While Netflix CEO Reed Hastings says that his company is in good shape, Wall Street has its doubts. That concern resulted in Netflix shares dropping 16 percent to $85.45 directly after its first quarter numbers were announced.
Netflix added 1.7 million new streaming subscribers in the first quarter — considered only light growth for the second straight quarter.
Growth for Q2 is predicted to be lower. “During the analyst call, Hastings appealed for calm and said the problem was temporary and seasonal. The second quarter is typically tough on Netflix,” reports CNET. “Skeptics, however, worry that the problems could be more lasting and have more to do with the company’s inability to secure film licenses and growing competition in the streaming-video sector.”
In order for Netflix to remain competitive and elite, it has to secure more content to encourage subscriber growth. “But licensing costs have gone through the roof,” CNET notes, and “Netflix failed to renew a licensing agreement with Starz, the pay-TV cable service that supplied Netflix with films from Disney and Sony Pictures.”
In the meantime, the competition is growing stronger as Hulu, Amazon and HBO Go continue to expand, along with Comcast’s new Xfinity Streampix service.
Google has revealed the results of their work to re-architect their internal network infrastructure around OpenFlow.
Google’s network, which is described as equivalent to “the second largest ISP in the world,” consists of a user-facing network and a second network that interconnects its worldwide data centers.
OpenFlow is a key part of the Software Defined Networking (SDN) approach that separates network equipment from the overall management. The result is the capability to manage the network fabric as a whole and dramatically increase its efficiency.
Moreover, Google which began working on an OpenFlow network in 2010 has actually been designing and building its own network gear as it was not yet available.
The result is a network that operates at almost 100 percent utilization, rather than the 30-40 percent of other networks.
Google is revealing their OpenFlow work with hopes that equipment vendors will begin manufacturing gear that supports it. Google is a member of the Open Networking Foundation, which promotes OpenFlow. Other members include Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook, Verizon and Deutsche Telekom, and Nicira.
Software Defined Networking as represented by OpenFlow is a fundamental change in thinking of complex digital networks that promises to remake the entire network industry, impact how companies and governments manage their networks, and enable new kinds of network applications.
The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) hopes to fight potential cyberattacks by enabling companies and the federal government to share cyber threat intelligence with each other.
Although the bill has been supported by many big Internet players, the Obama administration is now expressing some hesitation, suggesting CISPA “fails to adequately protect critical national infrastructure, such as electrical grids and water supplies, and could threaten individual privacy and civil liberties,” reports Digital Trends.
According to Caitlyn Hayden, spokeswoman for the National Security Council, cybersecurity legislation requires strong safeguards. “Legislation without new authorities to address our nation’s critical infrastructure vulnerabilities, or legislation that would sacrifice the privacy of our citizens in the name of security, will not meet our nation’s urgent needs,” she said in a statement.
Some civil liberty and privacy advocates criticize the bill’s broad language, which could “allow companies to hand over private information about their customers and users to the federal government without sufficient oversight or consequences for mishandling the data,” explains the article.
The “Stop Cyber Spying” campaign against CISPA also raises concerns that the shared information could be given to spy agencies with little public oversight.
Although the White House has not made any plan to veto the bill, there is definitely some question as to whether the proposed legislation will do much to protect against cyberattacks.
Nicira, “the most intriguing startup in Silicon Valley” according to Wired, has created a network virtualization technology that enables companies to program their networks as they do with server virtualization.
The technology runs on top of any network hardware which is used only to move network packets. The network virtualization software provides all the intelligence allowing one to reconfigure the network infrastructure. Thus, rather than be locked into a specific network configuration, the entire network architecture can be altered in software rather than hardware to fit the current requirements.
Nicira’s Open vSwitch goes beyond OpenFlow, which requires vendors to incorporate the protocol in their hardware. It can work with any network gear, even inexpensive hardware.
Companies like Google, AT&T, eBay, NTT, Fidelity and Rackspace are already using Nicira to manage their networks.
