MediaTech101
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
[Google Fast Flip] iPad Rivals: Over a Dozen Windows and Android Tablets Shown at Comp...
Sent to you by mlsj12 via Google Fast Flip:
The new war begins
iPad Rivals: Over a Dozen Windows and Android Tablets Shown at Comp...
iPad Rivals: Over a Dozen Windows and Android Tablets Shown at Computex Companies showed off over a dozen new rivals for the iPad at Computex this year, including a nifty 10-inch touchscreen tablet that docks into a speaker from Compal Electronics. pays testimony to the trend Apple set in motion in April. Now that the company has sold 2 million iPads in just under two months, PC vendors globally want a piece of the action. In the weeks leading up to Computex, it appeared Google might sweep the show with Android-based tablets, but Microsoft swooped in with some key victories and the launch of Windows Embedded Compact 7 software for small devices. One company that says it will make tablets using Android, Windows and the MeeGo software developed by Intel and Nokia, also showed off one of the neatest devices at Computex, complete with its own user interface (UI) and speaker-dock. Compal Electronics, the world's second largest contract maker of laptop computers, a sleek Android-based tablet with a 10-inch touchscreen and a stereo speaker it docked into. The UI is similar to Acer's Shell UI, which works on Android smartphones. The UI simplifies navigation by making the home screen a room...
Read full story ¶ 12:18 PM 0 comments
The new war begins
iPad Rivals: Over a Dozen Windows and Android Tablets Shown at Comp...
iPad Rivals: Over a Dozen Windows and Android Tablets Shown at Computex Companies showed off over a dozen new rivals for the iPad at Computex this year, including a nifty 10-inch touchscreen tablet that docks into a speaker from Compal Electronics. pays testimony to the trend Apple set in motion in April. Now that the company has sold 2 million iPads in just under two months, PC vendors globally want a piece of the action. In the weeks leading up to Computex, it appeared Google might sweep the show with Android-based tablets, but Microsoft swooped in with some key victories and the launch of Windows Embedded Compact 7 software for small devices. One company that says it will make tablets using Android, Windows and the MeeGo software developed by Intel and Nokia, also showed off one of the neatest devices at Computex, complete with its own user interface (UI) and speaker-dock. Compal Electronics, the world's second largest contract maker of laptop computers, a sleek Android-based tablet with a 10-inch touchscreen and a stereo speaker it docked into. The UI is similar to Acer's Shell UI, which works on Android smartphones. The UI simplifies navigation by making the home screen a room...
Read full story ¶ 12:18 PM 0 comments
[Google Fast Flip] Closing the Digital Frontier
Sent to you by mlsj12 via Google Fast Flip:
The changing landscape
Closing the Digital Frontier
The era of the Web browser's dominance is coming to a close. And the Internet's founding ideology—that information wants to be free, and that attempts to constrain it are not only hopeless but immoral— suddenly seems naive and stale in the new age of apps, smart phones, and pricing plans. What will this mean for the future of the media—and of the Web itself? By Michael Hirschorn As Chris Anderson pointed out in a moment of non-hyperbole in his book Free, the phrase Information wants to be free was never meant to be the rallying cry it turned into. It was first uttered by Stewart Brand at a hacker conference in 1984, and it came with a significant disclaimer: that information also wants to be expensive, because it can be so important (see "Information Wants to Be Paid For," page 47). With the long tail of Brand's dictum chopped off, the phrase Information wants to be free—dissected, debated, reconstituted as a global democratic rallying cry against monsters of the political, business, and media elites—became perhaps the most powerful meme of the past quarter century; so powerful, in fact, that multibillion-dollar corporations destroyed their own businesses at its altar. It's a bit of a Schrödinger's-cat situation when you try to determine what would have happened if we had not bought into the IWTBF mantra, but by the time digital culture exploded into the mainstream with the introduction first of the Mosaic browser and then of Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer, in the mid-'90s, free was already an idea only the very old or very obtuse dared to contradict. As far back as the mid-'80s, digital freedom was a cause célèbre on the Northern California–based Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link (known as the WELL), the wildly influential bulletin-board service that brought together mostly West Coast cyberspace pioneers to discuss matters of the day. It gives you a feel for the WELL's gestalt to know that Brand, who founded the WELL, was also behind the Long Now Foundation, which promotes the idea of a consciousness-expanding 10,000-year clock. Thrilling, intense, uncompromising, at times borderline self-parodically Talmudic, the WELL had roots in the same peculiar convergence of hippiedom and techno-savantism that created Silicon Valley, but it also called out, consciously and un-, to a neo-Jeffersonian idea of the digital pioneer as a kind of virtual sodbuster. The WELL-ite Howard Rheingold, in his 1993 digital manifesto, The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier, described himself as being "colonized" (in a good way) by his virtual community. The libertarian activist John Perry Barlow, an early member of the WELL's board of directors, was a co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital version of the ACLU. At the WELL, the core gospel of an open Web was upheld with such rigor that when one of its more prolific members, Time magazine's Philip Elmer-DeWitt, published a scare-the-old-folks cover story on cyber porn in 1995, which carried the implication that some measure of online censorship might not be a bad thing, he and his apostasy were torn to pieces by his fellow WELL-ites with breathtaking relentlessness. At the time, the episode was notable for being one of the first examples of the Web's ability