In a quiet acquisition deal, Amazon is purchasing Yap, a speech-to-text startup that may find its voice recognition technology in future Kindle products.
“Yap is truly a leader in freeform speech recognition and driving innovation in the mobile user experience,” says Paul Grim of SunBridge Partners, which funded Yap in 2008.
“Yap’s technology may give Amazon the ability to add voice controls to its tablets capable of understanding far more than the rudimentary commands currently supported by Android software, potentially allowing the company to erode Apple’s dominance,” reports Forbes.
Apple has yet to make a move toward installing Siri on its iPad, so Amazon could get a jump start. “If Amazon puts Yap’s technology to good use and releases tablets with intuitive voice recognition in the near future, it may give Android-powered tablets a stronger handhold in the market,” suggests the article.
Speaking at the GigaOM RoadMap conference this week, Pandora CTO Tom Conrad suggested that more than half of Americans do not pay for music each year, while 40 percent only pay about $15 annually.
“Conrad revealed that his company aims to monetize the vast majority of listeners who pay little or nothing per year for music,” reports TechCrunch.
“While there are opportunities to build businesses on the 10 percent who are willing to pay more, Pandora plans to focus on monetizing the majority via advertisements. Other music companies might be wise to target the non-paying segment as well.”
Pandora is working to expand across multiple areas, including “in the home, the television, the living room, the bedroom, even embedded above the ice maker on your refrigerator,” and in your car.
Conrad doesn’t feel threatened by Spotify’s success. “I see Spotify as largely complementary to what Pandora does,” he said. “Spotify’s CEO Daniel Ek says he thinks Spotify is the future of the record store, and that Pandora is the future of radio.”
TweetTV is a social TV guide that ranks available shows based on what people are tweeting about.
Users enter their zip code and TV provider, which makes the search more personally specific. You can view the tweets of certain shows (filtered by “experts” or cast members) or break it down by trending network.
Additionally, you can launch private or public video chats for each show.
“Not only does TweetTV empower TV viewers, but we think this creates a fantastic opportunity for networks and brands to engage with their social audience in a very direct way,” founder Bradley Markham said.
According to Canaccord Genuity analysis of Apple’s third quarter, the company “captured more than half of the handset industry’s overall operating profits — 52 percent…And it managed it with only a 4.2 percent global handset unit market share,” reports The Wall Street Journal.
“With the iPhone, Apple is doing to the smartphone business what it has done to the PC business with the Mac: Generating a disproportionate share of profits relative to revenue,” suggests the article.
With other manufacturers faltering and iPhone 4S sales soaring, Apple may hit 60 percent of the industry’s operating profits soon.
According to AllThingsD: “…with the iPhone 4S the top-selling smartphone at AT&T, Sprint and Verizon, and its international rollout in full swing, it seems pretty clear Apple has a very good chance of hitting that big number — and soon.”
Disney and YouTube have announced a partnership to produce original content for online distribution.
“Disney Interactive Media and YouTube, a division of Google, will spend a combined $10 million to $15 million on original video series; those shorts will be produced by Disney and distributed on a co-branded channel on Disney.com and YouTube,” reports The New York Times. “The channel will also include amateur video culled from the torrent uploaded to YouTube daily.”
Disney hopes that the deal will attract children to its online videos as Disney.com has seen a drop in traffic and Disney Interactive has reported losses over the last four quarters.
The goal is to “bring Disney’s legacy of storytelling to a new generation of families and Disney enthusiasts on the platforms they prefer,” explained James A. Pitaro, co-president of Disney Interactive, who added that a complete redesign of Disney.com should be completed by fall 2012.
YouTube hopes the deal will help create credibility with parents who are concerned about the site’s content as well as compete with cable providers for advertising revenue.
Google previously announced a high-speed Internet service project in Missouri and Kansas. The Wall Street Journal now reports that insiders indicate Google may expand the project to include a phone and video service, with channels from Disney, Time Warner and Discovery.
