A source from Microsoft revealed to The Daily some facts about the Kinect motion-sensing technology for Windows 8-equipped devices.
According to the inside source, Microsoft will license the technology to other manufacturers with the requirement that it is the only motion-control tech on the devices.
Asus will likely be a launch partner, but the company is not directly involved in testing the product.
Microsoft techs have been using prototypes “in the wild” at crowded locales to fine-tune the sensor.
Devices with the technology should be plugged in as much as possible because it quickly drains batteries.
Fragmentation, like that of Android when manufacturers created dissimilar versions, may happen because Microsoft enables makers to customize the look of Windows 8 on Kinect-enabled devices.
Perhaps most notable, the “log me in” feature enables the Kinect sensors to analyze the user’s voice and face to grant access.
Facing competition from the likes of Netflix and Amazon, Hulu has invested in securing exclusive content and curating original series. However, content creation is not its top priority.
“It’s important for us to differentiate the service and create content not out there right now, [to tell] stories that aren’t being told right now,” CEO Jason Kilar said. “Consumers are asking for it … [and] it does build up heavy differentiation. But it’s not ‘the thing’ on our agenda; it’s part of it.”
Hulu’s primary focus is distributing content to customers and “that’s about developing a solution that serves both content consumers and creators, one that makes premium video content available to consumers on as many connected devices and platforms as possible, and compensates content providers generously,” explains Mashable.
In 2011, the company earned $420 million in advertising and subscription revenues, a 60 percent increase over 2010. Kilar said Hulu plans to spend $500 million on content this year, but won’t need to raise additional funding.
Recently appointed Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson has already pulled the plug on 10 of the company’s under-performing mobile apps.
According to a recent company blog post, Yahoo will stop developing and supporting the following apps: 1) Yahoo! Meme (iPad and iPhone); 2) Yahoo! Mim (iPad); 3) Yahoo! Answers (Android); 4) Yahoo! AppSpot (Android and iPhone); 5) Yahoo! Deals (iPhone); 6) Yahoo! Finance (BlackBerry); 7) Yahoo! Movies (Android); 8) Yahoo! News (Android); 9) Yahoo! Shopping (iPhone) and 10) Yahoo! Sketch-a-Search (iPad and iPhone).
“As you can see, the list is a mix of some of Yahoo’s more popular online brands and some services it created especially for mobile users, but all have one thing in common: they weren’t being used much by consumers,” reports paidContent. “In the words of Yahoo itself, it is removing the apps as part of its effort ‘to continuously measure and scrutinize what’s working and what isn’t’ as part of a new ‘mobile first’ strategy.”
Technology in the decommissioned apps will be repurposed in some of the more successful apps that remain available, as Thompson continues to focus on the company’s culture of innovation.
“Thompson still has a very big task ahead, though, to convince an increasingly more distracted consumer base that this slightly tired Internet brand is one worth watching for the future,” comments paidContent.
A consortium of Vancouver-based production, tech and media companies recently launched a service called RenderCloud.
“Vancouver is revving up its computing horsepower to allow Hollywood studios to more speedily render data-intensive animation and special effects in the cloud,” according to The Hollywood Reporter.
“Vancouver is also hoping its ultrafast RenderCloud server will allow the west-coast city, already enjoying the advantages of close proximity to Los Angeles, [to] compete with emerging global production centers in the UK, Australia and New Zealand.”
The local server farm will allow studios to render in the cloud and enable work-sharing on projects. Clients will pay on an as-needed cost-per-day basis with an option of subleasing their resources to other studios.
The project is led by Vancouver Studio Group, Great Northern Way Campus, Scalar Decisions and BC Film and Media. RenderCloud includes more than 600 servers, with plans to grow to 1,500 by this summer.
The service is designed for large-scale production of 3D, animation and special effects for film, TV and games.
According to a recent article by the Financial Times, over 3 million people are now paying to use digital music service Spotify. It seems the company’s freemium business model was successful enough to start converting users to subscribers.
“That’s a conversion rate of more than 20 percent, a figure that has reportedly increased by 5 percent since the service hit 1 million users last year,” explains ReadWriteWeb. “In other words, not only is Spotify itself growing, but the rate at which people sign up for a premium or unlimited account is also increasing.”
Successful Facebook integration — and the first wave of six-month unlimited free music windows coming to a close for early adopters — have worked to expand usage and the number of paying customers.
The music labels are content to continue working with the service for now, but some artists have started questioning its value as they receive low royalty fees.
