Golden Age of Content: Netflix and Hulu Launch Original Series

  • Hulu will debut its original series “Battleground” on February 15th, following Netflix’s original series “Lilyhammer,” that premieres February 6th.
  • “For both companies, going into original content is in part a reaction to the threat of being locked out of deals for popular TV shows,” reports GigaOM. “But it’s also part of a larger movement toward a new Hollywood, where content is produced for online-only properties, money is raised differently and networks aren’t the only game in town anymore. It’s a new golden age of content.”
  • This movement is not unique to streaming services. YouTube, Kickstarter, Amazon and BitTorrent have all set aside funding for content creation.
  • The article suggests that actors may now get their big break on Netflix, that original content from these sites may get picked up by networks and content creation on YouTube is now a mode of income.
  • “Benefiting from this are consumers, who are going to see a lot more shows and movies show up on a lot more screens.”

Facebook Rolls Out New Listen to Music with Your Friends Feature

  • After being announced at the f8 conference in September, the listen-with-friends feature is now available to Facebook users.
  • The function helps friends discover new music and chat with one another as they listen. Also, Facebook will post a story in the News Feed when you listen to a song with someone.
  • “Being able to click on someone’s music and play it is a great experience, but knowing that you helped a friend discover something new, and that you have the same taste in music, is awesome,” says Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
  • The feature is limited to Spotify and Rdio and in order to listen together, users have to stream using the same service.
  • Pandora has backed away from the service on account of privacy.
  • “Music, on the one hand, is a very social thing. We listen to music together, we go to shows. But I think there’s also a very private dimension to it. Many people are self-conscious about what they listen to,” Pandora founder Tim Westergren said. “We’ve surveyed our listeners and a small percentage of them want people to know what they’re listening to all the time. And we start with a fundamental respect for what our listener wants and what’s in their comfort zone, not how we can grow or how we can increase referrals.”

WOWee and MicroVision Join Forces for Compact Projector and Speaker

  • The portable-speaker company WOWee is teaming up with MicroVision, creator of ultra-miniature laser display technology, to develop a compact projector-and-speaker in one for mobile devices.
  • “WOWee ONE’s portable speakers featuring Gel Audio and the portable projector featuring MicroVision PicoP technology can use any surface to create robust sound and focus-free viewing making it easy for users to view and share multimedia on the go,” explains the press release.
  • “Whether watching a movie with friends, viewing YouTube clips, or watching game highlights, the vibrant sound and crisp, always in-focus image provide users with an affordable, very compact immersive package as well as providing business users with a great tool for making on the fly presentations.”
  • The release suggests tablet and smartphone users can have a viewing display up to 200 inches diagonal.
  • The “immersive digital consumption experience” solution will be available Q1.

Nuance Announces Acquisition of Voice-Recognition Competitor Vlingo

  • Although previously opponents in various patent infringement lawsuits, Nuance announced last week its acquisition of voice-recognition competitor Vlingo.
  • “Our combined resources afford us the opportunity to better compete, and offer a powerful proposition to customers, partners and developers,” Vlingo CEO Dave Grannan said.
  • “Nuance cited that a main reason for the acquisition is a ‘$5 billion market opportunity’ that spans phones, PCs, tablets, cars, music players and navigation devices,” reports Mashable, “and it plans to integrate natural language interfaces across these areas and devices.”
  • The collaboration hopes to provide a competitor to Siri and Google’s expected assistant Majel as more mobile and consumer electronics companies look to have conversational voice interactions with their devices.

Examining Four Megatrends that Will Shape Social Media and Business

  • Forbes contributor Haydn Shaughnessy anticipates four megatrends expected to emerge in the coming years as social media “truly comes of age.”
  • 1) “The growth of the transmitter ecosystem.” Content creation is now widespread without barriers. The article suggests the social sphere may become more top-down, “where we become increasingly dependent on those curators with larger follower groups…” as opposed to a peer-to-peer relationship.
  • 2) “The age of global… There’s a new internationalism that segues with what is happening in the economy: more global, multi-polar, more equal,” the article suggests.
  • 3) “Social media vertical and local.” Social will become more area-specific among a variety of sectors as well as targeted to local audiences.
  • 4) “The emergence of brand driven social media,” especially in China, Indonesia, Philippines or Brazil where brands don’t yet have connection or access to consumers.

