At a Santa Monica event Thursday, Amazon revealed a new Kindle Fire HD, an updated version of the original Kindle Fire and a self-lighting Kindle e-reader, much like the rival Nook e-reader from Barnes & Noble.
The new 7-inch Kindle Fire HD with Wi-Fi, stereo speakers, dual antennas and a front facing camera will sell for $199. The updated version of the original Fire will sell for $159 — down from $199 — and is set to ship on September 14.
The 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HD will be available November 20 starting at $299, while the 4G version starts at $499. Specs on all models can be found in the Amazon press release.
“We’re taking on the most popular price point for a tablet, $499, but doubling the storage and incredibly, adding ultra-fast 4G LTE wireless,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO. “Kindle Fire HD is not only the most-advanced hardware, it’s also a service. When combined with our enormous content ecosystem, unmatched cross-platform interoperability and standard-setting customer service, we hope people will agree that Kindle Fire HD is the best high-end tablet anywhere, at any price.”
“The company showed off some new software, such as one measuring tablet usage for children and a voice-recognition technology for book reading,” reports the Wall Street Journal. “It will also release eight new serialized novels for $1.99 each under a new unit called Kindle Serials.”
“Like last year’s cheapest Kindle e-reader, all three new models — that’s the Fire, the HD 7, and the HD 8.9 — will display Amazon’s ‘Special Offers’ promotions and advertisements on their lock screens,” notes The Verge. “Unlike the low-end Kindle, however, Amazon isn’t offering the devices in more expensive, ad-free models, nor is it making mention of any way to opt out for a fee.”
“Google has extended its Patent Search facility to include European patents and has added a Prior Art facility,” reports I Programmer. “With the patent war over Android going on, one has to wonder whether this was to meet an in-house need.”
Google’s Patent Search has been available for U.S. patents since 2006. Its traffic has recently doubled.
“Jon Orwant, the leader of Google’s Patent Search team, says, ‘People are thinking about patents a whole lot more’ and thinks this trend is ‘correlated’ to interest in the various high-stakes mobile patent lawsuits,” notes the post.
Google’s partnership with the European Patent Office “enables Google to improve its machine learning technology for technical language and in return Google provides its improved translation service free of charge to the EPO.”
The Prior Art facility will be of value to inventors and the legal profession. “In order to be granted a patent the inventor has to establish that it is a novel idea — and in the current litigious environment companies and their lawyers might want to show that patents should not have been granted,” suggests the post.
Analyst and journalist Rakesh Agrawal predicted a year ago that the Groupon business model would not be successful. Dismal second quarter numbers suggest he may have been right.
As Agrawal wrote then and Slate now summarizes: “Groupon was riding high because its most important constituency — the small businesses who slashed their prices to entice Groupon’s customers — was getting ripped off.”
“Groupon is not an Internet marketing business so much as it is the equivalent of a loan sharking business,” wrote Agrawal in an editorial from June 2011.
The small business has to agree to a reduced price on its product or service, along with agreeing to provide Groupon with an often 50 percent chunk of the proceeds.
“For instance, if my fast-food shack normally sells a burger-and-shake combo for $10, Groupon will want me to offer it for $5, and then take half of the $5 sale — so I’ve just sold $10 of merchandise for $2.50,” explains Slate.
Businesses were attracted to the pitch because of the promise of being paid their cut immediately, along with the proposed exposure that would have customers returning again in the future, at full price. But many owners never considered that these deal-hungry consumers would never come in again.
For some businesses, it can work, like new companies, or those offering long-term deals or ones that have had previous success with Groupon.
“Agrawal sees this as evidence that Groupon’s merchant base is narrowing down to just the businesses that can do well with such promotions,” notes the article. “That’s certainly good for the small business community, but it isn’t good for Groupon, which sold itself as a company with limitless growth potential.”
Four years ago, researchers at IBM created Watson, the computer that went on to beat two “Jeopardy!” champions at their own game.
“Now they’re trying to figure out how to get those capabilities into the phone in your pocket,” the San Francisco Chronicle writes.
Bernie Meyerson, the vice president of innovation at IBM, “envisions a voice-activated Watson that answers questions, like a supercharged version of Apple’s Siri personal assistant,” according to the article.
Beyond its winning performance on “Jeopardy!”, Watson’s system has worked on crunching financial data for Citigroup Inc. and cancer data for WellPoint Inc.
