Last week, ETCentric reported that the U.S. Department of Justice was pursuing Apple and five publishers on charges of e-book price fixing.
Apple is denying any wrong-doing, as are three of the publishers.
“Apple says that it did not collude to fix the price of e-books — it simply helped break Amazon’s ‘monopolistic’ stranglehold on the publishing industry, while also offering a superior product to consumers,” reports Digital Trends.
Publishers Macmillan and Penguin are opting to fight the suit in court, while the remaining three (Hachette, HarperCollins, and Simon & Schuster) have agreed to settle out of court.
“The DOJ’s accusation of collusion against Apple is simply not true,” said Apple spokesman Tom Neumayr. “The launch of the iBookstore in 2010 fostered innovation and competition, breaking Amazon’s monopolistic grip on the publishing industry. Since then customers have benefited from e-books that are more interactive and engaging. Just as we’ve allowed developers to set prices on the App Store, publishers set prices on the iBookstore.”
“It’s worth noting that Apple’s pricing policy with books and apps differs from the setup it has with the music industry,” adds AllThingsD in a related report. “In that relationship, Apple pays the music labels a wholesale price for their digital assets, and then sets the retail price itself.”
Magazine publishers — Condé Nast, Hearst, Meredith, News Corporation and Time Inc. — have created a package deal of 27 magazines for your tablet that costs $10 a month.
The package includes popular publications such as Better Homes and Gardens, Condé Nast Traveler, Esquire, Fortune, Glamour, People, Real Simple, TIME, Vanity Fair, Coastal Living, Cooking Light and Southern Living.
For $5 more a month, or $180 a year in total, you can also get Entertainment Weekly, People, Sports Illustrated and The New Yorker. The number of magazines are expected to double or triple by year end.
The package app is available now only on Android 7- and 10-inch tablets that run 3.0 or 4.0 versions of Android. An iPad app is being submitted to Apple for review in a few weeks. Rather than to download and save all magazines, you can select up to 12 magazines to save.
Interestingly, the package is not cheap if you consider you could subscribe individually to the few magazines you really want for less. Moreover, the app does not include a global search feature, something you would expect to find, and the UI can vary by magazine which can be confusing. Still, it’s nice to have all the magazines you want in one place.
Canon will preview its EOS-1D C, a digital SLR camera with 4K support, at the NAB show in Las Vegas next week. The camera is priced at $15,000.
“The company is also developing new cameras for its Cinema EOS system — launched last November targeting motion picture production — including a 4K-capable Cinema EOS C500 for use with EF-mount lenses, and Cinema EOS C500 PL for use with PL-mount lenses,” Carolyn Giardina writes for The Hollywood Reporter.
“Currently expected to cost around $30,000, these Cinema EOS cameras would be capable of recording 4K resolution with 10-bit uncompressed ‘Raw’ output with no de-Bayering, according to Canon.”
“These Cinema EOS cameras will offer a new Super 35mm-equivalent approximately 8.85-megapixel CMOS sensor,” adds Giardina. “A prototype of the C500 camera will be at NAB.”
Canon will also unveil new prototype lenses for EF and PL mounts at the show.
According to Leichtman Research Group, 38 percent of U.S. households have at least one television set connected to the Internet via a game console, Blu-ray player, set-top box or other device.
Last year, 30 percent of households had Internet-connected TVs, while the figure was 24 percent two years ago.
Netflix subscribers represent more than one-third of that base, streaming videos through a connected device at least once a week, suggests the survey.
“Leichtman Research drilled down further into Netflix’s role in the media landscape. The firm found that half of Netflix subscribers are ‘satisfied’ with the online streaming service,” reports MediaPost. “There is some countervailing evidence that Netflix contributes to cord-cutting, as just 7 percent are ‘likely’ to switch from their multichannel provider in the next six months versus 12 percent of non-Netflix homes.”
For those interested in knowing more about what kind of information Facebook has stored about its users, the social network is expanding its Download Your Information service to include more than just photos, posts and messages.
Users choosing to download their information will also have access to stored IP addresses, previous names used, friend requests made and even more to come.
Facebook is rumored “to collect 84 different categories of information about you (85 if you count all those Instagram photos it just bought),” reports Engadget.
