“As the cameras and screens of smartphones and tablets improve, and as wireless networks offer higher bandwidth, more companies are getting into the business of enabling mobile video calls,” reports The New York Times, noting that the rise has been so quick that analysts have yet to compile numbers.
In 2011, Microsoft acquired video calling service Skype. Similarly, Apple developed its own FaceTime feature to sell the iPad and in September expanded the service beyond just Wi-Fi to cellular networks.
Google’s free video calling service Hangouts on its social network Google Plus allows up to ten people to video conference, and it features more than 200 apps. Just last week, Yahoo purchased its own video chat service OnTheAir. Tango Mobile is yet another video calling service, which has attracted 80 million active users and sees 200,000 join daily, according to CTO and co-founder Eric Setton.
Microsoft has incorporated Skype into its Windows 8 mobile phones, allowing people to receive calls even when the app isn’t running. Google is interested in “making money on the applications, but in learning more about them so it can sell more ads by getting people to use [Hangouts],” notes the article.
“Don’t expect video calling to improve productivity. Tango uses the same technology that enables video calls to sell games that people can play simultaneously,” the article states. “Google says some jokey applications on Hangouts, like a feature that can put a mustache over each caller, seem to encourage people to talk longer.”
“Tango’s average video call used to last six minutes, Mr. Setton said, but when the company started adding other applications to go with the videos, like games and designs that float over people, the average call length rose to 12 minutes.”
While computer makers are focused on adding touchscreen capabilities to desktops, Leap Motion has created a $70 matchbox-sized device that adds gesture control to computers, essentially negating the need for touchscreens.
The technology uses two small cameras and multiple infrarad LEDs to track the motion of a person’s fingers with an accuracy of a hundredth of a millimeter, Technology Review reports. The second camera is used to prevent errors from a hand obscuring itself. All the processing is done by a drive software installed on the computer.
According to Leap Motion co-founder and CEO Michael Buckwald, “Leap provides the solution to ‘gorilla arm,’ a term used to describe the dubious ergonomics of a person repeatedly lifting his or her hands from the keyboard or mouse and reaching out to operate a computer’s touch screen,” the article states. “Users of Leap’s device can lift their hands just slightly off the keyboard and make more economic gestures with their fingers.”
“If you’re controlling a cursor [with Leap], you don’t have to move one-to-one with the screen, like you do with touch,” says Buckwald, so small motions translate to larger movements on screen, making interaction faster than using a mouse and keyboard.
“We’re working with lots of consumer OEMs and for laptops but also automotive and medical companies,” he adds. In the future, the technology will be applied to mobile devices as well as new technology such as head-mounted displays. Leap Motion anticipates the technology will one day enable complex 3D interactions.
Pre-production versions of the device have been sent to developers who have created various applications for the interface, including a aircraft game and photo-browsing program. The post includes an impressive video featuring these uses and others.
YouTube has teamed up with Virgin America in what is the company’s first distribution deal with an airline.
“The airline will make programming on five YouTube channels — Warner Bros.’ ‘H+ The Digital Series,’ produced by Bryan Singer; WIGS’ ‘Blue,’ starring Julia Stiles; Geek & Sundry’s ‘Written by a Kid;’ ‘Crash Course’ and Barely Political’s ‘The Key of Awesome’ — available through its inflight entertainment system on December 15,” reports Variety.
The content will be free on all flights in the U.S. and Mexico. More content is expected to follow.
“For YouTube, putting the channels in front of more viewers is seen as a way to promote the programming on a new platform, where auds are eager to turn to video to bide their time during flights, and hopefully encourage them to seek out the shows after they’ve landed,” notes the article.
And it’s a win for Virgin America also, since it now has another partner through which to offer free entertainment to customers.
Virgin America is used to being the first to do things. It was the first domestic carrier to offer fleetwide Wi-Fi in 2009, enabling flyers to connect to YouTube through their own mobile devices.
Adobe’s Creative Cloud subscription service will now offer Adobe Scout, a cloud-based set of tools for game developers, reports VentureBeat.
“The tools enable developers to access a centrally located suite of tools for making their titles,” explains the post. “The aim is to streamline the game-development process from creation to final deployment.”