“Sure, it’s a great way to promote one’s music, but it may not be economically advantageous for artists, especially if it ends up hurting record sales,” suggests the post.
“The Internet now has 555 million websites, up from just 255 million at the end of 2010,” reports Digital Trends.
According to Web monitoring service Pingdom, 300 million sites were created in the last year alone.
Additional stats: there are currently 2.1 billion Internet users worldwide, 45 percent of users are under 25, North America leads with most citizens online at 73.3 percent penetration (although Asia has more total numbers), Facebook has more than 800 million users and there are 100 active Twitter users.
“With 39 percent market share, Internet Explorer remains the most popular browser in the world,” explains the post. “Chrome is now second, with 28 percent. And Firefox is a close third, at 25 percent. Safari only accounts for 6 percent of the browser market.”
The Pingdom report offers a thorough breakdown of Internet stats for 2011, including some helpful pie charts.
Microsoft and other gaming manufacturers are reportedly considering incorporating an anti-used game system into their new consoles.
Gamers expect to be able to buy cheaper used games and sell back their new games, but Wired notes, “the death of used games is inevitable.”
“But the success of digital-only, one-owner games on PC, phones, tablets and social networks must surely be helping to change consumers’ attitudes about what a game system is ‘supposed’ to do. So as soon as Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo et al. think they can get away with it, the disc or cartridge will simply disappear, replaced entirely by digital game sales,” explains the article.
“What we are possibly looking at now is an interim period in which the disc as a delivery method is still around but it becomes more like a PC game, which are sold with one-time-use keys that grant one owner a license to play the game on his machine.”
This doesn’t necessarily mean that used games will disappear; it’s possible that vendors like GameStop will pay sellers less for used games and use that money to buy new codes from the publisher for each used game it sells.
Also, the articles notes that discs will still exist to store a library of games, “but it can fill that role while still being only tied to one owner.”
Wireless Direct from Hewlett Packard enables people to print from iOS devices with AirPrint, even without the name or password of the local wireless network.
Apple’s AirPrint standard lets iPhones and iPads print from any networked printer without setup, configuration or driver installation.
All of HP printers include AirPrint-supported ePrint, which enables wireless printing, printing documents from anywhere in the world using email, accessing documents in the cloud, and other features.
With Wireless Direct, printing is becoming entirely seamless: “Wireless Direct-enabled printers broadcast their own SSID, allowing iOS devices (or any Wi-Fi enabled computer) to connect directly without knowing any details of the local network. Users can choose ‘HP-Print-4f-LaserJet’ as their network, for instance, and as far as your iPhone is concerned, it is connected to a Wi-Fi network with an AirPrint-compatible printer,” explains ArsTechnica.
Wireless Direct should prove useful in situations where network passwords aren’t commonly shared.
Google just announced an expansion to its Business Photos program, an initiative to take high-res and panoramic pictures of businesses (inside and out) for Google Maps and Google Places profiles.
For those companies interested, the program connects owners with local “Trusted Photographers.” The photographers then take pictures according to Google’s rules, and agree on payment individually with the businesses.
“It’s pretty systematic,” says Chris Favis, a Google Trusted Photographer based in Orlando, Florida. “Google loans us the cameras, and within the business you have to follow the rules, like getting the set of panos [panoramic shots] as soon as you walk in. The timing can be complicated — it’s a very specialized thing.”
As of now, only 14 U.S. cities and locations in the UK, Australia, New Zealand and France have Trusted Photographers, but Google will expand the program based on demand.
Organizing with the hashtag #TwitterBlackout, Twitter users collaborated to speak out (or rather go silent) on January 28 for a day-long protest against Twitter’s new plan to block tweets and accounts from certain countries.
“The protest follows less than two weeks after thousands of websites, including Wikipedia, Google, and Reddit, protested two controversial anti-piracy bills, the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act, by shutting down or posting notices outlining the downsides of the proposed legislation,” reports The Huffington Post.
“Yet this online protest, and others like it, have relied on Twitter as a means of communicating between protestors and buttressing support for their movements. It remains to be seen whether silencing tweets will call attention to the cause, or whether the mute accounts will go unnoticed.”
Twitter said it remains committed to free speech online: “We try to keep content up wherever and whenever we can, and we will be transparent with users when we can’t. The Tweets must continue to flow,” Twitter wrote on its blog.
Facebook could be filing for an initial public offering this week and is “close” to picking Morgan Stanley as the lead underwriter, although rival Goldman Sachs may still “play a significant role.”
