The Boxee folks have posted an update today about the 1.5 beta release. After the details of the release's UI enhancements, the Boxee team has also let slip that the 1.5 release will be the last one for Windows, Mac OS X or Linux.
According to the post, the team has been able to bring "Boxee for Computers to about 85% of the Boxee Box in terms of features and functionality."
After outraging the Internet yesterday by declaring support for the Stop Online Piracy Act, Go Daddy has reversed its position in a smarmy press release. It tweeted the link to Ben Huh, CEO of the Cheezburger Network, who threatened to move his company's thousands of domains yesterday in protest.
In the statement published on its website, Go Daddy maintains that "fighting online piracy is of the utmost importance," reminding us that the company has been working on the legislation. But it admits, in the face of massive boycotts, that "we can clearly do better."
The Internet is in an uproar over the Stop Online Piracy Act. The battles lines are drawn. Big Media (the record labels, movie studios and TV networks) support the bill while Big Tech (search engines, open source platforms, social networks) oppose it. The bill, introduced to Congress by Representative Lamar Smith, is ostensibly supposed to give the Attorney General the ability to eliminate Internet piracy and to "protect U.S. customers and prevent U.S. support of infringing sites."
There is a lot that may be wrong with SOPA, but putting the power to censor the Internet into the hands of the government is chief among citizens' concerns. The law would force Internet Service Providers and search engines to cut off access to infringing sites as well as give the government the ability to stop payment to those sites. How would SOPA work? What do you need to know about the bill heading into 2012? We take a deep dive into everything you need to know below.
One thing that I have learned from decades of writing is always find and tell a great story. And this is why Ira Glass is one of my heroes, one of my mentors. You wouldn't think that a guy who writes about tech day in and day out could be so moved from listening to him on public radio, or seeing one of his live shows. It isn't like he uses some new-fangled streaming audio gear or USB microphone setup. (Well, maybe he does, but that isn't the point.) Hearing his show is always a moving experience, a moment when he finishes the story and you just go, "Wow, that was something." Some stories are funny, some sad, some have morals or points to them, others just are what they are.
In any case, Glass sets a very high bar when it comes to his craft.
The list of companies that support the controversial piece of U.S. legislation called the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is fairly predictable. It includes huge media conglomerates, music industry groups, pharmaceutical companies and the like. One name that stands out, however, is that of domain name registrar GoDaddy. Whereas many of the big Web technology companies have come out in opposition to SOPA, GoDaddy enthusiastically supports the proposed law.
Not unsurprisingly, this news does not sit well with many of the Internet's most vocal SOPA opponents, especially on Reddit. A thread that popped up on the site today decries GoDaddy's support for SOPA and encourages users to transfer their domains to another provider. The conversation, which has more than a few choice words for GoDaddy, has grown quite long.
If you need remote access to your desktop from your iOS phone or tablet, now you can get there for free. Starting today, LogMeIn has a new app in the Apple App Store and it is free. This replaces their low-end Ignition app that they previously charged $30 for. It doesn't give you everything that the current paid app provides, such as file management and cloud storage and HD video/audio streaming. But if you just need remote access, then the free app will do quite nicely. You of course need to run the free version (or the paid version) of LogMeIn on your Windows or Mac desktop, and set up an account online with them to complete the connection.
What I like about LogMeIn is how they are upstanding guys. If you put down your money in the past for Ignition, you will be grandfathered in and have the premium features forever. They are planning on an Android app next year, naturally. The Pro version is $40 a year.
Today Facebook launched a brand new page to explain just how its advertising works. The social network makes most of its money through ads.
This comes right after yesterday's announcement that sponsored stories will start popping up in the Facebook news feed. Sponsored stories are already appearing in the news ticker.
When it comes to watching television without the aid of a cable subscription or rabbit ears, the Web is pretty accommodating these days. Most popular shows stream new episodes within 24 hours and even many live television events can be streamed online. One of the biggest deal killers for would-be "cord cutters," however has always been live sports. If you're a huge football fan, for example, there's no way around it: you need TV the old fashioned way.
That's still largely the case, but watching the year's biggest sporting event via the Internet just got a whole lot easier. The Super Bowl, which is the most-watched television broadcast in the United States, will be streamed live to computers and smartphones, the NFL announced today.
Facebook has confirmed that in early 2012 users will start seeing sponsored stories in the news feed. A Facebook spokesperson tells us that these sponsored stories, which are essentially ads that a company or organization pays to feature, will roll out slowly. It hopes to show users no more than one clearly labeled sponsored story in the news feed per day.
Facebook recently added sponsored stories to its news ticker, the sometimes-useful though mostly annoying constant stream of news in the upper right-hand corner of the user's homepage.
The nightmare is over. Or, hopes and dreams have been crushed. Really, it depends on what side of the argument you fell on but, as of now, it is moot: AT&T and T-Mobile have dropped their $39 billion merger bid and will remain two separate, unaffiliated companies.
The competition will rejoice. Sprint, in particular, comes off as a big winner and CEO Dan Hesse will be vindicated for his crusade against the merger all year. Verizon, which took a "don't look at us, we are just watching the circus" approach, probably does not benefit from its failure. AT&T had set aside $4 billion in breakup fees that it now needs to pay Deutsche Telecom, the owners of T-Mobile. So, the biggest loser here is AT&T. The company would also like consumers to believe they are the losers as well.
