 This is the Daily Tech News for Friday, December 18th, 2009 in Oakland, California. I'm CNET's Tom Merritt and from San Francisco, California I'm Sarah Lane and from the offices downtown in San Francisco. I'm Roger Chang for Tekzilla Google wants to buy Yelp y'all This seems like it might be a smart acquisition Google Neighborhood where Google asked people to put QR codes on their windows is already out there So why wouldn't Google Let Yelp get in on that action. Well, not let them but get them in on that action by buying them Yeah, I know that Google is certainly interested in this market I think Yelp made what was the last number about 300 million as of last year and Even if Google wants to build its own Yelp competitor The fact that Yelp already has all this data makes a lot of sense now. I'm here in Up to 500 million dollars for this deal, which would be Pretty high So obviously Google values Yelp's data quite a bit Yeah, and I guess with what TechCrunch is saying 30 million dollars of revenue Google probably feels like it's a decent bet Google has a lot of cash. I think the thing that that Concerns me is how big do we want Google to be? It's it's been interesting to watch the company move beyond search and a lot of that's been really fun like Gmail But now we're hearing rumors about Google making a netbook. We have the Nexus one Now Yelp. I mean, where does it end? Yeah? That's a very good question. I'm a Yelp user. I I enjoy Yelp I even enjoy the people that complain on Yelp regularly that's part of the fun of it And I would be interesting to see what Yelp would be Bundled into Google does it stay as a standalone service? Does it get wiped out completely and and it turns into I don't know a bunch of Google search results It's hard to say well You know, it's interesting to say search results because I'm wondering if you search for anything Like a store or a restaurant or any kind of entertainment Do you automatically get a Yelp review at the top of your list or near the top of your list along with That's basically what they want to do with places in Google neighborhood. So yeah, of course you would that that that seems to make sense They would just kind of incorporate it. The the other question is would it still be called Yelp or would it be called? Places with you know, would they would they merge it into an existing? product Yeah, I don't know. I mean the Yelp brand is pretty strong But Google has has a history of wanting to change names of companies that it acquired Do you think they'll try to harmonize the Yelp? For example, I have a Yelp account and I also have a Gmail account Do you think they'll try to harmonize those to be worthy become under you're gonna be logging in into a separate, you know You know account. Yeah, I mean when yahoo buy stuff You generally see the yahoo log log in become the way you log in I would assume that that's what Google would do as well The other question is are they actually gonna get it we all thought they were gonna get la-la and that didn't happen They they've did buy AdMob Which is just again making them bigger and bigger in the advertising business as well. So the interesting to watch Microblogging site Twitter got hacked by a group of protesters calling themselves the Iranian cyber army Twitter went offline for more than an hour overnight visitors were redirected to a page Declaring this site has been hacked by the Iranian cyber army and the United States thinks They control and manage internet access, but they don't that was the message This is a group of hackers whether they're actually from Iran or not Kind of doesn't matter to me It points out that dns sec needs to be implemented We need better dns security because that's how they replace this they didn't they didn't hack into twitter They they hijacked the domain Yeah, when I saw the fail well last night, I thought well, it's just you know, too many people on twitter same old same But uh, this is this is interesting uh twitter getting hacked because of course it's so popular right now Of course, this is going to be a target for for lots of folks Are we going to see more of these types of things? Can the company clamp down on something like this before it really gets out of control? And somebody does get into twitter itself I don't think there's any evidence that twitter is vulnerable. Uh, I mean the the only The only Vulnerabilities you hear about like rick sanchez getting hacked are phishing attacks where you trick someone into giving you access So so I feel like twitter is pretty safe. It's only a couple years old, right? So it's probably not 100 bulletproof, but this being a dns hijack Makes me much more concerned about the dns infrastructure than it has me concerned about twitter I'm I'm not so much a concern but more of a uh an academic pondering like Does this does this imply that twitter is becoming big enough and high profile enough for people to kind of see it as a A target in order to carry a message or some sort of you know politicization