MediaTech101

New Beginnings

noreply@blogger.com (Mario scott) — Sat, 01 Apr 2023 22:29:00 +0000

I have had this blog hidden for a while and now it is time to start using it. The purpose of this blog is to post and discuss the tools, software, hardware, and techniques being used in the collision of tech and media. So now begins this examination of these interesting times we are in now. So here is to new beginnings and constant posting

[Google Fast Flip] iPad Rivals: Over a Dozen Windows and Android Tablets Shown at Comp...

noreply@blogger.com (Mario scott) — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 19:18:00 +0000

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The new war begins

iPad Rivals: Over a Dozen Windows and Android Tablets Shown at Comp...
iPad Rivals: Over a Dozen Windows and Android Tablets Shown at Computex Companies showed off over a dozen new rivals for the iPad at Computex this year, including a nifty 10-inch touchscreen tablet that docks into a speaker from Compal Electronics. pays testimony to the trend Apple set in motion in April. Now that the company has sold 2 million iPads in just under two months, PC vendors globally want a piece of the action. In the weeks leading up to Computex, it appeared Google might sweep the show with Android-based tablets, but Microsoft swooped in with some key victories and the launch of Windows Embedded Compact 7 software for small devices. One company that says it will make tablets using Android, Windows and the MeeGo software developed by Intel and Nokia, also showed off one of the neatest devices at Computex, complete with its own user interface (UI) and speaker-dock. Compal Electronics, the world's second largest contract maker of laptop computers, a sleek Android-based tablet with a 10-inch touchscreen and a stereo speaker it docked into. The UI is similar to Acer's Shell UI, which works on Android smartphones. The UI simplifies navigation by making the home screen a room...
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[Google Fast Flip] Closing the Digital Frontier

noreply@blogger.com (Mario scott) — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 18:49:00 +0000

