Although Netflix isn’t bringing back the dreaded Qwikster concept completely, the company is taking steps to differentiate its DVD-by-mail rental business from its unlimited video streaming service.
Some customers can no longer rate and review movies and TV shows on the main Netflix listing anymore. They are instead redirected to the solely-DVD site, “dvd.netflix.com.”
The move looks to divide DVD from instant, but separates the reviews for the same movies across two different sites.
“Over the last week subscribers have also noticed that searching for titles that are only available for rental as a DVD, won’t show up in the results,” VentureBeat reports. “Instead, search results return unrelated streaming titles. The recommendation interaction between DVDs, unreleased titles, and streaming titles has apparently also been altered.”
“The market for night classes and online instruction in programming and Web construction, as well as for iPhone apps that teach, is booming,” reports The New York Times. “Those jumping on board say they are preparing for a future in which the Internet is the foundation for entertainment, education and nearly everything else.”
The article cites a number of interesting new start-ups such as Udacity, Treehouse and General Assembly (among others), that are hoping to meet this growing need.
“But at the center of the recent frenzy in this field is Codecademy, a start-up based in New York that walks site visitors through interactive lessons in various computing and Web languages, like JavaScript, and shows them how to write simple commands,” explains the article.
More than a million people have registered for Codecademy since it was first introduced last summer, and it got a big boost when Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced his New Year’s resolution to use the service to learn code. The free site, which plans to earn revenue by connecting new programmers with recruiters and start-ups, has raised close to $3 million in financing.
“Inasmuch as you need to know how to read English, you need to have some understanding of the code that builds the Web,” said Sarah Henry, an investment manager from Pennsylvania who recently took several classes through New York-based Girl Develop It. “It is fundamental to the way the world is organized and the way people think about things these days.”
Apple iPhones, which cost about one percent of a 1970s mini-cam, are being deployed by news organizations for field reporting.
Gannett, for example, has purchased over 1,000 iPhone 4S smartphones for its reporters and photographers, both at local TV stations and newspapers, which are collaborating on stories.
The iPhone was selected because there are a number of apps and accessories available including iMovie, Splice, Brightcove Mobile Upload, QIK, mCAM, Steadicam Smoothee, Camera Table Dolly, LiveAction Camera Grip, Kogeto Dot and Manfrotto Pro Monopod.
“During a recent Florida State-Duke basketball game, Gannett’s Tallahassee Democrat switched live between nine different video streams, highlighting on-court strategy with Telestrator-style graphics,” reports TVNewsCheck.
The iPad is also being deployed for news production both in the field and in the studio. Some of the more popular iPad apps being used include OradControl, VizReporter and Avid Studio.
Best Buy’s $1.7 billion loss for the last quarter of its fiscal year will lead it to close 50 “big-box” stores, cut 400 corporate jobs, and reduce infrastructure and non-product costs.
“The retail chain hadn’t named the stores in question, but expected these and other cost savings to cut $250 million in 2013 and $300 million just for retail by the 2015 target,” reports Electronista.
The company, however, is still moving ahead with 100 Best Buy Mobile stores, some 50 of which will open in China.
Best Buy notes that pressure from Internet sales and less focus on TV affected their results. It is responding by introducing a Connected Store concept where customers can get price comparisons via Web kiosks, staff will be trained in product integration and there will be instant checkout similar to an Apple Store.
Verizon is seeking a partnership with Comcast, Time Warner, Bright House Networks and Cox Communications. The $3.9 billion deal to buy spectrum licenses would also allow Verizon and the cable companies to sell each other’s products.
One such product would include a mobile TV service that could be offered by the end of the year.
Lowell McAdam, Verizon Communications CEO, is hoping to offer a mobile service where consumers could pick the content they want rather than paying for bundles of channels. McAdam says media companies have acknowledged the need to offer consumers more choice like an a la carte service.
Verizon is looking to have content providers pay for the amount of data consumed by streaming video.
“Critics have called the deals anti-competitive, charging that they signal a truce between longtime rivals,” reports the Wall Street Journal.
Comcast may be ignoring the concept of net neutrality as it looks to make its Xfinity TV app more competitive on Xbox Live.