to fact-check, and keep in check, the mainstream media—it turned out that the study on which Time's exclusive report was based was inaccurate, and its results were wildly overstated. In retrospect, what seems notable is the fervor with which digital correctness—the idea that the unencumbered flow of everything, including porn, must be defended—was being enforced. In the WELL's hierarchy of values, pure freedom was an immutable principle, even if the underlying truth (that porn of all kinds was and would be increasingly ubiquitous on the Web, with actual real-life consequences) was ugly and incontestable. Digital freedom, of the monetary and First Amendment varieties, may in retrospect have become our era's version of Manifest Destiny, our Turner thesis. Embracing digital freedom was an exaltation, a kind of noble calling. In a smart essay in the journal Fast Capitalism in 2005, Jack Shuler shows how similar the rhetoric of the 1990s digital frontier was to that of the 19th-century frontier era. It's a short jump from John L. O'Sullivan in 1839—"The far-reaching, the boundless will be the era of American greatness. In its magnificent domain of space and time, the nation of many nations is destined to manifest to mankind the excellence of divine principles"—to Kevin Kelly, the pioneering conceptualizer of the "hive mind" and a founding editor of Wired, writing in Harper's in 1994, "A recurring vision swirls in the shared mind of the Net, a vision that nearly every member glimpses, if only momentarily: of wiring human and artificial minds into one planetary soul." Two years later Barlow, a self- described advocate for "online colonists," got down on bended knee, doublet unbraced, to beseech us mere analog mortals: "Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone … You have no sovereignty where we gather." I take you on this quick tour not to make fun of futurism past (I have only slightly less-purple skeletons in my closet), but to point out how an idea that we have largely taken for granted is in fact the product of a very specific ideology. Despite its Department of Defense origins, the matrixed, hyperlinked Internet was both cause and effect of the libertarian ethos of Silicon Valley. The open-source mentality, in theory if not always in practice, proved useful for the tech and Internet worlds. Facebook and Twitter achieved massive scale quickly by creating an open system accessible to outside developers, though that openness is at times more about branding than anything else—as Twitter's fellow travelers are now finding out. Mainframe behemoths like IBM wave the bloody shirt of Linux, the nonprofit open-source competitor of Microsoft Windows, any time they need to prove their bona fides to the tech community. Ironically, only the "old" entertainment and media industries, it seems, took open and free literally, striving to prove that they were fit for the digital era's freewheeling information/entertainment bazaar by making their most expensively produced products available for free on the Internet. As a result, they undermined in little more than a decade a value proposition they had spent more than a century building up....
Read full story
The changing landscape
Closing the Digital Frontier
The era of the Web browser's dominance is coming to a close. And the Internet's founding ideology—that information wants to be free, and that attempts to constrain it are not only hopeless but immoral— suddenly seems naive and stale in the new age of apps, smart phones, and pricing plans. What will this mean for the future of the media—and of the Web itself? By Michael Hirschorn As Chris Anderson pointed out in a moment of non-hyperbole in his book Free, the phrase Information wants to be free was never meant to be the rallying cry it turned into. It was first uttered by Stewart Brand at a hacker conference in 1984, and it came with a significant disclaimer: that information also wants to be expensive, because it can be so important (see "Information Wants to Be Paid For," page 47). With the long tail of Brand's dictum chopped off, the phrase Information wants to be free—dissected, debated, reconstituted as a global democratic rallying cry against monsters of the political, business, and media elites—became perhaps the most powerful meme of the past quarter century; so powerful, in fact, that multibillion-dollar corporations destroyed their own businesses at its altar. It's a bit of a Schrödinger's-cat situation when you try to determine what would have happened if we had not bought into the IWTBF mantra, but by the time digital culture exploded into the mainstream with the introduction first of the Mosaic browser and then of Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer, in the mid-'90s, free was already an idea only the very old or very obtuse dared to contradict. As far back as the mid-'80s, digital freedom was a cause célèbre on the Northern California–based Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link (known as the WELL), the wildly influential bulletin-board service that brought together mostly West Coast cyberspace pioneers to discuss matters of the day. It gives you a feel for the WELL's gestalt to know that Brand, who founded the WELL, was also behind the Long Now Foundation, which promotes the idea of a consciousness-expanding 10,000-year clock. Thrilling, intense, uncompromising, at times borderline self-parodically Talmudic, the WELL had roots in the same peculiar convergence of hippiedom and techno-savantism that created Silicon Valley, but it also called out, consciously and un-, to a neo-Jeffersonian idea of the digital pioneer as a kind of virtual sodbuster. The WELL-ite Howard Rheingold, in his 1993 digital manifesto, The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier, described himself as being "colonized" (in a good way) by his virtual community. The libertarian activist John Perry Barlow, an early member of the WELL's board of directors, was a co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital version of the ACLU. At the WELL, the core gospel of an open Web was upheld with such rigor that when one of its more prolific members, Time magazine's Philip Elmer-DeWitt, published a scare-the-old-folks cover story on cyber porn in 1995, which carried the implication