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Apple's business database for Windows and Mac (you read right) moves forward

Publié: mars 10, 2010, 9:54pm CET par Jacqueline Emigh
By Jacqueline Emigh, Betanews

FileMaker Pro 11 left beta testing for general release on Tuesday, adding a host of new capabilities for better productivity in database use, faster database creation, and easy production of eye-catching charts.
Now updated for Microsoft's Windows 7 and Apple's Macintosh native Mac OS X "Cocoa" platform, FileMaker Pro is the only software in its category that runs on both Windows and Mac, noted Ryan Rosenberg, vice president, marketing and services for FileMaker, Inc., in a briefing for Betanews.
"We're number one on Mac, and number two after Microsoft Access on Windows," according to Rosenberg.
With so few rivals for FileMaker Pro on either platform, why is the Apple division adding so many new features this time around? "We want everyone to become a database user," the VP responded.
In contrast to FileMaker's Bento personal database program, a Mac-only product targeted at consumers and very small businesses, the division's flagship FileMaker product is designed mainly for "knowledge workers" at mid- to large-sized businesses.
Rosenberg said that FileMaker, Inc. now eyes expanding the adoption of FileMaker Pro among both advanced database users and novices, who might have been performing tasks such as invoicing using spreadsheets instead.
Like Bento, FileMaker Pro requires no familiarity with programming languages. In recent releases, the product has gained external links to Oracle, MySQL, and Microsoft SQL Server databases.
Rosenberg also contended, though, that FileMaker Pro has long contained a number of features -- such as Web publishing, for example -- still unavailable in the Windows-only Microsoft Access. He then argued that, on the whole, FileMaker's interface is smoother and easier to use.
Key enhancements in FileMaker Pro 11 include:
- FileMaker Charts for quick production of colorful bar, line and pie charts.
- Quick Find, an intuitive, iTunes-like search engine for database information.
- A Quick Start screen for making new databases, managing files, and finding help resources.
- Quick Reports for setting up data in a similar way to the popular pivot charts in spreadsheets.
- Snapshot Links for easy sharing of the most up-to-date database query results with co-workers and business partners.
- Layout Folders allowing advanced users to capture and reapply their favorite layouts across multiple types of reports.
- Inspector, a "master tool palette" for controlling layout objects and properties.
- A new Invoices Starter Solution, one of 31 template-based built-in solutions for performing specific tasks.
Rosenberg also acknowledged a certain amount of "cross-fertilization" between FileMaker and Bento, even though the two database programs are geared to different audiences.
"Features such as Quick Reports have been heavily influenced by Bento. But it really goes both ways, because Bento was originally based on the FileMaker product, anyway," he observed.
The new FileMaker series actually comes in four flavors: FileMaker Pro, FileMaker Pro Advanced, FileMaker Server, and FileMaker Server Advanced. Rosenberg said that FileMaker Server Advanced has been enhanced to remove limits on the numbers of supported users, while adding the ability to set different permission rights for various groups of users.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010
More 3D TVs launch, this time from Panasonic...but it's still kid's stuff

Publié: mars 10, 2010, 9:50pm CET par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

