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Posts Tagged ‘pandora’

Buried all the way at the bottom of the Wall Street Journal’s latest piece about the Apple Tablet is a very interesting nugget of information. Apple is apparently gearing up to launch a cloud-based iTunes replacement called iTunes.com as soon as this June, WSJ states citing sources familiar with the matter.

Yesterday, we ran a guest post by Michael Robertson, the former CEO of MP3.com, who laid out Apple’s cloud-based media strategy going forward. An iTunes-in-the-cloud offering is the central part of this, and could happen “almost over night,” as Robertson laid out. And late last year we wrote about how a move to the cloud was inevitable for iTunes. The planets seem to be aligning for this to happen sooner rather than later. Apple’s recent purchase of the music startup Lala has potentially made this possible, because of that team’s talent, if nothing else. But there’s more.

Apparently, part of Apple’s strategy in moving iTunes online would be to make it so that third-party sites could easily implement one-click purchases of iTunes content, presumably through some iTunes APIs. Yes, plenty of sites offer iTunes click-to-buy buttons now, but they require that you load up the iTunes software and enter the iTunes Store through there to make the purchase — it’s cumbersome, to say the least.

A fully web-based iTunes could have huge business potential for Apple which has traditionally counted on the service as just a small source of overall revenue (aside from the newer App Store element), and used it as more of a way to move iPods with their higher margins. Such a move would potentially turn services like Pandora into mini-iTunes stores.

[photo: flickr/vsz]

A new movie came out on DVD this week called The Invention Of Lying. It’s co-written, co-directed, and co-starring Golden Globe host Ricky Gervais and looks mildly entertaining enough that I want to rent it. So I load up Netflix to add it to my queue — but wait, according to Netflix, it’s not available until February 16. Why? Because it’s a Warner movie and as such is subject to Netflix’s idiotic new 28-day rule (they can’t rent Warner new releases on Netflix until after they’ve been available for purchase in retail store for 28 days). Well that’s just great. So all hope is lost, right? Nope. iTunes has it available for rent today.

Because Apple did not agree to enter into a deal with Hollywood that restricts them from renting movies during this 28-day window, it was available not only to buy but also to rent this past Tuesday on iTunes, the same day it was released on DVD. While iTunes has its own series of somewhat convoluted rules with regard to rentals (for example, some movies are restricted from being rented when airing on premium cable channels like HBO), in this instance, they hands down beat Netflix at their own game: rentals. And thanks to this new 28-day window, which the other major studios will undoubtedly have interest in getting from Netflix as well, this is something we could see a lot more of: iTunes, Amazon, Xbox Live, and yes, even Blockbuster Online being the go-to sources to rent new releases.

And that’s great news for those services which haven’t yet seen the rush of popularity that Netflix has enjoyed over the past several years. But Apple COO Tim Cook noted in an earnings call last year that iTunes movie rentals were a surprisingly strong part of the store and were helping drive Apple TV sales. People seem to like the idea of renting movies over iTunes, they just needed an incentive to do it more. This is it.

Sure, for a lot of people, a 28 day wait after waiting months for a movie to be released isn’t the end of the world. But a solid 30% of Netflix’s business is still people who rabidly want new releases when they come out. With Netflix no longer offering that option, they will turn elsewhere — and I don’t mean buying these movies. If they’re opposed to piracy (which will go up as a result of this window if all the studios get on board), they’ll turn to one of Netflix’s rivals in rentals. And with these companies’ living room hardware getting upgrades this year (Xbox in talks to get ESPN content, Apple TV likely to see a major upgrade, etc), there could be very enticing options. Not to mention a certain new Apple device likely getting unveiled next week that will probably support movie rental playback as well.

I understand why Netflix felt the need to cut this deal: on one hand, Hollywood was strong-arming them in a futile attempt stop their own DVD sales bleed. On the other, they want to secure what they believe is their future: streaming. But they’ve given their rivals a real opportunity with this 28-day window. Hopefully, one of them will take advantage of it.

[photo: flickr/snowkei]

By the time Palm announced the Pixi Plus and Pre Plus at CES earlier this month, there wasn’t a whole lot left to reveal. From the names, to the specs, all the way down to the carrier the handsets would launch on — just about everything had made it into the realm of public knowledge by way of the rumor mill.

