Yesterday, Microsoft unveiled its much rumored “Mesh” platform, a service designed to be the hub of our digital lifestyles: “Imagine all your devices—PCs, and soon Macs and mobile phones—working together to give you anywhere access to the information you care about”.

Mesh - currently in limited Beta - “synchronizes data across multiple devices (currently just Windows computers, but theoretically it will extend to mobile and other devices in the future) as well as to a web desktop that exists in the cloud”, writes Josh Catone over at our sister blog ReadWriteWeb. The service also has a social aspect too, enabling collaboration and sharing. “It can sync data across devices used by a single user, as well as create shared spaces for multiple users”.

Continue reading “Microsoft’s “Mesh” wants to be your digital hub” »

Last100 editor Steve O’Hear asked me today why, in a post about Sony’s movie/TV download service for the PlayStation yesterday, did I use the phrase “may launch” in the headline.

I thought about it, and I guess it was an oversight. I should have been more concrete: Sony is launching a movie/TV download service for the PlayStation.

But I explained that there is something deeper in my psyche that probably chose “may launch”: I don’t trust Sony these days. This movie/TV download service isn’t the first one the company has tried, and it’s not the only one that’s been on the drawing board.

Today comes along the news that Sony is delaying the debut of Home, its Second Life-like 3D virtual online community service for the PlayStation 3. See what I mean? Home has now been delayed twice and is now at least a year behind schedule.

Sony now expects a test version of Home to be available this summer for a limited number of users in Japan, the U.S., and Europe. After getting user feedback and making tweaks, Sony will release a beta of Home for all PS3 owner to try this fall.

Continue reading “Sony delays Home a second time; it’s now a year behind schedule” »

From Day 1 of the iPhone’s existence, users have clamored for a real-time instant message client like iChat. Instead, they’ve been given a sub-par intermediate solution — SMS through the exclusive iPhone carrier network, AT&T.

When Apple announced its software developers kit (SDK) will be available for third-party application development in June, those who covet an iPhone IM client rejoiced, crossing and recrossing their fingers in hope.

On Tuesday, AppleInsider noted that Apple applied for a patent last August on a universal interface for a real-time chat service on the iPhone. The patent was recently published in March.

The patent details what the IM client would look like and how it would behave on the iPhone. Judging by images that accompany the patent, IM will look like the current SMS program and also be a bit iChat-esque.

When I heard of the patent, I wondered why Apple just didn’t wait for others to develop their own third-party IM clients — AOL for AIM, Google for Gtalk, Yahoo! for Messenger, and others. The answers I came up with were:

Continue reading “Apple patent for real-time IM on iPhone hints at what’s really to come” »

Two down, two to go

Sony BMG today became the second major label to sign up to Nokia’s ‘Comes With Music’ service, whereby customers who buy a supported handset will get a year of unlimited access to “millions of tracks”. When Nokia first unveiled its all-you-can-eat music offering last December, Universal Music was the sole partner, a natural fit considering that the label has been busy touting its own flat-rate plan known as Total Music. However, the two remaining majors, EMI and Times Warner, have yet to commit to Nokia’s scheme.

The way ‘Comes With Music’ will work is as follows: Consumers who buy a supported Nokia device will have a year of access to Universal Music and Sony BMG’s music catalog, whereby they’ll be able to download tracks to both their mobile handset and Windows PC through the Nokia Music Store. After the year is up, they get to keep any downloaded tracks. To continue accessing new music, however, users are given “a number of attractive options” — aside from purchasing a new ‘Comes With Music’ device and starting another 12 month cycle, they can purchase tracks (download to-own) from the Nokia Music Store, or move on to a Nokia “unlimited access” subscription plan a la Rhapsody.

Continue reading “Sony BMG joins Nokia’s all-you-can-eat music service” »

Netflix’s ambitious Internet TV plans are forging ahead, with three new set-top box partners to integrate the company’s ‘Watch Now’ video streaming service into their products by the end of year. The company has previously announced a partnership with Korean manufacturer LG Electronics to stream movies, TV shows, and other content to LG high-definition televisions or set-top boxes by the second half of 2008.

During the company’s Q1 earnings conference call, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings told analysts:

“We have LG plus three additional partners actively working on integrating our technology into their products… Three of the four partners are major companies, which each sell millions of devices per year and will enable the Netflix functionality in some of those devices likely in the fourth quarter of this year. The fourth partner is a small company, which will likely launch sooner than Q4.”

So who might these three additional hardware partners be?

Continue reading “Netflix: three more set-top box partners by end of year” »

Word that Sony may be again launching a movie and TV download service was met today with interest and a bit of much-deserved scoffing.