“We have hundreds of thousands of customers, and that translates into multiple hundreds of thousands of network or network segments that customers want to create,” says John Engates, CTO of Rackspace, which is currently using the Nicira platform for a beta version of its cloud service. “Nicira gives us the ability to put any customer, any end point, any location on one common virtual network.”
Google is already buying inexpensive network hardware from Taiwan and China, thus bypassing more expensive options from Cisco and Juniper. Martin Casado, Nicira’s CTO, thinks over time that network hardware will become less important compared to the network software.
D-Link has launched its new $48 MovieNite video streaming player. The streaming-only player is designed for aspiring cord-cutters, as an affordable alternative to Roku set-top boxes.
MovieNite is being offered exclusively through Walmart with a $5.99 free movie credit from VUDU.
The player features 1080p video and access to services including VUDU, Netflix, Pandora and YouTube. D-Link has also released iPhone and Android apps for controlling the player.
“The closest match to video playback specs in Roku’s lineup of products is the $79.99 Roku 2 XD, but Roku players offer access to wider variety of services such as Hulu Plus, Amazon Instant Video, HBO GO and several sports subscriptions packages,” reports Digital Trends.
Since Walmart owns VUDU, it seems unlikely that the player will expand its offerings to include competitors such as Amazon Instant Video.
“If the user also owns mydlink-enabled network cameras, the feeds from those cameras can be viewed through the MovieNite player as well,” adds the post. “For instance, a user could pause a movie playing on Netflix to launch the mydlink application and view an outdoor camera feed when someone knocks on the front door.”
Pay TV could cost as much as $200 a month by 2020, according to a new survey from NPD Group. Compared to today’s $86/month rate, the rise seems rather drastic, especially when considering the rise of online content services.
“As pay TV costs rise and consumers’ spending power stays flat, the traditional affiliate-fee business model for pay TV companies appears to be unsustainable in the long term,” said Keith Nissen, research director for The NPD Group. “Much-needed structural changes to the pay TV industry will not happen quickly or easily; however, the emerging competition between S-VOD and premium-TV suppliers might be the spark that ignites the necessary business-model transformation of the pay TV industry.”
The majority of pay TV subscribers have stuck with their services despite the trend to cut cords in favor of streaming services. The main reason for staying with their services is lack of content, especially live sports, as well as the convenience of getting all their content from one source.
As prices go up, however, these reasons might not be enough to keep customers. Online options will become even more appealing if consumers don’t have to worry about going over their broadband cap.
“So the question for TV consumers is: Do you keep paying $86 today for access to a walled garden of really good content that will likely to continue to rise in cost? Or do you go outside the walled garden and scramble to get your regular shows while fighting the caps and agreements that will eventually make the world outside the walled garden inhospitable for a TV lover? And the bigger question is whether or not the FCC or anyone in Washington is watching this play out and plans to help the consumers by taking action?” GigaOM asks.
It’s been a year since Larry Page became Google’s CEO. The following are some highlights from his 2012 update published yesterday.
“Google has so many opportunities that, unless we make some hard choices, we end up spreading ourselves too thin and don’t have the impact we want.”
“Creating a simpler, more intuitive experience across Google has been another important focus. I have always believed that technology should do the hard work — discovery, organization, communication — so users can do what makes them happiest: living and loving, not messing with annoying computers! That means making our products work together seamlessly.”
“Getting from needs to actions lightning fast is especially important on smaller devices like mobile phones, where screen size is limited and context really matters. That’s why I’m so excited about Android.”
“We have always believed that it’s possible to make money without being evil.”
“I believe that by producing innovative technology products that touch people deeply, we will enable you to do truly amazing things that change the world.”
Samsung is working with OpenX Technologies Inc. to offer an ad service called Samsung AdHub Market that will enable advertisers to run targeted messages on Samsung phones and tablets.
“The move is part of Samsung’s broader push to bring targeted advertising to electronic devices, including Internet-connected television sets,” the Wall Street Journal reports. “It also will pit the company against other mobile-ad services from Apple, Google and Millennial Media Inc., which held an initial public offering of stock last week.”
