Saturday, June 19, 2010

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Updated Facebook iPhone App Lets You Watch Facebook Videos

Posted: 18 Jun 2010 08:42 PM PDT

Facebook has just updated their iPhone app to version 3.1.3, it includes two minor and one major update: you can now watch Facebook videos right in the app – supposedly.

The minor updates are being able to view and write on wall of Events, and that uploaded photos are now 720px wide.

Being able to view videos right in the app should should theoretically be great, but when we updated the app we weren’t able to find either an icon or anywhere else to view the videos. While this is most likely a bug, it could be that Facebook intends to only let you view videos in the New Feed, but that it’s more likely a bug.

The iPhone’s new iOS4 is supposed to ship with a number of Facebook features integrated right into the OS, so perhaps this is part of that integration from Facebook’s side and it will only show up when devices are updated to iOS4?

We’ve sent an email to Facebook asking for clarification.

Original title and link for this post: Updated Facebook iPhone App Lets You Watch Facebook Videos

A hard road ahead for Best Buy’s CinemaNow on-demand video service

Posted: 18 Jun 2010 06:24 PM PDT

As should be pretty clear for our readers at this point, we feel strongly that online streaming is the (nearer than most think) future of home video. So it should make sense then for Best Buy, the largest electronics retail store in the United States, to get in on this quickly emerging market if it has the chance, right?

New CinemaNow

Best Buy obviously thinks so, and last month they partnered with Sonic Solutions (better known as Roxio, which just purchased DivX for about $323 million) to roll out a new version of Web 1.0 site CinemaNow (which interestingly, Best Buy apparently owned the naming rights to, but not the website) and which is now bundled with a range of electronics sold at Best Buy.

Users can buy and rent movies from CinemaNow, and frankly, their rental prices aren’t that bad – many are $3.99 and some are $2.99 for 24 hour rentals. On the other hand, the current website is pretty bare-bones, lacking in any of the polish of Netflix.com or Hulu.com.

The competition is strong…

Yes, Netflix and Hulu. And Apple TV, and Google TV and Yahoo Widgets, and YouTube Leanback, and all of the other services that we called out last week that are combining to take down mostly-brick-and-mortar Blockbuster (which probably not coincidentally also signed a agreement with Sonic Solutions in early 2009 for Blockbuster to use CinemaNow – not sure what happened with that). This space is very crowded, and frankly, requires strong Internet DNA to compete. CinemaNow does not seem right now to have the required DNA to compete here.

…but Best Buy has clout…

That said, Best Buy should be considered a serious player, for no other reason than many of the hardware manufacturers count on Best Buy to produce a large percentage of their US sales, so Best Buy has some leverage here to cut deals, possibly exclusive ones if CinemaNow gains any traction.

It really is an interesting approach, because neither Best Buy nor Sonic Solutions are Internet-centric companies like all the rest of the middlemen (i.e. not hardware or content producers) in this space, but they have two advantages the others don’t: Best Buy that leverage that we discussed above, and Sonic – through Roxio, which is pre-installed on many PCs – a way to possibly get CinemaNow onto future PCs (if in fact that is an advantage, as PCs may be on their way out).  CinemaNow must be an attempt by Best Buy to offset falling DVD sales, and Sonic must be looking for a way to justify paying $323 million for DivX so that CinemaNow could reach beyond Windows-based platforms. So will they succeed?

…but unlikely to succeed

All that said, if Best Buy / Sonic Solutions can pull this off, it would near to a miracle. While having their system installed on a variety of devices sounds nice, few of the devices they list on the CinemaNow website are hot items (the Xbox is, but there are many other ways to view content on the Xbox).

Netflix and eventually Hulu will also be almost ubiquitous at some point as far as their reach onto devices, so this really isn’t much of an advantage. That said, the single largest problem that we see right now for CinemaNow is that their web interface simply does not stack up against the competition, and – while we haven’t actually seen the device interface – that doesn’t bode well for the user experience on devices other than computers.

So while Best Buy / Sonic Solutions have the right idea about getting into this market now before the market sorts itself out and declares a winner or two, the new/current CinemaNow offering doesn’t seem to be enough to dislodge its many competitors.

