In Netflix vs Lovefilm, the winner (probably) takes nowt
It isn't exactly your cliche of two bald men fighting over a comb, but victory in the battle royale between Netflix and Amazon's Lovefilm might not mean much to the eventual 'winner'.
Both of these video-on-demand offerings have their roots in the DVD-by-post business; in fact, that's the service that Netflix pioneered in the US, and which LoveFilm copied in the UK. Both will stream to your laptop, fondleslab or games console. Both are also members of DECE, the consortium behind UltraViolet, and hope to piggyback onto the aforementioned anti-piracy system in the long-term. Their prices are similar, too. LoveFilm has cut its fee to £5 a month, while Netflix launches at £5.99 with the first month free. Read more...
Opera’s new store beams HTML5 apps into tellies
Opera Software is making a play for turning your TV into a window-on-the-web with the announcement of Opera TV Store.
The browser maker's unveiled e-shop will flog HTML5 apps that you can use from your TV. The idea is to make it possible to access web content and apps using your existing HD-TV and remote controls, without needing to hook up a media centre or keyboard.
Opera said in a release: "By introducing easily navigated HTML5 apps such as Facebook or Vimeo to your living room, it expands your TV entertainment options." Opera TV Store was unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas on Monday. Read more...
Facebook obsessives overlook enterprise riches
It's not that enterprise software is boring. But let's face it: if you had the choice to tell your mom that your company makes it easy for 800 million people to talk to each other, or that your business makes it easier for companies like Chevron to do business more productively, the former is going to sound a heck of a lot cooler.
Which is one reason that it's not surprising that the media spends so much time talking about consumer-facing companies like Facebook, Apple, and Twitter, even though the boring enterprise is actually what gets work done.
And it's also the reason why so many of our younger developers forego a life of tedium at enterprise IT companies to make the next great Angry Birds clone (Furious Ferrets?).
But not all. Aaron Levie, 20-something-year-old chief executive of enterprise content collaboration company Box.net, is among those who believe that enterprise technology is cool in its own right, and can be made to be consumer-cool in terms of ease of use and user interface, as well. Read more...
Corning readies updated Gorilla Glass for screens 20 percent thinner
Corning is shipping samples of an updated version of its popular Gorilla Glass product, that will allow screens to be 20 percent thinner at the same strength.
While the space saved will work out to only about 0.1 mm in most smartphones, for example, it will provide additional benefits such as greater visibility and less resistance for touch-sensing components, said David Velasquez, head of marketing for the glass.
The company is putting on demonstrations this week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas showing that a thinner slice of the new product is as strong as the existing version. Mass production is to begin in the first half of this year. Read more...
Oracle partners with Cloudera for Hadoop appliance
Oracle has partnered with Cloudera to bring Apache Hadoop to its Oracle Big Data Appliance, which the company officially released Tuesday.
The newly released appliance comes with Cloudera's Distribution Including Apache Hadoop, along with the Cloudera Manager software. The rack also comes with a copy of the Oracle NoSQL Database. Oracle announced the Big Data Appliance, along with the Oracle NoSQL database, at OpenWorld last September.
"A lot of organizations have become very interested in big data. There is tremendous business value in analyzing new types of business data," said George Lumpkin, Oracle's vice president of data warehousing product management. Read more...
Google social search adds ‘personal’ Picasa, Google+ results
Google will start rolling out on Tuesday a tight integration between its search engine and two of its social media sites, Google+ and Picasa Web, in the company's latest move to deepen its social search capabilities.
With this link, Google hopes to make it easier for people to find not only information on public Web pages, but also content they and their friends have posted and made available to each other privately through the Google+ social network and the Picasa Web photo upload and sharing site.
However, at this point, those are the only two sites whose content will surface on this type of search result, which means that users will not see content they and their friends have shared privately on other Google social media sites, such as YouTube or Blogger, nor on non-Google sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Read more...
For Microsoft’s last CES keynote, Ballmer hawks Windows 8, Kinect
Microsoft's motion-sensing Kinect technology will be available for Windows PCs in a few weeks and is destined for a lot more than just gaming, CEO Steve Ballmer said at the Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas Monday.
It was Microsoft's last keynote at CES, and Ballmer was joined on stage by actor Ryan Seacrest who helped host the event. But there was no surprise appearance from Bill Gates, as some had expected, and not much in the way of big news -- perhaps a reminder of why Microsoft has decided to give up the CES stage.
Ballmer announced that Nokia's Lumia 800 Windows Phone will go on sale at Microsoft's retail stores in the US "in the next few months." The phone will be sold unlocked, he said, meaning Microsoft hasn't signed a contract with a wireless carrier to offer it.
He also announced a partnership with Fox that will bring the TV shows Glee, Family Guy and Bones to the Xbox, and with Comcast for its Xfinity TV service. The new programs will come to the Xbox this year, he said. Read more...
Visa certifies more smartphones for NFC payments
Visa has added smartphones from Samsung Electronics, Research In Motion and LG Electronics to the list of devices it has certified to work with the 185,000 NFC-based payWave payment terminals in Europe.
All the certified products run Visa's payWave application on a secure SIM card and use NFC (Near Field Communications), a short range communications standard, to securely transmit payment information to a contactless payment terminal, according to Visa.
The first round of certified phones are: Samsung Galaxy S II, LG Optimus NET NFC, BlackBerry Bold 9900, BlackBerry Bold 9790, BlackBerry Curve 9360 and BlackBerry Curve 9380. Read more...
Windows ultrabooks: What’s Apple response?
With a glut of "ultrabook" announcements slated at this week's Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Apple watchers have one question: How will the Cupertino, Calif. company respond?
Backed by Intel, the big PC manufacturers are expected to launch or show ultrabooks, the chipmaker's term for thin, lightweight notebooks that rely on solid-state storage (SSD) in lieu of a traditional platter-based hard disk drive and forgo an optical drive, at CES this week.
According to Intel, more than 75 different ultrabooks will appear during 2012.
But as two analysts who cover Apple noted today, the category isn't new. In fact, Apple was the company that kicked it off.
"They started the ultrabook trend four years ago with the MacBook Air," noted Brian Marshall, an analyst with International Strategy & Investment Group (ISI ), in an interview Monday. Read more...