Netflix will launch personalized profiles some time this year
Personalized profiles are coming to Netflix this year, according to CEO Reed Hastings – but the company is still testing this kind of personalization to make it simple enough. Read more »
Netflix ends year on a high note, calls House of Cards “defining moment for Internet TV”
Netflix did better than many expected in its Q4, and the company is already gearing up for another big moment: The release of its scripted series House of Cards next month. Read more at paidContent »
Google removes obstacle for Netflix (and more) on Samsung Chromebooks
I was enamored with Samsung’s newest Chromebook except for one key aspect: It couldn’t run some of the same apps as my older Chrome OS device. Google just fixed this with new support for ARM chips. Read more »
The story behind DIAL: How Netflix and YouTube want to take on AirPlay
Watch out, AirPlay: Netflix and YouTube are working on an open second screen protocol, and they’ve already secured support from key CE makers and content platforms. Read more »
It’s on: Time Warner Cable alleges that Netflix discriminates against its customers
Time Warner Cable wants Netflix’s 3-D movies – but not its Open Connect CDN. That’s why the cable provider is now alleging discrimination. Read more »
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Connected consumer fourth-quarter 2012 analysis
In the fourth quarter, the traditional pay-TV industry began to show signs of severe internal stresses after having held off the immediate challenge of over-the-top video. Meanwhile the music industry fell into an internal battle over performance royalties. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Resiliency and reliability, the devil is in the details
photo: Shutterstock / winui
The issue of resiliency in the cloud has gained new life after Amazon experienced an outage that took out Netflix on Christmas Eve. Hybrid clouds are the answer to the problem, but how do you know what applications deserve such treatment? Read more »
Netflix shows off how it does Hadoop in the cloud
Netflix is at it again, this time showing off its homemade architecture for running Hadoop workloads in the Amazon Web Services cloud. It’s all about the flexibility of being able to run, manage and access multiple clusters while eliminating as many barriers as possible. Read more »
Consumers are stuck between ISPs and content giants in the battle for online video
photo: Universal Studios
As TV viewing has gone online, the delivery of content has become fractured. With more players, there are more things to break, and it’s often the consumer that gets stuck in the middle when ISPs and the content giants like Netflix and amazon fight. Read more »
Redbox Instant CEO: Netflix was wrong to sideline DVDs
Don’t count out DVDs just yet: That was one of the key messages that Redbox Instant by Verizon CEO Shawn Strickland had for a select group of reporters Wednesday. Strickland said that Netflix’s decision to sideline DVDs was a mistake. Read more »
Netflix adds 3-D, Super HD movies to push ISPs towards its own CDN
Netflix is starting to stream a limited slate of 3-D movies – but you’ll only be able to watch if your ISP uses the company’s Open Connect CDN. That way, Netflix is enlisting its customers to move ISPs towards its own content delivery network. Read more »
Netflix gets eight shows from Warner Bros, including ‘Fringe’ and ‘Revolution’
photo: Warner Bros
A new deal means Netflix will be able to replenish its content library with past seasons from eight shows, including the West Wing. Meanwhile, many other content goodies will stay out of its reach. Read more »
Amazon stock hits an all time high
Amazon stock is up, up and away yet again — here’s the latest news and a chart that shows the company’s gravity-defying growth. Read more »
Netflix open sources tool to clean up your AWS cloud
photo: Flickr / Robert S. Donovan
Netflix open sourced the code to Janitor Monkey, a tool it uses to automate the deletion of unused Amazon Web Services resources. It’s easy to spin up cloud compute instances, but not so easy to shut them down as they fall into disuse. Read more »
Amazon blames human error for Xmas Eve outage; Netflix vows better resiliency
Both Amazon Web Services and Netflix — its most-prominent customer — have released details on AWS outage that took down Netflix’s streaming service on Christmas Eve. AWS attributes the issue primarily to human error. Netflix just wants to avoid this situation again, whatever the cause. Read more »
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How to manage the signaling storm in 2013
Signaling traffic growth is outstripping mobile data traffic by 30 percent to 50 percent and threatening the stability of mobile networks. However, the growth in signaling traffic is not only an indicator of success but also shows that mobile data has come of age. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Is Congress really capable of legislating the future?
Congress is supposed to write our laws, but it’s looking inadequate at doing so in the face of a rapidly evolving technology industry. The near-term passage of a bill allowing Netflix to share user data is too little, too late — and altogether too common. Read more »
Netflix can jump on Facebook at last — but does anyone care?