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Original title and link for this post: A hard road ahead for Best Buy’s CinemaNow on-demand video service

Verizon CFO Says Unlimited Data Plans May End This Year

Posted: 18 Jun 2010 04:10 PM PDT

In an interview with Bloomberg, Verizon’s CFO John Killian said that the carrier will “probably need to change the design of our pricing where it will not be totally unlimited, flat rate.”

If/when this happens, it will mean that the two largest carriers (the other being AT&T) in the United States will not offer unlimited data plans, meaning that more than half of mobile users in the US will not have the option to purchase unlimited plans. Both Sprint and T-Mobile have unlimited data plans, and neither carrier has publicly stated that they have any intentions to discontinue those plans.

There was no indication from the Bloomberg article on whether or not Verizon would follow AT&T’s lead to allow existing customers the option of keeping their unlimited data plans, but we can imagine quite a bit of backlash if they did not.

Verizon’s highest end smartphones are the Motorola Droid and HTC Incredible, while AT&T has the iPhone and Sprint has the HTC EVO 4G (and T-Mobile really doesn’t have a great handset competitor). Verizon has completed the technical trials of their LTC 4G network and are going to start the next phase of testing soon, which could certainly be part of the reason that they are considering capping unlimited plans.

For Sprint and Verizon it will be interesting to see how long they hold out on setting tiers to their data plans. If they can in fact keep their plans unlimited for the foreseeable future, and users of either AT&T or Verizon find that their limited data plans are costing them more than they are worth, the nation’s third and fourth largest carriers could possibly attract defectors from the larger carriers, provided that they stock cutting-edge phones and keep their networks running well and at the very least, at reasonable speeds.

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Original title and link for this post: Verizon CFO Says Unlimited Data Plans May End This Year

The New Digg Alpha Is (Kinda) Live

Posted: 18 Jun 2010 03:57 PM PDT

Update: it perhaps seems that we might have jumped the gun. This early roll out might be for Digg staff only. We have been told that (via our good friends at Digg), that press is not yet welcome inside. When we get in, we will bring you more.

If you were invited to take part in the new version of Digg, which appears to now be in Alpha, you can go and log in. Do so here. This is what the new Digg splash screen looks like:

And this is what it looks like when you try to log in without an invitation:

If you can log in, send screenshots to alex@thenextweb.com and we’ll toss them up here. Oh, and you should see a certain weblog in the technology section.

Original title and link for this post: The New Digg Alpha Is (Kinda) Live

iPad Not On The Cusp Of ‘Crushing’ The Kindle

Posted: 18 Jun 2010 12:51 PM PDT

We can now see how powerful the iPad hype cloud has become: it killed the Kindle this morning and no one even noticed. A story summarizing several analyst points came to the conclusion that the iPad was on the “Cusp Of Crushing [the] Amazon Kindle Platform.” Oh, really?

As a far too proud iPad owner who reads on the device and has never owned a Kindle, I think I have a fair enough perspective on the topic. If you disagree, I am sure that you will let me know in the comments. Getting to work, why is the iPad about to so eviscerate the very popular, long living, and well stocked Kindle platform? Because of the following, so they say:

Analyst: “Kindle currently enjoys a price and selection advantage over the iBook platform,” though he warns, “it's hard to see why the gap won't narrow over time.”

SAI: “If iBooks is almost as good as Kindle today on price and selection, imagine where it will be in a year.”

We can start with that, and then take apart the rest afterward. The analyst notes, in fair language, that the Kindle has an advantage in the two areas that matter: price and selection. You might think that that would be a point in Amazon’s favor, but instead SAI spun it as “well, Apple is not as good, but in a year they probably will be closer.” That assumes that Amazon sits still, does nothing, and lets Apple race past them. Not likely. Amazon has made huge bets on the Kindle lineup, understands Apple’s incursion into their market, and is going to fight tooth and nail to keep their dominance.

After all, haven’t more Kindles been sold than iPads? According to SAI:

Further, in a year, there will be more iPads (not to mention all the iPhones and iPod touches with iBooks) in the market than Kindles. Every time an iPad owner opens the App Store for the first time, Apple suggests downloading iBooks. Thus, iBooks will become the de facto eBook application for iPad owners.

