Navigating a browser with a plain old TV remote is no fun. Hillcrest Labs wants to improve that experience with point-and-click input devices, and the company just secured an additional round of funding to deal with the increased demand for a different kind of remote control. Read more »
Companies can now monitor in real time what people are saying about them on various BBC programs, thanks to a new cooperation between the broadcaster and media monitoring service Critical Mention. The service already indexes more than 30 hours of audio and video content per minute. Read more »
Are online video interstitials the new bathroom break? Are people multitasking to escape online video advertising? Are music videos being watched, or just being listened to? We know there are billions of video ads streamed online every month- but is anyone actually watching any of them? Read more »
Some people believe cord cutting is just a myth. Let’s show them that they’re wrong on the first ever Cord Cutters Day on April 26. We will be hosting Cord Cutters meetups in San Francisco, Los Angeles Austin, Toronto and, with your help, your home town. Read more »
What’s it like to cut the cord from pay TV? In our weekly Survival Story series, we’re asking cord cutters to tell us about their experiences. This week’s featured cord cutter is Beau Bredow, who will save close to $1000 this year thanks to ditching cable. Read more »
Today on the Net: YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen are thinking about doing another project together, Amazon is planing to launch a cloud media locker and Piers Morgan has fallen in love with Twitter. Read more »
Contractual rules prevent Current.tv from launching Keith Olbermann’s daily show until late spring, but that doesn’t stop the former MSNBC commentator from going in front of the camera. Olbermann posted a few clips on his own site this week, drumming up support for his upcoming show. Read more »
Want to watch the premiere episode of the new Starz show Camelot on Netflix? Then you’d better be patient: Starz introduces a 90-day window for its content starting April 1st. However, this isn’t really just about Camelot. Starz simply wants a better deal with Netflix. Read more »
Film festivals used to be the go-to-place for aspiring filmmakers. Nowadays, they’re a place to go and have some fun with your crew. If you’re serious about getting your films in front of an audience, you have to release them online, says Andrew S Allen. Read more »
We can’t wait for a standard for TV apps to evolve, believes Prisa Digital’s Javier Lasa. It’s time to experiment now, give the consumers what they want, and learn from our mistakes. Lasa shares some of the things he learned developing TV apps in this Q&A. Read more »
Miro is known as a great open source video player for your desktop, but now it’s extending to other devices: The upcoming version 4.0 will add support for external devices, and a dedicated iPad app will make it possible to stream media within your network. Read more »
Pete Warden got famous for scraping 220 million Facebook profiles and then analyzing this data to unearth U.S.-wide user connection trends. Now he wants you to be able to do the same with a new web service released at GigaOM’s Structure Big Data conference today. Read more »
Firefox 4 is clocking huge download numbers ever since it was released yesterday, and that’s good news for Google’s open video format WebM: The new version of Firefox supports WebM HTML5 video playback, bringing the total market share of browsers with WebM support to 50 percent. Read more »
Are you excited about NoSQL, Hadoop and big data analytics? Then you don’t want to miss GigaOM’s Structure Big Data conference, which is happening today in New York. Don’t have a ticket for the sold-out event? No worries, every session is streamed live online. Read more »
The iPad 2 can do more than just replace your laptop on the go — it can also act as your personal video streaming device, and possibly even replace your cable box. Check out this week’s Cord Cutters for a closer look at the iPad’s video capabilities. Read more »
Revision3 published the first episode of its new weekly Lifehacker web series today, produced in cooperation with the popular Gawker blog. The show is just one attempt to tap new audiences, and Revision3′s Ryan Vance said shows targeting sports or car geeks could be next. Read more »
VLC’s developers are busy working on an Android implementation of the popular open source video player, which could be released as early as next month. Next up will be a tablet-specific version of VLC, which could run on devices like Motorola’s Xoom with Android 3.0. Read more »
What’s it like to cut the cord from pay TV? What’s working, what’s missing, and what kind of equipment does the best job of replacing the cable box? In our weekly Survival Story series, we’re asking cord cutters to tell us about their experiences. Read more »
Today on the Net: Apple & Disney may just be a tad too cozy, HBO Go is coning to Samsung TVs and U.S. viewers only like Al-Jazeera if they’re told it’s CNN. Read more »
Two German music fans were fed up with geo-blocking on YouTube, which has been preventing them from accessing music videos from major-label artists. So they turned the tables and started to block employees of major music labels from accessing popular blogs and other websites. Read more »