Yesterday, Samsung launched its 2010 line of 3D TVs, which includes LED, LCD, and plasma screens between 46" and 65", with prices that start at $1,999 and go up to $6,999. Today, Panasonic added its products into the mix at a launch event in New York City with partners Best Buy, 20th Century Fox, and DirecTV.
The event marked the debut of a 3D home theater package that will sell exclusively at Best Buy that includes a 50" Panasonic Viera 3D plasma TV (VT20- $2,499), a Panasonic 3D Blu-ray player (BDT-300 - $399) and one pair of active shutter glasses for 3D viewing. It's comparable to the package Samsung announced yesterday, except that it comes with one fewer pair of 3D glasses. The whole package will go for $2,899, starting today.
Panasonic said it will also launch 54", 58", and 65" models later this year.
Unfortunately, there is still no new content available for the 3D systems, and therefore no really compelling reason to rush out and upgrade your HDTV to 3D right now, especially if you're not particularly fond of Pixar-style "family fun" films.
Early adopters will only be able to enjoy the 3D experience on a couple of features, such as Dreamworks' Monsters vs. Aliens which was announced at Samsung's CES press conference this year, and Sony's Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs which was announced at about the same time.
Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment Executive Vice President of Marketing Mary Daily also appeared at the event today, to announce that the studio's first 3D Blu-ray title will be Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, another animated children's movie.
Panasonic's partner DirecTV appeared at the event today, and it is expected to launch at least three stations in 3D which will include sports and music video content, but those won't be until June at the earliest.
DirecTV says it is working with AEG/AEG Digital Media, CBS, Fox Sports/FSN, Golden Boy Promotions, HDNet, MTV, NBC Universal, and Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. to develop 3D programming that will debut in 2010-2011. All of DirecTV's 3D channels will also carry the Panasonic brand for a year.
More electronics manufacturers will be showing off their 3D TVs in the coming months, but content is still lagging behind, and there has yet to be a mostly live-action 3D movie that takes advantage of the new 3D Blu-ray spec, or even one that is made for adults with a taste for movies a little less lighthearted.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010
Android picks up more US subscribers as Windows Mobile share plunges

Publié: mars 10, 2010, 8:16pm CET par Joe Wilcox
By Joe Wilcox, Betanews

Windows Mobile phones continue to bleed US subscribers, with Android devices picking up most of the lost subscriber share. Can you say free falling? Today, ComScore released standard handset and smartphone data for the three-month period of November 2009 to January 2010. ComScore designates the platforms by vendor. Microsoft smartphone subscriber share fell to 15.7 percent from 19.7 percent three months earlier. Meanwhile, Google rose to 7.1 percent from 2.8 percent during the same time period.
What about iPhone, for which American bloggers and journalists are seemingly obsessed? If Apple is gaining smartphone subscribers, it's not substantially showing in the data. Subscriber share rose from 24.8 percent to 25.1 percent, which is statistically negligible. Meanwhile, Research in Motion slightly climbed -- to 43 percent from 41.3 percent.
There were 234 million mobile subscribers ages 13 or older between November and January, according to ComScore. Nearly 43 million Americans owned smartphones. The number of smartphone owners increased by 18 percent compared to the previous three months.
The data is obviously bad news for Microsoft, which is making a major mobile platform switch to Windows Phone 7 Series. First devices aren't expected until late third quarter at the earliest. Next week, T-Mobile is planning a launch event for the HTC HD2. Unfortunately, the Windows Mobile-powered device, considered one of the hottest smartphones on the market, isn't eligible for Windows Phone 7 Series. Can Microsoft gain lost share despite the HD2's non-upgradability? Future ComScore data will tell.
But the numbers aren't good for Apple, either. Huge growth marked iPhone's first three releases. Questions to ask now about iPhone's stalled subscriber growth:
- Has Verizon Wireless "There's a map for that" counter-AT&T advertising hurt iPhone sales?
- Is Verizon's other marketing campaign -- for Droid -- slowing network churn to AT&T for iPhone?
- Are AT&T's well-publicized network problems (dropped calls and failed connections) hurting iPhone sales?
- Is Android benefitting from the increasing number of handsets, which are available through all US major carriers while iPhone is tethered to AT&T?
- Do smartphone buyers perhaps care about multitasking, which Apple hobbled on iPhone but is available on all other major competing platforms?
My answer is "Yes" to all five questions. Carrier subscriber data is revealing. During fourth quarter, AT&T gained 2.7 million subscribers for a total of 85.1 million. Verizon wireless subscribers grew by only 2.2 million, to 91.2 million, but beat Wall Street consensus of 1.5 million. Three months earlier, Verizon gained 1.2 million subscribers; 1.1 million in second quarter 2009. For third quarter 2009, AT&T gained 2 million subscribers; 1.4 million in second quarter 2009. Late-year AT&T gains are to be expected following release of iPhone 3GS in June last year. But Verizon's fourth-quarter surge is revealing and follows two major marketing campaigns and introduction of several Android-based handsets.
Marketing is a factor often overlooked by iPhone-obsessed bloggers and journalists. Apple spends hundreds of millions of dollars each year marketing iPhone. Verizon is spending $100 million on its Droid marketing campaign, which has helped raise Android smartphones' profile. Meanwhile, Verizon continues to club AT&T with aggressive advertising about network reliability. Verizon's marketing answer to Apple and AT&T is more bite than bark.
Oh and what about Microsoft? When did you last see Windows Mobile smartphone advertising from Microsoft? The company plans to spend big on Windows Phone 7 Series, but that's months away.
In early 2010, Apple changed tactics with iPhone marketing, and it will be interesting to see the affect on consumer perceptions. Presumably to combat competitor counter-marketing about there being no real multitasking, newer TV commercials insinuate that iPhone users can do many things at once.
Two of three newest iPhone commercials focus on families and feature female narration. That says heaps about where Apple sees the next big market segment for iPhone. Typically, gadget geeks (many of them male) are the first adopters of products like smartphones. Later, manufacturers tailor the products and their marketing for women and, more importantly, families. Timing is right if, as Sylvia Ann Hewlett asserts, "Women are the biggest emerging market."
As for Windows Phone 7 Series marketing, it's too soon to guess Microsoft's approach or its effectiveness. As for Android, its future looks bright.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010
Strongest condemnation yet of anti-counterfeiting, 'three strikes' from EU