This is nearly nonsensical, at least when you try and connect it to their headline that Amazon is in massive trouble now. Yes, they note, more Kindles have been sold, but over time Apple will likely pass them in units sold. Fair enough, but we are comparing apples (get it?) and oranges. The Kindle is  a dedicated reading device. All it does is read. People buy it to read. People (the vast majority) do not buy iPads to be e-readers. It’s all about the browser, remember?

The second bit is even better. Apple made iBooks, and thus wants you to download it. Therefore, among iPad owners it will be the most popular application for downloading books! Maybe, we’ll have to see about that. Remember from before that Kindle has better prices and a larger selection? Consumers aren’t stupid, they know that. When the fire up iBooks and it does not have the book they want, know where they are going to go? Where the books, low prices, and brand name is: Kindle. Yes, of course you knew it already, but Kindle is on the iPad. Therefore, not only does Apple have to sell a device, it has to then beat Kindle out for the e-book download, and then convince people to stay on iBooks and pay more for less.

All that and it will take at least a year (according to SAI) for Apple to match the raw sales numbers (which we have sown to be scurvy indicators) of the Kindle. Apple on the cusp of crushing the Kindle? Not likely. Apple may help to shake up and grow the market, but Amazon will come out with a new Kindle that will close the perceived hardware gap. In the mean time Amazon has every other advantage possible. To think or assert otherwise is to drink the Cupertino Kool-Aide.

Original title and link for this post: iPad Not On The Cusp Of ‘Crushing’ The Kindle

Facebook Answers Privacy Settings FAQs In New Blog Post

Posted: 18 Jun 2010 11:55 AM PDT

In a new blog post, Facebook says that:

“As we rolled out the new settings, we asked you to share feedback about them and ask questions about how privacy works on Facebook. Many of you did, and we wanted to share the answers to some of your most common questions.”

The post then goes onto answering the following questions:

  • What does the padlock next to the status update mean? Do you have to click on it every time you post something?
  • Are there privacy settings for malicious links and/or spam comments?
  • How does Facebook monitor content that compromises our security?
  • Are there privacy controls for parents over minors?
  • How does Facebook enable people to control the data they share with applications and websites?

Probably the most interesting answer is to the “How does Facebook monitor content that compromises out security?”, to which they answer (our highlights in bold):

“Once we detect a phony message, we delete all instances of it across the site. We also block malicious links from being shared and work with third parties to get phishing and malware sites added to browser blacklists or taken down completely. People who’ve been affected go through a remediation process so they can reset their password and take other steps to secure their accounts. We also partnered with McAfee to provide you with trial anti-virus software and free virus scanning and removal.”

This is an interesting look at how Facebook goes after software and malicious link security issues. If any of our readers have gone through the “remediation process” we’d like to hear about you experiences in the comments.

Original title and link for this post: Facebook Answers Privacy Settings FAQs In New Blog Post

Apple Didn’t Tell You, But Your Mac Now Has Up To Date Malware Protection

Posted: 18 Jun 2010 11:39 AM PDT

Did you upgrade to OS X 10.6.4 a short while ago? Good on you if you did, you are now safe from the latest Trojan horse threat to your beloved computer, HellRTS. Did you know that?

I’ll bet not. Apple updated the file containing information on the signatures of known Mac threats, XProtect.plist, and did not tell anyone. We found out anyway, and it’s a good thing too. Contrary to popular belief, Macs are at risk to certain malicious applications, and its a shame that few people seem to know it.

This particular Trojan horse is rather annoying. It comes wearing the guise of iPhoto and gives hackers the ability to “send spam email from your Mac, take screenshots of what you are doing, access your files and clipboard and much more.” If that sounds like a normal PC virus, you are on the right path.

Apple recognized the threat, found a fix for it to keep Mac users safe, and distributed it. While that is well and good, the company seems hell bent on keeping up its old reputation as being impervious to any sort of attack. That was mostly true for a long time, but is no longer the case. There are threats out there, and people need to know about them. Yes, there are fewer than on PCs, but that balance is changing over time.

Right now Macs are still safer, much, much safer from a day to day risk of infection than PCs, but that does not mean that Apple can act as if they are invulnerable. As the Mac user base becomes more mainstream (it is, just look at the Mac sales numbers), their average savvy goes down. That puts them at risk.

Apple, tell the world what is happening, tell us when there is a risk that you have to fix. We want to know so that we can compute in safety.