that some measure of online censorship might not be a bad thing, he and his apostasy were torn to pieces by his fellow WELL-ites with breathtaking relentlessness. At the time, the episode was notable for being one of the first examples of the Web's ability to fact-check, and keep in check, the mainstream media—it turned out that the study on which Time's exclusive report was based was inaccurate, and its results were wildly overstated. In retrospect, what seems notable is the fervor with which digital correctness—the idea that the unencumbered flow of everything, including porn, must be defended—was being enforced. In the WELL's hierarchy of values, pure freedom was an immutable principle, even if the underlying truth (that porn of all kinds was and would be increasingly ubiquitous on the Web, with actual real-life consequences) was ugly and incontestable. Digital freedom, of the monetary and First Amendment varieties, may in retrospect have become our era's version of Manifest Destiny, our Turner thesis. Embracing digital freedom was an exaltation, a kind of noble calling. In a smart essay in the journal Fast Capitalism in 2005, Jack Shuler shows how similar the rhetoric of the 1990s digital frontier was to that of the 19th-century frontier era. It's a short jump from John L. O'Sullivan in 1839—"The far-reaching, the boundless will be the era of American greatness. In its magnificent domain of space and time, the nation of many nations is destined to manifest to mankind the excellence of divine principles"—to Kevin Kelly, the pioneering conceptualizer of the "hive mind" and a founding editor of Wired, writing in Harper's in 1994, "A recurring vision swirls in the shared mind of the Net, a vision that nearly every member glimpses, if only momentarily: of wiring human and artificial minds into one planetary soul." Two years later Barlow, a self- described advocate for "online colonists," got down on bended knee, doublet unbraced, to beseech us mere analog mortals: "Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone … You have no sovereignty where we gather." I take you on this quick tour not to make fun of futurism past (I have only slightly less-purple skeletons in my closet), but to point out how an idea that we have largely taken for granted is in fact the product of a very specific ideology. Despite its Department of Defense origins, the matrixed, hyperlinked Internet was both cause and effect of the libertarian ethos of Silicon Valley. The open-source mentality, in theory if not always in practice, proved useful for the tech and Internet worlds. Facebook and Twitter achieved massive scale quickly by creating an open system accessible to outside developers, though that openness is at times more about branding than anything else—as Twitter's fellow travelers are now finding out. Mainframe behemoths like IBM wave the bloody shirt of Linux, the nonprofit open-source competitor of Microsoft Windows, any time they need to prove their bona fides to the tech community. Ironically, only the "old" entertainment and media industries, it seems, took open and free literally, striving to prove that they were fit for the digital era's freewheeling information/entertainment bazaar by making their most expensively produced products available for free on the Internet. As a result, they undermined in little more than a decade a value proposition they had spent more than a century building up....
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Labels: android, apps, iOS, marketplace, mobile
¶ 11:49 AM 0 comments
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
[Google Fast Flip] We Might All Be Watching Online Videos by 2015 [STATS]
Sent to you by mlsj12 via Google Fast Flip:
Really will we
We Might All Be Watching Online Videos by 2015 [STATS]
We Might All Be Watching Online Videos by 2015 [STATS] from the Pew Internet Project, 52% of the American population is watching videos online — that's 69% of all Internet-connected American adults. If online video watching continues at its current rate of growth, in just under 5 years, almost every American with an connection (i.e., the vast majority of Americans, period) will be watching video online. This includes video streamed from the web and downloaded video and encompasses sites such as In the current survey, Pew researchers found that the majority (61%) of American, adult Internet users watch short clips, television shows and movies on video-sharing sites such as YouTube. These sites have exploded in popularity over the past several years and are on a trajectory to dominate the space. By contrast, just 33% of Internet users in 2006 had watched a video on a vid-sharing site. The groups of people most likely to watch online videos include younger adults, men, the wealthy and the well-educated — a factoid which bucks current wisdom about YouTube comments. And as more Americans get broadband access, more get online to watch videos. This correlation may or may not be caus...
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Really will we
We Might All Be Watching Online Videos by 2015 [STATS]
We Might All Be Watching Online Videos by 2015 [STATS] from the Pew Internet Project, 52% of the American population is watching videos online — that's 69% of all Internet-connected American adults. If online video watching continues at its current rate of growth, in just under 5 years, almost every American with an connection (i.e., the vast majority of Americans, period) will be watching video online. This includes video streamed from the web and downloaded video and encompasses sites such as In the current survey, Pew researchers found that the majority (61%) of American, adult Internet users watch short clips, television shows and movies on video-sharing sites such as YouTube. These sites have exploded in popularity over the past several years and are on a trajectory to dominate the space. By contrast, just 33% of Internet users in 2006 had watched a video on a vid-sharing site. The groups of people most likely to watch online videos include younger adults, men, the wealthy and the well-educated — a factoid which bucks current wisdom about YouTube comments. And as more Americans get broadband access, more get online to watch videos. This correlation may or may not be caus...
