VUDU on Thursday announced that it has brought brought three key Internet apps to VUDU-enabled TVs. These are the same apps that were already available on the VUDU box and include Picasa, Flickr, Pandora, a free TV on-demand service and a few simple games. VUDU says it brought these apps to the TVs from its partners due to popular demand.
After making its appearance at Verizon earlier today, Sprint also announced that the BlackBerry Curve 8530 smartphone is coming soon to its lineup as well. Potential customers can register now to receive updates on the handset. Preloaded apps are the primary difference for Sprint's Curve 8530 and include the Sprint Music Store, Sprint TV and Pandora radio.
Litl has quickly acted on rumors by launching its first computer, the Webbook. The PC breaks away from the usual netbook market through a unique 12-inch LCD that bends almost completely backwards and turns the system into an easel-like display; the mode is considered ideal for video watching or for sharing content with someone else. To match, the screen uses a high-quality LCD with a 178-degree viewing angle and better colors, and unlike most netbooks carries a dedicated (but unnamed) GPU that can decode H.264 video at up to 720p.
In brief: An issue with the integration of the iPhoto and Flickr libraries has developed, which can result in users being able to accidentally wipe out entire sets of photos on Flickr. comiXology has meanwhile announced a change in the price of its Comics by comiXology iPhone app, a consequence of Apple now allowing in-app purchases for free iPhone apps.
Acer on Wednesday made a new claim to the fastest smartphone available with the Liquid. The company's first Android phone, it's one of the first to ship with Android 1.6 but is also the first Android phone to ship with a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor. Using the 1GHz chip makes it faster than the 800MHz Samsung Moment and helps drive the 800x480 touchscreen as well as speed up 3D and Android's already accurate web browser.
Better known for its network storage, QNAP today rolled out the NMP-1000, its first attempt at a networked TV media player. The device on its basic level acts as a conduit for Internet and locally shared network content with the ability to access Flickr and YouTube from a TV as well as see iTunes shares and DLNA-aware devices on the local network. A 3.5-inch SATA bay lets it share its own media and play 1080p movies in most common formats, including popular ones like DivX, H.264 and XviD.
Fon today formally rolled out its once-teased Fonera 2.0n router. The new update adds 802.11n Wi-Fi speeds but is better known for adding built-in clients for several services independently of computers. Owners can upload content to Facebook, Flickr, Megaupload, Picasa, RapidShare and YouTube when the relevant computer is turned off; it can also download BitTorrents and send Twitter updates to signal when a transfer has been completed or a guest connects to the public hotspot.
Belkin has introduced its Home Base networking hub on Tuesday, which allows users to share peripherals using their existing wireless networks, including printers, external hard drives or other USB devices. The Home Base is compatible with other Wi-Fi b/g/n devices and will also allow users to automatically back up a connected computer's files onto a designated and connected USB hard drive.
Samsung today held a rare single-model introduction and added a new model to its 650 series TVs at the CEDIA expo. At 65 inches across, the LN65B650 is one of the largest ever conventionally-lit LCDs from the company and sits in the middle of the lineup in features, with Internet support for Flickr, Yahoo and YouTube as well as a 120Hz panel, a 4ms pixel response time and a 100,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio.
Yahoo has introduced a dedicated Flickr application for the iPhone, which attempts to promote the media-sharing service and simplify its use. The app can upload both photos and videos from an Apple handheld, with the option of geotagging the former. As on the Flickr website, photos can be organized according to sets and tags.
Toshiba produced a surprise at IFA today with word of a touchscreen media tablet of its own. The Journe Touch is treated as a high-end mobile Internet device (MID) with an emphasis on video playback: the device can play HD video either at a reduced resolution on its 800x480 display or at full resolution through an HDMI output. Its Wi-Fi is used that way as well, as web browsing is considered secondary to streaming Internet video from YouTube or the movie service Acetrax.
Mitsubishi announced on Thursday that it has integrated VUDU support for the flagship Diamond models in its Unisen Immersive Sound range of LCD HDTVs. This will give users access to VUDU's extensive library that include thousands of HD movies and TV shows. The two Diamond Unisen models, the 46-inch LT-46249 and 52-inch LT-52249, have an Ethernet port that allows them to connect to the web. Otherwise, there is an optional VUDU wireless accessory bridge for hooking up to existing home networks.
Cerevo on Saturday unveiled its first product, a camera designed explicitly for Internet uploads. The CerevoCam is simple, with just a 9-megapixel (but CMOS) sensor and basic controls, but includes 802.11n Wi-Fi for an automatic photo upload feature. It can send photos either to the company's own CerevoLife site, which hosts 5GB of free storage, or else put the content on established sites like Flickr, Picasa, or Twitter-oriented photo hosts.