However, there was at least one feature that Palm managed to keep hidden up their sleeve: Mobile HotSpot. With the flick of a switch, the Mobile Hotspot application turns the Pre Plus or Pixi Plus into a WiFi router for up to 5 users simultaneously, fueled by Verizon’s 3G network. We’ve spent the last few hours tinkering with a pre-release copy of Mobile HotSpot – read on for our impressions.

Read the rest at MobileCrunch >>

This morning, after many months of rampant speculation over the enigmatic Tablet, Apple officially invited scores of press to a special media event to be held January 27. The debut of the Tablet seems all but a given according to most reports, but there are some secondary announcements that also stand to be huge — especially the rumors that we may also see the launch of iPhone 4.0. This afternoon, Fox News “confirmed” that we’d being seeing the latest iteration of Apple’s hugely popular mobile OS for the first time. Should that be the case, there’s also a good chance we’ll see launch of a very important new feature: background applications.

First things first. While the title of the Fox News article is “Apple Tablet, iPhone 4 Launch Confirmed for January 27″, the body of the article later says that it’s “likely” that Apple will unveil those two products (along with an updated iLife suite), and also notes that Apple is known for suddenly removing features or products from their announcements at the last second — none of which makes the news sound totally concrete. That said, there are plenty of reasons why iPhone 4.0 could be making an appearance alongside the Tablet, and why it will bring background apps with it.

We’ve discussed the probable connection between the Tablet and the iPhone OS since as early as last May. With iPhone OS, Apple took Mac OS X and stripped it down to the basics to turn it into a compact and powerful mobile operating system. The tablet will almost certainly have more horsepower than the iPhone, but it would still stand to gain from the power and space saving attributes of the mobile OS (albeit a modified version). Our suspicions got further support less than a week ago, when we saw reports that the newest releases of the iPhone OS was actually being held back because some of its code alluded to the unannounced tablet device. Given these ties, it would be logical for the iPhone 4.0 OS to make its debut alongside the tablet.

But the Tablet OS will need to bring some new features with it. For one, it will probably need to allow users to run multiple apps at the same time. Most people don’t particularly care (yet) that they can’t do this with their iPhones, because the screen real estate is so limited and they don’t view the device as a handheld computer (even though it is one). But that won’t be true with the tablet — in light of its larger screen, users will expect more functionality, and the inability to run multiple apps would grow frustrating quickly. With that in mind, if Apple has already established a paradigm for running background apps on the tablet, it would make sense to finally bring it over to the iPhone too.

The iPhone’s current lack of background applications is one of its most glaring weaknesses compared to other mobile operating systems, most notably Android and Palm’s WebOS. Apple’s reasons for withholding the functionality before now were obvious: running multiple applications can drain the device’s already-strained battery more quickly, and forcing users to manage which apps are open adds an extra layer of complexity. It was the right choice then, but it’s time for things to change.

Plenty of developers have already had their applications hampered by their inability to run in the background. Messaging clients have to rely on the iPhone’s Push notifications, which can only display a single alert at a time. Music players (other than the built-in iPod app) close down as soon as you try to do anything else on the phone. And location based apps have to rely almost exclusively on the “check-in” model popularized by Foursquare, because they have no way to passively monitor your location. Consumers may not be frustrated by these restrictions yet, but it’s only a matter of time before they look enviously at their Android-toting friends streaming Pandora and running Skype or Meebo in the background.

And Apple knows it. As far back as last May we were hearing that Apple was having serious discussions about how to implement background applications.  As it did with copy and paste (which iPhone users had to wait years for), Apple is clearly taking its time to get it right the first time.  Now, with the imminent release of the tablet, Apple may have finally settled on a solution.  If the Fox News report is correct, that could be revealed as soon as next week. But even if iPhone 4.0 isn’t announced for a few more months, it seems highly likely that background apps will come with it.

Image via Gizmodo. And no, it isn’t real.

I’ve seen Avatar twice now, which is saying something when you’re talking about a nearly three hour movie that was released 36 hours ago. But we lined up on Thursday night for the first midnight showing. And then I saw it again yesterday at the TechCrunch screening in San Francisco.

What do I think? I think I’m going to go see it again this weekend at an IMAX theater. Because the movie is awesome in 3D, but I want to see it in 3D on a 50 ft by 70 ft screen. Movies will never be the same after Avatar. Like the iPhone in the mobile world, this movie disrupts an entire industry.

