The Good NET Guide

Posts Tagged ‘networks’

First launched back in April 2009, TweetPhoto has been steadily building out its service with multiple useful features, including Foursquare integration and a partnership with Kodak. Today, the site is getting a huge overhaul with more social features and a new iPhone app.

TweetPhoto has now added the ability to sign in with Twitter OAuth, Facebook Connect, MySpace OAuth and Foursquare OAuth so that a user of any one of these social networks can use TweetPhoto as a stand alone photo sharing service. The site will also be rolling out LinkedIn support in the next few weeks. In addition to login capabilities across all four of these services, TweetPhoto users can also link these social networking accounts together. Once you link your Facebook, Twitter, MySpace , or Foursquare accounts on the site, your photos uploaded to TweetPhoto can be simultaneously broadcast to all of the networks. Third party applications that use TweetPhoto as the default photo uploader such as TweetDeck and Seesmic’s BlackBerry app, will also include this functionality.

TweetPhoto’s new, free iPhone app, called TweetPhoto Pro, is a suped-up version of its sister iPhone apps. The app allows users to upload photos, see their friends photos, the public photo stream, popular photos (usually celebrities or breaking news), and can link their social network accounts. The startup has also submitted similar apps for Android and Blackberry platforms.

In connection with the new social broadcast features, TweetPhoto is rolling out a new API to include over 35 new API calls. And as we wrote last year, TweetPhoto got into a bit of a pickle over its logo. That combined with Twitter’s trademark of the word “Tweet,” is resulting in TweetPhoto completely rebranding its service. The first step of this effort is a new logo, which we’ve attached above. A new name is forthcoming, says TweetPhoto, and its focus will be much more on the mobile side of things.

While TweetPhoto is still not getting the same amount of traffic as the leaders in the space, TwitPic, the site is edging out fellow competitor yFrog, according to January’s Compete numbers. But as TweetPhoto, which met with a little bit of scandal last fall, makes its offerings more social and interactive, the site could even give TwitPic a run for its money.

Well, TV manufacturers are definitely embracing 3D for the home.

Read the original post: 
Sony opens 3D Experience in Vegas

If you’re either American or Canadian (or just a hockey lover), chances are you were watching the gold medal hockey game yesterday. And with over 400 million users, there’s also a good chance you have a Facebook account. So what does it look like when those two worlds collide? Like the picture above.

As you can see, Facebook status updates per minute exploded at two times yesterday. The first peak, at 2:29 PM PST, is when Zack Parise of the U.S. tied the game with a goal in the third period. The second, much larger peak took place at 2:54 PM PST, when Sidney Crosby scored the game-winning goal for Canada in sudden-death overtime. All told, more than 3.5 million status updates were sent during those two times, according to Facebook. Perhaps even more remarkably, that was twice the pace of updates for the rest of the day.

While Twitter has yet to release similar stats, the service also undoubtedly saw an explosion of tweets during those two times. At one point after the U.S. scored, my entire tweet stream except for two tweets was some variation of “USA USA,” “OMFG!! USA,” “GOAL HOLY JESUS USA !!!1!!!,” or the like.

Data released a week or so ago had Twitter seeing 50 million tweets per day now. Meanwhile, recent Facebook data says that the networks sees over 60 million status updates posted each day (from 35 million active status updaters).

The New York Times Company has teamed up with RMG Networks to have some of its digital content displayed on part of the latter’s network of out-of-home screens. The partnership is said to bring NYTimes content to some 850 screens, located in district cafés and eateries in the New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, and San Francisco markets.

The new initiative, dubbed “NYTimes.com Today”, will feature the latest news headlines, photos, and a selection of videos exclusively from NYTimes.com – along with advertising units – on the digital location-based network operated by RMG Networks.

There’s also a mobile aspect to the story, as viewers can head to NYT2day.com on their phones to receive a direct link to the NYTimes.com Today mobile site, featuring the full articles displayed on the – smaller -screens.

Let’s take a closer look at the NYT’s newest distribution partner.

RMG Networks is headquartered in San Francisco but has local offices in New York, Chicago and Beijing. The company was founded in 2006 under the name Danoo and boasts an undisclosed amount of funding from National CineMedia, Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers and DAG Ventures – all investors also have one or more representatives on its board.

The company says it’s capable of delivering digital content and advertising to over 60,000 video screens nationwide, enabling it to reach up to nearly 25 million viewers every month.

RMG Networks’ management team is comprised of Garry McGuire (CEO), previously Chairman of Icon Internet Ventures, and former executives from companies such as Yahoo, LevelVision, Screenvision and McKinsey & Co.

Back in July 2009, when the company was still named Danoo, it acquired IdeaCast and rebranded the combined entity RMG Networks.

(Image via Venturebeat)

In something of a surprise move AOL has sold Buy.at, the affiliate marketing network it bought in early 2008, to UK network Digital Window. AOL acquired Buy.at for a rumoured $150 million but although sale terms have again not been disclosed this time round it’s fair to say the price will be substantially less that that.

French media conglomerate Vivendi this morning reported financial results, posting a decline in full-year profit but beating estimates because the net loss was much narrower than expected. You can read more analysis of the media and entertainment giant’s performance elsewhere, but there was a particular passage in the press release regarding Vivendi’s music subsidiary, Universal Music Group, that caught my eye.

UMG, the world’s largest music company with artists like U2, Amy Winehouse, Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, Black Eyed Peas, Rihanna, Eminem, Lil Wayne under contract, as expected finds its revenue from physical product sales (CDs) in a seemingly unstoppable decline. Last year, the company’s revenues were €4,363 million, a 6.2% decrease compared to 2008.

