DirecTV and Pandora have announced an agreement that will allow the music service’s “stations” to play, without charge, on connected HD DVRs.
“Additionally, you’ll be able to search for artists, songs and browse through different genres, as well as set up jam stations to your liking,” reports Engadget.
DirecTV customers will be able to choose artists and musical genres through the menu of the 1080p guide, customizing Pandora stations.
According to the press release: “Customers will be asked to either create a new Pandora account online or to activate their existing Pandora account on their DirecTV HD DVR. Once activated, Pandora will allow customers to easily create and listen to personalized radio stations, as well as play Pandora over the video that they are watching.”
Symantec designed a clever study to help determine what happens to private information after a smartphone is lost.
As part of the Honey Stick Project, researchers recently “lost” 50 smartphones in public areas of Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco, Washington DC and Ottowa, Canada.
Each phone was equipped with GPS tracking and a variety of generic “personal, neutral and corporate” apps. None of them were outfitted with passwords.
“While only 25 of the 50 smartphone finders made any attempt to contact the owner and return the device, the more shocking details of the study dive into how privacy is violated after the phone is lost,” reports Digital Trends. “Nearly 90 percent of the devices showed at least one attempt to access the apps within the personal category.”
“The social networking and email applications were accessed on 60 percent of the devices and the online banking application was accessed on more than 40 percent of the smartphones,” notes the article. “A file named ‘HR Salaries’ was accessed on over half of the phones and another file called ‘HR Cases’ was accessed on 40 percent of the sample group. A ‘Remote Admin’ application was accessed on nearly half of the smartphones and a corporate email application was opened up on 45 percent of the devices.”
Symantec recommends using a password or a “draw to unlock” pattern for security. The company suggests using security software “to remotely lock the device or wipe the data from the phone,” and for businesses, encourages formal policies regarding company-issued phones and increased employee education on data protection.
“Since tablets arrived a couple years ago, they have seemed the natural replacement for the printed page, whether it represented a computer document, a book or a magazine,” writes analyst Steve Wildstrom for Tech.pinions. “A tablet could be held like a book or magazine and its software often presented text as pages rather than streams of scrolling text. Their long battery life let you use them without thinking much about the need to recharge.”
What held up this potential shift has been the readability of displays. However, Wildstrom suggests Apple may now have the answer.
“The new iPad, whose display has to be seen to be appreciated, marks a dramatic change,” he writes. “For the first time, type looks as good on a screen as it does on paper. Photos pop in a way they never have before on a tablet, matching high quality printing on good paper.”
Earlier displays for tablets and phones, despite their advances, have been limiting — but the new iPad display may impact how we look at tablets.
“The super high-resolution introduced on the iPhone 4 looked spectacular, but had limited impact because the 3.5-inch display, and even the 5-inch high-res screens turning up on some Android phones, are too small for serious reading,” writes Wildstrom. “Bringing similar resolution to a screen the size of the iPad will change things in much more fundamental ways. The days of printing on paper may finally be numbered.”
As part of its ongoing efforts to attract more advertisers, Facebook rolled out Interest Lists the end of last week.
The new feature “mixes popular Facebook pages with social news aggregation,” reports Digital Trends. “Each curated list is specific to a particular topic such as technology, art, entertainment, causes, music or sports.”
Facebook users can subscribe to lists created by other users. The approach is similar to features such as Twitter lists and Google+ Circles.
“Advertisers will definitely enjoy the ability to curate content within lists, but Facebook users may become annoyed by an increased frequency of page updates that litter the main Facebook feed,” suggests the post. “Facebook users will have to be careful how many subscriptions they acquire in addition to carefully watching the amount of pages followed within each subscribed list.”
Amazon may have plans to become the latest online player to produce original programming.
Netflix, Hulu and YouTube have already set the stage for original content to be distributed via online streaming.
Amazon exec Joe Lewis recently described his title on LinkedIn as “Vice-President of Original Television” before changing it to “Vice-President, Production at Amazon Studios.”
The company has also reportedly advertised for executive positions for overseeing comedy and children’s series.
