TWTW: April 22nd – April 28th, 2018

byRaj Deut
3 minute read
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The week that was (TWTW) takes a look back at the week’s most prominent tech stories from around the world.

Video versions of TWTW appear on our website as well as our YouTube channel and Facebook page.

For those that prefer an audio only version, you can subscribe to the TWTW podcast feed on iTunes or by add this feed (https://feedpress.me/reckonerau-twtw) to your favourite podcast app.

Lastly you can find a full transcript of this week’s episode below.

In the week that was April 22nd to April 28th, 2018:

Intro

Hey everyone, my name’s Raj Deut and it’s time to take a look back at the tech news in the week that was:

April 22nd to April 28th, 2018.

 

Stories

One of the darlings of the early dot-com boom, Flickr, will now move on to its 3rd owner after being bought by once rival, SmugMug.

Sold for an undisclosed amount the site is the latest item to go in the garage sale Verizon is holding for its inherited Yahoo and AOL assets.

SmugMug CEO Don MacAskill released a statement saying they’re currently unsure what the plan for Flickr will be moving forward. For now, it will continue to run as is, the only change being to migrate portions of it’s backend over to SmugMug’s architecture.

Snap Inc decided that losing a 45 million and drowning in stock of their original Spectacles wasn’t reason enough to not invest in a second round.

The second generation Spectacles are thinner, have improved WiFi connectivity and are also water resistant. A new case also doubles as a charger however the same cumbersome method of transfering your videos remains.

Available immediately in north America the new Spectacles are slightly more expensive than the originals selling for US$150.

This time around Spectacles are available to purchase directly from their website instead of the unusual pop-up vending machine method used for the first.

After not receiving an update since 2012 Apple has finally pulled the pin on its AirPort wireless router range.

The original UFO shaped AirPort base station was released way back in 1999 at a time when WiFi could be anything but simple and reliable. The AirPort was instrumental in turning that around and contributed heavily to the wide spread adoption of WiFi that we see today.

Sonos gave a long awaited update on their integration of Apple’s own late to market AirPlay 2 software based streaming solution.

In a blog post on the Sonos website we were given the bad news that the majority of your Sonos hardware, sadly, isn’t going to be up to snuff to handle the new tech.

AirPlay 2, when it arrives, will be limited to Sonos’ most recently released products, the PlayBase, 2nd gen Play:5 & the Alexa enabled Sonos One.

It’s not all bad news though. AirPlay 2 will still work with your older speakers providing you have at least one of the newer ones to act as the controller.

In addition to the hardware specs we also learned that the integration will allow Siri to stream Apple Music and control your Sonos system, you’ll just have to use her on your phone to do so.

And as we do, let’s finish things off with a little NBN sunshine. And by sunshine I mean another shit storm as it’s revealed that more than 25% of the NBN’s fixed wireless connections are unable to achieve ADSL 1 like speeds of 12Mbps in peak periods.

Fixed wireless, initially designed to cover remote regional Australia has creeped into what are often called “problem areas” and now 1700 homes might just be better off being back on their copper.

Outro

And that’s it for another week! As always be sure to subscribe and like the show on your listening-slash-viewing platform of choice.

Over on the Reckoner website this week we have a review of the super simple and extremely effective network security device Fingbox. Check that out today and be sure to follow our Instagram at @ReckonerAU for news stories & updates as they happen.

Have a great week and bye for now.

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