Publié: mars 10, 2010, 6:51pm CET par Scott M. Fulton, III

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

The European Parliament today overwhelmingly voted in favor of a resolution compelling participants in multi-national negotiations over the proposed Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) to report on the status and substance of those negotiations, first to Parliament and eventually to the general public. This after a groundswell of public concern arose in the wake of documents purporting to be official ACTA material, the latest leaked by Wired last November (PDF available here from Wired), spoke of US negotiators' requests to include terms in the final Agreement that would force Internet service providers to police the content trafficked over their pipelines, or else face penalties.
A statement issued from Parliament this afternoon records the final vote as 633-13-16 in favor of the resolution, the motion for which (DOC available here) was drafted just yesterday on behalf of six of the continent's political parties and alliances, including Greens/EFA. That motion referred to the leaked documents by name, effectively confirming their legitimacy.
The motion warned that those documents referred to the institution of measures among ACTA members, including the EU, of criminal penalties for those accused of violating, or assisting in the violation of, intellectual property rights. The leaked Wired document, dated August 30, 2009, entitled simply "ACTA negotiations," indicated that US negotiators were not in a position to discuss even among other trade negotiators the substance of consultations with "a number of private stakeholders (bound to strict confidentiality clauses)" -- a group which presumably includes publishing and recording associations.
Rather than provide colleagues with written documents, the August 30 document stated, US representatives were free to give an oral summary of their requested proposal, which would be an abbreviated version of the existing US-Korea Free Trade Agreement. Clauses of the ACTA as US representatives proposed would narrow the legal definition of "safe harbor" as it pertains to ISPs, which today are protected from liability for IP violations under laws recognized as high up the chain as the Supreme Court. The ACTA, as discussed at the time, would only provide safe harbor to ISPs that instituted policies and installed technologies to deter IP violations, including the illicit trading of unauthorized files.
Later clauses would clearly classify the stripping of rights management provisions from any software as an IP violation, punishable with both civil and criminal penalties. And in a telling bit of legalese whose economy of phraseology speaks volumes as to its intent, the leaked August 30 document included this provision: "'Fair use' will not be circumscribed."
Last year, in an effort to diffuse growing public criticism (before legislators caught wind of it), the Office of the US Trade Representative issued a brief (PDF available here) discussing what it said could be discussed in public about ACTA negotiations. As to the matter of publicly revealing little things about, say, overriding the Supreme Court, the Office diplomatically gave credence to objections, while at the same time attempting to place them in a little box over to the side somewhere.
"A variety of groups have shown their interest in getting more information on the substance of the negotiations and have requested that the draft text be disclosed," the USTR document reads, referring indirectly to groups including the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Public Knowledge. "However, it is accepted practice during trade negotiations among sovereign states to not share negotiating texts with the public at large, particularly at earlier stages of the negotiation. This allows delegations to exchange views in confidence facilitating the negotiation and compromise that are necessary in order to reach agreement on complex issues. At this point in time, ACTA delegations are still discussing various proposals for the different elements that may ultimately be included in the agreement. A comprehensive set of proposals for the text of the agreement does not yet exist."
The USTR paper went on to mention the need to empower judges to impose stricter penalties for IP violations, though by its authors' own admission, it leaves a gaping hole with respect to the broadening of the definition of what an IP violation is. Trade negotiations throughout history have been, by definition, confidential, and their secrecy has been mutually observed for centuries. However, the EP took issue today with the whole notion not only that certain elements of the negotiation should be kept secret from lawmakers, but that negotiators should continue -- as the leaked August 30 document and the USTR brief indicate -- to keep certain elements secret from themselves.
According to this morning's EP statement, the resolution as adopted takes a strong stand specifically against the adoption of "three strikes" rules against IP violators, such as those being tested now in France; and also against the enablement, perhaps through deliberate imprecision (see "circumscribed"), of restrictions on access to media. Parliament now says the final ACTA "should not affect global access to legitimate, affordable and safe medicinal products, including innovative and generic products," according to the resolution.
The USTR brief also refers to negotiations for a clause that would empower customs agents patrolling borders to seize any material believed to infringe upon intellectual property. Without being specific, "any material" could include a hard disk drive...or the computer or MP3 player containing a hard disk drive.
The EP resolution took a stand against that as well, calling upon trade negotiators to provide "full clarification of any clauses that would allow for warrantless searches and confiscation of information storage devices such as laptops, cell phones, and MP3 players by border and customs authorities."
The problem with today's resolution is that it may not be legally binding. While it takes a very public stand, trade negotiators may very well continue to argue that it's their duty to continue to safeguard the intellectual property of the private stakeholders who developed that IP...to protect the IP of the private stakeholders. While the resolution reminds European representatives of their duty to uphold the terms of the Lisbon Treaty, which include keeping Parliament abreast of negotiations, that treaty was only fully enforced last December 1. Since the ACTA negotiations began earlier, participants could argue that they've been "grandfathered in," for reasons which, to borrow a phrase, may not be circumscribed.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010
Google Maps now generates bike routes