“In a posting on its privacy blog, Facebook said the expanded archive feature would be introduced gradually to its 845 million monthly active users. It goes beyond the first archive made available in 2010, which has been criticized as incomplete by privacy advocates and regulators in Europe,” explains The New York Times in a related article.
The RIAA, National Music Publishers Association and Digital Media Association have reached an agreement regarding royalty rates for digital music services and emerging media.
“Some of the new rates address music bundled with other goods, such as Internet-service plans, cellphones and vinyl records, which are sometimes sold with codes that allow downloading of MP3 versions of the music,” reports the Wall Street Journal.
The proposal would call for the creation of new guidelines for five new types of services, including online locker offerings such as Amazon’s Cloud Drive and Apple’s iTune Match.
Rates were previously established for three types of delivery: physical sales, digital downloads, and on-demand music services.
Expanding the number of categories “reflects our mission to make it easier for digital music services to launch cutting-edge business models and streamline the licensing process,” said Cary Sherman, who heads the RIAA.
Google has announced that its social network now has 170 million users, which makes Google+ the third-largest social network in the world.
The number of Google+ users still lags far behind those of Facebook and Twitter — 850 million and 500 million respectively — and in terms of usage, the site is still struggling.
But is Google+ really the third largest social network? It depends on how one measures the numbers.
“If you go by active monthly users in the U.S., particularly those reported by third parties, it appears that Google+ is well behind LinkedIn and neck-and-neck with Tumblr. If, however, you are measuring by monthly visits — again, in the U.S. — then Google+ is number six,” Mashable reports.
“Meanwhile, monthly visit data compiled by ExperianHitwise estimates that Google+ received 61 million U.S. visits in March, a nice jump over February, but still well behind Facebook (7 billion), Twitter (182 million), Pinterest (104 milllion), LinkedIn (86 million) and Tagged (72 million),” explains the post.
Additionally, a report from comScore found that Google+ is much closer to Tumblr and Pinterest when considering number of active users.
Internet pioneer and current Google Chief Internet Evangelist Vint Cerf is asking people how we should define the Internet and its future.
He distributed an email on April 9 as a call to initiate a new dialogue on the subject. An accompanying Google page suggests: “Let’s start something” and features links to participate via Google+, Facebook, or Twitter.
“It’s time to start a new chapter in our Internet conversation — one in which we come up with positive and proactive plans to drive constructive Internet legislation in countries around the globe,” Cerf wrote in the email.
“Instead of reacting only to legislation that is harmful to the Internet’s utility, we should be promoting policies that improve the Internet’s usefulness while making it a safer and more secure environment for everyone,” he suggests.
“At first glance, this whole campaign seems quite odd, and we’ve asked Google to clarify a few things about it,” reports Digital Trends. “But from what we can gather, this is an attempt to launch a proactive campaign to influence federal legislation on the Internet. (At least, that’s our interpretation of it.) It’s an interesting idea, considering nearly all of the online activism we’ve seen so far (think SOPA/PIPA blackout) has been reactive, meaning Washington drafts some dangerous bill, and then the Internet community pushes back against it.”
The Cyberintelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) is being backed by Internet companies that were previously opposed to its predecessors — SOPA and PIPA.
Under CISPA, companies are no longer responsible for the actions of its customers. The government is now responsible. Moreover, companies can refuse requests for information.
Microsoft, Facebook, AT&T, Intel and Verizon have all expressed support for the proposed legislation.
Still, while the legislation does not threaten the operation of the Internet, some critics see it as a threat to data privacy.
CISPA is so broad that “just about any online activity, including alleged piracy, could be considered a security threat,” reports Fortune.
“Andrew Couts of Digital Trends believes that although tech- and privacy-minded folk online are up in arms, opposition might not spread to the population at large in the same way opposition to SOPA and PIPA did,” explains the article. “Those bills threatened the very operation of the Internet, and were much bigger, or at least more direct, threats to free speech. Here, the issue is more about data privacy.”
Yahoo has signed a streaming music deal with TRI Studios, a state-of-the-art music facility built by Bob Weir, a founding member of the Grateful Dead. The studio will provide HD-quality streaming content to Yahoo Music’s 34 million viewers.
CNBC suggests the deal “could help bring high quality music and videos into homes around the world and change the music streaming business model that has so far made losers out of both the studios and the artists.”