“The company has charted an aggressive course with its Kindle tablet devices and media services, from books to movies and TV. Its Prime membership service is already a passport to the company’s many services and could grow in the coming years. It isn’t hard to see how beneficial compelling original programming could be to Amazon’s ecosystem,” reports CNNMoney.
As Netflix looks to compete with HBO by teaming up with a cable provider, it has already hit its first snag.
Comcast, the largest U.S. cable provider, said it has “no interest” in partnering with Netflix, reports The Verge. The company already has its own VOD service, Xfinity and recently launched Streampix, which enables access on the Web and mobile devices.
Netflix reportedly plans to seek competitive alternatives with Comcast’s rivals Time Warner, Cox or Bright House.
“Reuters first reported on Wednesday that Netflix had reached out to major cable companies to discuss joining forces. But without Comcast, the reach of those partnerships would be limited,” suggests The New York Times.
Additionally, streaming services are emerging from a number of companies. Comcast’s Streampix offers 75,000 television shows and movies to its its 22.3 million Xfinity subscribers. And according to The New York Times: “Dish Network and Blockbuster have a Web streaming service in the works. Verizon, the parent company of the Verizon FiOS fiberoptic network, has teamed up with Redbox on a Web streaming joint venture.”
At a media event in New York City this week, Samsung announced its new Smart Touch remote control, a universal Bluetooth keyboard for interaction with Smart TVs, and a new LED TV.
“Joe Stinziano, Senior VP of Samsung Electronics took the stage, to announce the ES8000 with Smart Interaction (a combination of voice control, facial recognition, and gesture controls). It has that thin bezel and a U-shaped stand, just as we heard it would back at CES,” reports TechCrunch.
“The camera on the ES8000 LED lets you swipe through apps with your hand, and all you have to do is close your hand to click,” adds the post.
“The camera also has a built-in microphone, so you can change the channel and perform other commands without even lifting a hand. That means you could be Skyping from the couch on a big screen. It’ll also come equipped with a Bluetooth IR Blaster.”
Mashable notes that “only about one-third of the world’s population is connected” to the Internet, but that “the amount of data we generate and consume is likely to blow your hair back.”
The post features a compelling infographic courtesy of MBAonline.com, which details one day of Internet use, to startling results.
“Would you believe that 294 billion emails are sent? That 2 million blog posts are written? That 864,000 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube alone? How am I supposed to watch all of that when I’m only on season one of Downton Abbey?” Mashable asks.
Additional stats of interest: 172 million people visit Facebook (while 4.7 billion minutes are spent on the social network), 22 million hours of video are viewed on Netflix, 18.7 million hours of music are streamed on Pandora — and iPhone sales exceed the number of babies born.
“Where once was a television landscape dominated by two clear competitors with leaders in broadcast and cable, there is now is a crowded field populated by numerous other players such as Netflix, YouTube and Hulu which have begun creating their own original content,” reports Broadcasting & Cable. “Added to that space — and complicating matters — is the increasing importance of a strong, branded digital presence.”
These topics and more were discussed by cable executives at the Hollywood Radio & Television Society’s Cable Programming Summit in Beverly Hills.
Multiscreen viewing has become an objective for cable programmers. “While the cable executives agree that great content is the catalyst for a great social presence, expanding the brand to multiple platforms has become a necessary step for all players,” notes the article.
Original content drives online social interaction both before the show launches and during the run of the show.
AMC’s “The Talking Dead,” for example, was the after-show online access to “The Walking Dead” cast and crew on Twitter. TNT is running a Facebook Timeline of “Dallas.”
“I don’t think there’s ever a point you can sit back and say…that the platforms have established themselves and we know what we’re doing. The constant theme that we’ve all learned [is that] we all need to evolve or die,” explained Carmi Zlotnik, Starz managing director. “It’s a fascinating period, where the creativity and what we do in shows is evolving at the same time as the platforms that they’re placed on changes as well.”
Consultant and columnist Tim Bajarin addresses the evolution of on-demand television distribution and the Internet as a disruptive business model.
In a world of digital media, Bajarin suggests the networks “are now realizing that while they ruled the roost in the world of broadcast television, they are just another channel among thousands of channels that consumers can choose from for viewing video content.”