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The changing landscape

Closing the Digital Frontier
The era of the Web browser's dominance is coming to a close. And the Internet's founding ideology—that information wants to be free, and that attempts to constrain it are not only hopeless but immoral— suddenly seems naive and stale in the new age of apps, smart phones, and pricing plans. What will this mean for the future of the media—and of the Web itself? By Michael Hirschorn As Chris Anderson pointed out in a moment of non-hyperbole in his book Free, the phrase Information wants to be free was never meant to be the rallying cry it turned into. It was first uttered by Stewart Brand at a hacker conference in 1984, and it came with a significant disclaimer: that information also wants to be expensive, because it can be so important (see "Information Wants to Be Paid For," page 47). With the long tail of Brand's dictum chopped off, the phrase Information wants to be free—dissected, debated, reconstituted as a global democratic rallying cry against monsters of the political, business, and media elites—became perhaps the most powerful meme of the past quarter century; so powerful, in fact, that multibillion-dollar corporations destroyed their own businesses at its altar. It's a bit of a Schrödinger's-cat situation when you try to determine what would have happened if we had not bought into the IWTBF mantra, but by the time digital culture exploded into the mainstream with the introduction first of the Mosaic browser and then of Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer, in the mid-'90s, free was already an idea only the very old or very obtuse dared to contradict. As far back as the mid-'80s, digital freedom was a cause célèbre on the Northern California–based Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link (known as the WELL), the wildly influential bulletin-board service that brought together mostly West Coast cyberspace pioneers to discuss matters of the day. It gives you a feel for the WELL's gestalt to know that Brand, who founded the WELL, was also behind the Long Now Foundation, which promotes the idea of a consciousness-expanding 10,000-year clock. Thrilling, intense, uncompromising, at times borderline self-parodically Talmudic, the WELL had roots in the same peculiar convergence of hippiedom and techno-savantism that created Silicon Valley, but it also called out, consciously and un-, to a neo-Jeffersonian idea of the digital pioneer as a kind of virtual sodbuster. The WELL-ite Howard Rheingold, in his 1993 digital manifesto, The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier, described himself as being "colonized" (in a good way) by his virtual community. The libertarian activist John Perry Barlow, an early member of the WELL's board of directors, was a co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital version of the ACLU. At the WELL, the core gospel of an open Web was upheld with such rigor that when one of its more prolific members, Time magazine's Philip Elmer-DeWitt, published a scare-the-old-folks cover story on cyber porn in 1995, which carried the implication that some measure of online censorship might not be a bad thing, he and his apostasy were torn to pieces by his fellow WELL-ites with breathtaking relentlessness. At the time, the episode was notable for being one of the first examples of the Web's ability to fact-check, and keep in check, the mainstream media—it turned out that the study on which Time's exclusive report was based was inaccurate, and its results were wildly overstated. In retrospect, what seems notable is the fervor with which digital correctness—the idea that the unencumbered flow of everything, including porn, must be defended—was being enforced. In the WELL's hierarchy of values, pure freedom was an immutable principle, even if the underlying truth (that porn of all kinds was and would be increasingly ubiquitous on the Web, with actual real-life consequences) was ugly and incontestable. Digital freedom, of the monetary and First Amendment varieties, may in retrospect have become our era's version of Manifest Destiny, our Turner thesis. Embracing digital freedom was an exaltation, a kind of noble calling. In a smart essay in the journal Fast Capitalism in 2005, Jack Shuler shows how similar the rhetoric of the 1990s digital frontier was to that of the 19th-century frontier era. It's a short jump from John L. O'Sullivan in 1839—"The far-reaching, the boundless will be the era of American greatness. In its magnificent domain of space and time, the nation of many nations is destined to manifest to mankind the excellence of divine principles"—to Kevin Kelly, the pioneering conceptualizer of the "hive mind" and a founding editor of Wired, writing in Harper's in 1994, "A recurring vision swirls in the shared mind of the Net, a vision that nearly every member glimpses, if only momentarily: of wiring human and artificial minds into one planetary soul." Two years later Barlow, a self- described advocate for "online colonists," got down on bended knee, doublet unbraced, to beseech us mere analog mortals: "Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone … You have no sovereignty where we gather." I take you on this quick tour not to make fun of futurism past (I have only slightly less-purple skeletons in my closet), but to point out how an idea that we have largely taken for granted is in fact the product of a very specific ideology. Despite its Department of Defense origins, the matrixed, hyperlinked Internet was both cause and effect of the libertarian ethos of Silicon Valley. The open-source mentality, in theory if not always in practice, proved useful for the tech and Internet worlds. Facebook and Twitter achieved massive scale quickly by creating an open system accessible to outside developers, though that openness is at times more about branding than anything else—as Twitter's fellow travelers are now finding out. Mainframe behemoths like IBM wave the bloody shirt of Linux, the nonprofit open-source competitor of Microsoft Windows, any time they need to prove their bona fides to the tech community. Ironically, only the "old" entertainment and media industries, it seems, took open and free literally, striving to prove that they were fit for the digital era's freewheeling information/entertainment bazaar by making their most expensively produced products available for free on the Internet. As a result, they undermined in little more than a decade a value proposition they had spent more than a century building up....
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[Google Fast Flip] We Might All Be Watching Online Videos by 2015 [STATS]

noreply@blogger.com (Mario scott) — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 18:18:00 +0000

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Really will we

We Might All Be Watching Online Videos by 2015 [STATS]
We Might All Be Watching Online Videos by 2015 [STATS] from the Pew Internet Project, 52% of the American population is watching videos online — that's 69% of all Internet-connected American adults. If online video watching continues at its current rate of growth, in just under 5 years, almost every American with an connection (i.e., the vast majority of Americans, period) will be watching video online. This includes video streamed from the web and downloaded video and encompasses sites such as In the current survey, Pew researchers found that the majority (61%) of American, adult Internet users watch short clips, television shows and movies on video-sharing sites such as YouTube. These sites have exploded in popularity over the past several years and are on a trajectory to dominate the space. By contrast, just 33% of Internet users in 2006 had watched a video on a vid-sharing site. The groups of people most likely to watch online videos include younger adults, men, the wealthy and the well-educated — a factoid which bucks current wisdom about YouTube comments. And as more Americans get broadband access, more get online to watch videos. This correlation may or may not be caus...
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[Google Fast Flip] The Future Of Netflix's Business Laid Bare — By Netflix

noreply@blogger.com (Mario scott) — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 14:18:00 +0000

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Netflix future is our future.