Google has other ventures in the television business including its new Google TV software update and announced deals to produce around 100 free, ad-supported online YouTube channels.
A former Google product director said, “Internet companies like Google will be able to give you [the] same high-quality content” as cable and satellite prices and possibly at lower prices as more TVs connect to the Web.
Nothing has been confirmed about Google’s plans to expand the project to wider areas. But if the company follows through, it “could unleash a new wave of competition within the traditional TV business,” suggests WSJ.
Google has developed a new indexing plan that marks a shift in its traditionally passive approach.
“Mind what you say in Facebook comments,” reports Wired, “Google will soon be indexing them and serving them up as part of the company’s standard search results.”
“Google’s all-seeing search robots still can’t find comments on private pages within Facebook, but now any time you use a Facebook comment form on other sites, or a public page within Facebook, those comments will be indexed by Google.”
The article suggests the new policy may upset developers and users alike.
“There are two primary requests you can initiate on the Web,” explains Wired. “GET requests are intended for reading data, POST for changing or adding data. That’s why search engine robots like Google’s have always stuck to GET crawling. There’s no danger of the Googlebot altering a site’s data with GET, it just reads the page, without ever touching the actual data. Now that Google is crawling POST pages the Googlebot is no longer a passive observer, it’s actually interacting with — and potentially altering — the websites it crawls.”
In an effort to strengthen its counterterrorism and counterproliferation measures, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency actively monitors over 5 million of the 140 million tweets posted daily.
The CIA monitors Twitter and Facebook daily, regularly briefing President Obama on popular posts and trends.
The McLean, Virginia-based monitoring team — called the “Vengeful Librarians” — tracks news and social media sources, using language to pinpoint origin.
“The CIA team has also used Twitter to monitor reports of real-time events, and can focus on a few Tweeters who are publishing accurate reports,” reports Digital Trends. “The team found that, in these situations, other Twitter users actively stamp out erroneous information when it is reported, which proves the usefulness of Twitter as a primary source for breaking news.”
In a study conducted by the University of British Columbia Vancouver, 102 bots controlled fake Facebook accounts to send friend requests at random, showing that one in five people were willing to accept requests from strangers.
“If that complete stranger had a mutual friend in common, the success rate went up to about 60 percent,” reports Ars Technica.
Once friends, the bots had access to a large amount of personal information: “…for people directly friended by the bots, availability of e-mail went from 2.4 percent (unfriended) to 71.8 (friended) and postal addresses from 0.9 percent to 19.0 percent.” The bots also gained information about the users’ friends.
The study raises interesting points regarding Facebook’s efforts to create privacy and control. “The site has been criticized for making it too hard to secure personal data, and be too liberal with its default policies,” suggest the article. “In response to these criticisms, it has made the privacy and security system easier to use and with more sensible defaults. But these controls are irrelevant if people are willing to add random bots, and hence give away access to their ‘friends-only’ private information.”
The Pew Internet Research Center found that about one-third of adults (18+ with tablets and/or app-enabled phones) use 3 to 5 apps at least once a week.
The new study examines the percentage of consumers who use their downloaded apps on a regular basis and suggests there is a significant range of adoption varying amongst different age groups.
Pew discovered that only 17 percent of phone users and 7 percent of tablet owners indicate they choose not to use apps at all.
“The share of adult cell phone owners who have downloaded an app nearly doubled in the past two years,” reports Lost Remote, “rising from 22 percent in September 2009 to 38 percent in August 2011.”
The most popularly downloaded apps were those that provided updates on news, weather, sports or stocks; helped communication with friends/family; and enabled learning about something users found personally interesting.
“And 43 percent say they’re using apps to watch TV and movies, which is likely dominated by Netflix and Hulu,” indicates the article.