Coming to CES: Archos to Launch First Honeycomb Tablet Under $200

  • Coming to CES and stores in January: the $199 70b Internet Tablet from Archos.
  • “The 70b IT will be lightweight (though we’re not sure exactly how lightweight), and ship with a 1.2 GHz processor, 1024 x 600 capacitive touchscreen, 8 gigs of Flash storage, 512MB of RAM and Wi-Fi connectivity,” Engadget reports.
  • The device will run Android 3.2 Honeycomb, have access to the Android Market, and feature HDMI output and a microSD slot.
  • “With Honeycomb, users will have faster and smoother transitions between different applications, and more intuitive navigation to and from home screens,” claims the press release.

CES: Myriad Alien Vue to Provide Google TV Apps for HDTVs and STBs

  • At next month’s CES, Myriad will demo its new Alien Vue, which allows TV and set-top box manufacturers to bring Android apps to their existing products.
  • Alien Vue also brings a branded app store, Web browser and portable device control to your TV.
  • Myriad enables Android apps on other non-Android devices such as iOS and MeeGo.
  • “This new release supports apps designed to run on GoogleTV and HTML5, including YouTube, Netflix and Twitter,” describes the press release. “Apps, content and services appear and function as they would in their native environment with no disruption or loss of performance.”
  • The Engadget post includes a 2-minute video demo.

MySpace Announces New Music Player Launch with Facebook Integration

  • MySpace is branching away from the social networking scene and is hoping to gain ground as a music site with its 42+ million songs and exclusive access to 30 million songs from independent, unsigned artists.
  • The new music player, launched yesterday, includes Facebook integration. “Because of the users they have and the integrations with Spotify, Mog, and Rdio it makes sense to open up our catalog to their users,” explains MySpace COO Chris Vanderhook.
  • The MySpace music player features enhanced music recommendations and built-in search engines. It is free with ad-supported content.
  • According to new owners Specific Media, MySpace will also undergo a full-scale relaunch in the beginning half of 2012.
  • “Music is white-hot right now and we want to be able to capitalize on our music catalog and our history in music. It’s something the previous management didn’t really highlight,” Vanderhook says.

Google Chairman Promises New Tablet Available in Next Six Months

  • Google chairman Eric Schmidt told an Italian newspaper, “in the next six months we plan to market a tablet of the highest quality.” He also confirmed that the tablet would incorporate Google’s voice recognition technology to challenge Siri.
  • “Exact details of the upcoming tablet were not revealed, and it’s unclear whether the slate will be specifically branded with Google’s Nexus nomenclature or be another manufacturer’s model that the search giant will champion,” reports SlashGear.
  • The tablet will likely run Ice Cream Sandwich (the latest version of Android), which may allow it to better challenge the iPad.
  • “Android tablets have generally struggled to compete with Apple’s iPad, and even the HP TouchPad managed to squeeze ahead of Android-based models in 2011 sales thanks to its cut-price discounting,” comments SlashGear. “Common criticisms include the somewhat jerky performance of Android 3.x Honeycomb, as well as a shortage of slate-scale apps to suit the larger displays.”

New Portable xPrintserver Offers Wireless Printing for iOS Devices

  • Lantronix has developed an iPhone-sized box called xPrintserver that enables printing from any iOS device. The $150 device supports more than 4,000 printers.
  • “With automatic printer discovery and no configuration, printing is easy and hassle-free. Simply open the box, plug in the xPrintServer anywhere into the network, and print wirelessly from the iOS device,” explains the press release.
  • “The proliferation of iPads and iPhones in the corporate world has yielded a potentially tremendous opportunity for providing an easy printing solution free of hassles associated with today’s work-around solutions,” said Kurt Busch, president and CEO for Lantronix. “With more than 90 percent of Fortune 500 companies slated to deploy iPads by the end of 2011, this is an ideal time to expand into this market.”
  • The xPrintserver will be available in January 2012 through Lantronix.com as well as resellers such as Amazon, NewEgg, Buy.com, and MacMall.
  • The company is expected to showcase xPrintServer at Digital Experience during CES in Las Vegas.

