Tyler Tech: Tech headlines heat up summer
Tyler Waldman
Life | 7/6/08
Ah, the sights and sounds of summer.
Birds chirping, kids playing, and here I am, back with my column for the mid-summer edition.
Some news has been brewing in my absence. Apple announced an upgraded iPhone, set to launch July 11.
It boasts faster Web browsing speeds, downloadable applications, a GPS system, and a slew of other new features.
My favorite feature?
It's cheaper, with the 8 GB model starting at $199, half of what it was before.
Some blogs, however, have crunched the numbers with AT&T's new data plan for the phone, and with the cost of the contract, the total cost of using the phone ends up being slightly more.
Regardless, certain Towerlight staffers, who shall remain nameless, are probably setting up tents outside Apple and AT&T stores as I write this.
Speaking of Apple, their recent student discount spree got me to bite the bullet.
Yes, that's right.
I have a MacBook.
And I love it.
It runs like a dream.
Getting $100 off, a free printer, a free iPod Touch, a dirt-cheap copy of Adobe Creative Suite, and a discount off AppleCare is all icing on the cake.
Also in the news these days, media giant Viacom recently gained a court order to go through YouTube's logs as part of its lawsuit against the video Web site and its owners at Google, according to tech blog Ars Technica.
Viacom's lawyers now get to plow through a database of every video removed from YouTube, along with 12 terabytes of logs of every video ever watched on YouTube, how often they were watched, and how that number stacks up against non-pirated videos.
In other words, if Viacom can prove that a clip of, say, "The Word" on "The Colbert Report," gets more views than "Chocolate Rain," they could have a real argument on their hands.
However, all this data may be tagged with usernames and IP addresses.
Viacom promises they won't use it for other cases, but the idea just gives me the willies.
Birds chirping, kids playing, and here I am, back with my column for the mid-summer edition.
Some news has been brewing in my absence. Apple announced an upgraded iPhone, set to launch July 11.
It boasts faster Web browsing speeds, downloadable applications, a GPS system, and a slew of other new features.
My favorite feature?
It's cheaper, with the 8 GB model starting at $199, half of what it was before.
Some blogs, however, have crunched the numbers with AT&T's new data plan for the phone, and with the cost of the contract, the total cost of using the phone ends up being slightly more.
Regardless, certain Towerlight staffers, who shall remain nameless, are probably setting up tents outside Apple and AT&T stores as I write this.
Speaking of Apple, their recent student discount spree got me to bite the bullet.
Yes, that's right.
I have a MacBook.
And I love it.
It runs like a dream.
Getting $100 off, a free printer, a free iPod Touch, a dirt-cheap copy of Adobe Creative Suite, and a discount off AppleCare is all icing on the cake.
Also in the news these days, media giant Viacom recently gained a court order to go through YouTube's logs as part of its lawsuit against the video Web site and its owners at Google, according to tech blog Ars Technica.
Viacom's lawyers now get to plow through a database of every video removed from YouTube, along with 12 terabytes of logs of every video ever watched on YouTube, how often they were watched, and how that number stacks up against non-pirated videos.
In other words, if Viacom can prove that a clip of, say, "The Word" on "The Colbert Report," gets more views than "Chocolate Rain," they could have a real argument on their hands.
However, all this data may be tagged with usernames and IP addresses.
Viacom promises they won't use it for other cases, but the idea just gives me the willies.
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