Going up against top streaming services like Netflix, Hulu Plus, HBO Go and Vudu, the Comcast app is setting itself apart by offering free data usage when streaming via Xbox 360.
Comcast allows its customers 250GB of data per month before they charge overage fees. VentureBeat says this cap is “generous,” enabling about 80 hours of content on streaming services as well as regular Internet use. While using Xfinity on other devices or Xfinity.com will still use up the allotted monthly data, the Xbox Live app doesn’t contribute to the data cap.
Comcast has said that “since the content is being delivered over our private IP network and not the public Internet, it does not count against a customer’s bandwidth cap,” differentiating it from other usage that relies on “public” Internet.
VentureBeat writer Tom Cheredar suggests the move “takes the concept of net neutrality, and throws it right out of the window,” and that the private network justification seems like a bit of a stretch.
“I’m not sure I buy this logic. Arguably, Netflix also has its own ‘private’ network that is only accessible through the ‘public’ Internet,” he said.
As Universal Music prepares its acquisition of EMI, the group is selling three music-publishing catalogs as well as real estate holdings in France and Germany.
The catalogs — classical, Christian and German schlager — have already attracted 12 bidders and may draw up to $200 million, according to a person with knowledge of the situation.
The proposed acquisition is still under investigation for antitrust concerns by the European Commission, which extended its decision deadline until August to allow for a more in-depth analysis.
“The commission’s initial investigation into the merger showed that the combined firm would be ‘almost twice the size of the next largest player’ on the EU market, the regulator said March 23,” reports Bloomberg.
As the Kinect for Windows hardware rolls out in the coming months, its SDK is already getting an update.
Microsoft’s Craig Eisler offered a sneak peek of the SDK in a blog post this week.
“The Kinect for Windows 1.5 SDK, due in late May, will see the release of Kinect Studio — a new app that allows developers to record, playback, and debug clips of users interacting with applications,” reports The Verge. “Microsoft is also planning to support a new ‘seated’ 10-joint skeletal tracking system, which lets developers track the head, neck, and arms of seated and standing users in default and near mode.”
The update will also include new support for French, Spanish, Italian, and Japanese speech recognition in addition to new language packs from Microsoft that enable regional speech detection.
According to the new Mobile Games Trend Report from research firm Newzoo, “the number of Americans who play video games on their smartphone, tablet, or iPod Touch has surpassed 100 million,” reports VentureBeat.
The report indicates that 69 percent play games on their smartphones, 21 percent play on tablets, and 18 percent opt for the iPod Touch.
“The firm also estimates that 9 percent of total game spending last year was on mobile titles and says the free-to-play (F2P) business model is increasingly converting players into continuous payers,” explains the article. “F2P games already account for 90 percent of mobile game spending in the U.S., Newzoo says.”
VentureBeat suggests there is a potentially significant business opportunity in this space: “Although smartphones and tablets are often seen as ‘casual’ platforms, Newzoo says there is major opportunity for ‘core’ games to be offered as full titles or game extensions, as 62 percent of core gamers in the U.S. also play on mobile devices. Developers that can combine core genres with the games-as-a-service business model on mobile platforms will be the ones that reap the most benefit from what Newzoo is dubbing ‘mid-core’ games.”
Jason Perlow, a technology editor at ZDNet and a long-time Android user, airs the platform’s dirty laundry.
While he praises the open source smartphone and tablet OS, the independence the users have and the variety of devices available — he suggests that issues regarding Android’s stability, the platform standardization and maintenance all combine for a frustrating experience.
“I’ve spent over two years as an Android user,” he writes. “The next time around, I’m going elsewhere unless substantial changes take place in how Google manages its ecosystem and OEM/Carrier partners.”
Google has failed to manage its ecosystem and the carriers who use it resulting in fragmentation and carrier bloatware, according to Perlow. If the issues persist, he says he will stop recommending Android and point people toward iOS and Windows Phone instead.
A study from market research firm Distimo notes that News Corp.’s The Daily, The New York Times and The New Yorker magazine are currently the top titles on Apple’s Newsstand app.