Publié: mars 10, 2010, 4:50pm CET par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

Different modes of travel often require different routes to be taken. If you're walking somewhere, for example, you're not likely to take a highway to get there, and you have the distinct advantage of being able to go through certain structures that cars cannot. The same goes for biking. When someone is planning to get somewhere by bike, they're going to demand different routes. This is why the Google Maps team today announced that it has added bicycling directions to Google Maps.
Shannon Guymon, product manager for Google Maps said, "We wanted to include as much bike trail data as possible, provide efficient routes, allow riders to customize their trip, make use of bike lanes, calculate rider-friendly routes that avoid big hills and customize the look of the map for cycling to encourage folks to hop on their bikes. So that's exactly what we've done."
Google has taken more than 12,000 miles of bike trail data from the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy's TrailLink.com database. The Washington, DC nonprofit has been collecting trail data since 2000, and has maps, pictures, descriptions, and listings for more than 30,000 miles of bike trails.
"The demand for trail maps and information has never been higher, especially as more people recognize biking as a viable, inexpensive and healthy alternative to driving," said Rails-to-Trails President Keith Laughlin today.
But simply having the data on hand is completely a different matter from the whole business of machine-suggested routes. Google had to incorporate trail data into its routing algorithm, include metropolitan areas with designated bike lanes, and include roads that have been recommended by other cyclists, all the while taking into consideration the business about certain roads. All that is just to determine the most biker-accommodating paths according to safety. There's also the whole issue of hills.
"Our biking directions are based on a physical model of the amount of power your body has to exert given the slope of the road you're biking on," said Google software engineer John Leen. "Assuming typical values for mass and for wind resistance, we compute the effort you'll require and the speed you'll achieve while going uphill. We take this speed into account when determining the time estimate for your journey, and we also try hard to avoid routes that will require an unreasonable degree of exertion." Likewise, the algorithm avoids routes that have too much downhill travel as well so the ride is balanced.
Today's launch of Google Maps for bikes is sort of the opposite of a development from last year, an Android app called My Tracks which targeted runners, hikers, and cyclists. Instead of suggesting routes, My Tracks collected live GPS statistics from the user's smartphone and mapped out total/moving time, (average) speed, distance, and elevation profile on Google Maps as the trips were being made.
Google Maps for bicycles is live right now.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010
Google unveils its cloud-based Apps Marketplace, wants 20% revenue share

