On Monday, Comcast announced that it’s making its newest set-top box, the X1, available in Boston in the coming weeks, “with a rollout planned across the entire country later this year. It’s also introducing a mobile app to control the set-top box from the iPhone or iPad,” according to TechCrunch.
This announcement comes after several years of aiming to develop a set-top box “that would take all of the smarts out of the box and put it in the network, essentially allowing the cable provider to launch new services and update the new features without having to totally rewrite applications or push out new firmware,” details the article.
All the processing for the X1 is done on the network, giving Comcast the ability to test and create new apps for its customers without considering the age or version of the set-top box.
“It will also provide more personalized features, such as allowing customers to see which shows their Facebook friends are watching,” adds TechCrunch. “The new X1 iOS app will improve navigation on the set-top box, allowing subscribers to use the virtual keyboard to search through all the live and on-demand channels more efficiently than using a traditional remote control. Users can also filter by genre and interact with other social media apps.”
Oscar-winning screenwriter Aaron Sorkin (“The Social Network,” “A Few Good Men,” “The West Wing”) is set to write the screenplay adaptation of the best-selling Steve Jobs biography written by Walter Isaacson.
“Sony reportedly paid $1 million for the rights to the biography, picking it up in October. The book was Amazon’s best-selling title of 2011 and, according to Publisher’s Weekly, 2.2 million copies were sold last year,” details The Hollywood Reporter.
The biopic about Apple’s co-founder will be produced by Scott Rudin, Mark Gordon and Guymon Casady.
It has long been rumored that Sorkin would take on the project. Sony had expressed interest in signing him since as early as November.
This is not the only Steve Jobs film in the works. Inferno Entertainment is selling “Jobs,” a $5 million indie starring Ashton Kutcher.
Since free blog hosting platform Tumblr integrated with the Facebook Open Graph feature in April, its referral traffic from the social network has grown by more than 2.5 times.
“This statistic makes one thing clear: the social giant really does drive some serious traffic for nearly everyone that’s integrated with its Open Graph so far, even though these integrations are often quite annoying for users,” reports The Next Web.
According to Facebook’s Developer Blog, this is what Tumblr does well: “Tumblr associates a photo with each post published to timeline and news feed, creating more attractive stories for friends; Tumblr uses the message property for personal messages on the Post, Reblog and Reply actions to show more relevant content to friends; Tumblr provides clear messaging about what activity is posted to timeline and simple controls to help users determine what is shared on Facebook.”
The posts suggests that success stories such as the Tumblr integration may help Facebook’s IPO launch.
Comcast announced it will abandon its controversial 250GB data cap on home Internet connections. Instead, the company will utilize something it calls a “more flexible data usage management approach.”
“That basically means that the company will eventually switch to a tiered plan arrangement with overage fees just like wireless providers, with base plans starting at 300GB per month,” reports The Verge.
The current 250GB cap will be suspended everywhere while Comcast tries out “two different types of tiered plan packages in various test markets over the next few months,” explains the post.
The first will give users at every speed a 300GB allotment with “additional capacity available in blocks.” The second plan starts most performance tiers with 300GB, but increases the GB availability for faster service levels.
“It’s all definitely a bit more transparent than much-hated cap-and-throttle system, but we’ll have to see how Comcast decides to price these new plans and additional blocks of data — heavy users could end up with exorbitant bills,” suggests The Verge.
“Time Warner Cable is on a roll with this whole TV Everywhere thing,” reports TechCrunch. “Just a day after adding Viacom channels to its live streaming iPad app, the cable provider has announced support for HBO GO on the Xbox, Roku streaming boxes, and Samsung connected TVs.”
Time Warner took a long time to get to this point, being one of the last holdouts to hook up with HBO GO, “but it’s catching up fast,” says TechCrunch.
Supporting HBO GO on game consoles and connected TVs means that Time Warner is joining the ranks of Verizon, AT&T and Dish Network in offering access to the service.
The move is good news for TWC’s HBO subscribers, who are no longer restricted to HBO’s broadcast schedule or cable VOD services to access content. “For everyone else who loves HBO but doesn’t want to pay $100 for cable, though, they’re stuck waiting and hoping that maybe, some day, HBO GO will be available a la carte,” adds the post.
