The HDHomeRun iPad app from Elgato paired with one of SiliconDust’s new HDHomeRun Prime CableCARD tuners allows users to play and record cable channels that are sent without encyption or are marked copy freely.
Currently, the $17.99 app is iPad-only and can only handle standard definition MPEG-2 channels. According to the press release, “The HDHomeRun PRIME App lets the user record programs directly to their iPad with the option of transferring those recordings from the iPad 2 to a Mac or PC.”
Engadget reports: “…in a market suddenly flooded by CableCARD tuners maybe this extra functionality is just what’s needed to tip the balance between one device or another.”
ESPN has selected Mountain View-based Ooyala to power the sports broadcaster’s streaming video content. The platform will replace a proprietary model administered by ESPN.
Ooyala’s platform will reportedly increase the quality of playback, reduce load times and streamline back-end management.
“It’s a serious feather in the cap and vote of confidence for the four-year-old video startup, as ESPN is one of the biggest producers of online video content, with 400 unique visitors hitting play on ESPN videos every second (and serving over 1 billion streams per month),” reports TechCrunch.
The media technology site sees the move as positive: “All in all, it’s great to see ESPN finally offering a quality player with fast load times and a more linear on demand experience in which video queues and layouts feel more akin to a television viewing experience — and can compete in ease of video use with YouTube.”
Despite the TouchPad’s dismal retail performance, HP is forging ahead with webOS.
HP is in talks to license webOS for use in smart appliances, cars, gadgets “and just about anything else that has a screen,” reports Digital Trends.
The company is taking a similar stance to that of Google with Android in terms of integrating the OS in smart appliances and other devices. HP plans to integrate webOS into all of its computers by next year.
“I happen to believe that webOS is a uniquely outstanding operating system,” said HP CEO Leo Apotheker during the D9 conference. “It’s not correct to believe that it should only be on HP devices. There are all kinds of other people who want to make whatever kind of hardware they make and would like to connect them to the Internet.”
“We are fans of webOS,” explains Digital Trends, “but if HP hopes to expand the platform, it will have to deal with the performance issues we’ve seen on the TouchPad and Palm Pre devices and work to drum up more interest from the developer community.”
ETCentric has featured a number of compelling reports regarding how mobile- and location-based technologies are making their way into the music world. Some very creative uses for location data are currently being implemented by musicians. For example…
Arcade Fire’s “The Wilderness Downtown” website asks viewers for an address and then incorporates Google Maps footage of that location into their music video. The band worked with video director Chris Milk, Google and@radical.media to create a fascinating HTML5 multi-browser experience.
OK Go (a big fan of technology with a reputation for media experimentation) asked fans to create GPS journeys that the band then edited into one of their music videos.
Panic at the Disco asked fans to send their videos of a recent 23-city tour that they will cut into their video. The band teamed up with the Viddy app launched in May (the “Instagram for video” allows users to create stylized videos and share them on social networks).
Bluebrain’s “National Mall” album adapts to your GPS location when using their app while walking around the Mall in downtown Washington, DC. Selections from three hours of recordings are designed to correspond to your physical location in the Mall. The band is working on a similar album/app that will be tied to Central Park in New York City.
Is this part of an emerging trend? Check out the music videos posted on the Mashable write-up and draw your own conclusions.
Three months after Google launched its cloud-based Music Beta, the company has introduced a new music discovery site called Magnifier.
According to the Official Google Blog: “Magnifier will feature great music and the people who make it, including videos of live performances, interviews with artists, explorations of different musical genres and free songs that you can add to your Music Beta collection.”
To kick-off Magnifier this week, Google is featuring indie rockers My Morning Jacket. “We’re giving away two of their tracks to Music Beta users, one of which is an exclusive to Magnifier: a live performance of ‘The Day is Coming.’ To get these free tracks and hundreds of other songs in our Free Song Archive, you need a Music Beta by Google account (if you don’t have an account, request an invitation).”
There is no mention that Google analyzes your Music Beta library to suggest new songs, but they certainly could do so.
Are you a casual gamer who wants to create your own games but lacks the resources of a big game company? Namaste may be for you.
The startup is developing a platform called StoryBricks, designed to help casual gamers and those interested in being part of a development team to create their own content and share them on social networks.
“The twist is that it’s not for professional game designers,” reports TechCrunch, “but users who want to create their own games. The company is understood to be be in discussions with several top VCs.”
Namaste has started fundraising via AngelList and recently tapped Anil Hansjee, former head of corporate development for Google Europe, to join the company as advisor.
Starbucks shut down Jonathan Stark’s pay-it-forward social experiment by deactivating Stark’s community-giving Starbucks Card.
Reps from Starbucks were reportedly rooting for the experiment to be successful (despite the violation of the card’s terms of use), but the company felt it had no choice when it learned that funds were being misappropriated by a hacker, defeating the social adaptation of “take a penny, leave a penny” that Stark originally envisioned.
Hundreds of people had donated several thousand dollars prior to the project being shut down, suggesting the experiment was not a failure.
The Jonathan’s Card website remains optimistic: “We believe this is the start to a bigger more glowing picture. In the last 5 days or so, we’ve received hundreds of stories of people doing small things to brighten a stranger’s day: Paying for the next car at the drive through. Sharing a pick me up with someone who has had a rough time. Charging up a phone card and sharing it with strangers at the airport… So, tonight we lose our barcode. But of course, we never needed it in the first place.”
Adobe has released a preview of Adobe Edge, which uses HTML5 technologies to bring “Flash-like animation and interactive development tools to the Web.”
The company also unveiled a beta version this week of its new Web publishing tool (code-named “Muse”) that is intended to enable users to design and publish Web sites without the need to write HTML code.
According to Digital Trends, the Muse tools will be familiar to those familiar with Adobe InDesign and will be implemented via the Adobe Air desktop application framework.
For those interested in additional information, the article outlines Muse by its four steps of production: Plan, Design, Preview, and Publish.
Adobe Muse is currently available in beta for Windows XP or newer and Mac OS X 10.6 or newer (Adobe Air 2.7 framework must be installed). Pricing has yet to be announced for the 1.0 release expected in early 2012.
Fox’s “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” has implemented a two-prong viral campaign designed by creative firm Mekanism to raise the film’s profile.
To accomplish this, Mekanism released a series of real ape videos online (with the intent of going viral) and targeted a group of 50 social media ‘influencers’ to help build buzz.
The efforts have so far been successful, but impressing the influencers is more challenging than a traditional media buy. “You have to really convince these guys to want to carry out your message,” explains Jason Harris, president and executive producer at Mekanism.
Tommy Means, Mekanism’s founder and director, adds that current audiences don’t recommend films to their friends because they like a certain brand. “It’s because they like their friends,” explains Means. Online communities tend to look to influencers because they consider them their ‘friends.’ “Our job then becomes to impress and wow the influencers,” he says.
Is this part of a larger trend? Will studios need to turn to YouTube stars and movie bloggers to promote new projects?
Premium cable network Epix has had its library of Paramount, MGM and Lionsgate movies available for streaming for nearly two years.
Since its launch in 2009, Epix has added original programming to its library of 3,000 film titles and has expanded its number of distribution partners.
“The channel is now available through Dish Network, Verizon FiOS, Cox, Charter, Mediacom, Suddenlink and the National Cable and Telecommunications Cooperative,” reports GigaOM. “Together, those distributors have more than 30 million subscribers, of which Epix has managed to sign up 9 million to its network.”
But now that TV Everywhere has become the trend with other networks, Epix is looking to differentiate itself in additional ways.
Epix is building apps for new devices (the network is already available on more than 100 devices), producing more of its own exclusive content, adding video that complements its library of movies, and leveraging partnerships that provide original video content.
Clearly, premium cable (and perhaps all television) needs to look beyond traditional practices to survive. Is Epix becoming the model of what a premium cable channel needs to be in the era of TV Everywhere?
What’s next for mobile devices now that capacitive touchscreens have become the standard?
According to Synaptics technology strategist Andrew Hsu (and inventor of modern touchscreen technology for mobile handsets), the answer could be haptic technologies that allow us to feel individual touchscreen elements.
“Where I see the next frontier of user interface control is that we now want to try and recreate the tactility we lost from traditional hardware interfaces,” says Hsu. “Now that we’ve gotten dynamic touch and visual interfaces, it’s time to look towards dynamic touch feedback.”