Of the medium in order to because you know as I guess it has such a huge reach Even from a couple years ago. Hey twitters made it. Is that what you're saying? I mean does that is that what that means? It's finally arrived. It's important. I don't have to explain to people why why they might want to use twitter You can just say look it's important enough for hacker groups Hijack it's domain. Are you to see environmentalists try to hang their digital version of like a protest banner off a bridge on twitter? Well, yeah, I mean, I'm still trying to explain to my family and my non-technical friends What twitter is and how it works and how it's not just about what I had for lunch although it is a lot of that but uh, but yeah, this definitely points to uh People who have access to these kinds of tools and want to make mischief if not worse Are starting to see Twitter as a place that enough people have gathered and have information and things to say and other people be listening to that information that uh, that that It sounds it seems like The company better get it together soon Well, you know who else has to get it together buggy software The national vulnerability database has issued their list of the buggiest software in the land based on reported vulnerabilities and the winner for the second year in a row is Firefox 102 bugs up from 90 last year. I mean are any of us surprised? Well, yeah, what? Well, okay, what hold on just closes all of them. So exactly exactly So that so it doesn't mean it's it's the buggiest. It means it's it's the most transparent about what's going on I you know, that's great. I still use chrome because every time I launch firefox my my cpu on my little laptop starts to overheat and hear the fans spin all the way up Yeah, well, good luck, uh with those secret bugs that google isn't reporting For you, uh 102 bugs up from 90 last year I think we can all agree though that adobe reader deserves to take second place speeding up microsoft's this year Uh as a foxit reader user myself. I say whoever would use adobe reader. Exactly. Why is just a Vector for disease I've never seen another application so bloated that offered such a small set of features Well, and apparently very insecure Yeah, and this is this is from a not open piece of software And before you apple people get to smug apple quick time took third place Ah quick time quick time. I remember that I remember what quick time is the days of your It was remember we used to use it all the time at uh sf state where we were learning how to desktop video at it Still still going strong. Yeah. Yeah, it's yeah, I never use it I don't really know what I would use it for but uh, but it's I think I commend firefox for Because again, like you said tom, it's open source. And so that's just the way these things go if there's A vulnerability. Well, you hear about it on firefox. So I think that more companies who aren't Clearly are not going to disclose uh, every bug that they find internally, right? And and very rarely even congratulate somebody maybe an outside researcher who has has found something that That the company then patches and and we all move on that doesn't really happen all that often You don't really hear about what's going on internally and how things are getting fixed. So I wish more companies acted the way firefox is if you're uh, wondering where internet explorer and chrome are on this list They're not on it because users of their software have patches installed automatically So that's something I'd like to see come to firefox to be honest is is automatic updates And a shout out to the folks at skype. Yeah, who I am and aim None of them are on the list this year. Although all three were on last year Yeah, well, yeah, who I am. I don't use it. I'm an aim user. Definitely. Uh, you Skype every so often I kind of to you know talk to friends and family who are who are overseas But uh, but yeah, uh, if I'm on aim, I would like it to be as as as strong as possible See, I use trillian and trillian is on this list. So maybe I said switch to the actual clients Yeah, I used trillian when I was still using a pc but now that I've switched over to To mac os Yeah, yeah, it's adm because of domaco And uh, thank you to uh game spot for forcing me to move over to aim because that's what the company's Yeah, I think I was what was I on? I think we mostly Are using aim People are kind of all over the place at cnet though Um, you know who instant messenger was the big tech tv one. I remember Hey, uh, the blu-ray disc association has released its finalized 3d specs this morning Outlining what you can expect out of 3d blu-ray next year. This is the future Full 1080p resolution backward compatibility For both 3d blu-ray players and 3d blu-ray discs And the use of the new mvc codec Uh, which is an extension of the existing abc 3d and the ps3 is not only going to support 3d gaming Uh by 2011, but it will also support 3d blu-ray playback That that machine is amazing can do anything Play your