It’s not like Sony hasn’t tried this before. Remember Movielink? Thought so. (It was sold to Blockbuster, by the way.) Remember Sony Connect? It shut down in March.

Heck, since the monumental success of the Walkman ages ago — in an analog world far, far away — Sony has pretty much failed at every digital offering, minus the early PlayStations and some home theater equipment. The whole digital music thing passed Sony by as Apple took over the Walkman mantle with the iPod, iTunes, and the rest of its digital lifestyle ecosystem.

The Los Angeles Times today reported that Sony is again in talks with Hollywood muckety-mucks regarding a download service that would beam movies and television shows from the Internet to the PlayStation 3.

But because said muckety-mucks are hush-hush over the negotiations, not much else is known — no pricing or if the movies and TV shows are for rent or purchase. One tantalizing tidbit, however, is being floated about.

Continue reading “Let’s hope Sony gets it right this time: may launch movie/TV download service for PlayStation” »

We7, the UK-based free, advertising-supported online music service backed by Peter Gabriel, has announced new licensing deals with three leading independent labels and distributors: IRIS, InGrooves and BFM Digital. The move adds a further 200,000 tracks to We7’s catalog (now totaling 750,000+), which offers free ad-supported downloads from other independent labels including Sanctuary Records, V2 and Nettwerk.

In early March, the company also unveiled its first major label partner, Sony BMG, who by the end of this month will begin offering free streaming of its music catalog to We7 users in the UK. Sony BMG’s roster includes international artists Bruce Springsteen, Westlife and Foo Fighters, along with British talent such as Mark Ronson, Kasabian and Leona Lewis. In additional to ad-supported streaming, users will be given the option to purchase and download tracks outright, either through We7 or on iTunes.

The partnership with IRIS gives We7 access to music from independent labels such as Scion, Chemikal Underground, Subliminal and Big Dada, while the deal with InGrooves secures tracks from ESL Music, VP Records, Chocolate Industries and A2M Distribution, and BFM Digital distributes labels such as Cristal Records, Disk Eyes and Ana Records.

Disclaimer: We7 is currently a last100 sponsor.

Also see: Q&A: We7 CEO Steve Purdham and Is free legal music service Qtrax too good to be true?

If you were going to announce a new ‘game changing’ joint venture involving four leading Hollywood studios, you wouldn’t choose to do it on a Sunday, right? Because that’s precisely what Viacom, Paramount, MGM and Lionsgate have done, with their newly formed premium TV channel and VOD service, which will be rolled out in the fall of 2009.

While details given in the press release are thin on the ground, plastered over by a very generous helping of hyperbole, the yet-to-be named “Innovative Premium Entertainment Service” will offer new and classic feature films and original TV programing from each of the studios involved, and in what looks like a major shake up of the traditional U.S. pay TV market (lookout HBO, Showtime and Starz), the joint venture will have first access to upcoming films such as “Iron Man,” “Star Trek,” “The Pink Panther 2,” “Cloverfield” and “Robocop.” The combined back catalog will also cover classic hits such as “Dirty Dancing,” “Reservoir Dogs,” “Crash,” “Braveheart,” “Forrest Gump,” the “Godfather” series and the Rocky and James Bond franchises, notes Hollywood Reporter.

However, of more significance to last100, the new joint venture will have a strong online component, according to an interview given to paidContent by Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman: “As we go forward and make further announcements, you will see that this will be oriented toward the consumer. It will also meet the needs of varying distributors and take advantage of online distribution…innovative both in presenting the content and in distributing it.” Dauman says that the joint venture will enable the studios involved to have greater control over their own destiny compared to traditional distribution deals, in terms of what they can and can’t offer online during competing release windows. This suggests to me that we may see paid-for downloads of premium content offered at the same time as pay TV.

It’s great that developers for Google’s mobile operating system Android have “risen to the challenge,” as a Google-ite said on the Android Developers Blog late Thursday. Google has received nearly 1,800 submissions from 70 countries for its Android Developer Challenge.

But at least one developer we know has ditched Android for the time being because his investors are demanding results, and so far he cannot deliver an Android solution in tandem with actual working hardware.

Peter Wojtowicz, the mastermind behind the Wi-Fi Army mobile game, announced early this year that his team would be developing the revolutionary game in Android, which generated a lot of interest from gaming, mobile, and Android blogs around the world.

Because Wi-Fi Army is cutting edge, combining a cell phone’s camera with Wi-Fi, bluetooth, location-based service, a back-end server architecture, and a slew of other complexities, investors interested in supporting his team have demanded proof-of-concept results that Wojtowicz cannot deliver with actual working Gphones. Adding to the frustration, Wojtowicz is often delayed when one Android SDK release isn’t compatible with an older one, forcing the team to lose time backtracking.

