Posts Tagged ‘media’

Publishers continue pummeling Amazon over e-book prices

// February 5th, 2010 // No Comments » // Tech News

Amazon’s $9.99 e-book price point may be a rarity as more book publishers declare that they’ll set their own prices for books, with the seller taking a standard 30 percent cut. Another major publisher has decided to move to what’s referred to as the “agency model” while others are hinting that they, too, are about to force the new model on Amazon. Hachette has become the latest publisher to announce that it was done with what it calls the artificially depressed e-book prices imposed by Amazon. In an e-mail to its employees, CEO David Young extolled the virtues of the agency model, noting that it “allows Hachette to make pricing decisions that are rational and reflect the value of our authors’ works,” according to an excerpt posted by Media Bistro . “Without this investment in our authors, the diversity of books available to consumers will contract, as will the diversity of retailers, and our literary culture will suffer.”

Books disappear from Amazon as old media battles new retail

// January 31st, 2010 // No Comments » // Tech News

The rise of digital media has led to many a battle between the old guard—record labels, television networks, movie studios, and book publishers—and the companies that sell their wares to the public. The latest skirmish between the two erupted over the weekend when Amazon stopped selling all books published by Macmillan, noting only that they are available through third parties. On Thursday, Macmillan CEO John Sargent met with Amazon representatives to discuss the pricing of the publisher’s titles on the Kindle e-book reader. Negotiations didn’t go so well, with Sargent wanting to exercise absolute control over the prices of e-books sold through Amazon. According to the New York Times’ sources, Macmillan wanted Amazon to raise prices from $9.99 to $15.

Hacking cable modems for fun, profit, jail time

// January 31st, 2010 // No Comments » // Tech News

Matthew Delorey was a 26-year old with a business plan: selling hacked cable modems. This is the sort of business that a budding entrepreneur should probably keep on the down-low, or at least limit to those tiny text ads at the back of magazines where satellite descramblers are sold, but that’s no way to rake in the cash. That’s why Delorey, of New Bedford, Massachusetts, posted ads on Craigslist and then—rather incredibly—put up YouTube videos with names like “Massmodz.com How to Get Free Internet Free Cable Internet Comcast or any Cable ISP—100% works.”

Google to send Internet Explorer 6 users packing come March

// January 31st, 2010 // No Comments » // Tech News

Google is continuing to kill off support for Internet Explorer 6 in its services; the search giant has announced that two more of its Web properties will stop supporting IE6 as of March 1. “Many other companies have already stopped supporting older browsers like Internet Explorer 6.0 as well as browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers,” a blog post on the Official Google Enterprise Blog begins to explain. “We’re also going to begin phasing out our support, starting with Google Docs and Google Sites. As a result you may find that from March 1 key functionality within these products — as well as new Docs and Sites features — won’t work properly in older browsers.” Older browsers, according to Google, include anything prior to IE7, Firefox 3.0, Chrome 4.0, and Safari 3.0. Although one might think this is a reaction to the Internet Explorer’s vulnerabilities notably exploited in the recent series of Chinese-based attacks against Google and 30 other tech companies, which Microsoft has since patched , the truth is Google has already done this with many of its other products. Google’s Orkut and YouTube started phasing out IE6 support about six months ago and Google has been using Gmail to convert IE6 users to Chrome for over a year . Google’s stance on IE6 varies from Microsoft’s because the search giant does not need to support Windows XP, the operating system with which IE6 first shipped, as long as Microsoft (which will support XP and IE6 until April 8, 2014). Google can thus pull IE6 support on its many Web properties and urge users to upgrade. Microsoft, on the other hand, which has stated time and time again that it wants to see IE6 disappear as much as anyone else, won’t force anyone to upgrade (though it’s worth noting that the software giant’s Office Web Apps won’t support IE6 either , just like Google Docs). Instead, it says the decision is ultimately up to the user , touting IE8’s many features over IE6, particularly in the area of security , in an attempt to push users to upgrade. IE6 ended 2009 with a market share of 20.99 percent .

Poll Technica: do you want Flash on the iPad?

// January 29th, 2010 // No Comments » // Tech News

Reactions around the Web to the lack of Flash support on the iPad are extremely polarized . The most common complaint is that Flash is necessary for a larger percentage of the Web to work properly. Popular video sites like Hulu, FunnyOrDie, and others are effectively shut out of the iPad browsing experience. This also includes many casual games, a majority of which are written and deployed online using Adobe Flash. Of course,  Apple has its own reasons for excluding Flash from the iPhone OS (which also runs on the iPad). Apple also offers its own alternatives—for which you’ll have to pay—but those aren’t always up to par with the unbridled selection you find online. We’d like to know your position on the absence of Flash on the iPad. We realize that this is a random sampling and not authoritative, but we’re still interested in what you guys think about this issue. Our readers skew highly to the educated, high-income, IT, and otherwise professional market segment, and we know that many of you like to tinker with your gadgets or are software developers.

The sequel stinks: critics trash new Google Books settlement

// January 29th, 2010 // No Comments » // Tech News

With everyone from authors to librarians upset about the initial settlement of the Google Books copyright lawsuit, and the US Department of Justice hinting that it was likely to be illegal , the parties involved withdrew it from consideration. After some modifications, it was resubmitted to the court; the deadline for comments on the new version passed yesterday, and many of the same parties submitted new briefs. But anyone who read the initial round may feel like they’re experiencing déjà vu when reading the new batch. For most of the settlement’s critics, very little has changed, and their initial complaints remain. To be sure, Google has now won over a number of authors groups, including groups from Australia, Canada, and the UK. But in the list of filings tracked by the public index, objections abound. Some of these come from the authors themselves. Ursula K. Le Guin, for example, organized over 350 authors who objected to the fact that the agreement would apply to anyone who didn’t opt out of it, a condition that most observers consider a major change in US copyright policy.

