When Netflix announced that they'd be changing their subscription rates in July, the company expected some existing customers to be uneasy about it. What they probably didn't expect was the widespread outrage expressed by customers, many of whom threatened to quit the service.
Now there's this: Thanks to a lag in subscriptions, Netflix has been forced to revise the number of subscribers it expects to see by the end of September, decreasing that number by 1 million. Previously, the company said it expected 25 million subscribers by month's end. That's a 4% drop in subscribers.
Israeli mobile chat startup fring has just taken a swing at Google Plus with Playgrounds, a group video chat tool for iOS and Android devices. Playgrounds are four-way open video chat discussions organized around topics. Users can browse open Playgrounds or create their own.
Sounds like a four-person Hangout, doesn't it? But the Google Plus open video chat service is still confined to the desktop. Fring keeps pushing mobile video chat forward, and the giants are slow to react.
Netflix learned today that it may lose a significant source of its content when Starz Entertainment announced it would not renew its distribution deal with the popular streaming service for next year.
It's this contract with Starz that gives Netflix the ability to legally stream a trove of movies from the likes of Walt Disney, Touchstone, Columbia and Sony, among others. If talks don't resume, that's a sizable chunk of content that will be missing from the service. In response to the news, Netflix's stock price dropped 9 percent in after-hours trading.
Flingo is the latest social TV service to hit the market. It has the ambitious goal of merging your television watching with your Web activity, in real-time. This works two ways: Web content is adapted according to what you're watching on TV, and your TV screen gets Web features such as checking in and tweeting.
What's most intriguing about Flingo is the developer platform. Via a public API, the company is positioning itself as "the world's largest enabler of applications for your Internet-connected TVs, Blu-ray players and Set-top boxes." The company says it is already the largest publisher of smart TV apps.
With the proliferation of Internet-connected devices, it's getting easier to create or consume media on devices like smartphones, tablets and set-top boxes. However this multi-device world is still evolving and it's often not obvious which apps to use or even how to set them up. So in a series starting today, we're going to explore how to get off the computer and enjoy the Web.
I've always wanted to have an Instapaper-like service for videos, an application which would allow me to save videos so that I can watch them later. Preferably when I'm relaxing on the sofa at the end of a long work day. Because who has time to watch videos during the day? Indeed, maybe your work place forbids that. Earlier this month Internet TV service Boxee launched an iPad app, along with a bookmarklet to put your daily video finds in a queue to watch later. It takes a bit of setting up to get both working properly, but it's worth it. Here's what to do.
Although we often invoke "Hollywood" when we talk about the movie industry, many of the world's greatest films and much of the world's film history comes from outside that Los Angeles district. A nod here goes to the Lumière Brothers, of course, two of the earliest filmmakers. But rousing applause should go to the European Film Gateway, which is now online, giving free and open access to much of Europe's rich film history.
The collection includes about 400,000 digital videos, photos, film posters and text materials, a number that is expected to grow to over 600,000 items by the fall.
If there's one thing that keeps me coming back to Facebook, it's the photos. Admittedly, I've largely abandoned Facebook as my social network of choice, but it's still the primary way I can see what all my old high school buddies are up to. But photos often get lost in the shuffle of Facebook status updates, and there's been no easy way to visit Facebook and look at just the photos or videos that friends have shared.
The New York City startup Pixable has built apps (for Web and for mobile devices) to improve the way in which we consume the photo feed from Facebook. Pixable makes it easier to view friends' photos, listing them by friend but also by category. You can see, for example, new profile pics, most popular pics of the month, photos from family, as well as photos that are popular on Flickr and Instagram.
And now Pixable has added a new category and a new media type: videos. Pixable's categories distinguish between videos that friends have uploaded themselves (home movies 2.0, if you will) and those that they've shared (from YouTube and the like).
Facebook announced today that the company will launch group chat, video calling with Skype and a redesigned chat side bar to make communication on Facebook easy and powerful.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the new features at the company's headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif. This announcement follows up on Zuckerberg's portent of "something awesome" last week. Skype video chat will be fully embedded into the Facebook ecosystem with an extension that is designed to make it as easy to use as possible. Essentially, video chat within Facebook is two clicks away.
Amid rumors of a possible buyout, the popular TV and movie streaming service Hulu is at last making its Android debut as promised. Like its iPhone counterpart, the mobile app connects paying customers to the Hulu Plus service, Hulu's premium subscription-based offering.
Unfortunately, not all Android devices are supported at launch.
The Internet Archive's entire collection of digital videos will now be available in HTML5 as well as Flash, the organization announced today.
The Internet Archive will be using Kaltura's open source video platform in order to deliver the 500,000 some odd digital video assets housed at the Internet Archive. Kaltura's video player identifies whether a device and browser supports Flash or HTML5 and will deliver the content accordingly.
