Well if you want to get a sense of what matters this week in the world of technology and maybe a real consumer review of a tech product then this is the program you want to be tuned into.
Andrew Thomas, from Nexa, joins me to talk about the tech news on our radar.
THE PODCAST
HERE IS THE Z5 REVIEW!
Here are the show notes so you can find the things we spoke about.
November 16
P1
2295 AED
Review Sony Z5
5.2 inches (~69.6% screen-to-body ratio)
Android OS, v5.1.1 (Lollipop), planned upgrade to v6.0 (Marshmallow)
23 MP, 5520 х 4140 pixels, phase detection autofocus, LED flash, check quality
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Geo-tagging, touch focus, face detection, HDR, panorama
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2160p@30fps, 1080p@60fps, 720p@120fps, HDR, check quality
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5.1 MP, 1080p, HDR
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Great Sound!
-waterproof and dustproof
P2
GOOGLE app
loving the voice search, beautiful on google maps
Firefox with Ios -what do you think
Snapchat video is insane
ipad pro - im going for it
A great interview!
Microsoft's Developer Chief Somasegar: The exit interview
Q: You started as a software design engineer in Windows, correct? You worked on eight different Windows releases, including OS/2, NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 (and some in between, I take it.) What was your biggest takeaway or lesson learned from being part of the Windows org?
SS: Nobody remembers when you ship something. What people remember is whether you shipped something great. This is something I learned in my early days at Microsoft and have strived to follow that throughout my career.
Q: What's the most important/monumental change in the developer landscape over the past decade, in your view?
SS: Two things, which we've already discussed here: (1) The power of Open source, and (2) The transformational nature of mobile/cloud and the opportunities that brings to the world of software development.
Evernote adds some more features!
SEARCH TEXT INSIDE IMAGES
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Just because that notebook page or brainstorm whiteboard is a photo doesn’t mean it’s not searchable. Evernote will even find text inside images.Learn how »
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SEARCH INSIDE ATTACHMENTS
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Premium users can take search to the next level. Stop searching filenames and start searching inside your Office docs and PDFs. Learn how »
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ADVANCED SEARCH
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Use natural language to find what you’re looking for, or add advanced criteria for pinpoint accuracy.
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CREATE A SAVED SEARCH
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For searches you do often, save your criteria so that next time it’s all automatic. Learn how »
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UBER and TomTom!
Uber and TomTom just got into bed together. On Thursday, the transportation giant signed a deal with the Dutch mapping company, allowing Uber to license TomTom’s mapping and traffic management services. The plan comes in the wake of a failed attempt to buy Nokia’s mapping business for a cool $3 billion earlier this year — Uber ultimately lost out in that particular bid to a German automaker consortium. While there’s no word yet on how much Uber spent to partner with TomTom, we can assume that licensing rights for the over 300 cities where Uber is active didn’t come cheap.
“We are excited to provide Uber with our best-in-class location data.” said Charles Cautley, Managing Director Maps & Licensing at TomTom, in a statement. “TomTom is a truly independent map provider with the platform for the future. With this platform, TomTom is the trusted partner for innovative and future-proof location technology for the global automotive and consumer technology industry.”
P3
facebook self destructing messages!
Facebook have rolled out a new 'disappearing messages' feature which allows users to send 'self destructing' messages that disappear after one hour.
The feature is available on iOS and Android, but is currently only present in France. It is not known when, or if, the feature will be rolled out to other regions.
The new feature has drawn obvious comparisons to Facebook rival Snapchat, which has over 100 million daily users and 6 billion daily video and photo views. According to the Wall Street Journal, Facebook attempted in 2013 to acquire Snapchat for $3 billion -- an offer Snapchat refused.
Facebook Safety Checkin
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg committed to turning on Safety Check in more human disasters going forward, responding to criticism that the company turned on its safety feature for Paris but not for Beirut and other bombings.
Zuckerberg explained that the Paris terror attacks marked the first time the company has enabled Safety Check for a human disaster, not a natural disaster like an earthquake. The feature allows people in a region affected by a crisis to send a notification to their Facebook friends that says they are safe.
As Facebook profile pictures are updated with French flags and Paris users check in, many have questioned why the same support has not been extended to Beirut, where more than 40 people died in bombings the day before the attacks in Paris.
“You are right that there are many other important conflicts in the world,” Zuckerberg wrote in a comment on Facebook. “We care about all people equally, and we will work hard to help people suffering in as many of these situations as we can.”
