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Ballmer Dismisses ‘Weird Collection’ of Android Tablets
- But Fails to Reassure Analyst Day with Firm Details of Windows Slate Strategy
By Caroline Gabriel, Wireless Watch
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer adopted his usual distance from reality in the world, dismissing Android as a serious competitor in the tablet market. He failed to reveal solid details of Windows tablet...
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Ballmer: We’re Tuning Windows 7 for Tablets
Microsoft chief Steve Ballmer made several statements about plans for a tablet at the company’s meeting with financial analysts last week. They provide insight into the company’s thinking. The iPad’s success has Microsoft concerned, although Ballmer said that netbooks are better for many applications. He was very clear that tablets...
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Tablet Watch
New and updated announcements are in italic
- Acer is expected to have a tablet in this year’s fourth quarter.
- Asus has two models in the works: an Android-based tablet with a 7-inch screen and a Windows 7 Premium model that uses Intel’s Dual Core processor.
- Dell...
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‘Top Kill’ Working
BP and the Feds’ point man United States Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen said that BP’s top kill (static kill) effort is working.
BP successfully pumped oil-field mud down the top of the hole, which stopped the flow of oil. BP finished pumping cement into the well on Thursday after getting government...
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Net Neutrality Talks Break Down
The Federal Communications Commission announced late Thursday that it would end its efforts on negotiating a series of "Net neutrality" rules aimed at keeping various companies and industries from discriminating against Internet traffic traveling over broadband connections.
While the FCC is cancelling its own talks with individual companies, presentations and comments...
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Microsoft Tweets Teasers for Upcoming Product
What a difference! Apple tries to kill rumors about its future products, going so far as to threaten arrests.Microsoft tries to start them.
Microsoft’s hardware operation is using Twitter to tease people about what could be an upcoming smartphone, tablet or gaming console that runs the company’s software. The tweets link to cropped images...
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Murdoch: Pay Walls Are ‘Start of a New Business Model for the Internet’
News Corp chief and media industry legend Rupert Murdoch made several important statements about paid-for online content during a video forum with The Australian, which News Corp owns. As reported by The Australian:
- Murdoch expects Apple to sell 15 million iPads by year-end and more than 40 million by the end of 2012....
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AOL Revenue Declines 26%
What’s to be done with AOL, once the symbol of the Internet’s coming might and valued in the billions?
The once dominant Internet service provider but now an Internet media shop reported a decline in revenue of 26% from the prior quarter to $584.1 million. Apple chief Steve Jobs once said that...
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CBS Has Hulu on the Brain
CBS, the most-watched US broadcaster, is in discussions to bring some of its TV shows to the popular Web video destination Hulu, according to CBS CEO Les Moonves. It is the only major broadcaster whose content is not available on Hulu.
Moonves, talking to Reuters this week, said that CBS is looking...
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Microsoft Demos Digital Home of the Future
Microsoft is too big, too determined and has too much technology to be dismissed in over-the-top video and home entertainment markets, two areas it’s been developing products in for over a decade.
The software giant demonstrated its latest version of the digital media home of the future last week at...
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5m Cars with Internet by 2015
Is there nowhere that’ll be safe from the Internet? Cars that connect to the Internet through smartphones will be a five million unit market in North America by 2015, according to Frost & Sullivan. Internet radio is expected to be one of the most popular applications in cars. Let’s hope texting...
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New Blackberry, New OS 6 Expected Next Week
Reuters and CNET report that RIM is likely to launch a touchscreen Blackberry next week that’s intended to compete against the iPhone, phones that use the Android OS and other smartphones. It’s expected to be the first Blackberry with the new BlackBerry OS 6 and a new and improved Web browser. ...
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Larsson Becomes First Kindle 1m Author
Stieg Larsson, author of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" and two similar thrillers, has become the first writer to sell more than one million Kindle e-books, according to Amazon.com. All three of his books in the Millennium Trilogy are in the Kindle top-ten list. The book business is still a...
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Finally, BBC to Launch Smartphone Apps
The BBC has started launching its mobile apps now that the BBC Trust has finished its review of the matter. The first ones will be the BBC News app for the iPhone, iPod touch, iPad and Blackberry. The launch was originally scheduled for last February but the Newspaper Publishers Association objected because they feared it would...
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Technicolor to Sell Grass Valley to Investment Firm
Technicolor, née Thomson, has received a binding offer to sell Grass Valley to the high tech investment company Francisco Partners. Technicolor had previously said it wanted to sell Grass Valley. ...
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Google Negotiating for Music Rights
Google is reportedly negotiating with the music publishers’ licensing group theHarry Fox Agency, for rights to offer its library in an upcoming Google music store, according to the New York Post. The Post’s source expects a Google music service by November or December. ...
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Last.fm Audience Increases 90%
CBS’ Last.fm, the social music discovery service, had 90% audience growth in the US over the past 12 months to a total of eight million users, according to CBS Interactive music president David Goodman. He said US users of Last.fm are generating between 30 and 40 million pieces of...
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AT&T Sells Wayport Europe to Swisscom
AT&T has sold the European subsidiary of its Wayport Wi-Fi hot spot business toHospitality Services Plus, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Swisscom. Wayport provides Wi-Fi hotspots in hotels, airports, fast food restaurants and coffee shops. AT&T will continue to operate Wayport in the US and considers it "part of AT&T’s nationwide...
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Sony PS3 Has Exclusive Until 2011
Google TV may arrive and find that gaming consoles from Sony and Microsoft are already installed. The Sony PS3 is expected to be the only gaming console to offerHulu.com this year. Microsoft has said it’ll add Hulu to its Xbox 360 in 2011 with some "signature features." In June it announced a deal to...
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Sprint to Launch 2nd 4G Handset
Sprint is expected to launch its second WiMAX handset. It’ll be the Samsung "Epic 4G" and have a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, 512 MB RAM, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 2.1, a 5 MP rear-facing camera with 3x digital zoom, LED flash, and 720p video capture and a VGA front-facing camera....
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LG Can’t Make iPad Displays Fast Enough
Companies that are planning to make tablets to compete against the iPad had better forget about using the same display. LG, which makes the display, said it can’t make them as fast as Apple wants. LG display boss Kwon Young-Soo is quoted by Reuters as saying Apple may have to delay iPad launches in some...
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India Offers the World a $35 Tablet
India’s government created quite a stir when it said it has designed a Linux-based iPad-like tablet that can sell for $35. It wants the unit for students and hopes to get them produced starting in 2011. It thinks it can eventually get the costs down to $10 per unit. No...
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Missing DECE Members
Apple, Disney and its ABC TV, Amazon, CBS, Verizon and AT&T are not listed as members of DECE, formed last week to provide online video service for the industry. Apple and Disney generally walk together in online initiatives. Some see DECE as an attempt to prevent Apple from dominating online video in the same way...
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Grace Digital Launches 2 New Internet Radios
Grace Digital, which says it has the widest range of home and portable Internet-radio products on the market, has launched its first component-style Internet radio tuner, $219, and first portable AC/DC unit, $169. They can access about 17,000 Internet stations including 150 NOAA weather stations.
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Apple Shows LED Display with 2560 x 1440 Resolution
It’s not a TV set but could become one if Apple decided to add the necessary tuners and other technology.
Apple is showing its new $999 27-inch LED Cinema Display that has 2560 x 1440 resolution, which provides 60% more screen space than its current 24-inch LED...
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Qualcomm Runs Out of Patience on FLO TV
Qualcomm has flipped its subscription-based FLO TV mobile TV service into the air to see where it might land.
"With respect to our FLO TV business, we’re engaged in discussions with a number of partners regarding the future direction of the business," said Paul Jacobs, president...
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AT&T Wants to Be Primary Windows Phone 7 Carrier
AT&T says it intends to be the primary US carrier for devices that use Microsoft’s upcoming Windows Phone 7 (WP7), according to Wireless Watch, perhaps as an insurance policy against the possible loss of its iPhone exclusivity. AT&T already sells smartphones that use Android, Palm’s (now HP) webOS, Qualcomm’s Brew andSymbian.
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Who Will Get the Second iPhone?
The momentum behind Android models like Motorola’s Droid X and HTC’s Droid Incredible indicate that the iPhone is no longer the only smartphone that appeals to high-end consumers.
The carrier to break the AT&T exclusive may turn out to be T-Mobile USA (TMo), rather than Verizon Wireless.
The latest in...
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Intel/Nokia’s MeeGo OS to Power Genivi’s In-Vehicle Platform
ARM may be on a roll, but Intel fired a shot across its processor rival’s bow with a significant win this week in the burgeoning in-vehicle market –– for its new MeeGo operating platform, co-owned with Nokia. It has been selected as the basis for theGenivi Alliance’s reference standard...
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Best Buy to Sell Clearwire Service
Clearwire has landed a wholesale deal that will allow Best Buy to offer Clearwire’s WiMAX 4G mobile broadband service under Best Buy’s Connect brand.
Best Buy is the first company to resell the service that is not a Clearwire investor.Sprint, Comcast and Time Warner Cable already resell the Clearwire service.Bright...
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UK Government Orders Auction for Mobile Broadband Spectrum
The UK government this week instructed the regulator Ofcom to "co-ordinate a combined auction of 2.6 GHz and 800MHz spectrum "as soon as possible." The auction for the spectrum, which would be used for mobile broadband, is expected to occur by the end of 2011.
Communications minister...
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Wireless HD Chips to Hit 13m by 2015
Sales of Wireless HD chips will increase from the current less than 1 million to around 13 million by 2014, according to In-Stat. Wireless HD uses line of sight radio signals within a room to connect HD devices such as Blu-ray players to TV sets. It’s intended to replace HDMI cables. ...
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Droid X Strikes Back
Verizon Wireless, which turned down the iPhone, has missed out on the extra revenue that the iPhone is bringing AT&T. Its push of handsets based on Android has worked well, however, with reports that the latest one, the Motorola Droid X, is running a week or so behind...
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iPhone Creates Halo for AT&T Wireless Service
What gives? According to most news reports, rebellion is in the air by iPhone users against AT&T’s wireless network. Now comes a report from Yankee Group that says 73% of iPhone users are very satisfied with AT&T’s service. It’s about the same rating that non-iPhone users give their service provider.
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UK Users Resist Global Move to ‘For Pay’ Content
KPMG’s annual "Consumers and Convergence" global survey showed that 81% of UK Web users would switch Web sites if a favorite free site switched to a "for pay" model. The remaining 19% said they would pay for online content.
Britain trailed other countries’...
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Online Sales of Games Approach Those from Retail Stores
Online sales of games may presage what will happen to online sales of TV shows and movies. NPD Group said that in 2009 the number of digital downloads of PC games approached the same sales numbers as those of boxed copies at retail. It said 21.3 million games were purchased via digital...
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Netbook Sales to Reach 120m by 2014
Shipment of netbooks will double in three years to 120 million units, according toABI Research. It said netbook sales will not negatively impact sales of PCs and that tablets will be additive.
Netbooks were first shipped in 2008. The majority currently use Intel’s Atom chips and Windows...
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Lawsuit Claims iPads Overheat
A lawsuit claiming the iPad overheats when used outdoors has been filed in the US North District Court of California.
The suit says, "Using the iPad is not ‘just like a reading book’ at all, since books do not close when the reader is enjoying...
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Apple Strikes at Unauthorized Makers of Accessories
Apple has sued seven companies and may sue another dozen or two for allegedly selling unauthorized electronic accessories such as cables, chargers and speaker cables for the iPod, iPhone and iPad.
In the suit, Apple said, "many are of inferior quality and reliability, raising...
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Virgin Media Launches Beta of Media Player
Virgin Media has launched a beta version of its first online and mobile TV player that’s called Virgin Media Player. It will offer content during the beta test from ITV, LIVING, Disney, Cartoon Network, National Geographic, MTV Networks UK & Ireland, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon.
Virgin Media’s...
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New Project Canvas Chair Meek Seeks Tough & Nimble CEO
We don’t typically do personnel matters but this one looks important because it involves the often-delayed BBC-led Project Canvas’ attempt to become a universal standard for getting Internet video on the telly.
The widely respected and Internet-savvy Kip Meek has been named the project’s non-executive chairman...
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No Convergence in European Standards for Internet TV Sets
The percentage of TV sets with Internet connections may be in single digits today, but more than half will come with it by 2014.
There are three groups in Europe trying to develop a standard for Internet-connected TV sets and it appears the three will...
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Slovenia’s Antik to Add Google TV to Its STBs
Slovenia-based set-top box maker Antik Technology plans to include Google TV technology into its Juice brand STBs. Antik is the first company after Logitech that says it intends to do that. Sony has said it’ll make TV sets with Google TV technology, which can run Google’s Chrome browser.
Intel will supply the...
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148.3m Internet-Capable TV Sets by 2014
- Set Makers Rushing to Do Deals with Online Services
- Will Increase Market for Semiconductors
3D TV sets have been getting the attention but it’s Internet-enabled TV (IETV) sets whose sales are booming in 2010, according to according to iSuppli. iSuppli expects shipments...
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TiVo Lands Suddenlink for Its Premier Service
TiVo continues to succeed with the marketing plan it always hoped would work: getting pay-TV operators to embed its technology in STBs that they sell. Its latest deal is with Suddenlink, the eighth largest US cableco. Tivo’s Premiere DVR and software present to the user a unified interface...
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HomePlug Progresses toward Faster AV2
The HomePlug Powerline Alliance this week said its Technical Working Group (TWG) has made major advancements to the upcoming AV2 specification that will improve HomePlug coverage, both in area and the ability to stream multiple HD videos.
It promises the AV2 version will be fully interoperable with...
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Meridian Launches $7,500 Whole-Home Music Server/Touchscreen Controller
Are the Internet music wars over, leaving the major labels with much less revenue permanently –– the new normal? Unlike the studios, the labels have not been able to launch a new music format that would improve sound by adding more audio channels and providing better copy...
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HP Roadmap Bypasses Windows Phone 7
In the aftermath of HP’s acquisition of Palm, there should be no surprise that HP has said it will not produce any smartphones that use Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 mobile operating system.
HP acquired Palm for its Internet-friendly webOS mobile operating system and intends to use as the...
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Technicolor Lands FiOS Router Order with Verizon
Technicolor, formerly Thomson, has signed a deal to provide FiOS broadband routers to Verizon. The routers, it said, are built to Verizon’s exacting specifications and support MoCA coax home networking.
It expects to start shipping the routers to Verizon in 2011.
It did...
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BT Fiber Passes 1.5m Residences
For the most recent quarter, BT added 96,000 net broadband customers in the quarter, which gives it a 40% share of the UK market.
It said its fiber cable to neighborhood cabinets now pass more than 1.5 million residences and it’s adding another 100,000 per...
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Broadband Service Providers Deliver Less Than They Promised
- Less Even Than They Are Capable of
- Ofcom Wants to Tighten Down
They wouldn’t do that, would they?
Data from the UK’s telecom regulator Ofcom shows that the gap between the speeds that broadband service providers, especially...
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Australian Duo to Build Direct to US Fiber Network
Pacnet and a new company called Pacific Fibre will invest about $400 million to deploy a 13,600-kilometer (8,160-mile) undersea fiber optic broadband cable that’ll connect Australia and New Zealand directly to the US by 2013.
The two said the cable will double the telecommunications capacity and...
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Comcast Adds 118,000 Broadband Subscribers, 230,000 for Phone
Comcast, like "Ole Man River," just keeps rolling along in broadband. For the quarter, it added 118,000 net additional broadband subscribers, compared to a net of 65,000 in the year ago quarter. It also continued to bedevil the phone companies by adding 230,000 net new...
