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BetaNews.Com (9 non lus)

CBS teams up with Amazon, brings you Steven Spielberg's Extant

Publié: janvier 8, 2014, 7:36pm CET par Alan Buckingham

Amazon has scored some big exclusives lately, bringing viewers such hit shows as Under the Dome and Vikings. Add those to new original content, and the online retailer is becoming a real competitor in the streaming video arena, taking on Netflix, Redbox and others.

Now the company claims another win, getting the latest series from producer Steven Spielberg, he of E.T. fame. The new show, titled Extant, stars Halle Berry, and is set to premiere this coming June.

Spielberg’s Amblin Television company is also responsible for the aforementioned Stephen King-inspired show. “Our partnership with Amazon for Under the Dome helped build a creative, financial and marketing model for event television in the summer”, says Scott Koondel, Chief Corporate Licensing Officer at CBS Corporation.

Amazon claims it has received positive feedback from previous exclusive deals. These allow Prime customers to watch the latest episode just days after it aired on television, and Extant will be no exception, so look for it early this summer.

Image Credit: Subbotina Anna/Shutterstock
Xbox One vs PS4 -- the truth behind the numbers

Publié: janvier 8, 2014, 7:26pm CET par Wayne Williams

Yesterday, I reported that the PlayStation 4 is massively outselling the Xbox One. Inevitably, this sparked a debate in the comments. Is the PS4 really outselling the Xbox One? Yes, unquestionably -- the numbers speak for themselves. But at the same time there are lots of factors that should be taken into account which I didn’t cover in my original post.

Price (which I did mention) is a big factor in these uncertain financial times, and the PS4 is $100 cheaper than its rival. But the number of markets and supply chain issues all also have a huge part to play.

Firstly, the main thing to note is sales derive from supply. Any product -- be it a games console, a smartphone, or a pair of shoes -- can only be sold if it’s made available to buy in the first place. If one store has a thousand PlayStation 4s in stock and it sells five, and another store has three Xbox Ones and it sells them all -- there are two angles that can be reported. The PS4 has sold more than the Xbox One, but the Xbox One has sold better than the PS4.

Take away the knowledge of stock -- there are two stores, one selling the Xbox One and one selling the PlayStation 4 -- and the story appears black and white. Sony’s console has sold more than its rival.

Without knowing how many items were made available to buy in the first place, the truth is it’s impossible to say at this juncture that one console is selling better than the other, only that one console has sold more.

We know (because Microsoft has said so) that the Xbox One is on sale in 13 countries. The PS4 is on sale in 48 countries. So from that we can determine that there are more places where people can buy Sony’s console, and therefore you would expect it to sell a lot more. That the PS4 has only shifted a million extra consoles than the Xbox One, despite being in nearly four times as many countries, suddenly makes Sony’s "victory" seem rather hollow.

But switching things around again, those 48 countries include lesser territories, such as Nicaragua, Uruguay and Kuwait, and we don’t know how many consoles there are in each country. Sony could have two consoles in the whole of Oman and still include it in the list.

Similarly, while Xbox One might be in significantly fewer countries, they are places where you’d expect more consoles to be sold, and Microsoft might have more consoles there than Sony has. If there are more Xbox Ones than PlayStation 4s for sale in the US, you would expect Microsoft’s console to rack up better numbers in that territory. Yusuf Mehdi, Corporate Vice President of Marketing, Strategy and Business, Xbox said the Xbox One had "become the fastest-selling console in the US during our launch month in November". (I've asked NPD for some independent US Xbox One and PS4 sales data and will update this post when I get it).

The PS4 is likely to sell phenomenally well in Japan when it finally comes out there in February and that home advantage will allow Sony to extend its lead in the number of consoles sold so far.

Sony or Microsoft could "win" the battle by flooding the market with their consoles, but that would be bad business of course. There’s no point in reporting massive sales if you’re also going to report huge financial losses and left over stock (or worse still poor sales and huge financial losses due to surplus stock -- as was the case with the original Surface RT).

And then there’s the issue of supply being able to keep up with demand. If neither company can produce enough consoles to match demand, then the early winner will be the firm which manages to get more units into the supply chain.

Summing Up

So what does this all mean? Essentially that the PlayStation 4 has sold a million more consoles than the Xbox One, but until both Microsoft and Sony provide a breakdown of stock and sales by territory (which isn’t going to happen), there’s no way of saying who is "winning" at this point. And ultimately, if past history is anything to go by, sales will likely balance out in the end anyway, with the Xbox One selling better in the US, the PS4 selling much, much better in Japan, and both consoles doing about the same numbers in total.

You can view an interesting breakdown of past console sales at VGChartz.