BitTorrent census: about 99% of files copyright infringing

// January 29th, 2010 // No Comments » // Tech News

It has never been a secret that the majority of files being shared over BitTorrent are movies and music that are likely being shared illegally. (Sorry, Linux distro nerds.) Princeton senior Sauhard Sahi confirmed this recently after setting out to survey the content available on BitTorrent and, although there are caveats to his findings, they highlight the relationship DRM has with illegal file sharing. As in: the more DRM there is on the legit versions of the content, the more popular it is on P2P. Sahi chose a random sample of 1,021 files from the trackerless Mainline DHT and classified them by file type, language, and apparent copyright status. He found that nearly half (46 percent) of files were nonpornographic movies and TV shows—the largest single category of content. 14 percent of the files were porn, tied with the 14 percent dedicated to games and software. Just 10 percent of the files were classified as music, and one percent were books and guides.

Netflix CEO: not streaming to the iPad "in the near term"

// January 28th, 2010 // No Comments » // Tech News

Apple CEO Steve Jobs called the iPad the “best device” for watching mobile video during its introduction on Wednesday. While the iTunes Store’s movie and TV offerings cover a lot of ground, services like Netflix’s subscription-based streaming are among the many options that aren’t yet available on the iPad. According to the company’s CEO, you shouldn’t expect Netflix to offer streaming to any of Apple’s portable devices any time soon, either. During the company’s quarterly financial conference call Wednesday, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said that the company isn’t currently working on an app to give access to its huge library of “Watch Instantly” content to the iPad or any other Apple mobile device. “It’s not a huge priority for us because we’re so focused on the larger screens,” Hastings said. “Until we get our TV ubiquity and our Blu-ray ubiquity and we’re getting close on video game ubiquity, then we would next turn to the small screen. So it’s something we will get around to, but it’s not in the near term.” It should be noted that Netflix uses Microsoft’s IIS Media Services to serve up streaming content over the Web to Macs and PCs. While viewing that content requires the Silverlight plugin on the desktop, Microsoft recently enabled IIS7 to transcode to an iPhone-compatible stream on-demand for content requests from Mobile Safari. The same trick would also work with the iPad, enabling Netflix to stream video to an iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch without creating a native iPhone OS app. It would also avoid a potential conflict should Apple move to block such an app from being approved for the App Store.

First build of "next-generation" Windows Home Server leaks

// January 28th, 2010 // No Comments » // Tech News

Windows Now Windows Home Server, codename Vail (also referred to as WHS version 2), has been in private testing for a few months, but only now are we learning more about it, thanks to the first leak of the operating system, as first reported by Mary Jo Foley at  ZDNet . Windows Home Server Vail Community Technology Preview 4 (CTP4), or build 7360, recently leaked to the Web. Like previous versions of WHS, Vail will come available on new OEM systems, and will also be sold as a standalone software package to system builders. Microsoft released WHS Power Pack 3 three months ago but it’s been working on WHS version 2 at the same time. Unsurprisingly, Microsoft still won’t talk about Vail officially: “We are not ready to discuss future products but will certainly let you know as soon as more details become available,” a Microsoft spokesperson told Ars. The leaked copy contains the following info: Windows Home Server - a server operating system with Microsoft, which is targeted at home users (as the name implies - Eng. Home - home) for use in home networks. Windows Server ® Code Name “Vail” is the next generation version of Window Home Server. Vail builds upon both on-premises and cloud technologies to deliver a best-in-class solution for home networks and SOHO. Out of the box, Vail provides simple file sharing, remote access, home computer backup, expandable storage through Drive Extender, and media streaming both inside and outside the home. Vail also contains an application catalog and product-wide extensibility model so that new services such as anti-virus, online sharing, and home automation can be seamlessly and easily added to the solution. Vail will be available pre-installed on systems by OEM partners, and a standalone software package will also be available for those who want to build their own systems. As expected , Vail is based off of Windows Server 2008 R2, meaning it will only come in a 64-bit flavor. WHS version 1 is based off of Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2. That said, the leak indicates that there will be Home Standard and Home Premium editions (Microsoft started considering splitting WHS in two back in September 2008 . Furthermore, you’ll need a 2GHz CPU, 1GB of RAM, as well as a 120GB/160GB primary hard drive (NTFS is the only supported file system). HomeGroup support is a go and the WHS Console is now simply “Dashboard.” The most interesting part is that there is a cleaner add-in model (all pages are now add-ins) that references an online catalog for add-ins hosted by Microsoft (yet to launch, naturally). WHS also apparently now backs itself up. The rest of the details we still don’t know. It’s not even clear if Microsoft plans to have Vail ready this year or next (last we heard it was slated for “sometime in 2010″). We’ll keep you posted; there’s bound to be a beta on the way soon enough, and if that somehow fails to occur, we doubt this will be the only leak.

Liveblog: Microsoft’s Q1 2010 Earnings Call

// January 28th, 2010 // No Comments » // Tech News

Our liveblog of Microsoft’s first quarter 2010 earnings call will begin at 5:30pm Eastern Time ( see it in your timezone ), so stick around to read the comments from Microsoft execs live.

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