Original title and link for this post: Apple Didn’t Tell You, But Your Mac Now Has Up To Date Malware Protection

Facebook reportedly had up to $800 Million in revenue in 2009, which sounds about right

Posted: 18 Jun 2010 11:17 AM PDT

Reuters is reporting that two sources told them that Facebook’s 2009 revenue was between $700 to $800 million in 2009, which if true would be a couple hundred million higher than previous outside estimates.

Facebook is a privately held company and under no obligation to report earnings to the public, and Reuters said that the company declined to comment on the report. The report also said that Facebook made a net profit “in the tens of millions” last year.

$800 million is frankly not that unbelievable, as Facebook saw rapid growth in 2009 – from about 150 million active users at the beginning of that year to over 350 million at the end – that coincided with a number of mega-brands launching Pages and ad campaigns on the site. Of course, this is even more impressive as the United States was in a deep recession for almost all of 2009.

If we take the halfway point in users, say 250 million, and the halfway point of the Reuters revenue estimate, say $750 million, then Facebook made about $3 per active user in 2009 (we suspect that this will continue to rise in the future – $10 per user isn’t that far of stretch to us). If everything stays constant, then we’ll assume the 500 million users right now will be the halfway point, so at $3 per user, Facebook (again if everything is stays more or less constant which is of course not a given) then Facebook should reasonably expect to make $1.5 billion in 2010.

Original title and link for this post: Facebook reportedly had up to $800 Million in revenue in 2009, which sounds about right

A Great White Whale Spotted: HTC Evo 4G In White At Best Buy On Pre-Order Today

Posted: 18 Jun 2010 10:50 AM PDT

Sprint is apparently going to win the race against AT&T for getting a new powerful white smartphone in people’s hands – starting today, buyers can pre-order white HTC Evo 4Gs at Best Buy in the US, and should have them in hand on July 11.

While the Evo has been popular since it hit shelves a couple of weeks ago, the one main complaint has been the battery life. That said, for those that were still teetering on the edge between the Evo & Sprint and the iPhone 4 & AT&T, lots’ of people like white devices (which ironically Apple made popular) so this availability so soon may push more people towards the Evo (anyone’s guess on the actual date we’ll see white iPhone’s on the market).

Image: Engadget

Original title and link for this post: A Great White Whale Spotted: HTC Evo 4G In White At Best Buy On Pre-Order Today

The Stages of Innovation Acceptance

Posted: 18 Jun 2010 08:46 AM PDT

There are several stages of grief and they are well documented. It comes down to this: someone gives you some bad news. Depending on how bad it is you go through the following stages pretty quickly, or over a period of a few months:

1. Denial and Isolation.
2. Anger.
3. Bargaining.
4. Depression.
5. Acceptance.

I’m noticing a similar set of stages when it comes to innovative ideas. Nobody just accepts them. Most people actually start with rejecting anything thats new. That isn’t unreasonable either: most ‘new’ stuff fails. Hundreds of thousands of new things are tried out all the time and most don’t go anywhere. If you just react negative to most of it and declare “That won’t work” you will be right most of the time.

I carry my iPad with me all the time. You have no idea how many people come up to me telling me that “The iPad is going to fail”. They tell me it is too expensive, doesn’t support Flash, has a bad form-factor or they don’t give me a reason at all.

My favorite dumb ass comment: “It is just a big iPhone”.
My favorite reply “Yes, and you are ‘just’ a big baby”.

What does surprise me, every time, is the smug look on their faces when they confront me with their wisdom. Like they got struck with this entirely original thought that this thing isn’t going to work. They seem to expect me to say “Geez, you are right. Never thought about it this way. The iPad sucks!”

Wanna be original? Explain to me why it WILL work. Tell me how it could make a difference. What new ways you could imagine it could change industries. That would get me interested. Just dismissing it is too easy.

So here are the stages I can see with companies and institutions when it comes to innovative or disruptive technology:

1: “That won’t work. Just a geek thing”
2: “Okay, it is popular but they will never make money”
3: “Well, they make money but it is still a geek thing with will never reach mass market”
4: “Wait a minute, they made us redundant! Someone should stop them!”

It applies to Twitter, Facebook, the iPad, the iPhone, Google and countless of other start-ups  and innovative technologies out there. It is an unfortunate fact of life and something you will have to get used to if you are an innovative entrepreneur. As Howard Aiken famously said:

Don’t worry about people stealing an idea; if it’s original, you’ll have to shove it down their throats.