Adobe Scout helps games run faster because it “uncovers granular internal information in ActionScript-based mobile and browser content to unlock significant performance optimization opportunities,” according to Adobe.
The Creative Cloud service also includes Adobe Flash C++ Compiler, the Adobe Gaming SDK, and trial versions of Flash Professional CS6 and Flash Builder 4.7 Premium.
The Flash C++ Compiler takes code from PC, Xbox, PlayStation 3, and iOS game engines and converts them so they are compatible on all browsers using the Adobe Flash player.
Adobe hopes to convince more developers to use Flash, and argues that “using Flash makes developers more productive when it comes to cross-platform experiences,” notes VentureBeat.
The post includes two videos detailing Adobe Scout and the Adobe Gaming SDK.
Spotify has announced a complete overhaul of its music service, which includes a Collection for users’ music, a Discover feature for finding new music and a Follow section for tracking celebrities. The update will be available in beta soon and then roll out to all devices early next year.
“The new features are not only meant to please users, but also to increase discovery as a whole on the platform, which could help artists gain traction,” writes The Verge.
“The recommendation engine works based on music you’ve listened to in the past, as well as based on artists you follow. There also appears to be a recommendation engine for showing you artists that are touring near you,” the post explains.
Spotify’s Collection feature gets rid of the plethora of playlists in the sidebar and brings all users’ music to one place.
“A fundamental behavior on Spotify is that people listen to whole albums,” says CEO and founder Daniel Ek. “A third of all playlists on Spotify are just albums people have saved. It was clear people want to listen to albums and wanted an easy way to save them, so for us [Collection view] is just about making it easier for users to save music the way they wanted.”
The third addition, Follow, enables users to follow friends and celebrities. “In order to keep fans on the right track, Spotify, like Twitter, displays Verified checkmarks on their profile pages,” The Verge writes. “Additionally, new push notifications can alert you as soon as albums drop inside Spotify by your favorite artists.”
At an event in New York City, Ek also announced that the service has 20 million monthly users and 5 million paid users, twice as many as a year ago. “We’ve paid out over half a billion dollars to musicians… over 70 percent of the money we make,” he added.
“It’s gonna look nothing like we’re seeing today,” said Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos in a discussion of what TV will look like in five years, noting that Netflix wants to lead that transformation.
For one, the streaming service aims to make ratings irrelevant. Even though Netflix’s original TV show “Arrested Development,” coming in February, is expected to attract millions, Sarandos says the company won’t be releasing numbers.
He explained that ratings are irrelevant for subscription services that don’t have to sell audiences to advertisers. Moreover, the numbers create unreasonable comparisons of shows’ immediate success when audiences may discover the content over time, GigaOM writes.
Although Sarandos acknowledged the necessity for time schedules for time-sensitive content like sports or talk shows, he says Netflix will not create time schedules that reduces on-demand flexibility. This model could have reverberations among other pay TV providers.
“After all, if Netflix is successful with its no-schedule strategy, should other TV networks stick to the schedule as their viewing is shifting towards an on-demand world?” the post asks.
Similarly, Netflix will offer complete seasons of TV shows all at once. Viewers don’t want to wait for the next episode, and creators will be able to spend less time recapping in each episode.
Netflix also places value in personalization and has worked to fine-tune its recommendation feature. The company is taking it one step further with Just for Kids, a UI that separates children’s content. Sarandos says Netflix aims to one day use voice and visual recognition to “be able to pull up a user’s personalized recommendations as soon as that person walked into the room,” the post states.
A recent automated request has asked Google to take down links to legitimate sites that reference studios’ films in addition to other links that seemingly have no connection to the films.
Although Google has left many of the links up thus far, the appeal is just one example of the numerous Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) requests that Google has to sift through.
According to The Next Web, the request was sent by a company called “Yes It Is – No Piracy!” on behalf of several major Hollywood movie studios.
“Victims of the takedown requests include sites where the content is hosted legally (Amazon, CBS, iTunes, Blockbuster, Verizon on demand, and Xfinity), newspapers discussing the content in question (the BBC, CNET, Forbes, The Huffington Post, The Guardians,The Independent, The Mirror, The Daily Mail, and Wired) as well as official Facebook Pages for the movies and TV shows and even their Wikipedia entries,” the post explains.
