June 2010
57 posts
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5 Free and Open-Source Software Alternatives for... →
If you’re part of a small business, chances are you’re always looking for ways to save money. What many business owners and managers don’t realize is that they can get all the software they need to run a business — quite literally all of it in most cases — 100% free of charge. That includes operating systems, word processing programs, accounting software, email servers, graphic design programs and...
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HTTPS Everywhere Encrypts Your Connection with... →
HTTPS Everywhere is a Firefox add-on created by The Tor Project and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. It encrypts your web communication with several major websites that support, but may not default to secure, HTTPS connection. The add-on, currently in beta, makes sure you connect securely to the following sites: DuckDuckGo, EFF, Facebook, Google Search, Google Services, Identica, Xquick,...
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Sezmi Expands to New Markets — But Is Anyone... →
Sezmi is making its broadband and broadcast set-top setup available in 10 new markets, expanding beyond a limited trial of services in Los Angeles that began earlier this year. But while the company called its LA trial a success, we’re skeptical that consumers will be eager to pay $299 plus an additional $4.99 per month to get live access to content, most of which is readily available through Hulu...
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FFmpeg Goes WebM, Enabling VP8 for Boxee & Co. →
FFmpeg published release 0.6 of its set of multimedia tools and libraries this week. The release is code-named “Works with HTML5″ since it incorporates support for Google’s WebM open source video codec, as well as improved decoding for H.264 and Ogg Theora. FFmpeg is used by more than a hundred video players, transcoding applications and home theater solutions to support a wide range of video...
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Attend One of Mashable’s 340+ Social Media Day... →
Mashable is hosting the first-ever worldwide Social Media Day celebration on June 30 and you’re invited. Last week, we announced Social Media Day — a global celebration of the revolution of media becoming social. Readers responded enthusiastically by signing up to organize or attend more than 340 meetups in 74 different countries. Today, we also launched Smday.com to help showcase the social...
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Huffington Post Buys Adaptive Semantics To Keep Up... →
The Huffington Post has acquired its first company in a small cash deal, and it is not another blog or media site, but a pure technology startup called Adaptive Semantics. The two-person startup provides a semantic analysis engine (aka JuLiA) already used by the Huffington Post to help moderate the 100,000 comments published on the blog every day. Prior to the acquisition, the Huffington Post was...
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Confirmed: Criterion Capital Partners Acquires... →
The rumors are true: hedge fund Criterion Capital Partners is indeed the buyer of Bebo. As we reported yesterday, AOL is offloading the social networking service for less than $10 million (other media are reporting a purchase price of around $2.5 million). To remind you: AOL paid $850 million for Bebo back in 2008. Ouch indeed. In a press release that just went out, Criterion acknowledges that it...
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Yahoo Expands Widget Availability With Sony, But... →
There’s good news and bad news for Yahoo’s TV Widgets. The good news is that Sony is expanding the number of markets where those widgets are available nearly seven-fold. The bad news is that Yahoo partner Sony is also spearheading the introduction of a competing platform by Google. Yahoo announced today that its TV widgets will soon be available on Sony Bravia LCD TVs in more than 100 countries...
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Encoding.com Offers White-label Encoding in the... →
Encoding.com has introduced a new API that will let major customers — like large video publishers and video distribution platforms — offer its cloud encoding services as a white-label solution. And a group of its customers have already signed up for the white-label service, including Cisco Eos, Giant Realm, Kaltura and Vzaar. Encoding.com’s new features allow video management firms to create...
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Ustream’s Live Mobilizer Gives Bands And Brands... →
Popular live video platform Ustream is adding a new product to its repertoire today: an iPhone application platform called Ustream Live Mobilizer that offers brands, celebrities, and bands a customizable iPhone application that features Ustream’s live steaming capabilities. Each Mobilizer app is branded to the artist’s specifications (in other words, they don’t look like generic cookie cutter...
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5 Ways to Build a Loyal Audience on YouTube →
Vanessa Pappas is Vice President of Audience & Strategic Partnerships at Next New Networks, where she oversees key partner relationships, builds out audience growth strategies and advises programming of the networks which include Indy Mogul, Hungry Nation, and Barely Digital. Online video has moved from the niche to the mainstream and become a part of our regular media consumption. After five...
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YouTube Adds Video Editing in the Cloud →
Up until now, if YouTube users wanted to combine multiple clips into a single video, they had to use offline editing tools. But YouTube today rolled out cloud-based video editing tools, giving users a whole new way to remix their existing video assets online. As detailed in the Google operating system blog, the new YouTube editor allows users to trim video, mix and match clips — even add music....