blu-rays play games Well, I mean, I think the ps3 Probably is the best blu-ray player you can buy if you can afford it. It's not the cheapest one, right? But definitely not the cheapest Uh, but but certainly, you know the fact that the ps3 is going to is in the spec for this I think is is certainly positive. I mean even according to robert heron. It's still considered the kind of uh, Benchmark, that's the one you benchmark against in terms of blu-ray performance Now i've been saying for a long time that I feel like streaming Is going to make the blu-ray battle irrelevant and I feel like i'm being proven wrong more and more so Do we feel like 3d? is going to Make blu-ray more popular is it going to you know? Because that's something that's going to be really hard to deliver over streaming Is that going to be the thing that that keeps blu-ray in the game? I want to say so but at the same time as someone who has to wear prescription I wear those those glasses I mean just to get ones that fit my face and over my glasses well Still haven't found that that magic one and You know, I I don't know why I just think that having to wear an extra pair of glasses over my glasses I mean, I love 3d, but I don't know I don't know I still find it to be it gives me a little bit of motion sickness I don't wear glasses But uh, I feel for you roger because who would want to wear glasses over glasses and you need you need your actual glasses You know, you can't see anything. Anyway, I don't know I I know that 3d over streaming is that that's that's a pipe dream at least right now, but I i'm not so crazy about physical media. I know that they're the blu-ray Loyal faithful people out there. I I know And you can't beat those specs in terms of quality video quality the 3d stuff I don't know. I don't know. It seems seems like a passing fad I don't know. I I go down to Best Buy and I I see them with all the new 3d capable TVs all lined up near the front with little signs telling you what what an amazing Well, again, like 3d capable though But how much content is actually going to be in 3d to the point where you would buy a 3d capable tv And feel like you paid more for a good reason, you know 3d is just going to come with every tv though So at some point people are just going to get used to it being in there whether they buy the tv to have 3d It just will be there, right? One good little weather is always to see what kinds of uh creation Hardware you can like in other words video cameras editing software and stuff like that You're beginning to see a lot of kind of prosumer level 3d video cameras. So I I mean it tells me that someone thinks that 3d is here to stay Well, yeah, the people who are making all that 3d I mean, you know, hey Uh, bing and get sued bing information design in st. Louis, Missouri has sued microsoft corp for trademark infringement in the st. Louis city circuit court Surding unfair competition trademark infringement and torsius interference It's a small privately held information graphics and multimedia design company But they claim that microsoft's use of bing Is uh is causing confusion. Yeah Well, now bing information design has been around since 2000. I believe right, you know microsoft bing pretty new So around nine years It's only been around a couple years and let's be honest There is no way that microsoft did not realize that bing information design existed It just doesn't think that bing information design was big enough to be able to fight it This is microsoft we're talking about so whether or not The company I don't know. I mean, I don't know what happened within microsoft But i'm gonna bet that they were like, eh, let him take us to court We'll just settle and and continue on our way Well, kevin cuts a spokesman for microsoft told the st. Louis business journal We do not believe there's any confusion in the marketplace and I have to have to tend to agree I don't think anyone is going to bing the search it. Well, I don't think anyone's going to bing the search engine But I don't think anyone's going to the bings the search engine and saying wait a minute Uh, I'm going to get all of my graphic and multimedia design in the st. Louis area done at the search engine Yeah I mean, I don't think that that's the confusion that the company is claiming though, right? It's more of I don't I don't know. Maybe maybe you're maybe you're searching on google for an alternative browser And you type in bit. Well, no, I mean that Realistically, I don't think this is about people confusing the bing Uh, they're being services with it's about maybe the information has to be to convince a judge Oh, no, I I I'm totally aware of that So they think they have enough of a case that they can get a judge to at least admit the case to court Which then might make microsoft give them a settlement and pay them off to go away But I imagine microsoft is probably not going to want to set that precedent So I wouldn't expect that they'll get the money out of microsoft, but they certainly