Univision announced this week that it is launching the UVideo Digital Network — “a brand new social experience with Facebook,” reports Lost Remote.
With the launch, the popular Spanish-language channel (it reaches 97 percent of Hispanic households in the U.S.) is putting a priority on online social video.
The official announcement states: “Univision will kick-off live chats with its personalities and celebrities through Facebook Platform… Facebook will be threaded throughout the experience allowing viewers to see what their friends are watching, follow celebrities, have access to exclusive content and join the conversation with Univision’s synched social stream.”
The post includes a Q&A with Kevin Conroy, president of Univision Interactive Media and Enterprise Development.
Sprint is paying a lot to carry Apple’s iPhone — up to a $15.5 billion subsidy over four years.
CEO Dan Hesse remains confident that such a hefty price tag is worth it. During the company’s recent annual shareholders meeting, he said that “carrying the iPhone will be quite profitable,” even if it takes a few more years to see positive financial results.
“We believe in the long term… And over time we will make more money on iPhone customers than we will on other customers,” Hesse explained during the meeting.
Because of pressure from shareholders, Hesse cut his compensation package by $3.2 million this year.
“If Sprint’s LTE network launches as planned this year, it will help alleviate at least some of the problems the company has faced and give Hesse time to make good on his iPhone promises,” suggests The Verge.
BlackBerry maker Research In Motion continues trying to improve its brand in order to compete with other smartphone makers. A new customer satisfaction survey released Tuesday reveals that the company likely needs to pick up the pace.
The American Customer Satisfaction Index “found that RIM’s customers were the least satisfied cellphone users among customers of the seven phone makers it tracked in its survey during the first quarter of this year,” reports The New York Times.
On a satisfaction scale of 100, RIM earned a 69 overall. Apple was the leader, coming in at 83.
Thorsten Heins, RIM’s chief executive officer, acknowledges that touchscreen BlackBerrys are not competitive, but that BlackBerrys with keyboards are the leaders in the market.
“Later this year the company will introduce phones using a new operating system, BlackBerry 10, which it hopes will fare better against Apple’s iPhone and phones using Google’s Android operating system,” explains the article.
As television continues to morph into something that operates more like the mobile business, Microsoft has the lead with its Xbox, according to a report from Forrester Research.
“The report, by the Forrester analyst James McQuivey, argues that there is a battle of technology platforms about to commence in the television market every bit as intense as the one in mobile, featuring Microsoft, Apple, Google and a small handful of other companies, possibly including Facebook and Amazon,” reports The New York Times.
McQuivey believes that Microsoft has set itself up in the best position thus far with its Xbox, “creating a meaningful audience of people watching online video through their television sets and holding that audience’s attention for the longest amount of time,” the article explains.
In his words, McQuivey wrote: “Microsoft is in the lead, offering everything that matters: a growing content library, a convenient engagement path for millions of existing Xbox 360 owners, and a growing ecosystem of partners and developers eager to exploit the platform for their own purposes.”
According to the report, around half of all Xbox users in the U.S. have connected their devices to the Internet and overall, Microsoft has shipped out more than 66 million Xboxes throughout the world.
On the brink of going public, Facebook faces “a new, unenviable test: how to keep growing and enriching its hungry new shareholders,” reports The New York Times.
Another challenge will be, as Facebook attempts to match ads to each user, it needs to do so without violating the sense of privacy and security that users hope for on a social network.
Additionally, Facebook needs to figure out other revenue options, “like allowing people to buy more goods and services with Facebook Credits, a kind of virtual currency,” suggests NYT.
It also needs to figure out how to make money on mobile devices, as more of its users log in through smartphones and tablets, which have so far been much less profitable for the company.
Not everyone is excited about Dish’s new ad-skipping technology. The interface allows users to skip over commercials after being exposed to them for a very short time, “maybe the first second,” details TechCrunch.
Dish records all prime-time TV automatically on its Hopper DVRs, making content available online right after airing on TV, and its “AutoHop” feature allows for skipping over commercials while watching.
