YATS 4: Whitespace

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“You remember that one time you pissed off Bill Gates?”

Welcome to YATS! Ant Pruitt here, and this is Yet Another Tech Show episode 4. Our outstanding panel met up again to discuss the latest news in the world of tech as well as other items of interest in tech. We’re four episodes in and our listener base is continuing its amazing growth. Thank you to everyone of you, the YATS Squadron, and we appreciate you continuing to spread the word about our show. Check us out in iTunes or our RSS feed for subscription downloads.

Now, on to episode 4

Google Facebook. . .err uh. . .Google Plus implemented a redesign in their user interface. This redesign stirred up the web with tons of feedback. Not always good either. The biggest concern for Google Plus users was the infamous unused white space found on the screen. Other changes included widgets on the left side for different Google Plus modules as well as easier chat and hangout integration. The text area for posting was changed as well. The area is a lot smaller and is eerily similar to that of Facebook or Twitter’s UI.

Facebook purchased the popular camera application, Instagram, for $1billion. Why did Facebook do this? What is true value in Facebook? Larry didn’t even know what Instagram really was. The rest of the crew at YATS didn’t hold it against him. We all tend to think that Instagram is an overrated application that makes regular users feel like their professional photographers just by adding a filter to their images from their camera phones. Is Facebook feeling threatened? Is Facebook just trying to grab as many top-notch developers by any means necessary? Where does this fit in the Facebook business model?

Netflix created a Political Action Committee to work with the government pushing SOPA? Well, no, maybe not. Netflix finally got everyone off of their back after their debacle of splitting plans and raising rates in late 2011, but speculation had everyone online sitting back looking for another Netflix PR screw up. After almost eight hours of SOPA support speculation, Netflix finally released a statement mentioning their PAC was not in support of SOPA. Maybe Netflix didn’t shoot themselves in the foot (this time). Is this a chance for Amazon to gain ground?

The computer world lost another pioneer. Jack Tramiel passed away at age 83 leaving a legacy that paved the way for other great minds of computing such as Bill Gates and Steve Wozniak. Tramiel brought the Commodore Pet and Commodore 64 to the world. The C64 was a “robust” machine running 64KB of RAM. See the hyperlinks for more details.

Mike is still holding on to his iPhone 3GS as he has yet to pull the trigger on purchasing a new cell phone. Windows Phone 7 got his attention briefly with the Nokia Lumia 900. We feel like this phone can give Microsoft a chance at making some noise in the cell phone marketspace, but what is Microsoft doing to promote this product? Has anyone outside of the tech world seen an ad for this device? If you go into a cell phone carrier’s store, are you shown the Windows Phone 7 models? Wait a minute, a memory management bug was found on the Nokia Lumia 900?

New WiFI standards are on the way. Say hello to 802.11ac. Mike discusses the specifics of this new standard such as how the hardware uses three antennas on a 80Mhz band. The data stream has a new encoding that essentially broadcasts at a faster speed up to 100Mbps.

We had a great time listening to (Uncle) Larry’s story about upsetting Bill Gates several years ago. Larry worked on the National Computer Conference and was tasked to invite a keynote speaker for an event. A few people came across Larry’s mind for keynote speaker, one which included Bill Gates of Microsoft. After close consideration, Larry finally decided to formally invite Robert Bemer to do the keynote at the NCC event instead of Bill Gates. You have to hear this story.

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