While takedown requests for copyright violations are reasonable, these automated requests put unnecessary strain on Google, the article suggests. One such request from Microsoft asked Google to censor BBC, CBS, CNN, Wikipedia, the U.S. government, and even its own Bing links.
“We have no problem with companies asking Google to censor webpages in its search engine because they are either illegally hosting or linking to copyrighted material,” comments TNW. “That being said, automated requests that don’t get a final check from human eyes result in mistakes, and it’s frankly quite sad that Google has to sift through them all. Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time this has happened, and it likely won’t be the last.”
In a challenge to console makers, Valve has officially launched its “Big Picture Mode” for its cloud-gaming platform Steam, enabling users to play titles on their televisions by simply connecting their computers.
“Steam has been offering its users the option to put the service on their television since September in beta mode,” the Washington Post reports, “but the company has deemed it ready to lose that testing tag. The mode makes it possible to use almost all of Steam’s features including its Web browser, social network and — of course — its games in a way optimized for television screens.”
To promote the new mode, Steam has put the compatible games on sale. “All the sale titles have full controller support, which means that users won’t have to tote their mouse and keyboard to the living room,” the article notes.
“There are also quite a few partial support titles, such as ‘XCOM Enemy Unknown,’ ‘Hitman: Absolution,’ and ‘Call of Duty: Black Ops 2.’ Steam is very clear about which titles have full support and which do not,” explains the article. “Titles with partial support may need the keyboard and mouse during installation or for ‘limited interactions’ throughout the game.”
Because Valve has established itself in the gaming community, the company could move further into the console territory currently dominated by Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo. “Some see this step into the living room as a test for bigger things in the future,” the article suggests.
Netflix and The Walt Disney Co. have agreed to an exclusive licensing agreement that will enable Netflix users to stream movies from the Disney library.
“The deal means that if you want to watch a live-action or animated Disney film, you’ll only be able to do it on Netflix and not Amazon Prime or Hulu,” notes VentureBeat. “This is a huge win for hardcore Disney movie buffs, who until now could only purchase digital copies of Disney films or watch them on DVD/Blu-ray.”
The deal arrives in the wake of Disney’s announcement that it would shutter its Disney Movies Online service by the end of this year.
“Under terms of the agreement, Netflix will gain exclusive streaming rights to all Disney films that hit theaters in 2016,” notes the post. “And while Netflix is currently the only service to have streaming rights to old Disney film content, there was no indication that this will always be the case.”
According to the Netflix blog, the deal will include theatrical releases from Disney, Pixar and Marvel starting in 2016. “In the meantime, we’ll have an amazing selection of Disney movies including Disney classics, catalog movies, and popular non-theatrical movies for the whole family featuring beloved characters like Tinkerbell, Mickey Mouse and Winnie the Pooh, to name a few.”
Netflix’s Just for Kids section is adding titles such as “Dumbo,” “The Aristocats,” “Pocahontas” and “Beverly Hills Chihuahua” — while older viewers can look forward to movies including “Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl,” “The Sixth Sense,” “National Treasure,” “Phenomenon” and “Quiz Show” in the future.
“Disney is the biggest studio yet to make such an arrangement with Netflix,” reports the Wall Street Journal in a related article. “Netflix has struck deals with smaller entertainment companies, including Dreamworks Animation SKG Inc., Weinstein Co. and Relativity Media LLC.”
WSJ suggests that Netflix is “ready to rumble with traditional pay TV channels such as HBO and Showtime,” since it outbid Starz for the exclusive rights to offer Disney theatrical releases.
A federal judge has sided with Facebook against an adware company that attempted to use the site for its own purposes, ruling that the social network has the right to exclude users if they install a program designed to change the look of the site and swap ad offerings.
“In a ruling issued Thursday [November 29] in San Diego, U.S. District Judge Cathy Ann Bencivengo dismissed an antitrust complaint filed by Sambreel, a controversial advertising company that offers products with names like PageRage that let users tweak the look of their Facebook page,” reports GigaOM.
“The companies got in a bitter fight earlier this year after Facebook ‘gated’ users who had downloaded the Sambreel products — meaning the users had to remove PageRage software before they could log on to the social network,” notes the post.
