SYN Straight News — GigaOM

SYN Straight News

Dish Network unveiled new mobile Remote Access apps that allow its subscribers to watch live and pre-recorded video from their iPhone, Android and BlackBerry mobile phones. The catch is that customers need a SlingLoaded DVR or purchase a Sling Adaptor for the apps to work. Read More »

Rumor has it that suppliers, model specifics, and new materials have already been chosen for the iPad 2. A new patent has also come to light that introduces some interesting possibilities about what materials might be used in future iPad casing designs. Read More »

 
 

Gift a Kindle E-book via Email This Year

Amazon is bringing the e-book more in line with the paper variety with the ability to give Kindle e-books as gifts this year. Giving that special book to a friend or family member is always a good gift, and now that includes the digital variety. Read More »

Apple’s own Black Friday deals never seem to be that impressive, but this one from T.J. Maxx and Marshalls is sure to attract consumer attention. The retailers are going to be offering the 16GB Wi-Fi version of Apple’s iPad for only $399 during the holiday weekend. Read More »

Time Warner Cable is planning to introduce a lower-priced cable bundle that it hopes will help stem subscriber losses. The package, which will cost between $30 and $40, would include programming from Viacom, Time Warner, Discovery and News Corp., but it won’t include ESPN. Read More »

Medialets has found that competing against iAd can be a good thing. Now the New York start-up is looking to offer its ad tools to agencies and in-house creative teams to help keep the rich media mobile ad wave going. Read More »

Myspace took another step down the road to full integration with Facebook today, with the launch of what the site calls “Mashup with Facebook,” which allows users to import their profiles and favorites into Myspace and then customize their content based on that information. Read More »

Amazon Studios offers aspiring filmmakers more exposure by giving them a chance at prize money and the opportunity to see their projects made into “major feature films.” But with no name talent involved, what they really get is a chance to surrender their IP. Read More »

Mobile healthcare is poised for major progress through incorporating technology, but a new study shows the FDA is negatively impacting this process in general. Companies trying to leverage technology in healthcare are finding that once the FDA gets involved, it becomes a time-consuming, expensive process. Read More »

Nielsen: Viewers Watched Less TV Per Month In Q2

The average amount of time U.S. viewers spent watching TV declined by about 14 minutes a month in the second quarter. But don’t worry, TV execs, that’s out of about 140 hours of TV viewed on average, and about 30 seconds less TV per day. Read More »

At this year’s Tokyo Designers Week, one of the most interesting installations was a giant screen made up of 25 synced iPads. The display, called iProject 25 and commissioned by the Environmental Ministry of Japan, was intended to reflect the impact of humans on their surroundings. Read More »

The company that made the PC omnipresent in American homes is now trying to do the same thing with cloud computing. You’ve no doubt seen a frustrated mother on television going “to the cloud” to edit family photos. The Onion contributor Amelie Gillette certainly has. Read More »

More Must Reads

There will be nearly 120 million LTE connections in the Asia Pacific region, driven by four major markets: China, Japan, South Korea and Indonesia. The race begins with the December 2010 launch of Xi, a new LTE service from Japanese mobile giant, NTT DoCoMo. Read More »

The Angry Birds phenomenon just keeps rocking the mobile world, and soon a second Android version will be rocking low-end handsets with older versions of the OS. Performance issues are forcing Rovio to develop this version to address the diversity of devices running Android today. Read More »

Qualcomm announced plans for the 2011 next-generation Snapdragon processor, making this year’s chips look stale. The new Snapdragon promises five-times-greater performance, a fourfold boost in graphics and multi-mode support for both 3G and LTE networks, all with a 75 percent reduction in power use. Read More »

Steve Wozniak, Apple co-founder and worldwide technology celebrity, predicts that Android will dominate iOS before long. Wozniak, speaking to the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf, shared his thoughts on various topics in his usual candid manner, but the Android/iOS war was front and center throughout. Read More »

In May, CBS promised us that its entire fall lineup of web videos would be viewable in on the iPad, a promise that hasn’t been fulfilled. So what’s holding the broadcaster back from making the same CBS.com content on the web available on the iPad? Read More »

While it’s been dawning on us for some time that Android is a beast, each day seems to bring new confirmation that the monster shows no signs of letting up. Android mobile ad impressions drew even with iOS for the first time, according to Millennial Media. … Read More »

Twitter co-founder and former CEO Evan Williams admits the company “screwed up” its relationship with third-party developers in the past, and told Web 2.0 Summit attendees today this happened mostly because the startup didn’t originally plan to become a platform company. Read More »

Marc Benioff, Paul Maritz and Andy Jassy shared the stage at Web 2.0 to talk about the democratizing effect of the cloud: a fair word choice when discussing the underlying value proposition for cloud computing, but not necessarily when discussing their respective roles in it. Read More »

Forget the age-old problem of figuring out what to watch on TV. The new question will be: where do you want to watch it? By 2014, U.S. broadband households will have to choose from between 5 and 10 screens for digital entertainment, says research firm, … Read More »

Facebook released its Social Inbox this week and set off a flurry of press about the perseverance of email and the epic battle between Facebook and Google. But this isn’t a fight between Google and Facebook, because the relationships users have with each are vastly different. Read More »