Read full story
Labels: streaming. video
¶ 11:18 AM 0 comments
[Google Fast Flip] The Future Of Netflix's Business Laid Bare — By Netflix
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Netflix future is our future.
The Future Of Netflix's Business Laid Bare — By Netflix
by MG Siegler on Jun 3, 2010 When it comes to slideshow presentations, few do them as well as Netflix. Last year, they released one that was sent around internally about their culture. If you read it, you probably wished you worked for Netflix afterwards. And now they've released one about the future of their business — it's also fascinating. The 40-slide presentation is great because it gives direct insight into Netflix's view of its competition, and why they think they'll succeed in the end. Long story short, they're transforming the company from a DVD-by-mail service to a streaming video service. Anyone who has followed the company over the past year or so will know this, but it's pretty interesting to read about just how much they've thought the transition through. For example, they know there's a demand for new release DVDs, but they're giving up that market to competitors so that they can focus on building the biggest back catalog of movies available for streaming. They know that DVD-by-mail will continue to grow for a few more years (they think 2014), but after that, it will decline just as rapidly as it grew as streaming takes over. Netflix doesn't want to be the end-all ...
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Netflix future is our future.
The Future Of Netflix's Business Laid Bare — By Netflix
by MG Siegler on Jun 3, 2010 When it comes to slideshow presentations, few do them as well as Netflix. Last year, they released one that was sent around internally about their culture. If you read it, you probably wished you worked for Netflix afterwards. And now they've released one about the future of their business — it's also fascinating. The 40-slide presentation is great because it gives direct insight into Netflix's view of its competition, and why they think they'll succeed in the end. Long story short, they're transforming the company from a DVD-by-mail service to a streaming video service. Anyone who has followed the company over the past year or so will know this, but it's pretty interesting to read about just how much they've thought the transition through. For example, they know there's a demand for new release DVDs, but they're giving up that market to competitors so that they can focus on building the biggest back catalog of movies available for streaming. They know that DVD-by-mail will continue to grow for a few more years (they think 2014), but after that, it will decline just as rapidly as it grew as streaming takes over. Netflix doesn't want to be the end-all ...
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Labels: netflix, streaming, video
¶ 7:18 AM 0 comments
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
[Google Fast Flip] Google to Release Chrome OS in Fourth Quarter - PCWorld
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A new OS enter the Fray this fall
Google to Release Chrome OS in Fourth Quarter - PCWorld
Google plans to release its Chrome operating system late this year, initially targeting laptop users, the head of the project said Wednesday. The Chrome OS "will be offered to users in the fourth quarter," said Sundar Pichai, Google's vice president of product management, during a speech at the Computex electronics exhibition in Taipei. The statement appears to push back earlier talk of a third-quarter launch for the OS, which is expected to compete with Microsoft's Windows 7 as well as other OSes. The Chrome Web Store will open at the same time so people can download Web applications that can be installed on the Chrome OS, he added. "For Chrome OS, we are focused on laptops for this year," he said at a news conference later in the day. The company designed Chrome OS for clamshell devices with touchpads, keyboards and screens between 10 inches and 12 inches across, he said, clarifying that anything, including netbooks, that fits the hardware specifications will have an easy time gaining Google certification. Certification by the company is meant to ensure hardware makers create a quality device for users. Initially, Chrome OS will limit certain customization such as user interfaces...
Read full story ¶ 11:50 AM 0 comments
A new OS enter the Fray this fall
Google to Release Chrome OS in Fourth Quarter - PCWorld
Google plans to release its Chrome operating system late this year, initially targeting laptop users, the head of the project said Wednesday. The Chrome OS "will be offered to users in the fourth quarter," said Sundar Pichai, Google's vice president of product management, during a speech at the Computex electronics exhibition in Taipei. The statement appears to push back earlier talk of a third-quarter launch for the OS, which is expected to compete with Microsoft's Windows 7 as well as other OSes. The Chrome Web Store will open at the same time so people can download Web applications that can be installed on the Chrome OS, he added. "For Chrome OS, we are focused on laptops for this year," he said at a news conference later in the day. The company designed Chrome OS for clamshell devices with touchpads, keyboards and screens between 10 inches and 12 inches across, he said, clarifying that anything, including netbooks, that fits the hardware specifications will have an easy time gaining Google certification. Certification by the company is meant to ensure hardware makers create a quality device for users. Initially, Chrome OS will limit certain customization such as user interfaces...