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Cincinnati Bell Picks Motorola’s Multi-Room DVRs
Cincinnati Bell this week said it’ll offer multi-room DVRs from Motorola’s Mobile Devices and Home operations. Subscribers can run the multi-room function on up to eight DVR and non-DVR DCX HD STBs. They can pause live TV, record and play back, manage their entire recorded library and...
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Pace Strengthens Telco, US Presence by Acquiring AT&T-Dependent 2Wire
UK-based Pace Micro Technology, which shipped more pay-TV STBs in 2009 than any other company, will acquire US-based STB maker 2Wire for $475 million. 2Wire is owned by Alcatel-Lucent, AT&T, Telmex, Oak Investment Partners,Meritech Capital Partners and Technology Crossover Ventures.
2Wire technology is used in the multi-room DVRs that AT&T offers.
"This...
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Boom Times for Virgin Media
Virgin Media had its biggest quarterly revenue increase since the company was formed four years ago with the merger of Richard Branson’s Virgin Mobile and the cableco NTL. Revenue increased 7.1% to £964 million ($1.505 billion).
It added 25,900 broadband subscribers in the quarter to bring its...
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Apple, Time Face Off over Subscriptions
AllThingsDigital reports that Time is unhappy with Apple for refusing to allow it to use its app to sell subscriptions to Sports Illustrated (SI). Instead Time is reportedly forced to sell only single copies with the app. Time reportedly said that during the process to get the app approved, Apple had led it...
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Amazon Launches 2 Un-iPad Readers
Instead of out-iPadding the iPad, Amazon is going lean and mean with two new smaller and lighter Kindles that are priced to reach a larger market. The 3G version is $189, the same price as the current Kindle 2, and one with only Wi-Fi is $139. For the first...
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iPad Use Spreads to Market Researchers
The iPad’s use outside of consumer applications continues to expand. Legislative aides are using them to track the different versions of a proposed bill as it winds its way to approval or rejection. Insurance companies, banks and car dealers are using them in the sales process, both...
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Motorola May Use 3.0 Version of Android for Tablet
Motorola, which has taken the lead in the States in smartphones based on Android, may be working on a table that uses the upcoming Android 3.0, according to analyst Ashok Kumar of Rodman & Renshaw. The 3.0 version, aka Gingerbread, of Android is said to be...
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Work Resumes on Permanently Closing BP’s Once Gushing Gulf Well
BATON ROUGE, LOUISIANA –– Tropical Storm Bonnie turned out to be a dud last week but its threat forced rigs in the Gulf to be dismantled and moved ashore. That led to a delay in the two attempts to cap the out-of-control BP well: one near the...
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Sony Increases Revenue & Hits the Black
- Bravia TVs, VAIO PCs, PS3 Drive Resurgence
A slimmer Sony, guided by chairman, CEO and president Sir Howard Stringer, became profitable again and increased sales 4% in the company’s first fiscal quarter. It also raised its financial outlook for the year. It attributed the improvement...
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ARM Reports 33% Revenue Increase
ARM, which licenses processors’ designs that it develops, this week reported a 33% increase in revenue to £192.3 million ($300 million) for the six months to the end of June, due to increased demand for smartphones, tablets and automotive systems. It had a 182% increase...
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Motorola Readies Split
Motorola has filed papers with the SEC in anticipation of separating its Mobile Devices and Home businesses, which will operate as Motorola Mobility (shades ofAT&T Mobility).
Motorola has established a new, wholly-owned subsidiary called Motorola SpinCo Holdings Corporation (Motorola SpinCo) that is the holding company for Motorola Mobility, its main...
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Microsoft-ARM Deal Could Shake Up Intel’s Atom World
The war of the tablet/smartphone world has Intel’s Atom chips allied withMicrosoft’s Windows 7 going into battle against ARM-designed chips in devices that run Apple’s iOS4 or Google’s Android OS. The ARM-Apple-Android sect is currently winning. The once-invincible Wintel team is left with only the remnants of the netbook market...
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China Telecom Buys STBs with Celeno’s Wi-Fi for Streaming HD Video
- Multiple Wireless Streams of ‘Carrier Grade’ HD Videos
- China to Become Asia’s Largest User of Fiber Networks
- Celeno Making Tiny Inroads in the States
Israel-based Celeno Communi-cations, which produces system-on-a-chip (SoC) for Wi-Fi boxes that handle digital media, has...
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‘Pay What You Want’ Benefits Everyone
Business models that offer a pricing strategy allowing a consumer to choose how much an item is worth can boost some companies’ profits because it gives consumers a chance to directly support a cause or organization they believe in. According to a study in Science, the "pay what you want" model...
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Best Hospitals Video Series Returns
US News and HealthiNation have partnered for a second year to present their "2010-2011 Best Hospitals" video series. The series shows an explanation of the rankings process and focuses on 5 specialty medical areas. There are 10 videos in this year’s series and HealthiNation is making them all embeddable....
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igma Designs to Make Chips for Mediaroom STBs
Chip maker Sigma Designs is making media processor SoCs (system-on-chip) for STB makers to use in gear for IPTV boxes that use Microsoft’s Mediaroom software. Microsoft welcomed the chip because it should reduce the cost and complexity of designing and making Mediaroom STBs, which are expected to ship to telcos this fall. Sigma...
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Corporates Taking to iPhones, iPads
Apple intends to sell iPhones and iPads to the corporates. COO Tim Cook said during his discussion with analysts about the company’s quarterly results that more than 80% of the Fortune 100 are evaluating the iPhone to be a company-supported handset. "We already have 50% of the Fortune 500 that are...
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MP3tunes, Roku Stream Music to TVs
MP3tunes, a digital music locker service founded by MP3.com creator Michael Robertson, has partnered with Web-enabled STB maker Roku, to let Roku users with MP3tunes accounts stream their personal music collections via MP3tunes to their TVs. The two are running a promotion that features a year of free MP3tunes...
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Spotify Hits 500,000 Paying Subs
Spotify has reached more than 500,000 subscribers for the premium version of its streaming music service that costs £9.99 ($15.25) per month. CEO Daniel Ek also told Music Week that the service’s US launch may be pushed back to 2011. "Will we launch this year? Yes, we think that’s...
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Rovi Lands Patent License with Europe’s Second Largest Cableco
Rovi, the EPG giant in both patents and metadata, has signed a multi-year patent license with Liberty Global’s German cableco Unitymedia, the second largest European cableco. Samir Armaly, Rovi’s SVP of licensing, said the deal shows "the importance that our intellectual property offers to service providers, especially...
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HP Trademarks PalmPad
The US Patent and Trademark Office granted HP a trademark for the term "PalmPad" last week. HP isn’t talking about it, but one can guess. It’s certainly not intended for a tablet that uses the Windows 7 or Android operating system. Companies like HP trademark and patent many things they never bring to market. ...
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MagicJack Owner, VocalTec Merge
VocalTec, which says it’s the inventor of VoIP technology and the soft phone, is merging with Ymax, the developer of the MagicJack VoIP service. The merged company will be called VocalTec and traded on NASDAQ under the CALL symbol. Its primary competitor is Skype. Ymax, which was not publicly traded,...
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Nokia Siemens Buys Motorola’s Mobile Network Assets
Nokia Siemens, the world’s second-largest maker of network gear for mobile phone operators, has agreed to pay $1.2 billion for Motorola’s wireless network assets, a deal expected to close by year-end. It sees the acquisition as helping it grow in the North American and Asian markets, where...
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DOJ OK’s CenturyLink’s Acquisition of Qwest
The DOJ’s antitrust department has approved CenturyLink’s acquisition of Qwest, but the FCC has not yet. The combined companies, which include the ex-Sprintwireline company Embarq, will operate in 37 states and have about five million broadband customers, 17 million access lines and 1.4 million pay-TV subscribers. It’ll be the US’ third largest telco but will not...
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Netflix, Warner Bros Expand Streaming Deals
Netflix and Warner Bros have strengthened their streaming content deal, giving Netflix access to more TV shows available through its Watch Instantly streaming service.
The deal will make all 100 episodes of "Nip/Tuck" available to Netflix subscribers for the next four years. Also included in the...
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SnagFilms Expands Film Distribution
On its second birthday, the documentary site SnagFilms, founded by former AOLvice chairman Ted Leonsis, announced a large expansion of its film distribution efforts.
The service will now deliver content to VOD platforms from Comcast and VerizonFiOS, make some content available for purchase on iTunes and deliver other content for...
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Aussie Video Rental Stores Impacted by Online Downloads
Video rental stores in Australia are seeing their business eroded by online video services just as they are everywhere else, according to The Sydney Morning Herald. A major reason is the launch of Foxtel IQ, Telstra’s T-box and FetchTV, which allow movies to be downloaded on demand.
The paper...
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Samsung Breaks $1,000 Barrier for 3D, 50-Inch Plasma TV
Samsung will launch in August a 50-inch 3D plasma TV that sells for less than $1,000. The PN50C490 is 720p, not the more popular. It is home network-connectable with DLNA. 3D glasses are not included. It’s $989 at: http://www.abcwarehouse.com/product_catalog/pc_proddetails.asp~assort_id~1254~prod_ID~24016 ...
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Jobs Stirs Up Verizon iPhone Rumors
During a recent Q&A session, Apple CEO Steve Jobs rekindled the Verizon WirelessiPhone rumors for here in the US.
When asked how the Apple headquarters in Cupertino has such good cell and data reception, Jobs said: "We’ve got strong signal here. We have AT&T and Verizon cell sites on campus."
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Sony Launches 2 Snazzy Video-Playing Walkmans
- Karaoke Mode Subdues Vocal, Records User’s Voice
- How Does Sony Get Consumer’s Attention?
We rarely report on MP3 players other than Apple’s, but make an exception here because Sony appears to have put a lot of thought and innovation into its...
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Pandora Hits 60 Million Users
Streaming music service Pandora has reached 60 million registered users according to its president and CEO Joe Kennedy. Speaking at the New Music Seminar, Kennedy said the company has added 20 million users since December. "Pandora plays the music of tens of thousands of artists every day. It’s a very promising sign...
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MOG’s Music Lands on iPhone, Android
MOG, the operator of a collection of music blogs and a digital music service, announced the release of its iPhone and Android mobile music subscription service, mirroring its existing offering.
After a three-day trial, the service costs $9.99 per month for unlimited, on-demand...
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Symbian Set to Bring Web-Style Apps
Symbian, the Nokia smartphone OS, has announced a significant step to try to reclaim some of its presence in the market.
The Symbian Foundation has officially embraced the idea of using Web applications on its platform. These Web apps are designed to remove the differences generated by different computing...
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Audible Launches iPhone App
While users have been able to listen to Audible audiobooks on their iPhones and iPod Touchs for some time via iTunes, Audible has now launched a standalone app for these devices.
The new app, now available in the iTunes App Store, also works on the iPad and...
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SingTel’s AMPed Adds 150,000 Sony Music Tracks
- Jay Chou Too
A major reason that sales of MP3 players are declining is the increasing availability of music on smartphones.
SingTel’s AMPed cell phone music service is adding 150,000 new tracks from Sony Music, giving its 200,000 subscribers access...
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iPhone Tethering App Pulls a Houdini
An app named Handy Light from developer Nick Lee made a brief appearance onApple’s iTunes App Store early this week, but quickly disappeared from the store on the same day it arrived.
The app was a flashlight for the iPhone that also contained code to...
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Google Reaches 70,000 Apps in Android Market
Google has confirmed that 70,000 apps have landed in the Android Market, and the company said it is on pace to surpass 100,000 apps before the end of the year.
Google’s senior VP of product management Jonathan Rosenberg confirmed the number this week, saying...
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Google, Microsoft Kill Their Own Handsets
- Microsoft Looks to Windows Phone 7
- Enhancements Aimed at the Corporates
It’s obviously harder than it looks to make a successful mobile handset and companies that only do operating systems seem to have the most difficulty, namelyMicrosoft and Google.
Google has...
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Droid Does Wi-Fi Hot Spot with Drain
Motorola’s Droid X has a new Wi-Fi hot spot feature that provides a lot more functionality for the device but also puts a strain on the device that can end up being more of a headache than a useful tool.
The Droid X...
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4 Spanish Cablecos to Build National WiMAX Network
Four Spanish cablecos –– Euskaltel, Telecable, ONO and R –– plan to bid for spectrum next year that will allow them to jointly build a national WiMAX network, similar to what four US cablecos are doing with Clearwire. The difference is that the Spanish cablecos would totally own and operate the network.
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4 Spanish Cablecos to Build National WiMAX Network
Four Spanish cablecos –– Euskaltel, Telecable, ONO and R –– plan to bid for spectrum next year that will allow them to jointly build a national WiMAX network, similar to what four US cablecos are doing with Clearwire. The difference is that the Spanish cablecos would totally own and operate the network.
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Harbinger Gets Closer to Its LTE Mobile Broadband Network
Clearwire and US cellcos like AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Sprint and T-Mobile USAwill have to prepare to compete with a new national LTE network.
Harbinger Capital Partners took two major steps forward to its goal of building a national US LTE mobile broadband network based on the use of...
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iSuppli Ups iPad Forecast to 12.9m
- ‘Only Limitation on iPad Sales Is Production, Not Demand
Every other maker of CE gear was stunned by Apple’s launch of the iPad and the reception consumers have given it. They are all scrambling to produce a tablet that can compete but are...
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Catastrophe Strikes Sales of MP3 Players in Europe
- Units and Revenue Down 14% in 2010
The number of MP3 players being sold and the revenue from their sales in Europe will decline by 14% this year, according to the European Information Technology Observatory (EITO), which is not part of the EU government.
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LG Predicts 1.1m 3D Notebooks in 2011
LG predicts it will sell 1.1 million 3D notebooks next year, five times as many as in 2010, according to Harrison Park, LG’s director of mobile communications PC business. It predicts 13.8 million will be sold by 2015. The company has three models of its 3D notebooks....
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Lots of People Want an iPad
Many more consumers are planning to buy an iPad, according to America’s Research Group, which said:
- 8.4% of the 1,000 people it surveyed said they had already bought an iPad
- Another 6.1% said they planned to buy one.
Britt Beemer,...
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BREIN’s Pirate Massacre
BREIN, an anti-piracy group that works on behalf of film studios, said that it has not only shut down several major Usenet indexes and streaming sites so far this year, but also hundreds of torrent sites.
According to TorrentFreak, BREIN’s "wholesale slaughter of file-sharing...
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Court Bans The Pirate Bay From The Netherlands
An Amsterdam Court has confirmed an earlier judgment and ordered The Pirate Bay to stop all their activities in The Netherlands.
The Court ruled that the site’s operators were assisting copyright infringement and if they fail to ban Dutch users, they will have to pay penalties of...
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PRS: ISPs Should Pay for Pirate Customers
The Performing Rights Society (PRS), the UK royalty collector for the music industry, wants to charge Internet service providers for the amount of illegal downloads that happen via their networks.
The argument is that ISPs should monitor the traffic of their users and compensate the music industry...
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‘Hurt Locker’ Lawsuits Set to Grow
Previously we reported that "Hurt Locker" producer Voltage Pictures was suing thousands of alleged pirates for downloading the film online with a little help from the US Copyright Group.
It looks like that "thousands" may be growing much quicker than anticipated.
Voltage originally sued 5,000 unidentified...
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Czech TV Turns to the Web
Czech public broadcaster CT plans to launch its fifth channel in the next two years, according to the station’s news director Milan Fridrich.
Fridrich said that this new channel will be an Internet-only service that will feature content from its existing four channels as well as new...
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Boxee Box Ready for Production
The Boxee Box is ready for mass production according to Boxee CPO Zach Klein. Klein has released a video showing off the production model of the highly anticipated STB.
The Box doesn’t appear to add new features or function above the existing Boxee software, at least from...
