Netflix and Amazon step up battle for kids’ eyeballs over summer vacation
photo: Shutterstock / James Blinn
Netflix and Amazon both want to be the company that captures your kid’s screen time this summer. Read more at paidContent »
Netflix dives into AWS usage monitoring with Ice
Very few Amazon Web Services customers know that infrastructure better than Netflix. Now it’s open sourcing its tool for tracking AWS use and spending. Read more »
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Having problems with your Netflix? You can blame Verizon
photo: Orla via shutterstock
Verizon is locked in a head-butting battle with Cogent Communications, a large bandwidth provider. The cause for these issues: Netflix, one of Internet’s killer applications that has been growing its share of the network. Bad news for Verizon customers: Netflix may not work as well. Read more »
Time Warner Cable: No, we don’t throttle YouTube — it’s all about peering
photo: Shutterstock / Swetlana Wall
No, your ISP isn’t intentionally slowing down your YouTube or Netflix video streams. But it may also not exactly be helping to get them sped up. Read more »
Netflix signs big, exclusive deal for original DreamWorks shows
Netflix and DreamWorks have signed a deal to create a bunch of original shows based on DreamWorks properties like Shrek and Kung Fu Panda. Read more at paidContent »
Netflix builds a tool for jumping between Amazon clouds
Amazon Web Services outages have prodded customer Netflix to write software that can keep the service alive amid infrastructure issues. Now comes a new tool addressing issues around the Christmas Eve outage. Read more »
Netflix’s new user profiles will mean freeloaders get even better service
The movie company’s new user profiles are meant to help with recommendations, but they’ll also make it easier for people to skim off someone else’s account. Could this be a perfectly laid trap by Netflix? Read more »
New from Netflix: Open-sourced gatekeeper to improve the delivery of web services
photo: Ghostbusters Wiki
Netflix calls Zuul a robust edge services gatekeeper that can help other companies deploy web services faster and more flexibly. Read more »
Here’s how cable will hit gigabit speeds and create a tricky business problem in the process
photo: NCTA
Executives at this year’s annual Cable Show are trying to figure out their industry’s future. The technology for delivering faster broadband is ready, but the business model of the future isn’t. Read more »
Amazon nabs streaming rights to Dora, SpongeBob and other Viacom shows Netflix lost
Amazon has signed a big streaming video deal with Viacom. The multi-year agreement includes Prime Instant Video access to kids’ shows like Dora the Explorer and SpongeBob SquarePants, plus grownup shows like Tosh.0. Read more at paidContent »
Netflix wants to spend up to 15 percent of its content cash on originals
Netflix wants to triple its original content spend within the next few years, according to its Chief Content Officer, Ted Sarandos. Read more at paidContent »
Say hello to Netflix Conformity Monkey
photo: anneheathen
Conformity Monkey, as its name implies, finds badly behaving compute instances, in the Amazon public cloud. Read more »
Arrested Development premiere spurs piracy, pleas to expand internationally
Guess who else likes Arrested Development? Pirates, that’s who. The new season of the cult show has been downloaded by 100,000 file sharers within a single day. Read more at paidContent »
Binge-viewing Arrested Development Season 4: Patience required
Ostriches, Google cars, SNL cast members, cameos, Liza Minelli and so much narration — the return of Arrested Development is finally here, and binge-viewing Season 4 this weekend revealed one of the densest seasons of television ever. Read more at paidContent »
Adios, Dora: Netflix is starting to take Viacom shows offline
Dora, Diego, Spongebob, Blue’s Clues and a number of other kids TV shows were taken offline by Netflix this week as the company’s deal with Viacom is expiring. Read more at paidContent »
Netflix may roll out 16 original shows, stand-up comedy specials next year
Netflix continues its competition with HBO by going into the stand-up comedy space. Altogether, the company may launch up to 16 original shows next year. Read more at paidContent »
Sandvine report confirms: video makes bandwidth hogs of us all
Video has long been the driving force behind our growth in broadband traffic. The latest Sandvine report shows us that’s still the case and offers clues on how ISPs may cope. Read more »
Netflix makes changes to public API after “Streamageddon” backlash
Figuring out which titles are going expire soon on Netflix just got a lot harder: The company changed its public API Monday night to prevent this information from popping up on third-party websites. Read more at paidContent »
How Reed Hastings’ busy 2005 winter vacation led Netflix to embrace big data
Netflix CEO thought he could do a better job at developing a recommendation algorithm than his engineers. He failed – and the episode shaped the way the company has looked at data ever since. Read more »
Fox sees “healthy growth” of home video market, thanks to digital downloads
News Corp COO Chase Carey spoke about Fox’s digital strategy in an earnings call Wednesday afternoon. The company saw strong growth in home video, thanks to digital downloads. Carey also acknowledged that Hulu will have to adapt in coming years to compete with Netflix. Read more at paidContent »
How Snapchat made a leap of faith by building atop Google cloud services
