The Next Web |  |
- Bing Now A Lot More Entertaining With Music, Movies And Games
- Yahoo! Placefinder Joins the Geo Infrastructure Fray
- VLC Media Player updates. Better HD, dropped SHOUTcast support.
- What Is LinkedIn Waiting For?
- Twitter for iPhone updates for iOS, now with OAuth and Multitasking
- Battery Life on the iPhone 4 Lasts 38 Hours on heavy use. Yes, 38 hours!
- Facebook is testing an enhanced news feed. Can you see it?
- Get Your Kindle Or Nook Refund While You Can
- Firefox 3.6.4 Released, Protects Against Video Crashes
- Want Fiber In The US? Too Bad!
- Google Maps Android app adds cool “What people are saying about” a place feature
- AT&T Won’t Have More iPhone 4’s In Stock Until June 29
- UK Police Join Assault on Google’s Wifi Data Collection
- Mark Zuckerberg Thinks Twitter’s Exponential Growth Is Over
- Some iPhone 4 Deliveries Are Happening Today [Pics + Videos]
- TomTom first turn-by-turn navigation iPhone app to run in background
- The Most And Least Liked Facebook Pages
- Posterous On A Mission To Get Your Content Off Of Dying Platforms
- Google Voice Opens to Everyone (In the US). No Invitation Required.
- Tag-Team: WWE To Show Full-Length Episodes On YouTube
| Bing Now A Lot More Entertaining With Music, Movies And Games Posted: 23 Jun 2010 01:19 AM PDT
Microsoft updated the Bing iPhone app yesterday and today its announced a new section called Bing Entertainment for bing.com I had recently listed out a few reasons why Bing is a good search engine alternative, now there are some more. Bing Entertainment introduces categories for music, videos and games. Music:Dedicated pages for artists with their bio and information about their upcoming events, albums, music videos and links to Bing's search pages where relevant. Screenshots:
Screenshots of an internal beta build of Bing show ability to stream music on Bing itself:
Icing on the cake would be the lyrics. Videos:Classified under two categories of TV and Movies, Bing now provides information about what's playing and top grossing movies. If you're planning to rent a movie and can't decide, Bing Entertainment can help you decide with the Top Rental section at the bottom. Games
Two different categories, one where you can play some time killer flash games and the other for console and PC games. While Jobs might be out to kill Flash, there are quite a lot of games on Flash, with the new Bing update, you can play them on Bing itself. Microsoft has integrated Facebook login and added a Microsoft Game Hub on Facebook for sharing your scores. You can see your Facebook News Feed on the game screen. Screenshots:
The updates are quite interesting as this goes beyond just being a static search engine with twitter updates and calling it "real-time search". Read more about the update: Bing blog Original title and link for this post: Bing Now A Lot More Entertaining With Music, Movies And Games |
| Yahoo! Placefinder Joins the Geo Infrastructure Fray Posted: 22 Jun 2010 07:34 PM PDT
But the location based infrastructure landscape is getting pretty interesting as well. Yesterday, Location Labs (formerly known as Wavemarket), hinted that they might be gearing up for an IPO. Not that long ago, SimpleGEO (see our interview) was able to raise a pretty big chunk of money to “sell shovels” to the start-ups digging for geolocation gold. And before that, GeoAPI was snapped up by Twitter to power that company’s in house location infrastructure. Today Yahoo! put a bit more spit and polish on its own legacy geocoding tools and relaunched them as Yahoo! Placefinder. Here is what you need to know: Where the service gets more interesting in my opinion is what it provides in terms of Points of Interest. For example, you can send them a name of a park, or of a baseball stadium, or of a tourist attraction, and get back lat long information. Why does this matter? Because using this sort of service could help any of the thousands of travel web sites convert their travel directories to location based services. With these big company APIs, the devil is often in the details. Yahoo’s restrictions don’t look too bad so far – you can send up to 50K queries per day to their service, and I didn’t see any restrictions that would make these APIs for “non-commercial applications” only. While 50K daily queries won’t be enough for some of the larger databases of places out there, it is certainly enough to service aspiring geolocation service providers a bit farther down the tail. Keep an eye on these services: SimpleGeo, Location Labs, Skyhook, Yahoo! Placefinder, OVI Maps, Google Maps – and even some of the legacy data providers like Acxiom, InfoUSA, and Localeze. As the geolocation tools and data gets better, so will the apps.  Original title and link for this post: Yahoo! Placefinder Joins the Geo Infrastructure Fray |