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Sonic Lands Major Chinese TV Maker Haier for OTT
Haier, the giant Chinese maker of CE gear, is launching a line of Internet-connectable TV sets and Blu-ray players that will be embedded with Sonic Solutions’ RoxioNow online service for movies and TV shows. Other CE makers such as LG,Samsung, Panasonic and Sony are selling TV sets with online services like...
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Netflix Will Bring Streams to Canada
- The First of Several International Launches
Netflix will introduce a streaming-only service for Canadian residents to watch unlimited movies and TV shows for a monthly fee.
It’s all the joys of the Watch Instantly programming in the US without the need...
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Asus First to Launch Notebooks with Embedded WirelessHD
In June, at Computex, Asus showed two new notebooks that incorporate chipmakerSiBeam’s WirelessHD technology, becoming the first to embed "the most robust wireless display solution available."
Asus’ WirelessHD notebooks allow the wireless streaming of uncompressed 1080p/60 video and a latency-free experience for gaming and entertainment.
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Atheros Forms Alliance to Span All Wi-Fi Variants
Wilocity and Atheros plan to work together on a tri-band chip that speaks all forms of Wi-Fi (2.4GHz and 5GHz), as well as working at 60GHz using the new WiGig Wireless Gigabit specification.
WiGig will transmit data at a raw PHY rate of 7 Gbps and...
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Netgear Selects Gigle Chips for HomePlug Adapters
Netgear has selected Gigle Networks’ GGL301 HomePlug/IEEE1901 chips for a line of Netgear Powerline adapters. The chips are rated for maximum service of 200 Mbps.
Gigle said its quality of service (QoS) support enables simultaneous delivery of high definition (HD) video streams, voice over IP...
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WiGig Alliance Moves Forward, Publishes White Paper
In an ideal world, a secure, high-speed and affordable wireless network technology would be used to stream HD video and other data to devices in the home. TheWireless Gigabit (WiGig) Alliance was founded to develop a unified specification for wireless networking that would offer multi-gigabit speeds.
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BitTorrent Ups Twitter Speeds by 75x
BitTorrent is getting used more and more by big Internet brands, such asFacebook and Twitter, but the latter has now said that its BitTorrent-powered system has made server deployment 75 times faster than before.
Large scale Web-services like Twitter use thousands of servers to manage the...
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KickApps Adds HTML5, Flash Support
Social software provider KickApps announced that its App Studio will now support HTML5 and the latest version of Flash.
The App Studio is a drag-and-drop authoring tool for creating customized video players. Users can select from a pre-integrated series of plug-ins and enable end-user device playback in...
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Multitasking’s Secret Gold
Rarely do people scream in public, but this past weekend a man sitting quietly at a coffee shop let out a blood curdling wail because an update to the Marvel Comics app on his iPhone caused all of the comics to be removed from the app and need automatic re-downloading.
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Sharp First with 100GB Blu-ray BDXL Discs & Recorders
Sharp is the first to launch 100GB triple play Blu-ray disks –– based on the BDXL format that the Blu-ray Disk Association announced in June –– and BDXL recorders. The discs are labeled BD-R and can only record once.
They’ll be available in Japan by the...
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Pirate Party-backed ISP Prepares Maiden Voyage
Sweden’s pro-file-sharing Pirate Party (Piratpartiet) is partnering on the launch of a new ISP in the country, which promises to offer anonymity to file-swappers while financially supporting the Party.
The Pirate ISP will be operated by ViaEuropa, the company that also developed the iPredator Web anonymity service.
The...
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Consumers Want Home Video in HD
Consumers have become so accustomed to HD video that they expect it on hand-sized video recorders and smartphones to record in HD. That will increase the demand for faster broadband. Consumers will want to upload HD videos and watch them streamed over the Net.
Cisco
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iPad Grabs 10% of iPlayer Mobile Traffic
A little under two months after its UK launch Apple’s iPad is now delivering 10% of all requests for the BBC iPlayer made from portable devices.
According to the BBC, during June mobile devices were the only delivery type to increase their viewing, while other delivery types saw...
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Cellcos to Offer Their Own Tablets
Tablets provide a clear opportunity for ARM-based processors to move upmarket from handsets into mobile computers, challenging Intel, particularly its Atom processor, dominant in netbooks. Nvidia’s Tegra, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon andTexas Instruments’ OMAP are considered to the processors with the best chances.Apple and Samsung rely on their own, closely related, ARM-based designs (A4 and Hummingbird respectively).
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iPad: The NBA’s New Jam
The NBA plans to bring live streaming games to Apple’s iPad this fall, according toPaidContent.
"We anticipate we’ll have our live streaming games available on iPad in the fall," said NBA Digital senior vice president and general manager Bryan Perez.
"This (mobile...
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HP’s Slate Lives?
HP has confirmed it’s running through customer evaluations of a Windows 7 tablet that looks awfully similar to the device shown off by Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer at this year’s CES.
The device appears to be called the "HP Slate 500" and showed up briefly on...
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iPads to Outsell Macs
It remains to be seen whether the iPad cuts into sales of low-cost, low-power netbooks. What we do know, based on Apple’s quarterly report, is that Apple will soon be selling more iPads than Mac PCs. It sold 3.27 million iPads in the quarter compared to 3.47 million Macs, the most...
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Toshiba Waves AC100 Tablet in Australia
Toshiba this week waved a prototype of its AC100 tablet at a press meeting in Australia, according to Australian PC Authority. It said it has an ARM-designed processor that’s made by Nvidia. Toshiba hinted there’ll be models that run Android and the CE version of Windows called Windows Compact...
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Apple Isn’t Charging for iOS 4 Upgrades
Ignore the rumors.
Despite what is making the rounds in e-mails, blogs and across the Web, Apple is not charging for iOS 4 upgrades this fall. Apple’s own licensing agreement states that the software update will be free to iPad owners.
Citing "top secret plans"...
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Elgato Converts Video Files for iPad, iPhone
Germany-based Elgato says its newest software Turbo.264 HD converts video files to high-quality video for iPhone and iPad playback. HD camcorder users can preview and crop video before converting it.
It said the software converts "nearly any kind of video format" including downloads, MKV files and wmv...
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Apple Launches iPad in Nine More Countries This Week
Continuing to open new markets for the iPad while potential tablet competitors figure out a product strategy, Apple will launch in nine countries Friday, July 23: Austria, Belgium, Hong Kong, Ireland, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, and Singapore.
Apple will then have iPads on sale in 19...
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Asus Drops Windows 7 for Android on One Eee Pad
After a tour of Asus headquarters, Netbooknews.com reported that Asus will use Android, not Windows 7, on its upcoming Eee Pad model EP101TC, a 10-inch tablet. Asus said at Computex that it would run either Windows Embedded Compact 7 (Windows CE) or Android.
The report said Asus will wait...
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Smartphones to Cut into Market for Notebooks
It’s not only iPads that will be cutting into sales of portable computers, according toVerizon Wireless’ director of new technology and development, Humphrey Chen.
Speaking at the Mobilebeat 2010 conference, Chen said it’s considering offering a smartphone docking station that has PC-like functions with a...
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AT&T Hits First $1b U-Verse TV Quarter
- Loses 347,000 DSL Broadband Subscribers
- Activates 3.2m iPhones
- Exceeds 90m Wireless Subscribers
In its quarterly report AT&T said it added 255,000 U-Verse broadband subscribers but overall lost 92,000 broadband customers. That seems to say it lost 347,000 of its legacy...
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Possible Hurricane Stops Work on Gulf Gusher
- BP Was Closing in on Permanent Close
- Temporary Cap Is Working
The possibility of a hurricane in the Gulf caused BP and the Feds to stop work on plugging the gusher on Thursday night. It takes about five days to close operations down...
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Jobs: ‘There Is No Antennagate’
Apple chief Steve Jobs told a press conference last week that to reduce call drops on iPhone 4s that are caused by putting the antenna around the product’s sides, the company will give free bumper guards.
Apple and AT&T both offered to reimburse dissatisfied customers.
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Apple Breaks Richter Scale with Quarterly Results
Apple this week reported its biggest quarter ever.
Small companies get revenue increases of 87% but it was Apple that increased its quarterly revenue 87% to $15.7 billion from $9.7 billion a year ago. That’s a $6 billion increase in revenue in one year,...
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DECE: ‘Buy Once, Play Anywhere’
- Cloud-Based Locker Debuts
- Partners Include Pay-TV, Content, CE, Distribution and Retail
Forget all that noise about 3D and bigger Blu-ray discs! The entertainment industry has just jumped into the digital age with both feet, announcing a digital content locker that blurs the lines that...
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‘Closer to a Convergence of TV and Internet Content’
"We are getting closer to a convergence of TV and Internet content and that is when the game really does change. Our TV will become a giant window for the Internet. It will get to know what we like, what music to offer us, and it will connect our TV...
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HP Delays Android Tablet
Hewlett Packard has been working on multiple tablet PCs but, according to The Wall Street Journal, has put a hold on its Android tablet. The Android device was supposed to arrive in Q4, but won’t be shipping this year. HP is also said to be stopping work on...
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Apple’s iPhone 4 Woes
The iPhone 4 has antenna issues and Apple has been a bit shifty in resolving the issue, first blaming users and software before admitting to hardware issues. Apple will have a press conference Friday to address the issue, but so has only released an update that makes the reception bars easier to...
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Universal Broadband in UK in 2015, Not 2012
The UK coalition government has stretched out the date for universal 2 Mbps broadband from 2012 to 2015. The aim is to use a combination of private and public funding and both wireline and wireless broadband. It blamed the prior government for failing to allocate enough money to make the...
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MSI Wants to Be the HTC of Tablets
Taiwan-based Micro-Star International (MSI), which has been making computers for other companies since 1985, wants to become in tablets what HTC has become in mobile phones, according to the Los Angeles Times piece at:http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2010/07/msi-tablet-pc.html. MSI is developing a Windows 7-based tablet called Wind Pad and thinking about an Android-based tablet. HTC has said it...
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Akamai Streaming British Open in HD
The UK Open Championship of Golf has chosen Akamai to stream HD video versions of the event throughout the world for its 150th Anniversary Championship at St Andrews in Scotland this weekend, according to Faultline. It is the first time the event has been viewable in HD over the Internet and will be...
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RIM to Launch New Blackberrys, OS
RIM says it’ll launch a new BlackBerry operating system called OS6 and two or more new devices by this fall. Could one of them be a tablet? Reports are that the new OS will have a dual mode function, one for business and one for personal, that...
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‘Designed in California, Made for China’
The first 5,000 visitors to Apple’s new store in Shanghai will get a T-shirt that has an Apple logo and says, "Designed in California, made for China" instead of the "Designed in California, made in China" that’s on Apple’s products outside of China. ...
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Windows Is Microsoft’s Cash Cow
Last year Microsoft made more than $10 billion from sales of its Windows OS – yep, profits, not revenue. Is there any wonder Microsoft is pushing so hard to get some Windows 7 tablets and Windows Phone 7 devices to market this year? Apple,Google, RIM and other non-Windows smartphone and tablet makers are intent on...
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Consumer Reports Rates New iPhone as Best Smartphone but Says Don’t Buy It
The ad-free Consumer Reports rates the new iPhone 4 as the best smartphone but recommends that consumers not buy it because of antenna issues when making cell calls, much like The Wall Street Journal’s chief technologist Walt Mossberg did several weeks ago. Mossberg said if consumers get the new iPhone for Internet access, they...
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The Consumerization of Workplaces
"There is a process of consumerization happening in workplaces at the moment, and although it’s still early days for the iPad to be an enterprise-grade device, it will be soon. I have no doubt the iPad will be used in workplaces, but it will take some time, in the same...
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Panasonic Raises 3D Goals
Booming sales have caused Panasonic to raise its internal target for 3D TV sales to a million units, up from 700,000, in the first year, according to The New York Timespiece "Defiantly, Panasonic Pushes a Vast Catalog." The company had revenue of $83 billion last year and employees 385,000. ...
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Apple Brings Its Magic to Redesigned Disney Stores
We knew Disney and Apple are connected at the head. Now we see they’re connected at the feet. Disney hired the same team that designed Apple’s stores to revamp its 300 retail outlets. Lots of technology and glitz is used to entertain customers, including interactive storytelling. The first one opened in Montebello, California on...
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Vimeo Lets Users Offer Creative Commons Content
Video uploading and sharing site Vimeo has added the ability for its users to offerCreative Commons licenses for the video they upload, provided that it is entirely their creation. Producers will retain copyrights for their works but will allow others to use their content in a variety of ways. Some licenses cover allowing...
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BitTorrent-Only TV Show Gains Ground
A BitTorrent-only TV show, "Pioneer One," debuted recently and in its first two weeks the show had more than 1.3 million downloads and received more than $20,000 in donations for work on future episodes.
Supported by many of the key figures in BitTorrent sites, protocols,...
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Netgear Unveils ‘First-Ever’ Storage with Skifta Place Shifting, TiVo Compatibility
Netgear calls its new ReadyNAS Ultra digital media servers "the first-ever home storage system to support the media-shifting of multimedia content."
What makes its gear different, the company said, is that users can keep all their media on ReadyNAS and access it on any...
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iTunes Users Interested in Cloud Service
The NPD Group’s latest survey shows that Apple fans would be willing to pay for subscription and cloud-based music services on the iTunes platform.
NPD recently surveyed iTunes, iPod, iPhone, and iPod Touch users about their preferences and reactions to various music subscription-model concepts. The results of the "iTunes...
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Sonos Offers Concerts from Wolfgang’s Vault
Sonos, maker of wireless, multi-room audio systems, has announced a new deal with Wolfgang’s Vault to provide a free 30-day trial to the collection of live concert recording archives to Sonos owners. Wolfgang’s Vault includes more than 3,500 concerts from the last 50 years, with performances from Bob...
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Prince Stirs Pirate Waters
The musician Prince recently declared that the Internet is "completely over" and instead of using iTunes or another digital store gave out his latest album via UK newspapers The Daily Mirror and The Daily Record.
Good news for the papers, their sales jumped 27% on that day.
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Android: Everyone’s an App Developer
Google launched a new development tool, App Inventor for Android, which the company hopes will get more developers and regular Web users interested in making apps for the Android Market.
The new software is said to be simple enough to allow anyone, even young...
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MP3tunes Syncs between Apple, Google Devices
MP3tunes, the digital music locker service run by MP3.com founder Michael Robertson, launched a new feature that offers cable-free syncing of music betweenApple and Google devices. This is what the film industry has been hoping to do with its Sony-led DECE and Disney Keychest projects.
The "Buy Anywhere, Listen Everywhere" MP3tunes feature will...
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Wi-Fi iPhone Going to China?
While rumors of an iPhone with Wi-Fi capability heading to China have come and gone throughout the years, a true device might be one step closer to existence.
According to The Wall Street Journal, an iPhone with Wi-Fi capabilities has officially received its Chinese network access...
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No Beta and No Launch, Windows Phone 7 Still in the Wind
Microsoft has consistently said that the new Windows Phone 7 OS will launch on devices in time for the holiday season coming later this year, but details beyond that have been scarce.
A few weeks ago, a Microsoft representative said that a launch should...
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T-Mobile USA Rolling Out Faster 3G Network
Speed, speed, speed!
By year-end T-Mobile USA intends to have its faster HSPA+ mobile broadband coverage in 100 markets with 185 million people.
In September it’ll reportedly be the first in the world to launch an HSPA+ Android-based smartphone from HTC. It’s also expected to...
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Hong Kong Offers Wireless ‘You Are Here’ & ‘Where to Shop/Eat Service’
Hong Kong quad player PCCW is offering visitors free Wi-Fi access at its citywide hotspots to tourist information. A location-based digital map shows at-a-glance a visitor’s location and nearby recommended shops and restaurants.
No log-in payment is required. It takes one click to access the Hong Kong...
