Swedish startup 13th Lab has just raised $700,000 from Nordic investors Creandum to help build its augmented reality browser and developer tools for iOS. But forget about tacky versions of AR: this team is trying to build a real interface between the digital and the physical. Read more »
Could a smartphone run solely on web code instead of native software? Mozilla thinks so and recently demonstrated such a device on video, replacing the Google Android operating system on a Samsung Galaxy S II phone with its Boot 2 Gecko (B2G) technology. Read more »
iBooks Author is like a candy land for aspiring, adventurous writers; it’s easily as intuitive as something like Keynote, iPhoto or iMovie, and it integrates smoothly with all those programs to allow you to use content from each in creating your e-books. Read more »
The line between car and home entertainment center is getting blurrier by the minute as electronics makers and car companies take to the Consumer Electronics Show 2012 and concurrent Detroit Auto show to strut their stuff. Here’s a sampling of the news. Read more »
When the Financial Times suddenly announced earlier this year that it was switching mobile gears from a native iOS app to build a web app, many in the industry took it as a sign that the dominance of the native mobile app was coming to an ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
We witnessed the end of an era this week. Steve Jobs’ resignation as Apple’s charismatic leader has had, and will continue to have, an incredible impact on Apple’s image. But will this shift in power drastically alter the company, or will Apple continue its fiery trailblazing ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
With the stock market in flux, do tech startups stand a chance when it comes to luring investors? To find out, we polled GigaOM readers on what’s hot, what’s not, which sectors might favor buyouts versus IPOs and how it all will change in the near ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
As evidenced by the news this week of the new HTML5-based Kindle Cloud Reader, much of the news about HTML5’s rapid ascent has centered on mobile devices. But the fast-growing technology won’t just be a one-screen phenomenon. In fact, HTML5 is set to completely invade the ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
The success of Pandora’s public offering underscores the popularity of online music, and the thousands of ways you can listen to tracks online. But how many can claim to be as fun as new virtual turntable setup Wheels of Steel? Read more »
A brush fire has been swirling through the blogosphere of late over whether RSS is dead or possibly dying. But is it actually doomed, or even ailing? Not really. Like plenty of other technologies, it is just becoming part of the plumbing of the real-time web. Read more »
Mobile video accounts for a very small fraction of the overall U.S. mobile data market, despite on-the-go video and mobile TV receiving as much hype as any other area in the space. This report — the first in a two-part series on mobile video — examines what we can learn from the failures of mobile video to find a sizable audience so far, which challenges will continue to hinder the market in the coming years and the opportunities that will increasingly exist. The iPhone, Android devices and other multimedia-friendly handsets offer more screen real estate and higher resolution than previously possible, while the move toward 4G will help carriers deliver higher quality video more consistently. Even so, the challenges in this market are many, and mobile devices will likely always be inferior to set-top boxes, desktop computers and laptops when it comes to delivering a quality viewing experience. And because video consumes so much bandwidth on mobile networks, uptake will surely be impacted as carriers move away from all-you-can-eat data plans. The industry must, then, find other ways to monetize video in mobile, and without clogging already taxed cellular networks. Most importantly, it must develop viable business models for implementing video in ways that make sense for the consumer, the content owner and the network operator. Companies mentioned in this report include AT&T, Sprint, Apple, Google, Research in Motion, Qualcomm and Samsung. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
The mobile applications market has exploded in recent years, with Apple’s App Store surpassing 300,000 applications and the Android Market continuing to gain ground. Apple and Google’s crowdsourcing strategies and the market’s low barriers to entry have set the standard and convinced dozens of individuals — regardless of experience — to become mobile app developers. A survey of 331 respondents derived from our readership at TheAppleBlog and jkOnTheRun looks at trends among mobile application developers, including average income for a developer, the most popular app platforms, the rising popularity of tablet applications and the in-app advertising vs. paid and/or low-cost apps. Companies mentioned in this report include Apple, Google, Research in Motion and Nokia. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
TV apps will soon be “everywhere,” according to attendees of a recent GigaOM Bunker event examining the future of the TV market. But how that market will develop, and which TV platforms will win out, is yet to be ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Several significant events set the tone for the digital media ecosystem during in the second quarter. First among these was the release of the iPad, the impact of which went far beyond device uptake; among other things it does not support Adobe Flash, which has impacted the entire chain of web-based video production from content sites re-encoding video to new tools being developed for HTML5-based advertising.
Another principal event in the quarter was the announcement of Google TV, a software platform built on Android 2.1, Google Chrome and Flash 10.1 that will be incorporated into a variety of companion devices including TV sets, Blu-ray players and set-top boxes. The platform offers significant advancements in merging TV and the web experience (although TiVo says it has done just that for years). Sony and Logitech have both announced plans to launch Google TV products in fall 2010.
Also in the second quarter, both YouTube and Hulu refreshed their sites, reflecting the market’s growing maturity. But while YouTube spent the quarter on the defensive in its ongoing legal battle with Viacom over copyright infringement, Hulu was on the offensive, introducing new services and preparing a paid subscription service launch. A paid service would bring new revenue streams to the video site, and would put Hulu in more direction competion with Netflix, which is increasingly shifting toward its streaming video service, away from its former mainstay of DVDs by mail. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
HTML5 isn’t yet fully ratified, but browser vendors are nonetheless starting to implement some of its features. This presents a huge opportunity for forward-thinking web app developers, which in turn will spell good news for ever-growing number people who uses web ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Apple makes it fairly easy to do basic text formatting for HTML signatures, but using HTML to create more complex signatures requires a bit more work. We’ll walk you through, step by step, how to create a custom HTML email signature is Apple’s Mail app. Read more »
TV apps — interactive, web-like applications meant to “enhance” the TV viewing experience by supplementing programming content with additional material and activities — are evolving quickly from a novelty feature on some Internet-enabled HDTVs and a few cable systems to a standard capability. Their rise is driven by rapid growth in the number of Internet-connected devices in consumers’ living rooms, growing consumer familiarity with mobile apps and strategic competitive forces that influence video service providers. In this report, we look at the market dynamics, key players, and provide forecasts for the market, including network-connected televisions, embedded app marketplaces, app downloads, paid TV apps, and revenue from the sale of paid apps to consumers, which will grow from $10 million in 2010 to $1.9 billion by 2015. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
While the debate over Mac versus PC will last for eternity, one of the elements that many “diehard” PC users have thrown at Apple fanboys is the ability to really tweak their experience, through application add-ons and plugins. Mac users who use Firefox have had a […] Read more »
Chances are if you do any kind of front-end web development on a Mac you’ve heard about CSSEdit, a very popular tool for editing .css files in OS X. I use CSSEdit pretty much all day long at my day job and while I absolutely love […] Read more »
Previously, I discussed how to create custom CSS email signatures for Mail in Mac OS X. This week, we’re going to look at what it takes to replicate the same signature on your iPhone. What You Will Need Your Mac Your iPhone (it needs to be […] Read more »
