Ikea’s Uppleva TV is starting to pop up in some of the furniture chain’s European stores, and there are some additional technical details available as well, including that the device will offer some basic DVR functionality to consumers that buy add-on flash storage. Read more »
The early bird catches the worm – and then posts about it on Facebook: Bed Battles is a new web app hack that aims to gamify getting out of bed. Are you ready to challenge your friends to get up on time? Read more »
It’s Father’s Day weekend, and some of you fellow dads out there might want to spend the time shopping for new gadgets. I say: Go ahead! Technology has helped me to be a better dad, and it can do the same for you. Read more »
What a week for Samsung: First, Amazon lists its upcoming Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 as available for pre-order, and now a video surfaces that shows it in action for a whole whopping five minutes. The only way to top this might just be releasing it already. Read more »
This week, both Dailymotion and Metacafe got acquired, ending the independence of two sites that at one time went head-to-head with YouTube, competing for the attention of users uploading their homemade videos. This made us wonder: Whatever did happen to all those other once-promising YouTube competitors? Read more »
Golf fans beware: The U.S. Open are going down in San Francisco this week, and at least part of the competition will happen while most of us are at the office. But no worries: The prestigious tournament will be live streamed online and on mobile devices. Read more »
U.K. second-screen startup Zeebox is getting close to expand beyond British borders: U.S. TV viewers could have access to the Zeebox app within the next 60 days, according to the company’s CTO Anthony Rose, who previously led the design and development of the BBC’s iPlayer. Read more »
Roku CEO Anthony Wood doesn’t think Blu-ray is going to be around much longer. He predicted At the TV of Tomorrow show in San Francisco that no one would be using Blu-ray players in four years. Instead, consumers would gravitate to streaming boxes and Smart TVs. Read more »
Mark Malkoff recently watched 252 Netflix movies in one single month to figure out how far he could take the company’s unlimited streaming plan. That instantly gained him notoriety as Netflix’s most obsessive user – and an invitation to the company’s campus in Los Gatos, Californa. Read more »
Gracenote has acquired video content recognition specialist Bulldog United to add its technology to its own content recognition platform. The combination of audio and video content recognition should help to tell apps on your iPad or smart phone exactly what’s happening on your TV. Read more »
Soundrop became the first app on Spotify’s app platform to secure major funding this week, and its investor is none other than Northzone – a company that also led the music service’s early funding round. But Soundrop has big ambitions that reach well beyond Spotify. Read more »
Are you looking to cancel cable or reduce your pay TV bill, but unsure where to start? Then look no further: We just released a new e-book titled Cut the Cord: All You Need to Know to Drop Cable that explains it all. Read more »
Apple was supposed to give third-party developers access to the Apple TV SDK today, enabling them to build apps for the TV platform. That didn’t happen, and for good reason: Apple platforms are a numbers game, and Apple simply doesn’t feel like playing yet. Read more »
DramaFever is quickly becoming one of the hottest video services for foreign niche content: The Korean drama service just announced some additional backing from Bertelsmann, AMC and NALA. The company wants to use the money to take on telenovelas and venture into Europe. Read more »
Netflix on the Boxee Box and WD TV Live just got a whole lot more kids-friendly: The devices, as well as some newer TVs and Blu-ray players from other notable CE manufacturers, got an updated Netflix app that now includes the Just for Kids UI. Read more »
Porn is a huge driver of online traffic, and Netflix has been successfully conditioning millions of people to consume online video with an all-you-can-eat subscription. So why hasn’t the adult industry been able to get consumers to pay up for a Netflix for porn? Read more »
Movie streaming platform Popcornflix announced 400,000 downloads on Roku today, which puts it right behind the big guys, Amazon, Hulu and Netflix. Popcornflix may not have the biggest blockbusters in its catalog, but it has something else going for it. The price is right: free. Read more »
Who would have thought you can do that with an iPad: Algoriddim’s new vjay app makes it possible to mix two music videos in real time, complete with loops, effects, beat matching, instantaneous exporting of clips and everything else that makes your inner DJ smile. Read more »
Want to know whenever Netflix adds something good to its instant streaming catalog? Then check out Qup, which offers customizable email notifications for new Netflix content. There are many tools to help you find content on Netflix out there, but this is definitely worth a look. Read more »
Google is gearing up to bring fiber-fast broadband to Kansas City, and a device that could be key to these efforts just popped up the FCC’s website. The set-top box GFHD100 comes with a Google fiber logo – and looks very much like a Google TV device. Read more »
