As all tennis buffs know, Wimbledon 2008 started today. And as all tennis buffs know, finding matches to watch live that are not top seeds can be difficult. Tourament organizers know this, and that’s why they’ve introduced the Wimbledon Live service.
For a flat fee of $24.99 (approx. £12.65) tennis fans can stream live matches to their PCs (Mac and Linux are not supported) or download up to 250 matches in the .wmv format after the match is complete. It’s a great way to catch matches that may, or may not, be broadcast on the TSN and NBC networks.
If you only care to watch a particular matchup (schedule), a day pass is also available for $9.99 (FAQ). Dale Dietrich of The Daleisphere has a nice rundown of Wimbledon Live.
Buried in Bob Iannucci’s discussion at Supernova 2008 last week was this comment: “Connecting people only through voice communications is limited,” the Nokia chief technical officer said.
To me, that sums up everything Nokia is doing, including today’s announcement. Nokia, the world’s largest handset manufacturer, is purchasing Plazes, the location-based social networking service that’s based in Berlin with all of 13 employees.
Plazes, founded in 2005, lets people alert their friends about what they are doing and where they are — sort of Twitter and Loopt rolled into one. Users can subscribe to their friends, a group of friends, or to specific locations known as “Plazes.”
Updates can be done via plazes.com, by mobile phone and text messaging, or by a number of third-party applications using the Plazes’ API. And, we can expect, Plazes will be on millions of Nokia phones worldwide as soon as possible.
“Nokia is a perfect partner for us because they share our product vision and have the muscle to bring locative presence to hundreds of millions of people all over the world,” the Plazes team writes on its blog. “What better partner than Nokia for exploring innovative ways of connecting people?”
With Plazes and other recent acquisitions, Nokia is clearly connecting people through location-based services, maps, music communities, gaming, and — almost forgot — voice.
According to the Wall Street Journal, mobile phones powered by the Google-led Android platform – the so-called GPhone – are unlikely to see the light of day until the fourth quarter of this year at the earliest or, more likely, early next year. Perhaps not all that surprising considering that Google elected not to build its own hardware, and instead is working with over 30 partners to bring Android-based handsets to market.
The reasons given for the delay are plenty:
The operating system is still a ‘work in progress’, with the various partners continually lobbying for additional features. “This is where the pain happens,” says Android chief Andy Rubin.
Carriers need time to customize Android with their own branded services and User Interface, rather than sticking with Google’s own suite of applications.
At the same time, developers are complaining that it’s difficult to write for Android since Google has yet to lock down its own development.
China Mobile is said to be having trouble translating the Android software from Roman characters into Chinese.
Additionally, it’s claimed that, in a push to help T-Mobile deliver on its promise of getting an Android-powered phone out the door before the year is up, Google has been unable to provide the needed resources to competing networks.
All of the above paints a pretty bumpy road ahead for the GPhone, at least in the short term.
June 21st, 2008 | Posted in Mobile, Other | Comments Off
Last month ReadWriteTalk (a regular podcast in which the show’s host Sean Ammirati talks to “The People Behind The Web”) launched a new bi-weekly feature called RWW Live. The idea is to get together a number of writers from the ReadWriteWeb blog network (that includes last100!) for a live discussion on recent events in the technology world.
In episode two, I join Richard MacManus, editor and founder of ReadWriteWeb, Charles Knight from Alt Search Engines, and ReadWriteTalk host, Sean Ammirati, to discuss a number of big events over the last week including:
3G iPhone
New Approaches by the Alternative Search Engines & a plug by Charles for his new favorite Alt Search Engine – Tag Galaxy
Here’s a summary of the week’s digital lifestyle action on last100. Note that you can subscribe to the weekly wrapups, either via the special weekly wrapup RSS feed or by email.
Supernova coverage
Last100’s Dan Langendorf reported from the Supernova conference in San Francisco this week.
First up, Dan picked up on one theme in the Mobile space that is likely to become increasingly important: mobile sensors. He writes, “What’s coming is life profound. Put billions of sensors in cell phones – regardless of hardware, operating system, or carrier – and affect the way we understand traffic or the weather.”
Despite Apple’s iPhone and the upcoming Google-led Android platform grabbing all the hype, developer interest in RIM’s Blackberry was on show at Supernova, largely because of its established user base. “There used to be a saying that nobody was going to be fired for buying IBM, at least in software,” said Peter Nofelt, one of the developers of the zombie-themed, social game MobileDead. “It’s the same thing for the Blackberry”.
There is a reason they call it the dog days of summer. It’s hot. TV is all repeats. Except for blockbuster weekends like Memorial Day and July 4, summer movie releases can be pretty bad. The kids, off school, even get bored watching YouTube.
Hulu, the increasingly popular online video venture brought to you by NBC and Fox, is fighting the dog days of summer with Hulu Days of Summer, introduced this week. From now until mid-August, Hulu will release a “premiere” program each weekday, hoping to entice viewers to drop by to see what’s new.