| VLC Media Player updates. Better HD, dropped SHOUTcast support. Posted: 22 Jun 2010 07:17 PM PDT
The newest version of VLC updates quite a few features, and brings it more up to par with high definition technology. So what’s new? Here’s the short list:
My sole gripe about the newest feature is actually not at all a gripe at the VLC developers, but rather at AOL. You see, I listen to a single streaming online radio station pretty regularly. VLC has always been my player of choice for this. The problem is, that station broadcasts primarily in SHOUTcast. SHOUTcast is owned by AOL, and AOL is none too happy about the way in which VLC does things. Free is bad, don’t ya know? So, after being on the business end of a number of injunctions, the VLC team has finally removed SHOUTcast streaming support from the VLC 1.1.0 release. Don’t let that detract you, however, from giving VLC a try. It’s an amazing application and deserving of not only your time but also your donations. Original title and link for this post: VLC Media Player updates. Better HD, dropped SHOUTcast support. |
| Posted: 22 Jun 2010 06:03 PM PDT
Should be rockin’ If anything, I should be using LinkedIn more, not less. It has always been a great service that well, makes its users money. Whether you’re looking for or posting a job, networking, doing market research, marketing, or just trying to look professional, LinkedIn can work wonders if it is used properly. It certainly isn’t for everyone, it isn’t perfect, and it’s certainly not sexy, but again, I bet for a majority of its members it is useful on at least an occasional basis. For some, it’s probably the most useful social network. Our David Reinhardt isn’t alone on coming up with ways to make LinkedIn even more useful; people around the world swear by it. Without a doubt, there is endless potential tucked inside LinkedIn. Where is the buzz?LinkedIn management knows all of this. They’re cash positive (with most of that money coming from job postings and premium accounts), have tens of millions of dollars in the bank, and they could most likely flip the switch to an IPO whenever they wish. That said, LinkedIn isn’t a hot commodity. It has no buzz, no snap, no crackle, and no pop. Why they don’t do something to get the buzz machine going? To put it bluntly, what the heck are they waiting for? Bloomberg ran a story today with quotes from LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner saying that the social network will start actively looking at acquisitions to improve its mobile applications. They also are going to embark on a hiring spree, especially to support their growing international business. Sounds great. Good for them. But that isn’t buzz. Today LinkedIn reportedly also improved their Groups to include a “content carousel” that lets you scroll through a threaded conversation within a Group you’re in. Nice, but… Here’s another example: a couple of weeks ago we wrote about LinkedIn upgrading their mail feature (you know, where you get and accept, decline or ignore connection requests). As our Alex Wilhelm pointed out, the biggest new feature announced was the ability to delete emails. Wow, certainly not buzz-worthy. That is a plumbing change, and a needed one at that. Really, the only real buzz-worthy thing LinkedIn has done over the last year was to integrate Twitter into their service. But really, that was a better deal for Twitter than LinkedIn; LinkedIn cast its professional glow onto Twitter for free. The “Event”So let’s recap: LinkedIn is a 70 million user strong well-established professional network with tens of millions in the bank that is cash positive and yet hasn’t done anything noteworthy in what feels like an age. All of this in the face of Facebook and Twitter growing like they want to take over the world. Those two companies are taking risks right and left to grow both their product and their niche. LinkedIn takes less risks than Warren Buffet, and Warren just bought a railroad. So where does this leave us, and what is LinkedIn waiting for? Here’s really all I can summon: LinkedIn must be waiting for an “event”. Perhaps that event is the end of the recession when hiring takes off. Maybe it is an explosion of international users. Maybe it’s their IPO. Maybe they have some killer feature that just now isn’t ready for the big stage. Maybe they’re waiting to buy Bump. Perhaps only Weiner and co-founder & chairman Reid Hoffman know for sure. If that “event” is coming soon, and then they use it as a start and not an end, then everything should be gravy. However, if that “event” is ill-defined or in the distant future, I can see a day when I leave my first social network for good – and I won’t be alone, and I’ll know why. Original title and link for this post: What Is LinkedIn Waiting For? |