I didn’t know much about the movie until I read an article about it in Wired on a flight to Europe last week. A movie James Cameron has been working on since 1994, but he had to wait until technology caught up with his dream, and he invented a new kind of camera along the way.

The amazing thing about Avatar isn’t the story – it’s simply a passable tale that’s part Pocahontas, part Dances With Wolves. But it’s a story played by ten foot tall blue people with tails who fly around on miniature dragons and generally kick ass. And suddenly the special effects in every movie you’ve ever seen seem trite in comparison. Jurassic Park type special effects, which seemed so awesome in the 90s, are now laughably dated.

There’s no point in the movie where you can really tell the difference between real imagery and CGI. You become completely lost in the world of Pandora, the setting for Avatar. And if you thought Zoe Saldana was amazing in Star Trek earlier this year, wait until you see Avatar. An entire generation of teenagers are now going to have a lifelong crush on a huge blue woman with a tail named Neytiri.

The movie grossed just $27 million in its first day at the box office, which pales in comparison to Twilight Saga: New Moon ($72 million) and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen ($62 million). But don’t forget that Cameron’s Titanic made just $28.6 million on opening weekend. And that movie did ok in the end.

Avatar, like Titanic, is one of those movies you’ll want to see over and over. But don’t wait for the DVD. This is a movie that has to be seen in 3D. And for that you have to go to the theater. Go see it, you’ll thank me later.

See the high definition trailer here.

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In the proud tradition of the CueCat the street is finding its own use for the Nook, adding Facebook, Pandora, and Browser apps to the ereader. Nookdevs have already rooted the Android-powered ebook and programmers have succeeded in installing multiple apps that have been ported to the version of the OS running on the Nook

Read more from the original source:
The Nook gets Pandora, web browser, Facebook apps

Online music services have had a bad few weeks. Imeem got bought by MySpace for next to nothing, Lala got bought by Apple for something ranging from a little to not-very-much. Spotify continues to be a no-show in the U.S. But at least one service, Pandora, appears to be doing quite well for itself.

The service has announced that it surpassed 40 million registered users earlier this month. That means the service had doubled its size in 2009. And it’s adding 600,000 new registered users a week now. Even more remarkable is that half of those new users are coming from mobile devices. And of those, the iPhone continues to lead the way with 10 million Pandora users of its own. That number has grown some 400% this year.

These good numbers follow the news earlier this year that Pandora had officially been “saved” after reaching an acceptable deal with the music companies for the royalty rates they have to pay. Pandora, unlike the other music services mentioned above, is much more of a radio service in the traditional sense of the word because you can’t pick exactly which song you’re going to listen to. But a proposed rate hike, which almost went into effect, would have severely hampered Pandora’s ability to survive as a business. Instead, with the new deal, they expect to be profitable by next year.

And that certainly seems possible given that Pandora is now apparently accounting for 44% of all Internet radio listening hours, Ando Domestic Ranker and their own internal numbers confirm. And they have great demographics to serve up ads to. Amongst 18-24 year-olds, Pandora has twice as many daily visitors as Hulu and ESPN, according to comScore. That said, the more music Pandora streams, the more they have to pay, so they need those ads to be effective. But that seems to be the case.

And while you might think the surge in mobile usage might be bad for Pandora which relies heavily on the ads that blanket its website, number indicate they have been able to monetize these mobile users as well.

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AdWhirl is a mobile advertising service that allows app developers to easily switch ad networks without being a hassle to the end users. They were acquired by the ad network AdMob back in August, but that hasn’t stopped them from doing what they do. And today, they’re making their offering even better by open sourcing the whole thing.

With the new AdWhirl iPhone SDK, developers can now customize which ad networks they’d like to use, rather than being forced to include them all. This can significantly cut down the size of app, the company writes on its blog today. But the open sourcing of the project means that developers can now also use ad networks that weren’t previously supported by the service, and can let other AdWhirl users how to do the same. AdWhirl notes that developers currently using the service won’t have to change a thing to accomodate this new SDK.

The other announcement today involves their AdWhirl Server. This the the backend infrastructure that makes the whole system work, not only serving up the ads, but allowing users to monitor statistics. AdWhirl says it has redesigned this server from the ground up and it’s now using Amazon Web Services EC2. And beginning today, the company is providing the code so that developers can run their own AdWhirl servers. The move to EC2 should allow running their own servers to make it easier to scale as well, they note.