Publié: mars 10, 2010, 3:50am CET par Scott M. Fulton, III

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

Tuesday evening, during an event televised over YouTube called Google Campfire One, Google executives lifted the curtain on its cloud-based Apps Marketplace for PC-based applications, with the promise of opening its online store with 50 charter vendors later in the evening. The Marketplace is designed to feature applications that integrate with the company's existing Google Apps, Gmail, and other cloud-based services.
Google Vice President of Engineering Vic Gondotra told attendees at the company's headquarters that the company plans to utilize very simple terms of service. Think of a garden, but more with clearly marked paths as opposed to walls. Extending the concept of the Android Marketplace from handsets to computing devices, the company is inviting developers to build applications using its Studio tool, then deploy those apps by way of the Marketplace. Each developer is asked to pay a $100 sign-up fee, and then give Google a 20% revenue share for sales, at whatever price the developer charges. (We have not seen yet whether there will be a price cap.)
11:10 pm EST March 9, 2010 · "The Google Apps Marketplace...[is] a great way to discover, to find, and install applications into your business. But not just any applications -- applications that are deeply integrated with Google Apps...that enable a single sign-on, that enable different kinds of cloud-based software to share data," explained Vice President of Engineering Vic Gondotra to the Campfire One attendees. "Applications that integrate with the navigation, integrate with the user interface of the tools that your employees already know and love and use every day."
The integration Gondotra spoke of will take place through a relatively simple XML-based manifest, the typical length of which is promised to be not very long. An actual Google Apps manifest (not the abbreviated version used in Google's slides) is pictured below.
Each category in this manifest represents a point of integration with the Google Apps environment -- actually, with any online service that Google Apps is capable of reaching. Gmail is one of these places; tonight, the company's director of engineering, David Glaser, promised a theoretical level of integration with Gmail that would enable business apps developers to create Gmail plug-ins that would appear to match, or maybe rival, the functionality available in Microsoft Outlook.
Glaser demonstrated the creation of an app manifest, which would also contain the "pages" (actually resources identified with URLs) that link to Google Apps' various points of integration. Perhaps the one that will be most often used is single sign-on, which will enable the identity of the Google Apps user to be shared with that of the custom app. Through the OAuth-based authentication protocol Google will use, developers will be able to deploy databases for their cloud apps using their own clouds, if you will, and then let Google's authentication pass through to the developers' clouds to validate users and enable the granting of permissions.
Glaser outlined another point of connection: "If you've ever used Google Apps, you've noticed at the top left of the screen, right above your mail or your calendar, there's a nav bar. That means you're a click or two away from getting at any of the other apps in the Google Apps suite...Well, if you have an application, you probably want it to be a part of the same navigation model, part of the same nav bar, so your users are a click or two away from not only the built-in Google Apps, but also from your app. How do you do that? You put an entry in the manifest -- a few lines of XML, you tell us, 'Here's the string that I want to have show up in the menu, and here's the link that it should go to when somebody clicks on it.'"
The keyword here again from Google is "simple," which is what will distinguish its cloud-based apps ecosystem from Microsoft Windows Azure in almost every respect. An app in Google's environment would appear to be leveraged on an existing Google App or service. As Glaser explained, a custom app will have its own home page, if you will; but as Gondotra explained, what makes the app usable in the first place is its connectivity with the existing hub that Google has in place. So the development studio for such apps (itself a Web application, pictured above running in Firefox on Google's favorite PC operating system, Windows XP) is specifically geared to generate this manifest and plug apps into the existing hub.
That's not to say apps won't or can't stand alone on their own, or even pre-exist, as Gondotra told the audience: "We're not mandating that you have to build on a particular platform. You don't have to use App Engine, although we'd be delighted to see that. You may already have an existing app built on your own infrastructure, your own tools, your own hosting environment...It's very easy to integrate even that existing app into Google Apps."
The ability for apps to stand on their own was exemplified this evening by charter partner Intuit's first entry into the Marketplace. It showed an online payroll application for small business that enables office managers to keep track of employees' payrolls, using tools that are also integrated into Google Calendar. (It's hard not to notice that Google's app development platform runs on Firefox, while it prefers to run the apps themselves on Chrome.)
Among Google's list of 50 charter developers, we noted, was Zoho -- a company whose existing cloud-based apps had actually competed against Google Apps, while using many deployment resources actually created by Google.
The exact terms and conditions that apply to Google's developers' agreement -- a $100 one-time up-front fee to enroll per developer (not per app), and a 20% cut of the revenue -- are not known as of this evening. Vic Gondotra did say, however, that Google will enable online resellers to promote and sell apps from the Marketplace, with 20% of the cut from resold apps also going to Google and the rest to their developers.
"Remember, with that rev share, you not only get to reach the 25 million customers, but you also get to take advantage of over 1,000 resellers who are not only going to be able to resell Google Apps, but may, in fact, be able to drive business directly to you," stated Gondotra. He did not say whether this resale operation would actually take place as part of Google's existing advertising platform, which may be why the early number of resellers (one thousand) is so high.
A few years ago when Google premiered its online apps on a mostly free business model (with some subscription revenue attached for upper-level apps more recently), folks wondered how Google would turn this into a revenue center. Now we know the answer: The company wants to earn its cut not from its core apps, but from a substantial slice of your apps.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010
Samsung launches its eReader, connects with Barnes & Noble