Photo Credit: iQoncept/Shutterstock
CentOS joins the Red Hat family -- Fedora gets a step-brother

Publié: janvier 8, 2014, 6:51pm CET par Brian Fagioli

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a wonderful operating system for commercial users. However, there is one major downside to it -- it costs money. Luckily, Red Hat provides the source code to the open-source community. This enables groups to use the code to build their own free distributions, such as CentOS. While these distributions are just as functional as RHEL, they lack support from Red Hat.

Even though the existence of CentOS can potentially take money from Red Hat's pockets, there never seemed to be any resentment or animosity. In fact, just yesterday, Red Hat surprised the Linux community and announced that it will sponsor that distribution going forward. In other words, CentOS is now owned by Red Hat Inc -- the father has officially adopted its illegitimate baby and Fedora has a new step-brother.

"This collaboration strengthens Red Hat's proven business model by extending the Red Hat open source development ecosystem. Red Hat anticipates that taking a role as a catalyst within the CentOS community will enable it to accelerate development of enterprise-grade subscription solutions for customers and partners", says Red Hat.

The company further explains, "since its initial release in 2004, the CentOS Project has grown to include a significant amount of focus on open source technology integration and a sizable user community. Red Hat and the CentOS Project recognize an opportunity to begin a new era by collaborating to expand the CentOS Project to address innovation, community contribution, and participation up the stack and beyond the operating system. By joining forces with the CentOS Project, Red Hat aims to accelerate community innovation, engagement, and momentum around open source cloud and infrastructure projects".

Congratulations is in order for some core members of the CentOS team, as they have landed full-time jobs with Red Hat. Remember, many Linux contributors do so on their "free time" -- they often work a full-time job too. This hiring by Red Hat will allow the members to focus more time and energy on CentOS.

CentOS users may be concerned and rightfully so. After all, it remains to be seen if this will truly benefit anyone other than Red Hat. Mergers and agreements are warm and fuzzy when they are announced, but time has a funny way of souring these relationships.

Do you think this is a good move? Tell me in the comments.

Photo Credit: Kazuaki Inagaki/Shutterstock
If you can measure IT you can make IT better

Publié: janvier 8, 2014, 4:25pm CET par Ian Barker

According to a study by New York-based risk management specialist Continuity Software, measurement and analysis is the key to achieving IT excellence.

Based on results from a number of sectors including healthcare, financial services, manufacturing and retail, the study underlines the importance of operational analytics in meeting performance targets.

As you might imagine the findings are all about size and performance -- stop making up your own jokes at the back! It's larger organizations that are most likely to use analytical tools to monitor IT performance goals -- 57 percent, as opposed to 29 percent of smaller enterprises. What they measure is interesting too, 89 percent measuring up time, 66 percent performance and 51 percent measuring the number of open issues.

There's more consistency when it comes to the different areas of infrastructure. Storage and network performance indicators are measured by 71 percent of those surveyed with applications a close second on 69 percent, databases on 66 and clusters on 49 percent.

The effectiveness of regular analysis is shown by the fact that 53 percent of companies that track configuration across their entire infrastructure daily said they were meeting or exceeding their goals. This compares to only 31-33 percent of those that monitor only part of their setup.

"Few would argue that business organizations that deliver IT operational excellence enjoy a distinct advantage over their competitors," says Doron Pinhas, CTO of Continuity Software. "As this survey reveals, organizations that are successful in achieving this goal invest in measurement and analysis of KPIs and are able to transform the collected insights into immediate actions".

The cloud seems to be getting neglected in all of this though with only 14 percent saying that they regularly monitor cloud KPIs. 43 percent of those surveyed say they never analyze configuration consistency in their cloud environment.

Pinhas comments, "It is also interesting to note that while the push to move data and applications into the cloud continues to escalate, most cloud infrastructure remains under-monitored, and consequently at great risk of unplanned downtime and service disruption".

The full report is available to download from the Continuity Software website.

Photo Credit: Bogdan Brasoveanu / Shutterstock
Rename music, movie and TV media files quickly with Collbee and FileBot

Publié: janvier 8, 2014, 4:20pm CET par Nick Peers

You’ve spent ages building the ultimate digital movie and TV collection, and now you’re ready to introduce it to a media server, so it’s easily accessible from a range of devices. The only problem is, you’ve named and organized your files in such a way as your media server can’t match them to the correct TV show and movie, leaving ugly filenames in their place.

One option is to painstakingly start renaming all your files to suit your media server. The other is to enlist the help of a dedicated tool, such as Collbee 1.0 or FileBot 3.8.