According to the report, which tracked Apple’s App Store for iPad during February, the leading 100 publications account for more than $70,000 per day in the U.S.
“Apple launched Newsstand as part of iOS 5 in October, providing a way for users to view newspapers and magazines they’ve purchased or subscribed to,” reports CNET. “The app also doubles as its own storefront, where users can browse and purchase content, similar to Apple’s App Store, iBooks, and iTunes apps.”
Distimo also says that China has surpassed the U.S. in free app downloads, but the U.S. is the global leader in iPad app spending.
“Smartphones accounted for 29 percent of all prepaid device sales in 2011, compared to just 5 percent three years ago, according to new survey data from marketing research group the Stevenson Company,” GigaOM writes.
Prepaid consumers generally pay full price for new handsets, unlike contract subscribers who get sizable discounts on their smartphones.
In 2011, 50 percent of all mobile phone purchases — both prepaid and postpaid contract plans — were smartphones and the gap between prepaid and contract users is closing, researchers found. Customers are also purchasing their prepaid services from other retailers like Walmart, not directly from the operators.
“Stevenson drilled deep into the demographic data and found that half of prepaid buyers had a household income of $35,000 or more, compared to 76 percent of postpaid buyers, and more than 55 percent of prepaid buyers owned their own home. Income and credit are no longer the sharp dividing lines between prepaid and postpaid,” the article states.
It’s Apple versus Nokia, RIM and Motorola in the battle for the new standard in smaller SIM cards. Nokia contends that Apple has bypassed the standards-setting process, ignoring rules for its own interests, so the phone manufacturer is fighting back.
“Nokia holds more than 50 patent families covering SIM related technologies that we believe may be essential to Apple’s proposal,” the company said in a statement. “We have informed ETSI that, if Apple’s proposal is selected, then Nokia will not license its relevant patents to that standard.”
Nokia seems more concerned about how the rules have been followed or broken and less worried about intellectual property. The company says Apple doesn’t even have the proper patents for its proposed design.
The tech giant has said it won’t require royalties if its proposal is accepted. However, “Nokia’s decision to withhold any of its patents that are ‘essential’ to Apple’s SIM design, should it be selected, would make life difficult for all ETSI members, not just Apple, when it comes to deciding on a future SIM card design,” GigaOM reports.
Nokia claims Apple’s behavior isn’t in the best interest of the industry or consumers, but hasn’t said which aspect of Apple’s design it objects to. Moreover, the article points out that a prolonged standards battle over this critical mobile technology doesn’t benefit consumers.
Taiwan’s Hon Hai Group, the owner of Apple products-maker Foxconn, invested $1.6 billion in the LCD producer, Sharp.
The deal initially seemed questionable since Sharp is expected to lose $3.49 billion this fiscal year and has only been operating at 50 percent capacity.
However, to some, the move indicates the iTV is soon to come.
A report from Daiwa Capital Markets analysts states: “We expect Apple to debut the iTV by the end of this year, and it is likely to adopt Sharp’s 10th generation TFT production line to produce TFT LCDs for iTVs. We believe Hon Hai will have better vertical integration for the Apple iTV following its stake acquisition in Sharp’s plant in Sakai.”
And according to Pelham Smithers, managing director of London-based Pelham Smithers Associates, the Sharp plant “is the most efficient plant at making 60-inch TV screens and as such, it could be the future of smart television,” adding “if anybody knows what Apple is going to be up to in the future, it’s Hon Hai.”
The researcher Simply Measured has found that brands are getting 46 percent more engagement on average with the help of Facebook’s Timeline.
Topping the list of brands in percentage of change, Livestrong saw its engagement increase 161 percent, while Toyota experienced a 156 percent jump.
The jump in numbers may be inflated since the results are based on only 15 brand pages, but it is weighted to take into account the engagement per post.
The data also shows that responses to status updates fell with the new format, but users are interacting 65 percent more with videos and photos.
“Facebook reported that a week after introducing Timeline, some 8 million brands — roughly one-fourth of the brands on Facebook — had upgraded to the new design,” explains Mashable. “Those that didn’t will be ported over to Timeline on March 30.”