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How the World Is Spending Its Time Online [STATS] →
So… whatcha doin’ over there on that laptop, denizens of the world? Well, according to a new study from Nielsen showing Internet usage in April 2010, 22% of the time, you’re engaging with social media. Yeah, 22% might not seem like a mammoth percentage, but you have to take into account the fact that this finding is on a global scale. Also, a few more telling takeaways from the report: *...
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T-Mobile Rolls Out “4G Speed” Network In 15+ New... →
4G is in the air! Or, at least for T-Mobile, 4G speeds are in the air. While T-Mobile isn’t technically allowed to pitch their HSPA+ network as 4G, its speeds can exceed that of the networks that some carriers (read: Sprint) have been toting as 4G for the last few months. This morning, T-Mobile is officially debuting their HSPA+ network in 15 new cities, from Los Angeles, CA to New Orleans, LA....
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The New Mac Mini — the Next Apple TV? →
Apple has updated the Mac Mini, beefing up the processor to a 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, allowing for up to 8 GB of self-installed memory thanks to a removable panel and providing a graphical boost with Nvidia’s GeForce 320M chipset. A single cord connection for audio and video output to a monitor or HDTV set has also been added, and the small desktop computer is now housed in a larger...
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Top 20 Mashable Reader Responses to "What is... →
Last week, we asked readers to define and submit answers to the elusive question, “What is Social Media?” To make it fair for readers submitting answers via Twitter, we limited the responses to 140 characters. Despite this limitation, we received some fascinating answers that ranged from the simple (i.e. “Twitter.” from Connor Jack) to the complex (Conduit collecting, catalyzing &...
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Shoply Lets Anyone Create An Online Store →
UK-based startup Shoply wants to allow anyone to sell anything online. The company offers free SaaS that allows people to sell their goods in an online marketplace, with their own storefront and website. The idea behind the site is fairly simple. Shoply aims to compete with eBay and other marketplaces by not charging setup or listing fees. Shoply makes money by charging a small transaction fee,...
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With Google TV Looming, Can the Boxee Box Prevail? →
Boxee, the popular home theater PC program, has received another serious blow in its quest to become a living room mainstay, as the release of its much-anticipated Boxee Box has been pushed back to November of this year. In fact, the delay might prove fatal to Boxee’s set-top hardware. In a blog post, Co-founder and CEO Avner Ronen announced that the device is being pushed back from Q2 2010...
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mDialog Tackles HTML5 Video Security →
Content security, advertising and tracking — these are all things that HTML5 video lags behind Adobe’s Flash. For most publishers, lack of support for any or all of these capabilities can be a deal breaker — which is why many have chosen to tread lightly or stay away from HTML5 video implementations altogether, despite the fact that HTML5 is the only way to get video on Apple’s iPhone or iPad....
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Facebook "Like" Increases Referral Traffic to... →
TypePad users who installed the Facebook “Like” widgets on their blog sidebars have experienced a 50% increase in referral traffic from Facebook collectively, TypePad revealed in a blog post. Facebook unveiled the “Like” feature at its F8 Developer Conference in late April. Readers can click the “Like” button on an article to share it with their Facebook friends without leaving a publisher’s...
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Side-by-side: HTC EVO 4G vs. Flip SlideHD →
One of the many neat features of the new HTC EVO 4G is its ability to record 720p HD video. Of course, the resolution alone doesn’t say much about how the videos look, which is why we decided to take the device for a spin and have it directly compete against a Flip SlideHD. I took both devices for a spin outside our office and recorded some additional footage in our hallway and elevator to...
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Glam Swings For The Fences With Glam Adapt, An... →
As big brands move more of their ad budgets online, what they want most is not just to capture clicks, but to capture the attention and mindshare of consumers. The buzzword in the online advertising industry for this attention capturing quality is “engagement.” Every ad platform out there is promising to deliver more consumer engagement. Today, Glam Media, which itself is both a publisher of...
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Twitter Is So 10 Minutes Ago →
Twitter is a mix of fail whale “over capacity” messages and significantly delayed timelines this morning, with the microblogging service experiencing a host of technical issues that are frustrating users. The timeline has been creeping further and further behind over the last hour or so –- as of 11:45 EST, the most recent tweets we’re seeing are from 11 minutes ago. This isn’t an unprecedented...