The Future Of Netflix's Business Laid Bare — By Netflix
by MG Siegler on Jun 3, 2010 When it comes to slideshow presentations, few do them as well as Netflix. Last year, they released one that was sent around internally about their culture. If you read it, you probably wished you worked for Netflix afterwards. And now they've released one about the future of their business — it's also fascinating. The 40-slide presentation is great because it gives direct insight into Netflix's view of its competition, and why they think they'll succeed in the end. Long story short, they're transforming the company from a DVD-by-mail service to a streaming video service. Anyone who has followed the company over the past year or so will know this, but it's pretty interesting to read about just how much they've thought the transition through. For example, they know there's a demand for new release DVDs, but they're giving up that market to competitors so that they can focus on building the biggest back catalog of movies available for streaming. They know that DVD-by-mail will continue to grow for a few more years (they think 2014), but after that, it will decline just as rapidly as it grew as streaming takes over. Netflix doesn't want to be the end-all ...
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[Google Fast Flip] Google to Release Chrome OS in Fourth Quarter - PCWorld

noreply@blogger.com (Mario scott) — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 18:50:00 +0000

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A new OS enter the Fray this fall

Google to Release Chrome OS in Fourth Quarter - PCWorld
Google plans to release its Chrome operating system late this year, initially targeting laptop users, the head of the project said Wednesday. The Chrome OS "will be offered to users in the fourth quarter," said Sundar Pichai, Google's vice president of product management, during a speech at the Computex electronics exhibition in Taipei. The statement appears to push back earlier talk of a third-quarter launch for the OS, which is expected to compete with Microsoft's Windows 7 as well as other OSes. The Chrome Web Store will open at the same time so people can download Web applications that can be installed on the Chrome OS, he added. "For Chrome OS, we are focused on laptops for this year," he said at a news conference later in the day. The company designed Chrome OS for clamshell devices with touchpads, keyboards and screens between 10 inches and 12 inches across, he said, clarifying that anything, including netbooks, that fits the hardware specifications will have an easy time gaining Google certification. Certification by the company is meant to ensure hardware makers create a quality device for users. Initially, Chrome OS will limit certain customization such as user interfaces...
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[Google Fast Flip] HTML5 vs. Flash: The case for Flash - Computerworld

noreply@blogger.com (Mario scott) — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 12:49:00 +0000

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The other side of the argument

HTML5 vs. Flash: The case for Flash - Computerworld
HTML5 vs. Flash: The case for Flash In one corner is Adobe's Flash, the once undisputed champion in delivering rich content to the glazed eyes of the easily bored public. In the other is HTML5, the once poor content provider now sporting the number 5 after its name and eager to prove that its new muscle and artful moves will be more than enough to take over the marketplace. A wide range of pundits and industry heavyweights have been handicapping the fight, heralding HTML5 as the new champ and calling Flash "old," "fragile," "insecure," or worse. The complaints are easy to understand and the new abilities of HTML5 are seductive. But is that enough to bet against Flash? [ Also on InfoWorld: Support for the next generation of HTML is already appearing in today's browsers and Web pages. Are you ready to take advantage? See " " | Follow the latest news in software development with InfoWorld's HTML5 duplicates many of the features that were once the sole province of plug-ins: local disk storage, video display, better rendering, algorithmic drawing, and more. Some of these features are available now in various forms, but enough to win? The fight isn't over by any means. While Steve Jobs m...
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[Google Fast Flip] The Top 10 Cities With the Best Broadband

noreply@blogger.com (Mario scott) — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 18:06:00 +0000

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Top 10 Bandwidth Cities in the US, some may surprise you