Milestone: Apple Mac App Store Passes 100 Million Downloads

  • The Mac App Store is now the “largest and fastest-growing PC software store in the world,” according to Apple. About a year after its opening, the Mac App Store has passed the 100 million downloads milestone.
  • Even so, the Mac App Store has not had the rapid success of the iOS App Store which reached 1 billion downloads only nine months after its debut. The iOS App Store has over 500,000 apps and more than 18 billion app downloads, about a billion a month (Google’s Android Market just hit the 10 billion download mark).
  • The Mac App Store only has about 8,459 apps but is “still a huge success,” GigaOM reports. “[It] will likely continue to grow as it ships on future Macs and increasingly becomes a go-to resource for customers looking to get new apps on their machines. Apple’s ability to attract top-tier developers away from direct Web distribution models will also be a key factor in helping it expand its library.”

What will Twitter Redesign of Enhanced Brand Pages Mean for Users?

  • Twitter is working on enhanced brand pages — expected to roll out in the next few months — designed to encourage social advertising and marketing.
  • Forbes shows a revamped Disney/Pixar page, commenting that it “looks pretty slick, especially for Twitter, whose interface and opportunities for brand interaction with consumers have been spartan at best to date.”
  • “So far, Twitter is working with 21 top marketers, the usual ones such as Coca-Cola, Nike, American Express, and others that have established brand beachheads on Facebook already,” the article adds.
  • According to the Twitter Advertising blog: “Communicating with users isn’t just about what you say. It’s also about how you say it. Now, your profile page does more to help you make an impression with a large header image for displaying your logo, tagline, and any other visuals.”
  • Forbes has included an interesting 2-minute video demo.

CES Predictions: Forrester Lists Five Anticipated Computing Form Factors

  • Forrester Research analyst Sarah Rotman Epps reveals the consumer electronics computing form factors that she expects to see at CES 2012, as reported in eWeek.
  • First is wearable devices, including current technology like the Lark sleep tracker or biometric bracelets that connect wearers with their devices.
  • Next, embedded devices — “gadgets that include computing processors and sensors, such as refrigerators, coffee machines, and other Web-enabled devices” — are expected to become more popular, allowing the remote use of devices.
  • “Epps also sees ‘surfaces,’ or larger interactive displays that rely on multi-touch, voice and gesture input, facial recognition, near-field communication (NFC) signals and any other manner of wireless technologies and sensors,” explains the article.
  • Screens will be reinvented, made flexible to be folded, rolled up or flexed and will come in all shapes and sizes.
  • Lastly, Epps predicts mini-projectors to make advances, allowing users to manipulate interactive projections in 3D space.
  • “The most successful products will work with other products — for example, wearables that talk to smartphones and TVs; surfaces that are activated by the presence of your smartphone,” Epps said. “We’re living in a multi-device, multi-connection world, and the best experiences will be those that work across devices and platforms.”

Watch It: Startup Launches Movie Queue that Works Across Platforms

  • Plexus Entertainment has launched a beta-version of its new movie-bookmarking service called “Watch It” that allows users “to keep track of movies they’re interested in, where those movies are playing, and to be proactively notified of all the different ways to view those films,” reports TechCrunch.
  • The post describes the service as “a Netflix queue for movies on the Web.” In addition to being a stand-alone site, Watch It buttons have launched on film sites, social media pages, industry trade publications and more.
  • “From theaters to streaming movies on demand from Amazon Instant Video, VUDU, and iTunes, the Watch It button enables users to create and maintain personalized queues of movies they want to see, with a range of tools for sorting and filtering those movies that they’ve queued. Watch It is also leveraging social networking by allowing users to share their movie choices with friends via Facebook Connect,” TechCrunch explains.
  • The service also has the ability to provide valuable analytics for movie marketers and promoters and can be used for reader engagement and a source of commerce with the easily embeddable button.

Become Your Own Content Programmer with Twitvid Social Video Network

  • Twitvid, a platform to share videos while Tweeting, just launched a new social video network that will “allow anyone to become a powerful video programmer, by curating links from YouTube, Vimeo or Twitvid,” reports Lost Remote.
  • “The purpose of this network is about discovering video. When you get followers, when you share a video, you’ll get viewership and engagement on the video and people talking and watching the next episode,” Twitvid CEO Mo Adham said. He believes the project is complementary, not competitive, to Twitter and YouTube.
  • The service allows users to make their pages open channels so anyone can share links, close it so only they can post links or assign a team of “editors” that can also contribute.
  • Several TV companies and shows already use Twitvid: “These tools will now help them build a following around sharing these clips,” the article states. As of now, only YouTube, Vimeo and Twitvid clips can be shared.