The Feed: Tech News You Probably Missed (Aug 4-8, 2014)
Tech news and commentary for the week of August 4–8, 2014.
In case you ever find yourself in a situation where you need to make a will (as in Last Will and Testament), like, right now, well, there’s an app for that. Your Last Will creates a video will for you, to be viewed after your death, which no doubt probably is accompanied by a fairly interesting story. Link.
Dell (the computer company) is researching ‘mood reading’ technology, which will be able to tell how you’re feeling when you use it. When this hits the market (they say 2017), you’ll have to wear a helmet that costs between $100 and $200, and that gets the mood reading correct ‘about half the time.’ Good luck with that. Link.
In 2011, HP bought British tech company Autonomy for $11.1 billion. Now, HP is saying that due to cooked books, Autonomy is actually worth only $2.3 billion. Ruh-roh. HP, as you might imagine, is suing Autonomy founder Michael Lynch for fraud. Link.
Apple’s model is to own the entire computing experience stack (hardware, software, app delivery model), but there’s one fly in the ointment: Intel CPUs for Macs. Jean-Louis Gassé makes the argument that because Intel is delayed in bringing 14nm chips to the market, Apple’s Mac hardware lineup is literally suspended in time and the end is nigh for the Macintel partnership. I’m certain being beholden to Intel is much to Apple’s chagrin, and don’t be surprised to learn in the near future Macs will run on Apple-designed ARM chips, just like iPhones and iPads do. Link.
Amazon’s same day delivery service is now available in these cities: Baltimore, Dallas, Indianapolis, NYC, Philly and Washington DC. If you’re an Amazon Prime member, same day delivery nicks you for $5.99 – cheaper than some retailer’s ground service, and certainly cheaper than almost all 2nd-day delivery options. Link.
Webmasters take note: Google has said it will start ranking sites that use HTTPS higher than those that don’t. Smart move for web security that will force a lot of organizations to finally check that item on their todo list. Link.
More Google stuff: if you use Gmail, the service will now highlight unsubscribe links atop messages, so you can bail out of ones you haven’t actually joined. Nice touch. I use Google’s ‘Unsubscribe and Report Spam’ everyday. Link.
Want a sign that the TV guard is indeed changing? Here you go: web-based Netflix now makes more revenue than HBO. And people wonder what net neutrality is all about. Link.
Thanks for reading, everyone. See you next week.