Zuckerberg wrote in a comment on his picture that Facebook’s policy just changed on Friday to allow the feature to be used in a human disaster, and going forward it will be used in more.
An early form of Safety Check first launched in 2011 during Tokyo’s tsunami and nuclear disaster. It has since been launched during earthquakes in Afghanistan, Nepal and Chile as well as during Tropical Cyclone Pam in the South Pacific and Typhoon Ruby in the Philippines. However, Facebook says the feature in its current form cannot be applied to all crises.
“In the case of natural disasters, we apply a set of criteria that includes the scope, scale and impact,” wrote Alex Schultz, vice president of growth. “During an ongoing crisis, like war or epidemic, Safety Check in its current form is not that useful for people: because there isn’t a clear start or end point and, unfortunately, it’s impossible to know when someone is truly ‘safe.'”
The AdBlock guy!
The very foundation of the free Web is at risk, and Wladimir Palant is partly to blame. Now he thinks he can fix it.
The problem, as he sees it, is an “outright war” between online advertisers and the rest of us. As intrusive online advertising has proliferated—in banners, pop-ups, and videos that distract readers, cover up content, clog the Internet, and track your Web browsing—easy-to-install programs that block those ads have soared in popularity. Take away the ads, and so goes the revenue that makes huge parts of the Web possible.
Palant is the creator of Adblock Plus, which has 60 million active users, making it the most popular of the ad blockers. That gives Palant, a shy, privacy-minded software developer from Moldova, and his company, Eyeo, an outsize role in determining the future of Internet advertising. His solution is to force a truce by letting only certain ads through the blocker. In other words, his goal is to save the Web by making ads less annoying.
In the process, Palant, 35, has made enemies, including publishers in Germany who have taken Eyeo to court, so far unsuccessfully. His opponents object to the fact that while Adblock Plus is open-source and free to download, Palant has figured out a clever way to profit from the détente he has forced with ad purveyors. Though one can choose to have Adblock Plus strip out all ads from Web pages, the application will, by default, let through ads that are part of Eyeo’s so-called Acceptable Ads program. To be in the program ads must be static, mainly text, and positioned in a way that doesn’t distract from the primary content on the page. Although small websites can apply for free to be included in the program, around 700 “larger properties,” including Google and Amazon, have to pay. Unlike the Acceptable Ads criteria themselves, who pays, and who doesn’t, isn’t so transparent.
Palant’s plan feels logical. If advertising is less intrusive and doesn’t invade one’s privacy, fewer people will be compelled to block every ad. We could all win: users get to keep their free content, advertisers maintain a low-cost way to reach customers, and publishers can fund their work. But who gets to decide what counts as an appropriate ad?
P4
Google Maps Now Offline!
ap app is only as good as your access to the Internet.
Now drivers who have ever been frustrated by losing navigation can use Google Maps offline and still have access to directions.
The latest version of Google’s map app allows users to download city maps so that streets and businesses will be stored on their mobile devices. The app automatically goes into offline mode when it detects there is little to no signal.
The offline version still provides information like a business’ hours of operations, contact information and ratings. But it can’t offer real-time traffic patterns to help determine driving routes.
“When a connection is found, it will switch back online so you can easily access the full version of Maps, including live traffic conditions for your current route,” Google Product Manager Amanda Bishop wrote in a blog post Tuesday. “By default, we’ll only download areas to your device when you are on a Wi-Fi connection to prevent large data fees.”
Google first previewed the new features during its developers conference Google I/O in May. The company said more offline features were in the works. The update is currently only available for Android users, but will come to Apple iOS soon.
Google Maps is the No. 1 downloaded map app. The company also owns Waze, another popular map app that Google bought in 2013 for about $1 billion.
Apple also features a navigation app called Maps, but it has long been dismissed as inferior to Waze and Google Maps.
SnapChat Video!
Days after Facebook announced that its users watched videos 8 billion times a day, Snapchat told theFinancial Times on Sunday that its smaller set of users opened videos 6 billion times a day.
The statistics reveal fast growth: Since the spring, video watching has tripled on Snapchat and doubled on Facebook. Outside that comparison though, the data points don’t offer much help in stacking up the two social entertainment services, which are competing with YouTube and other video apps for the time and attention of content creators and the pocketbooks of advertisers. Here’s a look at notable differences that make the big figures incongruous.
Tick-tock
The most obvious disparity is that Facebook requires at least three seconds or more of a video to play before counting it as a view. Snapchat counts a view instantaneously on load. Both have data that highlight how many videos are played to the end, but neither has publicized that information.
