Twitter has released its Bootstrap platform to better compete in the ever-changing app market and renew its ongoing efforts with developers.
The platform will provide a set of CSS and HTML tools for creating apps.
“At its core, Bootstrap is simply CSS, but built with Less, an easy-to-use pre-processor that provides more power and flexibility than standard CSS,” reports Digital Trends. “With Less, a range of features like nested declarations, variables, mixins, operations, and color functions become available.”
“Bootstrap remains very easy to implement; just drop it in your code and go. Compiling Less can be accomplished via Javascript, an unofficial Mac application, or via Node.js,” explains Twitter via its blog post. “Second, once complied, Bootstrap contains nothing but CSS, meaning there are no superfluous images, Flash, or Javascript. All that remains is simple and powerful CSS for your web development needs.”
Japanese R&D firm KDDI Labs announced it has developed 3D audio technology that enables people to change their listening position in a 3D space.
“Multiple microphones are used to record the audio and a unique method of audio signal processing, called virtual sound source reproduction, is used to map out the sound in a virtual 3D space in real time,” explains Akihabara News. “This can generate an unlimited number of listening positions, even in locations where there are no microphones. This technology also lets you change where sounds come from or remove them from the 3D space altogether.”
KDDI Labs says it has made the large database required to synthesize 3D audio much smaller (down to a few hundred kilobytes in size) so that the technology can be used for mobile devices such as smartphones.
According to KDDI Labs: “For example, suppose you’re watching a band on screen, and you want to get close to the guitar. As you get nearer to the guitar, the sound of the guitar gets much louder. The effect we’ve achieved now is that, if you move, for example, left from that position past the vocalist, the sound moves left. Another thing you can do with this technology is to change the position of instruments. So you can make the vocalist sound further away, and the guitar closer. Specifically, in music promotion videos, we’d like to enable users to get close to their favorite instrument, or eliminate just the vocals, and to do these things on a smartphone or cellphone.”
KDDI is developing an application that runs on a Web browser with hopes of commercializing the technology. The report includes a video demo.
As part of its partnership with the Original iPhone Film Festival, Red Giant Software has dropped the cost of its $2.99 “Movie Looks HD” app for a limited time.
According to Hand Held Hollywood, the app will be available for free via Apple’s App Store from August 23-September 1.
Movie Looks HD is a universal app capable of adding a professional finish to iPhone footage, providing services such as color correction using multi-layer color grading.
“If you haven’t tried Movie Looks HD yet, it’s an awesome universal app, capable of adding a professional, film-like finish to your iPhone footage,” reports HHH. “If you’re familiar with Red Giant’s line of ‘Magic Bullet’ plug-ins, then you already know what I’m talking about.”
The Original iPhone Film Festival asks aspiring filmmakers to shoot, edit and upload films with an iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad 2 (the submission deadline is September 30). According to the festival’s site: “We’ve recruited a panel of experienced industry professionals from the worlds of advertising, film and television to watch what you come up with. They will pick their favorites and we’ll give away some cool prizes.”
Sony is developing special subtitle-enabled glasses that could be in UK movie theaters as early as next year.
According to the BBC, one in six people have some level of deafness and are not being served well by the movie industry. In fact, many film fans with hearing issues wait for films to be released on DVD when subtitles are available.
“What we do is put the closed captions or the subtitles onto the screen of the glasses so it’s super-imposed on the cinema screen, [making it look] like the actual subtitles are on the cinema screen,” explains Tim Potter of Sony.
“The good thing about them is that you’re not refocusing. It doesn’t feel like the words are really near and the screen is far away. It feels like they’re together,” said test subject Charlie Swinbourne, who is hard of hearing.
“It was a great experience,” he added. “I think it’s a massive opportunity to improve deaf people’s lives and I think there’s great hope that this would give us a cinema-going future.”
If the glasses prove popular in the UK, we should expect to see them in wider availability in the near future.
Hollywood Suite is a new video-on-demand service with plans to launch in Canada this November.
Available via cable, the Internet and satellite TV, the service will offer 450 titles per month in HD from MGM, Warner Bros. and others.
The Toronto-based platform will also feature independent action, romance and relationship films.
According to Home Media Magazine: “Movie titles, subscription fees and rental programs, which are expected to rival rates charged by Netflix, will be announced closer to launch date, according to industry veteran Jay Switzer, co-founder of Hollywood Suite.”
“These channels are designed to meet the strong audience demand for movies across all platforms and support Canada’s television service providers,” Switzer said.
