Telecommunications giant Verizon is reportedly working on a Web streaming service akin to Netflix, according to a report from Reuters. The new service could be available to as many as 85 million U.S. households beginning next year, sources said.
At first glance, a company with the size and clout of Verizon would appear to be a formidable potential challenger to Netflix, who has been especially vulnerable lately. Still, there are reasons to doubt that Verizon would be successful in making a dent in Netflix's dominance of this space.
When you're holiday shopping this year, there's little doubt that Amazon would prefer that you buy that copy of the Steve Jobs biography or Snuggie on their site, rather than in an actual store. That's why the e-commerce giant offers things like free shipping and a mobile app that lets you scan barcodes and compare prices.
In many cases, the price Amazon pulls up on its Price Check app for iOS is going to smaller than the one stuck to the item you're holding in your hand. They know this, and so to further encourage you to buy from them, Amazon is offering a 5% discount on items purchased via the Price Check app.
When it comes to viewing websites and apps on the Kindle Fire, is the experience more like that of a bigger tablet such as the iPad or a smaller smartphone? Amazon's new 10-inch tablet appears to occupy an awkward space about halfway in between, which poses new challenges to designers and developers.
While conducting tests on the Kindle Fire, website usability expert Jakob Nielsen said the 7-inch form factor was too small to comfortably browse desktop-sized sites and that in most cases, a mobile-optimized site was preferable from a user experience standpoint. Even so, those mobile-friendly sites were designed for screens much smaller than that of the Kindle Fire, so they may not take full advantage of the 7-inch screen's real estate.
This week, darling of the all-you-can-stream music space Spotify announced that it's opening up to third party developers and creating a platform on which they can build HTML5 apps to run within its desktop client. Once approved by Spotify, those apps will be available to users from the service's new "App Finder" button. They've also added a new home screen that show's what music is trending among one's friends, as well as an improved social experience all around.
The new features are not yet included in the Spotify desktop client, but curious users can download a preview of the next version of the software. We did and after using it, we're finding that the inclusion of third party apps makes Spotify much better.
Tomorrow, Microsoft will push out a huge update to its XBox Live platform, adding a host of new content options, including both Web-based video and live broadcast TV. It marks a significant step in the device's evolution from a gaming console to an all-in-one entertainment hub, which Microsoft hopes will be the digital heart of every family's living room.
The update also brings improved voice search capabilities to the platform, which allows viewers to simply ask for a given TV show, movie or video game and have it pop up on the screen. It's not unlike what many people think Steve Jobs was dreaming up for the upcoming Apple HDTV, and indeed it's something a few developers have already started to cobble together by hacking Siri.
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Just a few years ago, Mozilla's Firefox browser was rising fast as the chief challenger to Microsoft's stubbornly dominant Internet Explorer. Things change pretty fast in the world of Internet technology, however, and today Firefox's once bright future seems much less certain.
In 2008, Mozilla entered into a three-year partnership with Google. In exchange for remaining the default search engine on Firefox, Google hands over about 84% of Firefox's total revenue. Well, it's 2011 now and, as ZDNet's Ed Bott points out, the status of that partnership is unclear.
Let's say you're a Middle Eastern dictator with an atrocious human rights record and repressive domestic policies. Currently, many of your constituents are in the streets, loudly decrying your government calling for you to step down, if not for your execution. In many ways, the situation doesn't look that different than it did in other countries in the region just before their leaders were overthrown.
Despite a violent crackdown on the protests, the rabble rousers just won't quit, and they're using their smartphones to keep in touch and get around your stringent controls on freedom of the press. What ever do you do?
Are you curious about some family member or friend who served in the US military during World War II? If so, go to Ancestry.com during the next several days and you can search a variety of their records for free. Normally, this is a paid site starting at $13 a month, but in honor of the 70th anniversary of Pearl Harbor day they have opened up their various archives temporarily to help researchers.
As soon as Amazon's Kindle Fire tablet started shipping last month, users eagerly unboxed it, took it for a spin and started posting their reviews online. Some were enamored with the device through and through, while others expressed disappointment over its shortcomings, one of which was a slower browsing experience than expected. As compelling as they may be, what many of these first impressions lack is hard data to back them up. Until now.
Google employee and Web performance expert Steve Souders decided to put Silk through its paces and test its performance alongside other leading tablet devices. He loaded a series of 11 URL's on the Fire, iPad 1, iPad 2 and Galaxy Tab versions 7.0 and 10.1. Souders, who created the Y Slow Firefox plugin while working at Yahoo, used a tool he built called Loadtimer to test the load speeds of each site. The results confirm what many have already noticed: Silk is slow.
I'll never forget when I first discovered Napster. I was in high school and had heard about it from a friend. As an avid music fan, I was delighted to suddenly find myself with access to a seemingly limitless trove of songs, some of which were previously available only on $40 CD-R bootlegs in the back of record shops where they also sold paraphernalia strictly designed for smoking tobacco and only tobacco.
I never abandoned purchasing music all together, but the MP3 struck me as a far more convenient format than the compact disc, and Napster gave me quick and easy access to a world of MP3's. When Radiohead's "Kid A" showed up on Napster weeks before the CD was available in stores, what was I supposed to do? Ignore it?
