Comcast Swallows Time Warner…You Get Indigestion

With the announcement that Comcast is grabbing Time Warner Cable for 45 billion…with a b….dollars, a lot has been said already about how little choice that will leave for cable TV. To the companies, that’s probably not the big picture, and it shouldn’t be for you, either. Together, the combined company will control half the video-voice-internet service in the US…and will be the biggest provider outside of China.

The spin is, Comcast says you have many other choices for content…and while there’s truth to that, the real issue…and where they make real money…is broadband. Only the cable company and the phone company have pipes into your home or office. You can’t get broadband over satellite! It may not be a monopoly, but it’s the biggest duopoly in the country, and guess who will be paying higher fees for it? That’s right, you will. Right now, the US is not even in the top 30 worldwide in download speeds, either. Think that will improve? Think again.

Blazingly Fast Internet

IBM scientists in Switzerland have come up with a technology that will allow internet speeds of between 200 and 400 Gigabits per second, according to zdnet.com. What does that mean in English? We’re talking about downloading a 2 hour high def movie or 40,000 songs in a few seconds! They plan to have a system in place outside the lab this year.

This sounds pretty gimmicky, but think about it…what a way to demonstrate what your product can do! Thenextweb.com says that Sony has started selling a waterproof Walkman mp3 player in a bottle of water! They have the Bottled Walkman on sale in vending machines in New Zealand.

In what could be a boon to fighting cancer, a Redwood City startup called Guardant Health has announced a genetic screening tool that uses blood samples instead of biopsies. Recode.net reports that one big benefit is the cost…it’s cheap enough that retesting can be done more often, and therapies changed as the cancer mutates, giving more effective protection against cancers.

Your Next Fridge May Be Magnet Powered

Instead of 100 year old compressor technology, in a few years, your refrigerator may be cooled by magnetocaloric effect…by magnets. Cnet.com reports that engineers at GE labs have a prototype running now…cooling beer! The magnet fridge is 20-30% more efficient than yours.

As privacy slips off into the night, Samsung is considering letting app developers see a lot more detail about you gleaned from your phone’s apps and sensors. Theverge.com says the samsung service is called Context…and it would also allow targeted ads tailored to you.

It was probably inevitable, but securemac.com has found a new trojan horse that hits Mac OS X, and spies on web traffic to steal Bitcoins. They say not to download an app called StealthBit.

TWO Galaxy S5’s May Be Coming

Benchmarks leaked point to two different Galaxy S5 flagship phones from Samsung. Bgr.com notes that there were two versions of the S4, but in those, only the processor was different. The two S5’s will be very different, and are being called the ‘Prime’ and ‘Standard’ models. The Prime one has a better display, faster processor, more RAM, and 32 Gigs of memory, while the Standard one has 16Gb. Look for the rollout the 24th of this month at Mobile World Congress.

Forbes.com reports that a startup claims to have cracked the code for porting iOS apps over to Android. Apportable says their software can cleanly convert the Objective C code from iOS apps to the Java based code used by Android apps. It basically builds a system within the app to fool the iOS app into thinking it’s still running under iOS. This could greatly increase the number of popular apps on both systems.

As the smart home movement continues to roll, a startup called bRight Switch has just hit its Indiegogo crowd funding goal of $115,000 to start producing small Android tablets to replace your light switches. According to techcrunch.com, it would offer features like people detection to automatically turn on lights on when someone walks into a room, and the ability to remotely switch your lights on and off via the Internet. Out by summer, they’ll be $75 each, or a 5 pack for $325.

Thoughts on Facebook’s Paper App

Click the link and hit the audio button for my take on the new Paper app Facebook introduced this week.

A Peek Inside A Tech Startup

This week, I had the opportunity to visit with the founder of one of the many startups in San Francisco. They are mostly in curated workspaces, not the garages of days gone by in Silicon Valley now. Here’s a little peek behind the curtain.

Rumor: Solar Charging iPhone

As the rumors continue to fly about the iPhone 6, here’s a new one that includes an earlier one. We already knew Apple has done a trial production run of sapphire screens, now bgr.com tells us that analyst Seeking Alpha has found that the sapphire glass may actually include tiny solar panels to solar charge your phone.

Smartphones have hit a big milestone…theverge.com says last year, more than a billion were shipped worldwide. That’s according to International Data Corporation. 314 million of those were just from Samsung.

Can’t wait to start making things with that 3D printer? Gigaom.com reports that on February 20th, Makerbot 3D printers will be available from Dell’s online shop. You can also get them from Microsoft and Amazon.

A Few Thoughts on the Mac at 30

Google’s Ad Sponsored Free Ride Idea

Slashdot.org notes that Google has gotten a patent for what they call ‘Transportation-Aware Physical Advertising Conversions.’ In English, it’s a system for arranging free or discounted rides to an advertiser’s business location…in Google driverless cars! A lot of patents don’t ever result in something tangible, of course. If this one does, it will be a huge change that will affect private cars in addition to taxis and busses.

Microsoft’s Surface tablet had a solid quarter with revenue of $893 million…up from $400 million the preceding quarter. Techcrunch.com says it may not be a smash hit for Redmond, but is a big move in the right direction

Here’s something that a South Korean court just ruled that should be done here…zdnet.com reports that they are making smartphone makers give users the option to delete pre-installed ‘bloatware’ starting in April.

Downside of the Internet of Things

One of the downsides of the wired house or so-called ‘internet of things’ has showed up. Cnet.com reports that a smart fridge has been caught acting in a botnet that sent out 750,000 spam emails. No malware protection. That will have to change! A real challenge will then be seeing if appliance and household electronics makers will be willing to keep updates coming to those devices…otherwise, it’s a moot point.

It happened with cameras….film has disappeared, and now the LATimes says Paramount has stopped releasing major movies on film. Other studios are expected to go digital only quickly, following their lead.

Microsoft CEO rumors continue to circulate, and recode.net notes that as a sidebar, look for none other than Bill Gates to take a more active role in the company, providing guidance and opening doors for the new CEO…who may be announced any time now. Is the (obviously Microsoft approved) move by HP to sell computers with Windows 7 instead of the latest version of 8 something Gates might have bought into to keep customers happy until Windows 9 is ready a little over a year from now?