Windows users looking for a painless solution where most of the hard work is done in the background should take a look at the recently launched Collbee 1.0. Simply choose how you want your files renamed and organized via a series of tick boxes for movies and TV shows, then select the folders containing your media and watch Collbee go to work in the background.

The app goes further: it’ll also download and embed additional metadata and even artwork into your files if you wish. However, you don’t get to choose how your files are renamed -- they should work fine with XBMC and Windows Media Center -- and if your files aren’t at least reasonably identifiable by their filename then you’ll have to manually rename them and hope Collbee recognizes the new format.

If you’re frustrated by Collbee’s limitations -- another is that there’s no undo function should you decide you preferred the things the way they were -- then take a look at FileBot instead.

FileBot -- which is open-source and cross-platform -- is a little trickier to get started with, but it’s blessed with a straightforward user interface and offers you far more control over the whole renaming process.

Simply drag in the files you wish to rename in batches: movies, multiple episodes from the same TV show or music tracks from a single artist. Then click the Fetch Data button to choose which online database to search for both renaming and metadata purposes (FileBot supports a range of different music, movie and TV providers). Once you’ve confirmed the matches a preview of how the files will be renamed will be shown in the right-hand pane.

From here, FileBot really earns its corn: don’t like the way it’ll rename your files? Click the Fetch Data button again, but this time, select Edit Format to choose how each type of media is named up.

FileBot also has some useful tools up its sleeve -- want to reverse a recent rename operation? Click the notebook icon to access a list of renamed items, allowing you to right-click any and choose Revert to restore the original name or names. It also lets you embed subtitles into your media files too.

It’s also technically possible to embed metadata into your file attributes and download artwork for shows too -- these require additional scripts that are freely downloadable.

Whatever your media renaming needs -- whether it’s quick and painless or slow, but thorough -- both Collbee 1.0 and FileBot 3.8 are available now as a free downloads. Collbee requires Windows, while FileBot works with Mac, Windows and Linux.

Photo credit: Dmitry Naumov/Shutterstock
Dear manufacturers, we don't need those darned stickers on Windows tablets

Publié: janvier 8, 2014, 3:53pm CET par Mihaita Bamburic

When I was a teenager I used to love having stickers on some of my things -- furniture, school notebooks and my PC. Of course, I later regretted my decision to "personalize" my belongings, but at the time it was fun and, in my mind, cool. I especially enjoyed seeing the logos of major then-popular tech companies, like Intel, AMD, Nvidia, ATI, on the front of the PC case. It meant something for me, and maybe others, at the time. My stance changed, rapidly, as I grew up.

After I bought my first laptop, the first thing I did was to remove the stickers that were on it. Unlike on my PC, they were not out of the way and, quite frankly, looked silly on my business-grade machine. For people who buy new Windows PCs, stickers are still a part of the present as you continue to have them on your (even flagship) devices. It is a common sight, even though they are in fact as attractive as the plague. Sadly, the same trend is emerging on new Windows tablets. I'm looking at you, Lenovo and Toshiba. How disappointing. And here I was thinking that stickers were reserved only for the cheapest and gaudiest Android slates that are usually displayed in supermarkets. I was, unfortunately, wrong. But so are you for placing them there. Why can't you escape that aging stink that surrounds you and move on with the times?

On traditional PCs stickers have provided some bragging rights. It has been a way to tell others of who has got the bigger, sorry the most popular and the latest components. Even so, I cannot name a single person, geeks included, who has ever said "Gosh, I find them attractive and useful and want to have them there forever!".

Meanwhile, for PC makers (like you) stickers have provided major benefits, in the way of brand recognition. After all, who is not familiar with the famous "Intel inside" logo?

This used to mean something when people would buy PCs in droves and configure them, but as mobile devices are becoming even more popular it is more difficult to make your name known to new customers. Folks do not buy Intel or AMD nowadays, they buy iOS, Android, Windows Phone, BlackBerry or Windows 8/RT devices.

That is the brand they are shown and know. The operating system is more personal and in-your-face than it used to be, and that is one of the main purchasing reasons for a lot of people (perhaps, as important as the make on the device for some). This should be the dead giveaway that times have already changed, and any attempt to pull old tricks is not forward-thinking.

Traditional PCs can be configured, either by the seller or the buyer, with a different video card, processor, storage option, etc. This holds true for both laptops and desktops with notable exceptions of course, like ultrabooks and gaming machines which are more strict in the way of the maker of components.

However, the same cannot be said in the case of tablets. Consumers can, at best, choose the amount of internal storage, the type of built-in connectivity options and the color of the device. They have no say over the choice of companies which build the said components. So having, for instance, Intel's logo on the back of their brand new 8-inch Windows 8.1 slate means absolutely nothing about their preference (it's not like they could have bought the same device with an AMD processor and graphics, at least not now). It is just conjuncture.