The Top 10 Cities With the Best Broadband
By Stacey Higginbotham May. 25, 2010, 5:00am PDT No Comments The company behind the broadband speed testing site, Speedtest.net is ready to go beyond testing broadband quality and into the data game. Ookla, the three-year-old company based in Seattle that's behind the online speed service introduced a broadband index today that tabulates the results from the more than 1 million speed tests done each day around the world. The global broadband speed is 7.69 Mbps while the US speeds average out at 10.12 Mbps. Mike Apgar, co-founder and managing partner of Ookla, said the indexes will measure broadband speeds, ping times and jitter. His goal is to move the testing beyond the tech-savvy market (we use it!), so as to get a better sense of how broadband speeds really play out across the world. The FCC is encouraging consumers to use the sites (Ookla also runs a site that tests jitter and packet loss at pingtest.net) as part of its nationwide testing goals, and many of Ookla's ISP customers also offer the test to their customers and host Ookla's servers. That's actually most of Ookla's business, providing tests for the ISPs. The next plank of the business strategy is the index data. Ookla ...
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[Google Fast Flip] Logitech's big plans for Google TV

noreply@blogger.com (Mario scott) — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 16:20:00 +0000

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Another piece in the living room game.

Logitech's big plans for Google TV
Kevin Simon, a product management director at Logitech, gave me more details this afternoon about what the company is building around Google TV, the just-announced system for accessing the Web on your television. Logitech's "companion box" (the company isn't sharing its official name yet) will be much more than an Internet connection for your TV, he said. And Logitech isn't stopping with a single device. The box basically uses Google TV as its operating system, but it will include lots of extra features. Logitech's Harmony technology for managing multiple devices (such as your stereo or video game console) from a single remote will be built in. And by "remote", I actually mean "smartphone" — if users own the box and install an application on their iPhone or Android device, they'll be able to use that device as the controller. The experience, he said, will be "television the way it should be." When you sit down to watch a TV, you probably don't care whether it comes from a network TV channel, cable, YouTube, or many of the other streaming video sources on the Web. Conversely, the main reason people watch television on their computers is because they can't get the c...
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[Google Fast Flip] DIY Home Theater PC – How to Turn a PC into a H - Flash Player In...

noreply@blogger.com (Mario scott) — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 18:06:00 +0000

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Hardware of media, very geeky

DIY Home Theater PC – How to Turn a PC into a H - Flash Player In...
New software and cheaper hardware make a compelling case for the PC as entertainment device. But should you buy one or build your own? BY GLENN DERENE AND ANTHONY VERDUCCI The computer industry has been trying to sneak its way into the home theater since 2002. That's when Microsoft first introduced Windows Media Center, a version of the company's media player with a "10-foot" user interface—large type and simplified menus that could be read and operated easily from couch distance. Apple followed in 2005 with Front Row, a Jobsian take on the 10-foot UI that was also used in the Apple TV. The computer-as-entertainment-device idea was compelling to technophiles (after all, people were already migrating massive amounts of music to their PCs), but it was a hard idea for most people to swallow back then. Dedicating a powerful, $1000-plus computer solely to TV duty was fine for the super-enthusiast, but computers at the time had few options for video (don't I already have a DVD player?), plus cable boxes and DVRs were becoming more computer-like anyway, so the computer as video recorder was an awkward fit. What a difference a few years can make. The price of a new computer has...
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[Google Fast Flip] Google TV Faces Some Prime-Time Challenges

noreply@blogger.com (Mario scott) — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 12:54:00 +0000

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How Google TV will change the market

Google TV Faces Some Prime-Time Challenges
By Tom Simonite Having conquered much of the Internet, it seems only logical for Google to try to take over television, too. But the Google TV platform unveiled at the firm's annual I/O developers' conference in San Francisco yesterday could face many problems. The goal of the platform, said senior product manager Rishi Chandra, is to offer the "best of what TV has to offer today, and the best of what the Web has to offer today." However, closer analysis of what is known about Google TV so far suggests that the firm has some work to do if its new platform is to live up to that promise. Google TV consists of a modified version of the open-source Android mobile phone operating system. It's designed to run on Internet-connected set-top boxes and high-definition televisions. The platform was developed in collaboration with Sony, Logitech, and chipmaker Intel, which is supplying relatively powerful Atom processors--chips already used in some laptop computers--for Google TV hardware. The hardware announced so far consists of two kinds of devices: Sony televisions and a set-top box made by Logitech. Both will be available in Best Buy stores in the fall. Google TV users will be able to sea...
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[Google Fast Flip] Um, Did Google Just Quietly Launch A Web-Based iTunes Competitor? Yep.

