Rdio will take some cues from pandora and introduce a radio mode that allows its subscribers to passively listen to music with little to no interaction. The company does this to deal with a key problem for unlimited music subscription services: Choice can be a challenge. Read more »
Shufflr wants to take the pain out of discovering new videos by curating a “daily fix” of clips you might like based on Twitter and Facebook data. The Shufflr app is now available for the iPad – and the company has big plans for monetizing it. Read more »
Want to watch YouTube videos on your Roku? Then you might want to check out the new Plex channel for Roku, which brings a whole bunch of online content as well as personal file sharing to the device. Check it out in this week’s Cord Cutters. Read more »
Bambuser users may soon have a much bigger audience: The Swedish live streaming startup has partnered with Associated Press. The news organization will be able to add footage from citizen reporters all around the world its own work, and credit them properly. Read more »
Google is working on turning its Hangouts video chat platform into a collaborative live streaming product that will give everyone the ability to stream their Hangout sessions to an unlimited number of viewers. Check out our interview with Google Engineering Director Chee Chew for details. Read more »
Roku is just about ready to start selling its devices to consumers in Canada, and it looks like the company will concentrate on two models that will sell through Amazon’s local website. We have also heard that Roku’s boxes will be slightly more expensive in Canada. Read more »
Instapaper competitor Read It Later isn’t just used to bookmark articles found on the web, but also to keep tabs of a whole lot of videos. In fact, YouTube has become the most popular domain for Read It Later since the service added video suppport. Read more »
Want to watch the NCAA Championship game, but can’t make it back home to your TV in time tonight? No worries, there are plenty of sites and apps that help you to tune in live or keep track of the action. Read more »
Sony will start selling two Google TV-based devices in Europe this September. The company confirmed the launch in France to a local news source, and also spilled a few more details about their new Google TV hardware: Apparently, it will once again be pretty expensive. Read more »
Blip is geting rid of more than half of its distribution partners, including a number of Smart TV platforms like Boxee, TiVo, Samsung and Vizio. Blip explained its video producers that it simply didn’t make any revenue with any of these platforms. Read more »
Spotify is adding a second batch of apps to its desktop player, and this time around, there is a big emphasis on record labels. That’s good, because labels could use these kinds of apps to reestablish themselves as curators in the age of subscription music. Read more »
The amount of data processed by companies big and small increases every day – and data centers have a hard time keeping up. Not only is scaling the physical infrastructure costly, it also consumes vast amounts of energy. A solution was discussed at Structure:Data. Read more »
Predicting risk is key to the way insurance companies figure out your monthly rates and premiums, and it needs data and time to do so. Allstate said at Structure:Data that the best use of this data was to give it to the 30,000 scientists competing on Kaggle. Read more »
If IBM Distinguished Engineer Jeff Jonas ever invites you for a friendly game of puzzle, be prepared: Jonas likes to leave out half of the pieces, or introduce false positives from other puzzle sets. These kinds of experiments have taught him a lot about data analytics. Read more »
YouTube is getting its first live comedy show: My Damn Channel Live is going to be live streamed on the site every weekday. It’s a big step for YouTube as it wants people to stay around longer – and a huge deal for My Damn Channel. Read more »
Comedian Aziz Ansari is following in Louis CK’s footsteps, selling his new stand-up special directly to fans as a $5 DRM-free download. The offering is powered by VHX.tv, and the company’s founders told me that they have great hopes for crowdfunding in 2012. Read more »
Mobile handset maker HTC has bought music subscription service MOG, according to a rumor reported by Business Insider. We haven’t been able to verify the rumor, but have also heard that term sheets have been going back and forth between the two companies. Read more »
Joe Penna a.k.a. MysteryGuitarMan has clocked some 325 million video views on YouTube to date, but his views went down dramatically when YouTube rolled out its redesigned home page December. The video site says that overall, engagement and subscription trends have been positive. Read more »
Unsuccessful DVD streaming service Zediva said in an email to its former customers this weekend that it has completed its liquidation process. Creditors got $0.018 on the dollar, and customers who pre-paid for Zediva’s DVD streaming service won’t get any refund Read more »
DramaFever secured $4.5 million in funding to bring Korean dramas and other foreign TV shows to U.S. viewers. One of its new investors is YouTube co-founder Steve Chen. Check out our video with DramaFever co-founder and co-CEO Seung Bak, who doesn’t want to demonize non-commercial piracy. Read more »
