Facebook has partnered with Spotify and more than a dozen other music startups to bring music sharing to its site. Facebook users can now share which songs they’re playing and offer their contacts a chance to join in on the fun in real time. Read More »
Bio:Janko has been covering all things tech for more than 10 years. His career as a technology journalist began in Germany, where he published a number of books about subjects like the online music revolution and Internet subcultures. He first began contributing to GigaOM in 2007 and joined the staff in 2009. Janko is also the host of GigaOM’s Cord Cutters series.
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Recent Posts
Swedish live streaming startup Bambuser knows that mobile networks can be unreliable for high-quality broadcasts – but it also realizes that people don’t want to watch a fuzzy video of an archived stream. That’s why it came with a unique technology for its live streaming apps. Read More »
Turner is going to launch dedicated apps for Google TV that offer access to full episodes of TNT and TBS shows, as long as viewers authenticate themselves as pay TV subscribers. The apps were briefly on the Android market last week, but have since been removed. Read More »
Facebook us about to unveil some major updates that will include a tighter integration with music services like Spotify and Turntable.fm. The company will unveil these new features at its f8 developer conference in San Francisco this Thrsday. Here’s how to tune in live online. Read More »
Roku has teamed up with Disney to bring free video clips from Disney.com to the company’s set-top-box. That’s good news for Jonas Brothers fans, but it should also help Roku to sell more of its hardware, thanks to the appeal of the Disney logo. Read More »
Sites like Vimeo or Hulu could soon utilize Google+ Hangouts to let their users interact with each other in real time, thanks to the new Hangouts API. The API makes allows anyone to develop apps for Hangouts, and video services could benefit greatly from it. Read More »
Google is bolstering the feature set of its popular Google+ Hangouts video chat service by adding the ability to broadcast Hangouts sessions to an unlimited number of participants. Hangouts users can also now chat with their mobile devices, share their screens and access other Google services. Read More »
More Must Reads
Comedy Central heavily promoted its Roast of Charlie Sheen on Twitter, and it looks like the bet may have paid off: Twitter users commented more than twice as much about the roast than about the season debut of his former show Two and a Half Men. Read More »
Ever wished the official YouTube Android app would come with more features? Then take a look at Desktube, which prides itself of being a Swiss Army Knife for watching and recording YouTube videos on Android devices. It even comes with its own group viewing mode. Read More »
This year’s fall TV season is going to bring us a whole lot of hash tags. Trendrr’s new enterprise measurement tools can help TV executives understand whether initiatives like these are actually working, and who their top influencers tweeting about their show are. Read More »
We all love fall TV, but never know when shows are on: Check out this list of services to find episodes of your favorite shows online and get reminders via email, SMS, iCal or even tweet when a new episode is airing on TV. Read More »
Google TV apps have started to pop up on the Android market, hinting at an imminent release of the Honeycomb-based next version of the smart TV platform. Wonder what those Google TV-specific apps look like? Then take a first look with our slide show. Read More »
It’s been close to a year since LimeWire was forced to shut down its file sharing platform. LimeWire’s website has since been reduced to a single splash page – but it’s still attracting more than a million people a month looking for free music every month. Read More »
Giving your YouTube videos the Instagram look is now as easy as clicking a button. The site launched new edit functionality today that adds Instragram-like effect filters as well as advanced cinematic image stabilization to take the shake out of mobile phone recordings. Read More »
Bye-bye Roku, hello Android? Netgear is now looking at Google TV as a potential platform for future media player products. The company had briefly teamed up with Roku to sell co-branded set-top boxes in retail stores, but that partnership didn’t last very long. Read More »
Pandora has established itself as the leading personalized radio service online. A new breed of services is now challenging Pandora by mashing up videos from around the web to personalized video streams, all without spending an arm and a leg on licensing. Read More »
Warner Bros. systematically abused an automated takedown system provided by Hotfile, the file host claims in a countersuit against the studio. The claims made by Hotfile include information on the behind-the-scenes actions taken by Hollywood to enforce its rights against file sharing on cloud file hosts. Read More »
Fav.tv wants to keep you up to date about your favorite TV shows, but without any of the distractions of other social TV platforms. Instead of asking you to check in to certain shows, it wants you to interact after an episode has aired. Read More »
Is Glenn Beck ready to make $100 million with his new subscriber-only web TV venture, or is he barely breaking even? The answer depends very much on who you ask. However, Beck’s numbers don’t look all that bad when compared to some new cable TV properties. Read More »
Hulu has been slow in rolling out its apps for Android devices, but Android handset owners don’t need to wait any longer: All of Hulu’s content is now available on their mobile phones for free, thanks to a new and controversial app from Orb Networks. Read More »
The LG ST600 set-top box doesn’t just offer access to Netflix, VUDU and Amazon VOD, but also integrates with Plex, the media center solution of choice for many cord cutters. Check it out in this episode of Cord Cutters. Read More »
Viewsonic won’t be selling the Boxee-powered smart TV it showed off at CES earlier this year: The company has told us that consumer interest is too low and hardware costs are too high. This is bad news for Boxee, but also the industry as a whole. Read More »