In a classic DRM U-turn, customers of Microsoft’s now-defunct MSN Music store are being given at least three more years in which they can be sure that the music they’ve purchased will continue to play, even after an operating system re-install or upgrade, and when transfered to a compatible device. That’s because the company, having weathered a storm of negative PR and complaints from customers, has relented on its decision to shut down the service’s verification servers used to implement that store’s copy-protection technology.
There’s a lot to like about Seesmic, the so-called video equivalent of Twitter, besides the charismatic founder Loic Le Meur, “in cloud” talent like Sukhjit and Giselle, and the people you meet “face-to-face” through video posting and commenting.
But there is one thing not to like: the lack of take-it-with-you mobility. To use Seesmic you’re mostly tethered to a desktop or laptop computer with a Webcam. You can use a cell-phone workaround like Shozu, but it can be cumbersome, working for some, not for others. Many people are hyper-mobile and participating in Seesmic is difficult, at least during the day.
This is all about to change. Over the next four to six weeks, Le Meur said following the Supernova conference, Seesmic will release its own bi-directional client for the Nokia series-60 phones including the N95. A hack for the iPhone 3G (jailbreaking it) will soon follow, as will a client for phones running Windows Mobile (and, it can be assumed, Android when they become available).
“In a few weeks we will have our own mobile client, which will let you have a full Seesmic experience,” Le Meur said.
The full Seesmic experience includes a two-way conversation. You record and upload video posts to the Seesmic Website (as well as other leading video sharing sites like YouTube and social network sites like MySpace and Facebook) that others can follow like Twitter. The community, including friends and strangers from all around the world, can comment on your post, and you on their’s.
June 18th, 2008 | Posted in Comms, Mobile | Comments Off
While the Supernova conference is mostly about the future of the network, a part of that network is mobile. And if you listen to most attendees, the two most important mobile players right now are Apple and the iPhone and Google and Android.
Oddly, it’s as if two other established players — Nokia and Research in Motion — have been relegated to the sideline as also-rans. One conference attendee even asked during a discussion about the future of mobile, “Is Blackberry dead?”
Loopt is the third location aware mobile social network to become available for the majority of U.S. smartphones . It joins fellow competitors Whrrl and Brightkite, both of which have already started to gain traction (see ReadWriteWeb coverage of Brightkite). However, this is not a market where the first one to debut on the smartphone will be the ultimate winner. Instead, in the wild west of the mobile social networks, the key will be adoption. This is an area where Loopt is making headway, having recently announced deals with all the major U.S. carriers and support for Blackberry smartphones.
A new version of Joost, the much hyped p2p Internet TV service from the founders of Skype, that will run in a Web browser is just weeks away, says CEO Mike Volpi in an interview with Silicon Alley Insider published today.
When Joost was first conceived of in 2006 it was pitched as the antidote to YouTube: an Internet TV service geared towards major content owners who required guarantees around copyright protection, and providing viewers with a higher quality “TV-like” experience. However, since then the online video landscape has changed dramatically, with many competitors syndicating professionally produced and network TV content online, on a mostly non-exclusive basis. And unlike the current version of Joost, the majority of competing services, such as Hulu, run in the browser and don’t require a separate download.
The mobile buzzwords at Supernova 2008 are plentiful: location, social networks, iPhone, Android, the cloud. But these are so . . . now.
At Supernova on Monday we got a glimpse of what’s next for mobile and our digital lifestyles and quite frankly, it has squat to do with hardware like the iPhone, software like Google’s open-source operating system Android, mobile platforms put forth by Apple, Google, Nokia, Research in Motion, and the carriers.
What’s coming is life profound: Put billions of sensors in cell phones, regardless of hardware, operating system, or carrier, and affect the way we understand traffic or the weather. With continued advances in chipsets, accelerometers, compasses, we can change the way we interact virtually with the physical world around us. We can turn monthly cell phone bills, which are difficult to use beyond paying, into living information integrated into our working and personal lives and social networks.
“We’re just getting started,” said Bob iannucci, Nokia’s chief technology officer.
As all tennis buffs know, Wimbledon 2008 started today. And as all tennis buffs know, finding matches to watch live that are not top seeds can be difficult. Tourament organizers know this, and that’s why they’ve introduced the Wimbledon Live service.
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There is a reason they call it the dog days of summer. It’s hot. TV is all repeats. Except for blockbuster weekends like Memorial Day and July 4, summer movie releases can be pretty bad. The kids, off school, even get bored watching YouTube.
In a classic DRM U-turn, customers of Microsoft’s now-defunct MSN Music store are being given at least three more years in which they can be sure that the music they’ve purchased will continue to play, even after an operating system re-install or upgrade, and when transfered to a compatible device. That’s because the company, having weathered a storm of negative PR and complaints from customers, has relented on its decision to shut down the service’s verification servers used to implement that store’s copy-protection technology. 
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Loopt
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