MagAppZine is a DIY app-publishing platform designed to lower the cost for publishers looking to create an application for the Apple App Store.
Starting next month, the 2.0 version will offer PDF uploads, website viewing and in-app sales of multiple issues (at a significant price drop).
“Co-founder Paul Canetti spent three years at Apple before leaving to launch a series of iOS training and development businesses,” reports ReadWriteWeb. “Then he started MagAppZine last July. It’s a simple looking publishing platform that democratizes access to publishing online — a little like blogging but for an App Store world.”
“Our most basic app package launched in April of this year,” explains Canetti, “but in September we are re-launching MagAppZine 2.0, which will include the new links and multimedia, an InDesign tool, and integration with Apple’s upcoming Newsstand feature. We’re also rolling out a new tiered monthly pricing structure that has plans starting at $99 a month.”
Can Research In Motion turn around waning sales of its BlackBerry smartphones by adding the ability to run Android apps?
Rumors suggest that the next generation of BlackBerry phones, to be released during the first half of next year, could be designed to run Android apps.
Bloomberg cites “three people familiar with the plan” who suggest RIM is building smartphones now that will use its new QNX software. Phones with the new software will be able to run Android apps, the sources claim.
“It has to be said, [BlackBerry] App World looks a bit sorry for itself when compared to Google’s Android Market,” reports Digital Trends. “App World currently has around 40,000 apps available for download. If next year’s phones are able to run Android apps, that’ll open up owners of the new BlackBerry devices to a further quarter of a million. If BlackBerry can create some unique, feature-rich phones in the coming months, that may well cause consumers to pay RIM’s devices some serious attention.”
In a case that indicates the U.S. government will hold websites liable for any illegal advertisements shown on their pages, Google settled its case over illegal online pharmacy ads by paying a $500 million fine.
The investigation (first revealed in May) led to this week’s settlement that has reportedly decreased Google’s quarterly profits by 22 percent.
“The Department of Justice will continue to hold accountable companies who in their bid for profits violate federal law and put at risk the health and safety of American consumers,” said Deputy Attorney General James M. Cole. “This settlement ensures that Google will reform its improper advertising practices with regard to these pharmacies while paying one of the largest financial forfeiture penalties in history.”
“Obviously, such a decision has far-reaching consequences beyond those of just the illegal pharmacies, as Google faces threats from a number of illegal and malicious entities who want to leverage its search engine to expose unsuspecting users to their ads,” reports TechCrunch. “Traditionally, Google itself has filed lawsuits against advertisers it suspected of breaking its rules, but this has clearly not been enough of a deterrent.”
Hollywood continues its frustration with the Chinese government’s limits on how many imported movies can play in its theaters in addition to how box office receipts are shared. Now, prominent American film producers are seeking change through ambitious deals that provide alternative routes into China’s market.
Success with the Chinese may prove crucial. With traditional distribution models such as DVD sales presently slumping, China could become a much-needed revenue source.
“It’s not about détente, it’s about making money,” suggests the Los Angeles Times. “The partnerships give the American firms better access to the country’s growing movie market.”
According to the LA Times report: “China’s box-office receipts surged 64 percent last year to a record $1.5 billion, and they will likely bring in about $2 billion in ticket sales this year. By the end of the decade, industry experts predict China will grow from the world’s No. 5 movie market to No. 1.”
Although lobbyists and the World Trade Organization have been unsuccessful in getting the Chinese to relax import restrictions, smaller American film companies such as Legendary and Relativity are partnering with Chinese-based companies in co-production and exhibition deals. Through the partnerships, companies are not subject to restrictions and find they can dramatically improve upon percentage of box office receipts.
Major Hollywood studios have not formed long-term partnerships to co-produce with Chinese firms, but have discovered other alternatives, such as making Mandarin-language productions in China and pushing digital product, including 3D: “To boost the rollout of high-tech projectors in the country’s theaters, China in 2007 began allowing several pictures per year into the country on a revenue-share basis if they played only in digital theaters.”
The ultimate goal is to eliminate the restrictions, but for the time being Hollywood is finding ways to work around them.
Twitter is introducing user galleries that integrate with third-party services such as TwitPic, Instagram and yFrog to display a user’s 100 most recent photo tweets.
This is the first feature Twitter has built upon its recently-launched native image sharing, launched earlier this summer.
“We think the user galleries feature will be good for advertisers, who now have greater incentive to include cool pictures in their tweets,” explains Matt Graves, Twitter’s director of communications.
ReadWriteWeb reports: “…considering Twitter’s need to monetize, bringing multimedia in-house and attracting more users to the website, rather than third-party clients, could be key to Twitter’s future business plans.”