The next version is to be called Watson 2.0 and is aiming for the mobile market. “IBM expects to generate billions in sales by putting Watson to work in finance, health care, telecommunications and other areas,” notes the article.
However, there’s a lot of work to be done before Watson could be ready for public consumption, including voice and image recognition.
Apple has filed a patent titled “Life Streaming,” intended to give consumers the ability to use a “life recorder” to easily record and publish every day experiences using both video and audio components.
“A life recorder is a recording device that continuously captures life experiences, including unanticipated life experiences, in video and/or audio recordings,” details a post on the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office website.
Without having to even hit record, users could capture video, audio and/or photos.
Since most smartphones are equipped with audio, video and photography features, the life recorder could help better utilize these devices by recording, publishing and sharing as a live feed.
“By indexing and storing life recordings, a life recorder may search for and acquire life recordings generated by itself or another life recorder, thereby allowing life experiences to be shared minutes or even years later,” notes the abstract.
“In some embodiments, recordings generated by a life recorder may be analyzed in real-time and automatically pushed to one or more target devices. The ability to automatically and instantaneously push life recordings as live feeds to one or more target devices allows friends and family to experience one’s life experience in real-time.”
Sources suggest Barnes & Noble will unveil a new Nook tablet at a press conference later this month. The device could be running on Windows 8.
“The Nook Color was Barnes & Noble’s answer to the 7-inch tablet, but the device never quite left its roots as an e-reader,” reports Digital Trends. “According to our source, who had discussed the to-be-announced Nook with a Microsoft employee close to the matter, that may change.”
“The existing Nook tablet’s selling point has been the ease of its use as an e-reader, but the new Nook may have a renewed focus on tablet features,” notes the post. “If that’s the case, Barnes & Noble clearly has its sights set on competing more aggressively with the Amazon Fire, Google’s Galaxy Nexus 7 and the to-be-released iPad mini.”
If the history of earlier Barnes & Noble tablet releases is any indication, we should expect to see the new Nook on shelves somewhere in the two months prior to the holiday season.
“With Microsoft’s $605 million investment in Barnes & Noble in exchange for a 17.6 percent stake in a subsidiary, the question that looms is whether the new tablet would scrap the Android OS and run Windows 8,” concludes Digital Trends. “From what we’ve heard, we’re more inclined to believe that the unannounced Nook will run on Windows 8, as many have already speculated.”
At a press event in New York yesterday, Nokia unveiled its new Windows Phone 8 device, the Lumia 920.
“With a dual-core 1.5GHz Snapdragon S4 CPU (the same one that drives the current U.S. supremos, the HTC One X and Galaxy S III), a ‘better than HD’ 1,280 x 768 LCD display, PureView imaging (albeit with only eight megapixels), NFC capabilities, 2,000mAh battery with wireless charging and a next-gen Redmond-baked OS, this handset’s a big-break proposition for the flailing Finnish company; an attempt to up the ante and compete on even ground,” reports Engadget.
Pricing and release details are expected by Q4. The post includes a full hands-on review, slideshow of images and 5-minute video report.
In a related story from CNET, Nokia is bringing all kinds of music — from the New York Philharmonic to Lady Gaga — to U.S. Lumia owners for free through its new Nokia Music app.
Music experts created over 150 different playlists for the app. “Users can also scour a collection of millions of songs to generate their own playlists based on their favorite music and artists. And though the service is designed for streaming, Lumia owners can listen to music offline via their special playlists,” CNET reports.
Lumia users can use the free app to download and play tracks from Nokia’s MP3 store, which offers over 15 million songs. The app’s Gig Finder notes the user’s location to find local concerts and shows; users can even buy tickets and get directions to events.
Amazon has announced a multiyear licensing deal with Epix that will provide popular films from Paramount and Lionsgate through Amazon’s streaming service.
“Epix is owned by Lions Gate Entertainment, Viacom Inc.’s Paramount Pictures and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc., so a deal with Epix amounts to a basket of entertainment from all the studios,” reports the Wall Street Journal.
The move is expected to help Amazon compete with the likes of Netflix, which recently ended its exclusive deal with Epix.
“We are investing hundreds of millions of dollars to expand the Prime Instant Video library for our customers. We have now more than doubled this selection of movies and TV episodes to over 25,000 titles in just under a year,” said Bill Carr, VP of video and music at Amazon.