If once is a fluke and twice is a trend, we can maybe confirm what we’ve been saying all along: that cord cutting is something the cable industry needs to worry about. According to new data, 119,000 pay TV subscribers dropped service in the third quarter. Read More »

What keeps a man like FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski up at night? Try 40th out of 40. That’s the U.S.’ ranking in broadband improvements from 1999-2009 according to a study last year. Genachowski is worried that the U.S. is in danger of losing its competitive advantage. Read More »

Cord cutting was one of the hottest topics at last week’s NewTeeVee Live conference. In fact, the term got mentioned so often that people started a drinking game. On this week’s episode of Cord Cutters, we talk about some of the show’s highlights and key take-aways. Read More »

HP today announced it’s releasing a new line of high-definition videoconferencing products. These new Visual Collaboration products provide a solution that not only works via hardware installed in conference rooms, but can also be accessed on desktop and laptop computers. Read More »

Hulu today announced a $2 price cut on its for-pay subscription service, Hulu Plus, reducing the price to $7.99, hoping it will goose revenues further in 2011. In this video chat from NTV Live, CEO Jason Kilar talks about company’s strategy, IPO and Hulu Plus. Read More »

Boxee made a name for itself with a cool media center application and a take-no-prisoners attitude. With its first device shipping this holiday season, the New York-based startup is streamlining its software and warming up to content owners. Question is, will its early adopters follow? Read More »

Google is enhancing the power of its Docs product to allow mobile users to edit online documents for the first time. Android and iOS users will now be able to not just read documents but collaborate with others and edit them in real time. Read More »

The healthcare segment is embracing the benefits of mobile technology, as evidenced in the new Minder device by Cambridge Consultants. The Minder uses 3G technology to allow healthcare professionals to monitor patient vital signs remotely. Remote treatment has big cost benefits over hospitalized care. Read More »

Silicon Valley has to get over its initial public offering anxiety, according to Benchmark Capital’s Bill Gurley, and it needs to do it fast. What could help? An initial public offering by Kayak, the travel service, which filed for a $50 million IPO today. Read More »

The OpSource cloud is built atop VMware, and a switch to vSPhere 4 means customers can now deploy eight-core, 64GB. Large instances are critical for cloud providers targeting enterprises and complex applications, and OpSource is among a small number of providers offering this much performance. Read More »

After trying get its chips in mobile devices for some time, Nvidia appears to be on the verge of success in both the hot smartphone and tablet markets; its capable Tegra 2 chip will reportedly power the LG Star smartphone and Motorola’s anticipated Motopad tablet. Read More »

Online video startup Hulu cut the price of its Plus service to $7.99 a month, shaving $2 off the cost of monthly subscription. The service also announced a number of new devices that it will become available on, as well as a number of new promotions Read More »

Vudu announced today that it will launch on Sony’s PlayStation 3 game console, giving it access to the PS3′s 30 million users in the U.S. In addition, it’s rolling out a new design that provides an improved user interface and personalized recommendations for Vudu users. Read More »

As a long time BlackBerry user, I get pretty excited when RIM announces a new model. I’ve been particularly excited by it introducing a new tablet device, but I can’t ignore that it’s essentially hyping a product that isn’t likely to hit the market anytime soon. Read More »

Despite being swallowed up by EchoStar more than three years ago, Sling Media is still chugging along, adding new features and viewing options for loyal SlingBox users. With its latest update, Sling will give users the ability to stream video content straight to the iPad. Read More »

I keep praying for fewer buttons on my TV remote, yet we keep going in the opposite direction. Thankfully, AT&T seems to understand my pain. The carrier showed off some concepts today for adding voice control and cloud-based natural language processing to the TV remote. Read More »

Author Tim Wu of the book “The Master Switch,” in a recent interview with the New York Times, gives some sobering, yet controversial thoughts about Apple’s role in information control that prove much more interesting than Apple’s announcement today. Wu finds Apple just a little terrifying. Read More »

Layar, creator of a mobile augmented reality (AR) platform, today announced $14 million in funding led by Intel Capital. The funds will be used for three purposes, all of which are meant to create “augmented reality experiences to people’s everyday lives,” says Maarten Lenz-FitzGerald of Layar. Read More »

The official Google Voice App for iPhone is now available in the App Store, following the arrival of a number of third-party solutions. The app was originally submitted sometime in mid-2009, and pulled from sale by Apple, but was never officially accepted or rejected. Read More »

A website has launched that puts popular smartphones through a series of controlled stress tests to see how they fare. Gadgetstress.com takes smartphones and puts some serious hurt on them, then ranks them so consumers can tell how each phone stacks up against the competition. Read More »

General Electric and some high-flying venture capital partners have named 12 winners of the first $55 million of a $200 million “ecomagination challenge” they launched this summer. The list is full of some already well-funded companies, including several that GE is already investing in. Read More »

You’d think the need for copious amount of bandwidth would drive up prices. And yet, the price of Internet bandwidth continues to fall. Telegeography shows prices for the IP transit are declining as traffic volumes grow more than 60 percent annually. Read More »

Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen said his company’s battle with Apple comes as a war is brewing to bring new applications to consumer electronics devices. That war is being fought to capture developer interest and ensure that the best applications are being built on different platforms. Read More »

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