noreply@blogger.com (Mario scott) — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 20:13:00 +0000

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This is going to be an interest move, Apple your move

Um, Did Google Just Quietly Launch A Web-Based iTunes Competitor? Yep.
Um, Did Google Just Quietly Launch A Web-Based iTunes Competitor? Yep. Today at Google I/O, Vic Gundotra introduced Froyo, aka Android 2.2. But he also went a bit beyond Froyo. Coming soon, is a way to download an app through the Android Market over the web — and have it automatically download on your Android devices too. But that's not all. Gundotra also showed off a new section of the Market — Music. Yes, an iTunes competitor on the web from Google. Details are sparse at the moment, but here's how this basically works. You go to the Market on the web, find a song you like, click the download button, and just like with apps, the song starts to download on your Android devices. So it's iTunes, over the web, with auto-syncing. No word on who the partners are for this, what the prices will be, etc. Undoubtedly, we'll hear more about that soon. Gundotra also announced that Google recently : Simplify Media. Using this technology, Google will soon offer a desktop app that will give you access to all of your (DRM-free) media on your Android devices remotely....
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[Google Fast Flip] Google TV: 8 Big Questions

noreply@blogger.com (Mario scott) — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 16:19:00 +0000

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Title said it all

Google TV: 8 Big Questions
The seamless integration of the Web and TV is the holy grail of home entertainment, but does Google's solution cover all the bases? Google TV is by no means the first service to try to combine TV and the Web. Web TV predates it by 15 years and Apple TV has been giving it a half-hearted attempt for the last three. Yet, with its industry-leading partners, a proven platform, and successful demonstration of phase one, Google TV does have the scent of a game changer. I think it's fair to assume many of you will be considering a Google TV purchase in the fall (in an anecdotal survey, over 60 percent of you told me you would). With that in mind, here are some things to consider before you make that investment. Google's partners include Sony, Logitech, and Intel. Direct TV is in there, too, but there were no major cable or fiber TV companies on site. This means that Cablevision, Comcast, Time Warner, Verizon FiOS, and other service provider customers will still need to use an IR blaster to control their cable boxes. If you're unfamiliar with this technology, here's how it works. There will be a port on the Logitech Google TV box. It will accept a very long cable that will end in a tiny pla...
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[Google Fast Flip] Some Early Pictures Of Chrome’s New Web Apps Feature

noreply@blogger.com (Mario scott) — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 21:28:00 +0000

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First look at Chrome OS

Some Early Pictures Of Chrome's New Web Apps Feature
Some Early Pictures Of Chrome's New Web Apps Feature Perhaps the biggest announcement during day one of Google I/O was — an app store for web apps that lives in Google's Chrome web browser (and soon Chrome OS). There's a lot of curiosity out there about how this will work. Here are a few early pictures to show you: Here's what tabs currently look like in Chrome (notice the TC favicon, Google is watching): Here's what installed apps will look like (on the left): Here's the app installation pop-up (notice that it informs you what it will need to access): Here's what the app launch page in Chrome will look like (the final icon is for the store itself): Here's one app, MugTug Darkroom, running in Chrome:...
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[Google Fast Flip] Google TV Vs. Apple TV Is Android Vs. iPhone Round 2

noreply@blogger.com (Mario scott) — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 16:19:00 +0000

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A new front on the Apple VS Google war

Google TV Vs. Apple TV Is Android Vs. iPhone Round 2
by MG Siegler on May 20, 2010 During the keynote at Google I/O today, Google took a lot (and I do mean a lot) of not-too-subtle shots at Apple. Most of this was related to Android vs. iPhone, but it also delved into something else with the new Google TV platform. At the Q&A following the keynote, someone asked the question: what does this mean for Apple TV? Google dodged the question a little at first. Their line is that the TV ecosystem is now ready for something like Google TV (that implies that it wasn't before with devices such as the Apple TV). But they also noted that their idea is different from Apple because they're trying to do this in a different way. That way, naturally, is the "open" way. Whereas Apple TV is a device and a piece of software, Google TV is just a platform. Sony TVs will be called something different, for example, but they'll have Google TV built-in. And this is an important distinction because it allows Google to take what makes current TVs popular — showing TV content — and build on top of it. Apple doesn't do that with Apple TV. Instead, they created an entirely new way to get content (by download via iTunes). Users shouldn't have to choose betw...
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[Google Fast Flip] Google Introduces the WebM Video Format

noreply@blogger.com (Mario scott) — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 20:20:00 +0000

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A new round in the video format wars begin.