Time is something Wojtowicz doesn’t have as he — and others — are racing to get their next-generation games to market as quickly as possible. For the time being, Wojtowicz’s team is developing Wi-Fi Army simultaneously in Microsoft’s Windows Mobile and Symbian; he expects to start work on the iPhone when Apple releases the SDK in June.

“It would be a lot easier with the (Google-powered) phone in hand,” Wojtowicz said.

Continue reading “Google says it has received 1,788 entries for Android challenge; not everybody is happy” »

The Internet is really feeling like the fifth TV network these days, with the line blurring between producing content for television and the Web. For a while now, the Internet has had its own production companies like NextNew Networks and 60Frames to develop unique online “shows.”

On Thursday Net TV got another online production company, one with pedigree. Miles Beckett and Greg Goodfried, the ones behind Web hits Lonelygirl 15 and spin-off KateModern, secured $5 million in Series A venture funding to launch Eqal, their new “social entertainment” production company, which supplants an earlier effort known as LG15 Studios/Telegraph Ave. Productions.

Eqal — pronounced “Equal” — join the likes of Joss Whedon’s Mutant Enemy and Bryan Singer’s Bad Hat Harry Productions as independent production houses, only Eqal produces for the Web, not for television or film.

“It’s an exciting time for online entertainment,” Beckett and Goodfried wrote on the company blog. “There are a slew of independent producers, digital studios, and social media companies sprouting up, not to mention the fact that traditional media isn’t exactly ignoring this whole ‘internets’ thing. . . .

Continue reading “Let’s hope Lonelygirl 15 and KateModern creators put their $5 million to good use” »

Catching up on iTunes with NBC Universal, Fox and Paramount, Amazon MP3, and Starbucks.

NBC wants back on iTunes, but with conditions

George Kliavkoff, NBC Universal’s chief digital officer, indicated indirectly and directly at the Ad: Tech conference that NBC would like to be back on iTunes, which the network dumped in late 2007 over a nasty public spat about pricing.

Indirectly, Kliavkoff said during an on-stage interview at the conference, “If you look at studies about MP3 players, especially leading MP3 players and what portion of that content is pirated, and think about how that content gets onto that device, it has to go through a gate-keeping piece of software, which would be a convenient place to put some anti-piracy measures.”

Directly, Kliavkoff said, “We’d love to be on iTunes”, but only if Apple institutes more anti-piracy measures. “It has a great customer experience,” he said. “We’ve love to figure out a way to distribute our content on iTunes.”

The timing is interesting. iTunes is now the largest music retailer, and while the video side of the store (TV shows and movies) has not reached the same level, it still benefits from the overall iTunes brand and music traffic. Since NBC bolted, no other major network or studio has followed, leaving NBC standing alone.

Think NBC regrets its decision?

If it does, NBC doesn’t appear to be budging. In addition to the extra anti-piracy protection, the network would also like to see flexible pricing on iTunes, which doesn’t seem to be likely anytime soon.

(via News.com and NewTeeVee)

Photo credit of Kliavkoff: News.com at Ad:Tech

Continue reading “Catching up on iTunes news: NBC wants back on iTunes, but with conditions” »

It’s hard to fault Peter Gabriel’s logic: We are overwhelmed by the amount of information and choice we have on the Web. But is his solution — a recommendation engine called The Filter — really the answer?

Of course Gabriel, the genius behind the British rock band Genesis and the solo artist who gave us such tunes as “Solsbury Hill,” “Exposure,” and “Games Without Frontiers,” thinks so as he and England’s Eden Ventures have invested $8 million in The Filter. They believe people are overwhelmed by the Web and can’t find good content because it’s buried out of sight.

“When you drown people in an ocean of information, you’ve got to give them navigation tools,” Gabriel told News.com. “I know that there is better stuff out there than what I generally am exposed to . . . So if I have a sort of intelligent ally working with me 24 hours a day, I think I have a much better chance of getting stuff that will entertain, excite, and inspire me.”

The Filter, originally launched as a music recommendation service about a year ago in Europe, re-launched today in private beta as a more complete solution. It will be available to the public sometime in May.

But there’s something about The Filter that bugs me. What separates The Filter from any of the other algorithm-based recommendation engines out there, whether a human is a part of the process or not — Amazon, iTunes, lastFM, Netflix, Imeem, Digg, Pandora, and many more?

Continue reading “Where do you get your recommendations on the Web? From a service like The Filter? Or from friends?” »