After using Microsoft’s Surface tablet for more than a week, Slate writer Farhad Manjoo concludes the tablet is no competitor for Apple’s iPad.
“It’s too slow, it’s mercilessly buggy, and the add-on that’s supposed to set it apart from the iPad — its touch-cover keyboard and trackpad — is nice but far from revolutionary,” Manjoo writes.
“At $499 for the base model, plus $120 for the almost-required touch cover, the Surface is also not very competitive on price: You can get the newest standard iPad for the same $499, the still pretty good iPad 2 for $399, and the new iPad mini for $329.”
The tablet feels heavy, he writes, and it takes extra half-seconds to do anything. Switching the orientation is also very clunky and the tablet responds slowly to inputs.
“Perhaps it’s just hobbled with an inadequate processor and too little RAM,” Manjoo suggests. “Maybe we can expect future versions to pack more power and, consequently, to feel less frustrating. After all, Apple’s original tablet was a bit lethargic, too.”
“[The first iPad] may not have been perfect, but it was unquestionably the best tablet of its era. The Surface is hitting the shelves in 2012, when, in addition to Apple’s tablets, you can now get Google’s Nexus 7 and Nexus 10 or one of Amazon’s super-cheap Kindle Fires,” Manjoo writes, adding that Microsoft has no room for error as Apple did when releasing the first tablet.
The Surface “promises that you’ll be able to type faster, to use a pointer, to actually get things done and not feel like there are certain things your device just can’t do,” he concludes. “The iPad may not allow you to do everything, but Apple has made sure that it’s great at what it can do. The Surface, by contrast, will let you do everything you want. The problem is that you’ll have no fun doing it.”
The new Nokia Lumia 820 and 920 smartphones, launching on Friday, run Microsoft’s new Windows Phone 8 operating system. The phones connect to AT&T’s 4G LTE network. Pre-orders through AT&T have already begun.
“The prices for these 4G LTE phones are particularly reasonable, and less than those rumored, with the Lumia 820 costing a mere $50, and the higher-specification Lumia 920 just $100; but you’ll have to sign your life away for two-years to take advantage,” reports Digital Trends.
“You can choose between a red, white, grey, black or yellow Lumia 920, while the Lumia 820 comes with a variety of rear covers for you to choose between,” according to the post.
The Lumia 920 features an 8.7-megapixel PureView camera, 4.5-inch 1280 x 768 touchscreen and a 1.5GHz dual-core Snapdragon processor. The 820 has a 4.3-inch screen with 480 x 800 pixel resolution.
Apps include Nokia Maps, Nokia Drive and Nokia City Lens.
“The Lumia 820 and Lumia 920 are exclusive to AT&T, but T-Mobile offers its own version of the 820, named the Lumia 810, and Verizon will also be getting in on the Windows Phone 8 fun with the Lumia 822,” explains the post. “They’re identical when it comes to features, but vary slightly in design.”
Internet radio provider Pandora has gained 150 million registered users in the U.S. but hasn’t been able to make a profit due to prohibitive music licensing fees. The company is now suing the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) for “reasonable” fees.
“Pandora is seeking a blanket licensing fee that would cover all songs represented by the 435,000-member group,” Bloomberg reports.
Pandora and ASCAP had an experimental fee agreement from 2005 to 2010, which Pandora said was “effectively non-negotiable” and “ill-suited and not reasonable,” according to court papers. Following that arrangement, the two sides haven’t been able to reach another agreement, which leaves the decision to the U.S. District Court in New York.
However, ASCAP and the Radio Music Licensing Committee were able to come to a fee agreement, one that Pandora was not offered. The Radio Music Licensing Committee represents Clear Channel, which runs a rival Internet service called iHeartRadio.
“Pandora also claims that it’s entitled to lower rates because some large music publishers have announced they are withdrawing new media rights from ASCAP and negotiating licensing fees directly with Web radio services,” Bloomberg writes.
The proposed Internet Radio Fairness Act of 2012 could help to solve licensing disputes by requiring “music royalty rates for Web broadcasters to be comparable to what satellite radio and cable companies pay,” the article explains.
Last year, nearly half of Pandora’s revenues went to royalties — more than six times the percentage satellite radio Sirius XM paid. “For the six months that ended July 31, Pandora reported that its net loss increased to $25.6 million from $8.57 million a year earlier, while revenue rose 54 percent to $182 million,” notes the article.
Apple has sold three million units of the fourth-generation iPad and iPad mini since launching them on Friday, beating analysts’ expectations and setting a new sales record.
“We set a new launch weekend record and practically sold out of iPad minis,” notes CEO Tim Cook. “We’re working hard to build more quickly to meet the incredible demand.”
