Tech News 2Night 205 (Transcript)

[Top TN2 Animation ] Tonight! Tim Cook says he Is 'Proud to Be Gay', Microsoft announces their health platform, and China's Xiaomi is now the third largest smartphone maker. Tech News 2Night is Next! [TWiT Open] [Main TN2 Open] This is Tech News 2Night Episode #205, for Thursday October 30, 2014 This episode is brought to you by Squarespace, the all-in-one platform that makes it fast and easy to create your own professional website or online portfolio. For a free 2 week trial and 10% off, go to squarespace.com, and use offer code TECHNIGHT I'm Sarah Lane, Let's get right to the Tech Feed! Today, Microsoft joins the health movment with its own long-rumored Health platform that includes a cloud service, mobile app, and smart wristband. The $199 Microsoft Band is compatible with iOS, Android, and Windows Phone devices, and has 10 smart sensors for all-day heart rate monitoring, calorie-burn measurement, and advanced sleep quality tracking, as well as guided workouts curated by Gold's Gym, Shape, Men's Fitness, and Muscle & Fitness. The Band also displays incoming calls, emails, texts, and social updates, as well as the Cortana personal assistant. At launch, the platform syncs with UP by Jawbone, MapMyFitness, MyFitnessPal, and RunKeeper to store information and build routines. Users can soon opt into connecting Microsoft Health data to HealthVault, in order to share details with medical providers. / Like em or not, Instagram video ads are officially live, with deals in place to show 15-second autoplay spots from Disney, Activision, Lancome, Banana Republic and CW. The ads will start appearing today and roll out over the coming weeks. Static image ads on Instagram launched last year, but video has become an essential part of mobile advertising, not just on Instragram-owned Facebook, but also rivals like Tumblr and Snapchat that recently launched similar ad products. The targeting of ads on Instagram is still pretty basic, giving marketers the ability to reach people by age, gender and country. / If I ask you, who are the #1 and #2 worldwide smartphone vendors, you might say Samsung and Apple... and you'd be right. But who's #3? It used to be LG, but no longer. Data from Strategy Analytics reveals that Chinese handset maker Xiaomi has surpassed both LG and Huawei to become the third-largest smartphone maker in the world. Xiaomi has seen huge growth as its market share grew to 5.6%, or 18 million smartphones shipped, in the third quarter compared to just 5.2 million in the year-ago quarter. LG now holds down the fourth spot with 5.2% global market share. Xiaomi has had great success selling entry-level devices in emerging markets such as China and India, and the company plans to expand its footprint in Asia and Europe. / Lenovo officially completed a $2.9 billion deal with Google earlier today, which now makes it the proud owner of Motorola. Motorola will remain a wholly owned subsidiary of Lenovo, and its headquarters will remain in Chicago. Google retains ownership of the bulk of Motorola’s patent portfolio, with Lenovo getting a license to the patents... although 2,000 patents and a large number of patent cross-licensing deals will go with Motorola to Lenovo. / Later in the show... a new app that tracks how often you look at your smartphone during the day. The truth is gonna hurt, people. And next I'll chat with Mark Millian from Bloomberg about Apple CEO Tim Cook's latest big announcement...hint, it's not about hardware. [AD] This episode is brought to you by: squarespace.com, the all-in-one platform that makes it easy to create your own professional website or online portfolio. Some of the reasons why you’ll love Squarespace: Beautiful designs - They have 25 beautiful templates for you to start with, and recently added a Logo Creator tool. Easy to use - but if you want some help, Squarespace has live chat and email support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. E-commerce - Now available for all subscriptions plan levels, including the ability to accept donations - which is great for non-profits, cash wedding registries, and school fund drives. plans start at just $8 a month, and includes a free domain name if you sign up for a year. two apps- Metric app for iPhone and iPad allows you to check site stats like page views, unique visitors and social media follows. With the Blog app you can make text updates, tap-and-drag images to change layouts and monitor comments on the go. and Hosting is included - Squarespace takes care of the hosting, so you don't have to. [[Call to Action]] Start a free 2-week trial with no credit card required and start building your website. When you decide to sign up for Squarespace, make sure to use the offer code TECHNIGHT to get 10% off, and to show your support for Tech News 2Night. We thank Squarespace for their support of Tech News 2Night. A better web awaits...and it starts with your new Squarespace website." [Segment #2] Mark Milian, Tech Editor, Bloomberg An essay published today on Bloomberg, Businessweek- ""Tim Cook Speaks Up"" -Why did he make his announcement now? Why did he wait? -Why is this significant? -Should this be significant? Tim Cook did not announce a new product, how is this related to technology? -Tim Cook mentioned that in more than half of the States (29) you can be fired for being gay. Could a statement like this from a business leader change laws? - Apple is a global company. How could this impact the Apple business? -Do the personal lives of CEO’s and company leaders matter? -Diversity has been an issue tech companies are tackling- mostly around gender. How much would this add sexual orientation to the discussion? ## Thanks Mark Milian / Facebook has 1.35 billion users and some of them probably have a few questions about the social network. In the spirit of transparency, CEO Mark Zuckerberg will conduct the first "Community Q&A" on November 6th in an hour-long livestreamed session that will intend to answer the public’s questions submitted to the “Q&A With Mark” Facebook Page. Zuck says the Q&A is themed after a Facebook tradition where “every Friday we have a Q&A and all employees can come and ask me questions about anything they want.” People can submit questions in the comments on Zuckerberg’s post, or Like ones to vote for the questions they want answered. A bit like a Reddit Ask Me Anything, actually. / Christina Bale has been tapped to play Steve Jobs in the upcoming biopic "Jobs", based on Walter Isaacson's biography "Steve Jobs" written by Aaron Sorkin and directed by Danny Boyle. So, who's Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak? Variety reports that Seth Rogen will fill that role, citing anonymous sources. Sorkin, who also wrote the successful Facebook drama “The Social Network,” has previously said the movie will be divided into three long scenes, each taking place backstage before one of Apple’s famous product launches. [Kicker!] Finally - how many times do you check your phone per day? Ten times? Twenty times? An app called Checky not only shows you a numerical figure of how many occasions you glanced at your phone, but it also offers a map feature, showing you the geographical coordinates of every phone check. The app says currently, the average person checks their phone around 60 times a day, according to its internal research and public data like user tweets. Checky founder Alex Tew told HuffPost Live in an interview today - "There were a whole bunch of people on Twitter when we launched the app who were very hesitant and even didn't download because they said they didn't want to know, they were almost in denial, which means that's a real problem then, if you don't even want to address the issue." [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 Sarah Lane, thanks for watching.