While the over-the-top (OTT) streaming entertainment category has not made a big dent in the mainstream home TV viewing market yet, it’s a hot business, and service providers, software makers, and hardware manufacturers are all jockeying for the biggest piece of the pie.

When AppleTV debuted alongside the iPhone at Macworld in 2007, it was more or less a stripped-down home theater PC so users could enjoy their iTunes media on their televisions. Relatively little had changed on the platform until today, when Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced the box would lose its storage capacity and become rental-only, gain Netflix streaming and drop in price to . Jobs said these changes were based upon feedback provided by AppleTV users.

The change has made AppleTV a lot more like Roku’s Netflix streamer, which debuted in 2008 and made a strong impression for providing an affordable and enjoyable iPTV experience without the need for a powerful computer hooked up to your TV.

“Roku created the category for streaming players over two years ago with the original Netflix player for ,” Roku’s Director of Corporate Communications Brian Jaquet said today. “Since then, the category has continued to grow rapidly with large hardware entrants like Xbox, PS3, Wii, blu-ray players, and now AppleTV adding streaming capabilities. At the same time, content is becoming more readily available thanks to Netflix’s increasing popularity, but also from Amazon, MLB.TV and most recently Hulu Plus.”

Just one day before Apple announced its new AppleTV, Roku slashed the prices of its three set-top boxes to .99, .99, and .99. At the highest end, the streamer supports 1080p high def and dual-band 802.11n wireless.

“Roku is completely confident that our strategy of offering more features and lower cost than competitors continues to be the right plan,” Jaquet said.

Boxee, the hot XBMC-based media center that will launch its first set top box in November with hardware partner D-Link, is taking a similar, but opposite approach to Apple’s new product.

“We all watched the Apple announcement,” Boxee’s Avner Ronen said this afternoon. “We walked away feeling strongly confident about the space it left for Boxee to compete. We have a different view of what users want in their living rooms. We are taking different paths to get there. The Boxee Box is going to be 0 more expensive than the Apple TV, but will give you the freedom to watch what you want. We think it’s worth it.”

Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010

Netflix – AppleTV – Apple – Roku – IPhone

Apple’s September 1 music event ended on a sour note. Coldplay’s Chris Martin gave a tepid and pitchy performance that would have sent him packing from an American Idol audition. Michael Stanclift aptly tweeted: “This guy could have practiced before this gig.” Martin, whose daughter is named Apple, seemed like the right performer for what was otherwise an outstanding event. While Martin muffed, Apple — the company, not his child — hit every key. Not since the first iPod nano launched five years ago has Apple delivered such spectacular new music products.

For the past week, pundits and rumormongers spewed forth the most ridiculous and seemingly sensible conjecture about what Apple would announce today. Nearly every rumor was wrong. There was a new Apple TV, but with no storage, no apps and no gaming capabilities. It’s a Roku with a nicer design and streaming support for Apple services and devices, Netflix and YouTube. Yes, there are 99-cent TV rentals as rumored, but only from ABC and Fox — and they’re all HD. Otherwise, the rumors missed all the significant stuff, even the most important details about the new multitouch iPod nano. Who guess right about iTunes 10? There was no iLife `11 as rumored, among the other bits of mistaken reporting (and blogging).

By far, Ping is the biggest single announcement. “Ping is for social music discovery,” Jobs said during today’s Apple event. People can “sign up for Ping immediately.” That “immediately” depends on when you can get iTunes 10, into which Ping is built. As I write, Apple has placed notice “iTunes 10. Coming Soon.” on the download page. Based on Twitter chatter, some people have the software. But not me. So my first-take Ping analysis is based on the strategy and not actual usage.

Apple is a surprising latecomer to the social sharing/networking circus. Ping is but the first of the day’s two entrants. The other is the new FaceTime-supporting iPod touch, which I predict will be a big seller this holiday. I tweeted during the event: “OK teens, will your new ‘face’ be FaceTime instead of Facebook?” I’ll circle back to the “Why?” in a few paragraphs.