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12 Mbps Wireless Broadband Being Tested in Rural Cornwall
In September Clear Mobitel will begin testing LTE mobile broadband technology in Cornwall as a means to bring speeds up to 12 Mbps to rural areas. The test will be for about 300 residences.
It’s using spectrum that became available when TV broadcasters switched from analog to...
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Comcast to Expand WiMAX Network
Comcast is expanding its High-Speed 2go-brand WiMAX mobile broadband network to areas in Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania and Washington, DC. High-Speed 2go was already available in all or parts of Texas, Oregon, Washington and Georgia.
Comcast’s WiMAX network is the one that Clearwire is building and is...
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Ericsson Shows End-to-End LTE in China
Ericsson has demonstrated an end-to-end TD-LTE system at an event in Shanghai organized by China Mobile, according to Wireless Watch. The report said the major equipment vendors are stepping up their efforts to get TD-LTE kit to market. China Mobile is planning to initiate live LTE services next...
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Poland’s Inea to Offer WiMAX
Polish cableco Inea has launched a WiMAX Internet access service. When taken with fixed-line telephony, users get the WiMAX service free for two months.
About 200,000 residences in western Poland can access Inea, which has about 138,000 subscribers. It expects its WiMAX service will be available to...
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KabelBW to Offer O2’s Mobile Broadband
German cableco KabelBW has made a wholesale deal with O2 Germany so KabelBW can offer a mobile broadband service. Access speed is 7.2 Mbps.
The entry-level service is €14.90 ($18.75) a month. Subscribers need to buy aHuawei-made USB stick, which is €29.90 ($37) for those subscribing to...
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IBM: Unlimited Mobile Broadband Data Plans to Disappear
- OTT Services to Proliferate
Tiered pricing for 4G networks with LTE and WiMAX technology will become the norm over the next five years, according to a report from IBM Global Business Services. The company sells products and services to cell phone companies.
It said...
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Intel Closes Dedicated WiMAX Office in Taiwan
Intel plans to close its WiMAX promotion and support office in Taiwan, according toDigitimes. The company said the closure is not due to lack of interest in WiMAX but because WiMAX has reached the point it doesn’t need the promotion.
Intel said that WiMAX...
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App Stores Get Stat Crazy
While app stores are growing faster than urban sprawl, there is finally some information coming out about trends in the market as a whole.
According to reports that hit this week from ABI, GetJar, VisionMobile and others, the market is doing well and has two years of growth left...
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More Mobile Users Gobble Data
Nearly two-thirds of US mobile subscribers used text messaging in May, while roughly one-third used mobile Web browsers or downloaded apps, according to a new report from comScore.
All three categories rose about 2% from figures released in February.
Social networks and blogs saw...
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Pay TV Not Needed for Local TV Channels
About 90% of all locally broadcast TV shows from the main networks –– CBS, NBC,Fox, ABC and The CW –– are now available for free on the Net, according toClicker.com, an Internet TV guide that lets viewers search, discover and watch TV shows. All of The CW shows are online.
"I...
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9.6m Tablets in Asia-Pacific by 2014, Excluding Japan
Shipments of media tablets like the iPad to the Asia-Pacific region but excluding Japan are expected to increase from 1.3 million units in 2010 to 9.6 million in 2014, a year-to-year growth of 65%, according to Gartner. ...
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Google Breathing down Microsoft’s Neck in US Smartphone Market
It may still be in fourth place in US smartphone OS market share but Google’s Android was the only major to increase market share during the three months ending in May, according to comScore.
BlackBerry maker RIM led with 41.7%. Apple followed with 24.4%. Microsoft was still in third with 13.2%.
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US Digital Singles Drop, Pricing Blamed
Sales of single-track digital music downloads in the US fell 0.2% to 597 million units in the first half of 2010, according to Nielsen SoundScan data.
While the decline is only a fraction of a percent, many are seeing this as a sign that the market is...
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anvas Unlikely to Be Slowed by Virgin’s Legalities or Five’s Departure
- France Telecom’s Orange May Replace Five
- HbbTV as an Alternative Technology
This article originally appeared in Faultline.
For several years some UK constituencies have fought tooth and claw against the growing influence of BBC, fighting off Kangaroo and forcing it...
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Russian Download Site Faces $1.25b in Piracy Charges
Russian police have opened a criminal investigation into a married couple that is believed to operate the site Interfilm.ru, which bills itself as a ‘pre-release’ movie download service. The site is charged with copyright infringement with damages exceeding $1.25 billion, according to published reports in Moscow.
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Judge Slashes ‘Unconstitutional’ P2P Award
Judge Nancy Gertner and everyone else at this point know that Joel Tenenbaum, the second US target of the RIAA’s litigation campaign to complete a trial, did it. After admitting to music-sharing on the stand, Gertner issued a verdict against him and the jury returned a $675,000 verdict...
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RIAA: Lime Wire Hid Money To Avoid Payments
While Lime Wire founder Mark Gorton made and spent a few million over the past decade helping people share billions of pirated songs, the RIAA claim that Gorton positioned his earnings in a way to prevent court seizure.
In court papers, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) once...
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RIAA Warning 1m Infringing Consumers Each Year
In less than two years, the RIAA said it has sent out copyright infringement notices to 1.8 million Internet users as well as roughly 270,000 notices to colleges and universities in the US.
The numbers are pretty staggering, but there seems to be a disconnect between the...
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UK ISPs Push Digital Economy to High Court
Two of the UK’s larger Internet service providers are joining forces to challenge the country’s Digital Economy Act.
TalkTalk and BT are requesting that the High Court examine the Act and make sure it followed proper parliamentary procedures. The two ISPs and other groups have previously...
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Pirate Bay Hacked, Users Exposed
A troop of Argentinian hackers gained access to The Pirate Bay’s (TPB) administration panel and were able to delete torrents and expose a variety of user content earlier this week.
TPB users had their IP addresses, e-mail addresses and passwords exposed, some of which has been...
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Australia Bows, Web Filter To Be Delayed
The Australian government has stopped plans to rollout a national Internet content filter that would target any and all material that is prohibited or "refused classification" by Australian censors.
The countrywide filter will be delayed for at least a year while the nation’s Broadband Minister...
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Hulu Plus Reaches the PS3
When it first launched, Hulu’s new Hulu Plus was mum about gaming console support, but as suspected it has made its way to Sony’s PlayStation 3. The Hulu Plus preview is available to a small group of PlayStation 3 users who currently subscribe to PlayStation Plus, a recently launched subscription service that offers and...
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New Apple TV Rumor: 99¢ TV Episode Streams
Rumors of a new Apple TV, or at least a major update, won’t die anytime soon, and the latest comes from a NewTeeVee report that suggests Apple aims to include streaming TV show episode rentals for 99¢.
Streaming content will be a big part of a new Apple TV,...
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Fetch TV Offers Free-to-Air Broadcasters a Way to Sell Subscriptions
Set-top boxes that connect TV sets to the Net, receive free over-the-air broadcasts and offer video-on-demand services can offer free-to-air broadcasters a way to sell subscriptions, according to Australia’s Fetch TV, 40% owned by Malaysia’s Astro All Asian Networks (Astro), and operated by Australian broadband service provideriiNet. See "iiNet...
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Five Withdraws from, but Still Supports Canvas
Financially troubled Five is withdrawing from Project Canvas. It does not appear that the problem is Project Canvas, because RTL, Five’s owner, has put Five up for sale.
BBC, BT, ITV, Channel 4, Carphone Warehouse’s Talk Talk and Arqiva are the remaining members.
Charles Constable, director of strategy at Five, said, "We...
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Panasonic Adds Acetrax Online Movie Service
Makers of TV sets and Blu-ray players know they must offer online-delivered content in order to prosper in first-world markets.
Panasonic, continuing to fight off the South Koreans and remain a strong seller of TV sets, has a non-exclusive deal with Acetrax to offer a...
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Free Piracy VPN Reaches 300,000 Members
Roughly one year ago ItsHidden, a virtual private network (VPN), launched, gave users the ability to use and share torrents while hiding their identities and locations from third-parties seeking to monitor P2P networks.
The VPN recently announced that it has surpassed 300,000 members.
As...
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Symbian Titanic Is Heading for Iceberg
- If Symbian Fails, Nokia Will Have To Accept A Large Part Of The Blame
In a commentary piece titled "Is Symbian re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic?," Gartner analyst Nick Jones provides a stinging analysis of the current Symbian state of play, admonishing the less than impressive...
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All for One, One for All in UK’s Networked Nation
Countries like Finland and Australia have mandated 100 Mbps broadband networks that every home can access.
The UK is talking up universal broadband by 2015 in a promotion called Networked Nation, saying, for example, all applications for school places and free school meals will be...
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China to Test Converged TV, Mobile, PC Networks
The Chinese State Council has designated 12 cities and regions to test the Three Network Convergence, which includes IPTV, mobile TV and online broadcasts, according to the Xinhuanet news agency.
The move allows telcos and broadcasting companies to compete by offering IPTV, mobile TV and online broadcasting on a...
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Movistar Upgrades to 50 Mbps, Headed for 100 Mbps
The telco Movistar, Spain’s largest broadband provider by number of subscribers, is upgrading its double- and triple-play fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) service. In mid-August it will offer 50 Mbps down and 5 Mbps up and re-price the service to attract more subscribers.
The price for the Movistar Futura...
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Costs Between To-the-Home and To the ‘Kerb’ Vary Five-Fold
There are still different opinions about whether telcos should run fiber all the way to the home, as Verizon is doing, or only the neighborhood, as AT&T and many other telcos are doing. Barring a breakthrough in DSL broadband technology, a distinct possibility, it seems certain that fiber will have to...
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LG Shows Off 3D With Big Web Credentials
LG Electronics is pushing its 3D technology by pairing it with as much Web content as it can fit into those slim screens and Blu-ray players.
Using its NetCast Entertainment service, the company is pairing its latest TVs withNetflix, Vudu, YouTube and all the TV apps covered...
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3D TV Reqs One Step Closer
The DVB said it will begin work on Phase 2 of its commercial requirements for 3D TV on July 28. The meeting follows the recent publication of specifications for a 3D TV system in line with current 3D broadcasts.
Discussions at the upcoming meetings will focus on...
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Sony PS3 Gets 3D Blu-ray Support in September
Users that chose Sony’s PlayStation 3 for its built-in Blu-ray player over other consoles are getting one more reason to be happy for their choice, Sony has confirmed that in September the console will receive a firmware update allowing it to play 3D Blu-ray discs.
"In...
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Apple Opens Store in Shanghai
Apple has opened its second store in China, this one in Shanghai. The store is located in what is considered China’s financial center. It has 16,000-square-foot showroom.
Apple said it will open more stores in China over the next two years but did not...
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Promising Outlook for MeeGo Tablets
Nokia still makes more mobile handsets than any other company but has been unable to develop smartphones and tablets to compete against Apple and Google at the high end of the market where sales are booming and profit margins are higher.
This article first appeared...
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iPad Cannibalizing Portable PC Sales by 30% to 40%
- iPad to Have 70% Market Share Long Term
Microsoft and its coterie of Windows PC makers must be staying awake at night if they believe the iPad will impact sales of their portable computers as Barclays Capital analyst Ben Reitzes predicts.
Reitzes said...
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Windows 7’s Tablet Handicaps
Looking ahead, Ballmer predicted that portable, Internet-connected devices will come in a plethora of form factors, prices and features.
"This is a terribly important area for us," he said. "We are hardcore about this."
Windows 7 is a wonderful and reliable operating system...
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Microsoft Promises Windows 7 Tablets by Holiday Shopping Season
At Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference in Washington DC this week, Microsoftchief Steve Ballmer said there will be Windows 7 tablets on the market before this year’s holiday shopping season.
VP of Windows Tami Reller showed two tablet prototypes, including a dual-screen Libretto from Toshiba. A Chinese company...
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Ownership Troubles at Hulu.com?
Could there be trouble in the future between Hulu.com’s three owners: Disney withABC, News Corp with Fox and soon Comcast’s NBC Universal. Each owner has a very different view about how to profit from Internet video. Disney wants to put its goodies on as many devices as possible as soon as possible and then figure out how to make...
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BP Stops Its Gulf of Mexico Oil Gusher
Operating under government guidance, BP this week placed a 75-ton, 3-story cap over the pipe that was gushing oil. At 2:25PM CDT Thursday BP said it had closed all the valves in the cap, which stopped all oil had from gushing into the Gulf of Mexico. If leaks start...
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Microsoft to Pay Developers for Windows Phone Apps
Having admitted that the company missed out on an entire generation of mobile phone technology, Microsoft chief Steve Ballmer knows well that the upcoming Windows Phone 7 has to be a hit. The company may be running short on innovation but it’s still got a very large pot of...
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Intel: 40m Netbooks This Year
For the June quarter, Intel showed no indication that the iPad has negatively impacted sales of its Atom chips, primarily used in low-cost, low-power netbooks. The unanswered question is whether iPads will cut into sales of netbooks.
Intel this week reported that sales of the Atom microprocessor...
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23% Have TVs Connected to the Net
- Will It Kill Blu-ray?
Consumers are getting Internet-connectable TV sets and buying devices like AppleTV or Blu-ray players that perform that function faster than we at The Online Reporter had ever hoped, according to a report from the research companyRetrevo.
The Retrevo report says about...
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YouTube 4K: Upping the Theater in Home Theater
The Internet was late to HD and 3D. YouTube, by far the largest online video service, wants to make sure the Net is the first to 4K, the next high def standard 4K.
Video in 1080p HD may seem high-quality, but Google wants you to think much, much...
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France Aims at 50,000 Pirates Per Day
France’s coming three-strike policy has gotten some teeth. According to a new review of the policy, one of its protocols to combat piracy will be enabling a P2P network monitor that can identify 25,000 suspected music copyright infringements daily, as well as 25,000 video infringements each day. The anti-piracy firm Trident...
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Qualcomm OK with Dropping FLO TV
Qualcomm might be in the market to sell off the FLO TV service that Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs called "just cable TV content sold primarily through cellular operators." According to Jacobs’ comments and other news from the company, Qualcomm was not looking to be in the service provider business and...
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Netflix Eyes Android
Netflix is looking to further its mobile rollout with an Android app, according to various sources and reports. What we have been able to nail down is that Netflix is doing in-house tests with Android-based devices for use over Wi-Fi and 3G networks, and that it is looking into working...
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Macs to Stay Blu-ray Free
According to emails allegedly written by Apple’s Steve Jobs and posted byMacRumors, Jobs and Apple think Blu-ray "will be beaten by Internet downloadable formats." The emails concerned the new Mac Mini which lacks Blu-ray support but does support HDMI-output. "The downloadable movie business is rapidly moving to free (Hulu) or rentals...
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Finland: High-Speed Internet Is a Right
Finland is the first country to say that every citizen is entitled to high-speed Internet connection. For starters it’ll be 1 Mbps but the goal is to give every home 100 Mbps by 2015. "Internet services are no longer just for entertainment," Finland’s communication minister Suvi Linden told the BBC. The...
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Verizon Wireless May Get iPhone in January
Despite the iPhone 4 and iPad being launched, Apple rumorville keeps churning. Citing two sources familiar with the matter, Bloomberg News reports that Verizon Wireless will start selling the iPhone this January, citing two sources familiar with the matter. Verizon Wireless is the biggest outlet for RIM’s Blackberry and a main reseller of Android-based phones. ...
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CES: January 6-9, 2011 in Las Vegas
Lest we forget. The main theme will be mobile devices. Perhaps Microsoft chief Steve Ballmer, CES’s opening keynoter, will present a winning mobile strategy for his company. Right now Apple, Google, LG and Samsung appear to have the momentum. And, once again, Apple, the reigning king of mobile devices, won’t be at CES. ...
