The Engadget editorial team offers some interesting comments in an extensive post that takes a close look at Windows Phone 8 and its possibilities. The following are some of the highlights:
“Rather tragically, there’s no upgrade path from any current Windows Phone device (the 7.8 stopgap notwithstanding). Your hot new cerulean blue Lumia 900? It’ll be obsolete this fall.”
“None of the handsets sold between today and the release of WP8 (this fall) will be upgraded, and none of the devices sold between now and then will run Windows Phone 8 apps… That may be the right thing to do for the platform’s future, but it’s sure going to sting for current users who, it must be said, are left feeling a bit like beta testers.”
“Microsoft ran down my list of complaints about Windows Phone and put a big red line through each of them. High-res screens, multi-core support, more homescreen customization and a seriously modern browser. All-in-all, Windows Phone 8 is shaping up to be a beastly update to the most visually appealing mobile OS on the block.”
“It’s common knowledge at this point that the availability of quality apps plays a huge part in the failure or success of a mobile platform, and the ‘Shared Windows Core’ provides just what’s needed to get more devs cooking up apps for WP8.”
“Unfortunately for Microsoft, balking a bit at the business space allowed Android and iOS time to offer up their own solutions. But Redmond’s got a long history of enterprise support to fall back on, and this slew of new features certainly looks promising with regards to Window Phone’s place in the business space.”
“Because of Windows’ momentum and massive market share, there will be plenty of people writing software for Windows 8, and with WP8, Microsoft just turned every one of those folks into developers for its mobile platform. In short, this, at the very least, should help Microsoft close the app gap, and it has the potential to eventually vault Windows Phone Marketplace ahead of its competition from Cupertino and Mountain View — and that bodes well for Windows Phone’s future.”
Microsoft announced ambitious plans for its Windows Phone 8 operating system at a sneak peek event on Wednesday.
The biggest take-away is that for the first time there will be one software platform — Windows 8 — across desktops, laptops, tablets and phones. Developers will be able to create apps that run across platforms, reports Engadget.
Windows 8 phones will support multi-core processors (up to 64), three screen resolutions (800 x 480, 1280 x 720 [16:9], and 1280 x 768), NFC for payments and SD cards. Nokia Maps is built in and includes use offline.
Unfortunately, current phones running Windows Phone will not be able to run Windows Phone 8. However, according to AllThingsD: “Microsoft is planning an update for existing devices that will bring one key feature of Windows Phone 8 — the more customizable Start screen. That update, known as Windows Phone 7.8, will be available for the current crop of Windows Phones from Nokia, HTC and Samsung.”
Microsoft is also promising enterprise-level support and security including encryption, secure booting, and the ability to deploy and manage apps.
The average person receives 63,000 words of information daily (about the length of a novel) from emails, tweets, Facebook updates and other assorted avenues.
Cue, formerly named Greplin, is an iPhone app that seeks to manage that data flow so you don’t have to remember where you saw something important or manually pull together related information.
The vision of its co-founders “is for Cue to be the first thing you check in the morning and the app you return to throughout the day to ‘find out what’s next,’ as the tagline puts it,” reports Businessweek.
You use Cue’s calendar to see what’s next in your schedule. The app pulls info from up to 26 data sources including email, Facebook, Salesforce, Yammer, and others to gather information on, for example, your meeting attendees’ contact information, Facebook updates from them, tweets they posted, addresses, etc.
The app can get smarter over time. It recognizes flight reservations, movie ticket confirmations and package deliveries so that it can automatically enter them on your calendar.
Interestingly, Robby Walker, co-founder and CTO of Greplin, feels that one day they may have to listen in on your conversations so they can catalog them for searching.
Turn-by-turn direction app Waze has expanded its features to include real-time gas prices in a new update. Waze will also integrate discounts at participating locations.
Waze boasts 19 million users across iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Android, and Symbian phone platforms.
The app offers live traffic data and directions. “Crowdsourced entirely from its users, the data makes Waze a far more useful alternative to standalone GPS units,” reports VentureBeat.
By adding gas information to its features, Waze could potentially lure customers from cheap fuel apps such as Gas Buddy and Fuel Finder.
“Waze has also finally added the ability to use waypoints on your trips, allowing you to plot more than one location for a single journey,” notes the post. “The company also has brought its nifty voice control feature to Android phones with this latest update.”
Software start-up Magnifis has announced the release of Robin, a voice-activated mobile assistant for Android devices.
“Robin is like a mashup of Siri and Waze. It’s a voice-controlled mobile app designed for drivers to use in their cars. Like Waze, it’s motion-activated rather than button-activated, which is easier for complying with distracted driving laws and using on the road, and it can proactively warn you about upcoming traffic or speed traps,” details CNET.