In watching Jobs’ announce Ping, I suddenly time traveled, first to January 2001 and then to October of the same year. In January, Apple announced iTunes 1.0. In October, the first iPod shipped. Both product launches marked Apple’s late entry into music products and services. The media software wasn’t just about managing music but being able to rip from CDs and later sync to iPod. I time traveled because of what made the iTunes/iPod combo eventually successful: People already owned content. There was no need to buy more to fill iPod. Users could just rip from CDs they already owned.

PIng is somewhat similar. People already have the content around which they will interact with others. Similarly, Ping users (hereafter referred to as Pingers) can discover new music through social interaction with people who own music of potential interest. “Facebook and Twitter meet iTunes,” Jobs said of Ping. That’s an apt description.

Ping really is two services with intertwined objectives. The first is social interaction around artists, whose activities Pingers can follow. Artists post updates, photos, videos, playlists and concert information to their fan subscribers. I’m somewhat surprised that Fox is one of Apple’s TV-rental partners, because Ping is quite likely a MySpace Music killer. Ping offers many of the same benefits, and music buying is just a click or two from discovery. If Apple and the artists are really smart, they’ll use “Facebook and Twitter meet iTunes” feeds for making exclusive offers.

The second objective is around non-artists — as in friends. Around them are three main points of discovery: following, and seeing what they’re listening to; seeing what friends of friends are listening to; and who is attending local concerts. Additionally, the discovery feature produces music charts for people Pingers follow.

I see lots of potential in Ping, which integration into iTunes for Macs/Windows PCs, iPhone and iPod touch, make it a better fit than Microsoft’s socially-oriented Zune. I’m a big fan of Zune, but too much of the experience is on the Web — outside the core device/software/service. Apple has done what Microsoft should have: Created a more enclosed and sticky service. Pingers won’t easily switch to something else, because of the iTunes enclosure.

Forrester Research analyst Mark Mulligan isn’t as enamored with Ping as I am. He blogs:

This social functionality (which looks like the best of MySpace, Last.FM, Twitter and Facebook) will be a valuable way of driving music discovery. But it needs more. My guess is that within 12 months we’ll see this upgraded with the resultant social data combined with Genius data to create a robust crowd sourced discovery tool.

Maybe, but there is something even more potentially powerful here: iOS devices and FaceTime. Artists can upload photos and videos to their Ping pages. Can regular Pingers do likewise? Since I still can’t download iTunes 10, I don’t have an answer. But what if they could use iPhone or iPod touch to shoot concert photos or video clips (short enough to avoid copyright problems) and post to their Ping feed? The tools are there. Only the connections are necessary.

FaceTime is potentially huge, separately and as part of the social iTunes interaction someone is sure to call Pinging. FaceTime and Ping are both social services, even if Apple fails to initially treat the video chat service that way. There’s a synergy FaceTime and Ping share that Apple should exploit, and it’s something competitors should copy — even if badly.

Given just how much social sharing takes place around music and music events or those where music is a part (think any party), Apple could and should assemble together the hardware, services and software pieces placed before existing and new customers today. It’s 2001 again and Apple is moving into territory occupied by others with something game changing. Apple came late to CD-burning, music software and MP3 players in 2001, just like it’s following behind Facebook, Last.FM, MySpace Music, Twitter and many other social-oriented services today.

There was an earthquake in San Francisco today. The shockwaves will reverberate from iTunes 10, Ping, iPod touch and iOS 4.1. Apple is finally getting into social media. Perhaps it’s fitting then that Chris Martin fumbled as a solo act. His strength comes from the group.

Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010

Apple – Steve Jobs – Facebook – iPhone – Microsoft

Microsoft announced that the highly anticipated Windows Phone 7 mobile operating system has been released to manufacturing on Wednesday, a major milestone for the project.

Following the release of its developer toolkit, Microsoft released Windows Phone 7 technical preview to its developer, carrier and manufacturing partners in July. Since that time, the mobile OS has been updated in a number of ways, such as including intelligent Facebook contact filtering (only real friends show up,) and the ability to “like” Facebook posts from within the People Hub.