An EA executive hinted to reporters that Nintendo is working on the next generation of its Wii game console, which will offer HD video. However, Xbox 360 and PS3 already offer a wide variety of HD content sources. So what can Nintendo do to compete? Read more »
Vevo will soon be available in the U.K., and the music video platform is already looking to expand into additional international markets, with the Middle East being on top of the list. So why can Vevo pull off what Hulu and Netflix can’t? Read more »
Today on the Net: YouTube wants to help you with your shaky cell phone videos, and it has spent some money to do so. Netflix is rumored to become more like HBO and produce an exclusive TV show, and MLB is showing games on its Facebook page. Read more »
Are students watching so much Netflix that fellow class members don’t have any bandwidth left to study? Officials at Ohio University think so, and they briefly instituted a complete ban on all Netflix video streaming on their campus network this week. Read more »
Miso offers its users mobile phone apps to check into TV shows and earn badges for their participation. So why does Miso CEO Somrat Niyogi think that these types of check-ins aren’t the key make TV more social, and what does he want to do instead? Read more »
This week’s episode is all about getting the most out of the WD TV Live Plus, a versatile media player that has the chops to become your very own NAS drive. We also show you how to connect a wireless keyboard and how to simplify YouTube. Read more »
Let’s be honest: Those videos you took during your last vacation — are you really ever gonna edit them? The growing amount of video footage on our hard drives can be intimidating, even with easy editing tools. Clipik wants to solve that issue by crowdsourcing video editing. Read more »
Are you an AT&T DSL customer who loves to watch Netflix? Then take it easy with the HD fare once AT&T’s new bandwidth caps kick in. Netflix users may hit the 150 GB cap with as little as three hours of streaming a day. Read more »
South By Southwest was the place where Twitter and Foursquare took off, and we’re to see a few success stories this year as well. But if you can’t make it, don’t worry: a growing number of panels and concerts will be streamed live online. Read more »
This is cool: Forage.com generates YouTube music video playlists based on the people you follow on Twitter. The site is a mashup cooked up by Chris Dixon, the co-founder of Hunch, and it demonstrates how Hunch uses its own data sets to predict new taste preferences. Read more »
Amateur footage out of Japan show burning buildings, shaking shelves and damaged roads in the aftermath of the massive earthquake. A number of online platforms have been aggregating citizen media reports about the natural disaster, offering a unique alternative to the clips shown on TV. Read more »
Charlie Sheen is making “six figures” with his sponsored tweets, and his appearances on Ustream attract hundreds of thousands of views, despite the lack of any regular schedule. However, the future of his Ustream show is unclear: Sheen said yesterday that the show is for sale. Read more »
Jennifer Aniston manages to cram a dozen or so popular Internet video memes into her latest ad for Smartwater, including dancing babies, a kick in the groin, lip synching and the inevitable sex tape. The clip has clocked more than 2.5 million views in two days. Read more »
A legitimate copy of The Dark Knight costs about $641 in India, if you adjust the price based on the comparative purchasing power of local consumers. These pricing discrepancies drive people in many emerging markets around the world to piracy, a new study finds. Read more »
This week on Cord Cutters, we are looking at ways to wirelessly stream your computer’s desktop to your TV. One of the devices capable of this is the Imation link, and we took it for a test drive to see how well it works. Read more »
The only way to watch all the video you know and love from your PC on your TV is to connect these two devices with each other. However, there are a number of wireless solutions available if you don’t want to rely on yet another cord. Read more »
It’s time to auto-tune the acquisition news: YouTube has sealed the deal today and officially announced that it is buying Next New Networks for an undisclosed amount. The Next New Networks team will become part of a new YouTube unit aimed at incubating new shows. Read more »
Charlie Sheen streamed a live show on Ustream Saturday night, only to call the format a train wreck on Sunday and take down the archived stream today. Still, former AOL CEO Barry Schuler thinks that live streaming could do wonders for Sheen and his own company. Read more »
“So far it has not been that bad” doesn’t exactly sound like a rave review. But when Matt Worley talks about his cord cutting experience, you’ll get a sense that he’s learning to love it. And saving a bunch of money definitely helps as well. Read more »
Not long ago, the only way to watch movies like Inception in China was to buy a pirated DVD. Youku.com wants to change that by offering Western blockbusters through VOD and Netflix-like subscriptions. Does the site have what it takes to become China’s Netflix? Read more »