Publié: mars 10, 2010, 3:35am CET par Jacqueline Emigh

By Jacqueline Emigh, Betanews

After showing a prototype of its first electronic reader at CES in January, Samsung on Tuesday officially rolled out the new device, spilling all the details about the final feature set while also unveiling a new partnership with Barnes & Noble.
Unlike other gadgets in the increasingly crowded field, the Samsung eReader lets people make notes in the margins of e-book pages, pointed out Vickie Cullen, a Samsung spokesperson, at a press event in New York City where the company launched a number of CE products including this device, 3D TVs, and a 3D Blu-ray player.
Users of Samsung's eReader can modify the electronic pages by underlining words, for example, and they can use built-in voice recording functionality to produce audio memos and annotations. It's also able to read text aloud, but only with electronic books that support text-to-speech (TTS) technology.
A reader can make notes in the margins through the use of a special electromagnetic resonance (EMR) stylus pen. In a demo at the event, we saw how you can easily make the brushstrokes wider or narrower or even turn the pen into an "eraser" by touching the tip of the pen to icons at the bottom of the screen.
The eReader comes in a slider form factor with a six-inch E-ink screen displaying at 600x800 resolution in eight shades of grey.
Cullen said that you can import drawings and photos in JPEG and BMP formats as well as other files downloaded from the Internet to a PC, using the eReader's mini-USB port. Other supported file formats include e-pub, PDF/a, and TXT.
Slated to ship this spring for $299. Samsung's new device offers 26 GB of internal memory, plus an external Micro SD slot capable of increasing storage by another 16 GB.
The product also comes with built-in speakers and Bluetooth technology for playing back music or TTS translation, she said.
Readers can use the gadget's built-in Wi-Fi, together with Samsung's proprietary EmoLink technology, for sharing content -- including notes jotted in e-book margins, for instance -- between two devices.
Samsung has also joined the growing list of e-reader makers now partnering with Barnes & Noble -- the arch rival of Amazon.com, the pioneer of the field. Through a new deal between Samsung and Barnes & Noble, users of Samsung's new eReader can use either a Wi-Fi or PC connection to browse, sample, and download content from B&N.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010
Get your glasses ready: Samsung soars into the third dimension