Google Introduces the WebM Video Format
Today at Google I/O, Google officially announced the forthcoming release of an open source, royalty-free video format called WebM. Using the VP8 codec that Google acquired from On2 last February, the format is backed by fellow browser makers Mozilla and Opera. In April, rumors about the open sourcing of VP8 started to take off, but the implications of what VP8 — and now WebM — might mean has been somewhat clouded by the bigger battle between Apple and Adobe over HTML5, Flash and the future of mobile platforms. While WebM is not currently part of the HTML5 spec, it will be added as a supported part of the tag for the Chrome, Firefox and Opera browsers. In addition to announcing WebM, Google also told the audience that WebM support will be coming to YouTube as part of its HTML5 experiment. All video that is in 720p or higher uploaded to YouTube from today onward will be encoded in WebM in addition to H.264. One issue that has been raised in the debate over HTML5 and Flash, in terms of web video, is the issue of what video codecs HTML5 supports. Right now, HTML5 supports both H.264 and Xiph's Ogg Theora. While free for end users and for users who upload video to the web, H...
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[Google Fast Flip] How to Design a Web App for Google TV

noreply@blogger.com (Mario scott) — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 16:16:00 +0000

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Google TV apps will change the way we watch TV

How to Design a Web App for Google TV
How to Design a Web App for Google TV Google has released a preliminary developer's guide to aid those interested in porting their web or mobile applications to , the newly announced platform built on top of technology. With Google TV, "television is no longer confined to showing just video" explains Salahuddin Choudhary, Google TV Product Manager, in . "It can be a photo slideshow viewer, a gaming console, a music player and much more." But how does one build a working application for Google TV? Although deeper, technical details are still forthcoming (sign up for updates), developers interested in this new platform can now follow on the Google TV developer site. These are essentially style suggestions for building TV-enabled web apps, something which developers should consider if building apps for any TV platform, not just Google's. identify the vital parts of your app before starting work, stick with one visible mode of navigation or one information hierarchy, make the primary action reachable in one click, avoid the temptation to use abstract icons, limit vertical scrolling, preselect the user's next action when you can. Google TV users will often navigate with a directional pa...
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[Google Fast Flip] 5 Tools For Integrating HTML5 Video in Your Website

noreply@blogger.com (Mario scott) — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 18:33:00 +0000

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IF it time to jump on the HTML 5 bandwagon, this is the time, and here are some tips.

5 Tools For Integrating HTML5 Video in Your Website
5 Tools For Integrating HTML5 Video in Your Website , the better way to do hosting. Learn more about Rackspace's hosting solutions , the fact is, more and more mobile or low-powered devices are being shipped either without or with very minimal support for Flash video. Web developers who design sites that utilize video need to be cognizant of this reality and design and build their sites accordingly. While it's great that video hosting services like support HTML5 and that solutions for larger sites are available from places like , that still leaves users who want to host their own video content — but don't necessarily use a platform like Brightcove — in a bit of a predicament. After all, in a perfect world, everyone who visits a website should be able to view video, whether they are on a desktop or on an iPhone. Fortunately, there are a number of great free tools available that will let you serve video via HTML5 and also support Flash, in the event that a visitor's browser doesn't support HTML5 (or in some cases, the video codec being used with your HTML5 code)....
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[Google Fast Flip] MyCityWay: Portals Are Back, This Time For Mobile

noreply@blogger.com (Mario scott) — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 13:24:00 +0000

