Guy Retweets Particularly Entitled Christmas Tweets, Becomes A Phenomenon |
- Guy Retweets Particularly Entitled Christmas Tweets, Becomes A Phenomenon
- The Case For Developer Platforms
- Video: Android 4.0 Hacked Onto The Kindle Fire
- 5 Simple (But Hidden!) Tricks All The New iPhone/iPad Owners Should Know
- GoDaddy Responds To Namecheap Accusations, Removes “Normal” Rate Limiting Block
- The Threat And Opportunity Of Mobile: How Physical Retailers Can Fight Back Against Amazon
- Apps Are Media
- Microsoft Is Way Overdue In Leaving CES Keynote – More Room For Companies That Ship
- Five Predictions For Online Video In 2012
- People Spend Twice As Much Time On Netflix Than On Hulu
- LG Prepping Ice Cream Sandwich Update For Q2 2012 Release
- Cooklet Aims To Disrupt The Stodgy Cooking Scene With Gingerbread Carp
- Streamonomy: Radionomy Opens Platform To Online, Traditional Radio Stations Alike
- Tango Card Aims To Make Gift Card Giving A More Personal Experience
- TechCrunch Moscow — All The On-stage Video
- 55 Inches: LG To Showcase World’s Largest OLED TV AT CES 2012
- Now GoDaddy Has To Contend With ByeDaddy
- Sony Exits LCD Joint Venture With Samsung
- TechGrinch Was Not Impressed By Google’s “Jingle Bells” Doodle
| Guy Retweets Particularly Entitled Christmas Tweets, Becomes A Phenomenon Posted: 26 Dec 2011 07:33 PM PST  This is the first Christmas where I didn’t get a single gift. Because I had to take care of a bunch of logistics issues, I decided not to celebrate “the holidays” this year, and you know what? It was awesome. It’s amazing not having any expectations about what you’re going to get, give and whatnot. Also, for some reason I got tons of digital messages of gratitude in lieu of material gifts, and I absolutely adore all the people who reached out to say Merry Christmas, adore. There is a darker side of the blatantly consumerist holiday (why are people being killed on Black Friday? WHY?), and comedy writer Jon Hendren (@Fart) managed to perfectly capture everything that is wrong with Christmas by searching for tweets that were particularly spoiled, like “I swear, everybody got an iPhone 4S. I asked for one and I didn’t get it. Santa, I hate you” and “My parents are the worst mother Fucking parents in the world fuck you mom and dad for not getting me a Iphone. FUCK YOU. FML,” and then retweeting them. This simple action resonated with the webosphere, so much so that Internet bard Jonathan Mann turned Hendren’s retweets into a song (above) within a 48 hour turnover. To compile material for his impromptu performance art, Hendren used Twitter search strings like: ”not getting,” “iPhone” and “iPod” or “iPad” or “Car” which would return tweets for people unhappy about “not getting.” “You can do the same thing with ‘didn’t get’ or ‘where’s my’ as well,” he says. So what possessed this sort of ad hoc social commentary on people unhappy because of the lack of iProducts under the tree? (Amazing in light of the 1.4 billion people who don’t have clean drinking water, right?) “I was visiting with my family,” says Hendren on the impetus behind his critique. “They’d all gone to bed somewhat early on Christmas Eve night, and I was lying awake playing with Twitter’s search function on my iPhone (oddly enough). Nobody I was following was tweeting much of anything at that time, so I didn’t feel too bad about flooding my timeline. I think I did about 40 or 50 before people started posting fake tweets, which made it harder to find real ones among the search results, so I cut it off probably around Noon on Christmas morning. There are probably even better real ones among all the fake ones out there by now, but it’s too hard to tell.” Hendren currently writes part-time for Something Awful as a day job and got laid off three weeks ago from his full time job due to “restructuring.” For the record, I am really really upset that no one bought me a house this Christmas. Okay, not. Well, maybe a little.
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| The Case For Developer Platforms Posted: 26 Dec 2011 07:22 PM PST  Editor’s note: Guest contributor James Yu is cofounder of Parse, a cloud platform for mobile developers. You can follow him on Twitter and read his blog. Over the years, software development has ping-ponged between server-centric and client-centric designs. Today, with dominant mobile platforms like iOS and Android, apps have entered a hybrid client-server architecture. What this means for developers is that they have to juggle more technologies than ever before. And in response, we’re seeing the rise of developer platforms that handle functionality that has never been outsourced before—everything from databases to sending email to providing user authentication. As more software moves to the cloud so too does the development tools used to make the final product. From the Client to the Server to a Hybrid Back in the ’90s, desktop software ruled. This meant that most software development was client-side. The world was also less connected. So, even if your application connected to the internet, users didn’t expect it to always be online. Developers could dutifully create client-side software and ship it to consumers as a simple download with no strings attached. But then, the web slowly became ubiquitous by the ’00s. More and more software was being moved into the browser. For developers, this meant more time spent doing server-side coding. Requests are made to the server, the server crunches it to produce a result and sends it back to the browser. There were probably bits of client-side javascript, but most of the heavy lifting was being done on the server. Knowing server-side programming was key during this time. Fast forward to the present and a complicated picture emerges. Networked mobile applications are at the forefront. It turns out that the eventual endpoints of the web won’t be desktop computers, but rather, mobile devices. The number of tablets and smart phones will dwarf desktops. Already, services like Facebook are seeing two times more mobile activity than desktop. Hybrid is Complicated Developers now have the challenge of creating both client and server code that deeply interact with each other. This means having to keep up with two different styles of development, and most likely more than one programming language and environment.The client code needs to work on resource-constrained devices with a network connection that is slow and unreliable. And because we’re dealing with clients that may be out of date, the server needs to be able to handle multiple versions of clients that are making requests. Add in data migrations and you have a recipe for disaster. Consumer behavior is also becoming more demanding. Users expect their apps to always be online, or at least pretend to be. This means having to gracefully handle caching, queue up requests, and wrangle a whole slew of networking issues. Oh, and you’ll also need to have various 3rd party integrations like Facebook and Twitter. Combine all these things and it’s clear that you’ll need something more than just a highly capable team of developers. You need to leverage developer platforms. The Rise of Platforms Over the past few years, we have seen the rise of X as a Service, where X could be anything from platforms to infrastructure and other services. One could argue that this all began with Amazon Web Services, and have since blossomed with countless services like Heroku, Mailgun, dotCloud, and AppEngine. All these services have one thing in common: they increase the productivity of developers. Using these services is like standing on the shoulders of giants. Why create another deployment of Rails if Heroku focuses 100% of their time and energy on it? Everyday, platforms are reducing the amount of time developers have to focus on non-app specific code. What this means is that apps can be developed faster at higher quality with a tighter focus on the core product. Yes, you are ceding some control over your app’s development to a third-party, but the whole point of these developer platforms is to do one thing very well at scale. The time for developer platforms is now, and it will only accelerate as more of the world comes online. Photo credit: “Developers, developers, developers” by purploony
