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Posts Tagged ‘web’

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Website Video Is Hot Hot Hot When It’s Instant

Monday, July 12th, 2010

Netflix year-over-year website traffic has surged 46% in June as a result of it’s Watch Instantly functionality. Netflix customers seem to crave the Watch Instantly streaming service and the ability to watch video on a broad range of devices from iPads to desktops.

The fact that this new service has proven to be a hot commodity may change Netflix previous core business model built on DVD rentals.

Besides iPads, there is a growing market of new web-ready devices that can sport internet video such as Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, or HDTVs.

Hulu and Hulu Plus does seem to be a strong competitor of Netflix, but such competition may simply drive more innovation into the web streaming video arena.

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Youtube’s Ploy To Steal Your TV

Sunday, July 11th, 2010

Youtube is working hard to invade your living room and become your TV. Quality video content is the next big thing with Youtube, which has recently launched a new product called Youtube Leanback. Leanback is essentially a made-for-TV version of YouTube. More recently, the company mentioned that they will be trying to sponsor higher quality video (television-ish) content.

As part of this shift in strategy, the company has launched a campaign dubbed YouTube Partner Grants, which represents an investment of five million dollars to find YouTube partners from small production companies and studios that need the money to build Youtube’s upcoming product offering.

Youtube will also be supporting a new high-end digital video format called 4K, which has a horizontal resolution of about 4000 pixels. For example, some of the best video cameras available, like the RED One system, shoot in 4K. The funding that Youtube will provide these smaller video agencies will help them purchase better equipment and hire new team members to produce the content for this new video platform.

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Odd UK Collaboration To Fix Deficit And Build Public Involvement Online

Saturday, July 10th, 2010

The British Government has an odd team member for helping to fix the problems with public spending and building a strategic initiative to tackle the growing deficit: Facebook is that team member.

The social media company will be joining hands with the British Government to build what they have described as the “largest public engagement project” that government has ever produced. The campaign will be dubbed the “Spending Challenge” and calls for public support and actions to accomplish major cuts in public spending and greater collaboration between the public and government to reduce deficits.

The campaign launched from a Facebook page “Democracy UK Facebook Page” and is calling upon the public to give ideas for spending cuts and to generally encourage a creative dialogue between citizens and state. In the first phase of the campaign, more than 60,000 ideas were submitted in just two weeks. Citizens are not just encouraged to give new ideas but also give feedback on the ideas of other citizens.

Facebook will be a primarily serving as a platform for the debate and solicitation of public involvement on the project.

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New HTML5 Mobile Site By Youtube

Thursday, July 8th, 2010

Youtube launched a new and upgraded mobile video website written in HTML5: m.youtube.com. The new website sports a couple of new features, including high-quality video playback in the browser using HTML5. Of course, you will need a browser that supports the HTML 5 <video> tag. Devices from Apple: iPhones, iPads and Android phones all support the HTML5 mark-up.

When you would click on a video in the old mobile Youtube site, you would be taken outside of the site and redirected to the player app for Youtube in order to watch the video. Now, you can watch videos right from the browser without the redirect.

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Ta Da! Firefox 4 Beta 1

Wednesday, July 7th, 2010

Firefox 4 Beta 1 was released by Mozilla. The official release will take place at the end of the year, 2010.

Firefox 4 will be a major upgrade from earlier versions, which will include:

  • A redesign of the user interface
  • Tabs are at the top — except in the Mac version
  • enhanced HTML5 support
  • hardware-accelerated HD video
  • WebSockets – low-complexity, low-latency, bi-directional communication system
  • enhanced add-on support via Jetpack: a tool that allows developers to create add-ons without needing to have in-depth programming knowledge. Extensions are built using CSS, Javascript and HTML. When they are installed the user will not need to restart the browser.
  • Jetpack Gallery – browse the inventions of others in the community – if you build it, they will browse it. :)

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Deposit Checks By Phone? Chase Has An App For That.

Friday, July 2nd, 2010

Chase Bank completed an update to their mobile app that allows iPhone users to make check deposits from their phone. The new feature called Quick Deposit is pretty simple to use. Simply login to your online account through the app, then select an account and enter the amount of the check and take a photo using the phone’s camera of the back and front and you’re done.

What is it? An iPhone app for chase.

