Hasta La Gadget!

It’s been about six months since we heard Comcast was running tests of a brand new set-top box platform but now thanks to one of our tipsters we’re able to see it in action and find out what’s on the way. From the remote to the box to the menus it’s all new, and appears to be a major step forward for the company and already includes familiar apps like Facebook and Pandora. The look of the new guide mirrors what we’d seen in the manual received by the FCC in December and demonstrated on Samsung HDTVs at CES earlier this year, intended for 16×9 displays and moving the main navigation elements to the top. The redesigned remote has a few new buttons and while it hasn’t gone the QWERTY route, the software and hardware are designed around T9-style access for searching and messaging, with a button and microphone icon suggesting voice control is a possibility as well. The DVR itself is the Pace box we’d seen previously, although there was differing information on the number of tuners and hard drive space available, suggesting these details may still be up in the air. Check after the break for more details and our tipster’s first hand account of the new TV experience.

[Thanks, Mark van der Linden]

Continue reading Comcast’s next generation Xfinity Spectrum DVR shows off quad tuners, new menu and apps

Comcast’s next generation Xfinity Spectrum DVR shows off quad tuners, new menu and apps originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 20 May 2011 16:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sony Ericsson Xperia Play, Arc getting Android 2.3.3 update next week, Facebook integration in tow originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 19 May 2011 14:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s taken the US Patent and Trademark Office four and half years to consider it, but Facebook now finally has a patent on one of its central features: photo tagging. Applied for in October 2006 and just granted this week, this legal doc gives Mark Zuckerberg and a couple of his buddies credit for designing a method for identifying users in “a selection of an item of digital media.” That could be photos, video, audio, or text — the main drive of the patent is that it lets people associate a given chunk of media with a person and inform others of this association. The wording of Facebook’s claims is rather specific — you have to, for example, allow the identified person the opportunity to reject the identification — so having this patent need not necessarily preclude other sites like Flickr from engaging in similar, but not identical, behavior.

Facebook granted patent for tagging digital media originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 19 May 2011 03:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you’ll recall, Google has been pushing social integration into its search algorithm quite aggressively for the past few months; lest we forget the versatile +1 button. Not to be out done by Team Google’s spider-crawling and link-snatching ways, Microsoft has announced full-on Facebook integration for Bing. They’re referring to it as, the “Friend Effect.” So, what’s the difference?

Continue reading Bing adds Facebook ‘friend effect’ to search, hopes you ‘Like’ it

Bing adds Facebook ‘friend effect’ to search, hopes you ‘Like’ it originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 17 May 2011 19:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It seems like the ongoing rivalry between Facebook and Google has taken a turn for the subversive. Last night, a spokesman for the social network confirmed to the Daily Beast that Facebook paid a top PR firm to spread anti-Google stories across the media and to encourage various outlets to examine allegations that the Mountain View company was violating user privacy. The PR firm, Burson-Marsteller, even offered to help blogger Chris Soghoian write a critical op-ed piece about Social Circle — a service that allows Gmail users to access information on so-called “secondary connections,” or friends of their friends. Social Circle, in fact, seems to have been at the epicenter of Facebook’s smear campaign. In a pitch to journalists, Burson described the tool in borderline apocalyptic terms:

“The American people must be made aware of the now immediate intrusions into their deeply personal lives Google is cataloging and broadcasting every minute of every day-without their permission.”

Soghoian thought that Burson’s representatives were “making a mountain out of a molehill,” so he decided to prod them about which company they might be working for. When Burson refused to spill the beans, Soghoian went public and published all of the e-mails sent between him and the firm. USA Today picked up on the story, before concluding that any claims of a smear campaign were unfounded. The Daily Beast‘s Dan Lyons, however, apparently forced Facebook’s hand after confronting the company with “evidence” of its involvement. A Facebook spokesman said the social network hired Burson to do its Nixonian dirty work for two primary reasons: it genuinely believes that Google is violating consumer privacy and it also suspects that its rival “may be improperly using data they have scraped about Facebook users.” In other words, their actions were motivated by both “altruistic” and self-serving agendas, though we’d be willing to bet that the latter slightly outweighed the former. Google, meanwhile, has yet to comment on the story, saying that it still needs more time to wrap its head around everything — which might just be the most appropriate “no comment” we’ve ever heard.

Facebook admits hiring PR firm to smear Google originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 12 May 2011 07:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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