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| Video: Android 4.0 Hacked Onto The Kindle Fire Posted: 26 Dec 2011 06:36 PM PST  You wanted an Android tablet for Christmas… and you got one! Alas, it’s a Kindle Fire. Whoops! While the Fire is technically well within the realm of “Android tablet” (and a mighty fine tablet, for the price), it’s not quite the tried-and-true vanilla Android experience you were looking for. Wait! Don’t go requesting that return label just yet: if a gang of goodhearted hackers have their way, Amazon’s wonderfully wallet-friendly tablet will be running the latest builds of straight-up Android (as in Ice Cream Sandwich) before too long. In fact, they’ve (sort of) already got it working. Check out the video below, as shot by the fine folks at Lilliputing: The guys behind this hack (the XDA dev thread can be found here) call it “pre-alpha”, and for good reason. While it technically works, it’s probably not something you want to dabble with just yet. It’s got all sorts of nasty bugs, with the biggest drawbacks being that audio/video playback are pretty much 100% broken. With that said, few communities can hobble together rock-solid hacks as fast as the Android crowd can. Now that the concept is proven, expect this one to come together quick.
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| 5 Simple (But Hidden!) Tricks All The New iPhone/iPad Owners Should Know Posted: 26 Dec 2011 04:26 PM PST  Once upon a time, the iPhone was a simple thing. You flipped it on, slid the unlock switch, and what you saw was what you got. Since then, things have gotten a bit more… layered. That’s not to say they’ve gotten any harder to use; iOS just has a ridiculous number of hidden bonus features now that are in no way immediately obvious to the untrained eye. Given that yesterday was Christmas, I’d wager that the number of untrained eyes out there is at an all-time high. If you consider yourself something of an iOS expert, this list isn’t for you. If the terms “jailbreak” and “rooting” have any sort of secondary, technical connotation to you, you can almost certainly skip right over this. This one’s for the curious newbie; the moms, pops, and younger siblings of the world; the Android converts who may be feeling a bit out of place. It’s a collection of things I’m regularly surprised to find that other iOS device owners don’t know. If it’s not for you, you almost certainly know someone who it is for. The App Switcher:You’re blasting around in Jetpack Joyride when your better half asks you to find a proper eggnog recipe. What’s the quickest way to get to Safari? You could head back to the homescreen like a chump — but if you’ve had Safari open recently, there’s a waaaay speedier route: Double tap the home button. Tada! Meet the App Switcher. The first page of the app switcher shows your most recently opened apps. Scrolling to the right will take you back even further in your app history. As one of the most requested features leading up to its introduction in iOS 4, it blows my mind how often I meet long-time iOS owners who have absolutely no idea the App Switcher exists. Closing Broken Apps:
Go to the homescreen. Double tap the home button (to bring up the App Switcher). Find the icon for the app you need to close and hold your finger on it for a second or two. Tap the - that shows up next to it. Relaunch the app from the homescreen, and it’ll be just like opening it up on a freshly reset device. (Note: With very few exceptions (and unlike what you may be used to with your ol’ laptop) you never need to manually close iOS apps to make your device “run better”. Thanks to the aforementioned freezing/unfreezing process, any app that you’re not actively using has very little effect on your device’s performance.) The Hidden App Switcher Buttons:The App Switcher is something of a swiss army knife. It switches! It closes! It slices! It dices! Beyond the aforementioned, the App Switcher has one more neat trick: a sort-of-hidden bonus page with myriad one-click shortcuts. On the iPhone, it’ll let you lock your screen orientation, pause/play/go back/skip tracks in whatever app is currently playing music (or immediately jump right into that application, instead.) On the iPad, it’ll do all of the aforementioned as well as let you adjust the volume and display brightness. To find it: double tap the home button to bring up the App Switcher — but rather than swiping to the left to see more apps, swipe to the right from the first page. The Notifications Center:
Beginning with iOS 5, iOS keeps a running list of your recent notifications so that you can easily jump to any app that needs your attention. To bring down the notifications drawer, simply swipe down from the very top of the display. Waiting there will be all of your recent (unread) texts, any messages that your applications have queued up, and a few configurable widgets (weather, stocks, etc.) You can adjust what shows up in this drawer in Settings > Notifications. The Camera Shortcut:We’ve all been there: that once in a lifetime moment is happening right before your eyes, and your only means of capturing it is with your phone’s camera. By the time you get it out of your pocket, unlock it, get to the homescreen, launch the camera app, and wait for the camera to boot up, the moment is gone. Opportunity lost, and now everyone is mad at you. As of iOS 5, you can access the camera right from the lockscreen (you don’t even have to unlock it! Don’t worry, though: you can’t access your older photos this way. Your booty pics are safe.) To quick-jump to the camera: from the lock screen (the screen with the “Slide to unlock” bar), double tap the home button. You’ll see music controls pop up on top, while a camera icon appears directly beside the unlock bar. Tap that, and you’re immediately inside the camera. (Note: this only seems to work on the iPhone and camera-enabled iPod Touches. It’s a no go on iPad.) Got any more easy, kinda-hidden tricks that new iOS device owners should know? Drop it in a comment below. Bonus Tricks:
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| GoDaddy Responds To Namecheap Accusations, Removes “Normal” Rate Limiting Block Posted: 26 Dec 2011 01:47 PM PST  You know who got a lump of coal in their PR stocking this year? Domain registrar GoDaddy. Its most recent stumble? The company’s presence on a SOPA supporter list sparked an impromptu user exodus last week, with already tens of thousands of domains being transferred in the fall out. Sensing a communications disaster (GoDaddy has gotten really good at this) the new CEO Warren Adelman then reversed the company’s official position on SOPA, well kind of. Despite the ambiguous reversal, the ramifications of the continuing PR disaster are huge, and “Dump GoDaddy Day” is still slated for the 29th” Perhaps that’s why GoDaddy reps are calling customers in order to make sure they understand the company’s new, reversed position? If thing’s weren’t bad enough for GoDaddy, competitor NameCheap accused it of blocking domain transfers this morning, “As many customers have recently complained of transfer issues, we suspect that this competitor is thwarting efforts to transfer domains away from them. Specifically, GoDaddy appears to be returning incomplete WHOIS information to Namecheap, delaying the transfer process. This practice is against ICANN rules. “ Namecheap said that its solution to the incomplete WhoIs returns was to manually process the requests, which it was doing. Accusations like these should not be taken lightly, and GoDaddy responded to Namecheap in a statement emailed to TechCrunch, saying that the WhoIs transfer delay time is normal procedure.