Publié: mars 10, 2010, 3:31am CET par Jacqueline Emigh

By Jacqueline Emigh, Betanews

At a press conference in New York City on Tuesday, Samsung unveiled new 3D products that include six HDTV series, a Shrek 3D movie, and a DVD player designed to handle 3D along with regular Blu-ray and standard DVD disks.
Samsung's initial 3D TV line-up -- which requires 3D glasses for viewing - ranges from the LED 7000/8000/9000 Series to the LCD 750 Series and the Plasma 7000/8000 Series.
Samsung also debuted the 3D-capable BD-C6900 Blu-ray player, a 3D-enabled release of Dreamworks' Monsters vs. Aliens along with the entire Shrek series, and a large set of Internet-downloadable applications for the 3D Blu-ray player and some of Samsung's 3D TVs.
Kicked off by an ad campaign broadcast during Sunday's Academy Awards show, the first two 3D TV models from Samsung -- the 46" and 55" editions of the LED C7000 -- are already available in stores, said Dave R. Das, director, Visual Display Marketing, in an interview with Betanews at the event.
So, too, are the first 12 apps for Samsung's 3D gear, with others slated for completion by the end of March, said Jason Han, senior manager, content partnership, CE Division.
The remaining 3D TVs -- and the 3D Blu-ray drive, priced at $399 -- are expected to roll out over the next few months.
The widget-enabled 3D apps will run not just with the new Blu-ray drive, but also the LED TVs, all of which are IP-capable. The first dozen apps include Rovi TV Listings, Yahoo, and streaming video movie apps from Netflix, Blockbuster, and Vudu, along with several games. One of the applications due out later this month is a Skype video conferencing app that will use a custom camera. The camera is slated to sit on top of a Samsung TV and to be sold by Skype.
Although all of the apps released in March will be offered free of charge, Samsung plans to start selling "premium" apps over this summer, Betanews was told.
Samsung dubbed the press conference "3D Wonder," and the name turned out to be apt for more reasons than one. Many of the journalists did marvel at the quality of the Samsung-supplied 3D experience, particularly during an airing at the event of a 3D Dreamworks' Shrek movie displayed on a huge "cube" of LCD panels.
Yet some also wondered aloud whether, during the current deep recession, all that many consumers will be willing to invest in the 3D ware, which Samsung is pricing at the rate of $150 for a pair of 3D glasses and about $1,599.99 to $6,999.99 for a 3D TV.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010
American cities fight for Google's attention

Publié: mars 10, 2010, 12:13am CET par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

One month ago, Google put the word out that it was looking to build and test its own fiber-to-the-home networks in a couple of cities. The speeds would be up to 1 Gbps and the reach would initially be about 50,000 homes.
Immediately, hundreds of cities began making pitches to attract Google's attention, some earnest, some outlandish.
Topeka, Kansas unofficially renamed itself "Google" for the month and garnered a considerable amount of attention; Sarasota, Florida quickly followed suit and re-named its City Island "Google Island".
Duluth, Minnesota's mayor Don Ness jumped into a 35 degree Lake Superior as a dual-purpose media event for Google Fiber and the Special Olympics; and 1,000 Morgantown, West Virginia residents last week held up signs saying "We Want a Gig" at the WVU-Georgetown basketball game.
But the majority of the cities interested in getting Google Fiber haven't resorted to cheap publicity stunts, and are hoping that their answers to Google's Request for Information will be much more convincing.
"I think we're going to draw the line at silly stunts," Madison, Wisconsin alderman Mark Clear said today. City officials there are hosting a public meeting to gather ideas for their pitch and show the community's interest in the project.
Juneau, Alaska has made the case that its isolated, mountainous location will serve as an ideal testing ground since it is both environmentally challenging and populous.
Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley reminded us of Baltimore's historical significance as "that place from which our nation's railroads emanated, and the place that was the source of the first telegraph message ever sent."
Kalamazoo, Michigan is using health care as its wager. The Kalamazoo Gazette's Editorial board argues that its modern health care facilities and its major medical corporations Pfizer and Stryker could benefit greatly from the fiber network.
In just under three weeks, we will be able to see which approach worked. March 26 is the last day Google will accept submissions for its fiber optic trial, and it will announce which cities it has chosen shortly after.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010