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Telstra, Huawei Testing LTE in Australia
Telstra and Huawei are testing LTE technology in the state of Victoria to understand the technology’s characteristics and application in different spectrums ...
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Sony Cuts Prices of Its eBook Readers
Sony, perhaps licking its wounds from its failures in the market for tablets and eBook readers, has cut the price of its entry-level eBook reader to $149.99 from $169.99. It reduced the price of the Touch Edition to $169.99 from $199.99 and the Daily Edition to $299.99 from $349.99. Amazon recently cut...
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iPad Sales Reportedly Top 2m per Month
Sales of iPads have topped two million per month, according to Digitimes analyst, Mingshi Kuo. ...
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‘The Internet’s Completely Over’
Musical artist Prince told The Mirror that "The Internet’s completely over," and intends to nix downloads for his next record, instead distributing CDs in copies ofThe Mirror. "I don’t see why I should give my new music to iTunes or anyone else," Prince told the newspaper. "The Internet’s like MTV. At one time...
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Netherlands’ NPO to Test P2P Torrent Technology
Faultline reports that Dutch public broadcaster NPO will test torrent downloads using a P2P network to deliver a catch-up TV service called Uitzending Gemist in a six months trial. Programming will be downloaded and can be viewed offline. Originally the BBC used P2P technology but after struggling with it for about...
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Apple Records To Issue Digital Non-Beatles Albums
After shying away from digital content, Apple Corps and EMI have announced plans to reissue 15 albums originally released by Apple Records, the label launched by The Beatles in 1968, as both CDs and digital albums. The reissues, which mark "the first ever Apple Records releases to be available via digital download," are slated for...
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Meo Launches IPTV App Store
The difference between IPTV and the Internet is getting a little more muddled.
Portugal Telecom’s IPTV operation Meo has unveiled Meo Interactivo, an application store that will host apps from Facebook, Oceanlook, Picasa andFlickr, among other yet-to-be named partners.
It will allow users to watch TV while simultaneously...
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YouTube Adds Takedown Appeals Process
YouTube has added a new feature that lets users easily send an appeal when their videos are taken down for a violation of the service’s own guidelines.
"As you can imagine, with the massive volume of videos on our site, sometimes we make the wrong...
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Netflix Now Directly Challenges Premium pay TV Films
Sometimes the best thing to do is try to beat them at their own game.
Netflix often has no luck getting streaming access to movies held by HBO,Showtime and Epix during the initial period they control rights to the films, so Netflix is trying a new way to...
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MOG Music Coming to Roku
MOG, the operator of a music blog network and recently a digital music subscription service, said that a new partnership with Roku will deliver its MOG unlimited music service across the company’s broadband set-top boxes. Roku owners will be able to stream more than 7.5 million songs to their TVs for $4.99...
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Radio Legend Dr. Demento Goes Online
After roughly 40 years of broadcasting on traditional airwaves, the syndicated show of radio veteran Dr Demento is heading to the Web, according to the AP. Dr Demento, or the 69 year-old writer and ethnomusicologist Barret Hansen, made a reputation by mixing political satire music with upcoming artists and parody work....
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Google Music Could Come With Android 3.0
It seems a Google Android product manager told an Israeli news agency that the company plans to debut a music service alongside the release of Android 3.0 (codenamed "Gingerbread") at the end of the year. Google announced plans to develop a music service out of its existing music search offerings back in...
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Google Puts More Cash behind Top100.cn Music
Google has made an additional large investment in the Chinese digital music serviceTop100.cn, according to Chinese media reports.
The reports indicate that both Google and NBA basketball player Yao Ming participated in the second round of funding for the service, totaling nearly $1 million in new funds.
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LG App Store Launches
LG has become the latest phone maker to join in the app store games with the launch of its LG Application Store.
LG promised to deliver apps to smartphones and most of its feature phones as well, and also said it will help users pick...
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Wi-Fi To Carry Mobile TV
Wi-Fi is looking to be the new pay TV service.
According to a study from Juniper Research, Wi-Fi networks will soon carry more TV traffic and drive a large part of the revenue growth for mobile TV as more services roll out.
According to...
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YouTube Mobile Site Leaves Apps in the Dust
YouTube has one-upped itself with the updated version of its YouTube Mobile Web site, m.youtube.com, that’s designed to deliver video to HTML5-capable browsers like the iPhone’s Safari and those available on Android mobiles.
The new updated site " incorporates the features and functionality you’ve come...
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AT&T Accused of Capping iPhone 4 Upload Speeds
After countless photos and videos of picnics and fireworks were uploaded overAT&T’s 3G network over the holiday, reports started pouring in of slower than normal upload speeds for iPhone 4 users all across the US.
In more than two dozen US cities, consumers have found upload...
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Microsoft Kills Kin
So much for Microsoft as a threat to Apple at making smartphones!
In another sign that Microsoft’s mobile devices operations are out of synch with the market, Microsoft has killed its recently-launched and barely-noticed Kin (nee Pink) handsets that were aimed at the social networking set a mere...
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Palm Deal Completed, HP Prepares to Launch Line of Smartphones, Tablets and ‘Other’ Mobile Devices
- HP Devices with Palm webOS Expected Shortly
HP’s acquisition of Palm has been finalized. HP devices with Palm’s webOS are expected, soon such as one to replace the tablet HP "previewed" at CES in January, with help from Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer, but never shipped.
HP...
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3G Eyeing Handheld Game Consoles
Japanese wireless carrier NTT DoCoMo is talking with video game console makers over adding 3G network connections to the next generation of handheld consoles or possibly introducing 3D to regular mobiles, according to The Wall Street Journal.
"Videogame makers know that in order for portable game machines to take...
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Best Buy to Offer Own Brand of Mobile Broadband
Private-label mobile broadband is coming as shown by Best Buy’s announcement that it will kick off a Best Buy-brand service for laptops in July. It’ll use Sprint’s 3G network but not Sprint’s Clear WiMAX 4G service, which is based in Clearwire’s WiMAX service.
It’ll be called Best Buy...
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Would 42 Mbps Mobile Broadband Make Consumers Happy?
Most US and European broadband subscribers currently get 4 Mbps to 8 Mbps speeds on their wireline broadband network. Mobile broadband technology has been developed and is beginning to be deployed that offers speeds up to five times as fast.
Japan’s DoCoMo, generally considered the cellco...
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YouTube Hits Record 14.6 Billion Views
YouTube drew more than 14.6 billion online video views in May, roughly 43% of all video viewed online, and hit a record according to the company.
Hulu was the only other video site to top the one billion views milestone, securing 1.17 billion streams...
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US Mobile Web Grows
Non-voice data usage on mobile phones has grown substantially over the last year with video seeing the largest increase in usage.
Roughly 60% of US adults now access the Internet wirelessly from a phone or laptop, up from 51% in April 2009, according to the Pew...
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55% of Portable Devices to Come with Mobile Broadband by 2014
About 55% of the more than 100 million portable devices such as such as e-readers, tablets and portable game players will come with mobile broadband embedded by 2014, according to Parks Associates. They will have 3G or faster 4G connectivity. CE makers will not only embed mobile broadband...
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iPad, Lower Prices May Increase 10% Wi-Fi Usage on Planes
Here’s another statistic the iPad is likely to bend sharply upwards: only about 10% of airline passengers are accessing the plane’s Wi-Fi, according to a USA Todayarticle. There’s so little elbow room these days that it’s hard to use even the smallest of netbooks. Then there’s the excessive...
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Declining Prices, Increasing Content Driving Sales of 3D TVs
Almost six million 3D TV sets will ship worldwide in 2010 and over 218 million 3D TV sets will ship cumulatively from 2010 to 2015, according to IMS Research. It says that the main driver is that CE suppliers have developed strategies that will result in quick proliferation...
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Wireless Broadband Replacing Wireline for Many
- HSPA Wireless Accounts for 17% of All European Broadband
- Double Digit Growth Rates
European carriers have led the way in promoting 3G connections as their customers’ main broadband connection, wireless or wireline. Mobile-only operators like O2 aim to increase their ARPU and customer...
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Older Adults Watch the Most TV, Enjoy TV the Least
Older adults watch significantly more TV than younger viewers, but they get a lot less out of it. According to a new study from the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, older viewers get less pleasure and stress relief from watching TV than do their younger counterparts. The study found that older...
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Settlement Talks Fail in Piracy Lawsuit
Settlement talks ordered by a judge have broken down in the ongoing copyright infringement proceedings against Jammie Thomas-Rassett. A joint motion from the case said that the settlement talks "have, unfortunately, been fruitless because of the substantially divergent views of the parties regarding copyright law and the...
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Nine Pirate Sites Get ICEd
The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has shut down nine movie piracy sites in what could be the first major crackdown from federal officials in the US.
The anti-piracy initiative, dubbed "Operation in Our Sites," is aimed at taking down sites that stream or offer downloads...
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Judge Rejects All of the EEF’s P2P Arguments
Law firms can indeed sue up to 5,000 accused P2P pirates from across the US in one fell swoop and in a single court, for now at least.
In a 45-minute hearing before federal judge Rosemary Collyer of the Washington, DC District Court, attorneys from the ACLU, EFF and Time...
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Alleged ‘Twilight’ Pirate Sues Movie Theater
In December of last year, a 22-year old woman was arrested in Chicago for recording three minutes of the latest "Twilight" film with her digital camera at the movie theater and ended up spending two days in jail awaiting a hearing.
The problem for Samantha...
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ACTA Trudges On With 6 Months To Go
The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is slowly rolling along with negotiators wrapping up the latest talks in Switzerland after meeting with civil liberty and society groups.
More than two years into the ACTA process, these meetings focused on some consumer protections, though there was little...
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TVs Seeking New Apps
Care to make an extra $41,000? That’s about how much Samsung Electronics is willing to shell out for ideas and plans for new Web-enabled TV apps.
In an effort to strengthen its Web capabilities, Samsung previously launched a Korean contest seeking developers to submit apps for its...
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France Televisions Launches Fluzz.fr Catch-up TV
France’s public broadcaster France Televisions launched a catch-up TV portal called Fluzz.fr this week. It’s available on the Net and from IPTV services Orangeand Free.
It’s ad-supported. Access is free.
FPluzz.fr will add 72 hours of new shows per day. They will be available for seven days....
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Microsoft Tops $1.2b in Revenue from Live
Microsoft does not report how much revenue it gets from its Xbox 360 Live service, but some folks at Bloomberg estimate the number at $1.2 billion or more last year.
It multiplied the number of users Microsoft admits paid the annual Xbox Live fee, half of 25...
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Popbox Arriving Later This Month
Popbox should be arriving in two weeks to early adopters as Syabas has announced July 23 as the shipping date for the highly anticipated media player.
Popbox is an app-based media player that will feel similar to Roku for many at first glance. Some of the initial ‘Popapps’ available...
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TalkTalk to Give Away Project Canvas STBs... If the Consumer Subscribes to Its Broadband Service
Set-top boxes based on Project Canvas technology are still a gleam in the eye, but already Carphone Warehouse’s TalkTalk operation is talk talking about giving them away when they go on sale in 2011, according to The Daily Telegraph.
The box will be free for consumers who subscribe to...
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Project Canvas Gets BBC Trust OK
Elephants give birth in 22 months.
The BBC Trust has approved the BBC’s continued development of Project Canvas after a public consultation period. It said it’ll review the matter 12 months after Project Canvas’ launch. Channel 4, Carphone Warehouse’s TalkTalk, ITV, Five, BT and media services company Arqiva are also involved in Project Canvas.
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Motorola Filings Give Full Weight to the Demise of Its Home Business
Motorola has filed SEC documents that give more details of how it plans to split itself into two organizations, and reveal more detail of its past business shape. For instance, it reveals for the first time in two years how much (or rather how little) revenue its Home set-top...
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TiVo Grabs Second Major European Deal
- This One’s in Spain with ONO
TiVo has a new agreement that makes Spain’s largest cableco, ONO, its exclusive Spanish distributor. It’s TiVo’s second major European deal, following a similar one with UK cableco Virgin Media.
Both cablecos will deliver broadcast, cable TV and...
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HDBaseT: One Cable for Uncompressed HD, Audio, 100BaseT Ethernet, Electric Power and Control Signals
- 10 Gbps at Birth and Ready to Take on HDMI, G.hn and MOCA
- The Same Ethernet Cable as at the Office
While MoCA and G.hn are slugging it out for both the current and future generations of wired TV connections, another technology called...
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Project Canvas to Use Marlin DRM
For digital rights managemen (DRM), Project Canvas will use the Marlin DRM technology that Intertrust, Panasonic, Phillips, Samsung and Sony jointly developed.
It is sensitive to making its technology as open as possible to all content providers. It wants to make sure they will be able to implement a subscription or download...
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EU May Force Apple to Support Flash and Silverlight on iPhone, iPad
- Aims to Broaden How Companies Can Violate Antitrust Rules
- Apple App Store Called "Closed Environment"
Adobe’s Flash 10.1 is poised to roll out across most key smartphone platforms and now Microsoft has released its own rich media technology, Silverlight, forSymbian. Both plug-in environments...
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Chrome Learns to Sit Up
Google has started working on a long laundry list of technology and features aimed at making Web applications run as smoothly on PCs as apps that run natively on the machine’s own OS, and first up to bat is an interface that tells the device which way...
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New BDXL Blu-ray Discs Hold 128GB
A coming version of Blu-ray discs called BDXL will allow storage of up to 128GB. TheBlu-ray Disc Association (BDA) has released specifications for BDXL that allow manufacturers to begin making drives and discs.
BDXL has triple layer 100GB RE (rewritable) and R (write-once) discs and quadruple...
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Australia Begins Rollout of National Broadband Network
Australia’s government-owned NBN is about to begin building the first five sites in its effort to build a national broadband network that will be universally available.
Each site will each cover about 3,000 residences.
NBN will award construction contracts this week for the sites, which...
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Clearwire Expanding to 60 Markets
As it promised, Clearwire is adding more markets to its WiMAX coverage.
After lighting up 10 new markets this week, its service is available to 51 million POPs (points of presence).
Seven more markets will be opened over the next two months.
By...
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World’s Best Broadband Deal: 1Gbps for $26/Month
City Telecom’s Hong Kong Broadband Network (HKBN) is using Alcatel-Lucent’s gigabit passive optical network (GPON) gear to launch a symmetric 1 Gbps broadband services offering for residents.
Hold on! The company will retail the service to consumers for $26 per month (that’s US$26). It calls it "the world’s...
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Corporate Purchases of iPads Picking Up Steam
The Apple iPad is making headway in the corporates, according to Bloomberg’sBusinessWeek. It said Wells Fargo, SAP and Mercedes-Benz are buying them for business applications.
Wells Fargo said it’s using its iPads for business presentations, an application that several companies are using. The bank is ordering more than the 15 it’s received so...
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LG Joins Parade of Tablets with Android Unit
LG said this week it’ll join the parade and launch an Android-based tablet by year-end. The tablet, it said, will be one of about 10 portable devices and smartphones it intends to launch by year-end, all with the brand name Optimus. This week it launched the new...
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Broadcasters Want the Service Compatible 3D Format
According to Broadband TV News, there’s a split between what 3D format broadcasters and pay TV operators want.
Broadband TV News, citing a survey it received from the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), said that broadcaster and other EBU members were asked which 3D format currently under...
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Update to ‘Drilling 3 Miles Down and into a 7-Inch Pipe’
BP and US Coast Guard engineers appear to be increasingly confident that they can complete drilling into and block the pipe that’s spewing oil into the Gulf of Mexico, perhaps earlier than the planned mid-August.
One of the two relief wells is reportedly within about 20 feet of...
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Five Thoughts Suggested by Recent Events
1. Google/Sony/Intel/Logitech will duke it out with Apple for dominance on the TV set, but only if Apple makes a major upgrade to Apple TV.