One side says the practice is “against ICANN rules.” The other side says the practice is “standard.” Any DNS experts want to weigh in? Update: According to an industry expert, limiting WhoIs requests is pretty standard to prevent abuse, “My guess is nothing particularly nefarious [is going on] here.” Namecheap is now claiming that it warned GoDaddy of the delay before it posted its blog. Image via: AdJab
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| The Threat And Opportunity Of Mobile: How Physical Retailers Can Fight Back Against Amazon Posted: 26 Dec 2011 12:48 PM PST  As online retail sales continue to soar, brick and mortar stores are seeing margins dissipate. Online holiday sales are expected to grow 15 percent to $37.6 billion this season while retail sales in physical stores are only expected to increase by 3.8 percent to $469.1 billion. Best Buy recently reported a 29 percent drop in profits because of discounts and sales of top grossing electronics. The fact is that the electronics retailer was probably forced into offering deeply discounted deals in order to compete with e-commerce giant Amazon. And it doesn’t help that Amazon is now offering discounts to consumers on any product purchased via its price comparison mobile app, another huge blow to physical retailers. Brick and mortar retailers need to figure out a way to compete with Amazon and other e-commerce giants that doesn’t eat into margins. Deals and coupons simply aren’t enought. And as former Apple retail chief Ron Johnson has said, retail isn’t broken, stores are. So how are retail stores going to survive? While mobile may be the technology e-commerce companies are using to jab physical stores, it is also the technology that may save these stores. Personalization and data are the two key factors that could save retail stores; and the vehicle by which these technologies can be utilized is via the mobile phone. Why Mobile? 2011 has been pegged as the year of mobile shopping by both technology companies and retailers. Now more than ever consumers are carrying around phones that enable them to access apps, discounts, price comparison information, payments mechanisms and more. comScore recently reported that two-thirds of all smartphone owners performed some sort of shopping activity on their phones, including comparing products and prices, searching for coupons, taking product pictures or locating a retail store. In fact, slightly more than one in three purchasers used their smartphone to make a purchase while in a store. When they enter retail stores, these consumers are carrying their mobile phones and using these devices. E-commerce companies have been quick to capitalize on this trend while brick and mortar retailers have not caught on in quite the same way. As mentioned above, Amazon is incentivizing customers to use its PriceCheck mobile app. Customers can walk into a brick-and-mortar retailer, use the app to scan the barcodes of a desired product, and access Amazon’s prices for that product. More often than not, Amazon’s prices are lower, and if a customer places the item into the app's virtual basket, a 5% discount will be applied to the product within 24 hours. Price Check app users can use the discount on up to three products. Simply offering coupons aren’t going to be able to combat Amazon’s tactics, because not only are these deals going to eat into retailer margins but these incentives can’t necessarily bring shopper back to a store repeatedly. Brick and mortar stores need to figure out not only how to drive traffic, but also how to increase the purchase amount and conversion rates, create loyalty and return customers and more. Cyriac Roeding, founder of location-based mobile shopping app Shopkick believes that the mobile phone is key to the future of commerce for stores. In case you aren’t familiar, Shopkick automatically recognizes when someone with the free Android or iPhone app on their phone walks into a participating store. Once a Shopkick Signal is detected, the app delivers reward points called “kickbucks” to the user for walking into a retail store, trying on clothes, scanning a barcode and other actions. These rewards can be used towards purchases. Rodeing says that the role of the physical store will change in the future. What online stores cannot offer (which brick and mortar outlets need to realize) is the one-on-one personalization and personal treatment that a physical store with employees can. And in-store shopping brings immediate gratification because a customer can take home the item with them as soon as the purchase is complete. And mobile is how you bring personalization back to the in-store purchase experience. The challenge, he explains, is to make this experience worth the consumer’s time and money. eBay is also trying to help physical retailers drive traffic into stores via its Red Laser barcode scanning apps, which now integrate in-store listings, prices and availability from Milo. As eBay’s Jack Abraham (who founded Milo) says, brick and mortar retailers need to be where their customers are, and that decision-making is now happening on phones. “There are clearly companies that are positioning themselves as destroying brick and mortar retailers but we’re positioning ourselves to be an ally for the retailers,” he says. eBay recently launched a new campaign, where consumers who spend $100 at Toys "R" Us, Dick's Sporting Goods and Aeropostale using PayPal, will get a $10 voucher to spend in store. How To Personalize The Experience: Data! How brick and mortar stores are going to be able to personalize and make the in-store shopping experience unique is through data, in my opinion. It’s no longer about creating a mobile web site or offering coupons; the experience centralizes around making customers feel as if they are being treated like a VIP just by walking into a store. And how brick and mortar stores are going to do that is the same way Amazon was able to create a business out of personalized e-commerce. Some retailers are attempting to use video and heatmaps to try to see how people shop, what they are buying and more. But this data is limiting because while stores can figure out what is working when it comes to placement, advertising, and marketing of products in-store, retailers still don’t know who is buying and how to get them to return. Personalization really gets interesting with transaction data. Shopkick recently teamed up with Visa to allow consumers a way to receive rewards points for retailers at the point of sale when they use their Visa credit cards. This is part of closing the redemption loop. The redemption loop starts when a consumer sees an ad or an offer for a merchant, and is completed when the consumer makes a purchase and that purchase can be tracked back to the offer. Thus far startups, tech companies and credit card companies have started to use transaction data as a way to close the redemption loop and drive future purchases but this is relatively new to brick and mortar retailers. With the Shopkick deal, brick and mortar retailers could see what items a consumer purchased and deliver discounts, and special offers based on purchase behavior. And this can be delivered via the mobile phone. Of course, this would all have to be an opt-in experience for shoppers considering the privacy implications. But many consumers use the personalized experience of Amazon when buying books, electronics and others items, so why not replicate this in the physical world? This means more partnerships with credit card companies like Visa, MasterCard and American Express. Online payments giant PayPal also sees this as a huge opportunity for physical stores. PayPal announced an in-store payments technology both via mobile and point of sale systems that is currently being tested on a 'friends and family' basis in a national retailer in two markets. The opt-in offering will include location-based offers, making payments accessible from any device and offering more payments flexibility to customers after they've checked out. Users will have the ability to access realtime store inventory, receive in-store offers, and real-time location-based advertising from stores. While exact details are still unclear, it sounds like PayPal will use location and transaction data to help in-store retailers improve the experience for consumers. PayPal is partnering with a at least 20 known top-tier retailers, which will be unveiled in 2012. We hear about the initial retailer as soon as this year. PayPal’s Anuj Nayar tells me candidly that retailers are desperate for this offering. “The fact is that most retailers have no idea about customers until they are leaving the store and that comes down to data.” He says PayPal is working with in-store retailers to create a suite of tools and technologies that help use technologies to level the playing field when it comes to data. One thing that is clear is that retailers need to jump on the mobile, personalization and data bandwagon very soon. Online retailers are only getting more aggressive (i.e. Amazon), and it’s only a matter of time before online retailers start to ramp up their existing personalization offers even more. Roeding says that physical retailers who doesn’t focus on mobile in the next six months are going to face a major problem in the next year. But it goes beyond just created a dedicated site and mobile app. Brick and mortar retailers need to find a way to be in as many mobile applications as possible, such as ShopKick, PayPal, and eBay, where potential customers are deciding what to buy and where. Abraham echoes these thoughts, explaining that retailers need to be part of search results, especially in mobile search results. “If they don’t, they risk getting lost in the age of the post-pc era,” he says. eBay is building out its own predictive data capabilities with the recent acquisition of Hunch, and we can expect more data-focused features to be rolled out soon. As for which brick and mortar retailer is going to be the first catch on the mobile and data wave when it comes to in-store shopping, my bets are on Wal-mart. The retailer has been particularly aggressive on the technology front, buying social and mobile ad targeting company OneRiot, and social media startup Kosmix. Wal-mart is already experimenting with a number of in-store mobile services, including things like NFC, barcode scanning and in-store geo-fencing. There’s no doubt that 2012 could be a pivotal year for brick and mortar stores. But they need to act fast and start providing a unique experience for customers or risk being left in the dust by Amazon.
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| Posted: 26 Dec 2011 12:09 PM PST  Apps have taken over the world. If you doubt that just take a look at this app map by Horace Dediu at Asymco which shows the 123 countries in the world where iPhones are available. Of course, anywhere you can get an iPhone, you can get an iPhone app. Like the Web, apps are distributed globally. But when it comes to “media” like books, music, and movies, the distribution is much more limited on digital devices. Again, only looking at Apple, Dediu counts only 51 countries where music is available through the iTunes store, and only 6 countries where TV shows are available (see map below). My first reaction is that Apple really needs to broaden its licensing efforts internationally. But remember, iTunes started going international in 2004, and there are still more countries where you can get only apps (72) than both music and apps. Traditional media industries are more restrictive in their licensing, and this is particularly true for TV shows and movies, which follow all sorts of arcane rules of availability across different distribution channels (theaters, Pay-Per-View, DVDs, cable, internet streaming). When you look at the glacial geographic advance of video and music on iTunes (and the internet, in general), it seems like we still have a long way to go before a global, legal market for digital media establishes itself in a meaningful way. Except there already is a global market for digital media. They are called apps, and they represent the future of media in many ways. Apps are media. Not only are they a form of media in the way that consumer software and games have always been considered media (they compete with TV, books, and music for consumers’ time and attention). But increasingly, they are also subsuming other forms of media. We are seeing the first signs of this “Software Eats Media” (to butcher a phrase from Marc Andreessen) phenomenon with books. Some of the most interesting books on the iPad aren’t merely iBook or Kindle editions, they are full-fledged apps. The best children’s books on the iPad are full-blown apps, as are other books and magazines which incorporate images and videos into the experience. The TinTin iPad art book, based on the new animated movie, is a perfect example. It incorporates 3-D models that readers can manipulate, immersive 360-degree rooms, and other software-enhanced media. Music and movies are arguably more passive experiences, but they are also increasingly becoming features of other apps. The lines between software and media will become harder to tell apart as apps begin to include more and more traditional media. We are seeing this first on the creation side, with songs, videos, movies being recorded on iPhones (part of the next Avengers movie was shot on an iPhone). And more apps are including video and music snippets as well. Imagine a game with immersive 3-D rooms you can “walk” through where you can watch different narratives unfold. Would that be a movie or an app? The way we consume media will be very different from the sit-back mode which rules today. Before we get there though, there will be many incremental steps along the way. Just think about how longer-form media already is delivered through apps—whether that’s listening to entire albums streamed on Spotify or watching Netflix movies on your iPad. In these cases, it is not so much the original media which gets transformed (the song or the movie), but the experience surrounding it. Media discovery becomes more social and algorithmic. A song or a TV show will become a hit because it is shared by millions of people on Facebook and Twitter, not because it is getting millions of dollars of promotion on radio or TV. These apps will determine what we watch next through social and algorithmic recommendations—because how else do you find something to watch when traditional programming is dead? The apps that deliver this media will exert a powerful influence over our consumption habits—what we watch, listen to, and read, as well as how we do it. Apps will help us find media through social and other filters, and throw it onto our TVs, iPads, stereos or whatever device is handy. They will bypass the set-top box, the radio, and the book store. Apps are where media consumption will happen. Media companies can continue to ignore or fight that trend at their own peril.
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| Microsoft Is Way Overdue In Leaving CES Keynote – More Room For Companies That Ship Posted: 26 Dec 2011 11:16 AM PST  The topic around the olives and cheese plate last week at an extended family Christmas gathering was, interestingly enough, Microsoft distancing itself from CES. My family, not ordinarily given to tech gossip, was alarmed, thinking that perhaps there was a grand re-ordering of things that they should know about. It’s a remarkably straightforward move, far from the conspiracy theories the last few days have spawned, but when you’re dealing with bruisers like Microsoft and CES, everything is swathed in diplomacy as would be ostensibly amicable divorce proceedings. But Microsoft’s grievances are legitimate and the move is a smart one. “Our product news milestones generally don’t align with the show’s January timing.” How true that is, and as others have pointed out, their product news generally didn’t align with products, either. And they’re aware that their news is propagating in a completely different way than it used to. Technologizer had a handy round-up of the keynotes, which generally have highlighted products that never shipped, or didn’t work well on stage. It’s a bit embarrassing to go back and watch some of these, knowing as we do how these products turned out. Why did Microsoft ever participate in this? Part of it was Bill Gates, who was much more of a keynote kind of guy. If you’ve seen him speak, you know that despite his natural nerdiness, he’s an endearing presence on stage and his enthusiasm for the broader mission of technology is infectious. Ballmer is certainly bombastic, but for years we’ve heard over and over the growth stats on Windows, heard from a few partners mumbling carefully-rehearsed platitudes, then seen a few features of the next version or a prototype (last year’s ARM surprise, to be fair, was the best thing they’ve had in years). It’s become rote, and rote is what Microsoft fears most now. The company is desperate for a reinvention of how it presents itself, and these doddering CES keynotes are exhibit A in the Case of the Dull Microsoft PR. Their booth, too, is filled with old devices and people halfheartedly selling services that anyone in the market is already well aware of. Meanwhile, year-round on the internet, we see astonishing things being done in Microsoft Research and Labs, beautiful and powerful demonstrations of advanced technology. And the Building Windows 8 blog is the surprise Microsoft hit of the year, with nearly every single post (detailed, revealing, and technical) creating a storm of discussion on the web. The new Explorer interface, for instance, spawned thousands of articles (not necessarily positive) and others have done nearly as much. The way Microsoft gets word out of its innovations, its products, its business performance, has been changing for years, but they and CES have clung together out of habit. I’m pleased to see Microsoft doing what it does worst: breaking a bad habit. CES is a show for product builders, people who ship devices, where you need to be there in real life to see how it works, how it feels, and most importantly, how it compares to the guys in the next booth. Microsoft simply isn’t a part of that world, and the show hasn’t been about them for years. They’ll still have a booth, and I expect them to stay around for a while. But I wouldn’t be surprised if they stopped using CES as a focal point for announcements, and use it instead (as many other large companies do) to present a snapshot of the company through and through, prototypes, research projects, traditional devices, servers, and all. They’ve made more room on the stage for companies that truly want to show off impressive things and talk about where the tech world is heading. I look forward to attending the keynotes of whoever steps up.
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| Five Predictions For Online Video In 2012 Posted: 26 Dec 2011 10:27 AM PST  Editor’s note: Guest author Peter Csathy is President and CEO of Sorenson Media, a leading provider of encoding solutions. Peter was interviewed by TechCrunch TV earlier this year about how Hollywood is moving to the cloud. He blogs at Digital Media Update. In 2011, the long-promised ubiquity of video—on-demand anytime, anywhere—started to become a reality, driven by mobile (smart phones, tablets). While this may seem obvious, remember, it was not so long ago (a couple years, really) that most doubted that consumers would ever watch anything other than short-form YouTube-like video clips on the small screen. Consumers are now beginning to watch premium long-form video (TV, motion picture content) on their most important screen on a massive scale, despite the frequent paucity of compelling content offered by service providers. Yet, we are still in the early innings of this video revolution—so, we truly haven't seen anything yet. With this in mind, here are my predicted "big stories" for video in the coming year: (1) TV Re-imagined. I have always expected Apple to release an all-in-one flat screen TV—think of a large-screen beautiful iPad on your wall—that will be called “iTV” in order to distance itself from Apple’s current Apple TV “hobby.” Apple’s goal will be to re-think the living room experience to be, well, more of an “experience” (rather than simply a “dumb” TV). That means that, yes, it will be a beautiful and aesthetically appealing piece of hardware. But, it will be much more than that. It will aim to seamlessly marry that beautiful hardware with underlying services (including linear TV—more on that below), much as Apple was uniquely able to effectively do originally with the iPod/iTunes to transform the music business and the overall consumer music experience. Apple’s ultimate goal is to sell more hardware of course—using software and services as the Trojan Horse. And, Apple will be able to command higher prices—and significantly higher margins. There is no doubt on this one. If Apple builds it, the Apple faithful most certainly will come. (2) Tablets on Fire. Not surprisingly, Apple’s iPad will continue to be the No. 1 tablet, but Amazon’s Kindle Fire will be closing in … fast, fast, fast (remember, it was recently reported that it already outsells the iPad at Best Buy). Sure, version 1.0 of the Kindle Fire has some performance issues, but Amazon will knock those down fast. And, “Amazon Prime” will begin to significantly challenge Netflix, as more and more of us are introduced to Prime via Amazon’s brilliant Kindle Fire maneuver. Amazon’s strategy is completely the reverse from Apple’s. Amazon will use its hardware (the Kindle Fire) as the Trojan Horse to sell more services (especially premium video)—and, of course (and most importantly) to enable mobile shopping. Anytime. Anywhere. That’s Amazon's huge advantage over virtually every CE company—Amazon is willing to take a significant loss on its hardware sales, because it is gunning for long-term continuous purchases of goods and services (including digital media). Brilliant Amazon. (3) Battle for Your Living Room & Cutting of the Cord. Not to be outdone, Google will continue its massive push—and billions of dollars in investment — into the premium video and “TV” world. It doesn't matter whether Google's initial experiments have worked so far (they haven't); Google is patient and recognizes that we are still early in the video game. Google covets the living room experience—again for very different reasons than both Apple and Amazon. For Google, it’s all about advertising of course—and monetizing video via ads is Google’s next great frontier. That’s why Google will stop at nothing. Google will even begin to take on the cable and satellite providers head on by offering full live linear programming (like ESPN) over the Internet and on their pipes. Apple and other behemoths (Amazon?) will follow suit—and consumers will finally respond in real meaningful numbers to cut the cord from cable/satellite programming packages, thereby beginning to relegate cable companies to "dumb pipe" status. Of course, this isn't all bad for the cable giants, because margins on broadband services are significantly higher than those for premium content services (due to the high licensing costs commanded by the content providers); and, more premium video means that more consumers will need faster broadband. This also is good—very good—for premium content providers like ESPN, because there will be more mega-customers vying to distribute their content; after all, content is still king). With these behemoths (Google, Apple, Amazon) battling for a seat on your living room couch, smaller players like Roku will be faced with tremendous pressure to be swallowed up (or simply risk being marginalized). Expect significant consolidation in 2012. (4) Personal Video Breakthrough. But 2012 won’t be just about premium video content. As a result of massive growth of smart phones with easy HD video capture anytime and anywhere, your “personal video”—intimate family and friend video memories/keep-sakes that you do not wish to share with the world on YouTube—will be, for the first time, easily archived, managed, shared and played back securely on any device and at any time (including in your living room and on the big screen) — and with HD quality intact. Think of Shutterfly for video. A number of services have popped up in the past several weeks seeking to address this potential market (Shutterfly has its own video service, but it has not yet implemented mobile video sharing; Path is mobile and already supports private sharing of videos). Companies will begin to significantly monetize this personal video opportunity in the latter half of 2012. Remember, family video memories are perhaps the single most valuable possessions we have . . . these are snippets of your life that can live on forever. And, once you invest in making a particular service a "home" for your personal video memories, you likely will never leave. The switching "pain" is simply too great. That is good for service providers. Really good. They now will have new ways to monetize with significant numbers. (5) HD Video Ecosystem Growth Explodes. As a result of these and other forces, the demand for HD video-enabling products and services will grow exponentially—and video workflows will move at scale into the Cloud, beginning to seriously challenge legacy hardware providers. All video must be prepared and optimized for delivery across all screens—including mobile and the living room. This means solving all relevant and increasingly complex delivery issues that make heads spin for any content creator—device specification and detection, format and codec licensing and optimization, video resolution, frame size, network detection and optimization, adaptive bitrate delivery. (Disclosure: I believe video transcoding, which is what my company does, will be a key driver of this video enabling universe). Those services that easily and cost-effectively solve all of this complexity for content creators should fare well in the coming year. After all, content creators want to focus on creation—especially when their avenues for distribution are becoming far greater than ever before. Image via James Vaughn
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| People Spend Twice As Much Time On Netflix Than On Hulu Posted: 26 Dec 2011 08:50 AM PST  Netflix and Hulu are the two leading video streaming services on the Web when it comes to mainstream TV shows and movies. More people watch Netflix online than Hulu, and have since about 18 months ago. In November, 2011, comScore estimates that Netflix.com attracted 26.6 million unique visitors, versus 20.2 million for Hulu But a better metric to compare the two is how much time people actually spend at each site. And there Netflix trounces Hulu by two to one. U.S. visitors spent 1 billion minutes on Netflix.com in November, 2011, versus 480 million minutes on Hulu, according to comScore. (One caveat here is that people also go to Netflix.com to manage their DVD accounts and browse movie titles in addition to streaming videos, but the growth in time spent is most likely coming from streaming). Netflix has an edge over Hulu in that it streams more movies than TV shows, and those tend to be longer. But if that was the only factor, you’d expect to see the same ratio over time. Yet back in November, 2010, the two services were almost neck-and-neck in time spent, with Netflix users logging 750 million total minutes versus Hulu users logging 690 million. A few things happened over the past year which explain this growing gap. One is that Hulu, which started as a free, ad-supported video service, shifted strategies and pushed harder to convert viewers to paying subscribers. As a result, the number of people going to Hulu every month stopped growing (its 20 million unique U.S. visitors in November, 2011 was down from 21 million the year before). Netflix, on the other hand, spent the year promoting its streaming service at the expense of its DVD rental business (its U.S. unique visitors increased by about 8 million people over the same time period). Another difference is that Netflix benefits from the fact that it already has a paying subscription relationship with all of its customers, whereas Hulu still has a mix between free and paying viewers. The biggest jump in time spent on Netflix, however, occurred in September, 2011, when it rose by 26 percent in a single month (from 820 million minutes to 1.03 billion). September was the month when Netflix’s price hikes went into effect for subscribers who chose to keep both streaming and DVD rentals. For all the subsequent damage to Netflix’s brand and stock, the move did seemingly have the desired effect of boosting viewership of the streaming service. The total time spent on Netflix has been flat the three months since the big change. Now it needs to prove that streaming is indeed a better model than DVDs, and that should be reflected in subscribers spending even more time on Netflix. Time spent on Hulu should increase also as streaming becomes part of people’s regular viewing habits. The biggest barrier here remains the living room TV. For the vast majority of viewers, it’s still not hooked up to the either service. But once you do connect a big screen to the Internet, Netflix and Hulu become a lot more compelling. In my house, for instance, we are still only occasional viewers. We watch Hulu on a laptop in the kitchen or in my home office where I have a large screen already connected to my computer. My wife and I watched a movie on Netflix last night. We could have watched it on the bigger screen in the living room, but that would have entailed pulling out an HDMI cable and plugging in a laptop. The path of least resistance was the office set-up. My New Year’s resolution will be to hook up the living room TV to the Internet. Once I do that, I am sure we will be watching a lot more Netflix and Hulu. I don’t think we will be alone.