photo: ollyy
Netflix has been lobbying to change a law that prevents it from using Facebook to reveal what movies people are watching. It has finally won in Congress but, by this point, doubts about the value of frictionless sharing mean the victory may not be worth much. Read more »
Christmas Eve AWS outage stings Netflix but not Amazon Prime
photo: Flickr/Will Merydith
Big problems with Amazon Web Services’ Elastic Load Balancing service in its US-East data center nailed Netflix and Heroku on Christmas Eve and carried over into Christmas. Netflix competitor Amazon Prime Instant Video appeared to be unaffected. Read more »
Netflix is down: AWS outage takes down service on some devices
Netflix is down for some customers this Christmas Eve, thanks to a outage of some of Amazon’s cloud infrastructure. However, there’s good news: You may be able to watch your holiday movie, after all. Read more »
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How consumer media will change in 2013
Many of the biggest stories in the connected consumer space occurred mostly offstage in 2012, from Apple’s new media services to policymakers in Washington. Overall, the past 12 months have laid important groundwork for significant advances in the connected consumer space. The year 2013 should be eventful. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Why you should expect more online outages but less downtime
Gmail went down for 18 minutes during prime email checking hours on the West Coast thanks to a routine software update conducted Monday morning. But in an era of continuous code deployment Google’s mid morning update isn’t unusual — it’s the future. Read more »
What we’ll see in 2013 in cloud computing
Next year, “the cloud” will finally be ready for enterprise workloads and big companies will finally start moving them there. Data centers will stop being enclosed by walls and those are just two of GigaOM’s 5 big cloud predictions. Read on for more. Read more »
Carl Icahn and HP — match made in heaven?
photo: Getty Images
Unconfirmed reports have it that the Carl Icahn, the infamous corporate raider, is buying up Hewlett-Packard shares. Investors think Icahn and HP’s board are meant for each other. Read more »
Netflix in trouble over Facebook post — feds show poor grasp of social media
photo: DM7 via Shutterstock
The SEC says Netflix is in trouble for sharing news on Facebook rather than through a more traditional method like a press release. The incident shows how regulators can fail to recognize transformations in our communications infrastructure. Read more »
Netflix open sources tool for making cloud services play nice
photo: Netflix Hystrix logo
Netflix has forged a cottage industry building tools to fill gaps in Amazon’s cloud infrastructure or otherwise add value to it. Now the company is open sourcing its Hystrix libraries, which manage interactions between the myriad distributed services that power its applications. Read more »
Looking for gift ideas for Dad? Consider Tie Society, the Netflix for ties
Looking for the perfect present for the fashion-concious guy in your life? Think about giving a membership to Tie Society, the online men’s fashion startup that lets users rent a certain number of ties per month, with free shipping to try out a variety of styles. Read more »
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OTT technologies and strategies for broadcasters
TV broadcasters and programmers must embrace a new set of video-delivery techniques to reach consumers today. Online delivery to so many types of consumer devices means that video programmers must produce multiple internet-streaming formats that use different types of security and different ways of inserting ads. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Netflix open sources dynamic query goodness for Amazon cloud
photo: Flickr / karindalziel
Netflix is putting Edda, aka Entrypoints, its tool for rapidly querying and reporting on Amazon Web Services resources, onto Github so other AWS customers can apply it to their own workloads, according to a company blog post. Read more »
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How devops can reduce cycle times
Devops is an industry buzzword that arose to describe the collaboration of development and operations teams. Continuous delivery is the automated implementation of the build, deploy, test, and release processes. As more teams embrace these ideas, more platforms and services will move toward a self-service model. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
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What the shift to the cloud means for the future EPG
The purpose of the on-screen guide has shifted. By connecting the guide to content-recommendation engines and advertising platforms, service providers and connected-TV device manufacturers are using the EPG as an access point for understanding consumers and reaching out to them to own the living room. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Once again, Netflix shows how to avoid a cloud meltdown
Streaming media powerhouse Netflix says its experience with Amazon Web Services outages led to best practices and technology that can insulate Netflix — and potentially other companies — from the impact of weather-related and other events. Read more »
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New Chromebook brings a little fragmentation to Chrome OS (Updated)
If a web app works on Google’s old Chromebooks, it works on the new one just announced, right? Not exactly: Netflix doesn’t, nor does Bastion, a fun browser-based game. Native code in the browser may require web apps to be recompiled for the new chips. Read more »
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Connected consumer third-quarter 2012
The third quarter saw many parts of the traditional media business in flux. Other developments included the rollout of new device-based content ecosystems, red flags and red ink for traditional consumer electronics makers, and a resurgence of consumer purchases of movies. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Netflix has big plans for the second screen
Netflix is getting ready to let users control the playback on their TV with their mobile phones. The company recently added support for such AirPlay-like features to the PS3, and is now looking to extend support to a number of other connected devices. Read more »
Storing big data in the cloud is easy — getting it there is hard
photo: JULIADEBOER PHOTOGRAPHY
The cloud is a great thing when it comes to storing large quantities of data, but getting it into and out of cloud-storage services can be difficult. Technologies that speed that process up can allow for new uses of that data, says Aspera CEO Michelle Munson. Read more »
Netflix will add closed captions to all of its videos within two years
Netflix currently has closed captions for 82 percent of all the videos it is streaming. By October 2014, this number will go up to 100 percent, according to a consent decree the company entered to settle a lawsuit with disability rights advocates. Read more »
Which ISPs are capping your broadband, and why?
More than 64 percent of broadband subscribers in the U.S. have a cap on their usage. Are you one of them? This story shows which ISPs are capping your broadband, the structure of those plans and explains why caps are a big business. Read more »
Netflix and Good Technology like NFC for building access
photo: HID Global
Netflix and Good Technology both completed the first pilots of NFC-equipped smartphones for building access in Silicon Valley. The tests with HID Global demonstrate some of the utility of NFC beyond payments but also highlight the remaining work to be done. Read more »