MTV wants to embrace indie bands in a big way, launching 1 million artist pages later this summer. But how is the network going to make sure artists actually sign up? Tie-ins with its on-air programming and e-commerce opportunities could be key. Read more »
TED released official apps for Android handsets and tablets as well as the Kindle Fire Thursday, giving users a chance to watch the popular TED talks on the go. The apps also come with mobile-specific features, including the ability to listen to talks without video. Read more »
Fragmentation? What fragmentation? Netflix’s Android app is being used on close to 1000 different Android devices each and every day, complete with multiple OS versions and custom ROMs. But for its daily testing, the company relies on a surprisingly small array of Android handsets and tablets. Read more »
Spotify apparently didn’t want to wait any longer for its launch in Germany, which came two weeks before the service is having its final negotiations with rights holders group GEMA. The final deal with GEMA could determine how much music Germans will get for free. Read more »
March Madness is a go! Once again, games will be streamed online, but this time around, you will have to pay $3.99 to watch – unless you are a Comcast cable TV customer, in which case live streaming is still free. Confused? Check our explanation for details. Read more »
Music subscription service Rdio relaunched its web and desktop experience at a press event at SXSW Tuesday in an attempt to focus more on music discovery and bring a desktop-like music experience to the web. The new UI takes some hints from iTunes, Spotify and Facebook. Read more »
Intel is reportedly working on a major TV initiative, with the plan to sell subscriptions of TV channel bundles over the Internet. The move would be powered by Intel’s own hardware, and would pit the company against former allies such as Google TV. Read more »
Google+ is looking much better on mobile web browsers this morning, thanks to a relaunch of the mobile web UI that takes some hints from the service’s Android and iOS mobile apps. Still missing is a native Google+ app for iPad users. Read more »
Second screen startup Peel is seeing its universal remote control hardware becoming a commodity — but doesn’t actually mind this all that much. The company is preparing for a post-hardware future with a new iOS app feature that allows real-time second screen engagement during American Idol. Read more »
Will the next big TV show debut on Hulu? The site is establishing itself as a kind of testbed for TV content, producing exclusive content that then finds it way to traditional broadcasters. The latest example is a distribution deal with media powerhouse Fremantle. Read more »
Al Jazeera has just launched a multi-lingual educational campaign about social media, with YouTube videos explaining how to use Twitter, Facebook and other online platforms. The goal is to make people more media-savvy and, in the long run, raise a new generation of citizen journalists. Read more »
Google+ Hangouts are a great way to communicate with a small group of people — except when you’re blind, and don’t know who is part of a Hangout. A new Chrome extension wants to solve this by making Hangouts accessible to blind and visually impaired people. Read more »
The cat is out of the bag: Apple’s new tablet won’t be called iPad 3 or iPad HD, but simply the new iPad. That may sound like an odd choice at first, but it signals a profound change, as the iPad is dominating the post-PC world. Read more »
The Apple TV got a minor refresh today and is now supporting 1080p video playback and video streaming via iTunes in the Cloud. Apple also slightly revamped the UI, leaving more room for partner apps — but didn’t open up the device to third-party developers. Read more »
Expect YouTube to look very different come Wednesday: The video-sharing site is rolling out its new channel-page design across its entire site, switching over all publishers who haven’t done so in recent months. The new design is meant to make users stick around longer. Read more »
Simple.tv is targeting cord cutters with its low-cost, bring-your-own-storage DVR that’s slated for release by the end of spring. We have the first screenshots of the HTML5 app that the company will use to target Boxee, Google TV and other connected devices. Read more »
Audiogalaxy is back: The former file sharing service is going back to its P2P roots to take on Pandora with personalized playlists, streaming music directly from one user to another and onto mobile handsets. But this time, the company is playing by the book. Read more »
TVGuide.com has bought Fav.tv in a deal that’s been described as an acqui-hire. The Fav.tv team will join TVGuide.com to strengthen its mobile strategy. One of the first tasks for the new hires: Make TvGuide.com’s personalized Watchlist recommendations a centerpiece of its mobile apps. Read more »
Machinima is rocking it on YouTube: The video game content publisher clocked close to 350 million domestic video views in January alone. That’s more than all the views of the next seven biggest publishers combined. Worldwide, Machinima had 1.3 billion YouTube views in January. Read more »
Spotify is launching in Germany within the next two weeks, according to German media reports. The streaming service already has an office in Berlin. It also recently hired a PR rep for the country, which in the past has been a difficult market for music services. Read more »