Google announced this week the beta release of Chrome, which “enables users to sync different accounts across multiple computers,” reports ReadWriteWeb. “This allows more than one person to sign into Chrome on a shared computer and have access to all their browser data. It also enables one person to have different Chrome profiles with different email addresses, e.g. work and personal, that can all be accessed from any computer by logging in.”
Chrome already syncs personal settings such as bookmarks, extensions and passwords to a user’s account, but the new beta “makes it possible to use multiple Chrome accounts on any copy of the browser.”
Google acknowledges this feature provides convenience at the cost of privacy.
The Google blog notes that it “isn’t intended to secure your data against other people using your computer,” since “all it takes is a couple of clicks to switch between users.”
“Google, Microsoft, Citigroup, IBM, GE and other top-tier American companies on Thursday urged the United States to fight for trade rules that protect the free flow of information over the Internet,” reports Reuters.
The coalition criticized federal requirements for companies to have their data centers within a country’s borders to provide services. Additionally, the group argued against governments blocking access to services such as Facebook, Twitter, WordPress, and YouTube.
The group says future U.S. trade pacts must “reflect the new realities of the global economy: specifically, the contribution of the Internet toward economic growth, toward job creation and exports,” said Bob Boorstin, director of public policy for Google.
“Even when Internet curbs are intended to support legitimate public interests such as national security of law enforcement, businesses can suffer when those rules are unclear, arbitrary, unevenly applied or more trade restrictive than they need to be to achieve their objectives,” suggests the group’s paper.
“We want the free flow of data just like we want the free flow of goods and services,” said Nuala O’Connor Kelly, chief privacy leader at General Electric. “In the information age, data is our widget.”
Apple now owns C3 Technologies, a company that “creates incredibly high-quality and detailed 3D maps with virtually no input from humans,” reports 9to5Mac.
The acquisition is likely a step towards creating a 3D-enhanced version of iOS Maps, eventually moving away from Google entirely. Apple may also be looking to include traffic data.
The update would probably not come for some time as Apple and Google signed a deal to extend the use of Google Maps. “We’re not expecting anything big in the immediate future but we’d be surprised to see the same old Maps program in iOS 6,” suggests the article. “Expect something much much bigger.”
The post includes some interesting video demonstrations of C3’s impressive capabilities.
Forbes speculates that the rumored future Apple TV would create a demand for single channels, which could potentially break up the cable pricing monopoly.
Rather than paying for a package of a hundred channels, users would pay a la carte for content just as single-channel apps have become popular in the mobile sphere.
“Presumably, Apple wants to disrupt this market the same way the iPod and iTunes made it easier for consumers to buy music, and the way the iPhone is slowly moving the cellular industry to data plans over voice plans (see: iMessage, Facetime),” suggests the article.
Providers such as Time Warner Cable, Optimum and DirecTV already have apps for live streaming of channels. And ESPN, CNN and Major League Baseball have their own apps.
“[Cable providers] might consent to separate channel apps as long as each still requires an overall subscription…that would certainly put a crimp in [Apple’s] potential plans to revolutionize television,” explains Forbes. “And if Apple provides incentives for channels to go it alone, the fight could be massive.”
A recent study by EyeTrackshop showed that Apple’s iPhone 4S and iPad 2 “drew more glances and held people’s attention longer than Google Android devices from Amazon, HTC, Motorola and Samsung,” reports Forbes.
The study showed participants a picture of six smartphones and five tablets. EyeTrackshop’s software tracked where subjects’ eyes went, in what order and how long, using webcams.
“EyeTrackshop said the results equate to respondents dwelling on the iPhone 4S 42 percent longer than the other phones and on the iPad 138 percent longer than the other tablets.”
Additionally, a follow-up survey indicated that 40 percent found the iPhone most visually appealing; for tablets, 35 percent for the iPad; and disregarding price, 47 percent said they would buy the iPhone and 48 percent preferred the iPad to other tablets.
In a quiet acquisition deal, Amazon is purchasing Yap, a speech-to-text startup that may find its voice recognition technology in future Kindle products.