| Twitter for iPhone updates for iOS, now with OAuth and Multitasking Posted: 22 Jun 2010 05:06 PM PDT
Apparently there are also some other cool points features of note. Namely, you’ll now be able to switch out of Twitter, into another application and then back to Twitter without losing what you were doing. Some welcome changes, surely, for those who know and love the official Twitter client. Original title and link for this post: Twitter for iPhone updates for iOS, now with OAuth and Multitasking |
| Battery Life on the iPhone 4 Lasts 38 Hours on heavy use. Yes, 38 hours! Posted: 22 Jun 2010 03:30 PM PDT
I even tweeted just a few days back that for its next release, Apple should focus on improving nothing but the iPhone’s battery life – call it the “iPhone Charged” or something. With the release of this new iPhone however there seems to be some very surprising news. Three credible sources are reporting that their iPhone life has surpassed anything they have experienced with the iPhone before. Engadget reports that – on heavy use – the battery lasted 38 hours. Mossberg claims that his battery didn’t even reach the red zone in his single day of tests (which means he must have been using it a fair amount.) Finally, Xeni Jardin at BoingBoing reports that with “3G data and WiFi turned on the whole time, she got a full 4 days of battery life!?? This is huge. Now their exact quotes because I know I’d want them if I were you:
Original title and link for this post: Battery Life on the iPhone 4 Lasts 38 Hours on heavy use. Yes, 38 hours! |
| Facebook is testing an enhanced news feed. Can you see it? Posted: 22 Jun 2010 03:15 PM PDT
Well here’s an interesting thing from the Facebook camp. Business Insider tells us that apparently, in order to get users with very few friends involved with new and interesting content, Facebook is providing testing a different news feed. Instead of just the stream of news, as you see in a normal News Feed, Facebook has integreated some other items that might be of interest to the user. Check the screenshot to see the new stuff:
This comes right on the heels of Facebook’s testing of a new status bar that we wrote about just a few days ago. Though that test essentially just showed a trimmed-down version of the current bar, this new News Feed certainly appears to be beefing things up somewhat. Do you have it? If so, what do you think of it? Toss us some screenshots, will ya? Original title and link for this post: Facebook is testing an enhanced news feed. Can you see it? |
| Get Your Kindle Or Nook Refund While You Can Posted: 22 Jun 2010 02:06 PM PDT
Both refund scenarios are time sensitive. If you wait, you will lose. Kindle:If you bought a Kindle at the $259 price in the last 30 days, Amazon will refund you $70 in store credit. Contact Amazon customer support and have the data of your Kindle purchase in hand along with whatever documentation that you think that you could need. Nook:You have to have purchased your Nook in the last 14 days, you can get some money back. Barnes and Noble is offering a $10 refund and $50 gift card to recent purchasers. The 14 day period corresponds with the Nook’s return period. Contact either online customer support, or take your device to the local manager at your local Barnes and Noble. To learn about the recent price drops, read more here. Original title and link for this post: Get Your Kindle Or Nook Refund While You Can |
| Firefox 3.6.4 Released, Protects Against Video Crashes Posted: 22 Jun 2010 01:39 PM PDT
Not crashing the browser when plugins fail is how this is accomplished according to the Mozilla Blog and is somewhat similar to how Google Chrome handles crashes – see the screenshot below: Firefox even uses a similar sad face when the plugin crashes. Here’s how Mozilla describes the process:
You can download this new stable version on the Firefox homepage as always.
