Online video continues to grow in popularity among Internet users. According to Nielsen, the time spent video watching went up 13 percent year-over-year in December.
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FROM HOLLYWOOD CRUSH: “Have you ever had a secret you couldn’t tell anyone?” That’s the question on our minds tonight as the LA premiere of “New Moon” gets underway! We’ll begin by live-blogging the entire event, giving you the inside scoop on all the big arrivals (say it with us now: OME!), awe-inspiring fashion and inevitable ear-piercing screams that will takeover the red carpet at the Westwood Village theater. So get your refresh buttons ready and join the MTV crew (and “Twilight” maniacs) — including Larry Carroll and Ryan J. Downey — as Hollywood Crush takes you behind the scenes of the most-anticipated movie this year!
(Note: the blog will be updated from the bottom up, so the newest messages will be right below this message)
9:57 Robert is HERE!!!!!!
Continue reading We’re Live Blogging From The ‘New Moon’ LA Premiere!
As part of its one-year anniversary, indie game developer 2D Boy had a couple of big announcements for fans last week. First, there was the news that the phenomenal game World of Goo was going to be making its way to the iPhone. The second—and even bigger announcement—was that the developer was letting fans of the game digitally purchase a copy for however much they were willing to pay. Now, 2D Boy is one-upping even that news: the sale has been so successful that it’s being continued through October 25.
Aside from announcing the sale’s extension, the developer also revealed how well the sale has done so far. “Since the birthday sale started, about 57 thousand people bought World of Goo off our website. The average price paid for the game was $2.03 a significant percent of which went to PayPal for transaction fees,” the blog post reads. “Normally, they keep about 5% of the revenue, but because PayPal fees are structured in a way that they take a larger percentage for smaller transactions, we ended up paying over 13% in transaction fees. For all purchases of around 30 cents and under, we actually saw no money, PayPal took it all, but they probably ended up losing money on most of those transactions ($0.01) as well, they’re not the bad guy.”
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Software, Bugs/Recalls, iTunes, Apple, Developer, App Store
I didn’t really take last week’s Twitocalypse that seriously, but as you probably know by now, it turned out a little worse than expected — we’d been told that Twitterrific (and, we assumed, most other Twitter apps) would be fine, and of course, as Craig Hockenberry explains on his blog, things ended up not-so-fine. Desktop app developers, of course, could publish updates as quickly as they could code them; iPhone developers were in a different situation.
When the Iconfactory’s app stopped working, most people (including me) got an API error all weekend. Craig found the bug, then he and his team were able to leverage their contacts at Apple Developer Relations to help expedite the release; in short order, an update was pushed out to the App Store. I downloaded it yesterday, and can tell you that things are fixed… at least until the numerical limit on Twitter’s tweet identifier raises its head again (or the Newton flips out, but that’s another story).
Hockenberry also has ideas about how to keep issues like this from happening again. Not the actual issue of a variable overflow (that will undoubtedly happen again at some point, on Twitter or any other API that scales way faster than anyone expects it to), but the issue of iPhone apps needing a quick fix. He says that Apple should give every developer a number of “incidents” — situations rarely used, in which a high priority fix can get sent out to apps in major emergencies. He says, and it’s true, that for most developers, it’s not a question of if you’ll need to send out a critical fix, it’s a matter of when. And support by Apple, obviously limited to one or two instances per developer, would help developers, distributors, and consumers.
Of course, it’s up to Apple, and it’s not like they’ve smoothed out the approval process so well already that they can start adding wrinkles to it. But clearly, given that the Twitterrific update went through quickly, there’s room for exceptions to be made.
[via DF]
Twitpocalypse aftermath and “incident” fixes on the App Store originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 16 Jun 2009 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Twitpocalypse aftermath and “incident” fixes on the App Store originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 16 Jun 2009 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Well! Our tips line has certainly been a beehive of activity with WWDC just around the corner. We’ve gotten several purported iPhone images, which range in quality from meh to ludicrous. Particularly interesting: the iPhone Blog’s 16×9 widescreen model.
As for availability of the rumored phone, GearLive is laying it on the line for an on-sale date of Monday, immediately after the announcement. Technologizer responds with four reasons we wouldn’t see the new device in stores right after the keynote.
Interested to see what everyone else has cooked up for Apple to release on Monday? Check out the gallery for pictures galore.
Thanks to everyone who sent these in!
Gallery: iPhone Rumor Image Roundup
TUAWPhotoshop Phun: iPhone next-gen rumor pic roundup originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 06 Jun 2009 17:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Hulu dropped a surprise on TV fans Thursday by introducing public beta of Hulu Desktop—desktop software for the Mac and Windows that works with the popular TV streaming site. The software finally removes Hulu from the Web browser in an official, Hulu-approved way and puts it into a very media-center-like format for browsing and watching your favorite shows. Though Hulu Desktop still keeps Hulu’s offerings largely on the computer, it offers some flexibility in the watching experience.