However, the post suggests that Robin is not a Siri-killer just yet, as Siri has the ability to send “text messages and play music, making it a true voice-activated mobile assistant,” while Robin focuses mostly on driving-related tasks such as learning the driving schedules and habits of the user.
Robin is still in beta, and available for free at the Google Play store.
A new update to the My Xbox Live app allows users to control their Xbox 360 gaming console using an iPhone.
Although the iOS app is available for the iPod touch and iPad, this specific feature only works on the iPhone.
To access the feature, users must connect their Xbox 360 and iPhone to the same Wi-Fi network. Users must then connect their iPhone to the Xbox 360 via the Console Settings menu.
Once connected, the app allows users to “navigate through the Xbox menu using the onscreen buttons on your iPhone,” reports CNET. “Functionality really doesn’t go beyond that, but it might be easier to scroll through the Xbox’s various media apps and content delivery portals this way.”
The post includes step-by-step instructions and a video tutorial. Once the video plays through, a second video report offers additional details regarding the My Xbox Live app.
Spotify’s new app update allows users to access Spotify Radio on iOS devices for free. Previously, the recommendation-based application was only available on mobile for Spotify Premium subscribers.
Spotify Radio is similar to Pandora and Slacker in that it allows users to “pick a song, album, artist, or playlist, and build a radio station using it.” Spotify then “makes recommendations based on millions of hours of user data combined with data based on playlists users create — since playlists are already places where users organize similar content,” reports The Verge.
The app will employ a thumbs up and thumbs down rating service. The ratings will not apply to all playlists, but rather the currently playing playlist only, since “people often create playlists for specific moods.”
Inter-device functionality allows users to start a playlist on an iPad and continue listening on an iPhone. Social functionality enables songs and playlists to integrate with friends’ Facebook streams.
The updated app will be available in the next few days for all users in the United States, and to Premium subscribers internationally.
It is not yet available on Android, but according to Spotify: “we think it’s core to the mobile experience, and we’re looking to bring it to all of the major platforms in due time.”
Sites like Vevo and YouTube have added revitalization to the music video business. Those sites pay fees to major music publishing companies for music videos, but according to CNET, the independent publishers have been left out.
On Tuesday, the National Music Publishers Association announced that it’s reached a “new model agreement” with Universal Music Group that aims to make sure indie publishers get their fair share.
“David Israelite, chief executive of the NMPA, told CNET this morning that the deal with Universal calls for the label to pay indie publishers directly and is the first of its kind with one of the top four record companies,” explains the post. “He said Vevo, the Web music video service that offers music from three of the four major labels, announced that it generated $150 million in revenue last year and has its sights on topping the $1 billion mark in coming years.”
Israelite also stated the deal is retroactive to 2008 and that negotiations with other major labels outside of Universal are in the works.
SoundExchange, a nonprofit group that processes payments for online streams, reports it has now paid over $1 billion to artists and record companies since 2000.
Although SoundExchange represents a relatively small stream of revenue for most record companies, it is increasingly making an impact.
“The way the industry is going, it is about multiple revenue streams, not just one,” explains SoundExchange president Michael Huppe, adding that digital music streams can help record companies remain profitable as traditional sales decline.
“SoundExchange collects money from Sirius XM Radio, Pandora and other forms of Internet radio,” reports The New York Times. “For most labels and performing artists, this is the only money their recordings earn for radio play, since terrestrial radio pays only songwriters and music publishers. (‘On-demand’ digital services like Spotify and Rhapsody, which let users choose exactly what songs to listen to, generally pay record companies directly.)”
SoundExchange paid out only $15.6 million in 2004, but already reports payments of over $100 million for this year.
However, some Internet radio companies are not pleased. Sirius, for example, sued SoundExchange over the right to make direct deals with record companies for recording performance royalties. Last year, Sirius paid a total of $200 million in royalties.
In the last six months of 2011, authorities across the world submitted over 1,000 requests to remove search results or YouTube content.
Google’s Transparency Report describes the “alarming trend” as a disturbing attack against free speech.
Dorothy Chou, senior policy analyst for Google, explains that the trend is “alarming not only because free expression is at risk, but because some of these requests come from countries you might not suspect — Western democracies not typically associated with censorship.”
The most government requests come from the United States, United Kingdom and India. The report shows how many times each government “sought to censor search results, drop YouTube videos or look at user data in the second half of last year,” according to Engadget.
In its latest Transparency Report, Google reports complying with 65 percent of court orders and 47 percent of informal requests asking that content be removed.
When declining to remove content, Google often cites a EU law on eCommerce that states companies cannot remove content for which they are the host and not the producer.
According to numbers released by Google, the company finds about 9,500 new malicious websites per day, “either innocent ones that have been compromised by hackers or sites built specifically to distribute malware or for phishing,” according to CNET.