Hsu hasn’t make any final judgements on 3D technology yet, although VentureBeat sees it as less significant than haptics at this point: “There’s plenty of potential in mobile gaming (imagine actually feeling buttons and joysticks again), and it would also make modern touchscreen phones more accessible for the disabled and elderly. I’d much rather the mobile industry move towards screens that can dynamically generate braille text for the blind to touch, rather than focusing on making us cross-eyed with tiny 3D screens.”
You’re probably tired of reading about it, but as the tablet wars continue it seems little traction can be made against Apple’s market leader. The Wall Street Journal offers the latest look at the iPad’s impact.
HP announced it will lower its price on the TouchPad by 20 percent, only a month after the tablet hit the shelves. Motorola cut the price of its Xoom tablet following the February launch and offered a cheaper model, with little response.
Samsung has stopped reporting how many Galaxy Tabs they are shipping — and is now stuck in a patent dispute with Apple that threatens its European sales.
Motorola and RIM don’t say how many tablets they have sold and, as recently reported on ETCentric, RIM’s PlayBook is in carrier trouble since Sprint Nextel pulled its support.
Meanwhile, Apple has sold some 28.7 million iPads since April 2010. According to WSJ, Apple “says it is having difficulty keeping up with demand and selling every iPad it can manufacture. Five months after its release, its iPad 2 can be hard to find in retail stores. The company said it shipped 9.3 million iPads in the June-ended quarter.”
Despite price changes, many consumers seem to view the iPad as the tablet leader and others as imitators. As a result, the tablet market is essentially divided into two sectors at this point — Apple’s iPad…and everyone else.
Do any of our readers have a different take on this trend? Does anyone recommend using a tablet other than the iPad?
Verizon FiOS customers could potentially lose service due to ongoing litigation between Verizon and ActiveVideo Networks, a company that builds interactive TV applications.
A U.S. District Court in Virginia awarded ActiveVideo Networks $115 million based on patent infringement involving interactive applications and VOD elements. Now ActiveVideo is also seeking to shut down the entire FiOS network.
Based on the nature of the specific patents, Verizon could possibly shut down a portion of its services while finding a practical workaround. Verizon also plans to appeal the verdict.
“The ActiveVideo CloudTV platform is currently being utilized by one of Verizon’s competitors, Cablevision,” reports Digital Trends. “ActiveVideo was an early developer of video-on-demand technology over the last two decades and has turned to developing platforms for interactive applications as of late.”
Founder of TwitPic Noah Everett has released a new photo-sharing service called Heello (pronounced “he-low”), just in time to compete with Twitter’s newly announced photo feature.
Everett told Digital Trends that the microblogging site has been in development for the past year, and the timing of its launch is a coincidence.
“The idea for Heello for what it is now came out of hearing user’s frustrations (and even our own) of not being able to post text, photos, videos or do check-ins from one single service; they were all spread out among different sites and this confuses a lot of uses,” he explains.
The post compares Twitter and TwitPic: Tweets/updates are referred to as “Pings” while Retweets are called “Echoes” and viewing the Twitter stream is known as “Listening.”
“The jury’s still out on the future of Heello,” reports Digital Trends. “There have been a handful of Twitter clones that have been DOA, but Heello does seem to have a little more steam to ride off of for now. You do have to think that Heello is giving TwitPic some competition at the same time that Twitter introduced what’s seriously going to impact the photo-sharing platform.”
August 6 marked the 20th anniversary of Tim Berners-Lee publishing the first website at CERN. Techdirt provides a few guesses regarding where we might stand today had Berners-Lee sought and received a patent for the World Wide Web.
The article suggests that innovation would be dramatically limited and rather than an open World Wide Web, we would be using proprietary, walled gardens such as AOL, Compuserve and Prodigy. The idea of open Internet development would be hampered by lawsuits.
Search functionality would most likely be dismal (no Google, for example), and limited to proprietary systems. We may also not have seen the meteoric rise of smartphones without the Web.
And try to imagine this: “Most people’s use of online services would be more about ‘consumption’ than ‘communication.’ There would still be chat rooms and such, but there wouldn’t be massive public communication developments like blogs and Twitter. There might be some social networking elements, but they would be very rudimentary within the walled garden.”
What are your thoughts? If Berners-Lee had not been so generous, would innovation be stalled in patent hell? Or would we have moved forward with other systems in development at the time?
