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“We’re doing it, they’re doing it, everyone’s doing it.”
It’s episode 62 of Yet Another Tech Show! Welcome, everyone. This is YATS. The tech podcast that focuses on bringing you informative, yet entertaining tech discussions each week. Our tech evangelists include producer Mat Lee, Larry Press and myself. I’m the one and only Ant Pruitt. This week we’re joined by regular guests Chris Miller of Spiked Studio and Richard Hay of Google. Also, new YATS guest and Attack of the Androids host, Nick Carroll. We appreciate these guys joining us. Ok, the formalities are out of the way, let’s get into the show notes.
So our US government is paying mobile carriers to tap the phone lines we all chatter on? Do you all care about the government tapping our lines and having the ability to listen in on your calls? There’s been a lot of discussion and uproar around the NSA Prism story. Where does this all end and where is the privacy line drawn? If you’re wanting to attempt to wear your tinfoil hat, check out this app mentioned by Anne Flaherty. The video demos the app for protecting against line snoopers.
Image credit: WikiCommons
Say goodbye to Google’s Latitude app. Now don’t everyone go into a massive panic as we did when Google Reader went down. How many of you use Latitude? of the YATS panel, only about half of us use it. I use it more for tracking family during travel. Mat uses it for Ingress portal hacking coordination. We speculate more on what other services could go by the wayside from Google. We like to think that Google Drive isn’t going anywhere because it’s a paid service, but what about other items such as Local?
Want to design your own smartphone? Motorola is supposedly going to allow for customization of the Moto X. . .sorta. No you won’t be able to specify your chipset or specs. It’s more so for. . .um. . .the color of your new phone. This is the first device from Motorola since being purchased by Google. You can get nice and fancy with your phone by changing the colors and even have engraving. Seriously, Moto?
Here’s some breaking news for you. PC sales are down for Q2. Yeah I know, this barely qualifies as news. The question is, why. We attribute it to a few things. Windows 8 isn’t widely accepted as the default operating system. Tablets are continuing to soar in sales. Smartphone as becoming just as reliable for some cases. Nick thinks that smartphones are getting faster and faster in processing and other hardware progression which may surpass the needs of a local computer. What about the sales of the Macbook Pro and Air? What about the Chromebook? These lead you to think that computing needs are going the way of mobile laptops and alternative operating systems.
Image Credit: Ant Pruitt
I lost my smartphone this week. This will happen if you ride a roller coaster and not secure your personal items. Fortunately, I’m really not concerned. At a prior time in my life I would have been an angry mess. I’ve been disconnected from 3G/4G, but I still have my Nexus 7 with WiFi when available. Using WiFi I can make VOIP calls if I really need to. Or still communicate via text messaging with Google Voice. If you lose your smartphone phone, would you totally freak out?
Lastly, we mention the passing of Doug Engelbart. Geeks know him best from his “Mother of All Demos.” Larry wrote and shared insight on how much Engelbart meant to today’s world of technology. Lots of foreshadowing from the 1960’s that is available today.
Thanks for check out this week’s show, everyone. Be sure to like, follow and subscribe on our social connections on Twitter, Google Plus, iTunes, Stitcher and our Google Plus Community. Feel free to leave us a note or comment. Your comments, ratings and reshares of our content is always appreciated. Keep spreading the YATS love and we’ll see you next episode.
Check out the hangout video below. If you want to watch us live, check out YATS tv Wednesday nights.