Eternal Storms has released flickery 1.5, its desktop flickr client for Mac OS X, featuring new video upload, download and playback. The software allows users to upload photos, and now video, to flickr from iPhoto or Aperture and organize the pictures into photosets or groups. flickery can also resize, crop, rotate and filter photos and it can view and search photos and videos from the flickr database.
Executives at Chumby have said on Thursday that they plan on bringing the gadget's software to other consumer electronics via a series of partnerships. The Chumby can so far bring weather, music, news, photos and trivia to living rooms from the Internet. According to a Thursday Forbes report, the company's chief executive, Steve Tomlin, has established partnerships with Sony, Samsung, Broadcom and Marvell to bring the open-source operating system into TVs, Blu-ray players, clock and tabletop radios and other consumer electronics, with some expected for a release before the end of 2009.
In a rare mid-year update, Samsung this morning added a new, high-end lineup to its 8 series HDTVs. The 8500 series uses newer, pure white LED backlights with local dimming to boost the dynamic contrast ratio up to a very high 7,000,000:1, topping even the 5 million of the 8000 it replaces. A newer LCD panel improves brightness and visibility in ambient light, and a Natural mode tries to replicate the color behavior of normally more vibrant plasma displays without giving up brightness.
GPS maker Mio has announced it will soon offer two new portable navigation devices, the Moov M300 and M400. The identical devices are called Navman M300 and Navman M400 over on Mio's English website, with the former offering a 3.5-inch screen that has a 320x240 resolution, and the latter sporting a 4.3-inch LCD with 480x272 resolution. The Moov M300 will come with a map of France pre-loaded, while the Navman M300 will have a map of the UK and Ireland loaded onto its storage space. The M400s get mapping data for 23 European countries. Either way, users get speed radar locations, and free updates for one year.
Toshiba on Monday announced it has partnered up with FrameChannel, a web-based digital photo frame integration service, to bring weather, news and sports info, as well as uploaded photos to its new line of Digital Media Frames. There is an 8-inch frame and 10-inch frame offered. Videos and music uploaded to the FrameChannel servers will also get transferred to the frames.
FON today significantly improved its core wireless router by launching the Fonera 2.0n. The device appropriately has 802.11n Wi-Fi for faster speeds and longer ranges than the older 11g model. More importantly, though, it adds USB and dedicated clients for multiple services directly on the router. Owners can download from BitTorrent, Megaupload or Rapidshare to USB storage without turning on a computer; they can also upload photos or videos to Facebook, Flickr, Picasa or YouTube from an attached camera.
Apple has been ordering enough camera sensors that every iPod except for the shuffle could have a camera with its next update, Asian sources claim. The American company is believed to be ordering cellphone-quality units worth about $10 but in too large numbers to simply apply to iPhone orders. Which models would get the update aren't specified by TechCrunch, but it's speculated that more than one iPod model would have to be covered given the sheer numbers.
Dell on Tuesday announced it will add mapping features to its Inspiron Mini 10 netbooks starting next week. The Wireless 700 add-on combines both an internal GPS card from Broadcom and Wi-Fi triangulation technology from Skyhook Wireless to find its own location, which allows it to operate both indoors and outdoors. Indoors, Wi-Fi access points are used to determine the location via their respective and mapped hardware addresses. Outdoors, or when the line of sight to a satellite is available, it reverts to the assisted GPS chipset for a more accurate, network-independent view.
VIZIO on Tuesday announced its VIA-badged TVs with access to Internet Apps will now have access to Real's Rhapsody music service. With the user interface, users can browse the near 8-million song library using VIZIO's Bluetooth universal remote control, which has a built-in QWERTY keyboard, while watching TV. Songs can be searched by title, artist or album and on-demand access to new releases and top albums is available.
For the first time, Vudu will offer its library of more than 14,000 movies and 1,500 high-definition movies on hardware from a third-party, effectively becoming a service provider in addition to a hardware manufacturer in the process. Vudu chose Entone as its partner, which supplies set-top boxes and DVRs to small regional TV providers. Vudu will endow the Entone hardware with the same functionality as its Vudu Box offering, including on-demand access to HD and HDX movies, via a software update.
Eye-Fi on Tuesday announced users of its Eye-Fi Share Video and Eye-Fi Explore Video cards can now upload photos or videos to Picasa Web Albums, Photobucket and SmugMug in addition to the previously supported YouTube and Flickr. The addition lets any appropriately enabled still or video camera publish videos to the sites over a Wi-Fi connection created directly from the memory card itself, bypassing computers entirely as with the earlier version.
Eternal Storms has released an update to its desktop Flicker client, Flickery 1.1, which adds photo sharing through iChat Theater and Twitter, an enhanced interface and improved speed. Flickery allows users to upload photos to a Flickr photostream, organize photosets and track favorites. It also provides basic photo editing abilities such as cropping, rotation, resizing and applying filters.