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Google Rolls Out Its New and Improved Search Index →
Google has announced that it has completed the rollout of Google Caffeine, the new and improved web indexing system that now powers the world’s largest search engine. In August of last year, it was revealed that Google was working on a new version of its search engine. The project, dubbed “Caffeine,” was initiated in order to create a faster, more accurate indexing and search system. It was also...
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SponsorPay secures further €3.8m for its virtual... →
SponsorPay, Europe’s leading provider of advertisement-based payment systems, has secured a further €3.8m of funding. The new round comes from Hasso Plattner Ventures, Moscow’s Kite Ventures, and Team Europe Ventures who are the original backers of the Berlin-based startup. The injection of capital solidifies SponsorPay’s dominant position in Eurpope, having recently acquired its equally young...
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Group Buying Site Tippr Acquires White Label Deals... →
Group buying site Tippr.com has acquired Austin-based deals site FanForce for an undisclosed sum. This follows the company’s acquisition of fellow deal of the day site ChicagoDeals last week. FanForce offers a white-label Groupon of sorts, allowing small businesses to create their own deals. FanForce takes care of the promotion of deals and offers, sell the vouchers and collect payments. It’s...
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iOS usage around the world: US has 3.45%... →
Our buddy Jack Deneut of Nelso looked at some of the AdMob mobile metrics reporting and came away with an interesting look at the penetration of iPhone/Touch/iPad (iOS) around the world. The biggest user of iPhones by population? You’ll never guess. Jack looked at the total numbers and compared it to population. For example, China has .05% penetration with 922,138 iPhones and Touches in a...
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Is Facebook Getting Bigger Than Google? [STATS] →
According to the analysts at Hitwise, social networks in general are more popular than search engines in some parts of the world. In fact, networks such as Facebook (Facebook) have been pushing hard against the biggest names in web search, including Google (Google), for several months now. As Hitwise reported recently, Facebook’s overall web traffic pulled ahead of Google’s for the first time in...
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IAB: Forget Flash, Move to HTML5 for Tablet Ads →
The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) is taking a cold, hard look at the market for advertising on the iPad and other tablet devices, launching a new “Tablet Task Force” and issuing a report on the future of “tabvertising.” (We didn’t come up with it — blame the IAB.) And while some may see the iPad’s lack of Adobe Flash as a potential barrier to advertising on the device, the IAB says...
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How Much Video Can You Watch With AT&T’s New Data... →
Critics were up in arms last week when AT&T revised its wireless data plans ahead of today’s WWDC keynote, in which Apple’s new iPhone HD is expected to be announced. The new plans, which essentially cap data usage on AT&T’s wireless network, take over for the company’s older unlimited data plan. While the new 2GB data plan, at $25 a month, is $5 cheaper than the old unlimited plan, it...
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Vid-Biz: Facebook, Vevo, Metacafe →
Facebook Grows Video Presence; data from comScore’s Video Metrix suggests the number of unique US users viewing video content on Facebook has grown from 13.3 million in April 2009 to 41.3 million a year later. (ClickZ) Vevo Passes Hulu in Users, Finds Hispanic Niche; in five months, Vevo has surged, hitting 44 million unique users in April, according to comScore. (MediaWeek) Metacafe Lands $5M for...
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Facebook: 2B Videos Viewed Per Month →
Facebook is increasingly becoming a hub for online video viewing, with more than 20 million videos being uploaded to the social network each month — and more than 2 billion videos being watched. Those two stats, given exclusively to NewTeeVee by a Facebook spokesperson, underscore the growing importance of video as a communications medium on the social networking site. The number of uploads, in...
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Did Apple’s iPhone 4 Just Kill the Flip? →
Apple CEO Steve Jobs just announced the highly anticipated fourth-generation iPhone at WWDC, and the device is bound to make some people at Cisco pretty nervous: The iPhone 4 features 720p HD video recording at 30fps, an LED flash that doubles as a spotlight source for video recording and the ability to edit any video footage right on the device. Video editing on the iPhone is enabled through a...
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Mobile Video Chat Revenues to Reach $3.4B by 2015 →
Driven by ubiquitous broadband, increasingly smart devices and free, easy-to-use video chat services, the number of video calls that consumers make is expected to increase nearly ten-fold over the next five years. That will lead to an explosion in mobile video chat revenues, which are expected to reach $3.4 billion by 2015, according to a new report by GigaOM Pro. (subscription required) The...
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Survey: Up To Half Of All Media Sites Plan To... →
As everyone on the Web knows by now, Steve Jobs does not think too highly of Flash and therefore you cannot watch Flash videos on the the iPad (or the iPhone). Apple’s position has stirred a lot of debate about how much video on the Web is iPad-friendly. It turns out that about two thirds of new videos are currently being encoded in the H.264 format, which is playable on the iPad, but media sites...