Apple could opt for an iPad-compatible Apple TV that would use less expensive hardware and run the new iPhone 4 OS. All of the...
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Where Now, Apple TV?
A punch line has a limited lifetime. After that it starts getting old, like the line "Apple TV is a hobby."
If Apple wants to dominate the living room in the same way it dominates the smartphone and tablet markets, it has to move soon ––...
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Hulu Goes Premium for Mobiles, Tablets, PCs, TVs
- Takes Pay TV Advertising Approach
- $10 Per Month Will Open a Lot of Eyes and Wallets
Hulu has lived up to all the rumors, speculation and hype by rolling out a premium service called Hulu Plus that will give users access...
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Digital License Plates Eye Ads
California, in a seemingly continuous state of near-bankruptcy, has proposed a new gimmick to rid itself of the financial crisis: digital license plates where display ads can be shown. The proposed "technoplates" will display an advertisement when the vehicle is stopped at a red light or otherwise temporarily not moving....
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Musix Licenses Universal Tracks
Musix, an Israeli digital music subscription service operated by Pelephone Communications, has licensed Universal Music Group songs according to aBillboard report. The service now offers more than 500,000 tracks, one-tenth of which are from native Israeli acts. Musix costs users $5.20 per month for unlimited downloads and currently counts 90,000 subscribers. ...
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Apple Approves Rdio App Update
Rdio, the social music service developed by Kazaa and Skype founders, said thatApple has approved the latest version of its mobile app for the iPhone after an "unexpected delay." The new version fixes some of the bugs in the older app, and has added a new feature that remembers the last...
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Shazam Nearing 1m Weekly Downloads
Shazam recently held a party to celebrate its tenth anniversary, and CEO Andrew Fisher announced that the company is getting nearly one million downloads of its apps every week. Surprisingly, the other big talk that night concerns the company’s end game. The general consensus of those speaking...
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‘Premium Hulu’ in Talks with CBS and Viacom
According to BusinessWeek, popular streaming TV catch-up service Hulu is in talks with CBS and Viacom to add their content to the upcoming "Premium Hulu" service. CBS is currently the only major broadcaster not to have a stake in Hulu and Viacom recently pulled some of its most popular content away from Hulu, so these rumors are...
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Consoles Iffy on 3D
While Sony’s PlayStation 3 has begun sending out its first 3D downloads for firmware updates and games, Nintendo has joined Microsoft in saying it won’t be pushing a 3D console just yet. While Microsoft has said its Xbox 360 can technically handle 3D, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata recently said, "considering the current penetration rate of...
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Flash 10.1 Launches, Now Keep Waiting
Adobe has officially released Adobe Flash 10.1 to its mobile platform partners, with support coming to Android, Blackberry, WebOS, Windows Phones, Symbian, MeeGo and LiMo. What does that mean for the average consumer? Not much. Only select users of the Google Nexus One device have Android 2.2 and while the rest...
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iPhone Users Need Another Phone for Making Calls
"Just as with its predecessors, I can’t recommend this new iPhone for voice calling for people who experience poor AT&T reception, unless they are willing to carry a second phone on a network that works better for them," Walt Mossberg, columnist for The Wall Street Journal and America’s most respected technology critic. Other than...
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RealNetworks Cuts 85, Reorganizes
RealNetworks, once a darling of the digital media industry, is reorganizing and terminating 85 positions, of which about 25% are executives. The company said it wants "to reduce the spans and layers of management to create greater efficiency, teamwork and customer focus." The changes are expected...
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Who Will Get the NYC Metropolitan Transit Wi-Fi Project?
MuniWireless’ Esme Vos asks, "Who will get the NYC Metropolitan Transit (MTA) Wi-Fi Project? It’ll be one of the biggest Wi-Fi projects in the US but the MTA does not want to pay for it. Cablevision is fighting hard to get the contract so they can offer free Wi-Fi to...
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Will World Cup Save FLO TV?
Qualcomm’s FLO TV has added the LG Vu Plus to its list of compatible devices. It’s available in AT&T stores. FLO TV has a dedicated channel for ESPN’s coverage of the World Cup. The company said total viewing minutes increased 39% during the first five days of World Cup compared...
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Microsoft Foresaw but Missed the iPad Opportunity
"The fact that Microsoft was able to foresee the hardware that would enable the iPad and yet not build the right software to seize the opportunity highlights several challenges that Microsoft still needs to address if it hopes to catch-up," said Ina Fried in the CNET piece "How Microsoft Foresaw –– and...
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Google to Launch Leanback Version of YouTube
- Tied to Google TV Launch
Google is bent on getting more eyeballs for its search and YouTube services so it can bring in more advertising revenue. It wants all those eyeballs that, in the US at least, spend five hours a day watching TV.
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YouTube, Wrestling Head to the Mat
Google’s YouTube announced a partnership with World Wrestling Entertainment(WWE) that will bring full-length episodes of its wrestling programs to US YouTube users.
The deal includes popular shows like "Friday Night Smackdown," "WWE NXT," "WWE Superstars" and "ECW."
For more "pile-driving goodness," the two are...
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Vevo To Air INgrooves, Emerging Artists’ Videos
Digital music distributor INgrooves has made its frontline music videos available for viewing on Vevo, the music video portal that runs on YouTube’s technology and is a venture from Sony Music, Universal Music and the Abu Dhabi Media Company.
Vevo also features content from EMI, though that label doesn’t appear to own any part of...
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UBC Gets iTunes Tagging, Sells Radio Stake
UBC Media Group signed an agreement with Guardian Media Group Radio to supply iTunes tagging capabilities to 12 of Guardian Media’s UK radio stations. As part of the deal, UBC also sold its minority stake in radio group MXR to Guardian Media.
The 12 radio stations being covered...
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ouTube, RumbleFish Partner for Friendly Music
Music licensing store RumbleFish has joined with YouTube to launch Friendly Music, an online store that sells copy-protected tracks for $1.99 each.
The service targets video producers and allows for "non-commercial unlimited views rights in perpetuity," RumbleFish CEO Paul Anthony told PC Mag.
The site will go active...
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‘Exciting’ Feedback from Mobile TV Test in DC
- 63% Watch "on the Go," 44% at Work/School, 33% at Home
- 23 Mobile TV Channels Including All the Major Networks
- Samsung, LG, Dell Supply Mobile TV Handsets & Dongles
The local TV stations’ Open Mobile Video Coalition (OMVC) has been...
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Cellcos to Test Mobile TV over Unused 3G Spectrum
Ericsson, IPWireless, and Streamezzo have developed mobile TV technology called Integrated Mobile Broadband (IMB) 3GPP that uses spectrum that many cellcos own but cannot use for telephony or broadband. Using the spectrum means the cellcos will not impact the usage of their 3G bandwidth.
Users can...
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Blockbuster Movies Coming to V Cast via Droid X
Verizon Wireless and the movie rental chain Blockbuster are bringing the Blockbuster on Demand movie service to the Droid X smartphone when it launches in the US on July 15.
The Blockbuster on Demand service will be available through a new V Cast Video app that...
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Free Music is Just an Android Away
Music piracy on the Web is pretty easy to find, as are sites that cater to piracy on the mobile Web, but a new breed of Android apps is making the whole process far too simple.
Wonder if Google TV will run these apps too?...
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Brightcove Launches Android SDK
- Flash 10.1 Support Inside
Video platform provider Brightcove has released a new software development kit (SDK) for smartphones using Google’s Android, including support for Froyo and Flash 10.1.
The new SDK is aimed at extending Brightcove’s Web-based video platform and offers support to the first...
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SlingPlayer Lands on Android Mobiles
Sling Media’s newly minted $29.99 SlingPlayer app lets Android users with an installed Slingbox device control their home TVs and DVRs in order to watch live and recorded content directly on their smartphones.
Users must have a Slingbox Solo, Pro or Pro-HD hooked up...
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Facebook Adds Video to iPhone App
Facebook has released a new version of its iPhone app that lets users see shared video content and watch it on the smartphone.
The new service from Facebook that allows users to see video content shared by friends will likely boost the site’s video...
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Sprint to Aim at Corporates with Motorola’s New Windows Mobile Phone
Confirming again that Microsoft is aiming its Windows Mobile at businesses rather than consumers is Motorola. It said this week it’ll launch a new model E400 smartphone based on Microsoft’s Windows Mobile 6.5 that Sprint will sell to the corporates.
Motorola called the E400 an enterprise digital assistant. Its features...
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Smartphone Makers Give Up on Producing an ‘iPhone Killer’ and Go for New Approach
- Nokia and Samsung Adopt HTC’s Anti-Apple Formula
- Price Plus Multiple Versions Tailored to Different Carriers & Users
- Nokia/Intel’s MeeGo OS Aimed at New Form Factors
The most urgent question facing smartphone makers: how to beat Apple at its own game.
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Nokia to Sell iPhone Competitor N8 for Less Than $500
Nokia will sell its new Symbian 3-based N8 smartphone for about $550AUD (US $484) when it launches in early October, according to Nokia Australia managing director Emile Baak in an article in the The Australian. He said multiple carriers would sell the N8 but did not name any.
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Two WiMAX Services Crater
The threat to WiMAX broadband services was always that existing cellcos would beef up their existing 3G networks with faster connect speeds and more geographical coverage and that the telcos’ LTE technology would get to market before the WiMAXers could build large customer bases. Both are happening.
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BT Offers Broadband Subscribers Unlimited Wi-Fi
BT will start immediately start offering unlimited Wi-Fi access to its Total Broadband subscribers. Free access to both BT FON and BT Openzone Wi-Fi hotspots had been metered except for BT’s top tier subscribers.
"Because of the growing number of BT customers with mobile...
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Telstra, Nokia Siemens Get 100 Mbps Wireless Broadband
Australia’s Telstra and Nokia Siemens Networks say they have successfully achieved peak speeds of 100 Mbps down and 31 Mbps up on a mobile broadband network that uses LTE technology. The range was 75 kilometers (45 miles).
The tests used a combination of laboratory and long range field testing...
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700,000 Connected TVs in German-Speaking Market
The total number of Web-enabled TVs in Germany and Austria has surpassed the 700,000 mark.
"Television will change fundamentally because of connected TV sets; 3D is only a passing fad," Christoph Puhl, responsible for product training at Philips Austria toldBroadband TV News.
According to Puhl,...
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Hungary Is Internet Money Hungry
The Web will generate more in revenue than any other media in Hungary by 2014.
Yes, that includes TV, too.
The prediction comes from PricewaterhouseCooper’s Hungary media and entertainment industry overview for the next four years.
The total media and entertainment industry value...
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China Leads Continued Surge in Wireline Broadband
It seems certain that every first world residence will in time get a broadband connection, but the emerging giant China accounted for 45% of the net 14 million broadband adds during 2010’s Q1, according to the industry group Broadband Forum.
COO Robin Mersh said broadband growth...
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Free Apps Account for 81% of App Store Downloads
Apparently a lot of folks enjoy a good free app.
According to data released by Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, free apps represent 81% of App Store downloads across the entire iOS.
Research from Piper Jaffray said that free apps currently account for four billion...
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49% of German Net Users Watch Web TV
Roughly 25 million German Internet users, or just under one in two, watch video on the Internet.
According to data from BITKOM, German online viewers most enjoy short-form video, with this content reaching 40% of all Internet users.
The research found that Web TV...
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TV-Replay.fr Wins Video Aggregator Suit
Le Tribunal de Grande Instance de Paris has ruled against M6 in a copyright infringement case it brought against the online catch-up TV service TV-Replay.fr.
M6 brought the case against the TV-Replay Web site under claims of copyright infringement, parasitism and disloyal conduct because it provided deep...
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RapidShare Nixes Cash for Content
RapidShare, a free file-hosting service that’s come under fire over alleged copyright infringement, has dropped an incentive program that paid money to users who shared popular content on the service.
The cash for content service was reportedly axed because it encouraged illegal file...
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Labels Ask Google to De-Link Upload Sites
The BPI, Britain’s record label trade group, has sent a request to Google asking that it remove search engine result links to file-hosting sites such as Megauploadand MediaFire, which are sometimes illicitly used to share copyrighted music.
The notice, which appears to have been sent under the US Digital Millennium...
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LimeWire Plans Legit Cloud Music Service
LimeWire, the file-sharing service ordered shut down by a court due to copyright infringements and about to face another trial related to music file sharing, has once again popped its head out of the tar to say it will turn into a legitimate music service.
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Special Master Appointed To Aid Piracy Settlement
The federal judge overseeing the settlement talks between Capitol Records and convicted file-sharer Jammie Thomas-Rasset has appointed a special master to "promote meaningful settlement discussions" according to recent reports.
The plaintiffs in the case, the major labels and the RIAA, have agreed to pay the $400 per hour...
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Google Gets the ‘Not Guilty,’ Viacom Left to Appeal
Google’s YouTube video sharing Web site didn’t infringe upon the copyrights owned by the movie and TV producer Viacom, according to a judge’s ruling, bringing what could be an end to the three-year lawsuit.
The owner of MTV Networks and Paramount Studios had been seeking $1 billion in damages.
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Shaw Launches TV Everywhere
Canada’s Shaw Communications has launched a TV Everywhere VoD Player for its 1.5 million subscribers. Subscribers can watch VoD on PCs or TVs. They will be able to search and order programs on Shaw’s VoD.Shaw.ca.
Like whole-home DVRs, subscriber can begin watching something online and then switch...
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Sony’s Move into Web TV
Sony, which will sell a Google TV later this year, is expanding its online movie content so it can be a leader in digital content when Web-to-TV video delivery is the norm.
Over the next few months, Sony and its competitors will introduce the next...
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Logitech’s Revue Is Google TV’s First Brand Name
Logitech has officially kicked off the naming of its Google TV companion hardware, the first of which will be branded the Logitech Revue.
The STB name is supposed to conjure in the mind old-fashioned "multi-act theatrical entertainment" from the early 20th century. Now this 21st century...
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LoveFilm Gets Warner Bros Movies
UK-based LoveFilm keeps adding popular, recently-released movies. It will begin offering Warner Bros Entertainment films on its LoveFilm player on a pay-per-view basis. They will be available online to PCs and to Internet-connected TV sets.
The multi-year deal brings LoveFilm customers 28 films per month. Some new releases will...
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thePlatform Adds in OTT Video Support
thePlatform, a white-label video publishing company, said it has integrated its publishing platform with numerous over-the-top (OTT) consumer electronic devices, allowing these devices to access a unified system that delivers more content to more users.
Among the devices named are Boxee’s upcoming box, Roku, TiVo STBs and...
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Ozmo to Offer Chips for PAN Version of Wi-Fi
Ozmo Devices is developing chips for a personal area networking (PAN) version of Wi-Fi that would replace Bluetooth to connect devices. It’s designed to be used in ultra-low power systems for connecting PCs and peripherals such as keyboards, mice or remote controls. It’s also expected to...
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Trends in Home Networking
The coming popularity of whole home DVRs, led by DirecTV, and HD/3D videos are the main drivers of faster home networking and increased coverage in more rooms. Gotta watch the rest of the movie in the bath, eh? At some point in the near future, in-home health care...
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Comcast Picks NDS for tru2way Deployment
Comcast has selected NDS, which provides digital pay-TV technology, as its prime integrator of Comcast’s tru2way software. NDS will lead set-top box (STB) testing, code development and validation for the integration of new tru2way applications and devices. Comcast will be able to run the same applications and services...
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Verizon Tests 10 Gbps Fiber Broadband
- Never Wait on a Blu-ray Movie Download Again, Even in 3D
What comes next, after 100 Mbps broadband and the BPON fiber optic technology that offers consumers that speed?
Verizon thinks it could be 10 Gbps down to the home and...