The studio has already provided online shows from Weir, Sammy Hagar and Carlos Santana. Shows are ad-supported and designed to watch on home theater systems.
“Weir said he sees the advertising linked to the live music as a move away from traditional corporate sponsorship of performances and toward ‘patronage for rock and roll’ the way companies underwrite classical music,” reports CNBC.
Viewers from all over the world will be able to watch the shows and simultaneously interact through Facebook and Twitter to communicate with other viewers and performers in real-time.
Put on some earbuds and check out the music from TRI Studios. It’s worth a listen.
Google is providing a redesign of its social network Google+, which could very well lure early users back to the platform.
“The UI has been greatly streamlined with a customizable ribbon of shortcuts on the left and your buddy list moved to the right. The main interface has been tidied up quite a bit and a new focus has been placed on one of the universally beloved features of the beleaguered social network — Hangouts,” Engadget writes.
Hangouts will now have their own dedicated home page, allowing users to more easily see any available video chat party lines.
“Replacing the old static toolbar at the top, the Navigation bar includes the usual icons for Home, Profile, Photos, and more. But this bar is customizable,” details CNET in a related report. Users can change the order of the icons, dragging their favorite ones to the top and removing ones they do not use at all.
Multimedia sharing has also been enhanced. Larger photos are coming to profile pages and Sparks have been replaced by an Explore tab.
The Washington Post has launched a real-time advertising campaign, one that pulls live content from social networks.
In order to do this, the publication is using Trove, it’s news aggregation technology that was previously used to launch reading services like Social Reader and Personal Post.
TechCrunch explains that “it’s using this technology for a campaign from the Cleveland Clinic, which is the official sponsor of the TEDMED event in Washington, D.C. The ads will automatically pull headlines and tweets about the TEDMED conference into the clinic’s display ads.”
While real-time advertising is not a new concept, the Washington Post’s approach is original in that Trove is its very own system, giving the company a chance to sell ads directly and not through an ad tech company or network.
As Xbox expands its entertainment offerings with new apps, it is coming in direct competition with other set-top box solutions.
All the apps are free to download but most require a paid membership as well as an Xbox Live Gold account, which cost about $60-$100 a year. For example, the HBO Go app requires a current cable subscription; for Netflix and Hulu Plus, users must pay the $8/month subscription; and to access the MLB.TV you must have the $125 annual Premium account.
To use these apps on other devices, consumers also have to have accounts set up. However, the Roku and Apple TV set-top boxes don’t require annual fees like Xbox Live Gold. Additionally, both alternatives are much more compact and they only cost $50 and $99 respectively, compared to the Xbox’s $200-$400 price tag.
According to the Wall Street Journal it’s clear that Microsoft is serious about its non-gaming apps, but “a smaller, more stylish console would make the device even more welcome in the living room,” which could more effectively compete with other options.
Apple and five publishers are facing lawsuits for their adoption of an agency pricing model, “where the vendor takes a 30 percent cut of each sale rather than the wholesale model which allows stores to sell books at rock-bottom prices,” reports Engadget.
Three of the publishers — Simon & Schuster, Lagardère SCA’s Hachette Book Group and HarperCollins — have already made settlements with the Department of Justice.
“Apple and Macmillian have already denied any wrongdoing, saying that the agreements were enhancing competition in an industry previously dominated by Amazon,” explains Engadget.
“If successful, the DoJ will allow Amazon and Barnes and Noble amongst others to return to the wholesale model to sell best-sellers at a loss, something that the big five are desperate to avoid, and will look to fight the battle in court,” adds the post.
Spotify is looking to expand its user base by using a new “play button” widget on Web pages. Sites can use the feature to run free music on their sites and Spotify will get numerous new promotion partners.
“The integrations echo the Spotify/Facebook partnership, where the widget works as a remote control for the Spotify software. But, just like the Spotify/Facebook link, it won’t do you any good if you don’t have the Spotify software on your machine,” AllThingsD explains.
If you don’t have the software running or have it at all, you have to click a couple of buttons to open or download it.
“Things would be a whole lot easier if you could just click a button and get Spotify streamed directly from the Web, and Spotify might end up there one day. For now, it can’t, because of both technical and biz-dev reasons,” the article reports.