Original title and link for this post: Firefox 3.6.4 Released, Protects Against Video Crashes |
| Want Fiber In The US? Too Bad! Posted: 22 Jun 2010 01:10 PM PDT
Some 70% of US broadband consumers are content with their broadband, giving it a score between eight and ten points out of ten. Yes, it seems that the average US internet surfer has no idea how much they pay for how little they get it seems. Why is this a problem? It is best to answer that in the form of a question: why would any ISP invest billions on a massive fiber roll out to consumers happy with what they currently have? If they are happy now, how many would spring for a more expensive, faster connection? Not many, it would seem. In light of that fact, Verizon has stopped their FiOS roll out to new houses. They company is instead working on promoting the connection to people who can use it. Oddly enough we Americans seem completely care free that we pay top dollar for bottom of the barrell service. To put our ‘broadband’ internet connections into perspective, this is how fast one intrepid traveller found the free WiFi at a Korean hostel: Internet speed is important for American competitiveness. We need to demand more, but instead are telling the people gouging us that we are happy and content as can be. That must change. Original title and link for this post: Want Fiber In The US? Too Bad! |
| Google Maps Android app adds cool “What people are saying about” a place feature Posted: 22 Jun 2010 12:59 PM PDT
On the day that iPhone 4’s have started showing up in people’s hands, Google is going all out to convince people that Android isn’t going anywhere, first by opening up Google Voice to everyone and now by significantly upgrading their Google Maps Android app to version 4.3. The most significant (and cool) feature by far is the “What people are saying about” a place feature. Kind of like a heat map for recent comments about a bar, restaurant or other venue, the feature could best be described as a “trending topics” built around one place. Here’s what it looks like:
Another significant (and highly useful) feature is around public transit: the public transit stations pages now include upcoming schedules where info is available. Here’s what that looks like:
The new version also includes improvements on adding people to Google Latitude as well as to add your location for others to see. The release is a worldwide update. Obviously, Google is not taking the release of iOS 4 and the iPhone 4 laying down. Original title and link for this post: Google Maps Android app adds cool “What people are saying about” a place feature |
| AT&T Won’t Have More iPhone 4’s In Stock Until June 29 Posted: 22 Jun 2010 12:55 PM PDT
Other outlets include the Apple Store, Walmart, Best Buy and Radio Shack. Here’s the full press release according to Business Insider:
Original title and link for this post: AT&T Won’t Have More iPhone 4’s In Stock Until June 29 |
| UK Police Join Assault on Google’s Wifi Data Collection Posted: 22 Jun 2010 12:54 PM PDT
Pressure group Privacy International announced today that it has complained about Google’s practices to London’s Metropolitan Police, leading to the force kicking off an investigation today. Back in May, Google held its hands up to having inadvertently collected “fragments of payload data” from wifi networks its Street View cars had passed. This, the company said, was likely to be little more than fragments of data from Internet users’ online sessions but sue the the speed the cars move at it was unlikely that they would have been able to pick up solid data like passwords. This has led to several countries taking action, including a multi-State legal threat in the USA. Worryingly, the BBC yesterday reported that French investigators found email passwords within the data they examined. It’s worth noting that the UK investigation has been started by a privacy pressure group despite Google offering to delete the offending data. Privacy International asked for the data to be kept so that the police could begin their investigation. As the group’s press release states:
The Metropolitan Police will conduct an initial investigation, including interviewing Google staff in the UK, before deciding whether it believes a crime has been committed. Original title and link for this post: UK Police Join Assault on Google’s Wifi Data Collection |
| Mark Zuckerberg Thinks Twitter’s Exponential Growth Is Over Posted: 22 Jun 2010 12:38 PM PDT
To paraphrase what Mark said, Twitter grew at an amazing rate for a brief window of time, and that growth was not due to the organic strength of the company exclusively, but was also due to external factors outside of the company’s control. Did the hype around Twitter’s growth help to fuel Twitter’s growth? The question has merit. Twitter did succeed in finding (some would say suffered through due to capacity related downtime) growth that was so dramatic that it in and of itself was a story external to the core myth of Twitter: that this little message service was going to shake up the world. Talking about Twitter’s growth was fashionable nation wide. Twitter is still growing, and last we checked was adding some 300,000 users a day. That is nothing to shake a stick at. Facebook is growing faster than that, and has (backed up by average usage statistics) a much higher user retention rate. This is reflected in the graphs of Twitter’s traffic that we have access to publicly; Twitter is not growing as it once was. The days of hockey stick style growth are over. Of course Facebook is not growing (on a percentage level) as fast as it did in the past. Mark Zuckerberg in the same interview said:
Facebook is not growing on the same percentage rate as it used to, but it is still growing absolutely faster than Twitter is, and with better retention. It seems that the company that was supposed to keep him up at night is not something to cause nightmares for any Facebook executive. Lead on, Mark. Original title and link for this post: Mark Zuckerberg Thinks Twitter’s Exponential Growth Is Over |
| Some iPhone 4 Deliveries Are Happening Today [Pics + Videos] Posted: 22 Jun 2010 11:22 AM PDT
It’s official, the first iPhone 4 deliveries are being made as we speak. According to some reading over at TUAW, some lucky buyers already have their shiny new Apple-branded goodness in hand. There were rumors about the 4’s hitting the streets a day early, and then we heard that maybe they’d hit Wednesday. For those who get them, let us know. We want pictures and video!