“This is the first time any device manufacturer has entered the ad tech space in this way,” said OpenX chief executive Tim Cadogan. “It is becoming very clear to the principals in the mobile space that advertising is going to be a very important part of the revenue mix.”
“According to data provided by eMarketer, spending on mobile advertising in the U.S. is expected to reach $10.8 billion in 2016, up from $2.6 billion this year,” reports WSJ. “Cadogan said he expects that OpenX, which has focused on advertising within desktop computers and is now generating more than $100 million in annual revenue, will move further into the mobile market in the future.”
Grooveshark is hurting. The music streaming site no longer has legal access to the majority of licensed music after EMI terminated its contract.
Of the major music publishers, EMI was the only company that had made licensing agreements with Grooveshark; however, in January, EMI filed a lawsuit against the service, claiming Grooveshark hadn’t paid licensing fees since 2009.
“Grooveshark was recently forced to make the difficult decision to part ways with EMI due to EMI’s currently unsustainable streaming rates and EMI’s pending merger with Universal Music Group, which we consider monopolistic and in violation of antitrust laws,” Grooveshark announced in a statement to CNET. “To date, Grooveshark has paid over $2.6 million to EMI, but we have yet to find sustainable streaming rates. In spite of this, Grooveshark’s dedication to artists and rights holders remains the same.”
Florida-based Grooveshark says it has more than “30 million monthly users who stream more than 15 billion songs per year,” reports VentureBeat. “In November, it rolled out a new design of its online music player that includes a social layer.”
Two analysts are predicting that Apple’s stock will hit the $1,000 mark within a year or two.
Brian White of Topeka Capital Markets says the introduction of the next iPhone and the iTV, paired with expansion into China and the TV market, will surge the stock to more than $1,000 bringing the company’s value to $1 trillion. “Apple fever is spreading like a wildfire around the world,” he said.
“Shares can reach $1,000 based on our belief that Apple will continue to win in global mobile devices,” Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray wrote in a note.
The company has grown over 60 percent since Steve Jobs’ death in October, so these predictions may not be unreasonable. In this year alone, the stock has risen 53 percent.
“Apple investors also are benefiting from a $2.65-a-share dividend, starting in July, and a $10 billion stock buyback plan,” reports Bloomberg. “The company announced both initiatives last month.”
Highlight Hunter is a free app for Macs and PCs that takes your unedited video and creates highlight clips ready for downloading into your favorite editing program.
The app requires you to cover the lens after you shoot footage you want highlighted. The app automatically looks for those clips and includes the preceding 30 seconds. The company claims it can reportedly reduce editing time an average of 80 percent.
A later version will enable the software to scan, edit, upload to the cloud and make clips available on YouTube.
“Highlight Hunter is free to use, and unlimited, but the free version applies a small watermark to videos,” reports TechCrunch. “Users can switch to a $29/year premium version, which removes the watermark, supports faster scanning speeds, priority support, among other things.”
The article also mentions HighlightCam, which has facial recognition and other software that can create mini-movies.
Nuance Communications has become a leader in voice technology. Already in use for Apple’s Siri, the company is developing voice technology to command televisions, cars, computers, and smart devices such as coffee makers, refrigerators, thermostats, alarm systems and appliances.
Nuance’s Dragon Go voice assistant app for Android and iPhone, which has been downloaded several million times, listens to voice commands regarding mobile entertainment, streaming media, social networking, and shopping.
It is actively working directly with websites like Spotify, Yelp, YouTube, AccuWeather, ESPN, Facebook, Fandango, LiveNation, Pandora, Twitter, Wikipedia and others. The app bypasses search engines like Google and Bing, which are both developing their own voice command systems.
Nuance is also working with major corporations to develop voice-enabled information systems. In healthcare, a Nuance system can scan dictated doctor’s notes for key information. US Airways has created “Wally,” a voice operated customer service that can anticipate and respond to requests for flight information.
LG will soon introduce a Dragon TV-enabled voice-command system that can find programs, make calls via Skype, shop on Amazon and even allow viewers to update their Facebook and Twitter accounts.
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 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.
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.”