got some press out of it Right, you know, they probably would get further if bing wasn't already a word that people use, you know It's bing. I mean that that is it's not. I don't know if it's even a real word, but it's not like bing cherries I mean like something that was made up or spelled weird. Then they'd really have a case It's probably is it named after a guy named bing the the graphic design company. I mean I don't start it by bing crossby Maybe what is he from st. Louis? Maybe this is just changed their name of the company to crossby Uh, well, no, they're not gonna give up. They want to fight this This will tell it somehow bears fruit. They should call themselves bling information design because we make great graphics So you remember a couple years ago when we talked about, uh, the netflix data set, uh, that they put out with anonymized information Uh, and we've talked about the fact that that anonymity had been broken mostly because you can take things like zip code birthday gender and It's been shown that there's a chance for for you to figure out who someone is even though it doesn't have their name on it In fact, the the famous thing Was a blockbuster data set revealing an 87% chance that a person could be uniquely identified Just from zip code birthday and gender Uh, well an in-closet lesbian mother is suing netflix Alleging the movie rental company made it possible for her to be outed when it disclosed Insufficiently anonymous information about a half a million of their customers as part of that one million dollar netflix prize Now and that is because of her viewing habits and she Uh, obviously has gone through some hardship because of this That was what netflix was was allowing people to see well netflix was allowing you to see Viewing habits of anonymized users just had an output, right? She's saying that you can look at the data that they put in this data set and figure out it's her And figure out that she's a lesbian But how can they do that with when the viewing her viewing history is anonymized? Well, the viewing history being a bunch of movies that are Generally loved by lesbians would be the way to tell that the the user was a lesbian Zip code It maybe she lives in a very sparsely populated zip code Birth if there's a birth date or you know gender that that's it's it is I mean, again, this is going back to that blockbuster data Uh, you don't need that much information to start ruling out possibilities and narrowing it down until you get an 87 Percent chance that you can say yep pretty sure. I know who that is This is Well, you know the this particular case aside It sets a very dangerous tone for All sorts of things people being able to find other people on social networks without them actually being friends or I don't know, uh, you know advertisers being able to target people based on Very simple what we think is Think of is very simple information like my gender my zip code Maybe, you know a couple things that I might have clicked on in the past and you can find me kind of thing I don't really know what it means, but I don't like the sound of it Yeah, and so the lawsuit is being led by joseph malley who recently reached a multimillion dollar settlement with facebook over its beacon program, uh, which was sharing users blockbuster rentals. So The the question is whether netflix should have known their data set would have anonymity But it sounds like she's got a high quality lawyer to fight in her side I You can buy the esquire magazine on your phone Now this is a little okay, so it's an app, right? Yeah, I mean I didn't I didn't get an iphone Right away. I waited, you know about a year, but I but I have one now And I don't know. I mean they're so small I don't want to read a magazine on my iphone that that just sounds like it's going to hurt my heads I think it's interesting that esquire is trying to Push back on this whole, you know FUD about the magazine industry going away because everybody's gone digital But is the iphone really the answer to this? I don't think so either So it's $2.99 to get the app and that gets you whatever the current issue is and then through in-app purchases On the iphone you can buy future issues. So it's not like you're like having to buy a new app every month, right? And you know it does some fun stuff. It makes it easy to scroll through different articles You look for visual or textual indicators, but I'm with you I actually do read comics and books On my phone, but I prefer to read them on my kindle. I prefer to read the comics at least the books. I prefer Well with the comics, it's it's more of a matter of convenience versus Preference, right? It's the fact that I can do it means I'll read a comic that I might not bother to go out and get otherwise But I don't know that I would buy a magazine No, I don't know that I'm dying for a magazine. I could just go to the web, right? And yeah, the form factor would just have to be much bigger. You'd have to have something that is I don't know for me. I