The Good NET Guide

Posts Tagged ‘inevitable’

One of the universal complaints about the Surface is its size — and competitors like the iTable , Displax , and FlatFrog are attempting to strike at that weak point before Microsoft comes out with the inevitable flat version. But if this nascent project being pursued by Microsoft Research bears fruit, the next version of the Surface might not have a screen at all. The idea is that the interactive surface would be projected from above, while a stereo-sensitive camera or pair of cameras captures the position of hands, objects, and so on, allowing you to interact with the image

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Microsoft Surface could go mobile with this miniature projected version

Don’t count Songbird out yet. The open source media player that’s increasingly positioning itself as an alternative to Apple’s iTunes has forged a deal with global electronics maker Philips. Under the agreement, which will be announced later today at CES, Songbird’s software will come bundled with the Philips line of GoGear portable music players, available worldwide. We first reported a partnership between Philips and Songbird back in September, but details were vague at that point.

Songbird will be releasing a Philips-branded version of its software with a few key differences, most important of which will be the application’s native support for each GoGear device. While Songbird offers support for some portable music devices (they recently upgraded their support last week), the experience for users isn’t always as seamless as they typically get from the ubiquitous iPod/iTunes combo. The Philips-branded version of Songbird will be custom tailored for the GoGear devices, which means it will recognize exactly which device you plug in and which features that device supports (the same way iTunes knows if you plug in a Nano vs an iPhone). The application can be used for song purchases and playlist management, as well as firmware updates.

The Songbird software will come as a self-extracting install with some devices (you plug the device into your computer and it will install onto your Windows machine automatically). For other products it will ship on a disk, or users will be directed to download the software from a website. The Philips-branded software is only available on Windows for now, but Macintosh support is in the works. The Philips devices should still be usable using the standard Songbird application on the Mac, but you won’t be able to install firmware updates.

This is a big win for Songbird. The company had a very rough 2009, which included the departure of the company’s founding CEO Rob Lord and a struggle to raise new funding to remain afloat (though it eventually did complete a round at a significantly lowered valuation). Songbird’s core product, which offers song management alongside a deeper integration with web services than iTunes does, remains the same, but it’s now targeting a broader audience than it was before.

The partnership with Philips is Songbird’s first major step in this area. And we’ll likely see more deals like this as Songbird tries to to appeal to electronics manufacturers as a content manager that isn’t owned by Apple.

Songbird isn’t alone in this space though — another impressive product looking to offer an alternative to iTunes is doubleTwist.

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We all know that Psystar is busy bleeding out in federal court, but that doesn’t mean the fun stops.

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Psystar’s folly: 12 million clones per year by 2011

Pioneers of the Inevitable, the company behind the open source Songbird music player, has had a tough year. Founding CEO Rob Lord left the company earlier this year after burning through $8 million in venture capital from Sequoia Capital and Atlas Ventures. “We were left without a game plan,” said one person close to the company to me confidentially.

The company has struggled through, facing what all startups face when they run out of money – shut down or raise new money at unfavorable terms if they can get it. New CEO Jerrell Jimerson has managed to scrape together a new round of financing, we’ve confirmed. Atlas Ventures is participating, but Sequoia Capital has backed out. The new round also recapitalizes the company – it will wash out old investors and drop the valuation substantially. That means Lord, who remains a board member, will lose most of his equity in the company.

Songbird may have new legs, though. Another source tells us the company has a deal with Phillips to have Songbird included in 5 million Phillips music players. There’s a chance for Songbird to become a platform for Apple competitors to work from, much like Android provides Apple competitors an easy way to compete in the phone market.

Will it work? Investors seem to be interested enough to put more money behind the effort. And the company now, at least, has a game plan.

Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

Are normal people finally starting to warm to wikis as publishing tools? Wikia, which hosts 50,000 enthusiast sites on the same wiki software as Wikipedia, is claiming profitability of sorts on strong growth. Over the past six months, Wikia sites (which also includes Wikianswers) have increased unique visitors 76 percent in the U.S. to 6.5 million in July, 14.2 million worldwide (comScore).

The orange line in the chart above is just Wikia.com, which had 5.9 million visitors in July, and the blue line is all Wikia sites combined. The company deadpooled its Wikia Search product last March.