Joining other airlines in similar efforts, British Airways will trial the use of iPads with its cabin crews to improve customer service, increase efficiency and cut back on paper. (ETCentric reported in May that Alaskan Airlines became the first U.S. carrier to replace its flight manuals with Apple’s popular tablet.)
If the British Airways trial proves successful, senior crew members will be given tablets in the coming months.
“It gives the cabin crew a whole library of information at their fingertips including timetables, safety manuals and customer service updates,” explains the press release. “It also means any issues can be logged with ground-based colleagues around the network prior to departure so solutions can be delivered while the flight is airborne.”
In related news, United Continental has issued iPads to 11,000 of its pilots in its efforts to convert to paperless cockpits.
According to MarketWatch: “…the move saves 16 million sheets of paper and 326,000 gallons in fuel because of the lighter weight.”
Will we see tablets used for automated publishing systems in other professions?
A federal judge has ruled that online music services that host tracks in the cloud are not liable if that music has been acquired illegally by customers. ETCentric reported earlier this week that this may seem like a hollow victory for the record labels. However, a green light for online music locker services also provides some legal certainty for the likes of Apple, Google and Amazon.
“The judgement, by U.S. District Judge William Pauley, came in a case involving EMI and fourteen other record companies and music publishers, who had sued the service MP3tunes,” reports MacUser. “Judge Pauley explained that MP3tunes and its chief executive, Michael Robertson, had not breached the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in allowing downloads.”
“This is a huge victory. Users can still download songs from publicly available websites, and store them without a separate license fee, so long as MP3tunes complies with takedown notices,” says Greg Gulia, representing MP3tunes and Robertson.
This ruling should also come as good news to those companies investing in cloud-based music services. For example, Apple’s iTunes Match is due in the U.S. later this year. According to MacUser: “It will scan users’ iTunes libraries and allow them to access versions of tracks in their library, but not purchased from iTunes, online in iCloud. Tracks purchased in iTunes are automatically available to computers and mobile devices associated with an iTunes account. If no match is found, users will be able to upload the track themselves.”
Sports bars have become venues for live Internet videogame matches between professional gamers.
The events attract a large numbers of gaming fans that have already been watching alone at home, but are attracted to the energy and screams of other fans. One tournament in July attracted some 85,000 online viewers via Twitch.tv.
“This summer, ‘Starcraft II’ has become the newest barroom spectator sport,” according to The Wall Street Journal. “Fans organize so-called Barcraft events, taking over pubs and bistros from Honolulu to Florida and switching big-screen TV sets to Internet broadcasts of professional game matches happening often thousands of miles away.”
The “Starcraft” franchise is very popular in Korea, where two cable stations provide dedicated coverage of “Starcraft II” (in addition to “Halo,” “Counter-Strike” and “Call of Duty”). Fervor for public viewings is spilling into the U.S. for the first time.
“This feels like the World Cup,” said one Barcraft attendee recently in San Francisco. “You experience the energy and screams of everyone around you when a player makes an amazing play.”
Ford and Toyota announced this week they will work together on the development of standards for Internet connectivity in their vehicles.
The collaboration will address Bluetooth and Wi-Fi use, in addition to back-end networking infrastructure for in-vehicle data services.
“Standards will be crucial to enable car companies to work with third party developers, device makers, cell phone companies and Internet companies to create applications that are actually compelling to drivers,” reports GigaOM. “Drivers will want to move their data, digital entertainment and Internet services from their homes and cell phones to their cars, and this will rely on a standardized format.”
Ford is developing related technology beyond digital entertainment and basic Internet services, with the goal of enabling vehicles to wirelessly communicate in an effort to reduce crashes and fuel consumption.
The number of vehicles worldwide with Internet radio service is projected to grow from 168,000 in 2010 to 24 million in 2018, according to IHS iSuppli.
U.S. sales alone are expected to move from 149,000 to 10.9 million during the same period.
“The next several years will see an explosion in the use of in-vehicle apps in cars, driven by booming shipments of automobiles employing head units designed to integrate Cloud-based content,” says IHS. “These apps, whether built into cars or provided via connected mobile devices like smartphones, will provide a range of infotainment, entertainment, remote diagnostics and navigation services. Internet radio is expected to lead the in-vehicle app revolution.”
The study concludes that the following are currently driving demand: Pandora, iHeartRadio, Slacker and Spotify (and in the Cloud: Apple’s iCloud, Google Music and Amazon’s Cloud Drive).