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Portal comeback

MyCityWay: Portals Are Back, This Time For Mobile
MyCityWay: Portals Are Back, This Time For Mobile Last week in New York, I met up with the founders of . It's a portal for location-based mobile applications for city navigation, available on iPhone, iPod, iPad and Android. Around 50 different services are currently available in the MyCityWay app. Despite the 90's style user interface, in some ways MyCityWay points to the future of mobile apps - because it offers up contextual and useful information to your mobile device, based on your location. The company's latest release was launched last Friday and it's focused on discoverability. I met with MyCityWay co-founders Puneet Mehta and Sonpreet Bhatia to find out more. MyCityWay started out as a New York City iPhone app, but it has plans to be available in 40 cities on iPhone as well as other smart phone platforms. In effect, MyCityWay is a modern-day guidebook for cities. The current apps features 50 "hyper-local apps" and they're presented in a portal-like interface that reminds me of what Yahoo or Excite used to offer on the Web in the 90s. The app targets both city locals and tourists. I first became aware of MyCityWay when it was pointed out to me by Mobile futurist Adam Greenfi...
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[Google Fast Flip] Go To Barnes & Noble, Get A Free E-book

noreply@blogger.com (Mario scott) — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 18:58:00 +0000

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Another battle in the ebook wars

Go To Barnes & Noble, Get A Free E-book
Go To Barnes & Noble, Get A Free E-book ? If so, get thee to a Barnes & Noble store to participate in the new Fun and Free e-books promotion. It's a pretty simple concept: you waltz into a Barnes & Noble store, get an access code, then download a free e-book. Done and done. The promotion runs for the next five weeks, and is also compatible with the B&N e-reader software that runs on your laptop, BlackBerry, or iPhone (or whatever). Steve Jobs Spars With Gawker Blogger Over Revolutions, Freedom, and Porn Adobe Flash-Enabled Sites Are Highlighted Upon Updating To Android 2.2 Central Command Turns To Twitter To Solve The Gulf Oil Spill. Uh Oh. After 3+ Years, Alex Payne Quits Twitter To Create "A Bank That Doesn't Suck" Tweets In Buzz: It's Complicated — Well, Maybe Political...
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[Google Fast Flip] Media Relations 101 for Your Startup

noreply@blogger.com (Mario scott) — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 12:55:00 +0000

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Media Relations is a way to make money in the media market by guiding the blind through this new media storm.

Media Relations 101 for Your Startup
First off, you do not need a PR firm. The retainer is usually not worth it, especially for a young, growing startup because your product is still drastically changing and because your conversion rates are probably very low. As a startup that is looking to innovate in your industry, it usually does not make any sense for you to allow someone else to communicate your vision. PR firms do not always get it. Even with stellar communication skills, only you and your core team really understand the message and the vision. Danny Wong is the co-founder and lead evangelist of Blank Label, a provider of custom dress shirts. He has been featured in publications like ReadWriteWeb, FastCompany, ABCNews, FoxNews, BusinessWeek and more. He is also a 19-year-old evangelist and rockstar studying full-time at Bentley University. If you are a first-timer at PR, start small so you do not burn any important bridges (but be aware that every bridge counts). Start pitching to small blogs and websites in your niche and occasionally take a shot at medium-sized blogs. Once you start feeling more comfortable with your email pitch, and are making decent traction with small blogs and websites, move onto pitching...
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[Google Fast Flip] Kindle Arrives on Android This Summer

noreply@blogger.com (Mario scott) — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 18:57:00 +0000

Sent to you by mlsj12 via Google Fast Flip:

Another staked claimed by Amazon

Kindle Arrives on Android This Summer
Kindle is already available on the iPhone, iPad, and BlackBerry, but AndroidAndroid will join the mobile lineup in the next few months. The free app comes with all of the features you'd expect in a Kindle app: access to Amazon's half a million e-books, automatic sync of bookmarks, notes, and highlights, and the ability to read books in portrait or landscape mode. While Kindle for Android seems very similar to its iPhone and iPad counterparts, it does come with an additional feature: the ability to buy books through the app itself. iPhone and iPad users currently have to buy Kindle books via the SafariSafari mobile web browser because Amazon doesn't want to give up 30% of its book sales to its new e-book rival. There still aren'ta lot of details about Kindle for Android, but Amazon has created a landing page where Android owners can sign up for updates on the app. Oh, and for those with older Android phones, there's good news: Kindle for Android works on phones running Android 1.6 or better. With Apple and other book retailers challenging Amazon's dominance of the e-book market, the world's largest online retailer is responding by spreading its virtual library onto as many platforms...
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[Google Fast Flip] Open vs. Closed: Google Takes on Amazon and Apple in e-Books

noreply@blogger.com (Mario scott) — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 18:12:00 +0000