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Online Video Viewers: The Young, the Rich, the... →
The number of people that turn to the web for video entertainment continues to increase, with almost 70 percent of all US Internet users now watching videos online, according to new data from The Pew Research Center. But the research firm’s latest State of Online Video report shows much of that growth coming from Internet users that are young, educated and well-off. According to the latest data,...
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WatchKno Movie (by Kno, Inc.)
This one was posted more because I am a tablet and education fiend. I have a been a massive proponent of tablets in the classroom as books as apps for the iPad as being the future of education… These guys take is even further.
You can watch the video here or read about it on mashable here
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We Might All Be Watching Online Videos by 2015... →
According to recent research 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 Internet (Internet) connection (i.e., the vast majority of Americans, period) will be watching video online....
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Apple Shows Us What HTML5 Can Do →
Apple is one of the biggest supporters of HTML5, and Steve Jobs clearly thinks this new standard is the future of the web. To show why Flash is no longer necessary, Apple has launched a HTML5 showcase displaying what an HTML5-capable browser can do without the need of additional plugins. In typical Apple style, the showcase consists of simple, elegant, yet quite impressive demos of the technology....
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Comcast COO: We’re Not Competing with Google TV →
More people may be watching online video than ever, but Comcast doesn’t see initiatives like Google TV as a competitive threat, according to Steve Burke, the cable company’s COO. In an interview at the D8 conference today, the cable exec said that Comcast’s real competition comes from satellite TV providers and telco companies entering the pay TV market. After Comcast merges its cable networks...
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MeFeedia: Let Us Handle Your HTML5 Analytics →
MeFeedia, the Burbank, Calif.-based video search and advertising startup, is offering analytics capabilities to publishers that want to be able to track videos delivered via HTML5, for free. With the rollout of its new analytics suite for HTML5 video, customers can now track engagement metrics across the web and a number of mobile devices, including Apple’s iPad and those built atop Google...
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Google Mobile Search Results Now Include Apps, Too →
Starting today, when you conduct a Google search on your iPhone or Android device, you’ll get apps as results along with regular search results. These special links will take you directly to the app’s page in the Android Market (Android Market) or iPhone App Store (App Store), where you can buy or download the app immediately. Links will include star rating, number of reviews, price and the name...
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Harris Interactive Adds Social Media to Market... →
Market research firm Harris Interactive has launched Research Lifestreaming, a research platform that looks to give clients a full view of panel members’ online and offline lives by connecting participants’ social media activities — collected and categorized from sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn — with survey responses and behavioral data. The idea is to link traditional panelist profiles...
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AdMob Rolls Out iPad SDK; Praises ‘Creative... →
Fresh off the closure of its acquisition by Google, mobile ad network AdMob is officially launching an iPad-specific SDK to allow app developers to use the network’s ads within their apps. The SDK was previously in beta but is now available to the public. AdMob says that the SDK is unified across all devices running the iPhone OS, which makes it much easier for developers, who can can download one...
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Steve Jobs at D8 on Flash, iPad and the Post-PC... →
Events have just kicked off at the D8 Conference with Apple CEO Steve Jobs taking the stage for a conversation with All Things Digital producers Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher. After an introduction from Rupert Murdoch commenting on how content creators and technology companies are “finally getting along,” the trio took the stage to shed light on some of the most salient issues the company faces...
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Why Google TV As A Platform May Push Apple To... →
Apple CEO Steve Jobs had a lot of interesting things to say tonight at the D8 Conference. But to me, one of the most interesting topics he talked about was only brought up by a question from the audience: Apple TV. We all know that Apple considers the device a “hobby,” and tonight Jobs explained why. But he also may have tilted his hand a little bit when it comes to his thinking about this going...
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What is Social Media? →
What is social media? It is a question that is debated by media professionals and consumers alike. Some point to the revolutionary transformation of media, going from a top-down broadcast model to one that allows the former audience to communicate with one another and take part in the content creation. But with media evolving so quickly, what defines and constitutes social media becomes more...
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Gilt CEO: How Gilt Will Go Local →
Gilt is closing in on Groupon’s turf. In April, Gilt quietly launched a beta version of “Gilt City,” a local deals service that offered a set of weekly deals for New York. Although City remains in beta mode and is only available to approximately one-third of Gilt’s NY membership, the well-funded company is preparing for an official launch in 15 to 20 U.S. markets.