FON on Thursday held a small, informal demonstration of its Fonera 2.0/La Fonera+ router in Paris, announcing in will be made available in Europe on April 21st, with other markets that include the USA, Japan, Hong Kong and Taiwan being added in May. Compared to the original La Fonera, the new Wi-Fi router adds an extra LAN port that allows users to connect a wired device. The new device also can share 3G data network access as a Wi-Fi connection and users can set how much of their own bandwidth they want to share with other FON members.
The United States Library of Congress has begun the process of uploading its audio collection to the iTunes Store, reports say. The content of the first upload is limited to 39 podcasts, but should expand in coming weeks as the Library adds content such as first-person slavery accounts, and interviews with a number of book writers. All of the current podcasts fall into the latter category.
Myka today said it would start shipping its self-titled media hubs shortly after their initial batch is finished production on April 6th. Originally unveiled last year, the set-top box is designed as an open-source alternative to devices like the Apple TV and the VUDU Box that uses BitTorrent as its underlying framework. The feature lets users download commercial and unofficial content without being dependent on any one connection or service. Myka doesn't immediatly have content deals but claims to be in negotiations with "major" providers.
Eternal Storms on Friday launched the full version of its Flickr image client for the Mac, Flickery. Originally released in May 2008 as a public beta, the finished product comes complete with several added features and bug fixes. New functions include the ability to browse and add to groups, to view contact’s favourites and photosets, and support for multiple photosets or groups at once. In addition, fixes have been made to performance and memory issues when adding photos for upload, and to a variety of bugs. Performance improvements have also been made that were mentioned by public beta testers.
Eye-Fi took advantage of PMA to launch the Eye-Fi Share Video and Eye-Fi Explore Video SD cards. The new models move to SDHC to get a total of 4GB in storage and now also support direct uploading of short-form videos over Wi-Fi to Flickr and YouTube in addition to still photos at Flickr and other sites. As before, the Explore adds geotagging to locate shots.
Green Volcano has released Flickit for the iPhone and iPod touch. The app is an uploading and organizational tool, which lets users send photos to Flickr and then add or edit text. All files stored on Flickr can be organized using either pre-made or custom tags, and allow for the customization of titles, descriptions and privacy settings.
T-Mobile today quickly silenced rumors by launching its version of the Samsung Memoir. The full touchscreen phone is one of the first 8-megapixel cameraphones with an official US carrier and aims to overcome most of the flaws of cellphone cameras, including the addition of a Xenon flash, autofocusing and five shooting modes. Its photo features also debunk late rumors and involve 3G data on T-Mobile's 1,700MHz band, giving it enough speed for out-of-the-box photo uploading to sites like Flickr and Photobucket.
Sony has based its BRAVIA introductions at CES around three core series that each promise a different focus. The company's attention centers on the VE5, a new line that pushes low power consumption above all. A new hot cathode fluorescent lamp, or HCFL, lets Sony illuminate the screen but consume 40 percent less power on average than a cold cathode lamp TV. The screen also has a true power-off switch to avoid draining energy on standby and has both motion and light sensors to automatically dim the screen when no one is watching or night allows a darker picture.
Sony on mid-Thursday crowned its Cyber-shot news at CES with the DSC-G3. The camera is both one of Sony's few Wi-Fi equipped cameras but is the only one to include its own web browser. The addition not only allows for basic web use on the 3.5-inch touchscreen but also streamlines photo and video uploading; users can post images to Flickr, movies to YouTube, and other similar actions without having to return home to a computer. A streamlined landing page improves the experience in particular for sites like Picasa.
Samsung on Wednesday overhauled its TV range with both altogether new models as well as updates to existing sets. At the top, the new 6000, 7000 and 8000 series LCD sets are all dependent on LED backlights and so have much higher contrast ratios than fluorescent-lit TVs; Samsung hasn't published numbers but in previous generations has managed 1,000,000:1. They all also have built-in Internet access and, on the 7000 and 8000 models, use the new Internet@TV service to access content news and media from Yahoo, including Flickr, as well as YouTube streaming videos. 6000 models get Samsung's InfoLink service that supplies news through RSS feeds.
LG today made its 2009 HDTV range known and is centering its advances both on sheer image quality and on turning its TVs into full-fledged media hubs. The 55LHX is LG's thinnest TV ever and uses a combination of a breakout box and LED backlighting to reduce the set to just one inch thick. The illumination on the set is also advanced even compared to other LED-lit sets and produces a 2,000,000:1 claimed contrast ratio. It equally delivers a fast 240Hz panel that should eliminate motion jitter and holds four HDMI ports with Deep Color as well as a USB port for viewing content from external storage.
Samsung announced on Monday that certain HDTVs in its 2009 line-up will feature the Internet@TV content service first introduced this past summer. The service will be made possible thanks to the Yahoo Widget Engine, an applications platform in its fifth-generation that will bring Internet connectivity to users' living rooms via a number of what the company calls "TV Widgets." Initially, users will be able to check their stocks and news headlines and also browse Internet-based videos and photos as well as interacting with friends.
VUDU today staked out a potential edge in networked media hubs on Tuesday by launching a new platform specifically tailored to normally web-oriented services. The RIA (Rich Internet Application) standard lets developers write and users download add-ons that convert web games, photo and video services into a native program for the VUDU Box rather than have to use a special web browser or make special arrangements for app development. The implementation will make it relatively straightforward to integrate web content while still having a "lean-back" interface with remote control, the company explains.
NETGEAR hopes to lead the increasingly crowded networked media hub field with a new flagship, the company tells Wired. The Digital Entertainer Elite or EVA9150 will focus on brute hardware superiority to compete against rivals such as the Apple TV and will be one of the few in the category to play 1080p video. Appropriately, it will also carry a 500GB hard drive in an accessible bay that lets owners upgrade themselves if the storage is lacking.
Flickr has overhauled its website for mobile devices, m.flickr.com. The updated version allows video playback, based on the Yahoo Video platform, and will eventually support a range of handsets, screen sizes and audio/video codecs. The interface has been enhanced, now focusing on the most recent activity of the user and any contacts. Favorite images, contacts and privacy settings can be changed through the mobile site. Access to the "interestingness" photos has also been added.
Boxee has released an updated alpha version of its media player software adding support for the Watch Instantly video streaming feature from Netflix as well as MTV music videos, the WB network and photos from the Boston Globe. The move comes two weeks after the startup secured its first round of venture capital funding, hoping to license the XBMC-based software for use in set-top boxes and other devices.
Aequitas Technologies is said to be shipping the iGala Wireless Digital Picture Frame, an eight-inch touchscreen viewer with built-in Wi-Fi. The Wi-Fi allows access to Microsoft's FrameIt service, which lets people browse news, traffic and weather information. Users can also browse photos on Flickr, but a focus of the device is on receiving Gmail, as the frame can be associated with an account and have photos e-mailed to it from any supporting Internet connection.
24x7digital has introduced PhotoCopy 1.0, its new iPhoto to Flickr mirroring utility. The user selects albums in iPhoto for sharing and PhotoCopy then uploads the photos to Flickr and organizes them in matching sets. It also copies metadata like tittles, date and time, ratings, keywords and descriptions. A primary feature of the new software is its ability to mirror the iPhoto folder on Flickr; when images are added to a PhotoCopied folder, the changes are updated automatically on the same folder on Flickr. It also works in reverse, adding images to iPhoto as the Flickr folder changes. It will mirror changes including adding, deleting reordering or editing photos.
The Apple iPhone is by a wide margin the phone most used by Flickr uploaders, updated charts from the site suggest. The charts track the number of people with a particular device "who have uploaded at least one photo or video with a particular camera on a given day over the last year," according to Flickr, and show the iPhone as nearing 100 percent of site cameraphone users. Nokia's N95 has an overlapping figure of about 70 percent, but the N73, N82 and Sony Ericsson K800i are the only other phones on the list, at just over 20 percent each. The N73 and K800i are in decline, while both the iPhone and N95 are increasing in popularity.
eMusic will try to improve its standing against iTunes and fellow web-based store Amazon MP3 soon by adding a social component to the music, the music service's chief David Pakman tells Fortune. Taking advantage of the need to buy music through the web portal, eMusic hopes to draw in buyers by providing deeper and constantly changing artist info through Web 2.0 sites. Musicians will frequently have Wikipedia pages for their biographies as well as relevant Flickr photo albums and YouTube videos.
Conflicting reports have surfaced today of Microsoft potentially renewing its interest in a Yahoo deal. Information sent from "multiple" sources to TechCrunch claim that the two firms have not only resumed talks after Yahoo's abrupt conclusion of negotiations but that Yahoo is willing to entertain a bid lower than the $33 Microsoft says it proposed immediately before talks first broke down in early May. The move is said to be triggered both by a steep drop in Yahoo's share price as well as pressure to secure an important agreement with Microsoft.
Eternal Storms Software on Monday unveiled a public beta for Flickery, a new Flickr image client for the Mac that allows Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard users to browse, view, upload, manage, and comment on photos. Flickery features a minimalist interface, which can show several photos, or just a one-up approach in either full-window or full-screen. Eternal Storms Software is running a public beta of the software from now until June 30th, and is currently free to try.
Adobe has updated the beta website for Photoshop Express, its online, lightweight version of its standard image editing software. New to Express is support for Flickr, the popular photo-sharing site; this complements earlier support for Facebook, Photobucket and Picasa, and lets users pull photos from Flickr accounts, edit them, and re-upload them. This can be done entirely without leaving the Express interface.
