Tech News 2Night 129 (Transcript)

[Top TN2 Animation ] Tonight! Apple teams up with rival IBM, Net Neutrality comments crash the FCC website, and Google's smart contact lens may be headed to an eyeball near you! Tech News 2Night is Next! [TWiT Open] [Main TN2 Open] This is Tech News 2Night Episode #129, for TUESDAY JULY 15, 2014 This episode of Tech News 2Night is brought to you by NatureBox. Order great-tasting, healthy snacks delivered right to your door. Forget the vending machine, and get in shape with healthy, delicious treats like Coconut Date Energy Bites! To get 50% off your first box go to naturebox.com/twit. That’s naturebox.com/twit. I'm Mike Elgan, lets get right to the tech feed.. Apple and IBM today announced a partnership that could drive iOS adoption in the enterprise. The agreement is significant in part because IBM long served as enemy number one for the late Apple co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs. The partnership will drive the use of iPhones and iPads for accessing complex data sets that live in the cloud. IBM's newish enterprise mobile software is called MobileFirst, and the partnership will result in an extension to that software called MobileFirst for iOS. The companies say they'll create more than 100 industry-specific applications that will run on the iPhone and iPad -- ranging from security to mobile device management products. IBM will also start selling iPhones and iPads to its corporate customers. Apple is already big in the enterprise -- 82 percent of smartphones and 73 percent of tablets currently used in corporate America are iPhones and iPads. / Microsoft announced job cuts -- the biggest in five years. The layoffs may be part of the integration of Nokia’s handset unit, which Microsoft recently acquired. The restructuring is expected to be announced soon, possibly this week. Recode’s sources suggest that details of the cuts are still being decided, but the total job losses could exceed the 5,800 jobs cut from IBM's 2009 layoffs. / Google plans to license its smart contact lens technology to a Swiss pharmaceutical company called Novartis. The plan is to bring electronically enhanced contact lenses to market within a few years, with prototypes planned for early next year. The technology embeds "non-invasive sensors, microchips and other miniaturized electronics" into contact lenses for two main applications. The first is glucose monitoring for diabetics. Sensors would measure sugar levels in tear fluid, then transmit the data in real time back to a wireless device. The second application could correct vision to help restore the eye’s natural focus. The lenses would be able to detect whether its wearer is looking at something close or far away, and make changes to the lens accordingly. It’s like autofocus for the human eye. / coming up, Google kills their unpopular "real names" policy for Google+. And next I'll chat with NPR reporter Elise Hu about the FCC's comment period on net netrality, which has now been extended and I'll tell you why. But first.... [AD] "If you want to get healthier, maybe you should snack more! Why? Nature Box, that's why. Nature Box is a subscription service for healthy snacks, with ZERO trans fats, ZERO high fructose corn syrup -- and NOTHING artificial. Nature Box sends great tasting snacks right to your door with free shipping anywhere in the U.S. Here’s how it works: Click on the “Continue” button to choose between 3 subscription options. Then place your order. Once you’re a member, you can select which snacks you’d like in your monthly box. You can select by dietary needs: Vegan, Soy Free, Gluten Conscious, Lactose Free, Nut Free and Non GMO. You can also select by taste: Savory, Sweet or Spicy. The next time you get cranky and hungry and are ready to eat anything, remember Nature Box. Snack guilt free with Coconut Date Energy Bites, Santa Fe Corn Stix, Pear Praline Crunch and over 100 more healthy choices! [[Offer/ Call to Action]] To get 50% off your first box go to naturebox.com/twit. Stay full! Stay strong! Go to naturebox.com/twit. And we thank Nature Box for their support of Tech News 2Night" [Segment #2] The U.S. Federal Communications Commission today pushed back its deadline for public comment on the chairman’s net neutrality proposal to Friday, July 18th. The reason for the extension is that massive traffic to the site by a flood of comments appeared to crash the FCC’s site. The previous deadline was today. Joining us to talk about the FCC’s proposal and the public comment period is NPR reporter and Thursday Tech News Today co-anchor, Elise Hu. Welcome, Elise. Q: Elise, can you briefly frame the story here and summarize the current proposal that the public has been invited to comment on? What’s the proposal? Q: Yesterday, most major web-centric tech companies spoke with one voice on the net neutrality issue in the form of a letter from the Internet Association, which is a lobbying group representing Google, Facebook, Twitter, AOL, eBay, Amazon, Netflix, Yahoo and many others. Another major voice has been comedian John Oliver, who has eviscerated cable companies over the issue on his HBO show Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. Have the Internet Association or John Oliver had an impact in generating public interest in net neutrality? Q: The FCC is currently weighing a $45.2 billion proposal by Comcast to acquire Time Warner Cable. If approved, the combined companies would control about 40% of the fixed broadband market in the United States. Already some are slamming Comcast for acting like a monopoly after part of a customer service call to Comcast was recorded and posted online yesterday by former Engadget Editor-in-Chief and current AOL executive, Ryan Block, who was simply trying to cancel his Comcast service. Let’s have a listen. Q: What was Comcast’s response to the posting of this call? Q: Is that a credible response? Don’t companies monitor calls to improve customer service? Q: Will this PR crisis affect the proposed Comcast/Time Warner merger? " [Kicker!] Google announced today the death of its ill-fated real names policy for Google+. When the social network was announced more than three years ago, Google’s restrictions on what name you could use for your profile was controversial. Many high-profile users who used pseudonyms professionally were banned from using their preferred names, and Google got a lot of bad press. The company later softened the policy, allowing pseudonyms on what Google calls plus-Pages, the kind of profile used by businesses, but not on personal profiles. When Google forced a Google+ login on YouTube users, another big controversy erupted, in part because YouTube users now had to theoretically use their actual names for the first time, instead of commenting anonymously on YouTube with a pseudonym. One problem with the requirement for real names was that Google had no way to enforce it, and many Google+ profiles clearly don’t use real names. Today, Google announced that any user can use any name for their Google+ profile without restriction. That’s the right policy. It’s just three years too late. [good bye] That's it for this edition of Tech News 2Night. Subscribe to this show at Twit.tv/tn2, and write us at tn2@twit.tv Don't miss our morning news program, Tech News Today, tomorrow and every weekday at 10am Pacific, 1 pm Eastern. I'm Mike Elgan, thanks for watching.