Sent to you by mlsj12 via Google Fast Flip:

The ebooks wars are heating up

Open vs. Closed: Google Takes on Amazon and Apple in e-Books
KevinCTofel: Those pining for a #webOS Tablet could see one in the 3rd quarter. http://bit.ly/9yUUkG Seems an aggressive timeline to me. Open vs. Closed: Google Takes on Amazon and Apple in e-Books By Mathew Ingram May. 8, 2010, 9:00am PDT 1 Comment As it stands now, the e-book industry is dominated by two closed and proprietary giants: Amazon and Apple. Both have e-book platforms — the Kindle and the iPad — which they design, manufacture and control, and both have been busy trying to convince book publishers to do business with them, with Amazon pushing for lower prices and Apple giving in to publishers' demands for a more flexible approach. The landscape will change dramatically later this year, however, when Google is expected to launch a digital book-selling unit called Google Editions. The search company's entry promises to turn the e-book business into yet another battle in the ongoing war of Open vs. Closed. According to Google product manager Chris Palma, who described the search giant's plans at a recent publishing industry event in New York, it will start selling digital books in late June or July. And unlike books bought from either Apple or Amazon, which are locked ...
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[Google Fast Flip] Google Brings Android to Web TV

noreply@blogger.com (Mario scott) — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 13:29:00 +0000

Sent to you by mlsj12 via Google Fast Flip:

A new front in the war for the living room is opening.

Google Brings Android to Web TV
If you thought that Web TV was a thing of the past, then Google's latest decision may come as a surprise. According to an article in this morning's Wall Street Journal, the company "is planning to introduce Android-based television software to developers at an event in May, according to people familiar with the matter." Android, the Google-created operating system seen on a number of different phones including Google's own Nexus One, would open Internet-enabled televisions to more content and create a marketplace for apps on what many thought might be a failed, Jetsons-like technology of times past. Internet-enabled televisions were an emerging trend at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, with applications like streaming-music provider Pandora and video chat service Skype becoming integrated on more and more devices out of the box. The decision to address developers suggests that the Internet giant may be hoping to kick-start a race to build applications for its TV platform, much in the same way that Google, Apple Inc. and others have courted developers for smartphones. The app-store approach has already begun to gain traction among some players in the TV market, too, aided b...
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[Google Fast Flip] Apple-Adobe Feud: Is Flash as Bad as Jobs Says?

noreply@blogger.com (Mario scott) — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 13:13:00 +0000

Sent to you by mlsj12 via Google Fast Flip:

Another take on the Adobe vs Apple

Apple-Adobe Feud: Is Flash as Bad as Jobs Says?
By Tom Kaneshige CIO - At the heart of the great war of words between Apple CEO Steve Jobs and Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen lies a simple question: Is Adobe Flash really bad technology? If the answer is yes, then Apple is right to ban it from the iPhone platform. If the answer is no, well, then it's a good bet Apple is trying to sway public opinion and put an end to Flash's reign on the Web for business reasons. Apple has much to gain with Adobe out of the mobile Web picture: Flash is a popular app development tool that lets developers expose their work across platforms. Apple doesn't want the competition. That's why Apple recently tweaked its developer agreement to forbid developers from using third-party software tools, essentially banning Flash from the iPhone platform. Jobs, in a rare and lengthy blog post, claims Flash is poorly written software that will drain battery life and drag down the mobile Web experience. There are better and more open ways of rendering video on the iPhone, he says, such as the emerging HTML 5 standard. It's because of poor, proprietary technology that Apple has banned Flash on its iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. In a Wall Street Journal video, Narayen fir...
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