“That is still a far cry from the roughly 50,000 shows and movies Netflix is estimated to have, and the more than 58,400 videos Hulu offers its subscribers,” notes the article.
Last year saw the lowest number of movie tickets sold since 1995, coming in at 1.3 billion. That summer, only 543 million movie tickets sold, compared to the 629 million during the summer ten years ago.
Although 2012 has seen slightly better attendance and revenue than 2011, only an estimated 529 million tickets were sold this summer, reports TIME.
“That’s 100 million fewer tickets,” Exhibitor Relation’s Jeff Bock told USA Today in a related article. “That’s a really troubling number for the industry if you look at it that way, which reflects how the movie business is really doing.”
“While some experts say that ‘rising ticket prices mask attendance drops,’ there’s also an argument to be made that attendance drops have come directly as a result of rising ticket prices,” notes TIME.
“Nonetheless, despite declining attendance, and the obvious cause-effect in which raising prices will decrease attendance further, plenty of analysts have suggested that jacking up ticket prices is the solution for the struggling movie business.”
The article suggests that making better movies could help the issue. Social media has allowed people to quickly determine if a movie is worth seeing, and the high ticket prices make viewers much more selective. Good movies would validate spending the money on tickets, especially for expensive 3D.
Many small television stations are unprofitable or bankrupt, unable to compete with cable and the Internet. Some investors are hoping to flip these failing stations by taking them over and selling their airwaves at premium prices.
The Federal Communications Commission is planning an incentive auction to “reclaim spectrum for use by wireless phone companies and other bidders,” in order to meet expanding demand for wireless broadband services, reports the Wall Street Journal.
Private investors are planning small TV station purchases in major markets where the demand for spectrum is high. When the FCC auction comes — which may not even begin until 2022 — these investors hope to sell off airwaves at a significant profit.
“While the private-equity funds are buying stations for as little as several million dollars, observers say their value could be many times higher once the FCC auction gets under way,” the article states. “The speculative buying is providing an opportunity to small-station owners who want to cash out but don’t want to wait for the auction, which could be years away.”
For investors, buying the stations could be “a big payday,” says Marci Ryvicker, a cable and media analyst at Wells Fargo. “But there’s no guarantee.”
Tribeca Film released a new documentary this weekend in New York and Seattle. Directed by Chris Kenneally and narrated by Keanu Reeves, “Side by Side” examines the impact of digital technology on today’s moviemaking.
“For a film geek this movie is absolute heaven, a dream symposium in which directors, cinematographers, editors and a few actors gather to opine on the details of their craft,” writes A. O. Scott in his New York Times review. “It is worth a year of film school and at least 1,000 hours of DVD bonus commentary.”
Scott suggests the film is not merely “pro-digital propaganda,” but features a balance of tech enthusiasts and skeptics, while “the discourse tilts toward triumphalism.”
“Not only do you get to sit at the feet of Martin Scorsese, Steven Soderbergh, Christopher Nolan and other heroes of modern cinema,” he writes. “You also get to check out the latest high-definition cameras from Panavision, Arriflex, Canon and Red.”
Scott notes the importance of discovery, experimentation and invention as part of filmmaking’s history and how crucial it has been for filmmakers to adapt to big changes over time including “the arrival of sound, of color, of wide-screen, of television.”
The film addresses both sides of arguments involving digital utopianism, instantly available dailies, and advances in editing and color timing.
Scott’s only criticism: “Kenneally might have paid more attention to the world beyond Hollywood, and also to the impact of digital technology on lower-budget, independent filmmaking and on restoration, but within the parameters it defines, this film does an excellent job of presenting complex material in an enlightening and exciting manner.”
“What it cannot do is provide the last word on the digital revolution in movies, since the revolution is in its early stages,” concludes Scott. “For now the mix of agnosticism and optimism — of respect for the old and enthusiasm for the new — seems reasonable. But we will have to wait for the sequel to know for sure.”
SecurityWeek writes of a “new malware intelligence system developed at Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI)” that’s “helping government agencies and private companies share threat intelligence and work together to understand attacks.”
The system is called Titan and allows “member organizations to submit threat data and to collaborate on malware analysis and classification,” according to the article.
The data is contributed anonymously. “You are asking people to submit information about targeted attacks, so anonymity is built-in to the platform,” says Chris Smoak, project leader and branch head for malicious software analysis at GTRI’s Cyber Technology and Information Security Lab.