“Obviously everyone with a DVR skips over commercials. It’s a given and it’s the way things work now,” comments the post. “However, for Dish to formalize the process programmatically is a wild move. It’s akin to a movie theater allowing folks to vote on whether the audience will see those inane pre-feature ads and previews.”
“Imagine if, a few years ago, ‘Lost’ or another huge, sprawling epic drama was available online immediately after it aired. This sort of episode saturation is a new paradigm for TV watching, one that even time-shifting advocates didn’t foresee,” explains TechCrunch.
Android continues to boost its global market share, according to a new study from Kantar WorldPanel.
“The firm’s latest research showed that Android picked up strong market share gains in most of the seven major nations around the world, including the United States, Australia, the UK, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. The gains were measured over a 12-week period up until mid April,” reports CNET.
In both Spain and Germany, Android more than doubled its market share to 72 percent and 62 percent, respectively.
According to Kantar WorldPanel, the increases can be attributed to new smartphones from Samsung and HTC, which continue to draw market share away from RIM and Nokia.
“Android’s U.S. market share jumped to 61 percent last quarter, up from 49 percent during the holiday quarter, according to NPD. At the same time, Apple’s iOS lost ground, dropping to 29 percent from 41 percent during 2011’s fourth quarter,” indicates the post.
Berlin-based MoviePilot is putting a spin on traditional ways to market new movies. It brings upcoming films to fans based on their personal taste, “making better use of budgets,” according to TechCrunch.
“It focuses solely on upcoming movie projects and TV shows so that fans are less likely to miss new releases. This gives them a place to gather often long before official homepages are created, finding the right film for its natural audience and the right audience for a film,” details the post.
MoviePilot sealed $7 million Series B financing last week, including funding from venture capital firm DFJ Esprit, along with already existing contributions from T-Venture, Grazia Equity and VC Fund Creative Industries Berlin.
The funding will be used to expand into the U.S. and continue platform development.
MoviePilot has already worked with Twentieth Century Fox, Universal, Disney and Paramount.
With company shares and contacts on their side, some of Facebook’s first employees have left the social networking giant to create start-ups or to “bankroll their friends,” reports The New York Times.
The article suggests that this could be one of Facebook’s long lasting legacies — “a new generation of tech tycoons looking to create or invest in, well, the next Facebook.”
As has happened with previous breakout successes from Silicon Valley, like Apple and Netscape and PayPal, each “public offering creates a new circle of tech magnates with money to invest,” points out NYT. “This one, though, with a jaw-dropping $100 billion valuation, will create a far richer fraternity.”
Some early executives from Facebook have already sold their shares and are now living with (and potentially investing with) millions of dollars.
“The history of Silicon Valley has always been one generation of companies gives birth to great companies that follow,” said 35-year-old Matt Cohler, employee No. 7 at Facebook and now a partner at Benchmark Capital. “People who learned at one set of companies often go on to start new companies on their own.”
“The very best companies, like Facebook,” he added, “end up being places where people who come there really learn to build things.” It’s worth noting that Cohler has invested in start-ups created by his earlier Facebook colleagues.
New data from online video advertising firm Freewheel indicates that Microsoft’s Xbox is now the most popular non-PC device on which to watch online video.
That means that more consumers are watching online video content on the Xbox than on the iPad, iPhone and Android devices. “And when it comes to home viewing, competitors like Apple TV, Google TV and Roku are so far behind they’re not even competitors,” according to AllThingsD.
Worth noting: “Freewheel is only measuring ‘professional content’ that runs with ads, because that’s how it makes its living. So that means it’s counting stuff from companies like NBC, CBS, ESPN and Vevo, but not YouTube cat videos. It’s also not measuring Netflix usage,” points out AllThingsD. “On the other hand, this isn’t a poll or sample, but data compiled by the company’s own ad servers.”
The article suggests that this data “gives credence to Microsoft’s claim that Xbox users are spending more time watching videos on the machines than playing games, and that its deals with conventional TV programmers may be bearing fruit.”
On Monday, Comcast announced that it’s making its newest set-top box, the X1, available in Boston in the coming weeks, “with a rollout planned across the entire country later this year. It’s also introducing a mobile app to control the set-top box from the iPhone or iPad,” according to TechCrunch.