Read full story ¶ 11:50 AM 0 comments
[Google Fast Flip] HTML5 vs. Flash: The case for Flash - Computerworld
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The other side of the argument
HTML5 vs. Flash: The case for Flash - Computerworld
HTML5 vs. Flash: The case for Flash In one corner is Adobe's Flash, the once undisputed champion in delivering rich content to the glazed eyes of the easily bored public. In the other is HTML5, the once poor content provider now sporting the number 5 after its name and eager to prove that its new muscle and artful moves will be more than enough to take over the marketplace. A wide range of pundits and industry heavyweights have been handicapping the fight, heralding HTML5 as the new champ and calling Flash "old," "fragile," "insecure," or worse. The complaints are easy to understand and the new abilities of HTML5 are seductive. But is that enough to bet against Flash? [ Also on InfoWorld: Support for the next generation of HTML is already appearing in today's browsers and Web pages. Are you ready to take advantage? See " " | Follow the latest news in software development with InfoWorld's HTML5 duplicates many of the features that were once the sole province of plug-ins: local disk storage, video display, better rendering, algorithmic drawing, and more. Some of these features are available now in various forms, but enough to win? The fight isn't over by any means. While Steve Jobs m...
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The other side of the argument
HTML5 vs. Flash: The case for Flash - Computerworld
HTML5 vs. Flash: The case for Flash In one corner is Adobe's Flash, the once undisputed champion in delivering rich content to the glazed eyes of the easily bored public. In the other is HTML5, the once poor content provider now sporting the number 5 after its name and eager to prove that its new muscle and artful moves will be more than enough to take over the marketplace. A wide range of pundits and industry heavyweights have been handicapping the fight, heralding HTML5 as the new champ and calling Flash "old," "fragile," "insecure," or worse. The complaints are easy to understand and the new abilities of HTML5 are seductive. But is that enough to bet against Flash? [ Also on InfoWorld: Support for the next generation of HTML is already appearing in today's browsers and Web pages. Are you ready to take advantage? See " " | Follow the latest news in software development with InfoWorld's HTML5 duplicates many of the features that were once the sole province of plug-ins: local disk storage, video display, better rendering, algorithmic drawing, and more. Some of these features are available now in various forms, but enough to win? The fight isn't over by any means. While Steve Jobs m...
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Labels: adobe, apple, flash, html 5
¶ 5:49 AM 0 comments
Tuesday, September 07, 2010
[Google Fast Flip] The Top 10 Cities With the Best Broadband
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Top 10 Bandwidth Cities in the US, some may surprise you
The Top 10 Cities With the Best Broadband
By Stacey Higginbotham May. 25, 2010, 5:00am PDT No Comments The company behind the broadband speed testing site, Speedtest.net is ready to go beyond testing broadband quality and into the data game. Ookla, the three-year-old company based in Seattle that's behind the online speed service introduced a broadband index today that tabulates the results from the more than 1 million speed tests done each day around the world. The global broadband speed is 7.69 Mbps while the US speeds average out at 10.12 Mbps. Mike Apgar, co-founder and managing partner of Ookla, said the indexes will measure broadband speeds, ping times and jitter. His goal is to move the testing beyond the tech-savvy market (we use it!), so as to get a better sense of how broadband speeds really play out across the world. The FCC is encouraging consumers to use the sites (Ookla also runs a site that tests jitter and packet loss at pingtest.net) as part of its nationwide testing goals, and many of Ookla's ISP customers also offer the test to their customers and host Ookla's servers. That's actually most of Ookla's business, providing tests for the ISPs. The next plank of the business strategy is the index data. Ookla ...
Read full story
Top 10 Bandwidth Cities in the US, some may surprise you
The Top 10 Cities With the Best Broadband
By Stacey Higginbotham May. 25, 2010, 5:00am PDT No Comments The company behind the broadband speed testing site, Speedtest.net is ready to go beyond testing broadband quality and into the data game. Ookla, the three-year-old company based in Seattle that's behind the online speed service introduced a broadband index today that tabulates the results from the more than 1 million speed tests done each day around the world. The global broadband speed is 7.69 Mbps while the US speeds average out at 10.12 Mbps. Mike Apgar, co-founder and managing partner of Ookla, said the indexes will measure broadband speeds, ping times and jitter. His goal is to move the testing beyond the tech-savvy market (we use it!), so as to get a better sense of how broadband speeds really play out across the world. The FCC is encouraging consumers to use the sites (Ookla also runs a site that tests jitter and packet loss at pingtest.net) as part of its nationwide testing goals, and many of Ookla's ISP customers also offer the test to their customers and host Ookla's servers. That's actually most of Ookla's business, providing tests for the ISPs. The next plank of the business strategy is the index data. Ookla ...
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Labels: bandwidith
¶ 11:06 AM 0 comments
[Google Fast Flip] Logitech's big plans for Google TV
Sent to you by mlsj12 via Google Fast Flip:
Another piece in the living room game.