“At a valuation between $75 billion and $100 billion, Facebook is looking to raise as much as $10 billion, said people familiar with the matter,” reports the Wall Street Journal. “The final valuation will be determined by a variety of factors, people familiar with the matter cautioned, such as investor demand for social media, the IPO market and the health of the European economy.”
In 2004, Google’s offering became the largest U.S. Internet IPO (and third in the world), which sold at $1.9 billion with the company valued at $23 billion.
“A $10 billion Facebook offering would rank fourth among U.S. companies, behind Visa Inc., General Motors Co. and AT&T Wireless. At a $100 billion valuation, Facebook would be worth about the same as McDonald’s Corp. and nearly half of Google Inc.,” according to WSJ.
The planned IPO is reportedly targeted for sometime between late spring and early summer 2012.
Using white space spectrum, “Super Wi-Fi” is rolling out to Hanover County in North Carolina.
In 2010, the FCC approved devices to run using this spectrum but instituted regulations on manufacturers based on concerns that the spectrum would interfere with TV signals. Now, the current requirements only mandate that the device have geolocation capabilities and access to the spectrum database.
“The white space will operate at 40 milliwatts alongside these stations,” SlashGear explains. “Without interference, the network will operate at 100 milliwatts, and users should see much faster speeds.”
If all goes well in Hanover, Super Wi-Fi could expand across the nation. “Actual purchase for these white space spectrums will be very competitive. They are essentially untouched television stations, so all broadcasting and wireless companies will be potential buyers,” SlashGear notes.
According to the GSMA, worldwide association of mobile operators and related companies, more than half of the devices launched at CES were Internet connected.
“GSMA calculated that more than 90 percent of TVs at CES, 70 percent of automotive devices, 44 percent of healthcare devices and 30 percent of cameras were connected,” reports ReadWriteWeb.
The association predicts 24 billion connected devices by 2020, up from 9 billion today. Automobile connectivity is expected to be an emerging product category.
It also estimates that connected devices will become a $1.2 trillion market by 2020.
“At this year’s CES, more than 40 percent of the connected devices announced were gadgets such as laptops and smartphones. The rest were non-gadgets, such as those in the ‘home lifestyle’ category, which, according to the GSMA, made up 30 percent of the connected devices at CES. The products in the home lifestyle category included connected TVs, smart refrigerators and Internet-connected washers and dryers.”
GSMA has labeled this trend “The Connected Life,” defining it as “a world where all technology devices intelligently connect.”
The ReadWriteWeb post features several interesting charts and infographics from GSMA.
UK-based Juniper Research is forecasting that sales of ultrabooks will increase at three times the rate of tablets over the next five years.
“However, tablet volume will remain higher, with 253 million expected to be shipped in 2016, compared with 178 million ultrabooks,” reports MediaPost.
Ultrabook was a major buzzword at CES in Las Vegas, where a number of compelling new models debuted.
Intel, a major proponent of the sleek lightweight laptops, expects more than 75 new ultrabooks to launch in 2012, including models with 14- and 15-inch screens.
“Samsung, Lenovo, Acer and Vizio are among the manufacturers that have jumped on the ultrabook bandwagon,” explains the post. “Among other findings, the study said Windows 8 will play a key role in driving ultrabook adoption, with extended battery life, an always-on connection and other features coming with an updated version of Microsoft’s operating system.”
Google announced that beginning on March 1st, the company will combine data about users’ activities on most of their sites and services including YouTube, Android, Gmail and the search engine. This aggregated user profile is designed for “a simpler, more intuitive Google experience,” according to the company.
While this might lead to new services, it will also create a detailed picture to better tailor ads. There will be no way to opt out unless users are not logged in.
GigaOM writes that the new policy “seems to have highlighted for many a crucial question: Is Google having all of that info about you — including Web searches, Google Analytics data from your website, even location information — a good thing?”
This sharing may be problematic for some. As GigaOM points out, “for those who want to ‘compartmentalize’ their lives, with some services reserved for personal use and others for business or public use, the pooling of information is a very real threat.”
This new policy is a break with Google’s previous privacy position. Analysts say that Google is responding to Apple and Facebook which have more unified ecosystems. Still, this new approach will invite antitrust scrutiny as Google is the dominant online search engine.
Google has already faced the Federal Trade Commission over privacy issues and recently received heavy criticism about its personalized G+ results in searches.
The co-chair of the Congressional Privacy Caucus, Rep. Edward Markey, said: “It is imperative that users will be able to decide whether they want their information shared across the spectrum of Google’s offerings.”