You can find all the new code on Google code.

Earlier this month, .App/Ads launched its own open ad platform.

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Just a few days ago, the voice recognition connoisseurs over at Nuance released Dragon Dictation, an iPhone app which would automatically transcribe your voice into text messages and emails.

All was well and good at first; the response to the app was generally quite positive, and the app itself seemed to work pretty dang well. Soon after release, however, controversy was abound; someone stumbled across a section of the End User License Agreement which stipulated that the application would upload a list of your contacts to their server. Just like that, the paranoia train barreled out of the station.

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There tend to be two types of emerging market tech success stories that get ink, venture capital and revenues from the U.S. The first is the so-called “copycat,” most prevalent amid Chinese Internet companies. (I say “so-called” because I think it actually takes quite a bit of innovation to localize an idea successfully, plus most Valley Web sites are just rip-offs of one another.) The other type are the IT outsourcing firms that multinationals hire to handle anything from annoyingly menial to overly-complex techy projects. These companies built much of India’s tech sector.

I found an example of each last week in Argentina. Earlier this week, I wrote about MercadoLibre—one of the only Nasdaq traded companies to come out of Latin America and clearly a company that took the copycat route. Conveniently just upstairs from MercadoLibre is Globant, an Argentine company taking the outsourcing route.

Globant has cobbled together a $50 million a year (and growing) business that’s something like a mix between edgy-but-small Ideo and big-and-boring Infosys. It’s hard to get excited about an IT outsourcing firm. My question is always: If you know so much that you can advise everyone on their businesses, why don’t you actually make something yourself?

And for the local economy, tech services companies are a great way to create a lot of high-paying jobs quickly, but long term it doesn’t necessarily build a startup ecosystem that knows how to build product companies—a gripe I heard repeatedly while I was in Bangalore last month.

And, personally, when I look at the world’s fast growing economies and burgeoning populations, I get a lot more excited about entrepreneurs that are taking advantage of those untapped domestic markets in ways US companies can’t. 95% of Globant’s revenues come from the UK and the US, so their chief local advantage boils down to labor cost, which many companies doing business in India’s services sector have learned isn’t a sustainable edge.

But, despite all that, Globant is worth watching for six reasons.

1. A quick sale isn’t the goal. Co-founder Guibert Englebienne (pictured above) boldly says the plan is to go public on Nasdaq in two years. For those keeping score, that would make two for Argentina after MercardoLibre.

2. Globant is building an actual business to back that bravado up. I mentioned the $50 million in annual revenues. Globant also has 1500 employees and is the fastest growing company in Argentina. It has ten development centers throughout the country—some in the poorest areas. It also has offices in London, Boston, New York and Palo Alto. Globant has also acquired two smaller companies and aims to do more.

3. It’s an IT company people really aspire to work at in Argentina. Globant gets 1,600 resumes a month and is co-creating some local university classes to create a skilled enough workforce to support its growth. It’s invested heavily—almost obnoxiously—in creating a cool “Google-like” place to work complete with massage rooms, yoga rooms, game rooms and a hair salon. Its conference rooms are named after iconic hipster cartoons like Tom & Jerry, the Thundercats and Spanish names I didn’t recognize.  Occasionally you have to hack something just to apply for a job at Globant.

A class of people who can code for multinationals may not breed a next generation of product-company entrepreneurs, but it does groom many of the would-be employees for those companies. Put another way—Silicon Valley isn’t just built on the Evan Williams and Mark Zuckerbergs of the world. It also relies on the highly skilled employees they hire.

4. Globant does work for non-tech big brands like Nike, but also big tech companies like Google and EA. Indeed 60% of its revenues come from Silicon Valley. Why do these very heavily-staffed, deep-pocketed tech companies need a (comparatively) tiny Argentine outsourcing firm? I’m not exactly sure. But for the employees of that firm, they’re building connections with some of the most powerful tech multinationals they wouldn’t be able to build otherwise.

5. Globant has raised $24 million from US investors Riverwood Capital and FT Ventures. I’m not saying you have raise US money to be a promising startup, indeed most of the ones I cover around the world haven’t. But with few VCs investing in Latin America, it’s impressive that Globant has grabbed such attention.

6.  The four founders came up with the idea in a bar. At TechCrunch we are firm believers that some of the best things happen in bars.

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