According to Apple, sales of the 7.9-inch mini and the fourth-gen iPad “easily topped the 1.5 million Wi-Fi only tablets sold during the third-generation iPad’s opening weekend in March,” reports the Wall Street Journal. “Apple will start shipping cellular-enabled versions of both new iPads in the U.S. within a few weeks.”
However, the company has been tight-lipped regarding the actual number of minis sold.
“ISI Group analyst Brian Marshall estimated iPad minis accounted for about two million of those initial iPad purchases over the past three days, putting sales well on their way toward meeting the research firm’s estimate of about five million iPad mini sales this December quarter,” explains the article.
The mini, which starts at $329, provides competition with rivals that offer 7-inch tablets running Google’s Android OS.
Two decades ago, Nintendo accounted for 80 percent of the gaming hardware market. It has since fallen to 25 percent, but the company hopes that its new Wii U device will help it stay relevant in the new world of streaming content, mobile devices and social gaming.
“As the Kyoto, Japan-based company prepares for the Nov. 18 launch of its Wii U — a flashier, more powerful and social-oriented update of its Wii system that debuted in 2006 — its executives are taking a page from showbiz and positioning the console as a broad entertainment-delivery platform,” the Hollywood Reporter writes. “Think television, web and video game enabler rather than just a home for Mario, Donkey Kong and Pokemon.”
The Wii U will feature a handheld controller equipped with TVii, which enables recording of shows, snapshots the viewing habits of family members and friends, access to Facebook and Twitter and an easy-to-use programming guide. “If TV is going to become more about engagement and the ‘second screen’ experience, then Nintendo hopes its controller serves as the platform of choice.”
Moreover, Nintendo has content deals with cable companies, satellite distributors, and streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon.
When the Wii first debuted, Nintendo sold 5 million consoles in the first year, and enjoyed a few years in the lead before the Xbox and the PlayStation3 caught up. “But the motion-sensor novelty soon ebbed,” the article states. “Casual gamers moved on to low-cost diversions downloadable through more open platforms like Apple’s iOS and the Android universe or social platforms like Facebook. Games on smartphones also have gobbled up Nintendo’s share of the portable gaming market.”
Some analysts remain skeptical that the Wii U can turn Nintendo’s decline around, saying the reinvention is too little, too late. But Nintendo disagrees. “It’s the games that will drive the system into the household,” says Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime. “But what consumers also will find is that they are getting a robust social space … then find out they have a super remote and an aggregator.”
Chinese telecom giant ZTE plans to release a line of HTML5 set-top boxes that will support 3D TV and video calling over Google’s Android platform, which powers 90 percent of the company’s smartphones.
“The announcement comes after ZTE reached agreement allowing the company access to the digital TV systems of Kudelski SA’s Nagra division,” reports Bloomberg.
“The agreement enables the Chinese company to sell intelligent set-top boxes to customers of Nagra, which has a 70 percent share of Europe’s market for cable TV devices, and 18 percent globally, ZTE said.”
The company also plans to launch a new mobile operating system with Mozilla, developer of the Firefox browser, to lessen its dependence on Android.
“ZTE’s shares traded in Hong Kong fell 6 percent, the most since August 27, to close at HK$12.60, while the Shenzhen-traded stock gained 2.6 percent to 11.45 yuan,” notes the post.
“A U.S. House intelligence committee report to be released [October 8] says the company poses a security threat,” notes Bloomberg, “and ‘cannot be trusted to be free of foreign state influence,’ according to a draft provided by the panel.”
A new iPhone app called Threadlife wants to be the Instagram of video sharing, enabling users to create three-second clips and thread them together in private or public streams to create social video reels.
The service was created by Zappos founder and former CEO Nick Swimrun along with Ken Martin, co-founder and CEO of design company BLITZ Agency. It launches today as invite only.
“What sets Threadlife apart from other video apps, its creators say, is that its three-second limit eliminates any need for editing, a major obstacle for the success of video-sharing,” CNET writes. “It’s much easier to apply filters on photos to make them look better than it is to edit a long video clip. The three-second clips are more like photos that can be strung together, Martin said.”
Public threads can be shared through Facebook, Twitter or the Threadlife network. There’s no limit on the number of clips or “stitches” that can be threaded together; users can sort clips by date or creator. Clips can also be moved to different threads.
The app also allows private threads for personal conversations between friends.
“Eventually, the Threadlife team hopes to incorporate tagging and location-specific information, and adding ways to make money off the service, like inserting video ads into threads or charging for extra storage space,” CNET writes. “Martin said there’s also plans to expand to other devices to desktop.”
Enliken, a new startup with a staff of eight and $200,000 in seed funding, encourages consumers to control how they’re tracked online and then sell that data to advertisers.