By organizing each wiki into a niche communities of gamers, sports fans, movie buffs, and so forth, Wikia has been able to sell more targeted advertising into each niche. With the recent growth, Wikia now claims to be profitable—not ina strict GAAP-accounting sense, but in that revenues from ad sales are “significantly higher than the cost of operations in total,” says Wikia CEO Gil Penchina.

Wikis need a critical mass of repeat contributors before they become useful. So far, Wikia’s growth has been a slow burn, and certainly pales in comparison with the original Wikipedia. But if the growth of the last six months continue, it may just now be coming into its own.

Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

Japan sure has a penchant for extraordinary piggy banks . Tokyo-based toy maker Banpresto is now selling a quite unusual model, too.

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New piggy bank: The Coin Penguin swallows your coins, then dances for you

It’s not a bad joke, Twitter is apparently somehow involved in a new TV show. Among other things, this earns it our rarely used “WTF” in sign language image.

Twitter has not yet responded to an email, but investor Fred Wilson seems to think it’s a good idea, saying “TV isn’t TV anymore. It’s just the largest screen in the house.”

So we’ll wait for more details of the show to surface before we write the inevitable blog post trashing the idea. In the meantime, Twitter, as a heavy user there are a nearly unlimited number of things I’d so much rather you guys spend your time on than going Hollywood. Here’s a few key ones, I’m guess lots more will show up in the comments and we’ll get to at least 300 or so things Twitter could better spend its time.

Keep The Lights On. Twitter is still not a stable service.

Fix Track. This is the “Google Alerts” feature of Twitter that made a brief appearance in 2007 but was stripped out in the uptime wars of 2008. It may have made sense to remove it at the time, but we’re long past due on this much needed feature.

Fix Search. Twitter’s main value is as a search engine, and it’s pretty broken. There’s lots of work to do here.

Stop Breaking Stuff. Twitter just doesn’t seem to feel comfortable in its own skin, making changes to suit the masses that are just confusing and need to be reversed.

Fix Private Messages. Twitter’s direct messages (private messages) has occasional hiccups. Sometimes they are mis-delivered, as in they go to the wrong person. That just can’t happen.

Maybe Launch Some Features. Twitter is so concerned with uptime that they rarely (never) launch new features. Sites like FriendFeed are embarrasing them with innovation, and others like Facebook are copying the core Twitter service. I get that uptime is important, but if you have time for meetings in Hollywood, you have time to add new features. Spend that time interviewing new engineers at the very least. You need more people badly.

Ok, that’s six. Let me know what you’d like to see Twitter do before working on a television show in the comments, and we’ll add the smartest and most entertaining to the main post.

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Hot on the heels of the Great iPhone Baby-Shaking App Debacle of 2009 we have another example of the crack Apple iPhone App Review Team in action. Alkali Media, a little programming shop run by three college grads, decided to make a crude soundboard and entitled it, fittingly, CrudeBox. The app had a number of clever sounds including, but not limited to, farting, peeing, burping, and a “sproing” sound to simulate the male member reaching tumescence. Unfortunately, all of this was a too much for Apple’s App Review team. Alkali writes:

Apparently the seemingly tame soundboard, bodily sound effect application was far too offensive for Apple’s strict moral guidelines. We unanimously agreed that maybe it was the female orgasm sound that set the app over the edge. The orgasm was replaced with a cartoon-like spring sound. The kind you hear when a male cartoon character finds himself awkwardly aroused. The application was submitted a second time. Seven Days later we received word that once again Crudebox was too obscene and offensive for the iTunes App Store. After moving past the inevitable feeling of frustration towards Apple, we decided to poke some fun at Apple’s app approval team. What if we were to submit the same sounds as before, except this time around we make the app look extra flamboyant and change the name to the ironically appropriate, Prudebox?

Eight days later we would received an e-mail from Apple stating that our recently submitted application, Prudebox, has passed the approval process and is now ready for sale. After a name change, and an overtly flamboyant reskin of the application (complete with a pink bunny and a a fleeting sunset), we were able to get our app approved. To this day, we’re still questioning what sort of quality assurance is in place for Apple’s quality assurance team. I’m sure you can only imagine what other quality apps you’ve been missing out on thanks to Apple’s ever-so-stringent approval process.