In response, Sambreel launched an aggressive legal and PR campaign, accusing Facebook of violating antitrust laws.
However, according to Judge Bencivengo: “There is no fundamental right to use Facebook; users may only obtain a Facebook account upon agreement that they will comply with Facebook’s terms, which is unquestionably permissible under the antitrust laws. It follows, therefore, that Facebook is within its rights to require that its users disable certain products before using its website.”
“The ruling comes at a time of uncertainty over the degree to which large companies like Facebook, Google and Twitter can control their products,” notes GigaOM. “On one hand, these are private companies that provide a free service — meaning they should be able to do what they like. On the other hand, they have become like public utilities that people depend on for their communications and on which third party companies make their livelihood.”
Apple has been criticized for its premium pricing on its iPad tablets (the latest 64GB version costs $699), especially in light of cheaper competitors that have entered the market.
But consumers have been willing to pay that price for the rich user experience and sleek hardware. With the new Surface Pro offering from Microsoft, the question arises: Are Windows fans as willing to spend big bucks?
A more powerful version of the Surface RT tablet, the Windows 8 Surface Pro tablet costs $899 for 64GB, and that’s without a keyboard, Wired reports.
“Unlike the Surface with Windows RT, which runs on ARM-based chips and only serves up a stripped-down version of Windows, the Surface Pro runs a full-fledged version of Windows 8 Pro on an Intel Core i5 chip. One of the biggest differences: The Surface Pro will run existing Windows 7 applications,” explains Wired in a related article. “In addition to the Core i5 processor, Microsoft announced that the Surface Pro will have a 1920×1080 resolution, a full-size USB 3.0 port, and Mini DisplayPort for external display support.”
The tablet comes with a stylus and enables on-device note taking. It aims to be both a PC and tablet, but it’s uncertain if customers will justify spending more.
“Fuller-featured Windows 8 convertible/hybrid tablet-laptops like Lenovo’s new Yoga 13, start at $1,099. So it seems Microsoft is not really going after the iPad directly, but instead pushing a new, yet undefined category of device,” Wired writer Mike Barton states. “But the price has kept me looking at the $199 Google Nexus 7 tablet.”
“Compared with iPad and its rich app ecosystem, is the Surface Pro dead on arrival given its price?” asks Barton. “Will this new device category take off? Do consumers and business want a full Windows device in a tablet form — and will they pay a premium for it?”
While opportunities created by the Internet are boundless, the move to take advantage of them has been slow. Although the online world has dramatically changed how we access information or purchase products, “the real opportunity of change is still ahead of us,” and it’s all about machines, GigaOM writes.
“There are now many millions of machines across the world, ranging from simple electric motors to highly advanced MRI machines,” the article states. The Industrial Internet aims to connect these machines with people, big data and analytics — and the benefits of doing so could be significant.
“The Industrial Internet leverages the power of the cloud to connect machines embedded with sensors and sophisticated software to other machines (and to us) so we can extract data, make sense of it and find meaning where it did not exist before,” the post explains.
In the airline industry, “just a one percent improvement in aircraft engine maintenance efficiency can reduce related costs by $250 million annually. A similar one percent fuel savings in power generation could add more than $4 billion annually to the global economy.”
Other industries — health in particular — have similar opportunities to increase efficiency to cut operating costs. “Assuming growth similar to what prevailed during the Internet boom, the Industrial Internet revolution will add about $15 trillion to global GDP by 2030. That’s the equivalent of adding another U.S. economy to the world,” reports GigaOM.
“This Industrial Internet is not about a world run by robots, it is about combining the world’s best technologies to solve our biggest challenges,” the article continues. “It’s about economically and environmentally sustainable energy, curing the incurable diseases, and preparing our infrastructure and cities for the next 100 years.”
Australian video company Blackmagic Design announced its Blackmagic Cinema Camera (BMCC) earlier this year during the NAB Show in Las Vegas.
The 2.5K camera features a built-in SSD recorder and is designed to record footage in native formats including 12-bit CinemaDNG raw, Apple’s ProRes 422 (HQ) and Avid’s DNxHD at 220 Mb/s.