“Google provides malware warnings for about 300,000 downloads per day through its download protection service for Chrome,” notes the post. “About 600 million users of Chrome, Firefox, and Safari see several million warnings per day about malware and phishing on sites the users are about to visit.”
Additional daily statistics include: a warning that sites are compromised result from 12-14 million Google Search queries, the company sends thousands of notices to ISPs and webmasters regarding malware, and phishing pages are generally removed within an hour of being detected.
“Our tangible impact in making the Web more secure, and our ability to directly protect users from harm, has been a great source of motivation for everyone on the Safe Browsing team,” Google wrote in a blog post. “We are also happy that our free data feed has become the de facto base of comparison for academic research in this space.”
After a string of violent attacks on teens stemming from the location-based flirting app Skout, Mobiledia questions if young users should be allowed to access location-based services.
Although Skout CEO Christian Wiklund believes Skout set up sufficient protection for its teen version of the app, Mobiledia argues that “letting strangers know where you are will always leave people vulnerable to violent outliers.”
The post differentiates between minimizing risk and eliminating risk, arguing that even if companies take precautionary measures such as banning sex offenders from sites, risk still exists for violent attacks based on location data.
The attacks come as Facebook mulls the option of opening its site to children under the age of 13.
Mobiledia suggests that even if sites improve security features, “parents may want to monitor or even outright forbid teenagers’ access to location tracking sites and features.”
But the post also suggests that there are options other than banning the sites for children, and that “educating them about how to navigate these potentially hazardous situations may start them off on a path to more sophisticated digital literacy.”
Digital Trends has acquired a 56-page document outlining Microsoft’s plans to introduce the Xbox 720 in late 2013. Although authenticity of the document has not been confirmed, the length and depth of the report suggests the briefing is not a hoax.
The document describes plans to sell the Xbox 720 for $299 during the 2013 holiday season. The device will feature improved Kinect capabilities including “an improved camera, support for up to four simultaneous players and improved, hardware-based player tracking technology,” explains the post.
The Xbox 720 will reportedly output content in true 1080p and full 3D, creating the possibility of 3D gaming and streaming video. Additionally, the console will supposedly function as a DVR with the ability to stream across multiple devices.
“That concept, more than anything, offers hope that this document is indeed legitimate, as that last feature sounds quite similar to the SmartGlass initiative that Microsoft outlined at [the recent] E3 conference,” adds Digital Trends.
The document also outlines plans to implement “props” in a fashion similar to the Wii. The props may possibly operate as controllers, and also pulse and shake as users “feel the experience,” according to the document.
Zynga’s social game “Draw Something” hopes to revive its success as a new interactive game show on CBS.
Variety reports that Sony Pictures Television, Ryan Seacrest Productions and Embassy Row are producing the show, which will allow viewers to interact with celebrities and their drawings from home.
“Teams of celebrities and everyday users will test their skills in front of a studio audience to earn money and big laughs,” explains Variety. “Viewers can also play along at home for a chance to win prizes and compete with the celebrities.”
A related TechCrunch post suggests that the move may represent a last-ditch effort from Zynga to spark interest in the app after a dramatic traffic decease following the acquisition of OMGPOP.
In an interview with Lost Remote, social TV graphics expert James Neufeld says one challenge facing the “Draw Something” television experience will be that the game “is based on timing and revealing the drawing as it was captured.” He suggests that it will be difficult “to maintain the sensation of the game’s real-time nature and render out the drawings in a way that is presentable in studio, or even harder, the audience at home.”
Despite the inherent risks involved in transitioning a social game to a television show, Neufeld maintains that “this is a huge step for social TV and participation TV.”
Speaking at the TV of Tomorrow Show in San Francisco last week, Roku CEO Anthony Wood predicted Blu-ray player sales would peak this year or next and then decline.
“Will people use Blu-ray players in four years? I don’t think so,” he suggested.
While admitting that most video streaming takes place on game consoles today, Wood doesn’t expect we’ll see much growth in that area. “New customers don’t go out and buy game consoles to stream video,” he said.
“Wood sees momentum shifting to streaming players like the current-generation Roku boxes, as well as Smart TVs,” reports GigaOM. According to Wood, his company’s “goal is to be the dominant platform in those two segments.”
Roku’s streaming stick is scheduled to launch later this year and Wood sees it as an initial step into the Smart TV space for Roku.
“Wood also shared some new numbers about his company’s performance: He said that Roku made $100 million in sales last year, and that the number of devices sold tripled year-over-year,” notes the post. “However, he didn’t mention that the company missed its projected sales goal by 500,000 units.”
The Engadget editorial team offers some interesting comments in an extensive post that takes a close look at Windows Phone 8 and its possibilities. The following are some of the highlights:
