And just like that, all three of the major game consoles now have some semblance of motion controls. Unlike the Nintendo Wii and PlayStation Move, however, Microsoft's Kinect for Xbox 360 opts to get rid of buttons altogether, relying on body gestures and voice commands. As the (estimated to be $500 million) ad campaign says, "you are the controller" -- for better and for worse. Read on for our full review!

Continue reading Kinect for Xbox 360 review

Kinect for Xbox 360 review originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 04 Nov 2010 00:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Kinect for Xbox 360 review

Do you smell that? It’s the sweet smell of success. Or — well, something. Windows Phone 7 devices aren’t even available to the public yet, but it’s looking like Microsoft may replicate Apple’s iPhone success in at least one important area: fart apps.

Even though the phones aren’t going to launch for a few more weeks, the app store is up and running within Microsoft’s Zune software. And those reviewers and/or employees with devices are downloading and using the first batch of must-have apps. The top-selling app? Farting Dino.

Yep.

I don’t know what’s better: the fact that an app named Farting Dino is the first hit for Windows Phone 7, or that it’s a paid app, and people are actually paying for it. iPhone users have long been in love with fart apps, but almost all of them have been free. Perhaps Windows Phone 7 really is going to change the space.

It’s interesting that even though Apple has since decided that fart apps are no longer kosher, Microsoft has said they’ll be fine with them. That commitment is clearly going to be put to the test early.

[image: flickr/artificialignorance] [via twitter/ai]

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The Gas Has Been Passed From iPhone To Windows Phone 7: Fart App Tops…

Now that we’ve inundated you with a battery of posts on Microsoft’s new mobile operating system, it’s time for a time out and a gut check. In vintage Siskel and Ebert fashion, we asked our reporters to give us their final verdict on Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 operating system via TCTV.

Spoiler Alert: While no one was wildly optimistic on Microsoft’s chances, many of our reporters saw a glimmer of fight in this OS. However, as always, as MobileCrunch’s Greg Kumparak says, buyer “be wary.”

For more rapid fire assessments check out “The Windows Phone 7 Launch: Our Take.”

Post from: Technology News Videos And Resources

TCTV Roundup: The Final (Video) Verdict On Windows Phone 7

About two and a half years ago after “losing” (but really winning, because it was forced open) the FCC’s 700Mhz spectrum auction, Google turned its sights to a new goal: the opening of the so-called “white space”. White space is the name given to the vacant airwaves between television channels, airwaves which are increasingly open as people move to cable and other methods of getting television. These airwaves have the potential to carry wireless data at speeds and distances that would make today’s WiFi seem antiquated. That’s why the white space has earned the nickname “WiFi 2.0″ or “WiFi on steroids”. And after an FCC vote today, it’s finally a go.

The FCC voted unanimously (5-0) to adopt rules for using the white space. This means that companies like Google can start getting to work coming up with ways on how they want to use them. Of course, you can bet they’ve already been thinking about that for the past two and a half years, and probably longer. So now it’s time to execute.

This is exciting for a few reasons, but the biggest is that it gives technology companies a way to innovate outside of the realm of wireless carriers or broadband providers — all of which use their quasi-monopolistic control over their industries to inhibit innovation in order to make money. In the Reuters piece about the white space vote, they note that not only is Google interested in using the space, but Microsoft, HP, Motorola, and even Sprint are as well.

Obviously, even white space WiFi won’t have the range that wireless carriers currently offer. But imagine a future where white space WiFi blankets cities and people can use WiFi phones instead of the the ones tied to carriers. Maybe I’m dreaming here, but please don’t wake me up, at least for a few minutes.

Shockingly, it doesn’t seem to be the carriers that are the ones most opposed to this opening (though some undoubtedly don’t like the idea). Instead, it’s the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), which are afraid that the new use of the spectrum will interfere with existing TV and wireless radio signals. They had previously sued the FCC over this, but they’re apparently reviewing what to do after today’s ruling.

[photo: flickr/Ed Schpuil]

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“WiFi On Steroids” Is A Go. Now Google (Or Someone) Just Has To…

Josh Kopelman of First Round Capital was supposed to be my guest on “Ask A VC” this week, but called me this morning to cancel because his attorneys pointed out that doing press interviews while raising a new fund ran afoul of Securities & Exchange Commission rules. Oops. Filling in is Mike Hirshland- or “VC Mike” as he’s called.

Regular readers know the drill by now: Email your questions to AskaVC(at)techcrunch(dot)com. You can leave them in the comments, too, but I’ll prioritize the ones emailed, because they don’t give the guest time to prepare an answer. I purposely invite guests who are leaders in the field and are blunt. So don’t be shy. With a lot of developments in the world of venture capital this week, there should be plenty of questions out there.

If you don’t know Hirshland here are some facts, that may prompt more questions:

1. He is a partner at Polaris Ventures in Boston, but spends almost all his time in the Valley because he says that’s where the best consumer Web companies are.
2. He founded Dogpatch Labs– a bicoastal hang-out spot in San Francisco and New York to help give him a leg up on deal flow in this ultra-competitive world.
3. His investments include Automatic (aka WordPress), ThingLabs (aka Brizzly) and Quantcast.
4. Before Polaris he worked for the Senate Judiciary Committee that investigated Microsoft’s antitrust issues.
5. He’s sort of an over-grown frat boy. I say that with love. You’ll see what I mean Friday when the show runs.

Send your questions now! We’re taping early this week.

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“Ask A VC” Guest Swap: Kopelman Out; Hirshland In

The world of media distribution is a bad place to be right now. What with major labels all wanting everything from everybody, people like Apple and Microsoft vying for exclusive content, and a ton of different laws governing all this international trade stuff, I’m surprised anybody gets anything done at all. But Microsoft has put in the work and they’re rolling out their Zune music and video services to a bunch of Europe. International reader, you may be on the list.

Of course, pricing and availability for certain programs and features differs from country to country, because a simple worldwide distribution platform is a fairy tale we tell our children, or a scary tale music execs tell theirs. There are variations.

Continue reading this story…

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Zune Expands Media Services In Many, Many Countries

Microsoft has had its time in the sun, kicking things off here at the 2010 Tokyo Game Show. Now it's Sony's turn with its press conference. This is a somewhat smaller affair and, unlike Microsoft's, is being conducted entirely in Japanese -- with no translation provided. We're relying heavily on Ittousai, our international man of mystery, to tell us what's going on, and then we'll do our best to tell you what's going on. Sound like fun? It sure does, so come along and click on through.

Continue reading Live from Sony's TGS 2010 press conference

Live from Sony's TGS 2010 press conference originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 16 Sep 2010 00:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Live from Sony’s TGS 2010 press conference

comScore has released its July video metrix stats today, with the number of U.S. users watching online video content rising slightly to 178 million viewers compared to 177 million total viewers in June. In July, each viewer watched an an average of 14.7 hours of online video. And 84.9 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video.

Unsurprisingly, Google Sites, whose viewership is driven primarily by video viewing at YouTube ranked as the top online video content property with 143.2 million unique viewers (compared to 144.5 million in June, followed by Yahoo Sites with 55.1 million viewers (compared to 44.9 million viewers in June). But the real news in the release is in Facebook’s growth as a video destination. Facebook.com jumped one position to capture the third spot with 46.6 million viewers, compared to 43 million viewers in June.

Google Sites had the highest number of overall viewing sessions with 1.9 billion and average time spent per viewer at 283 minutes, or 4.7 hours. Hulu also had high viewer engagement with an average of 158 minutes (or 2.6 hours) per viewer.

comScore also reported video ad metrics, a feature the company launched last month. Americans viewed nearly 3.6 billion video ads in July, with Hulu generating the highest number of video ad impressions at 783 million. Tremor Media Video Network ranked second overall (and highest among video ad networks) with 452 million ad views, followed by BrightRoll Video Network (248 million) and Microsoft Sites (232 million).

Google sites came in behind Microsoft with 219 million impressions but it’s important to note that this metric does not include banner ads, and other types of advertising used on YouTube. Video ads reached 27 percent of the total U.S. population an average of 44.5 times during the month.

The top video ad networks in terms of their potential reach of the total U.S. population were: ScanScout Network at 40.5 percent, BrightRoll Video Network at 39.4 percent, and Break Media Network at 38.7 percent. Video ads accounted for 9.8 percent of all videos viewed.

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comScore: Facebook Now The Third Largest Video Site In The U.S.

Some cried and some cheered when Microsoft revealed that handset manufacturers couldn't reskin Windows Phone 7 devices wholesale. But as it turns out, at least one major OEM is still banking on software to help differentiate its phones. HTC's Drew Bamford told Forbes that Sense UI will still appear in the company's Windows Phone 7 creations, and believes it will live on in Android 3.0 (Gingerbread) as well. "Microsoft has taken firmer control of the core experience," acknowledged Bamford, who added that Sense wouldn't be fully integrated into WP7 phones, but that HTC would "augment" the Microsoft experience with as-yet-undisclosed functionality of its own. As long as it doesn't eat up too much memory and processor time, right?

HTC Sense coming to Windows Phone 7, after all originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 24 Jul 2010 22:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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HTC Sense coming to Windows Phone 7, after all

Time Magazine Editor Josh Quittner and AOL CEO Tim Armstrong took the stage on Friday afternoon at the Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference in Aspen. Most of the interview was centered on AOL’s content strategies.

But what I really wanted to know about was what AOL’s plans were around search. Their long term Google deal expires in December. And from what we hear both Microsoft and Google are gunning for AOL’s search traffic.

Why? AOL is the fourth largest U.S. search engine, but they have just 2.5% market share.

If Microsoft could add AOL’s searches, though, they’d be, with Yahoo’s share, above 30%. Search volume brings more advertisers, and more advertisers means a more robust bidding system. Microsoft needs that 2.5%.

But there’s more. AOL visitors tend to click on search ads at more than twice the rate that people click on ads on Google’s search engine. So that 2.5% market share is really more like 6% of total search advertising market share.

Google has paid AOL more than $600 million/year for search over the last several years. With the appropriate amount of negotiating leverage, that number could increase dramatically.

Armstrong says there are more than two companies competing for their search traffic, which presumably means Yahoo has somehow gotten itself into the mix. But the only real competition, says our sources (and common sense), is Microsoft and Google.

Both companies want the deal. The bids are getting high enough that one person familiar with the negotiations suggested (jokingly, I think) that it may be cheaper just to buy AOL outright – their current market cap is just $2.25 billion.

Lots of people are keeping an eye on the ongoing MySpace search negotiations. But the MySpace deal will be a pittance compared to what AOL brings in. We expect a deal to be done by September, based on information from sources.

Post from: Technology News Videos And Resources

Big Money: AOL’s Beauty Pageant With Google, Microsoft For New…

You had to know those freebie WP7 devices for Microsoft employees would come with a few strings attached. We imagined the Redmond brain trust was aiming for some word-of-mouth popularization along with a boost in team morale and proactivity, but as it turns out, things are a little more codified than that. TechFlash has what it claims to be the internal memo announcing the free Windows Phone 7 handsets -- from mobile chief Andy Lees, who hasn't been having the best of times lately -- which sets out Redmond's expectation that employees should "evangelize" the product at every opportunity, while also setting aside some spare time before launch to develop apps. The idea, clearly, is to harness Microsoft's massive talent pool to try and get a headstart on populating the Marketplace with compelling content; we're just not too sure the "spare time" bit is going to go over quite as well as the "free smartphone" part. Either way, you'll find the full email from Andy at the source below.

[Thanks, Mint]

Microsoft wants employees to code Windows Phone 7 apps 'in their spare time' originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 23 Jul 2010 03:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Microsoft wants employees to code Windows Phone 7 apps ‘in their spare…

In season 1 of AMC’s hit show Mad Men, Rachel Menken comes to the advertising firm Sterling Cooper because she wants to give her department store, Menken’s, a makeover, so to speak. She wants to transform it from a successful department store into an elite one. “What kind of people do you want [coming into your store]?,” Creative Director Don Draper asks Menken. “I want your kind of people Mr. Draper. People who don’t care about coupons — whether or not they can afford it. People who come into the store because it is expensive,” Menken replies.

Based on what we’re hearing, HP has been having similarly themed meetings in recent months. They want to transform themselves — from HP, the successful tech juggernaut, into Apple, the sexy one.

When you think of HP, what do you think of? For most consumers it’s either printers and sort of crappy, cheap computers that you get at Best Buy. But that’s not what HP aspires to be anymore, sources familiar with HP’s thinking are telling us. They want to be Apple. They want be the makers of high-quality consumer gadgets all connected by way of a digital ecosystem. An ecosystem they own and operate. One tied together by webOS.

While it should hardly be surprising to hear that any company wants to be Apple given that company’s recent success, HP is one of a very few — and actually maybe the only company with the required assets to potentially pull off such a makeover. Of course, that doesn’t mean they’ll be able to — but it’s possible. And they know that, and that’s exactly what their strategy is going forward, apparently.

On the face of it, it may not seem to make a lot of sense. After all, HP makes nearly double the revenue that Apple does each quarter. But despite this, it’s Apple that actually makes more profit. And it’s Apple that has more than double the market cap of HP. In the eyes of investors, Apple is the up-and-coming rockstar, HP is the aging one. And they’re closely tied to their counterpart, Microsoft, who is also seen as aging.

And that’s what HP is trying to break away from.

WebOS is the key to all of this. It’s the software layer that HP’s hardware has been lacking — forcing them to go with Microsoft instead. But the Palm acquisition in April changed all of that. From the moment that happened, HP has made no secret that the reason for the deal was to “double-down” on webOS.

Just listen to what HP executive Todd Bradley had to say today at the Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference in Aspen, CO. “I think you’ll see us with a family of slate products, clearly Microsoft for the enterprise, and a webOS product,” Bradley said. “Our focus is working with still our largest software partner, Microsoft, to create a tablet, a slate, for the enterprise business,” he continued. What he’s doing there is carefully positioning HP’s relationship with Microsoft on new products going forward as being focused on the enterprise side of things. Previously, it was stated HP would do a Windows-powered slate for consumers. That is no longer the case. That tablet will be built to run webOS.

Does that mean HP is going to ditch Windows altogether anytime soon? Of course not. As the largest maker of PCs, HP is Microsoft’s largest customer. But for the new products HP is planning, it’s going to be all webOS. And on the desktop side of things, they’re working on webOS-syncing software that will run on Windows (and Macs), we hear. So again, they’re basically trying to recreate the ecosystem that Apple has.

HP executive Jon Rubinstein (the CEO of Palm) also confirmed at the same event today that webOS 2.0 is coming later this year. This new version is likely to be the first one that will start to tie all of these HP products together.

Speaking of Rubinstein, his pedigree here can’t be overlooked. He was the executive at Apple in charge of the iPod until he left in 2006. He’s the one who oversaw the framework for the ecosystem Apple has in place today. There was some talk leading up to the Palm acquisition if Rubinstein would stay or go — he’s apparently onboard with this new “let’s turn HP into Apple” idea. That shouldn’t be surprising given that this was the basic strategy at Palm with the Pre.

But Palm failed simply because they didn’t have the resources to do what they wanted to do (challenge Apple’s iPhone directly). HP does — and then some. And while HP is not a player in the mobile space right now, they plan to be once again with webOS.

From what we’re hearing, HP wants to create a seamless experience for all of their hardware. That’s PCs to notebooks to netbooks to tablets to mobile phones to printers. And they want to do so with a much more controlled product line than they’ve previously had. They want to move towards more premium products, ones with higher margins. That will make the profits go up, just as it has with Apple.

Of course, whether or not HP can make any of this happen is a pretty big “if.” One obvious problem with them being Apple is that they don’t have their own retail stores, like Apple does. HPs are sold everywhere from Best Buy to Costco, but those stores tend to attract people looking for bargains. And those that aren’t, buy Macs there.

Second, HP’s strategy in mobile phones will meet resistance not only from the iPhone, but from Google’s Android phones. But Google appears to be positioning Android as the sort-of Windows of the smartphone era. That is, they’re all about getting their software as widely distributed as possible. Like Microsoft with PCs, Google don’t make their own hardware for Android (though they had a hand in designing the Nexus One, which is all but dead now). HP would be making its own hardware to run webOS. Again, like Apple.

Android also poses a potential threat in the tablet field. But again, Google won’t be making this hardware. As I said at the beginning, because HP is a hardware maker that just happened to purchase a great piece of software in webOS, they have a shot at pulling off what Apple has. Whereas most other rivals, even Google, cannot. Android may be ubiquitous by this time next year, but the experience won’t be as seamless as it is within Apple’s ecosystem. And, HP hopes, their ecosystem. As Apple has proven, people are willing to pay a premium for that.

This is HP’s big bet on the future. They’re betting on the Apple way. And that’s the right way for them to bet because they’re a hardware company. With a shift towards mobile starting to take place, as well as new products like tablets starting to rise, HP seems smart to get ahead of this trend. They’re not Microsoft or Google where profits are in licenses and advertising, respectively. With the webOS buy, they’re much closer to Apple. The profits there are in premium products, buoyed by the seamless ecosystem.

That’s where HP is heading.

[images: AMC]

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HP Wants To Become Apple. WebOS Is The Key

Microsoft has just reported its earnings for Q4 2010 (their fiscal calendar is a bit odd). Given Apple’s blockbuster quarter announced on Tuesday, there was a lot of talk that Apple would surpass Microsoft in revenue for the first time in recent history. That hasn’t happened. Instead, Microsoft had its best Q4 ever with $16.04 billion in revenue (Apple had $15.7 billion in revenue last quarter).

Microsoft easily beat Wall Street estimates that they would see about $15.3 billion in revenues. Microsoft largely credits strong sales within enterprise of Windows 7 and Office 2010. Net income was also strong at $4.52 billion. And earnings per share were at $0.51. Both of those beat Wall Street estimates as well.

Microsoft says it has sold over 175 million Windows 7 licenses to date so far. They also tout the fact that Bing has achieved its 13th straight month of market share gain.

Since this was Microsoft’s fiscal Q4, they reported revenue of $62.48 billion for the year — a 7 percent increase from the 2009 fiscal year. Operating income, net income, and earnings per share were all up significantly higher at 18 percent, 29 percent, and 30 percent, respectively. The 29 percent jump in net income (up to $18.76 billion) is particularly impressive.

Investors, meanwhile, are giving Microsoft’s earnings more of a “meh.” So far in after-hours trading, the stock is down two cents (.08 percent). During the day today, the stock rose almost 3 percent ahead of earnings.

While some were predicting Microsoft revenues to fall behind Apple’s (though, for the record, I wasn’t), there was never a question that Microsoft would retain a big lead in income. As they’re primarily a software and enterprise company, Microsoft’s margins remain massive. Their $4.52 billion in net income easily beat Apple’s $3.25 billion.

That being said, it seems quite likely that next quarter Apple will surpass Microsoft in revenue. Assuming that iPhone 4 sales are huge and that the iPad continues to grow, Apple’s momentum in revenue is simply too great for Microsoft to keep up with. Apple may or may not hit $20 billion in revenues next quarter (they’re projecting $18 billion, but they always low-ball that number so they can beat it).

This past May, much was made of Apple passing Microsoft in market cap for the first time — giving Apple the title of most valuable tech company. That distinction is more ceremonial than anything else, however. But when Apple passes Microsoft in revenue, that will be significant. As I said, it will be more difficult for Apple to catch Microsoft in income because of Microsoft’s software margins (whereas Apple primarily makes money on hardware, which offer smaller margins, even though Apple’s are the best in the business). But the gap is closing there as well.

Post from: Technology News Videos And Resources

Microsoft’s Record Q4 Earnings Keeps Revenue Ahead Of Apple……

Ever sent or received an email that was just screaming to be misunderstood?

There’s a good chance you have, and if not it will happen some day – just trust me on that one. Unless …

Canadian startup Lymbix thinks it can help you avoid situations that come out of misinterpreted textual communication with the launch of a new service called ToneCheck.

Think of it as an emotional spell-check application.

Available today for Microsoft Outlook, with support for more desktop and Web-based email clients slated for the future, ToneCheck is supposedly capable of identifying the emotional definition of words and phrases in order to help end users improve the clarity of their communication.

The application gauges words and phrases against 8 levels of connotative feeling, enabling end users to make real-time corrections and adjust the overall tone of messages using a simple menu system. Text interpretation problems: solved. Provided you use Outlook, of course.

Any readers who still do, please be so kind to give ToneCheck a whirl and tell us if it sucks rocks stinks is worth its salt. At the very least, their graphics are amusing:

Post from: Technology News Videos And Resources

ToneCheck Checks Your Tone Like A Spell Checker Checks Your Spelling

Discovery engine startup StumbleUpon today announced it has hired two new directors to expand its sales and partnership teams, both previous Google employees.

Anthony Napolitano, a former key member of the sales teams for several of Google’s products, including TV Ads, Analytics, Checkout and AdWords, will be joining the company as Director of Sales.

Oliver Hsiang, until recently manager of strategic partner development at Google and former product manager at Yahoo, Microsoft and Chipshot, is StumbleUpon’s new Director of Strategic Partnerships.

In a press release, StumbleUpon founder and CEO Garrett Camp boasts about the double steal from Google and says the company has hired 15 new team members in the last three months alone.

Looks like StumbleUpon is faring well after about a year after its spin-off from eBay – the ‘social search engine’ company recently also reached 10 million registered users.

Post from: Technology News Videos And Resources

StumbleUpon Poaches A Pair Of Googlers To Fill Director Roles

It’s probably not a coincidence that Google is making a significant upgrade to Docs the same week that Microsoft rolls out Office 2010 to the public. Not to be left out, the search giant has modified sharing, visibility and the interface for Google Docs, which is also part of its Office 2010-competitor, Google Apps.

Google is now giving users more clear cut options for sharing documents: private; anyone with a link; or public on the web. All documents start out as private, with the creator as the sole administrator. You can then share your document by setting it as “Anyone with the link,” which allows anyone who knows the web address or URL of that doc to view it. You can set your document as ‘public on the web,’ which allows anyone to find the document on the web. Google says that Public docs are automatically indexed by search engines so they may appear in search results.

Google is also enhancing the visibility options for docs, making it fairly clear to the administrator which document is set to private, semi-private or public. The options now appear next to every doc title and in the docs list. You can also see the full list of editors and viewers by clicking on the ‘visibility option’ next to the doc’s title or on the Share button. And Google has improved the sharing interface and allows you to reset any link you’ve shared, so that you can move a document back to private even if you’ve shared the document.

It’s probably wise that Google has improved its sharing options, considering that Microsoft is now attacking Google in the cloud with the web-version of Office 2010. It should be interesting to see if the use of Word will gain traction in the cloud as Office 2010 is rolled out more widely.

Post from: Technology News Videos And Resources

In The Midst Of Microsoft’s Office 2010 Launch, Google Upgrades…

Of the rumored devices we've been looking forward to getting official at E3 this year, two of the biggest come from Microsoft -- both of which, sadly, seem to have escaped from their bag a little early. First is Kinect, the re-naming of "Project Natal," and now it's looking like the rumored Xbox 360 Slim has been leaked early as well. An Italian site, Console Tribe, ran an ad (embedded after the break) showing the above rather more angular looking console that's definitely an Xbox 360, but definitely not a current model. It mentions that this model is compatible with the Kinect and also invites you to "live today." We're not thinking this model was not supposed to go live until tomorrow, but seizing an extra day doesn't sound so bad for us.

Continue reading Xbox 360 Slim outed by Italian ad?

Xbox 360 Slim outed by Italian ad? originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 13 Jun 2010 20:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Xbox 360 Slim outed by Italian ad?

Audience measurement firm comScore has released its May 2010 U.S. Search Data report, and it shows continued market share gains for Yahoo and Microsoft.

Yahoo and Bing/MSN each added approximately 60 bps and 30 bps to 18.3% and 12.1%, respectively. Google is down, claims comScore, declining approximately 70 bps for the second consecutive month to 63.7%.

But that’s not the whole story, and investors need to caution when interpreting the data as presented by comScore, say analysts.

Gleacher & Company’s Broadpoint.AmTech puts it this way:

While these numbers are correct on an apples-to-apples basis (in the sense that certain types of searches – e.g. contextual shortcuts and slide-shows – are being counted consistently across properties), the trending data for which we think comScore is most useful shows a different picture.

J.P. Morgan has this to say about the reported numbers:

User interface changes continue to cloud the picture. Google, Yahoo! and MSN all made notable changes in April and May, according to comScore. As such, numbers may not be directly comparable to past months.
…
We think more months of data under the new methodology could clarify matters.

We’ve detailed how Yahoo has boosted its search market share with these ‘tricks’ last month.

When adjusted, backing out Yahoo and Bing/MSN’s use of contextual shortcuts and image slide-shows from both May and April, Broadpoint.AmTech estimates that Yahoo’s share actually declined roughly 30 bps month over month in May to 16.6%, while Microsoft Sites’ share was flat at approximately 10.8%.

Google, after a small data collection adjustment to the April data (namely a change in how Google handles searches with typos), appears to have gained roughly 30 bps of share in May to 66.4%, says Broadpoint.AmTech. However, Google’s domestic core search market share was 63.7% in May, down slightly from 64.4% in April, J.P. Morgan claims.

According to the reported data, total US core search volume increased 11.2% year over year in May, an acceleration from 5.3% growth in April, adds J.P. Morgan. However, adjusting for the impact of user interface changes, the firm estimates search volume was up roughly 7%.

Post from: Technology News Videos And Resources

comScore Says Bing And Yahoo Gained Market Share In May. Or Have They?

OExchange, a simple specification for URL-based content sharing on the Web, was introduced today by a number of online service providers and social networks. The open link-sharing protocol has gained support from Google, Microsoft, LinkedIn, Digg, Instapaper, StumbleUpon, Clearspring Technologies and a handful more.

So what’s it all about?

OExchange essentially establishes a common way for services like Posterous and Google Buzz to receive content. The protocol defines how third-party tools, e.g. Clearspring’s bookmarking and sharing service AddThis, can dynamically discover and share content to these services, as well as how sharing tools can read and set a user’s sharing preferences.

A number of these services, like Google Buzz and Instapaper, have already implemented the protocol, which together with others such as OpenID and OAuth intends to making sharing content on the Web completely open. OExchange is licensed under the Open Web Foundation Agreement – you can get the specs here.

Chris Messina, Open Web Advocate at Google, has this to say about the new protocol:

“The key to increasing the amount and quality of sharing online is smoothing out the user interaction. By simplifying the underlying mechanism for cross-site sharing with OExchange, people can focus on what they’re sharing, rather than how.”

Do you agree that there’s a need for an open URL sharing protocol (which companies like Twitter and Facebook seem to doubt, since they’re not supporting it)?

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Open URL Sharing Protocol OExchange Gets Support From Google,…

Back in the days before Gmail, webmail on the Internet was really, really bad. Inboxes were limited to 10 or 20 megabytes, interfaces were slow and ugly, and the experience simply didn’t come close to matching what most desktop clients offered. This is how I remember Hotmail. I hated it. In fact, since signing up for Gmail in 2004, the only times I’ve checked out Microsoft’s webmail client were immediately after big launches, at which point I would reactivate my account, give it a quick run through, and promptly decide that it still wasn’t very good. So when I say that the new version of Hotmail that’s launching this summer has me excited, that’s saying something.

This morning, Microsoft showcased this new version of Hotmail to a room full of press at its offices in San Francisco. It’s fast, slick, and comes with a set of new features for managing large amounts of email that make it a much better rival to Gmail. Does it look like a revolution? Not really. But it does incorporate some very nice features — things that seem quite obvious once you seem them in action, but aren’t already available elsewhere. And more importantly, they’re features that regular people will actually use.

First, the stuff that Hotmail is really just playing catchup with. The first thing you’ll notice is that threaded conversations are now offered, and it looks like they’re the default (though you can turn them off). The search box now features auto complete. You can flag messages (I can’t believe this wasn’t available before). There’s better spam protection. Gmail users should stop yawning, because there’s plenty of other good stuff.

Perhaps the most important suite of features, at least to people who commonly experience inbox overload, are all the new filtering and message management tools the new Hotmail comes with. My favorite is called ‘Sweep’. If you’ve subscribed to a newsletter but decide you don’t want to filling up your inbox any more, you can hit activate this option to move every message you receive from that sender to a folder other than your mail inbox. Other webmail clients can do this too, but the flow for this looks easier than, say, making a filter in Gmail.

Another feature, called Hotmail Highlights, breaks out your messages according to where they’re coming from. One section shows you at a glance whether you’ve received any messages from people in your address book. Another shows you any messages you have from social networks like Facebook. On the left hand side of the screen, you’ll see a few options under the label “Quick View”. One of these is for photos — click it, and you’ll see all the messages in your inbox that have either image attachments or links to photo albums on sites like Flickr. There’s a similar option for Documents, as well as one that lets you immediately find shipping updates.

The other big features involve reading and composing messages. When you receive a message that has either photo attachments or links to an online photo album, Hotmail will use those photos to build a slick slideshow (it uses Silverlight). The service is even better for sending photos. Most email services aren’t great for sending photos, because they have a limit of 10-20 megabytes per message (and you also have to worry about whether the recipient’s service will allow for messages that large). Hotmail works around this by automatically uploading your images to Microsoft’s cloud storage service SkyDrive, which is free up to 25 GB. The resulting message looks great — Hotmail builds a photo album that should be visible in any mail client that supports rich formatting, and it doesn’t kill anyone’s inbox storage.

Finally there’s Hotmail’s integration with Microsoft’s online version of Office. When you receive a document in Hotmail, you have the option to view and edit it using the online versions of Office, and then save and send any changes back to the original sender. These online apps have strong integration with the desktop versions of Office 2010, but you don’t need the desktop apps in order to use the online versions for free. This is of course Microsoft’s answer to Google Docs, which is itself integrated into Gmail, and it looks well done (I expect document fidelity will be better for Microsoft, which may be a big sticking point).

I should point out that Yahoo Mail offers some of these features already (like the ability to break out messages that were sent by your contacts). And while Gmail doesn’t offer some of these features as part of its default set, you can reproduce some of them using filters. Hotmail doesn’t necessarily need to outdo its competitors in every respect — it’s still the largest email provider worldwide, with 360 million active accounts. But Gmail is growing fastest, and Microsoft is looking to curb that growth.  This new launch probably  isn’t going to spark any kind of mass migration away from Google’s services, it may well draw a few more former AOL users who are now looking for a new webmail provider.

Microsoft expects to ship the new Hotmail in mid-summer.

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Meet The New Hotmail: Sleeker & Faster, With Some Powerful Weapons…

Internet Explorer market share falls below 60 percent for first time, according to NetApplications originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 03 May 2010 19:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Internet Explorer market share falls below 60 percent for first time,…

The online advertising industry saw growth accelerate in the first quarter, with the combined advertising revenues of the four largest players (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and AOL) jumping almost 15 percent to $8.8 billion. This compares to 10 percent annual growth in the fourth quarter, and negative growth the first two quarters of last year (aka, the Great Advertising Recession of 2009).

Overall growth would have been even stronger if AOL didn’t have such a rough quarter. It was the only one of the four companies to show a decline in advertising revenues, down 19 percent. Google’s ad revenue was up 21.5 percent, Microsoft’s was up 8.8 percent, and Yahoo’s was up 3 percent (although the display portion was up 20 percent). As a result of AOL’s poor showing, the combined $8.8 billion total was down 2.6 percent from the fourth quarter’s $9 billion

I keep track of these numbers every quarter for these four companies, which turns out to be a good proxy for overall online advertising revenues since they represent a majority of the industry’s revenues. The numbers represent global advertising revenues, and include network revenues paid to affiliates through AdSense and Yahoo’s ad network. Google’s licensing revenues for Google Enterprise Apps have been stripped out. For Microsoft and AOL, I include only the advertising portions of their online revenues as reported in their quarterly earnings statements.

Below is a table with all the numbers:

Online Advertising Revenues (in millions)

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Online Advertising Revenues Jump Almost 15 Percent In First Quarter

Nokia this morning announced that it has acquired MetaCarta, a privately-owned geographic intelligence company, for an undisclosed sum. Nokia says it will use MetaCarta’s technology in the area of local search and other services.

MetaCarta was founded in 2001, is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and employs over 30 people.

MetaCarta’s solutions enable companies to bridge the gap between content and maps. Its products fall into four major categories: the MetaCarta Platform, Geographic Data Modules, GeoWeb Applications, and Hosted Content Collections.

To see an example of what MetaCarta’s technology is capable of, see NewsMap, a hosted map mashup / extension that enables Web publishers to dynamically display maps that show the places mentioned in their news articles. Or check out its GeoSearch News service, which aggregates news from thousands of sources and displays a map of the locations mentioned in stories.

MetaCarta also has a partnership with Microsoft in place to provide its Geographic Search and Referencing Platform to deliver map-based local news within the Microsoft Vine service.

For Nokia, this is the second small acquisition in two weeks – it recently picked up mobile Web browser company Novarra. Its purchase of MetaCarta is another testament to the Finnish mobile giant’s focus on location and navigation-based services for its wide range of handsets that find their way into the hands of customers all over the globe.

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Nokia Buys Geographic Search Technology Company MetaCarta

Wi-LAN, a Canadian company founded in 1992 to commercialize wireless networking technology, a couple of years ago decided to refocus its business on “developing, protecting and monetizing patented inventions” when it was facing a fast-approaching bankruptcy.

According to its website, its portfolio today includes more than 800 patented inventions, either developed in-house or acquired or licensed from third parties.

This morning, Wi-LAN announced that it is suing just about every mobile phone and laptop maker in the world in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, alleging that these companies are infringing Wi-LAN’s U.S. Patent No. 5,515,369 by making and/or selling various products enabled with Bluetooth technology.

The list of companies that Wi-LAN is targeting is long, but just to give you an idea: it includes corporations like Apple, Sony, Toshiba, Dell, LG, Intel, Texas Instruments, Acer and Motorola.

Wi-LAN will be represented in this action by law firm McKool Smith, the same firm that got VirnetX a $105.75 million patent infringement verdict in its lawsuit against Microsoft a couple of weeks ago. It’s also the same firm that in May 2009 helped i4i win a $200 million lawsuit against Microsoft (the awards were later lifted to $290 million after review).

We’re trying to obtain more details about the case, but here’s the summary description of the patent, which is titled “Method for frequency sharing and frequency punchout in frequency hopping communications network”, for starters:

In a wireless packet communication system having a plurality of nodes, each having a transmitter and a receiver, the receiver at each node is assigned a seed value and is provided with a channel punchout mask. A node uses its seed value and punchout mask to generate a specific randomly ordered channel hopping band plan on which to receive signals. A node transmits its seed value and punchout mask to target nodes with which it wants to establish communication links, and those target nodes each use the seed value and punchout mask to generate the randomly ordered channel hopping band plan for that node. Subsequently, when one of the target nodes wish to transmit to the node, the target node changes frequency to the frequency of the node according to that node’s band plan.

Click here for the entire document (PDF).

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Wi-LAN Files Patent Lawsuit Against Just About Every Portable Device…

Let's just be nice and feign surprise, okay? Good. With that out of the way, Microsoft has announced a 64GB version of Zune HD, due out April 12th via the Zune online store (and later via other retailers) with a handful of color options and a strapping $349.99 price tag. Not to be outdone, the 16GB and 32GB will each receive a $20 cut on the MSRP, to $200 and $270, respectively -- whatever Amazon and Newegg slash beyond that is up to them. It seems "as soon as possible" is the motto for when the price drop is taking place, so if your favorite online / brick-and-mortar retailer isn't yet honoring the extra Andrew Jackson in your pocket, have patience. So now we're left with a v4.5 firmware release date as the remaining piece in this puzzle, but Microsoft promises to solve that riddle wrapped in an enigma "in the coming days." Right. Press release after the break.

Continue reading 64GB Zune HD launching April 12th for $350, current models reduced $20

64GB Zune HD launching April 12th for $350, current models reduced $20 originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 31 Mar 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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64GB Zune HD launching April 12th for $350, current models reduced $20

AOL has recruited a few celebrity chefs and foodies; including Curtis Stone, Food & Wine’s Gail Simmons, and Marcus Samuelsson; and the famed Culinary Institute of America to launch food website KitchenDaily. Similar to Epicurious, AllRecipes, or FoodNetwork.com, KitchenDaily features a recipe database of meals that have been tested by top chefs, food magazine and cookbook publishers.

AOL has recruited a number of talent from Conde Nast’s recently shuttered Gourmet Magazine. Former Gourmet Editor Cheryl Brown is the editor-in-chief with a number of former Gourmet writers named as contributors. Epicurious’ Megan Steintrager will be the senior editor of the site.

In addition to recipes, KitchenDaily will feature a meal-planner tool, cooking lessons, cookbook reviews, and and more than 250 instructional videos created by celebrity chefs and industry insiders. AOL already has a food blog called Slashfood though its unclear how the two sites will be integrated.

The recipe site space is crowded, with a number of worthy competitors vying for traffic. And even Microsoft’s Bing launched its own recipe search product. But its seems that KitchenDaily aims to be part magazine, part recipe site, so it may be able to differentiate itself and possibly attract many former Gourmet readers. We know that AOL CEO Tim Armstrong is bullish on niche content so the launch of this site fits into the company’s strategy nicely.

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AOL Partners With Celebrity Chefs To Launch Recipe And Foodie Site…

Microsoft loses second Word patent appeal, on the hook for $240 million in damages originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 08:54:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Microsoft loses second Word patent appeal, on the hook for $240…

Editor’s note: This guest post is written by Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of salesforce.com. In it, he responds to critics of his last guest post arguing that enterprise software should be more like Facebook.

Two weeks ago on TechCrunch I posted “The Facebook Imperative,” which posed a simple question, “Why isn’t all enterprise software like Facebook?” It was the next iteration of the question I asked in 1999 that spawned salesforce.com, “Why isn’t all enterprise software like Amazon.com.” If you have read my book, Behind The Cloud, you are well aware how that one question launched a company, and a movement. Its been an exciting decade. But the real excitement is just starting.

Frankly, I’ve been amazed by the huge amount of responses, tweets, and comments (aka “the ruckus across the blogoshere,” as Joe McKendrick calls it). It only strengthens my conviction that we are about to see the greatest revolution in enterprise software, ever. Well, really, the most exciting revolution in computing, ever. It will create more value for users, customers, and vendors by an order of magnitude over what we saw in the last wave. And, it’s really starting to happen right now. It is realtime. It is social. It is mobile. And, it is about time. Literally, it is about productivity.

I’m energized by the excitement I see for a new generation of collaboration software in the enterprise to replace antiquated Microsoft Sharepoint servers and IBM’s Lotus Notes. I’ve enjoyed seeing my observation—that Lotus Notes was conceived before Mark Zuckerberg—reverberate around the web. But, the reality is the Facebook Imperative contained more than a funny line. It hit a nerve. We are all responding—debating—a question that is an imperative because we all need to take software to a new level, and now is the time. Microsoft and IBM have maintained the status quo on enterprise collaboration software too long, and it’s time for a change.

There are an overwhelming number of you who agree that its time to transform the business conversation the same way Facebook has changed the consumer conversation. We are betting salesforce.com’s future on it. Approximately 40% of companies are already deploying or planning to deploy a social computing platform, a number that’s expected to rise, says Irwin Lazar of Nemeretes Research. Not everyone agrees, mostly the vendors that are milking their cash cows. But, make no mistake about it, this generation of social platforms is very different than the last.