Qualcomm Atheros is bringing the power of its Skifta DLNA Android app to routers, set-top boxes and other home gateway devices: Router manufacturers can license the Skifta Engine for their own hardware. But for Qualcomm, capturing the living room is just a first step. Read more »
Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker are back: The Napster co-founders will launch their social video chat startup Airtime with a press event in New York Tuesday after quietly operating in stealth mode for some months. Here’s what we already know about Airtime. Read more »
Ikea’s new Uppleva TV sets will make it possible to order things you see during a commercial break simply by pressing a few buttons on your remote control. This kind of technology could one day be used to sell Ikea goods to Uppleva owners. Read more »
Boxee launched a video sharing app for the iPhone Monday that aims to make private video sharing easier. A close integration with the Boxee Box will follow soon, and a paid service tier is in the works as well. But is Cloudee Boxee’s DVR in disguise? Read more »
Battleground was Hulu’s first foray into original scripted programming. How has producing online-only TV content changed since Hulu picked up the show, and what’s up next for Battleground? We talked to executive producer J.D. Walsh to find out. Read more »
Ikea’s Uppleva TV set will arrive in stores in Europe any day now, and the company just revealed a few more details about the design and functionality of the device. One interesting fact: Uppleva will come with a slide-out remote control to hide less important buttons. Read more »
We all will watch 833 days of video every single second by 2016, and much of that video consumption won’t happen on the PC. Instead, we are seeing a huge growth of connected TV traffic, and video consumption on tablets is also skyrocketing. Read more »
The cord cutting DVR Simple.tv just went up for pre-sale on Kickstarter, where the company is joining a growing number of hardware startups peddling its wares before they’re even manufactured. Simple.tv Mark Ely told us that Kickstarter gives him invaluable market intelligence. Read more »
The Xbox 360 just got more videos: Amazon launched an app on the game console that offers access to both video-on-demand and Prime Instant subscription streams. With 25 percent of all Netflix traffic coming from the Xbox, it’s an important place to be for Amazon. Read more »
Remember the Internet Underground Music Archive, also known as IUMA? The site pioneered independent music distribution online, offering bands hosting space for their songs as early as 1993. Now, six years after IUMA’s website went dark, its 680,000 songs have started reappearing online. Read more »
Philip DeFranco’s new YouTube channel Sourcefed clocked 100 million views since it launched three months ago as part of YouTube’s new channel roll-out. But with YouTube focusing on professional content, smaller producers could be left behind. That’s why DeFranco wants to share the stage with them. Read more »
Google has completely revamped its Google+ Android app, putting a much bigger emphasis on photo sharing and integrating its Google+ Hangouts video chat more tightly. The UI refresh comes just weeks after a similar relaunch of the Google+ iPhone app. Read more »
Crowdsourcing, crowd-financing and… file sharing lawsuits? The science fiction comedy Iron Sky has gotten lots of help from its fans, and its filmmakers have in the past relied on BitTorrent to distribute their works. Now, a German distributor is threatening to sue file sharers. Read more »
FT.com Managing Director Rob Grimshaw made no secret of his distaste for Apple’s in-app subscription terms at padContent 2012. iOS apps don’t work for publishers, he told the audience, and the Financial Times’ decision to leave the iTunes store was a success. Read more at paidContent »
Dish and Roku have partnered to launch a new streaming service focused on international programming. The service, dubbed DISHWorld, will offer foreign-language TV stations targeting Indian, Arabic and other expat communities. And you won’t have to subscribe to Dish to access it. Read more »
Google+ was supposed to be a ghost town, but a growing number of photographers are nonetheless embracing the site to exchange pictures and knowledge about photography. That’s no accident, considering one of the key people behind Google+ led Yahoo’s acquisition of Flickr. Read more »
Record collectors have been using Discogs.com to catalog and trade their wares for years. Now, much of that user-submitted data is finding its way to Spotify and other online music platforms, thanks to a partnership between Discogs and the music data provider The Echo Nest. Read more »
The Plex app for Google TV will be preinstalled on Sony’s upcoming Google TV devices, which are expected to hit the shelves in the U.S. and other countries this summer. This is a big deal for Plex, and a nice addition to Google TV. Read more »
YouTube users are now uploading three full days, or 72 hours, of video every minute. That’s 24 hours more than just a year ago. The Google entity announced the new milestone to celebrate its official launch as a video sharing website seven years ago. Read more »
Player FM. wants to make it easier to consume podcasts across different devices: The web-based curation and playback platform was launched by former Googler Michael Mahemoff just a few days ago, but Mahemoff is already thinking about bringing new ad formats and micropayments to podcasts. Read more »
