Hasta La Gadget!

Good news, Bostonians: yours is the second major US city to get Aereo live television access via the web, and it’s starting on May 15th. Aereo announced its next city expansion this morning, and said the service will go live to pre-registered parties on May 15th. It will eventually become widely available to Boston’s “designated market area,” which includes “more than 4.5 million consumers in 15 counties in Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont.” We’ve got the full list of counties after the break if you’re interested.

Of course, this is just the tip of the iceberg for Aereo, which has plans for expansion in 22 cities just this year. The OTA network internet streaming TV service launched in New York City early last year. Traditional broadcast networks have voiced concern over Aereo’s TV model, even threatening to move to cable should the nascent internet company gets its way in an ongoing legal battle.

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds, Home Entertainment, Tablets, Internet, HD

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While we like the convenience of shopping the iTunes Store from any device, that doesn’t mean we want the download wherever we happen to be — just ask anyone trying to buy the Beatles Box Set using a flaky coffee shop hotspot. As of a quiet update noticed by Macworld, customers won’t have to risk a long wait for some of their impulse purchases. Buy from iTunes on any device and you now have the option to defer very large downloads, whether they’re music box sets, movies or TV shows. Shoppers have to live in an area where iTunes in the Cloud is up and running for downloads elsewhere, but that’s about the only major catch. Swing by the source link for Apple’s explanation of how its delayed gratification works for each format.

Filed under: Cellphones, Tablets, Internet, Software, Apple

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Via: Macworld

Source: Apple

You may not be familiar with a service called Tor. Tor is a web service that allows users to surf the Internet, use IM, and other services while keeping themselves completely anonymous. Tor is a free and open-source that is available for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android.

The National Police Agency in Japan is now asking ISPs to begin blocking Tor for customers if the customers are found to have abused Tor online. The push by Japanese authorities is because they’re worried about an inability to tackle cyber crime enabled in part by anonymizing services such as Tor. Clearly, the indication from the NPA is that there is some guilt associated with people who heavily use Tor.

The push to curb the usage of Tor in Japan stems from a case last year where a number of death threats were posted online from compromised computers. Several arrests were made in the case, but those arrested turned out to have had nothing to do with the posted messages. Once police finally caught up with the real perpetrator of the crimes, it was discovered that he frequently used Tor to cover up his cyber crimes.

The NPA also claims that Tor makes it easier for criminals to conduct financial fraud, child abuse, and to leak confidential police information. Whether or not ISPs in Japan go along with a request to block Tor remains to be seen. Privacy advocates will likely fight the request.

[via Wired]

Japanese National Police Agency wants ISPs to block Tor is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

While everyone else speculates about new Nexii and what sweet treat the next version of Android will be named after, we’re anticipating some exciting news about Now at Google I/O. Specifically, that it might be coming to both iOS and the desktop. We’ve already seen quite a bit of evidence that the virtual assistant app will eventually land on Apple’s mobile platform and maybe even Chrome. Newly discovered code in a Google page hints that it might just become part of the standard web search interface — provided you opt to turn it on, of course. Source code for the page in testing encourages you to, “get started with Google Now,” because it provides, “just the right information at just the right time.” It also offers you the opportunity to change you home and work locations because, as the explanation goes, “Google Now uses your Home location to show relevant information like weather, traffic conditions, and nearby places.” As you dig through you’ll also find plenty of references to “now_card.”

If Now becomes a standard part of the Mountain View lineup, regardless of platform, it could be huge for a company which already dominates the search market. Not to mention, it might satiate those seven people out there still mourning the loss of iGoogle. We won’t know anything for sure until the wraps are taken off and have reached out to the company for comment, but we anticipate the response will be predictably non-committal.

Filed under: Internet, Google

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Source: Google Operating System, Google

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