Brand loyalty today is not about what's powering the device, it is about the operating system that runs on it and which company makes it. By slapping stickers on the back of Windows 8 tablets, the same results can no longer be achieved because only those two things take center stage today.

Users have never loved stickers. They spoil the look, get ugly with time, and for devices that are very personal (after all, users touch and hold them) they are so damn annoying. So why ruin the user experience by putting people off with a bad design choice and forcing them to peel the stickers just to enjoy touching a smooth surface? Windows tablets, and the people who buy them, do not deserve this treatment, indicative of a PC business that's going down. It is time to let go and face the truth -- a sticker cannot compensate for the lack of attention your brand gets today.

Signed,

Someone who wants Windows tablets to succeed.

Photo Credit: HomeArt/Shutterstock
Journal Communications: media takes off into the cloud

Publié: janvier 8, 2014, 2:46pm CET par Troy Hartfiel

Journal Communications, Inc. (Journal) is a successful century-old media company based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA. Our company owns and operates 34 radio stations and 15 television stations. We produce 20 print publications including the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. For many years, our IT infrastructure for all of those media stations and papers functioned as separate entities. Our small team relied on long personnel-hours, hard work and dedication to keep everything running -- and functioning on time. As the company grew, however, we realized that this was not a sustainable model.

Originally, we had 17 implementations and multiple versions of Microsoft Exchange and SharePoint with multiple servers for each of our locations, most of which were not backed up or redundant. The company managed for years without significant problems, but we knew there was a better way. As a newspaper and media company, it’s important for us to maintain the highest levels of efficiency and accuracy in all of our IT and business processes. To accomplish this, we needed the most effective operational approach we could use -- for total reliability across a disparate infrastructure.

Starting in 2010, our first priority was to bring multiple IT divisions together and have them start working more collaboratively. We had 18 months left on our enterprise agreement with Microsoft, but we knew that if we wanted to reach our collaborative goal, it would be very expensive and hard to do with the existing portfolio of Microsoft products. At the time, we began the move to Google Apps as we moved away from the old model of on-premises IT management and towards a more flexible, connected operation.

Into the Cloud

Our cloud migration strategy was to bring our infrastructure together and use the cloud to build efficiency, speed and focus back for our team. We didn’t want to own and operate our own data centers anymore. Our skills are best used for activities other than hardware monitoring. The old on-premises model tied us to daily management and fire-fighting activities instead of continuous improvement and innovation. This strategy transformed all of our work from operational maintenance to operational excellence.

As we continued implementing our strategy, we moved three of our top five business-critical applications outside of the four walls of our business. We implemented circulation management, advertising management, and news editing systems using cloud-based solutions. Immediately we began to realize better service levels at a lower cost and with less reliance on repetitive manual effort. Our operational model moved from one dominated by capital expenditures for hardware to one of more manageable operational expenditures based on what we actually use and need. This strengthened every aspect of our IT team and our business.

Automation is Critical

The whole point of our transformation into a cloud-based operation was to free people from having to spend time simply monitoring hardware to make sure processes took place correctly. To get the most value from this, we needed to incorporate automated processes throughout every part of our infrastructure -- both inside and outside of our brick-and-mortar operations. We needed to manage by exception and do it transparently, across our own data centers as well as the ones operated by partners.

To control and connect all of these activities in our new enterprise, I saw that we needed an automation solution that was both quick and easy to implement across our cloud environment. Traditional job scheduling tools could help, but they didn’t fit our new operational landscape. They were limiting. We required a new approach to automation.

I discovered RunMyJobs from Redwood Software, and explored how it could help. As a cloud-cased automation service, it fit perfectly with our enterprise and offered the speed and flexibility we needed to connect any task into a logical, seamless process. It made it easy to automate complex processes that included applications from both within and outside of our physical IT enterprise.

Get What You Pay For

For example, it helps us manage our Amazon Web Services. Since we’re billed for these services based on usage, it’s important for us to only use the service we need -- no more and no less. RunMyJobs enables us to bring resources on and off-line automatically, based on our usage at any given time. This kind of cloud-based "load balancing" helps us provide get the best results paying for exactly -- and only -- what we need from Amazon.

Automation as a service from the cloud enables us to automate processes from a variety of CRM and other applications quickly and easily with a single solution. It works across our data centers in Milwaukee and Madison, Wisconsin, along with our data center in Atlanta, Georgia. We use it to automate information on print runs, accurately transfer files for ads and keep our news editing systems up-to-date at all times with manageable effort.