Get the app: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/chase-mobile-sm/id298867247?mt=8

How much is it? free

The feature does come with some limitations however. You are only permitted to deposit $1,000 per day and $3,000 per week using the tool, which is not helpful for a business.

In addition to check deposits, the app will also sport a new tool called Person-to-Person QuickPay, which allows you to make quick payments to anyone, so long as you possess their email.

These features are an exciting preview of what is to come with mobile online banking in the future.

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In-Flight Web Could Break 100 Million This Year

Wednesday, June 30th, 2010

Airlines have been adding in-flight internet access for a fee. This luxury could prove to be a 100 million dollar business for the industry this year. Airlines that have enables paid wireless internet have seen their monthly revenues significantly grow due to the added service. BusinessWeek, for instance, ran this story and mentioned how Aircell has seen it’s revenue jump by 50% from February to May of this year after adding the service.

At the end of 2010, more than 2000 more planes will have on-board, for-a-fee internet access. Currently the service is being under-utilized. This is most likely due to the high fees that some of the airlines are charging for the service. For example, on a recent 90 minute flight on AirTran airlines, they were charging a flat 9.99 fee for the service. This would work fine for business travelers, but the average consumer might balk at the fee and opt for a good book instead. More consumers may jump at the notion of in-flight internet as the fees drop.

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Where Does HTML5 Not Beat Flash?

Wednesday, June 30th, 2010

Youtube posted a strong argument in favor of Flash that will certainly weigh in on what we have dubbed the war against Flash.   In the official Youtube blog, the company outlined the argument for the Flash and the HTML5 <video> tag comparison and stated reasons for Flash to remain dominant for the near future.

Youtube stated that they have “very exicted” about the HTML 5 movement and, with it, the emerging web standards. However, they feel that Flash will be critical to the distribution of video content over the web.

Some of the reasons for Youtube’s reliance on Flash include:

  • Flash chops down on the number of formats that YouTube needs to encode.
  • Flash allows  Robust video streaming: “fine control over buffering and dynamic quality control”
  • Flash offers video content protection
  • Encapsulation and embedding … sending extra data with your video
  • Fullscreen video
  • Microphone & camera access

Source: JUNE 29, 2010,  http://apiblog.youtube.com/2010/06/flash-and-html5-tag.html

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Some Advertisers Take A More Disruptive Approach To Display Ads

Tuesday, June 29th, 2010

Many consumers simply ignore traditional online banner ads. In the place of banner ads, marketers and advertisers have tried to replace simple banner ads with higher impact and more expensive ads.

Some users complain that these higher profile and higher impact ads take away from the content of the site and degrade it’s overall experience or are burdensome. Yet, these websites strive to find ways to bring in revenue through advertising–in lieu of other debated approaches such as paid content or paid access.

Recently, some media companies (Hearst, to name one), have decided to use the advertising platform created by Pictela to launch high definition brand content that will include video, photos and applications. Facebook for instance will use the Pictela platform for it’s newsfeed.

One interesting point (beyond a discussion of the consumer experience of the ads) is that this new model does blur the lines between advertisers and content producers–as ads will begin to take on a more “story-like” presence.

The ads are clearly disruptive. Many users will not appreciate that ads are becoming bigger and more disruptive than ever with this new line of high definition advertising. Perhaps the approach that advertisers will take to win over users is to make the ads more closely tied to their interests and become content in of themselves. One thing is clear, advertisers should not anger consumers in the process of building a more lucrative advertising model.

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Chrome Gives Flash Greater Support

Friday, June 25th, 2010

In what we have dubbed the war on Flash, an interesting event has transpired. As Apple has taken a strong stance against the Adobe plug-in Flash even with Steve Jobs publicly railing against the technology on stage, Chrome has gone a different direction.

With the latest version, Chrome 5.0.376.86, the browser has increased support to Flash and even enables the plug-in by default. In the past, Flash was only available on the BETA and developer releases of the Chrome web browser.

There have been wide debate whether the fate of Flash is sealed, but it may not be so clear. Adobe has even pushed out Flash Player 10.1 which has support for mobile devices in addition to computers. In addition, some browsers (Chrome and Firefox particularly) have updated technology to prevent Flash from crashing the browser, which was a long-standing complaint against the plug-in.

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