Logitech's big plans for Google TV
Kevin Simon, a product management director at Logitech, gave me more details this afternoon about what the company is building around Google TV, the just-announced system for accessing the Web on your television. Logitech's "companion box" (the company isn't sharing its official name yet) will be much more than an Internet connection for your TV, he said. And Logitech isn't stopping with a single device. The box basically uses Google TV as its operating system, but it will include lots of extra features. Logitech's Harmony technology for managing multiple devices (such as your stereo or video game console) from a single remote will be built in. And by "remote", I actually mean "smartphone" — if users own the box and install an application on their iPhone or Android device, they'll be able to use that device as the controller. The experience, he said, will be "television the way it should be." When you sit down to watch a TV, you probably don't care whether it comes from a network TV channel, cable, YouTube, or many of the other streaming video sources on the Web. Conversely, the main reason people watch television on their computers is because they can't get the c...
Read full story
Another piece in the living room game.
Logitech's big plans for Google TV
Kevin Simon, a product management director at Logitech, gave me more details this afternoon about what the company is building around Google TV, the just-announced system for accessing the Web on your television. Logitech's "companion box" (the company isn't sharing its official name yet) will be much more than an Internet connection for your TV, he said. And Logitech isn't stopping with a single device. The box basically uses Google TV as its operating system, but it will include lots of extra features. Logitech's Harmony technology for managing multiple devices (such as your stereo or video game console) from a single remote will be built in. And by "remote", I actually mean "smartphone" — if users own the box and install an application on their iPhone or Android device, they'll be able to use that device as the controller. The experience, he said, will be "television the way it should be." When you sit down to watch a TV, you probably don't care whether it comes from a network TV channel, cable, YouTube, or many of the other streaming video sources on the Web. Conversely, the main reason people watch television on their computers is because they can't get the c...
Read full story
Labels: android, google tv, hardware
¶ 9:20 AM 0 comments
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
[Google Fast Flip] DIY Home Theater PC – How to Turn a PC into a H - Flash Player In...
Sent to you by mlsj12 via Google Fast Flip:
Hardware of media, very geeky
DIY Home Theater PC – How to Turn a PC into a H - Flash Player In...
New software and cheaper hardware make a compelling case for the PC as entertainment device. But should you buy one or build your own? BY GLENN DERENE AND ANTHONY VERDUCCI The computer industry has been trying to sneak its way into the home theater since 2002. That's when Microsoft first introduced Windows Media Center, a version of the company's media player with a "10-foot" user interface—large type and simplified menus that could be read and operated easily from couch distance. Apple followed in 2005 with Front Row, a Jobsian take on the 10-foot UI that was also used in the Apple TV. The computer-as-entertainment-device idea was compelling to technophiles (after all, people were already migrating massive amounts of music to their PCs), but it was a hard idea for most people to swallow back then. Dedicating a powerful, $1000-plus computer solely to TV duty was fine for the super-enthusiast, but computers at the time had few options for video (don't I already have a DVD player?), plus cable boxes and DVRs were becoming more computer-like anyway, so the computer as video recorder was an awkward fit. What a difference a few years can make. The price of a new computer has...
Read full story ¶ 11:06 AM 0 comments
Hardware of media, very geeky
DIY Home Theater PC – How to Turn a PC into a H - Flash Player In...
New software and cheaper hardware make a compelling case for the PC as entertainment device. But should you buy one or build your own? BY GLENN DERENE AND ANTHONY VERDUCCI The computer industry has been trying to sneak its way into the home theater since 2002. That's when Microsoft first introduced Windows Media Center, a version of the company's media player with a "10-foot" user interface—large type and simplified menus that could be read and operated easily from couch distance. Apple followed in 2005 with Front Row, a Jobsian take on the 10-foot UI that was also used in the Apple TV. The computer-as-entertainment-device idea was compelling to technophiles (after all, people were already migrating massive amounts of music to their PCs), but it was a hard idea for most people to swallow back then. Dedicating a powerful, $1000-plus computer solely to TV duty was fine for the super-enthusiast, but computers at the time had few options for video (don't I already have a DVD player?), plus cable boxes and DVRs were becoming more computer-like anyway, so the computer as video recorder was an awkward fit. What a difference a few years can make. The price of a new computer has...
Read full story ¶ 11:06 AM 0 comments
[Google Fast Flip] Google TV Faces Some Prime-Time Challenges
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How Google TV will change the market
Google TV Faces Some Prime-Time Challenges
By Tom Simonite Having conquered much of the Internet, it seems only logical for Google to try to take over television, too. But the Google TV platform unveiled at the firm's annual I/O developers' conference in San Francisco yesterday could face many problems. The goal of the platform, said senior product manager Rishi Chandra, is to offer the "best of what TV has to offer today, and the best of what the Web has to offer today." However, closer analysis of what is known about Google TV so far suggests that the firm has some work to do if its new platform is to live up to that promise. Google TV consists of a modified version of the open-source Android mobile phone operating system. It's designed to run on Internet-connected set-top boxes and high-definition televisions. The platform was developed in collaboration with Sony, Logitech, and chipmaker Intel, which is supplying relatively powerful Atom processors--chips already used in some laptop computers--for Google TV hardware. The hardware announced so far consists of two kinds of devices: Sony televisions and a set-top box made by Logitech. Both will be available in Best Buy stores in the fall. Google TV users will be able to sea...
