Good news, everyone! We may have detected our first exomoon outside a solar system. It orbits a gas giant 1800 light years away from us, and it’s half the size of Earth—just like the famous Yavin IV from which the Rebel Alliance launched its attack against the Death Star. It’s a really weird moon too.
     |
Shows like Million Dollar Listings are fun and all—but, like, who can relate? The new Discovery Health show Urban Suburban might represent a more realistic real estate conundrum for most Americans: a real-life version of the Town Mouse and the Country Mouse, where homebuyers have to decide between settling down in suburbia or the big city.
| |
With more and more video content being consumed every day on things like the Apple TV, PS3 and Xbox 360, having an exceptional recommendations system is becoming an essential part of the viewing experience. Microsoft knows how important this is, and today it announced it’s reached a multi-year deal with Tel-Aviv-based firm Jinni to enhance entertainment discovery on the Xbox platform. The newly minted agreement will see Jenni’s own engine, dubbed Entertainment Genome, vastly improve Xbox recommendations by utilizing its “deep knowledge of every show and movie in the Xbox Video catalog.” It’s worth noting Jenni has plenty of experience in the insight field, having previously been pegged by Time Warner and Vudu to power their intelligent search efforts. For its part, Xbox General Manager, Dave Alles, says there’s excitement to combine Jenni’s taste-and-mood engine with Microsoft’s Conversational Understanding, which he hopes can make “finding something to watch on Xbox as fun as watching it.”
Filed under: Gaming, Home Entertainment, Internet, HD, Microsoft
Source: Jinni
While the people of Europe bravely set sail during the Age of Discovery—a period stretching from the early 15th century and continuing to the 17th century—it’s easy to forget that very few of the shores onto which they stepped were entirely uninhabited. This map shows the lands that were, until adventurers landed, entirely unexplored by a single human.
| |
It’s time to add another entry on our “Apple television rumors” timeline, as reports tonight indicate the company has acquired the team behind the second screen web / iPad app Matcha.tv. VentureBeat initially posted news of the acquisition at a price of between $1 and $1.5 million, which would appear to explain the aggregator’s sudden disappearance back in May. If you weren’t familiar with it before now, Matcha.tv was one of a number of efforts seeking to enable content discovery from mobile devices. By the time it closed its doors, it included TV listings of what’s on cable / satellite, queues for online streaming from services like Netflix and Hulu, personalized recommendations and social network tie-ins. CEO Guy Piekarz told TechCrunch in May that the company has a “plan to provide something better in the future.” We’ll wait and see if speculation leans towards an IR blaster tie-in for the iPhone similar to the Galaxy S 4 and HTC One, controls for an integrated living room TV experience or something else entirely.
Filed under: Home Entertainment, Internet, HD, Apple
Source: VentureBeat, AllThingsD, Matcha.tv
Discovery Channel, DMAX, 3NET (with Sony and IMAX) and Revision 3 owner Discovery Communications is pondering an HBO Go-style streaming service. In an interview with Reuters, company boss John Hendricks said that shows that are between three and 18 months old can still make money before they’re launched on Netflix. His plan is to let subscribers access that programming online for a small additional monthly fee, which, according to Hendricks’ autobiography, is between $6 and $8 a month. The boss also said that the company is developing the infrastructure for the platform, but that we won’t see such a service arrive for anything up to five years.
Filed under: Home Entertainment, Internet, HD
Source: Reuters
Windows Phone 8 users whose TV habits revolve around MythBusters, Cake Boss and cute pets are in luck: Discovery has just posted three apps for their platform of choice. The new Animal Planet, Discovery Channel and TLC releases share the same basic template, letting fans check show schedules and stream either brief clips or a smattering of full-length episodes. All of the apps support Windows Phone’s live tiles, voice commands and calendar reminders, although they’re otherwise simple; they lack the second screen features we’ve seen in iOS versions. If you’re just hoping to watch some Auction Kings on the bus, however, you can get your fix through the Windows Phone store today.
Filed under: Cellphones, HD, Mobile
Via: Windows Phone Blog
Source: Windows Phone Store (1), (2), (3)
It’s been a mere few weeks since Shazam introduced those new location-based and tagging features for the tablet version of its iOS app, but the music-driven service isn’t stopping there. Reaching version 6.1 on Apple’s platform, today Shazam’s universal application is bringing a few more tidbits to both the iPhone and iPad. Handset users, for one, will notice speedier load times within the app and a rather fresh look that focuses on displaying more info on the tab bar — such as friend tags and chart updates. On the bigger screen, Shazam says it’s improved things by allowing users to more easily delete tags from Favorites and by adding under-the-hood tweaks which should make for a smoother experience while browsing the Friends feed.
The bigger news, perhaps, is Shazam Pulse, a music discovery tool that’s making its way to the iOS app, one which allows folks to quickly see and sample the music currently being tagged by people. It’s worth noting that all these new features are available for Shazam and Shazam Encore, so fret not if you have one or the other.
Filed under: Portable Audio/Video, Software
Via: Cult of Mac
Source: App Store (1), (2)
More and more video discovery apps are starting to pop up, with even big-name brands such as Samsung joining the race to have the best offering out there. But while this particular field is still relatively young, startups like Showyou are already thinking ahead by launching creator-focused programs of their own. With the newly minted Showyou Channels, the service is taking a slight cue from sites who are familiar with creating and distributing videos (YouTube, Vimeo, etc.), announcing that the idea is to provide users with a hub where they can make original content and easily share it with the world. What’s more, Showyou also has a revenue model in place which allows people to make a little cash from their vids, though that won’t necessarily be a requirement. Only time will tell how far Showyou can go, but, if anything, we’re definitely interested in seeing how its evolution plays out.
Filed under: Internet, Software
Via: TechCrunch
Source: Showyou
Finding things to do and places to go has never been easier thanks to services that neatly pull all the options together. Weotta hopes to be another weapon in your discovery app arsenal after expanding its coverage to the whole of the US, having initially been limited to 40 cities. As the company’s CEO told Forbes, the free iOS app uses “phrase extraction and natural language processing” to source its local suggestions from the nooks and crannies of the internet. That same wizardry is used to steer its rating system, which is based on what’s said about a venue or event rather than aggregating numerical scores. It’ll learn your likes and dislikes, tailoring recommendations as it gets to know you better, but you can discover what’s happening in the area for yourself using the search feature. Via Facebook Connect, the app will also tell you what’s popular among your peers. While Weotta is only available for iOS, it’s attracted funding from Google Ventures, which is a recommendation in itself that suggests you give it a whirl.
Filed under: Cellphones, Tablets, Software, Mobile
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