Get ready to do a whole lotta shoving…

Original title and link for this post: The Stages of Innovation Acceptance

Sencha Touch might have just standardized mobile HTML5 development.

Posted: 18 Jun 2010 06:59 AM PDT

There’s been a lot of debate about what would power the mobile platform moving forward.  Of course, much of that debate depends on what side of the Apple versus Google fence that you stand on.  However, one thing that both companies agree on is that HTML5 is the way that mobile will move forward.

Sencha Touch is the first full-blown HTML5 development platform to focus entirely on the mobile environment.

Now, I’m not a developer, but even I can see how cool this has the potential to be.  Ext JS, jQTouch and Raphaël are what have combined to come up with Sencha Touch.  What it enables is a really comprehensive UI widget library, complete management of touch events and CSS transitions along with the deep data package.

So what makes it different?  HTML5 will make Sencha Touch apps have an available offline presence, as demonstrated in this Solitaire application.  The platform can save game states locally, and enable you to work without interruption.

According to the Sencha Touch website, here’s what we need to know:

Sencha Touch is the world’s first app framework built specifically to leverage HTML5, CSS3, and Javascript for the highest level of power, flexibility, and optimization. We make specific use of HTML5 to deliver components like audio and video, as well as a localStorage proxy for saving data offline. We have made extensive use of CSS3 in our stylesheets to provide the most robust styling layer possible.

What’s more?  Sencha Touch is tiny.  It sits at a svelte 80Kb, with all options enabled.  This is an amazing thing, considering that some offerings are sitting at over 8,000 lines of code just to run a video player.

Want to go play with Sencha Touch?  Of course you do.  You’ll need a webkit-based browser (such as Chrome or Safari) at the very least.  However, all of these are designed expressly for mobile devices, so fire up the iPad and take a look at the examples.

For now, Sencha Touch is licensed open source, under GPLv3 + FLOSS.  The reason?  Again, according to the site: “We'd like to give open source folks the benefit before we introduce a commercial trial license. And we'd like to take the opportunity to emphasize something that many people miss: that we have Free and Open Source exceptions as part of our GPLv3 license”.

So developers, go nuts.  Play with this, and tell us what’s cool about it.  You’re the ones with the lead in this game.

Cheers to Edward Sanchez from Kohive for the heads up.

Original title and link for this post: Sencha Touch might have just standardized mobile HTML5 development.

Vodafone’s iPhone 4 Pricing: A Missed Opportunity

Posted: 18 Jun 2010 05:38 AM PDT

On Monday, Vodafone excited legions of potential customers by releasing its iPhone 4 tariff prices. It quickly retracted them, saying they had been published early. Fair enough – mistakes happen, but now the official prices are up and it’s clear Vodafone has messed up.

You see, the official prices are more expensive than the leaked ones. Customers will have to shell out an extra £30 upfront for their handset on all but the priciest tariffs. Now, maybe those original prices just weren’t feasible for the company to offer. They did, however, set an expectation from customers. Those customers could now think Vodafone is trying to rip them off.

Once the original prices leaked on Monday, Vodafone should have honoured them or even bettered them. Instead, they took them offline for most of the week before releasing more expensive prices today. Are we over-reacting? Those eagerly awaiting the trariffs probably wouldn’t think so, especially as Vodafone’s own Twitter account told one customer this week that:


@Sam_Harvey We aren’t just supplying the hardware the tariff pixies are working their magic tweaking the best deals possible ;-) ^BHless than a minute ago via CoTweetVodafone UK
VodafoneUK

Setting customers up for good things and then falling short may be an economic necessity in this case, but from a PR point of view it’s a real failure. For reference, here’s Vodafone’s leaked (and incorrect) pricing…
Vodafone's leaked (incorrect) iPhone 4 pricing

You can see the company’s actual iPhone pricing (and compare it with other UK operators) in our UK iPhone price guide.

Original title and link for this post: Vodafone’s iPhone 4 Pricing: A Missed Opportunity

Banned iPhone 4 Promo

Posted: 18 Jun 2010 03:34 AM PDT

via youtube.com

Original title and link for this post: Banned iPhone 4 Promo

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