Ever wonder what places get the most attention in American news? The answer is more striking than you might think. This geography of U.S. attention is beautifully illustrated in a new animation that maps the geographic subjects of U.S. television news broadcasts over the span of four-years. It’s kinda sparkly.
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The YouTube app is now available on Roku 3, and it features full HD streaming and a send to TV feature from your phone. Might we suggest this Beyonce video as a candidate for the first thing you watch?
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Twitter is working on an edit feature. Meaning you could soon be able to edit your tweets — with some caveats. You won’t be able to write a tweet, publish it, wait a few hours, and then replace the content of the tweet with entirely different and unrelated content. Twitter is still working out the […]
Google Chromecast owners can now stream Google Play music and movie content direct from the web, as well as from smartphones and tablets, thanks to the Google Cast extension for the Chrome desktop browser. Oddly, Google’s own media store isn’t the first to do this, as Netflix on the web can play nice with the Chromecast extension, as can YouTube. But Play media access means Google’s $35 wonder device is everything the Nexus Q was not, and a device only limited by software and time.
When the Chromecast first launched, it was sort of like a knock-off designer handbag: Not the thing you really want, but close enough and so cheap it didn’t matter. Slowly but surely, however, Google has been improving its streaming dongle to the point where it’s quickly becoming a true competitor for Apple’s AirPlay and Apple TV devices, which is a much-needed ingredient currently missing from Google’s ecosystem.
Web-based streaming is also something that AirPlay can handle, thanks to the ability to connect an AirPlay display in the latest version of OS X. Chromecast also still can’t mirror a display entirely, which is something AirPlay can handle that’s incredibly useful for presenters, educators and many others. AirPlay has also been used by many developers as a way to program experiences designed to take advantage of using both a small and a big screen at one time, which is likewise something Google hasn’t really implemented with Chromecast just yet.
Earlier this week, Google added a good list of new content partners to Chromecast’s stable of supported software, and each drove up the value of owning one considerably in my opinion. In the same way that Apple keeps improving the Apple TV via content partnerships and service improvements, Google keeps doing the same with Chromecast, but the short-term potential here is even greater, I think, at least in terms of immediate impact for a huge group of Chrome and Android users.
Apple continues adding new channel partners to its Apple TV hardware, and now it’s rolling out four new ones today (via 9to5Mac), including Watch ABC for streaming local ABC affiliate content, Crackle for movies and TV, and KOR TV, a Korean language channel. There’s also Bloomberg, which is going to be streaming a live 24-hour news channel that provides content seven days a week.
This launch is just the most recent in what’s been an increasingly fast-paced rollout of new content partners on Apple’s set-top box, but it brings some interesting ingredients to the mix, including local broadcast TV streaming and a 24-hour news channel, which are key ingredients to what many users would consider basic TV service. Apple TV didn’t start off as a really viable cord-cutting alternative for people looking to ditch their cable subscriptions, but it’s been building up a piecemeal library of a la carte content that begins to become a truly worthy option.
It’s true that many of the services are still tied to cable service and TV packages, including the new Watch ABC channel and the HBO Go app that was launched previously, but it’s best to take all of these launches as baby steps in a larger plan that sees content unbundled from traditional sources. Apple’s Apple TV bet is a long play, and I think we’re only just starting to see the next curve around the bend on the long road to what will ultimately be a robust alternative to subscription-based bundled TV services.
Of course, that takes for granted these service providers can deliver content in a high-quality, reliable way. I’ve heard less than flattering things about the WSJ channel, which delivers live news content, but only during certain hours, unlike the Bloomberg effort. Still, the building blocks are falling into place, and Apple just needs to continue this rollout while avoiding a big blockade from legacy players along the way
It’s difficult to say good-bye to a man as formidable as Nelson Mandela.
TV, Radio and the blogosphere have been flooded with updates, and I
suspect this will continue for some time. Living in the digital age, as
mankind moves forward, it’s apparent that we will all be memorialized
when the time comes with what we leave behind on the Internet.
Perhaps not as funny as the classic 1938 comedy sketch "Who’s on First?"
popularized by Abbott and Costello, but it does bring a smile to one’s
face when anybody is able to give Google a run for their money. Such is
the case when the Northern American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD)
backed by Microsoft and Bing take on the Granddaddy of search engines in
a face-off that pits one Santa Tracker against another.
The thing about newspapers is that you don’t really need the newspaper to read the newspaper any more. The Internet! If you find reading online a little hollow for some intangible reason, you might like the New York Times’ new web app, Today’s Paper, which is organized like the New York Times in print. It’s positively functional. No flare, just reading. Kind of like…a newspaper.
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Amazon has been the target of an undercover report that looked into working conditions for employees at its warehouse near Swansea, something that will air this evening on the BBC’s Panorama. The undercover report shows unfavorable conditions that could prove unhealthy to workers, but Amazon has spoken out against such claims, saying that it has […]
Freelance photojournalist Daniel Morel was awarded $1.2 million yesterday when a US federal jury found two large media companies guilty of copyright infringement. Agence France-Presse and Getty Images had swiped his photographs of the 2010 Haiti earthquake and distributed them to news outlets around the world. Guess where they swiped them from! Morel was present […]
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