Still, Universal Music Group’s digital sales grew 8.4% in 2009, which the company attributed to strong growth in online sales yet “tempered by softening demand for mobile products in the United States and Japan”.

UMG says it will “continue to encourage and support innovation”, citing Spotify’s iPhone application and MusicStation’s presence on the Android Market as examples. Universal is also a major shareholder of VEVO, a service launched in December, 2009 that quickly rose to become the number 1 music property in the United States.

We should note that UMG is also largely responsible for the demise of video sharing site Veoh, and has sued or threatened to sue companies like YouTube, MySpace, Bolt, Grouper and many more to date.

Universal Music Group recently appointed Lucian Grainge as Chief Executive Officer of the company, succeeding Doug Morris who remained as Chairman. When the promotion was announced, Jean-Bernard Levy, chairman of the Vivendi Management Board, said:

“I am delighted that Lucian Grainge has agreed to move to New York to take on the Chief Executive role. His track record speaks for itself, finding stars, growing revenues and building new business models. He has the right combination of experience and innovation to take UMG forward as the migration into the digital era accelerates.”

Do you think Universal Music Group can offset the decline in revenue from physical product sales with a continued increase in digital sales revenue in the foreseeable future?

Tech giant Juniper Networks this morning introduced the $50 million Junos Innovation Fund, a new corporate venture capital initiative that will invest primarily in VC-backed technology companies in early or growth stage.

The fund builds up on Juniper’s efforts to establish an ecosystem of technologies, software and applications built on its cross-network software platform Junos, the company said.

According to the press release, the Junos Innovation Fund will invest in companies over the next two years, and focus on areas such as networking technologies, applications, and services that foster the development and deployment of security infrastructure, mobility and video solutions, virtualization, network automation, optical technology, and green networking.

Juniper Networks currently has investments in 11 companies, including Ankeena Networks, Blade Network Technologies, Cyan Optics, FireEye and Packet Design.

Recently a war has broken out in Europe about who will power online video for media owners. The two main players tussling it out are both from the US: Ooyala and Brightcove.

Last month Ooyala, a provider of video platform applications and services, and the UK’s Telegraph Media Group signed an agreement for Ooyala to run online video on the publisher’s websites and co-develop new technologies.

Today Ooyala is partnering with Middle East based social media platform developer H2O New Media, giving it distribution rights to Ooyala’s video platform, Backlot. It wil be used to stream video content from the growing Middle East television and media sector.

But (also today) Brightcove, which already has some big partners in Europe, is fighting back with a swathe of deals in Spain.

Though they’re not planning to unveil it until next week, Meebo has given us a sneak peek at their iPhone app. My immediate reaction? This will be my go-to messaging app on the iPhone.

While there are no shortage of apps that now allow you to connect to a wide range of messaging networks, Meebo’s is great because it’s very, very fast. It might not have all the bells and whistles that some others contain, but its brilliance is its simplicity. The app itself contains only three main areas: Buddies, Chats, and Accounts. Buddies obviously shows you a list of all your contacts. Chats keeps track of who you are actively chatting with. And Accounts allows you to set status messages, and toggle settings such as being visible. From here you can also add accounts, which is the key to Meebo.

While the main network screen shows you the 8 most popular chatting services you can link up (AIM, MSN, Yahoo, Google Talk, MySpace IM, ICQ, Jabber, and Facebook), the “More Networks” area gives you access to dozens of other ones. Once you add these, all your contacts on all these networks are seamlessly added into you buddy list.

And yes, it does offer Push Notifications, so you don’t have to have the app open at all times to actually use it on the iPhone.

While the app is great, Meebo faces an uphill battle in the iPhone messaging app race simply because they’re so late to the game. The reason is that their team was focusing the business on their Meebo Bar, which they’ve been evolving rapidly. Also, they’ve had a mobile web version that has worked on the iPhone since 2007. Meebo had a big year in 2009, starting with around 30 million uniques, and growing to just about 100 million.

The company plans to formally unveil the app next Tuesday, the 16th. Watch for it in the App Store. It will be a free download.

Leading up to its January event, rumors were swirling that Apple was talking to the TV networks about offering possible subscriptions to their shows through iTunes. Of course, that never happened. While reports had CBS and ABC interested in such a deal, the other networks apparently were less enthusiastic about it — perhaps out of fear of repercussions from the cable companies. But that doesn’t mean that Apple is giving up.

A new report today in the Financial Times indicates that Apple will begin testing the sale of $1 U.S. TV shows this year. Specifically, the new pricing could launch around the time that the iPad does, which will be March/April, FT notes citing people familiar with the discussions. Apple currently sells its shows for $1.99 (standard definition) or $2.99 (high definition) through iTunes. These $1 would be the standard definition variety, apparently, as they will play on the iPad.

Obviously, by cutting the prices of the shows in half, Apple and the networks in the test are trying to see if it spurs sales. It undoubtedly will, but this remains a temporary solution. Apple still wants to do some sort of subscription service for the shows it offers through iTunes. And I would be all about that because it would strike a blow to the major cable operators that control the industry with an iron fist and make us all pay insane rates so they can pad their profits.

Also, a subscription version of television shows would mean you wouldn’t have to store all of them, all the time. It’s simply not practical to buy all the shows you want through iTunes right now. Even if you could afford it, the amount of space they take up would quickly overwhelm your hard drive. This is exactly why iTunes is inevitably going to move to the cloud.

Apple has been testing discounts on its TV shows even before this announcement. For example, if you bought the latest season of ABC’s show Lost early, you could get the season pass for $39.99 instead of the regular $49.99. It’s not clear how the new $1 pricing would change season passes, but presumably, they would be much cheaper as well.