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How Google TV will change the market
Google TV Faces Some Prime-Time Challenges
By Tom Simonite Having conquered much of the Internet, it seems only logical for Google to try to take over television, too. But the Google TV platform unveiled at the firm's annual I/O developers' conference in San Francisco yesterday could face many problems. The goal of the platform, said senior product manager Rishi Chandra, is to offer the "best of what TV has to offer today, and the best of what the Web has to offer today." However, closer analysis of what is known about Google TV so far suggests that the firm has some work to do if its new platform is to live up to that promise. Google TV consists of a modified version of the open-source Android mobile phone operating system. It's designed to run on Internet-connected set-top boxes and high-definition televisions. The platform was developed in collaboration with Sony, Logitech, and chipmaker Intel, which is supplying relatively powerful Atom processors--chips already used in some laptop computers--for Google TV hardware. The hardware announced so far consists of two kinds of devices: Sony televisions and a set-top box made by Logitech. Both will be available in Best Buy stores in the fall. Google TV users will be able to sea...
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Labels: android, google, google tv
¶ 5:54 AM 0 comments
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
[Google Fast Flip] Um, Did Google Just Quietly Launch A Web-Based iTunes Competitor? Yep.
Sent to you by mlsj12 via Google Fast Flip:
This is going to be an interest move, Apple your move
Um, Did Google Just Quietly Launch A Web-Based iTunes Competitor? Yep.
Um, Did Google Just Quietly Launch A Web-Based iTunes Competitor? Yep. Today at Google I/O, Vic Gundotra introduced Froyo, aka Android 2.2. But he also went a bit beyond Froyo. Coming soon, is a way to download an app through the Android Market over the web — and have it automatically download on your Android devices too. But that's not all. Gundotra also showed off a new section of the Market — Music. Yes, an iTunes competitor on the web from Google. Details are sparse at the moment, but here's how this basically works. You go to the Market on the web, find a song you like, click the download button, and just like with apps, the song starts to download on your Android devices. So it's iTunes, over the web, with auto-syncing. No word on who the partners are for this, what the prices will be, etc. Undoubtedly, we'll hear more about that soon. Gundotra also announced that Google recently : Simplify Media. Using this technology, Google will soon offer a desktop app that will give you access to all of your (DRM-free) media on your Android devices remotely....
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This is going to be an interest move, Apple your move
Um, Did Google Just Quietly Launch A Web-Based iTunes Competitor? Yep.
Um, Did Google Just Quietly Launch A Web-Based iTunes Competitor? Yep. Today at Google I/O, Vic Gundotra introduced Froyo, aka Android 2.2. But he also went a bit beyond Froyo. Coming soon, is a way to download an app through the Android Market over the web — and have it automatically download on your Android devices too. But that's not all. Gundotra also showed off a new section of the Market — Music. Yes, an iTunes competitor on the web from Google. Details are sparse at the moment, but here's how this basically works. You go to the Market on the web, find a song you like, click the download button, and just like with apps, the song starts to download on your Android devices. So it's iTunes, over the web, with auto-syncing. No word on who the partners are for this, what the prices will be, etc. Undoubtedly, we'll hear more about that soon. Gundotra also announced that Google recently : Simplify Media. Using this technology, Google will soon offer a desktop app that will give you access to all of your (DRM-free) media on your Android devices remotely....
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Labels: android, google, webservices
¶ 1:13 PM 0 comments
[Google Fast Flip] Google TV: 8 Big Questions
Sent to you by mlsj12 via Google Fast Flip:
Title said it all
Google TV: 8 Big Questions
The seamless integration of the Web and TV is the holy grail of home entertainment, but does Google's solution cover all the bases? Google TV is by no means the first service to try to combine TV and the Web. Web TV predates it by 15 years and Apple TV has been giving it a half-hearted attempt for the last three. Yet, with its industry-leading partners, a proven platform, and successful demonstration of phase one, Google TV does have the scent of a game changer. I think it's fair to assume many of you will be considering a Google TV purchase in the fall (in an anecdotal survey, over 60 percent of you told me you would). With that in mind, here are some things to consider before you make that investment. Google's partners include Sony, Logitech, and Intel. Direct TV is in there, too, but there were no major cable or fiber TV companies on site. This means that Cablevision, Comcast, Time Warner, Verizon FiOS, and other service provider customers will still need to use an IR blaster to control their cable boxes. If you're unfamiliar with this technology, here's how it works. There will be a port on the Logitech Google TV box. It will accept a very long cable that will end in a tiny pla...