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| LG Prepping Ice Cream Sandwich Update For Q2 2012 Release Posted: 26 Dec 2011 07:22 AM PST  Most of the big name Android smartphone vendors have already laid out their Ice Cream Sandwich upgrade plans, but LG has been notably absent from the list of companies offering an update schedule. Well, a brief announcement on the company’s official Facebook page has remedied that — Android 4.0 will be coming to select LG handsets as early as Q2 2012. The first round of updates will roll out to the Prada 3.0, Optimus LTE, Optimus Sol, Optimus 2X, LG Eclipse and strangely, the LG myTouch Q. Meanwhile, owners of other Optimus-branded handsets won’t be left waiting for too long. The Optimus 3D, Optimus Black, Optimus Big, Optimus Q2 and the Optimus EX will be getting their first taste of Ice Cream Sandwich in Q3 2012. But let’s go back to the myTouch Q for a moment. Though it’s a pretty unimpressive device when compared to some of the others getting the update, the myTouch Q is the only device on the list that’s actually available here in the States. It’s a puzzling choice, especially when LG makes no mention of devices like the Thrill or the Nitro HD, both of which are U.S. variants of devices that will indeed be getting the update. While I’m sure LG fans are probably heartened by the news (that is, if they have switched to custom ROMs already), the company still has a long (and probably bumpy) road ahead of them. LG’s mobile division, if you recall, has had a pretty awful run over the past six quarters, and 2012 could be a make-it-or-break it year for them. They’ve already devoted around half of their 2012 CapEx budget to revitalize their handset business, and here’s hoping they’ve got some blockbuster device launches planned along with these software updates.
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| Cooklet Aims To Disrupt The Stodgy Cooking Scene With Gingerbread Carp Posted: 26 Dec 2011 07:21 AM PST  Cooklet, a Poland-based cooking site founded by Grzegorz Trubiłowicz, features a lot of what you’d expect – lots of recipes, a few pictures of happy-looking skinny people who you know don’t eat much food, and some international flare. However, the rise of sites like Cooklet point to a change in the way people find recipes and make food. It’s a transition from the standard cookbook-based economy of yesterday’s kitchen to a more plugged-in experience we are now embracing. The site’s main draw are its many well-made tablet apps including versions for Android, a version for the Sony P, and a version for the Kindle Fire. The content, as it stands, is a bit of a mixed bag. Many recipes are in Polish but there are a nice selection of recipes for non-Slavs including something that looks like death on a plate, Gingerbread Carp. In this season of holiday feasts, I think it’s time to recognize that there are now many great places where home cooks can find recipes and that cookbooks should watch their backs. My own favorite site, Epicurious, collates recipes from Gourmet and Bon Appetite in an app that is simple to use and promises a good meal every time. Other sites like AllRecipes do the same and now upstarts like Cooklet aim to further disrupt the scene. Where does this leave Rachel Ray and that one lady who likes butter? While I would not call cookbook writers culturally relevant, I think sites like these push their relevance even further into the niche. Why buy Anthony Bourdain’s Post-One-Week-Bender Cookbook for $40 when you can make truffled scrambled eggs, miso soup, and Watermelon Drink from recipes gathered online. Sure you don’t get all of Bourdain’s wit and wisdom, but who reads cookbooks for the prologue anyway? This is also not to say that the veneration of great cooks isn’t important. However, I wonder how long it will be before the next great cooking personality comes from the web rather than the kitchens of WD50. Cooklet needs a lot of work. The UI is quite fresh and other cooking sites could do well to emulate it but the content, because it is user generated, could use an editor and translator to reach an international audience. However, that a young man in Wroclaw can take on Julia Child at her own game is not only impressive, it’s downright scary if my business is dependent on printing cookbooks. Click to view slideshow.
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| Streamonomy: Radionomy Opens Platform To Online, Traditional Radio Stations Alike Posted: 26 Dec 2011 06:38 AM PST  Radionomy, which enables people to create and listen to radio stations online, is preparing the launch of a new service dubbed Streamonomy, which will essentially open up its platform to external radio stations, whether they broadcast online or the traditional, simulcast FM way. Streamonomy will also be available to online radio stations not produced with Radionomy, although the option to do so will of course remain available, free of charge. Radionomy has been growing by leaps and bounds this year, particularly in certain, large European countries, and by opening its ‘socialization’ and monetization platform to outside radio stations the company aims to accelerate this growth and attack new markets, including the US. One of the core services Radionomy offers to radio station operators is Adionomy, which enables advertisers to target a specific region or country (e.g. a radio station in the United States could run ads exclusively for French listeners, or even only those in, say, the Bourgogne area). Streamonomy is expected to debut in the first half of January 2012. Radionomy, a Belgian-French venture, has raised about $2 million to date, but is currently in the midst of closing a $15 million funding round from a French investment bank.
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| Tango Card Aims To Make Gift Card Giving A More Personal Experience Posted: 26 Dec 2011 06:00 AM PST  While gift cards are certainly a useful and practical gift, the act of giving a gift certificate to a store can be construed as impersonal. One startup is trying to change this. Tango Card, which offers a gift card program for consumers, is launching a new personalized experience, called ‘What I Got.’ For background, here’s how Tango Card works. A purchaser can buy a Tango Card, and give this to a recipient via email. The recipient can then exchanges the value for the card for one or multiple retailer gift cards (Amazon, iTunes, Target, Starbucks, others) or they can donate any portion of their gift card to one of 9 non-profits (National Park Foundation, World of Children, Habitat for Humanity, etc.). Any unused value can actually be redeemed for cash. Basically, it provides a more flexible gift card option which allows recipients to choose and then stagger the proceeds of a gift card across various retailers or charities. The Tango Card’s value can be used on the startup’s site or directly via its iOS and Android apps. The startup also offers physical Tango Cards for those that prefer a plastic product. With ‘What I Got’ (WIG), recipients can take a photo of what they bought with their gift card, and then share it directly with the person that gave it to them via the Tango Card iOS and Android apps. Tango Card users start WIG on the app, attach or take a picture of what they got, and select how to share the photo, via Facebook, Twitter, or a Picasa or Flickr album. The gift giver is notified by email and can instantly view how the gift card was used. The startup says that this is a more personalized way to close the loop with the gift giver. As founder David Leeds tells me, in November and December, U.S. consumers will receive about $30 billion in gift cards. Tango Card’s WIG offers a way to close the loop with the gift givers, and personalize the experience.