According to Smoak, Titan can do more than the average malware detector like VirusTotal.
“Generally speaking, people can upload suspicious files to VirusTotal to find out if it is malicious, and whether existing security tools can detect it,” explains SecurityWeek. “However, there is no way for VirusTotal to look at two variants of malware and correlate it to say they are the same, while Titan can do that, Smoak said.”
The system has been in public beta since May collecting data from members across the industry including government agencies. “There is no push to add new members for the remainder of the beta period, Smoak said. The system will be expected to be final in ‘a few weeks,’ at which point the platform will likely be expanded to add more.”
In his Dashes.com blog, entrepreneur and tech writer Anil Dash suggests that Web pages are outdated, and cites the popularity of Facebook, Twitter, Gmail and Tumblr as evidence of people’s preference to streams of data rather than Web pages.
Effective streams of data allow for customization. Sometimes customization means choosing friends on Facebook or who to follow on Twitter. Other times customization means filtering a writer’s stories by topic, and only receiving these types of stories within a stream.
One reason Web pages still persist is because advertising operates on a page-view model. Dash suggests in-stream advertisements that deal with the user’s interests are not only more effective, but do not stop the flow of reading and will not disturb the reader as much.
Dash concludes that effective Web publishers should adopt a more fluid style. He suggests trusting “readers to know how to scroll down and skim across a simple stream, since that’s what they’re already doing all day on the Web.”
“Pay attention to the fact that all the links you click on Twitter, on Facebook, on Pinterest, all take you to out of the simple flow of those apps and into a jarring, cluttered experience where the most appealing option is the back button,” he notes. “Stop being one of those dead-end experiences and start being more like what users have repeatedly demonstrated they prefer.”
Dash wants publishers to give readers “the chance to customize those streams to include (or exclude!) just the content they want.”
“Google has decided to pull the plug on Google TV Ads, its five-year attempt to convert the cable and broadcast TV industry into selling its available ad inventory on an online ad exchange,” reports Business Insider.
The announcement arrives amidst rumors that Google is considering a sale of its Motorola Mobility set-top box unit.
Google TV is not affected, and the company continues its Google Fiber efforts, which delivers high-speed Internet access (and possibly pay TV) to early users in Kansas City.
“We’ve made the hard decision to close our TV Ads product over the next few months and move the team to other areas at Google,” explains Shishir Mehrotra, VP of product, YouTube/video. “We’ll be doubling down on video solutions for our clients (like YouTube, AdWords for Video, and ad serving tools for Web video publishers). We also see opportunities to help users access Web content on their TV screens, through products like Google TV.”
“The death of Google TV Ads is a huge victory for the broadcast and cable networks, who are fighting an epic war against the Web, which threatens to turn traditional TV viewing into the newspaper business of the 21st Century,” suggests the article.
“Google TV Ads was the third major attempt to start an online electronic exchange for TV ads, all of which have been rendered extinct by cable and network TV’s refusal to allow any programming inventory to be sold on them.”
Twitter co-founder Biz Stone is among the ten celebrities who will be competing in Canon’s Project Imaginat10n initiative — a fresh new take on the short film competition.
The directors (including Jamie Foxx, James Murphy and Eva Longoria) will gain inspiration from fan submitted photos. Photo categories include “setting, time, character, mood, backstory, relationship, goal, obstacle, the unknown and an unannounced 10th theme,” reports Wired.
The celebrities will work with director Ron Howard and will be partnered with professional production teams.
“The concept behind Project Imaginat10n showcases the power still images can have on narrative storytelling, but more importantly, it demonstrates there are no limits with creativity, and sources of inspiration can come from anyone or anything,” Howard explained in a statement. “I’m thrilled to work with this talented group of new directors… to help them on this creative journey.”
Stone worked as an artist before founding Twitter, and hopes his combination of talents will help him succeed in the competition.
“When you’re building software that millions of people use at the same time, you really have to be prepared in advance,” he explains. “I still think of myself as an artist and maybe the way that I express myself now is by creating platforms for millions of others to express themselves… This project allows me to get right in to the more traditional definition of the word.”
At a Santa Monica event Thursday, Amazon revealed a new Kindle Fire HD, an updated version of the original Kindle Fire and a self-lighting Kindle e-reader, much like the rival Nook e-reader from Barnes & Noble.