This is all part of the opening of Hulu Labs, which, according to the Hulu Blog, will offer sneak peeks at things the developers are working on. This includes recommendation algorithms, custom widgets, and more. The first Hulu Labs offering, however, is Hulu Desktop, which was designed as a “lean-back viewing experience” for use with either Apple’s standard remote or the Windows Media Center remote (the menus can be navigated with a mouse and keyboard as well).
Click here to read the rest of this article
Go to Hands-on: much to like in Hulu Desktop
The Nokia Blog’s got it on good authority that the Finnish phone maker’s giving its North America distributors the heads up to expect the N97 to arrive on June 2nd for $699, although that price might end up lower. We’ve been hearing an expected June launch for some time, so it’s definitely not out of the question. This does, however, serve as both an exciting and somewhat painful reminder that, should a couple other rumors pan out, June’s gonna be a busy month for smartphones.
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Filed under: Cellphones
Nokia N97 NAM launching June 2nd? originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 17 May 2009 23:52:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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I was reading this critique of Eric Boehlert’s new book by Alegre, and it reminded me of something I’d thought earlier today: I can’t believe that only a few bloggers have reviewed the book to date.
I mean, this is Eric Boehlert of Media Matters, author of very popular “Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush”. He’s one of the most respected and credible voices in the blogosphere. So why the deafening silence?
Perhaps it will help matters if I point out the only blog reviews to date have been written by the bloggers who protested the treatment of Hilary Clinton in last year’s primary. Which raises an interesting question: Is discussing even the possibility of sexism in the liberal blogosphere the third rail? Might be.
That isn’t all the book covers (the primary wars do take up two chapters). There’s a lot of interesting background about other bloggers I didn’t even know (for instance, who knew that Duncan “Atrios” Black once lived in Australia?). Boehlert wants readers to get some sense of bloggers – who they are, what drove them to blogging. It’s really a good read.
But the book does have a few flaws. Boehlert takes great pains to list the charges of sexism in the primary without really investigating them; for instance, I can’t imagine why he let it pass when a male blogger claims there was no sexism on his site because he didn’t allow his commenters to call Clinton a “cunt” or a “bitch.” (Because, of course, we all know there’s simply no other language that could possibly demean women.)
To illustrate the debate, he gingerly uses a technique that liberal bloggers deride regularly: “He said, she said.” (Literally.) I think the book would have been a lot stronger if he’d verified or refuted what male bloggers claimed about their allegedly sexism-free sites. (Because when I was interviewed for the book, I know I was asked for specific examples. I supplied them.)
But there’s much, much more (the subtitle of the book is “How The Internet Changed Politics and the Press”), and it’s all great fun to read, especially when you already know so many of the players. I especially enjoyed the chapter on Glenn Greenwald and FISA.
Anyone who reads liberal blogs should enjoy it tremendously.
Filed under: Hardware, iPhone, iPod touch
The iPhone Blog has posted a screenshot of a warning screen that the iPhone 3G produces when it’s over heated. According to Apple, it’s totally legit. From the Knowledge Base:
“Operate iPhone 3G in a place where the temperature is between 0º and 35º C (32º to 95º F) … If the interior temperature of iPhone 3G exceeds normal operating temperatures, you may experience [the] Temperature warning screen.”
Here in New England, we don’t see temperatures above 95º F often. Still, I have felt it heat up pretty good after playing music for two hours straight during a summertime commute. It does get cold, however, and two weeks ago we saw a frozen iPod come back to life. It’s nice to know that these devices can survive (or protect themselves from) temperature extremes.
[Via Macenstein]
TUAWWhat happens when your iPhone overheats originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 11 May 2009 08:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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The Street is reporting on a rumor today that AT&T is planning to drop the cost of the entry-level iPhone plan in the US from $69US per month to $59 per month. The suspected drop will take place when new iPhone models are released, as early as “…next month.”
What’s AT&T’s motivation here? To attract price-conscious customers, woo Apple away from a rumored Verizon deal or simply clear inventory for the next-generation iPhone? As a person who’s on this plan, I honestly don’t care why — I just hope it happens.
The change would trim $120/year off of the current plan, reducing the overall cost of the 2-year plan to $1,760. [The original $240/year mention was due to an editing error. -Ed.]
[Via The Apple Blog]
TUAWRumor: AT&T to reduce cost of entry iPhone plan originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 07 May 2009 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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