“Enliken enables people to control and use their own data. We capture the value created by its use,” says co-founder Marc Guldimann. “We think that letting individuals offer a competing product in the marketplace for consumer data is the most efficient and least destructive way to move the Internet to a privacy-friendly space.”
The proceeds from the data sales goes to a charity of the user’s choice. Enliken takes a ten percent cut of the sales, which comes in around $1 per user per month.
Unlike other services, Enliken offers an all-encompassing view of online behavior and doesn’t require any input from users.
A personal dashboard allows users to customize what information gets captured and sold to advertisers. “The company’s founders hope that, someday, users will be able to earn a wide range of perks — from airline miles to online news subscriptions — in exchange for their information,” reports The New York Times.
Enliken has also unveiled a new feature to entice consumers. Called “Enliken for the People,” the feature shows users which elements of their personal data is harvested by other companies, but they must first install Enliken’s tracking software.
Some argue that people will still shy from tracking. “But as humans get educated about something, they move from a place of fear to a place where they want control over it. When you empower people to control something, you make them feel good,” says Guldimann.
Japanese phone maker NTT Docomo is hoping consumers will be interested in its Grip UI technology, which offers functionality through squeezing and pinching phones.
“Consumers have gotten used to pinching and swiping,” reports Fortune. “Soon phone makers may be adding bending, folding and squeezing to their repertoire.”
The primary goal of Grip UI is to create a mobile phone that is easier to control with one hand, freeing up the user’s other hand for carrying a briefcase, for example, or holding on to a pole in the subway.
NTT Docomo’s Android-powered handset has 270 sensors in the phone’s body that enables users to execute operations by squeezing the bezel.
“It is the latest in a range of emerging technology haptic gadgets — and even bendable phones — that promise commercialization soon and that exploit our innate love of manipulating tactile, responsive objects,” explains the article.
“Pressure sensitivity is a very interesting direction for phones so this is great technology,” says Ivan Poupyrev, haptics researcher at Disney’s labs in Pittsburgh.
Flexible objects and haptic interfaces could eventually lead to innovative products such as thin bendable media cards, interactive maps, mini photo albums, advanced OLED screens and various malleable electronic devices.
The U.S. Copyright Office reauthorized circumvention of certain copyright encryption techniques for jailbreaking mobile phones and e-books, but the group remained unmovable when it came to game-console modifications and copying DVDs for personal use.
“The ruling hands yet another loss to digital rights groups who are waging an ongoing campaign to chip away at the scope of a law that limits citizens’ rights by treating copyright owners’ encryption techniques as sacrosanct,” reports Wired.
Every three years, groups can submit requests to the copyright office to change aspects of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. This year, the regulators argued that controls on DVDs and consoles are necessary to prevent piracy.
“The record demonstrated that access controls on gaming consoles protect not only the console firmware, but the video games and applications that run on the console as well. The evidence showed that video games are far more difficult and complex to produce than smartphone applications, requiring teams of developers and potential investments in the millions of dollars,” the copyright regulators state.
Regulators backed the Motion Picture Association of America in keeping DVD duplication illegal. Users can, however, legally circumvent encryption “to make use of short portions of the motion pictures for the purpose of criticism or comment,” regulators say.
They are allowing jailbreaking for smartphones, but not for tablets. “When the only difference between a Galaxy Note and a Android tablet is an inch and a radio that can handle voice and data channels, it’s a pretty odd line to draw,” Wired writes.
While some consider e-books “tablets,” authorities allow circumvention for e-books to enable read-aloud functions for the sight impaired.
The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences held its 64th Primetime Emmy Engineering Awards last week in Hollywood.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) and the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) both received Engineering Emmys.
“A first for the 92-year-old ASC, its Emmy was awarded for its ‘ASC Color Decision List,’ a development of the society’s technology committee that is used to communicate consistent color information from a shoot through postproduction — enabling cinematographers to create and maintain an artistic look,” writes Carolyn Giardina for The Hollywood Reporter.
“AMPAS was recognized for the Academy Color Encoding System (ACES), a standards-based color management architecture designed for the production, mastering and long-term archiving of motion picture and television (non-live broadcast) content.”
Additionally, Kodak was honored with the Philo T. Farnsworth Award for the company’s contributions to the television industry. Richard Green, founder and former president and CEO of Cable Television Laboratories, was given the Charles F. Jenkins Lifetime Achievement Award.
“During the ceremony, the participants also paid tribute to last year’s Charles F. Jenkins Award winner, industry visionary Bob Lambert, who passed away last month,” writes Giardina. “Lambert had been unable to attend the 2011 ceremony, and a clip from his recorded acceptance was played in his memory.”
More than 250,000 customers have pre-ordered Nintendo’s Wii U at GameStop, and have shown preference for the more expensive Wii U Deluxe set, reports Polygon. The Wii U Deluxe set sells for $349.99 and the regular version retails for $299.99.