“But what they don’t seem to get is that in this world of digital, they will need new distribution partners and that they will not have as much control over them as in the past,” he adds. “And I also don’t think they really understand the idea that people want to have access to that content anytime, anywhere and on any device they own.”
Bajarin also suggests that Apple may be on the cusp of causing additional disruption.
“Apple is going to become one of the most powerful video distribution networks by nature of their existing customer base and one that is added to continually,” he writes. “I know the networks would like to keep control of their distribution, but in the world of digital, those days are gone.”
“The sooner the networks understand this and see things like Apple’s new distribution vehicle as a critical way to get their content to the masses quickly, the sooner they can adapt to and fine tune a new business models to take advantage of this new era of on demand, anytime, anywhere and on any device video content world.”
Ray Ozzie, Microsoft’s former chief software architect, says we are in a post-PC world where the PC is no longer central, but co-exists with other devices.
According to Reuters: “The PC, which was Microsoft’s foundation and still determines the company’s financial performance, has been nudged aside by powerful phones and tablets running Apple Inc and Google Inc software, the former Microsoft executive said.”
Microsoft, which dominated the PC era, has developed Windows 8 that will operate on ARM-powered tablets and hopefully put the company back on the cutting edge — or the “doom and gloom” scenario for Microsoft will be if people switch to portable, non-Windows devices.
“It’s a world of phones and pads and devices of all kinds, and our interests in general purpose computing — or desktop computing — starts to wane and people start doing the same things and more in other scenarios,” said Ozzie.
American Express is partnering with Twitter on a program that syncs with credit cards for automatic merchant discounts and coupons.
“The service is similar to one that American Express has with Facebook, letting consumers use their favorite social network to take advantage of special offers,” reports GigaOM.
Amex customers who sync their cards to their Twitter accounts can use a special hashtag to redeem coupons. “Users don’t have to actually clip a coupon or print anything out to take advantage of the service. They just have to send a tweet and the discount is stored for them,” explains the article.
Best Buy, McDonald’s, H&M, Whole Foods and TicketMaster are among the early participants.
NBC has teamed up with YouTube as its “official on-demand partner” for the 2012 Olympics.
Some 11,000 athletes from 205 countries are scheduled to compete over 17 days at the Summer Olympic Games in London.
“All events will be streamed live on Google’s backbone (likely via NBC.com) with replays of web-exclusive events, all the TV broadcasts and ‘behind the scenes’ footage all available at your whim,” reports Engadget.
According to the press release: “We plan to deliver the most extensive 2012 Olympics content to viewers, including — for the first time ever — ALL events streamed live. That’s right, you’ll be able to watch up to 3,000 hours of live streaming covering all 302 Gold Medals and every event in between.”
“Live streams will be available across our mobile platforms, providing an extraordinary 360-degree coverage of The Games,” adds the release.
Music sales were up 14 percent for 2011 over the previous year, while the number of music buyers also increased 2 percent.
NPD reports 78 million Americans purchased music in 2011, marking the second consecutive year that the number has increased.
The report indicates that CD sales continue to decline, but some 45 million music fans opted for digital downloads via iTunes and Amazon, up 14 percent from 2010.
“Given that it’s easier than ever to listen to free music, legally, via streaming options like Pandora and Spotify, the fact that paid downloads are up is a little counterintuitive,” notes AllThingsD. “But that’s always been part of the streaming music service pitch to the big labels: Let us give away your stuff, and we’ll help increase demand — just like radio used to do.”
With Apple expected to announce its much-anticipated iPad 3 today, a survey of mobile users reports that 29 percent plan to purchase the new tablet.
According to independent mobile ad network inMobi, of that number, 54 percent have never purchased a tablet before.
Nearly two-thirds of those wanting an iPad 3 said they would also consider an older device at a cheaper price, and almost half of the entire group reported no interest in a non-iPad tablet.
Initial rumors indicate the iPad 3 “will be slightly thicker and will include a higher-resolution Retina Display, better cameras, and the inclusion of LTE 4G chips,” reports VentureBeat. “Other rumors suggest that the unit will offer a new quad-core A6 processor to replace the iPad 2′s dual-core A5 chip, which will make processing high-end games and apps much smoother.”
The three most sought after features specified by survey respondents: “faster processor speed, better battery life, and higher-quality screen.”