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| TechCrunch Moscow — All The On-stage Video Posted: 26 Dec 2011 05:31 AM PST  On December 5th, 2011 TechCrunch Europe came to Moscow again. Co-organized by TechCrunch Europe, Digital October and Kite Ventures, the second TechCrunch Moscow showcased several early stage startups and hosted panels on emerging technology trends in Russia and abroad. The event, held in English, proved to be a smashing success, bringing together over 700 participants and attracting several thousand viewers online. Videos of the event can be found below including the amazing interview between Andrew Keen and political commentator Anton Nossik on a pivotal day for Russian politics following the Russian Duma elections of the previous day. It’s a must watch.
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| 55 Inches: LG To Showcase World’s Largest OLED TV AT CES 2012 Posted: 26 Dec 2011 05:14 AM PST  We’ve been waiting for large-sized OLED TVs at least since Sony rolled out the cool (but too small) XEL-1 in 2007. Various bigger OLEDs and “breakthroughs” have made the news in the years after that, and now LG says it’s ready to showcase the world’s biggest OLED TV at CES 2012 (which kicks off on January 10). Sized at 55 inches, the panel has a contrast ratio of 100,000:1 and has been developed by using the Oxide TFT technology, according to LG. The company has been working on bigger OLED devices for quite a while now, for example a super-thin 31-inch model (which was shown last year). So far, so good, but unfortunately LG says they see the device as a step forward in popularizing the concept of large-sized OLED TVs. In other words, the TV is just a prototype at this point with neither a price tag nor a release date, and we might have to wait years before being able to actually buy one. Via Engadget
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| Now GoDaddy Has To Contend With ByeDaddy Posted: 26 Dec 2011 04:58 AM PST  Although GoDaddy’s new CEO, Warren Adelman, no longer supports SOPA (after supporting it), a mass movement (of critics is gathering pace. Adelman notes he is now taking a step back to “look at the current legislation.” Meanwhile the crowd has other ideas. Hence the appearance of Byedaddy.org where you can now handily check if a domain is registered with GoDaddy. Let’s just see… so it looks like wikipedia.org and wikibooks.org is still among them. Will we see ByeWikipedia.org appear? This story will run and run…
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| Sony Exits LCD Joint Venture With Samsung Posted: 26 Dec 2011 04:15 AM PST  S-LCD Co., the joint venture for making LCDs for TVs between Sony and Samsung, will soon be history. The Japanese company today announced it will exit the 50-50 venture by selling its share to the Korean rival for US$940 million, after seven years of collaboration. After inking a final agreement, Samsung is ready to absorb the South Korea-based joint venture into its existing LCD business and turn it into a 100% subsidiary. Samsung’s LCD business will then be the second-largest in the world by revenue, trailing only LG Display. Sony, which has been reporting losses for its TV unit for years, said that parting ways with Samsung will result in savings of about US$640 million every year. Last month, Sony issued a financial report forecasting a US$1.15 billion loss for this fiscal (for the company as a whole), but it didn’t say if the forecast will be revised. To some extent, Sony and Samsung are continuing to collaborate in the display area. The Japanese company, which will keep on producing TVs, says it “entered into a new strategic agreement for the supply and purchase of LCD panels with a goal of enhancing the competitiveness of both companies”.
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| TechGrinch Was Not Impressed By Google’s “Jingle Bells” Doodle Posted: 25 Dec 2011 10:03 PM PST  Warning, I’m about to get real critical of something pretty minor. It’s midnight on Christmas and the world is largely at a standstill, so pardon my rant. When I visited Google.com this morning, I was as excited as the kids sprinting from bed to tree. But all I found was a lump of sonic coal. Oh joy, after months of Christmas music, I get to hear a crummy elevator music version of “Jingle Bells” one more time? *sigh* But wait, is it a game where I guess how to play the song on the colored keys? No. Can I remix it and make my own song using the tones? Nope. Can I at least share something to the legion of strangers who’ve added me to their Circles on Google+? Well there was no readily available permalink, and the metadata wasn’t changed so sharing Google.com into G+ didn’t produce a doodle preview. Why the high expectations? I was impressed with the Thanksgiving doodle, mostly because a special button encouraged people to share their custom turkey to Google+. Considering the fledgling social network needs users and content, I thought that was a wise move. The Polish doodle the day before offered a sci-fi comic puzzle game. The Father’s Day doodle was a useful PSA to call your Dad. And the 65th birthday tribute to Queen’s Freddie Mercury was the pinacle of awesome, featuring mustachioed bears riding bicycles. Today we got a crummy elevator music “Jingle Bells”. I would have settled I would have settled for some 8-bit tones, a more expansive light show, or something actually interactive and not just triggered. In previous years, the Christmas doodles have been basic but classy. This one built me up with its shiny buttons but didn’t follow through. Maybe children were more elated. Oh sorry, am I being an overly entitled TechGrinch? Normally I’m a rather loving person, this is just some constructive criticism. I know the doodle is a delightful little service Google does out of the goodness of its 30,000 hearts. I’m sure it has plenty else to worry about and should be permitted an occasional flop. Still, Google needs loyalty and good will right now. It should be looking to make fanboys and fangirls out of all of us, because it’s launched some ambitious products in verticals with powerful incumbents. If services like Google+ and Google Currents are going to challenge the Facebooks and Flipboards, Google needs people to love it. Ask any parent — on Christmas Day the stakes are high. Google just got the 6 year old a big shiny box with a pair of socks in it. When it comes to holiday doodles, Google should either keep it simple, or really make it shine. TechGrinch signing off. Image Credit: Shipment Of Fail
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