Original title and link for this post: Some iPhone 4 Deliveries Are Happening Today [Pics + Videos] |
| TomTom first turn-by-turn navigation iPhone app to run in background Posted: 22 Jun 2010 11:21 AM PDT
TomTom beat out Navigon – which also announced support but is as of yet not available for download – Google Maps and all other comers. The app runs on the iPhone 3GS, 3rd Gen iPod Touches (though who would use it for this purpose is unclear) and of course the iPhone 4. The TomTom app lets you continue to hear the audio turn-by-turn directions while using other apps, which should be expected, but is nice to confirm that iOS 4 has that capability. As we said yesterday, free Google Maps navigation right now is a strong reason to like Android (no news yet on when it will come to the iPhone, but it is coming) but if you’re willing to spend $49.99 for the TomTom app (or already have) you can have turn-by-turn running now in the background with your iPhone 3GS (or tomorrow/Thursday for the iPhone 4). Original title and link for this post: TomTom first turn-by-turn navigation iPhone app to run in background |
| The Most And Least Liked Facebook Pages Posted: 22 Jun 2010 11:15 AM PDT
According to data harvested by Hubspot, certain Facebook pages are much more likely to be popular than others based on their genre. On the flip side, some pages are nearly cursed from the get go to be ghost towns due to their subject matter. On the popular end of the stick, the largest Facebook pages center around media. Topping the list of most liked pages are movies, television shows, books, and bands. No real surprise there, but what is striking is the rapid fall of the average popularity of a page once you move away from the three most liked genres. On the negative side, the least liked Facebook page topics are decidedly mundane: activities, local businesses, non-celebrity musicians, auto dealers, and home services. The things that you use because something is broken or you are stuck far away from the bright lights of a real city. Where do the pages that you manage fit into the hot and not columns? Take a look:
There is always room for breakout pages to buck the trend and become extremely popular despite being of a topic that most people find bland, but it is an uphill battle. If you started a page that was about a movie, on the writing of a book, about a famous band, you may have the most potentially popular Facebook page of all time. Original title and link for this post: The Most And Least Liked Facebook Pages |
| Posterous On A Mission To Get Your Content Off Of Dying Platforms Posted: 22 Jun 2010 10:43 AM PDT
Posterous just announced on their official blog (eh…Posterous) that they will be adding importing capability of content (or all out switching) to Posterous from “dying” platforms at a rate of one new service a day for the next 15 days. While they are keeping a tight lid on what those 15 “dying” platforms will be, they are starting out with Ning today, which much fall into the category of “dying” in Posterous’ view, or as they put it:
So Posterous is obviously on a mission, and they aren’t pulling any punches either. It will certainly be interesting to see what platforms they / their users consider “dying” and will also be interesting to see really how much content they can switch over in an effortless manner. One big question that we have – will any dedicated blogging platforms be on that list? Guess we’ll know in 14 days.
Original title and link for this post: Posterous On A Mission To Get Your Content Off Of Dying Platforms |
| Google Voice Opens to Everyone (In the US). No Invitation Required. Posted: 22 Jun 2010 10:19 AM PDT
Google Voice lets users give out one phone number that will ring their desk phones, home phones, or cell phones when the number gets called. It also translates voice mail into text and allows users to place calls from a Web-based Google Voice console. If you’re based outside of the US, still no word on availability unfortunately but you should absolutely give Ribbit a try if it’s available in your country. If you’re in the US its still worth giving Ribbit a try, but I suspect you’re clearly more likely to want to get signed up with G Voice first.
Original title and link for this post: Google Voice Opens to Everyone (In the US). No Invitation Required. |
| Tag-Team: WWE To Show Full-Length Episodes On YouTube Posted: 22 Jun 2010 10:15 AM PDT
Well, now you can get it, as the WWE and YouTube just announced a partnership to show not only these riveting recent shows on the WWE YouTube Channel (in the US only unfortunetely) but also “clips from Monday Night Raw, footage from classic WWE matches, and videos from WWE Superstars and Divas like John Cena, Chris Jericho and Alicia Fox.” What more could you ask for? Here’s a 46 minute taste!
Original title and link for this post: Tag-Team: WWE To Show Full-Length Episodes On YouTube |
Forgive me for being excited but if there is one major gripe I’ve had with the iPhone it’s battery life. I’ve bought battery case after battery case and external battery after external battery but have never been satisfied.
Big news. Google has just announced the public 
| You are subscribed to email updates from The Next Web To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
The Next Web Part 1
The Next Web Part 1
The Next Web Part 1
Tags: The Next Web, The Next Web watch online, full The Next Web video, The Next Web download, The Next Web torrent, free The Next Web, The Next Web megavideo, The Next Web full, The Next Web eng sub
0 comments:
Post a Comment