As more companies build their businesses on cloud infrastructure, it’s important to not only understand the technical decisions behind their architecture, but also the economic ones. That’s one of the topics we’ll explore at Structure. Read more »
You gotta watch this House of Cards spoof for the White House Correspondents’ dinner
Have you been watching House of Cards? Then make sure to catch this spoof, created for the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, and starring key D.C. insiders. Read more »
Eucalyptus supports Netflix tools to prove its Amazon cloud compatibility
Eucalyptus wants to be the most compatible of AWS-compatible private clouds and says its support of Netflix OSS tools proves it is just that. Read more »
Carriots is building a PaaS for the internet of things
Carriots, a Madrid startup, wants to build a PaaS for the internet of things. Is this the right model to help spur more hardware development, or should companies build out their own infrastructure? Read more »
The future of TV, according to Netflix CEO Reed Hastings
TV is fundamentally changing from a linear delivery model to a world in which apps compete with each other, and Netflix is spending billions to be part of that future. Read more at paidContent »
Netflix CEO: password sharing is not a big deal
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings doesn’t really think that many people are sharing their accounts with extended family members. His remarks came in response to an estimate that 10 million people watch Netflix without paying for it. Read more »
The House of Cards effect: Netflix tops $1B in Q1 revenue, near 30M U.S. subscribers
photo: Netflix
Netflix made more than $1 billion in revenue for the first time in its corporate history last quarter. The company also used its Q1 results to announce a new $12 family plan. Read more at paidContent »
Zombies vs. Lazarus: The digital resurrection of canceled television
It’s now common practice for canceled shows to find their way to fans via digital means, but there’s a big difference between uploading unaired episodes and truly coming back to life. Read more at paidContent »
How to hire data scientists and get hired as one
photo: Shutterstock / Sergey Nivens
Data scientist might be the sexiest job of the 21st century, but it’s hardly an easy gig to land. Here is some advice from practitioners at Netflix, Orbitz and Hortonworks on how get hired and even do the hiring. Read more »
Subscriber Content
Connected consumer first-quarter 2013: Analysis and outlook
Many long-standing legal rules of engagement between publishers and consumers tilted the playing field in unexpected ways in the first quarter. The period also saw a major expansion in the amount and quality of original productions for web-based video platforms and a major move by chipmaker Intel to stake a claim in the digital living room. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Netflix users watched more than four billion hours of video in Q1
photo: Netflix
Netflix streamed more than four billion hours of movies and TV shows to its members in the first quarter of this year. Read more at paidContent »
US TV cord cutter households will reach 4.7 million (4.7%) by year-end 2013
— Convergence Consulting Group
Netflix job offers hint at further international expansion: are India, Europe or Korea next?
photo: kcp4911
Netflix won’t expand to another international market until the end of this or early next year, but the company is already looking for help to translate its site – giving us some interesting clues. Read more at paidContent »
Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Robot Chicken & Co. start streaming on Netflix
Fans of edgy animated fare just got a few more reasons to binge as Netflix has started to add cult classics from Adult Swim and Cartoon Network to its catalog. Read more at paidContent »
Content for cord cutters is going to get harder to find, industry executive predicts
photo: Shutterstock user Vlue
The TV industry knows that broadband changes its business, but it can’t adapt quickly. That’s why the CEO of Conviva expects cord cutters to suffer higher fees and less content in the short term. Read more »
3 shades of latency: How Netflix built a data architecture around timeliness
Netflix computes information in different ways, depending on how soon the data needs to get served up to customers or evaluated internally. The nuanced approach extends to Facebook, LinkedIn and other webscale companies. Read more »
Subscriber Content
Smart TV forecast: gigabit Wi-Fi in the living room
The smart TV market will grow from 67 million units shipped in 2012 to 134 million shipped in 2015. As it expands, a simultaneous transition to higher-speed Wi-Fi connections based on a new standard — 802.11ac — will translate to fast growth for the new wireless technology in the TV space. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
We can’t let the Internet of Things become the Tyranny of Things
The Internet of Things isn’t just some futuristic concept — it already exists. But often badly. For it to succeed, it will need an economy supported by developers who can rely on open standards and APIs. Read more »
Subscriber Content
How the mega data center is changing the hardware and data center markets
photo: Facebook
Mega data centers’ innovations in serviceability, automatically detecting and recovering from failures, procurement practices, and so forth will become standard practice in all modern data centers. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Netflix fronts $100K for best cloud ideas
photo: Flickr/401(K) 2012
Netflix wants to hear about your great cloud computing ideas and is willing to pay for the privilege. Read more »