A big part of Netflix’s growth has been its embrace of connected and mobile devices, which now contribute 80 percent of all Netflix traffic. With the company expanding to Latin America, one has to wonder: How many of these devices are available in countries like Brazil? Read More »
Some Netflix users reported earlier this week that the company has started to crack down on streaming to more than one device at any given time. Netflix denied any policy change when contacted by us and said the error messages were the result of a glitch. Read More »
The Pirate Bay announced Wednesday morning that it is now in the business of offering 3-D movies, destroying the hopes of Hollywood that 3-D would be something of an automatic piracy deterrent. With prices for 3-D TVs declining, the phenomenon is poised to become more popular. Read More »
Netflix is coming to Brazil and other Latin American countries this week, where it will be competing with thousands of street vendors peddling unlicensed DVDs. Can the service beat piracy, or will it be too expensive for the average consumer in Brazil and beyond? Read More »
Kids don’t need to be able to read to navigate Netflix’s website, thanks to a new and much simplified section with children’s content. The new UI isn’t available to everyone yet, but Netfix has looked into making its site more appealing to kids for some time. Read More »
Boxee’s new iPad app aggregates videos from your Twitter and Facebook contacts, plays videos files stored on your computer and beams videos straight to the Boxee Box or an Apple TV. Check out a detailed walk-through in this week’s episode of Cord Cutters Read More »
A stumbling economy with the threat of another recession, a price hike for Netflix customers, people canceling cable and a pay TV wall for fans of popular TV shows like Glee and Top Chef: Sounds like a perfect storm for piracy, doesn’t it? Read More »
With temperatures reaching record highs, so do the number of heat-related tweets: Twitter sees up to two million weather tweets each day. The Weather Channel will now feature some of those tweets on air and on its website, thanks to an ambitious Twitter integration plan. Read More »
Hulu is turning Japanese with the launch of a subscription service in the country. The company today announced that it will launch the service before the end of the year, but declined to provide further details. Hulu actively looked for partners in Japan earlier this year. Read More »
Tiger Woods is back! Well, back at the Atlanta Golf Club anyway, where he’ll participate in this week’s 93rd PGA Championship. The tournament will be broadcast live online with multiple streams, a 360-degree-camera and a nifty feature that will allow fans to share clips on Facebook. Read More »
Netflix has a catalog of 51,000 movies and TV show episodes, which can be watched on more than 450 devices. Those numbers have helped Netflix to become the biggest video subscription service in the U.S. Check out our infographic for a success story in numbers. Read More »
Google+ users can under some circumstances access IM conversations of other Google users. The bug seems to be related to the way Google Talk is integrated within Google+. Google has said that it is addressing the issue, which only affects users of shared machines. Read More »
Cablevision subscribers can now watch cable TV on their iPhone or iPod touch, thanks to the company extending the functionality of its iPad app to all iOS devices. However, viewing is restricted to a subscriber’s home, and some cable channels still don’t like the functionality. Read More »
Canceling cable won’t just save you money, it could also help to save the planet: Apple TV, Roku & Co. use significantly less electricity than your cable box. However, not all Netflix boxes are created equal. We tested five popular brands to find the greenest device. Read More »
Users of Sony’s PS3 can now access a special TV version of the BBC’s iPlayer, complete with a navigation optimized for remote controls, personalization and video overlays. The new iPlayer is based on HTML5, showing how important the emerging standard is to the connected-TV world. Read More »
The FCC wants to reallocate some of the TV spectrum to auction it off, and Congress is working on bills to facilitate that process. Local, low-power TV stations believe that they could be the casualty of the process, affecting cord cutters and ethnic minorities alike. Read More »
The Lollapalooza festival celebrates its 20th anniversary this weekend. We are all invited to join in on the fun through an online live stream that will feature close to 30 of the festival’s live performances, including performances by Ween, Coldplay and the Arctic Monkeys. Read More »
Any video call between users of Skype’s newest Windows client automatically uses Google’s open video codec VP8. Being embraced by a company that’s soon part of Microsoft is a big boost for Google’s open video strategy, and it could quell potential fears of patent lawsuits. Read More »
Online TV viewing is about to get a whole lot more complicated soon, as Fox.com and others are introducing pay-TV walls that force consumers to authenticate themselves as paying customers. It’s like DRM for online video — and, once again, consumers are getting screwed. Read More »
Hulu is catching up to its subscription service competitors by rolling out its Hulu Plus service to more devices. The newest Hulu Plus-enabled devices are the family of WD TV media players. The WD TV Live Hub media player also received access to ShoutCast today. Read More »
Does your Cablevision Internet connection feel a little slow in the evening hours? Turns out you are not alone: The FCC’s new broadband report shows that Cablevision delivers less than 60 percent of its advertised speed during peak hours. Most other ISPs fared significantly better. Read More »
Logitech just significantly lowered the price of its Revue set-top box to $99. It’s a desperate move, but price-conscious consumers shouldn’t see it as a closeout sale. Instead, it may just be a great chance to get much more bang for your smart TV buck. Read More »
Roku just came out with a new generation of streaming media players, complete with support for Angry Birds and other casual games as well as advanced Netflix streaming. Want to see it in action? Then check out this week’s episode of Cord Cutters. Read More »
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