Read full story ¶ 9:19 AM 0 comments
Title said it all
Google TV: 8 Big Questions
The seamless integration of the Web and TV is the holy grail of home entertainment, but does Google's solution cover all the bases? Google TV is by no means the first service to try to combine TV and the Web. Web TV predates it by 15 years and Apple TV has been giving it a half-hearted attempt for the last three. Yet, with its industry-leading partners, a proven platform, and successful demonstration of phase one, Google TV does have the scent of a game changer. I think it's fair to assume many of you will be considering a Google TV purchase in the fall (in an anecdotal survey, over 60 percent of you told me you would). With that in mind, here are some things to consider before you make that investment. Google's partners include Sony, Logitech, and Intel. Direct TV is in there, too, but there were no major cable or fiber TV companies on site. This means that Cablevision, Comcast, Time Warner, Verizon FiOS, and other service provider customers will still need to use an IR blaster to control their cable boxes. If you're unfamiliar with this technology, here's how it works. There will be a port on the Logitech Google TV box. It will accept a very long cable that will end in a tiny pla...
Read full story ¶ 9:19 AM 0 comments
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
[Google Fast Flip] Some Early Pictures Of Chrome’s New Web Apps Feature
Sent to you by mlsj12 via Google Fast Flip:
First look at Chrome OS
Some Early Pictures Of Chrome's New Web Apps Feature
Some Early Pictures Of Chrome's New Web Apps Feature Perhaps the biggest announcement during day one of Google I/O was — an app store for web apps that lives in Google's Chrome web browser (and soon Chrome OS). There's a lot of curiosity out there about how this will work. Here are a few early pictures to show you: Here's what tabs currently look like in Chrome (notice the TC favicon, Google is watching): Here's what installed apps will look like (on the left): Here's the app installation pop-up (notice that it informs you what it will need to access): Here's what the app launch page in Chrome will look like (the final icon is for the store itself): Here's one app, MugTug Darkroom, running in Chrome:...
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First look at Chrome OS
Some Early Pictures Of Chrome's New Web Apps Feature
Some Early Pictures Of Chrome's New Web Apps Feature Perhaps the biggest announcement during day one of Google I/O was — an app store for web apps that lives in Google's Chrome web browser (and soon Chrome OS). There's a lot of curiosity out there about how this will work. Here are a few early pictures to show you: Here's what tabs currently look like in Chrome (notice the TC favicon, Google is watching): Here's what installed apps will look like (on the left): Here's the app installation pop-up (notice that it informs you what it will need to access): Here's what the app launch page in Chrome will look like (the final icon is for the store itself): Here's one app, MugTug Darkroom, running in Chrome:...
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Labels: chrome OS, google, mobile
¶ 2:28 PM 0 comments
[Google Fast Flip] Google TV Vs. Apple TV Is Android Vs. iPhone Round 2
Sent to you by mlsj12 via Google Fast Flip:
A new front on the Apple VS Google war
Google TV Vs. Apple TV Is Android Vs. iPhone Round 2
by MG Siegler on May 20, 2010 During the keynote at Google I/O today, Google took a lot (and I do mean a lot) of not-too-subtle shots at Apple. Most of this was related to Android vs. iPhone, but it also delved into something else with the new Google TV platform. At the Q&A following the keynote, someone asked the question: what does this mean for Apple TV? Google dodged the question a little at first. Their line is that the TV ecosystem is now ready for something like Google TV (that implies that it wasn't before with devices such as the Apple TV). But they also noted that their idea is different from Apple because they're trying to do this in a different way. That way, naturally, is the "open" way. Whereas Apple TV is a device and a piece of software, Google TV is just a platform. Sony TVs will be called something different, for example, but they'll have Google TV built-in. And this is an important distinction because it allows Google to take what makes current TVs popular — showing TV content — and build on top of it. Apple doesn't do that with Apple TV. Instead, they created an entirely new way to get content (by download via iTunes). Users shouldn't have to choose betw...
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A new front on the Apple VS Google war
Google TV Vs. Apple TV Is Android Vs. iPhone Round 2
by MG Siegler on May 20, 2010 During the keynote at Google I/O today, Google took a lot (and I do mean a lot) of not-too-subtle shots at Apple. Most of this was related to Android vs. iPhone, but it also delved into something else with the new Google TV platform. At the Q&A following the keynote, someone asked the question: what does this mean for Apple TV? Google dodged the question a little at first. Their line is that the TV ecosystem is now ready for something like Google TV (that implies that it wasn't before with devices such as the Apple TV). But they also noted that their idea is different from Apple because they're trying to do this in a different way. That way, naturally, is the "open" way. Whereas Apple TV is a device and a piece of software, Google TV is just a platform. Sony TVs will be called something different, for example, but they'll have Google TV built-in. And this is an important distinction because it allows Google to take what makes current TVs popular — showing TV content — and build on top of it. Apple doesn't do that with Apple TV. Instead, they created an entirely new way to get content (by download via iTunes). Users shouldn't have to choose betw...
Read full story
Labels: android, apple, google tv
¶ 9:19 AM 0 comments