While Nintendo president Satoru Iwata is excited about the high pre-sale numbers, he cautions that Nintendo will lose money on the sale of Wii U hardware. The company hopes to profit from the sale of software.
“In addition to the yen’s continuous appreciation, the Wii U hardware will have a negative impact on Nintendo’s profits early after the launch because rather than determining a price based on its manufacturing cost, we selected one that consumers would consider to be reasonable,” explains Iwata.
“In this first half of the term before the launch of the Wii U, we were not able to make a profit on software for the system we we had to book a loss on the hardware, which is currently in production and will be sold below cost price.”
Customer demand for Wii U has outpaced production efforts. “As production only started this summer, it has now become more likely that it is our production capacity, rather than consumer demand, that will place limits on our Wii U prospects for this calendar year,” says Iwata.
“But we will make every effort to supply as many units as possible, and we will strive to continue to ship Wii U hardware without any interruptions in each regions even after its launch.”
Free for existing users, the new Final Cut Pro X update comes with dual viewers to compare shots, MXF plug-in support, Compound Clip creation for reusing clips and much more.
The software will cost $299.99 for new customers and requires OS X 10.6.8 or later.
New audio tools allow users to edit audio channels directly within the timeline and to combine audio from multiple angles with Multicam Clip.
Users can transfer media from both file-based cameras and files and folders with the new unified import window; the update also includes XML 1.2 featuring metadata import and export.
The “Share” interface now enables users to export their projects to one or more destinations.
“The Final Cut Pro X update also includes RED camera support with native REDCODE Raw editing, as well as optional background transcode to Apple ProRes,” reports Apple Insider.
Additional features: “Option to add chapter markers in the timeline for export to video files, DVD, and Blu-ray disc… Range selection now preserves start and end points in the Event Browser and allows you to create multiple range selections on a single clip… Paste attributes window lets you choose specific effects to copy between clips… Flexible Clip Connections allow you to keep Connected Clips in place when slipping, sliding or moving clips in the Primary Storyline.”
Following the landmark patent suit with Samsung, Apple has lessened its reliance on its rival for iPhone parts — and now Samsung is pushing back.
“We are unable to supply our flat-screens to Apple with huge price discounts. Samsung has already cut our portion of shipments to Apple and next year we will stop shipping displays,” a senior Samsung source told The Korea Times Monday on the condition of anonymity.
“Samsung has been the top supplier of liquid crystal displays to Apple, selling more than 15 million displays in the first half of 2012 to Apple,” GigaOM explains. “But according to the same unnamed source, Samsung has sold only 3 million to Apple since then. Apple has been cutting its reliance on Samsung Display and buying similar products from other sources, such as LG and Sharp.”
“Samsung has also seen its chip orders from Apple cut,” notes the article. “Reuters reported earlier that Apple planned to rely less on Samsung for the iPhone 5′s memory chips. Then perhaps to add a little insult to injury, Apple also recently snaked a top chip designer away from Samsung. In this context, the severed panel business relationship seems like an inevitable next step.”
Samsung is likely to simply substitute Apple’s business with its own, producing displays for its own line of tablets. Amazon could also be a potential new customer for the company with its expansion of tablet offerings.
Facebook and Twitter users today are simply out to get followers, no longer focused on sharing good content. There is just too much noise created by high volume of poor-quality content.
At least that’s what the new social network Pheed is arguing as it places emphasis on providing high-quality content.
“It’s pretty simple, if you allow influencers to charge for content, high quality content will be produced,” Forbes writes. “Pheed enables users to share all forms of digital content, including text, photo, audio, video, and live broadcasts. ‘Pheeders’ then have the option to share for free or at a premium, either by applying a monthly subscription fee to their channel or setting up a pay-per-view live broadcast event.”
Just days after launching the site, Pheed has already seen 350,000 unique visitors. The company says 200 celebs and “taste-makers” have signed up for the service.
“Users can charge anywhere from $1.99 to $34.99 per view, or $1.99 to $34.99 per month. In both cases, the user selects their own pricing and owns all of the content,” explains the article. “Pheed makes money by taking half of the revenue, which covers bandwidth and storage, payment processing, and of course, Pheed’s profits.”
Pheed faces one, potentially large, obstacle: Will people actually pay to view content or subscribe to celeb content?
“Time will tell,” Forbes concludes. “Pheed has a good opportunity to succeed if it stays focused and doesn’t try to become a jack-of-all-trades. For now, it’s safe to say Pheed is a site we should all keep an eye on — its Twitter-with-a-business-model approach stands to seriously impact the social media game.”
After using Microsoft’s Surface tablet for more than a week, Slate writer Farhad Manjoo concludes the tablet is no competitor for Apple’s iPad.