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Deltenna Promises 2 Mbps Broadband in Rural Areas
- Look Ma! No Wires!
- 30X the Rate & 5X the Range of a 3G USB Dongle
- 50 Mbps with LTE
Femtocells and Wi-Fi-based fixed/mobile solutions are used to improve wireless broadband in rural areas, but they rely on...
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Brazilian Government to Build Broadband Network
The Brazilian government plans to invest 3.2 billion Brazilian real ($1.8 billion) over two years in its Telebras broadband service so it can build a national broadband backbone. Small broadband service providers will sell and support service in 22 cities.
The ultimate goal is to provide broadband...
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France Telecom to Buy Le Monde Newspaper
The incumbent French telco France Telecom (Orange to many) plans to buy the majority share of the French newspaper Le Monde and its Web sites for about $74 million, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The thinking is that Le Monde’s Web site, its most profitable news operation, will be used...
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Verizon Offers Month-to-Month Bundle
Verizon ratcheted up the pressure in broadband by announcing a $99 month-to-month bundle for its FiOS broadband, pay-TV and telephony services. The offer is good for one year, after which –– who knows? The pay-TV companies it competes against are sure to be watching the results.
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Telstra, Australian Government Reach Tentative Deal for National Broadband Network
The incumbent Australian telco Telstra has reached a nonbinding agreement that will allow the government-owned broadband provider NBN to use Telstra’s copper and cable network to help the government build a national broadband network that’s available to 90% of Australian residences.
Telstra agreed to move its broadband subscribers to...
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Toshiba Ships Latest 3D-Crazed Laptop
3D is beginning to feel like the gimmick tacked on to make something pricey feel really good, meaning there’s yet another 3D laptop coming to store shelves.
Toshiba has entered the fray with its first 3D laptop, the Satellite A665-3DV, and hey: at least...
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Technicolor Brings World Cup in 3D to France
Technicolor is providing play-out services to the Canal+ Group for live 3D broadcast of the World Cup. Technicolor specialists are handling live 3D program reception and broadcast, as well as insertion of additional 3D content and commentary from Canal+ sports journalists. The company said this is the first time...
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3D NASCAR Racing To Customers via Satellite, Web
While soccer has been grabbing the world’s attention, NASCAR is stepping up to gain limelight with a 3D broadcast at the Daytona International Speedway July 3
The 3D production will be broadcast live to DirecTV subscribers and to PC users on NASCAR.com, thanks to TNT RaceBuddy.
Users...
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iPad Sales Break 3m in 80 Days
While not traveling around the world in 80 days, Apple’s iPad has sold more than three million units in that short time span.
"People are loving iPad as it becomes a part of their daily lives," said Apple CEO Steve Jobs. "We’re working hard to get...
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Condé Nast Revives Newly Dead Magazine as App
Publisher Condé Nast plans to take its recently shuttered Gourmet Magazine and resurrect it as a digital magazine app for devices like Apple’s iPad. Condé Nast has found yet another new revenue model thanks to devices like the iPad: keep the brand, forget the staff and keep the cash.
The...
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Elgato Launches iPad Eye TV for iPad
Elgato has an updated EyeTV app for the new iOS 4, taking full advantage of the iPad’s bigger screen and better resolution.
The new EyeTV version 1.1 brings full-screen streaming live TV to the iPad by working in conjunction with the EyeTV software and...
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Dell Takes Streak to China
Dell intends to sell its Android-based, 5-inch Streak tablet in China, according to Amit Midha, the company’s president for Greater China. Midha did not say when or for how much.
Dell will start selling the Streak in the UK this month and has said...
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Sonos Does iPad Music Right
Sonos is one of the more popular whole-home stereo systems with a preference for digital tracks. It has branched out to the latest techie toy: the iPad.
Users can already manage music in different rooms, or zones, throughout a home or business via a...
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Amazon, Barnes & Noble Cut E-Readers’ Prices to Under $200
Are the cuts in prices of e-Book readers the result of pressure from the iPad’s use as an e-book reader or is it their declining production cost? Or both?
This week Barnes & Noble reduced the price of its Nook e-reader to $199 and Amazon.com cut the price of...
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Vonage Developing iPad App
The online telephone service Vonage is developing an app for the iPad as it did for the iPhone, according to CEO Marc Lefar. ...
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Toshiba Launches 2-Screen ‘Concept PC’
Tablet launches continued this week. Toshiba announced a "concept PC" that uses Microsoft’s touch screen-disadvantaged Windows 7 OS.
Called the Libretto W100, it has two 7-inch 1024 - 600 touch screens so it can be used as a PC or as an e-book reader. It has a 1.2GHz...
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Roku Leaps into Pay-TV’s Arms
Clearleap, a Web-based TV platform, has joined with Roku to enable incumbent pay-TV providers to deliver premium content from their own video-on-demand libraries directly to customers via the Roku box. Initial details are scarce, but it appears that Roku owners will soon be able to grab pay-TV content...
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Apple on Pace To Sell 1m iPhone 4s on Day One
According to Bloomberg, Apple is at a pace of first day sales high enough to reach one million units sold.
Apple sold roughly 600,000 iPhone 4s via pre-order, so coming up with 400,000 first day sales seems like an easy feat, especially considering that pre-order problems plagued Apple...
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Microsoft Adds Entertainment Tab to Bing
- Music, TV, Movies, Gaming
- No Books or Magazines
Microsoft has updated its Bing search engine and is offering more digital entertainment. The Bing Entertainment category joins Shopping, News, Travel and Maps.
Entertainment has four major sections:
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Sonic Strikes Web Video Deal with Sears, Kmart
- Moves into Markets That Lack a Tech Focus
Sonic Solutions has been making video and content delivery deals for some time, with strong partnerships with Blockbuster, Zip.ca, Best Buy, TiVo and evenYahoo!’s TV Widgets, but it latest deals mark new territory, retailers where tech isn’t the main venue.
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Drilling 3 Miles Down and Into a 7-Inch Pipe
- South Louisiana, June 24, 2010
The unwelcome gusher of oil in the Gulf of Mexico has led the news on many days since the drilling rig over it exploded April 20, killing 11 workers.
From the beginning, BP and industry analysts have said that...
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Microsoft Faces Being Shut Out of Netbooks and Tablets
- Et Tu Dell? Going Chrome, Too?
- Google Offers Device Makers Two OSs
Microsoft’s tardiness in coming up with a dominant operating system for netbooks appears to have given Google time to develop and launch its free and open Chrome operating system.
Dell is the latest netbook maker...
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Mobile Phone & Pay-TV Services Might Offer Their Own Tablets
- ARM Processors, Android, Asian Device Makers Are Readily Available
- Free Tablets for Subscribers?
Nature abhors a vacuum; especially, it seems, in the tablet market, where PC kingpins Microsoft and Intel have not made an appearance. Their absence from the market and the easy availability of...
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Nintendo 3DS: 3D Movies In Your Palm
Nintendo officially unveiled its Nintendo 3DS handheld that supports glasses-free 3D content. The new device has a touch screen, 3D screen, Web browser, 3D-capable camera, music player and few other motion sensors. While 3D games and pictures were expected for the device, support for 3D films was a bit of...
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Lenovo Joins the 3D Crowd
Lenovo is the latest to announce a laptop with 3D, following Acer and Asus. On June 22 it’ll start shipping the $1,200 Ideapad Y560d, which has a 15-inch display and comes with a pair of 3D glasses. ...
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Verizon Wireless to Be 100% LTE by 2013
Verizon Wireless is promising that it will match its 3G footprint with LTE by the end of 2013, and says it is on track to cover about 100 million people when it goes live later this year in 25-30 markets, according to Wireless Watch. ...
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100 Apple Stores to Open in China
TC Gou, whose brother runs Apple supplier Foxconn Technology, plans within three years to open 100 stores in China that’ll sell Apple gear. The first will open in Shanghai by the end of the year. Many forecast that China will become the largest market for PCs within 2-5 years. IDC...
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Eircom Offers 150 Mbps FTTH
After a €20 million ($24.6 million) investment, Ireland’s Eircom is testing fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) broadband to 10,000 homes with speeds that can go up to 150 Mbps. The company said it has tested both FTTH and fiber-to-the-cabinet (FTTC) technologies. As of January 2010, it offers speeds up to 24 Mbps using...
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iPhone 4s Sells Out
On Wednesday afternoon Apple’s Web site said iPhone 4s ordered that day would be shipped July 14, two weeks later than the July 2nd it had previously said. AT&T said iPhone 4 orders on Tuesday, the first day for preorders, were 10 times higher than for the iPhone 3G S...
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TiVo Offer Local, Social Personalization
TiVo users can now personalize the delivery of local news, weather and sports, as well as updates from social networks like Facebook, Twitter and Flickr, the company said. It’s done with a function called the FrameChannel. ...
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Vevo to Reach the Middle East in 2011
Vevo, the music video portal from Sony Music, Universal Music and the Abu Dhabi Media Company plans to launch in the Middle East in the first quarter of 2011, according to The National, which is also owned by Abu Dhabi Media. No firm details were set other than the launch...
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Apple Selling Mobiles at More Stores
Apple has partnered with Wal-Mart, RadioShack, Best Buy and AT&T stores to sell its upcoming iPhone 4, though it appears only Apple and AT&T are handling pre-orders. All of these retail outlets will be getting the mobile device on the same day, which makes us wonder if Apple has a...
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Microsoft’s Xbox 360 Waits on 3D
Sony and Nintendo each made announcements about 3D at this year’s E3 expo but not Microsoft. It said, "It’s projected that less than one half of one percent of all TVs in the US this year will be 3DTVs. And 3DTVs will make up only 5% of the TV installed...
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New iPhone Aims to Drop Less Calls
The new iPhone 4 addresses one of the biggest complaints: dropping too many calls. According to The Wall Street Journal, citing FCC documents, Apple’s latest iPhone puts out more radio-frequency radiation than its predecessors. That and its new antenna should give the iPhone 4 both greater signal strength and reliability....
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Is Wal-Mart Squeezing Best Buy CE Sales?
Best Buy blamed its less than expected quarterly revenue and profits on a decline in prices for television sets. Wonder if the cause of that might be Wal-Mart, which has accelerated its efforts in CE gear such as overhauling its electronics departments? Last weekend Wal-Mart advertised a 40-inch LCD TV...
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YouTube Adds Cloud-Based Editor
Uploading content is no longer the final step in a YouTube outing, now users are able to edit and enhance their video, adding in a creative aspect to the video site as well as prime real estate for advertising.
The YouTube editor is a rather simple tool, but proves to be...
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AOL, Jonas Bros’ Handlers Create Music Video Site
AOL has debuted its latest online music video site, Cambio, which features a whopping four videos, two of which merely explain the idea behind Cambio.
As it stands, it looks more like an ad for the artists covered by the Jonas Group mixed in with faked user-generated content.
The site, aimed at...
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Guggenheim, YouTube Pick Video for Museum Display
In 2004, visitors to an American modern art museum in New York, upon exiting the elevators, were greeted to looped video of the then-popular computer game Counter Strike, and prestigious institutions have been following suit ever since.
More recently there was The Library of Congress setting out to acquire every single...
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Twitter Killed the Video Star
Twitter is getting to be so popular MTV needs someone just to handle those 140 characters.
For all you former fans of MTV’s "Wanna Be a VJ," prepare for a bit of nostalgia mixed with feeling a bit old. MTV is now seeking a TJ (Twitter Jockey).
According to the AP, MTV...
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Netflix: Viewers Don’t Mind Waiting
Blockbuster CEO Jim Keyes has been very vocal about the company’s new advantage over Netflix and others, getting new releases around 28 days before its rivals.
Keyes pushed for a deal for Blockbuster to get these four weeks of exclusivity with several major studios, giving it an advantage over Netflix and...
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BitTorrent Streams Brings Film Festival to Gaza
One of the larger "files" not usually considered by BitTorrent users are streams of live events.
The international "Nordic Youth Film Festival" took place in Tromsø, Norway this past weekend. It established a BitTorrent powered stream to reach users all over the world, including Gaza.
The streams of the festival opening and...
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Cloud-Based Backup for Digital Media
Consumers consistently undervalue the worth of their music and movie files and have no way of replacing their invaluable personal videos and pictures unless they use an off-site back-up service.
D-Link says its enhanced Network Attached Storage (NAS) solution (DNS-323) now comes with an integrated online backup service that CTERA operates....
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D-Link Shipping Intel-Certified Wi-Fi Router with 3-Stream MIMO
- Cloud-Based Backup, Too
Digital media users want the fastest network they can find and generally don’t back up their digital media collections because of the difficulty of doing it. D-Link says it has gear for both.
D-Link is shipping its first 802.11n Wi-Fi router with 3x3 MIMO technology. It said three...
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Google and Music Have a Past
Google’s major foray into digital music came last fall when it launched the Music Onebox that allowed users to search for song titles to stream through the online music stores Lala.com and iLike. The service caused a lot of buzz and appeared popular with users, but seemed to end when...
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Google Music Store Could Threaten Apple
After some success with its label partners through the Vevo music video portal, Google appears poised to launch its own music store service in an effort to take on Amazon.com and Apple.
According to a variety of reports and sources, Google is building a music service that features both purchases and...
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App Store Gets the Apple Store
Apple has announced it will launch an Apple Store application for its iOS devices.
Called Apple Store, the iPhone and iPad app allows customers to "buy Apple products and accessories, read customer reviews, find an Apple Retail Store, stay up to date with in-store events, and make Personal Shopping, Genius Bar...
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Microsoft Aims Windows Phone 7 at Corporates
The Wall Street Journal article "Microsoft Week Involved Phone 7 Office Web Apps Cloud" confirmed our observation last week that Microsoft is aiming its upcoming Windows Phone 7 at the corporate world rather than at consumers.
The piece quotes Paul Bryan, a senior director of Windows Phone 7 at Microsoft, as...
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Nokia Has Lost the Apps War to Apple & Android
Nokia has lost the apps war to Apple and is being overtaken by Google’s Android, according to the Bloomberg.com article "Nokia Loses Battle for Apps as iPhone, Android Snare Developers" at:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=aaS6bqjjIoz4&pos=11
The piece says Nokia does not appear to have a clear path for its two smartphone operating systems, MeeGo,...
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T-Mobile Rapidly Rolling Out Faster Mobile Broadband
T-Mobile USA expects to be almost halfway through its mobile broadband upgrade from HSPA to HSPA+, which can offer download speeds up to 56 Mbps. It said it’ll have HSPA+ coverage of more than 75 million people by the end of June and plans to have coverage of 185 million...
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Starbucks Teams with Yahoo & Others to Offer Free Wi-Fi and Content
On July 1 Starbucks will add its 6,700 cafes to AT&T’s list of free Wi-Fi hotspots. McDonald’s, which is challenging Starbucks as THE place to get coffee, already offers free Wi-Fi at its 11,000 restaurants.
AT&T has over 20,000 Wi-Fi hotspots in the US.
Starbucks has raised the ante by teaming with...
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Despite OTT, Pay TV Subscribers Keep Increasing
Viewing of over-the-top (OTT) video (Hulu, Netflix, YouTube and the like) is growing rapidly, leading some to predict a day when pay-TV subscribers will begin "cutting the cord." The fact is, according to Strategy Analytics, US pay TV companies added a net of almost two million additional subscribers in the...
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iPads, Other Tablets to Kill Netbooks
Few iPad owners will be surprised at Forrester Research’s prediction that sales of iPads and other tablets will pass those of netbooks within two years.
Forrester predicted that in just the US, 20.4 million tablets will be sold in 2015 compared with 3.5 million this year, a compound annual growth rate...
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Internet Ad Revenue about to Pass Newspapers’
Stop the presses!
Here’s the page one statistic of the week, maybe even the year, especially for those in print publishing, but also for those in the TV, movie, music and advertising industries.