Automatic
Facebook users mostly encounter videos when scrolling down their news feeds, and many videos load automatically as people go past them. The feature is meant to make videos more eye-catching and to eliminate the need for people to wait for the content to load. But even if someone scrolls past an “auto-play” video and doesn’t actually tune in, it can still be a view. By default, these videos also are muted.
Snapchat requires far more engagement to get a video started. Users have to tap on an icon to load one.
Where you at
Snapchat’s been able to arrive at billions of video views a day solely through a mobile app. In addition to an app, Facebook loads videos through its website and on others’ websites by allowing publicly shared videos to be embedded elsewhere. It’s a bigger ecosystem, and one that Snapchat has hinted through its terms of use policy that it could eventually do more to directly compete with.
What you are
Neither Facebook nor Snapchat has been entirely upfront about what counts as a video for purpose of the big viewership numbers. Snapchat, for instance, has several different types of videos. There are messages sent between friends, mini posts combined into longer videos and clips from professional outlets such as ESPN and CNN that are interspersed in between articles. In the longer videos, whether Snapchat registers a view for each individual piece or just one overall isn’t certain. Snapchat didn’t immediately respond to requests to comment.
On Facebook, people often share videos from other services that can be viewed within the feed. Those don’t count as a Facebook video view, a spokeswoman said, which means overall video-playback on Facebook is actually higher than captured by the 8-billion number.
The money
Both Snapchat and Facebook are ramping up sales of video ads, though the number of ads they’re selling and the amount of feedback they give to advertisers on viewership is far apart.
Snapchat is concentrating on the biggest advertisers, seeking big deals for a few spots and championing the idea that buying an ad on Snapchat is like buying an ad for television. Facebook is seeking a wider spectrum of buyers, and offering far more precise capabilities and accounting. It’s also planning to split ad revenue with content creators in some cases, but likely with a far larger group than the about 20 media companies that Snapchat does that with.
One thing both companies have agreed on: The days are young in the era of online video.
“It's pretty amazing how quickly it's growing but there's a lot more to do,” Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg told analysts and investors last week.
Apple Streaming now on Android!
In its quest to become the world’s streaming music leader, Apple is extending an unlikely olive branch to its mobile-world rival, Google.
On Tuesday, an early beta version of the Apple Music streaming service was made available on Google’s highly popular Android mobile operating system for the first time. Not even iTunes, the music-download store and player that made Apple a global music giant, had been available on Android before today.
Since the iTunes store emerged in 2003, the company has become the dominant force in music retail, but customers are dropping downloads in favour of streaming music: subscription services that generally charge a monthly fee or jam numerous ads into the experience.
Spotify is the world’s streaming music leader, with more than 75 million active users, 20 million of whom pay subscription fees of about $10 a month for unlimited ad-free music. In the face of such competition, Apple is changing its tune. By launching on Android, Apple has made a small concession in its battle for mobile market share in order to make huge strides in its battle for music market share.
Since launching Apple Music in June, the tech giant has racked up 15 million users, 6.5 million of whom pay subscription fees, chief executive Tim Cook recently told reporters. Opening up to Android gives Apple a greater battleground to grow the nascent streaming market and steal share from Spotify and other rivals such as Rdio, Google Play, Tidal and Deezer.
Ipad Pro!
The first thing you need to know about Apple's iPad Pro is that it's, well, giant.
About an inch longer than a standard sheet of paper, the Pro features a 12.9-inch diagonal display, giving it 78 per cent more surface area than the 9.7-inch iPad Air 2. At nearly 1.6 pounds, the Pro is heavier than current models, but not much more so than the original iPad from 2010. There's room for four speakers, compared with two on other iPads.
The price is supersized, too. The iPad Pro starts at $1049, compared with $549 for the standard-size iPad Air 2 and $329 for the cheapest iPad, the 2-year-old iPad Mini 2. A physical keyboard from Apple costs $229 extra, and the Apple Pencil sells for $129.
Designed with professionals in mind, the Pro is Apple's way of reaching new consumers as sales of iPads — and tablets in general — decline. Here are some things to know as the Pro starts appearing in stores this week:
The Pro isn't for everyone
Many people will be fine with the standard iPad Air, while others will prefer the portability of the smaller iPad Mini.
The Pro is for those who need the larger screen, including people who write, build spreadsheets or edit graphics and video rather than primarily reading or playing games. These are people who might otherwise be lugging around a laptop. If you're using a tablet just to watch Netflix, the Pro might be overkill, though movies and TV shows look and sound nicer.
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