read plenty of magazines on on the web, but my desktop monitors, you know Would it make more sense to be like on a Kindle or a or a Tablet or something. Oh, yeah. No, I love reading newspapers on the Kindle That's one of the the things I loved about the original Kindle Is is like I can read, you know the the Oakland tribute on it So yeah, I'm I'm still on the Blackberry. So, you know, I mean my my opinion is too weighted here It's it seems like a fun experiment by Esquire And somebody in a conference room was like Let's you know, you know, let's get crazy here. Let's just you know We're gonna get a lot of attention because they're not the first magazine to try to do this the first publication But it is Esquire And it when you look at the numbers you think, okay. Well, somebody was very compelled to Consume Esquire on their iPhone. The pricing is not unreasonable But I I just I I don't know how many other magazines might follow suits Just don't see it. Yeah, I think I need a little more than three and a half four inches of display space And at that point I'm just gonna use my my laptop. I I don't mind reading an article in in a web browser on the iPhone Uh, but I'm not paying for that right no And I could save that and look at it on my desk on my laptop later if I want Yeah, I don't know about that Reuters saying that the Pentagon has closed a security breach That would have allowed insurgents to hack into data feeds from drone aircraft That provide real-time video of war zones This is after a report in the wall street journal showing She-ite fires fighters in iraq using software to intercept the video feeds and let them monitor u.s. Military operations So it was being exploited. Oh great Now we got to deal with drones getting breached What's next? It's so the I thought but sarah, but sarah, we don't have to deal with them being breached anymore. They fixed it Well, that's good, but I thought that their response was a little flippant like this is an old story We fixed that a long time ago. Okay. Well, you did There was an issue in the beginning and what kind of information Do people have now about the military in in in highly covert situations? And you know, it's interesting is part of this is because the feeds aren't encrypted because they didn't expect anyone to Be looking and so that's all the things. Yes This is one of the this is one of those times where People just kind of assumed a certain level of sophistication that people wouldn't have to be able to hack it But you know what that was maybe eight years ago and technology has progressed and it's gotten cheaper for a lot of Cheap enough for a lot of people to make it more acceptable to a lot more people Yeah, I mean You're not going to expect the u.s. Military to come out and announce without provocation that they had a vulnerability Because that's announcing to the enemy that they can hijack your stuff So you just don't say anything about it at all The only the fact that the wall street journal brought this to light is why the military is even responding to it Yeah, and I do want to make clear that this wasn't an instance of someone controlling the drone But rather taking the video feed information that flows back And just siphoning it Well, and that's not worth anything anymore because think because conditions have changed Well, and as drones continue to Not only be you know something that consumers are interested in but obviously Um defense departments are interested in okay Well, this particular drone security breach has been fixed if we believe that's true great We can all move on are they going to use is that drone going to be using the same software? Is it going to be the the same company making all the same drones for the military going forward? It seems like we're going to get more and more competition from various companies Especially those who have contracts with the u.s. Government And I certainly hope that the future drones are a lot safer All right, here's a way to make some movie folks I said movie but I meant money, but it's money with the movie a producer from uruguay Made a science fiction film on youtube Ended up with a ton of emails and a film deal with sam marami's ghost house worth 300 million dollars Dang Wow attack was uploaded on thursday by monday Hollywood studios were all over alvarez It was a day alvarez to develop and direct a film based on one of his ideas This is a pretty cool little clip But he I think he did a majority if not all the animation Himself and it's pretty cool. Like if you want to see something attack the capital of uruguay, that's That would be it. I mean, well, this is going to end up being the way movies are made. I can I can tell this already Is this is this the new reel instead of having a reel of all your accomplishments. This is like my demo reel I'm just going to blurt it out there on something Yeah, this is the beauty of youtube Well, and it just goes to show you who is you know who is watching youtube Well, clearly hollywood studios and