Charles Zedlewski emerged from a long blogging hiatus to argue that Facebook is designed for entertainment—not productivity. Well, that’s not surprising given that he works for SAP, one of the companies I have previously referred to as “innovationless”—in my view they remain the Anti-Cloud. Their actions speak for themselves. Still, I’m astounded that more enterprises haven’t figured out how to tap into the real collaborative power of Facebook and Twitter, and the new social models that they have pioneered.

I consider Facebook and Twitter—and the ability to tap into my network of friends and followers—one the most productive ways I can start my day. Using these new Internet phenoms, I’ve tested new ad campaigns and elicited great customer responses, promoted my book to a large audience of people who cared, and with the help of my network, even named new products—all before I sat down for breakfast. I’m not alone; ask Vinnie Mirchandani for a sneak preview of his new book and read how Starbucks, Avon, and Pepsi are using these new social services to increase productivity in their enterprises. Or, look at how Causes, one of Facebook’s most popular apps, is having a fascinating impact on the future of philanthropy.

While my admiration for Facebook is no secret, the fact is that the Facebook Imperative—much like The Amazon Imperative of 1999—is just a metaphor. Like all metaphors, they are terrific catalysts to introduce an idea and orient people. They are rooted in inspiration, but they do not funnel down to the granular details. And, there are details that make this movement entirely new in practice. The power of this new model is to create the next level of productivity, collaboration, and learning in the enterprise. And, I see it happening now in our own company.

For years we’ve been reading about the potential for institutional memory to transform a corporation into a learning organization. But, have we seen it happen beyond very few unique organizations? A true paradigm shift occurs when the barriers of entry are removed for everyone. That is changing fast. With these new social models, there is a way to immediately leverage the knowledge of an organization. People with expertise and relevance are instantly looped in, can participate in the conversation, collaborate, and make contributions more simply than ever before. That will be the catalyst of this new productivity revolution—delivered through these new social enterprise platforms.

We have deployed Salesforce Chatter internally through our own beta program, and we are now using the social models proven by Facebook and Twitter to run our company. Our new social enterprise is built atop our existing business information and applications. It’s not partitioned off from other enterprise applications, but is an integrated part of it—offering a new view of the data that is more productive and easier to use. Through enterprise sharing models, filtering and discovery tools, users have full flexibility over which people and data they follow—allowing them to fully maximize the value of their own feeds and eliminating the risk of “pollutants” some critics fear.

I have learned more about my own company in the last three weeks using Salesforce Chatter than I have in the last three years. It reminds me of the time we went live with http://ideas.salesforce.com. The awareness I have today of what is happening with our employees, our customers, our products, our customer service escalations, and even the deals we are closing is spectacular. Social computing for the enterprise is about seeing what matters to your company, what is happening with your products, and among your people. It’s about the information you need to make decisions finding you. I’m amazed at the potential of this technology. There is just no way I can explain it to you in writing, so here is an actual screen shot that I took off my desktop to give you an idea of the flow (click to enlarge):

It is time to let go of the past and start to create a compelling future for the software industry. I’m energized by the skeptics. It’s familiar. They all eventually convert to what’s important to customers, or become increasingly irrelevant. You don’t have to look any farther than last week when Steve Ballmer spoke to the University of Washington telling them Microsoft was finally “All-In” the cloud. Well, that only took a decade or two. No more software plus services, now they are 100% cloud too. Sure.

I’m living in the post-PC revolution. I’m in a desktopless world that is about feeds and profiles running in all my browsers and mobile devices, and interacting in exciting new ways. It doesn’t matter if I am in the office, at home, or at Starbucks—I am productive wherever I am. The enterprise is not just going to the cloud, it’s now going social, and it’s going mobile. Facebook and Twitter have shown us the way. Like Microsoft, and IBM, not everyone has to get it yet, but eventually they all will. As they say: Shift happens.

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The Facebook Imperative Cannot Be Stopped

comScore has just released its US online video rankings for January 2010, and the results aren’t positive. Overall views dropped by around 2.5%, with  32.4 billion in January vs. 33.2 billion in December. And Hulu, which celebrated crossing the 1 billion view milestone for the first time in December, dipped back down to 903 million views. The drop can’t be blamed entirely on seasonality, either, — January 2009’s overall video views were up 4% over December 2008.  That said, video views are still up 119% year over year.

Rankingwise, there weren’t many changes. Google Sites (which is essentially YouTube) is still the reigning champion, with Hulu and Microsoft Sites still rounding out the top three. Fox Interactive Media fell from 4th to 6th place as its views dropped from 550 million December to 293 million in January — a drop of around 47%.

I suspect the drop in overall video growth will be shortlived, given the huge amount of video consumed online during the Olympics last month.

Here are the stats from January 2010:

And here are the stats from December 2009:

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comScore: Online Video Views Down Across The Board In January

Turns out Steve Ballmer's talk up at the University of Washington delivered even more saucy info than we were initially led to believe. In a transcript of the subsequent Q&A session, Steve is shown to have delivered the following statement on the topic of large-screen televisions and Microsoft's related hardware strategy:

For that big screen device ... there's no diversity. You get exactly the Xboxes that we build for you. We may have more form factors in the future that are designed for various price points and options, but we think it's going to [be] important.

It's safe to assume new form factors point to a smaller rather than larger 360 chassis, though the price points and further options he mentions are wide open for speculation. It wouldn't be unreasonable to forecast Microsoft pushing out its own slimmed-down console to match up with Sony's PS3 Slim, but we also shouldn't discount the idea of an Xbox 360 with Project Natal hardware integrated into its shell. In other words, we really don't know what Steve has going on under that shiny dome of his, we just hope it's as exciting as he makes it sound.

Steve Ballmer teases new Xbox 360 form factors, price points and options originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 06 Mar 2010 05:21:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Steve Ballmer teases new Xbox 360 form factors, price points and…