As we continue to move forward to leverage the cloud, I see adaptable, flexible automation and cloud services both working together to provide our organization reliable, fast and secure ways to improve everything we do. This strategy provides us the ability to grow while keeping our team focused on real process improvement.

Photo Credit: Fun Way Illustration/Shutterstock

Troy Hartfiel is responsible for determining Journal Communications’ technology direction related to IT infrastructure through research, evaluation, and implementation of new technologies. He works to improve processes and performance to reduce costs, centralize management and support team leadership.
New infographic reveals the top gadgets and tech of 2013

Publié: janvier 8, 2014, 12:47pm CET par Wayne Williams
We’re a week into the New Year, a time to look to the future, and all the news flooding out of CES has us excited for what’s coming up. But that’s not to say we can’t still take some time to look back on 2013 -- a year that brought us some great (and not so great) tech.

FinancesOnline.com has created a new infographic summing up 2013 in tech launches and featuring the best smartphones, tablets and other gadgets. Each of the included devices has been sorted into the following categories:
- Winners: They’re a cut above the rest. Best in class. Clear standouts.
- Contenders: Would have been winners, but beaten to the tape by millimeters.
- Game changers: There’s something to them that might upset the old order and start a whole new way of doing things.
- Clunkers: Bright ideas when they were rolled out, but consumers didn’t think so.
It’s an interesting list, and while I agree with many of the winners, I know some of the conclusions will have BetaNews readers up in arms.

Is the iPhone 5s really the best smartphone ever made (I own one, so would have to say yes) and does Sony’s PS4 deserve to take the crown from Microsoft’s Xbox One as the best gaming system? Which mobile OS is better -- Android 4.4 KitKat or iOS 7? Each has its merits, certainly.

The infographic also looks to the future and seeks to answer questions such as which smartphone will be the game changer this year, and will 2014 be the year when wearable technology finally makes it big?

Browse the infographic below and then let me know what you agree or disagree with.

Photo Credit: Sashkin/Shutterstock
Yahoo buys Android launcher Aviate

Publié: janvier 8, 2014, 2:13am CET par Brian Fagioli

For many people, one of the great things about Android is the ability to customize. While iOS offers the ability to change your wallpaper, customization pretty much stops there. Google's mobile operating system is quite different, since it permits the installation of different launchers. If you aren't familiar, a launcher is essentially the UI. In other words, a user can change not only the look of their device, but how they interface with it too. Many manufacturers ship devices with their own launchers, rather than the stock variant. Luckily, if the consumer dislikes the one that comes with their Android device, they can download a different one such as Nova or Apex; two very popular launchers.

However a relatively new launcher has been taking the Android community by storm -- Aviate. Part of the allure of this launcher is that it is invite-only. However, once invited, the user can then invite five people. This allowed Aviate to spread virally; after all, people desire what they can't have. Apparently, Marissa Mayer did not want to wait for an invite. The Yahoo CEO had the company buy Aviate outright. Does this signal a future Yahoo smartphone?

"Today, at CES, we announced the acquisition of Aviate, a company that shares our vision for simple and intelligent mobile experiences. The Aviate team has created a product that changes the way users interact with their Android devices by connecting them to information at the moment it's useful [...] We hope to make Aviate a central part of our Android-based experiences in 2014 (and beyond), and we are committed to continued innovation on the product", says Adam Cahan, SVP Mobile and Emerging Products, Yahoo.

Cahan further says, "we envision homescreens becoming smarter, more personalized, aware of your context. Aviate helps us bring this vision to life. Aviate auto-categorizes apps on your Android phone and intelligently gathers them into 'spaces'. By using signals to understand your context - WIFI, GPS, Accelerometer, Time, etc -- Aviate automatically surfaces information at the moment it's useful. So whether you're just waking up, driving, at work, or maybe out for the night, Aviate learns your habits and helps anticipate the information and apps you need -- making your phone smarter".

I have been testing the launcher and find it very useful. It learns your behaviors and customizes itself; it is reminiscent of Google Now. Surprisingly, even though it is in the beta-stage, it is fast and for me, bug free. I can see myself using this as my main launcher.

The big question though, is why does Yahoo really want Aviate? While my gut tells me that Yahoo wants to release its own skinned Android phone (pure speculation), I would hope the company learned its lesson from Facebook. If you do not recall, Facebook released its own launcher and skinned phone with disastrous results (the HTC First was abruptly cancelled).

While the launcher is still in private beta and "invite-only", the first 25,000 people that download the launcher and use the code "YAHOO" can activate it. However, this code will likely be used-up rather quickly.