The collaboration space is already crowded, but one expert feels there is still a gap in the market for a “WordPress for enterprise,” a flexible collaboration platform that allows businesses to tailor their collaboration suite as easily as WordPress allows them to tailor their sites.
The upstart unlimited music service, like Rdio before it, has a better web music widget than Spotify, and has just inked a media partnership for it. But will it really count for anything?
Skyfire, the mobile browser maker now working with carriers to tame mobile data, just raised a $8 million Series C round with participation from Verizon Ventures. The funding helps Skyfire expand its Rocket Optimizer product and launch a new browser portal for carriers.
After upgrading to Lion on my early 2008 15″ MacBook Pro, I started to notice that the computer was hot to the touch. Really hot. So I started measuring the internal temperature of my Macs to see if there was anything to be truly alarmed about.
One of the best design choices Google made for Android is to allow widgets on the home screen. The Android Market is full of widgets, and these are the top 5 free ones I’ve encountered. Note that widgets appear often so this only reflects current ones.
I was thrilled to hear that current apps will be compatible with the iPad, but I’m more excited for apps that haven’t been written yet. Apps for the iPhone and iPod touch are designed for use while being held. There’s an exciting new use case that comes with the iPad — when it’s sitting in the dock. Owners not only have a new device to read news while on the couch, but they also have the perfect peripheral display.
What’s a peripheral display? Something that provides basic information without distracting you from your primary task. It runs silently in the background and it’s there when you need to retrieve some glanceable information. You already use plenty of them every day: clocks, stock tickers, weather icons, unread email icons, etc. I currently use one app on my iPhone as a peripheral display: Flip Clock. I think we are soon going to see a lot more apps like this.
My perfect peripheral display app would come with a few basic widgets like a clock, calendar, stocks, weather, and access to photos on the iPad. The app could then offer upgrades (perhaps $2.99 each) for access to services like Flickr, Picasa, Twitter, Facebook, CNN (and other news sites), etc. The app could be free with the requirement that one of the widgets shows advertisements. A quick paid upgrade (perhaps $9.99) would remove the ads and offer a spot for another widget. Read More about The iPad as a Peripheral Display
This week on GigaOM Pro, we got an exclusive look at the financials for a mainstream network–backed web series, explored two high-tech aspects of the holiday shopping season, suggested a few reasons cloud computing could boost IT spending, and more.
Roku vice president of marketing Chuck Seiber only gave us a teeny-tiny sneak-peek at the new Roku Channel Store at NewTeeVee Live couple weeks back, but the company officially launched the feature along with ten new free channels today.
Roku owners will now be able to get content on their big screen TV from:
blip.tv: web shows (though NewTeeVee videos weren’t available yet when I searched)
Facebook photos: see yours and your friend’s pics on your TV, or use…
Flickr: for photos, if you prefer
FrameChannel: lets you view photos and updates from your social networks
MediaFly: web shows and podcasts
MobileTribe: another service to connect you to multiple social media sites
Motionbox: for personal video sharing
Pandora: lets you listen to Internet radio
Revision3: original web shows like Diggnation
TWiT.TV: Leo Laporte’s raft of tech-related content
Linking your Roku box to these services is snap, though you will need your computer on hand to enter the proper registration codes (see video embedded above for a demo).
Read More about Video: Roku Launches Channel Store with Facebook Photos, Pandora and More
With Internet-connected TVs hitting the market this fall, look for television to get its app store moment. Widget makers will flood your TV with nifty tools that allow you to do all sorts of things with the click of a remote. Rallycast is among the first leading this charge, and is looking to establish a beachhead on your broadband TV through fantasy football.
Rallycast is a TV widget built on the Yahoo widget platform (s YHOO), and while it offers a number of features like Facebook and Twitter integration, its primary function is to connect you to sports. A free version of the widget provides sports scores that you can bring up while you’re watching TV, but for $59.95 (per season), users can connect to their fantasy football teams to view stats, standings, and make substitutions on-screen.
In the “free” age, one might scoff that the company is charging for its service from the get-go, but according to David Adams, Rallycast vice president of business development, there are nearly 30 million fantasy sports participants in the U.S., and they spend an average of $400 a year on their fantasy activities.
Read More about Rallycast’s Football Widget Looking to Score
Verizon (s VZ) announced today that it will be opening up its FiOS “Widget Bazaar” to third-party developers as the company hopes to spur innovation around the way we consume television (and sell a few TV apps along the way). If Verizon can keep its head in the game, it actually does have all the pieces in place to be a leader in the space.
In announcing the openness of the Widget Bazaar platform, Shaygan Kheradpir, Verizon’s chief information officer said “Developers should start thinking now about applications that are appropriate for the ‘big screen,’ not the pocket-sized screens they’ve been writing for so far. We’ll be looking for tools that engage TV viewers and enrich or enhance the ‘living-room’ experience in new ways.”
I think a more strategic statement would have been to say that developers should start thinking about applications that are appropriate for the big and the pocket-sized screens. TV widgets are transforming right before our eyes. Where they used to be about checking the weather and stocks, now they are about interacting with friends via Twitter, or sharing photos via Facebook (among other possibilities). As our televisions access more content and we are able to do more and we interact with that content on-screen, we will need input devices that are flexible and make sense to us. Forget the 53 button remote control — just use your phone.
Read More about Real Innovation for Verizon’s TV Widgets Will Be in Your Hand(set)