The Internet will shortly produce more advertising revenue than newspapers and become the second largest US advertising medium by...
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Androids Grab 20% of Mobile Web Browsing
Devices running Google’s Android mobile OS now account for 19.9% of mobile Web consumption in North American markets, a jump of 12.2% from last year.
The information comes from digital measurement firm Quantcast, which also said that Apple’s iOS represents 58.8% of mobile Web use in North America. Despite its lead,...
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Most To Watch Web Videos by 2014
A new study from eMarketer says that up to 77% of all Internet users will watch online video, from movies and TV shows to YouTube, by 2014.
The past few years have seen tremendous growth in Web video views, with an 11.3% rise in viewers from 2008 to 2009, according to...
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We’ll All Compute in the Cloud by 2020
Some 71% of 900 Internet and tech experts told Elon University researchers that Internet users will "live mostly in the cloud" by 2020.
The report said that by 2020 we will work in Internet-based applications such as Google Docs, and in applications run from smartphones. It said most innovative developments will...
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World Cup, ESPN Drive Web Views Up and Up
- Record Traffic Attributed to the Cup
- ESPN Racks Up 8.2 Million Mobile Visits
World Cup fervor is building and at the end of last week it pushed the Internet to a new record, according to measurements from Akamai.
According to the service, which tracks traffic to news sites among other things,...
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LimeWire Lost? Sue! Sue! Sue!
A group of US music publishers have filed a copyright complaint against LimeWire’s parent company Lime Group and founder Mark Gorton in federal court, because LimeWire already lost a similar case brought by the major labels.
Included in the parties named in the suit are eight members of the National Music...
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FCC Considers Crucial Broadband Vote
The Federal Communications Commision is expected to vote this week on the first step toward reclassifying broadband as a regulated common-carrier service. The vote will facilitate the first steps for setting up and enforcing new network neutrality rules, redirecting phone subsidies and beginning the steps of its national broadband plan.
The...
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Judges Liken P2P to Lending Books
After raids in 2005, Spanish police arrested four people and dismantled a popular file-sharing site. The case against the site has been slowly dragging on but has not reached its final closure.
Three Spanish judges decided that the site had committed no offense and likened the file-sharing practice to the ancient...
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BitTorrent Lawsuits Are Coming in Droves
Cry "BitTorrent" and let slip the dogs of law.
According to the US Copyright Group, industry lawyers not a government group, tens of thousands of BitTorrent users are at a very serious risk of receiving a settlement letter if they have illegally downloaded films off the Web or P2P networks.
In March,...
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Virgin Offers Boxes to Canvas, Canvas Declines
Virgin Media CEO Neil Berkett confirmed again its commitment to the BBC-led Project Canvas initiative by offering to open up its TiVo STBs to the platform.
"Far from trying to block the development of these open standards, we have offered to work commercially with Canvas to explore mutually beneficial ways in...
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Sezmi Expands, Adds Interactivity & Guide for All Video Sources
Is Sezmi the future of pay-TV? It offers consumers a broadband-connected DVR that plays OTT content like YouTube’s, local stations’ digital broadcasts, pay-TV networks and video-on-demand on TV sets.
The company makes it clear that it’s a direct competitor to the pay-TV services.
It’s spreading beyond its initial market of Los Angeles,...
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Telstra’s T-Box Arrives Down Under
Australia’s incumbent telco Telstra started selling its much ballyhooed T-Box this week. The box connects to a TV set and the Internet to offer BigPond TV, about 1,400 movies to begin with, HD free-to-air channels, a dual tuner DVR and YouTube. BigPond TV includes a movie download service, five sports...
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Boxee, Sonic Team on Premium Streams
Sonic Solutions and Boxee announced a new alliance to bring premium content options to users of the Boxee service on existing and next generation devices.
Just don’t expect the Boxee box soon, because production has been delayed.
Boxee will license the RoxioNow platform for its Web-to-TV desktop app, supported TVs, mobile devices...
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ESPN, Microsoft Ink Xbox Deal
ESPN and Microsoft have signed a deal to bring ESPN content, including live sports, directly to the Xbox 360 video game console.
The agreement will bring over 3,500 live events currently available on ESPN3.com directly to the console in HD. Xbox Live Gold members, who pay a yearly fee to Microsoft,...
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1901 Spec Inches Along
The IEEE this week said the IEEE P1901 Working Group has made significant progress in developing the P1901 specification that’s intended to provide coexistence of HomePlug devices, of which there are millions, and HD PLC devices, of which there are almost none except for a few in Japan.
The 1901 specification...
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Green Comes to HomePlug
There’s more to wireline home networks than delivering entertainment video. There’s a big market coming for what’s called Smart Grid.
The HomePlug Powerline Alliance this week announced that the HomePlug Green PHY (HomePlug GP) specification for Smart Grid applications is now final and published.
HomePlug GP is a low power, highly reliable,...
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G.hn’s HomeGrid Appliance Gets New Members
Kawasaki Microelectronics America and TangoTec joined the Intel-backed G.hn certification and promotion HomeGrid Forum last week. DS2, Ikanos, Intel, Lantiq, Sigma Designs, and Texas Instruments were already members. As a result of its acquisition of CopperGate, Sigma is involved in the HomePNA, HomePlug and G.hn standards.
Matt Theall, president of HomeGrid...
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Will Intel Re-Enter ARM Space by Acquiring Infineon?
In the war for the mobile market between the ARM architecture and Intel’s x86 processors, ARM-based chips have held the cards in low power, and has progressively added to its mesh of alliances, with a view to maintaining its lead. This week, ARM’s strategic pact with chip manufacturer GlobalFoundries, focused...
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No More XP on Netbooks
Remember when Microsoft was caught in netbook no man’s land? Windows Vista wouldn’t run properly on netbooks and Windows 7, which did, was months away from being ready. To solve the problem, Microsoft resurrected Windows XP and priced it so netbook makers would use it on netbooks instead of Linux.
Well,...
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Adobe Fixes Security Flaw in Flash
Maybe Apple was right when it criticized Adobe Flash for its lack of security and causing too many PC crashes.
Adobe this week said it had fixed a "critical" security flaw in Flash that allowed hackers to take control of PCs with Flash. Hackers reportedly sent e-mails that prompted users to...
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Singaporeans Getting 100% Availability of 1 Gbps Broadband
Singapore is likely to soon be the first nation with a 100% available fiber optic 1 Gbps network, according to a piece in The New York Times. Each HD video stream requires about 35 Mbps.
The government is investing about $700 million to help companies build the network.
The paper says Japan...
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The iPhone 4 Will Use More Data
With AT&T scrapping its unlimited data plans for new subscribers and the new iPhone 4, there’s been concern over whether the data caps will affect users.
While the vast majority of users won’t exceed the 2GB monthly cap in the higher data plan, the 200MB plan seems like a way to...
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800,000 Download ABC TV’s iPad App
It’s no surprise that consumers are using iPads to watch TV shows and movies.
Disney’s ABC TV network said 800,000 have installed its free iPad app and 4.2 million episodes have been watched. ABC has doubled the number of ads per episode from 5-6 to 10-12.
All revenue comes from ads. There...
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Microsoft, Intel, HP, Dell Caught Flat-Footed by iPad
- PCs’ Big 4 May Be a Year or More behind Apple
Bloomberg.com has discovered what we reported weeks ago. Microsoft’s inability to produce a "must-have" operating system for tablets is costing it, HP, Dell, Acer and other would-be tablet manufacturers, because Apple, at least currently, is shipping as many as...
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Apple Passes 10,000 iPad Apps
Apple has more than 10,000 iPad apps, doubling its size in the past six weeks.
iPad lists how many apps are available.
Developers are starting to have a longer-than-usual wait time for apps to get approved, believed due to Apple giving a little preference to apps that use iOS 4 features, securing...
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The Sun Launches £4.99-A-Month iPad Edition
News Corp’s UK daily tabloid The Sun has followed other News Corp papers The Wall Street Journal and The Times to Apple’s iPad with an app that, at £4.99 a month, adds a bit of silliness to the otherwise very serious offerings from the media company.
Users who pick up the...
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Samsung to Launch ‘Galaxy Tab’ Tablet
Ho hum! Another day, another tablet rumored or announced. Unfortunately for the tablet manufacturers, none of the leaks will stop consumers from buying iPads.
This time it’s Samsung, which said this week it intends to have a tablet on the market in the third quarter. The guess here and elsewhere is...
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NEC to Ship Tablet for Businesses in Japan in October
NEC, somewhat surprisingly, is the first Japanese CE maker to actually announce a tablet and include the name –– LifeTouch –– specifications and a ship date: October in Japan.
Prices were not announced, nor was availability outside of Japan.
It appears to be a tablet that’s not aimed at the consumer market...
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RIM Developing iPad/iPhone Competitor
Count RIM as one of many CE gear makers caught flat-footed by Apple’s launch of the surprisingly well-done iPad. RIM belongs to a "what happened?" list that includes such note worthies as HP, Dell, Microsoft, Nokia and Sony.
The Wall Street Journal reports that RIM is developing both devices and software...
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UK Regulators OK BBC DRM
After the US’ FCC decided to allow Hollywood to add DRM to movies broadcast by pay-TV services, the UK regulator Ofcom has taken a similar step by allowing the BBC to use a form of DRM to stop the recording of HD content.
While the report issued with the decision focuses...
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The Survival of Paid Content
This week’s announcements by News Corp (acquisitions and investments) and Starbucks (free Wi-Fi and free access to paid content) points to the latest battle in digital publishing – not just closed but optimized platform (Amazon and Apple) versus open source and best effort (Google), but also non-aligned distribution channel versus...
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iPhone 4 Sells Out, Nokia Lowers Expectations
- Do the Dots Connect?
Dot 1: Apple and AT&T sell out of iPhone 4s after taking orders for 600,000 during the first 24 hours it was available.
Dot 2: On the same day, Nokia said "multiple factors are negatively impacting Nokia’s business to a greater extent than previously expected."
Nokia gave as...
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NPR, PBS, Others Push Public Digital Content Platform
A wide array of public media companies, including PBS, NPR, American Public Media, Public Radio Exchange and Public Radio International are joining forces to create a shared digital content platform and a digital distribution network "that will allow public broadcasters and Web producers to combine, create, share and distribute their...
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HP Buys Again
HP’s shopping spree has brought it Phoenix Technologies’ HyperSpace instant-on technologies for $12 million.
It might be preparing a launch for its own operating system, likely a tablet or smartphone. HP recently bought Palm, in large part for its webOS.
Phoenix has licensed its technology to companies like Samsung for notebooks and...
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News Corp Buys Skiff, Invests in Journalism Online
- Continues Drive to Make Online Information Pay
- ‘Key Building Blocks in Our Strategy to Transform the Publishing Industry’
News Corp, run by the 79-year old Rupert Murdoch, has invested in two startups that it intends to help it in the paid content field. One is Skiff, an electronic reading platform....
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News Corp Wants to Buy All of BSkyB
News Corp wants to buy the 61% of British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB) it doesn’t already own for £7.8 billion ($11.5 billion), in what would be News Corp’s largest ever acquisition. News Corp has $8.18 billion in cash. Its most recent major acquisition was Dow Jones, which owns The Wall Street...
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9 Predictions about the Digital Media Industry
- And One We Missed out on
Here’s the update to our decade-old predictions for the digital media industry in developed countries:
1. Consumer demand for "always available everywhere" content will continue to increase until the requirement is met. See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZ9qcp6Lcno
2. Every home with electricity will have a broadband connection.
3....
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The New Mac Mini: More Apple TV, Less Hobby
Apple’s updated Mini is the home media device that’s everything Apple TV should’ve been.
This ain’t your Apple’s hobby.
The new Mac Mini is a solid choice for the living room because of the HDMI port and a full browser. The device should support any HDTV where video and audio are sent...
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MoCA Goes for 800 Mbps
MoCA, which most of the cable and satellite TV operators and Verizon, use, said it’s ratified the specifications for MoCA version 2.0.
MoCA chipmaker Entropic will start producing MoCA 2.0 chips in volumes in the second half of 2011, according to its senior VP of marketing and business development Vinay Gokhale....
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Sigma Supercharges G.hn and HomePlug
Sigma, one of the most active G.hn supporters and soon to ship chips for HomePlug powerline adapters, has developed an as yet unnamed MIMO (multi-in, multi-out) technology that promises to speed up and improve both standards over power line.
Unlike existing Powerline technologies such as HomePlug and UPA, the MIMO versions...
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MoCA, Sigma Race to Provide Home Networks with More Speed and Coverage
- Sigma Develops MIMO Technology to Supercharge HomePlug, G.hn
- MoCA to Provide 800 Mbps, Less Power Usage, More Reliability
Topics like over-the-top video entertainment, 3D, whole home DVRs, online video services such as Hulu and BBC Player and Internet-connected TV sets and Blu-ray players are getting all the headlines. But none...
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DVRs, OTT Winning in Middle America
DVRs and over-the-top TV have won. We don't live in Silicon Valley, Manhattan or London, so we take seriously when a number of people told us this week they no longer watch "live" TV except for sports and news. And they say they depend on the Web for news much...
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Jobs Shows iPhone's ARM Processor
At the launch of iPhone 4 this week, Apple CEO Steve Jobs showed a picture of the processor in the iPhone 4 that had ARM's name. It's the first such public confirmation we can find. Engineers at the PA Semi company that Apple acquired in 2008 are said to have fine tuned the ARM design...
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World Cup to Kick up Mobile TV Usage
The 2010 FIFA World Cup will increase the uptake of mobile video and TV services in Western European markets, according to Pyramid Research, but Central and Eastern Europe aren't expected to see an effect from the tournament. The two big reasons that Western Europe will see more from the tournament is that: 1)...
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'iPad Could Approach the Ubiquity of the Mobile Phone'
"The response to the iPad has been well ahead of expectations, and it isn't taking long for people to start to realize the potential of this class of device. As we have previously said, we believe over the long term -- 10 years -- it could approach the ubiquity of...
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Apple TV Somewhere over the Rainbow?
The biggest no-show at the Apple do this week was the much anticipated new Apple TV. Is it dead or did Apple delay it to add functions to better compete with the recently announced Google/Intel TV? ...
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YouTube to Link to Shows It Doesn't Offer
Youtube is following the BBC iPlayer by adding links to TV shows that it doesn't offer and the shows' metadata. YouTube has agreements with 4oD and Demand Five to offer their catch-up TV shows but not withITV, which is developing its own ITV Player. ...
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Killer App of iPhone 4 Is Videophone
After three days for the smoke to clear, it appears that the videophone capability is the new iPhone's killer app, the one kids will use to tell their parents why they need the new model. And it's viral. It only works when two iPhone 4s connect. ...
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TVonics to Ship HD STBs in July
Set-top box maker TVonics says it'll start shipping HD versions of its Freeview STBs in July. The company said its Freeview HD product development is the foundation for its future digital TV products. ...
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Apple Greenlights a WiMP
Aspiro Music has had its WiMP streaming music service app approved for Apple's App Store in Norway. The service, also available for PCs and Android mobiles, features offline music caching, local storage and a few other services that are popping up more and more on music...
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Android to Have 2nd Largest Mobile Market Share by 2013
Microsoft chief Steve Ballmer must get pulsing neck veins when he sees that Google's Johnny-come-lately mobile operating system will in 2013 surge past Windows Mobile into second place after Nokia's Symbian. The numbers are from IDC. ...
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Sculley Now Says He Should Have Kept Jobs
John Sculley, the ex-Pepsico CEO who was hired to run Apple and then fired co-founder Steve Jobs in 1985, now says Jobs should have run Apple with Sculley working for Jobs, according to a report in The Daily Beast. Sculley still doesn't accept that he made a major mistake, saying "Maybe he should have...
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