“Windows Phone 7 is the most thoroughly tested mobile platform Microsoft has ever released. We had nearly ten thousand devices running automated tests daily, over a half million hours of active self-hosting use, over three and a half million hours of stress test passes, and eight and a half million hours of fully automated test passes,” said Terry Myerson, corporate vice president of Windows Phone Engineering on Wednesday. “We’ve had thousands of independent software vendors and early adopters testing our software and giving us great feedback. We are ready.”

Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010

Microsoft – Facebook – Windows Phone 7 – Software release life cycle – Betanews

Contrary to popular opinion, the competition between e-reader hardware manufacturers is nothing compared to the competition between e-book retailers. Tuesday, second place book retailer Borders revised its aggressive strategy for e-reader sales, slashing the price of its two e-ink readers before the arrival of its Android-based tablet readers from Velocity Micro.

In June, Borders unveiled its 9.99 Kobo e-reader, which was met with considerable consumer interest due in large part to its low retail price. After Kobo’s launch, both Barnes and Noble and Amazon reduced the prices of their respective e-readers from 9.00 down to 9.99.

Amazon then launched of a newer, more feature-rich Kindle 3 with models costing 9 and 5, which began shipping not even three days ago.

Borders has again pulled the trigger on a price reduction.

Now, the Kobo is 9.99 and the Aluratek Libre eBook Pro is only .99, and they’re both available immediately. Furthermore, Borders will soon be launching two full-color, Android-based devices from Velocity Micro. The Cruz Reader R101 and Cruz Tablet T103 are both available for Pre-order on Borders’ website, but won’t ship until late September/early October.

In July, Borders said it expected its branded e-bookstore to grab 17% of the e-book market by 2011. Like its competitor Barnes and Noble, which has placed immense Nook displays right in front of the entrance to a number of stores, Borders expects to have its e-reader section in a majority of its stores by next month.

Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010

Barnes Noble – E-book – Borders – Velocity Micro – nook

Google continued its reinvention of the Gmail inbox Tuesday with the introduction of Priority Inbox Beta, a new mail filtering system that prioritizes emails based upon the user’s viewing and responding habits.

The feature will be rolled out incrementally to Gmail users over the next week, and will break up inboxes into three categories: Important and Unread emails, Starred conversations, and “everything else.” Incoming messages will automatically be routed into one of these three categories, which Gmail determines by user trends. For example, if a particular contact is someone frequently exchanging emails with the user, their incoming messages will be ranked as more important than someone else’s. Similarly, messages that users actually opened instead of skipped, deleted or “marked as read” from certain senders will be considered higher priority.

Like song suggestions from music service Pandora, an email’s priority can be upranked or downranked with the click of a button; and users can set up filters to always mark certain messages as important, even if they have never received a message from them before. This means users who receive tons of email can be sure that a new important message will rise to the top, especially handy for new contacts, job interviews, or support tickets.

“We’ve evolved Gmail’s filter to address this problem and extended it to not only classify outright spam, but also to help users separate this ‘bologna’ from the important stuff,” Google software engineer Doug Aberdeen said on Tuesday. “In a way, Priority Inbox is like your personal assistant, helping you focus on the messages that matter without requiring you to set up complex rules.”

Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010

Google – Gmail – Mail – Personal assistant – E-mail spam

Early Tuesday morning, a new version of Mac OS X-based media center software Plex was released, called Plex/Nine, and with it came a new app for iOS.

Plex is a fork of open source media center software XBMC, which has recently risen to prominence for being the software that powers Boxee and the forthcoming D-Link Boxee Box. It organizes multimedia content on a local media server, adds online content from more than 150 video and entertainment sites, and makes it available on client devices in the home network.

One of the most appealing aspects of Plex is its attractive user interface, which displays artwork and relevant information about your content without having to add it yourself.

With the new iOS app, users with the Plex Media Server installed on their OS X machine can then watch videos, access their music library, and control their Plex media manager with their iPod Touch, iPhone or iPad.

Elan Feingold, lead developer and creator of Plex said, “Is it perfect? No. Is it bug free? Absolutely not. But it’s a giant step in the right direction, and it makes us very happy to be able to share it with you. We’re over the snowy pass, and heading down into a lush valley, where great things await.”