“Then it can offload its material over a Thunderbolt connection at up to 10 Gb/s for instant editing that is facilitated by including metadata directly from the camera,” reports creativePlanet. “Priced at $2,995, Blackmagic has bundled the camera with software packages including Resolve and UltraScope, which total more than the cost of the camera itself.”
As previously reported on ETCentric, the original camera was outfitted with an EF mount that accommodates Canon and Zeiss lenses, and the company later announced a Passive Micro Four Thirds (MFT) model for lenses with manual iris and focus capabilities. “Other lens formats, like PL or Nikon, can be used with third-party adapters,” explains the article.
Jacob Rosenberg, director and CTO at Bandito Brothers in Culver City, describes the camera as “awesome,” noting that Blackmagic truly understands the needs of video professionals.
“Blackmagic Design is aware of the color science that goes into using video formats like CinemaDNG raw files to get what we need out of them,” he says. “It gives you great latitude at 2.5K for an HD deliverable, giving us extra headroom for enhancements like stabilization.”
Marco Solorio, owner of OneRiver Media in the San Francisco Bay area, has shot several interesting tests, including one that offers a comparison between 12-bit raw footage and 8-bit alternatives.
Blackmagic has given the camera a 13-stop dynamic range, that serves bright and dark shooting environments. “Solorio finds that the camera has very solid low-light capabilities and says you can boost its sensitivity all the way up to 1600 ASA,” notes the article.
“This camera has a 15.81mm x 8.88mm sensor that is sized between Super 16mm film and Micro Four Thirds,” he says, “and some have expressed concerns over its potentially limited depth of field. But we’ve found that using a fast lens, like f/1.2, and stepping back so you can zoom in a bit can put backgrounds out of focus the way most modern shooters expect.”
Microsoft may take on Google with its own augmented reality specs, according to recently released details of a 2011 patent application.
While the company may have been late to the tablet party, it could become an early player in augmented reality eyewear.
“The Redmond-based computer company states in the patent that the specs would incorporate technology enabling a user to view supplemental information while watching a live event,” notes Digital Trends.
“So at a sports event, for example, stats and replays could be shown on the glasses, allowing you to keep your eye on the action instead of looking up at the big screen for the same information. Also, at something like a music event, the lyrics of a song could appear in front of the wearer’s eyes.”
The patent application details how the device might be operated, including a wrist-worn computer, voice commands or gestures.
“It’s not known if the computer giant has invested any time or money on building a prototype of the high-tech specs, or whether it’s simply a case of laying claim to various features early on to avoid threats of patent-related litigation from rivals should they wish to develop the idea further down the road,” explains the post.
Google is hoping to commercially launch its AR specs by 2014. Juniper Research forecasts the market for AR specs and other wearable technology could be worth as much as $1.5 billion by then.
“The TV Everywhere pitch is straightforward: If you pay for cable TV, you can watch cable TV wherever you want — on your iPad, in your bedroom, on your phone, in the airport,” writes Peter Kafka for AllThingsD.
“The reality is a lot more complicated, for a lot of reasons, but the upshot is that right now you can only watch a bit of what’s on cable on devices that aren’t your TV,” he notes. “And if the cable guys are going to convince people not to cut the cord, or to sign up for the cord in the first place, that’s going to have to get better.”
Kafka cites ESPN’s “great WatchESPN app” as an example of this model that really enables consumers to watch content everywhere on demand. However, the app let Kafka down when he tried to watch Monday Night Football on his phone.
“The problem, says ESPN PR, is that Verizon has an exclusive on NFL mobile rights, so ESPN can’t deliver the game to me on my iPhone, even when I’m at home, on a Wi-Fi connection (which is the way that lots of mobile video gets consumed),” he writes.
While this may make sense from a business development perspective, what is the reaction of average sports fans who expect to watch what they want, when they want?
Even more confusing: while the game was not available on the iPhone, it was available on the iPad.
“Again, trying to argue that some rights apply to a 9.5-inch screen but not a 3.5-inch screen is the sort of thing that makes sense to lawyers and deal-makers, and no sense at all to normal people,” concludes Kafka. “You know, the people you want to keep paying for cable.”