people who want to to partner with extremely smart people who aren't already in the industry Or at least are or are less visible in the industry alvarez He got enough attention that It's kind of like youtube can be a place where you can't get a job if you get enough attention I mean it's it's that's he got lucky Online you put your talent there and everyone can see it. It's interesting because uh back in the late 90s Remember the 90s It was often said that a lot of producers would go to comic cons and book fairs And other events in order to see if they could find any kind of story Worth translating or adapting for uh for the larger screen And this might be just the next logical step where people are going to youtube and sing like hey Who has a really cool sci-fi idea of aliens? This is the cool thing about youtube it democratizes content creation And that's why you're seeing so many people flooding into it And this sort of thing is going to happen more often. We're going to see more people Using it and uploading lots of different kinds of of stories there. It's really really fun to watch. Yeah I also think it's um, sorry roger. I I also I feel like most kind of serious creators use vimeo So I I I wonder why youtube was chosen in this situation Maybe just the platform he likes better But uh vimeo is like well known for Kind of those that's kind of flashy reels type of I think a lot of people do both though like they they go on For the professional presentation, but they also are uploading their content to youtube Well, because there's more people. Yeah, really the amount of eyeballs on youtube. Yeah. Yeah Hey, uh speaking of eyeballs We want your eyeballs to participate in our forum and your fingers too submit stories and uh and talk about them there And you can also do it in our irc chat room as well and we love getting your email Let's check out the mail bag Angry andy. That's what he calls himself says for years now I've heard you explain that drm only punishes the honest customers Well today I was such an honest customer for the last time I went to see avatar at my local cineplex saw a huge crowd standing in the lobby and I knew something was up The theater manager explained that the premiere screening of the 3d version could not commence They'd been waiting for the digital key to arrive that's necessary to decrypt the film It should have arrived by email from fox over four hours earlier, but it had not Apparently this was a problem for every movie theater in germany and probably every cinema in europe That wanted to show the film that day the 2d version not affected by the way Andy says I gather 50 of all the perplexed visitors had no idea what kind of key he was talking about But definitely 100 percent were pissed and had no understanding Why they made it all the way and the effort to come to the movie theater only only to be told Sorry, we don't want your money Andy says back and Andy says the 16th of december 2009. That was the day he went to see avatar. It was supposed to be the day I saw a masterpiece turned out to be the day I swear to never set foot in a movie theater again screw you fox and happy downloading Gee, it's almost like they punished an honest customer and turned them into a dishonest customer As a result. Yeah You know, we talked about chromo s and whether it could get in trouble in the eu Because it's only a browser and of course microsoft is being required to provide that browser ballot in the in the eu We had one person ask why it's okay for apple to only have its own browser safari on the iphone But then we had a holland wolf Recommend a couple of points that differentiates chromo s from microsoft windows Windows runs proprietary closed source code Whereas chromo s can be built and customized from open source code from chromium os A competing browser vendor is free to put their own browser in the place of the chrome browser and reuse the existing kernel and Underlying code within the restrictions of the license the microsoft windows os is itself a platform for running applications By contrast the chrome browser is the sole app That runs on chromo s and the chrome browser is the platform not the operating system So I thought that was pretty well explained. Thank you holland wolf for that. Yeah Thanks, uh, thanks everybody for writing in and thanks to everybody who supports us We love doing the show if we're lucky we'll be doing this in another five years Oh my gosh, I hope so you can support us directly on paypal By going to the address daily tech news show dot com slash support And please peruse our fine selection of dtns stuff at daily tech news show dot com slash store Our email address is feedback at daily tech news show dot com If you want to join us live your connection is strong enough anyway We're live monday through friday at 4 30 p.m. Eastern. That's 21 30 utc And you can find out more at daily tech news show dot com slash live see you next time This show is part of the frog pants network get more at frogpants.com