Plex/Nine (0.9.0.21) for OS X is available for free on the Plex website, and the mobile app is available today in the iTunes app store for .99.

Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010

Mac OS X – iPod Touch – Mac OS – Plex – Open source

As school districts across the country open their doors for the 2010-2011 school year, a remarkable shift in thought is taking place: cell phones, once regarded as distractions or liabilities are coming to be viewed as viable learning tools.

This fall, Wisconsin’s Milwaukee Public School district will let students use their mobile phones in classrooms as long as it’s for an approved educational purpose. 

Contrast this new rule change with the newly-revised policy in Lynchburg, Virginia, which now lets students keep their mobile phones on them at all times, but only if they are not used during instructional time.

Prince Georges County, Maryland is taking a similar approach for the 2010-2011 school year. The county’s policy says “students are permitted to use cell phones and PEDs only during certain times. The use…should not interfere with teaching and learning during the school day.”

While school districts throughout the U.S. are tinkering with their policies to figure out how to best include cell phones, few are as forward-thinking as Milwaukee.

“When students are at home, they’re using social networking tools like Facebook and sharing services like YouTube..but they step into a classroom, and they’re stepping back into 1950,” said Vikram Savkar, Senior Vice President and Publishing Director at Nature Publishing. “That will change over time, it’s inevitable. I think the question is how to work mobile devices into teaching and then jump on the opportunity [to use them].”

Savkar and Nature Publishing are pushing a new model for learning and collaboration with Scitable, a free Web-learning portal that publishes peer-reviewed journals and scientific research for free, and lets students communicate with educators and researchers in “Web 2.0″ fashion.

This week, Scitable launched a mobile version of its service, which is truly jumping on the opportunity Savkar mentioned.

“M-learning is not a replacement for e-learning,” Savkar told Betanews. “It supplements it. Behavior on mobile devices won’t be a 1:1 match with our behavior on the Web; our engagement with our tasks and workflow in the future –whether that’s in education or any field, really– will be split across many devices. I don’t think that in the future a student will learn on just a PC or just a smartphone, the combined behavior will add up to the total experience.”

The problem up to now has been that smartphones are a double-edged sword. Students can use them as scientific calculators, dictionaries, research tools, and even word processors or devices to assemble and conduct presentations. But on the downside, they can be a tool to cheat on tests, an expensive liability if stolen or broken, and generally, a tool to distract students from the learning they should be doing.

“I think that we’ll come to accept that there are existential problems with mobile devices,” Sakvar said. “Any college professor knows that they will have students falling asleep in their classes. Maybe today, instead of students sleeping in class, they’re texting. But in the end, the same percent of students will be engaged, and the same will be goofing off. I don’t think phones will change the proportion. The split will stay the same. The engaged students will use their phones properly. Keeping phones out of your class because 20% may use them to goof off is a serious error.”

When mobile phones are regarded as learning devices on campus, their purpose subtly changes when students go off campus. Education becomes available 24 hours a day.
Though this sounds blissfully ideal, the teacher responsible for a large class full of students ceases to have time away from his pedagogical dais.

“Professors say they get hundreds and hundreds of emails from students every day, and at some point it becomes unmanageable. Faculty are looking for a way to streamline their communications with students so they can approach it in a more methodical way,” Sakvar said. “But when students turn to the Web for answers, I don’t think they’ll necessarily turn to their own instructor first.”

This is one of the main benefits to a socially-enhanced learning site like Scitable. Rather than bog down their instructor with questions that may have already been answered in class, students can query other teachers who can answer it at any time.

“I think students are less afraid to pose ‘dumb questions’ to strangers,” Sakvar posited. “And less hesitant to post time-consuming questions to the masses. Teaching is irreplacable in creating the personalized learning experience; but questions are just widgets to the community. It’s a new kind of questioning that isn’t possible. You see a lot of Q&A sites out there…they’re skimming at one level, but we’re trying to bring researchers and scientists into the fold…the people you really have to ask for certain information.”

