Life & Technology – 2GB 20th September, 2014

Wow – some people really didn't really like getting a free U2 album from Apple. The company's given people a way to remove the new U2 album, Songs of Innocence, from their iTunes library, apparently in response to the relatively sizeable outcry on social media. I'm not quite sure what they're talking about to be honest, I'm enjoying it, but if you want to remove it, click here to find out how.

 

I had another great chat with Internode founder and NBN Board Member, Simon Hackett, about net neutrality. The short of it is, Australians shouldn't be too worried – the reason this conversation is happening in the United States is due to the prevalence of unmetered plans. The increase in video content consumption means people are internet providers are serving up much more data for the same price. In Australia, most of our plans are already metred, ie, we have a download cap, so we won't be getting charged more if we want to use YouTube.

 

I also had a chat to Mike Boyd, the founder and managing director of AppCast, about the Apple Watch – specifically, about what we can expect in terms of apps. While developers will be able to make apps for Apple's wearable, he doesn't think it's going to generate as much interest as apps for phones. He also mentioned that there isn't a lot of activity going on in terms of Android Wear development either at the moment. What will this mean for the future of smartwatches? Only time will tell.

 

On the subject of smartwatches, I sat down to with John Demezieres, Account Director at Motorola Mobility Australia, to talk about the Moto 360. The Moto 360 is different from other smartwatches because it's the first round one to hit the market – not even Apple are planning to make their watch round. As we mentioned last week, the Moto 360 sold out just hours after going on sale in the United States. Thankfully, Motorola are making more and it should see an Australia release before the end of the year.

 

In other news Windows 9 videos have started leaking ahead of its announcement on September 30.  We've got the videos of the new start menu and notification centre on CyberShack, click here to check them out! Looks like the boys at Redmond could be cooking up a winner! 

 

And this week's weirdest story is a selfie hat. That's right, a selfie hat. In collaboration with fashion designer Christian Cowan-Sanluis, Acer have created a giant glittery sombrero that houses on the company's new tablets. Click here for pictures, you have to see this to believe it.