As more school districts do as Milwaukee has done, and regard mobile phones as learning tools, it is critical to have high-quality material for those devices to access.

Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010

Education – Scitable – Mobile phone – Wisconsin – Vikram Savkar

Two weeks ago, Dell announced it would be acquiring virtualized storage company 3PAR for .5 billion. Dell’s announcement, however, represented only a preliminary agreement between the companies, and HP wanted to acquire 3PAR as well.

Friday morning, just a matter of hours after 3PAR announced it had signed the second amendment to its merger agreement with Dell, competitor HP made its third bid for 3PAR, which upped the total value of the company to billion.

In the late night hours Friday, 3PAR announced that its board of directors determined that offer to be superior, and that it would terminate the merger agreement it had with Dell as soon as it can.

3PAR says it has alerted Dell’s board of directors of its intent to terminate the agreement in three business days “contemplated by, and the satisfaction of the other conditions set forth in, the merger agreement with Dell in order to enter into the merger agreement with HP on the terms set forth in HP’s acquisition proposal.”

However, 3PAR’s board of directors must continue to recommend that its stockholders accept Dell’s cash tender offer, and tender their 3PAR shares pursuant to Dell’s tender offer, so long as the merger agreement with Dell remains in effect.

Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010

Dell – Hewlett-Packard – Business – Company – Tender offer

Microsoft co-founder and former executive Paul Allen filed a suit against 11 tech companies on Friday, accusing them of infringement over patents he acquired from the now defunct Internal Research. While Allen had invested in the company, he never participated in the development of the patented technologies.

When Internal Research closed its doors in 2000, the rights to the patents were transferred to Interval Licensing, a company Allen owns. The technologies cover four patents — the most notable being the 6,263,507 and 6,757,682 patents — relating to various web technologies. The companies named in the lawsuit are AOL, Apple, eBay, Facebook, Google, Netflix, Office Depot, OfficeMax, Staples, Yahoo and Google’s YouTube.

Allen founded Microsoft with Bill Gates in 1975, and left the company in 1983 after being diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Disease. He helped found Internal Research in 1992, and ended up investing about 0 million of his own personal fortune in the firm’s work.

The ’507 patent is titled “Browser for use in navigating a body of information, with particular application to browsing information represented by audiovisual data,” and appears to cover visual methods for accessing news content. All defendants save for Facebook are accused of violating this patent.

The ’682 patent — which all defendants are accused of infringing — is titled “Alerting users to items of current interest.” This patent describes a method for alerting users in real time of items that they may be interested in.

Two other patents named in the complaint cover “attention managers” which serve to get the attention of the user on a display device.

A spokesperson for Mr. Allen, David Postman, told PC Magazine Friday that “the technologies in the patents are fundamental to the ways that leading e-commerce and search companies operate today.” The suit asks for an unspecified amount in compensatory damages.

AOL, Apple, Google and Yahoo are charged with four counts of patent infringement, and all other companies save Facebook accused of two counts. Allen’s company has charged Facebook with a single count of patent infringement.

Both Google and Facebook have said Allen’s suit is without merit. The remaining nine companies have so far not publicly commented on the suit. Several have policies of not commenting on current litigation, such as Apple.

In filing the suit, Allen’s Interval Licensing becomes the latest patent-holding company to create problems for the technology sector. The most notable example of this was NTP in 2006, who successfully settled with BlackBerry maker RIM for 2.5 million.

Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010

Facebook – Apple – Microsoft – YouTube – Google

According to a survey given to Hulu Plus testers, the streaming web TV service might consider offering ad-free content packages on top of the existing Hulu Plus subscription.

The options Hulu is considering include: movie packages that feature classic movies, indie and foreign fims, documentaries or “back catalog” studio films; Premium Channel add-ons like HBO or Showtime; or On-demand premium TV with the option to rent or buy like Amazon On Demand.

While these types of satisfaction surveys frequently amount to nothing, similar surveys were released by Netflix before its streaming on demand service came to different platforms, and the Playstation Network Plus service was foretold in a 2009 survey long before it was officially launched in June 2010.

Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010

Netflix – Hulu – Television – Huluplus – Amazon.com