HBO confirms negotiations with Fox and Universal for iCloud video streaming

You may recall that after last week's introduction of the new Apple TV, we noted that Fox and Universal weren't providing iCloud video streaming content due to existing contractual obligations with HBO. Well, that's a temporary situation, as the Wall Street Journal is reporting that HBO is working with Fox and Universal to give the studios a bit more leeway in providing films for distribution for streaming services.

HBO spends hundreds of millions of dollars each year to get "exclusive windows" during which HBO has the right to show movies on its channels and through the online service HBO Go. The company is in negotiations to allow users of iCloud and other services to send movies that they already own to other devices.

According to sources at Fox and Universal, the iCloud restrictions should be lifted in the near future. HBO already loosened the ties on Warner Bros. content, which is why that studio was listed as a streaming content provider during the Apple event.

In other television / movie news, CBS CEO Leslie Moonves told the Hollywood Reporter that he was approached by Steve Jobs about providing the network's shows to a subscription content service. Moonves said that he had concerns that the service could disrupt the traditional revenue streams for CBS, and that Jobs strongly disagreed with him -- not unsurprising, knowing the late Apple CEO's penchant for always being right.

[via MacRumors]

HBO confirms negotiations with Fox and Universal for iCloud video streaming originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 12 Mar 2012 13:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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from TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog http://www.tuaw.com/2012/03/12/hbo-confirms-negotiations-with-fox-and-univers...

Top Social Media Investor on What’s Next [VIDEO]


The Leaders in Digital Series is supported by Samsung. Follow Samsung USA on Google+ and Twitter, and like them on Facebook.


After spending 26 years at Electronic Arts, Bing Gordon moved over to Kleiner Perkins, where in 2008, he led the venture capital firm’s investment in the antithesis of EA: Zynga.

That investment has netted a nearly 20x return for the firm, and Gordon has since helped steer Kleiner Perkins deeply into the social web, with investments in Spotify, Path, Klout and many others.

Gordon also leads the sFund, a $250 million venture between Kleiner Perkins, Facebook, Zynga, Amazon, Comcast, Liberty Media and Allen & Company that launched in 2010.

We had a chance to catch up with Gordon at SXSW, which he described as the place “where the entrepreneurs we work with make a stand.”

Gordon shared his thoughts on what areas of social he’s most excited about right now, what makes social games so compelling and whether we’re in an investment bubble.

Check out the video above for the interview.


Series supported by Samsung

The Leaders in Digital Series is supported by Samsung. Follow Samsung USA on Google+ and Twitter, and like them on Facebook.

More About: Kleiner Perkins, Startups, venture capital

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from Mashable! http://mashable.com/2012/03/19/bing-gordon-interview/?utm_source=feedburner&u...

OK, I admit It. I have a mancrush on the new Federal CTO, Todd Park

I couldn't be more delighted by the announcement today that Todd Park has been named the new Chief Technology Officer for the United States, replacing Aneesh Chopra.

I first met Todd in 2008 at the urging of Mitch Kapor, who thought that Todd was the best exemplar in the healthcare world of my ideas about the power of data to transform business and society, and that I would find him to be a kindred spirit. And so it was. My lunch with Todd turned into a multi-hour brainstorm as we walked around the cliffs of Lands End in San Francisco. Todd was on fire with ideas about how to change healthcare, and the opportunity of the new job he'd just accepted, to become the CTO at HHS.

Subsequently, I helped Todd to organize a series of workshops and conferences at HHS to plan and execute their open data strategy. I met with Todd and told him how important it was not just to make data public and hope developers would come, but to actually do developer evangelism. I told him how various tech companies ran their developer programs, including some stories about Amazon's rollout of AWS: they had first held a small, private event to which they invited people and companies who'd been unofficially hacking on their data, told them their plans, and recruited them to build apps against the new APIs that were planned. Then, when they made their public announcement, they had cool apps to show, not just good intentions.

Todd immediately grasped the blueprint, and executed with astonishing speed. Before long, he held a workshop for an invited group of developers, entrepreneurs and health data wonks to map out useful data that could be liberated, and useful applications that could be built with it. Six months later, he held a public conference to showcase the 40-odd applications that had been developed. Now in its third year, the event has grown into what Todd calls the Health Datapalooza. As noted on GigaOm, the event has already led to several venture backed startup. (Applications are open for startups to be showcased at this year's event, June 5-6 in Washington D.C.)

Since I introduced him to Eric Ries, author of The Lean Startup, Todd has been introducing the methodology to Washington, insisting on programs that can show real results (learning and pivots) in only 90 days. He just knows how to make stuff happen.

Todd is also an incredibly inspiring speaker. At my various Gov 2.0 events, he routinely got a standing ovation. His enthusiasm, insight, and optimism are infectious.

Todd Park

When Todd Park talks, I listen. (Photo by James Duncan Davidson from the 2010 Gov 2.0 Summit. http://www.flickr.com/photos/oreillyconf/4967787323/in/photostream/)

Many will ask about Todd's technical credentials. After all, he is trained as a healthcare economist, not an engineer or scientist. There are three good answers:

1. Economists are playing an incredibly important role at today's technology companies, as extracting meaning and monetization from massive amounts of data become one of the key levers of success and competitive advantage. (Think Hal Varian at Google, working to optimize the ad auction.) Healthcare in particular is one of those areas where science, human factors, and economics are on a collision course, but virtually every sector of our nation is undergoing a transformation as a result of intelligence derived from data analysis. That's why I put Todd on my list for Forbes.com of the world's most important data scientists.

2. Todd is an enormously successful technology entrepreneur, with two brilliant companies - Athenahealth and Castlight Health - under his belt. In each case, he was able to succeed by understanding the power of data to transform an industry.

3. He's an amazing learner. In a 1998 interview describing the founding of Athena Health, he described his leadership philosophy: "Put enough of an idea together to inspire a team of really good people to jump with you into a general zone like medical practices. Then, just learn as much as you possibly can and what you really can do to be helpful and then act against that opportunity. No question."

Todd is one of the most remarkable people I've ever met, in a career filled with remarkable people. As Alex Howard notes, he should be an inspiration for more "retired" tech entrepreneurs to go into government. This is a guy who could do literally anything he put his mind to, and he's taking up the challenge of making our government smarter about technology. I want to put out a request to all my friends in the technology world: if Todd calls you and asks you for help, please take the call, and do whatever he asks.

from O'Reilly Radar - Insight, analysis, and research about emerging technologies. http://radar.oreilly.com/2012/03/mancrush-federal-cto-todd-park.html?utm_sour...

Deck Is a Slick, Feature Rich Application Launcher for iPhone [Jailbreak]

iOS (Jailbroken): Since the iPhone homescreen is essentially an app launcher on its own you wouldn't think it needed much in the way of quick access. However, Deck is a simple but well made side bar launch tool that adds easy access to a number of customizable apps and settings. More »


from Lifehacker http://lifehacker.com/5892781/deck-is-a-slick-feature-rich-application-launch...

SxSW Interactive: Day Four

The sun is shining today in Austin (finally!) and walking between venues in the 80+ degree weather has been the highlight of the day. I got shut out of “Social Media in the Underground World of B2B” this morning (to my intense disappointment) but used the time to walk the trade show floor.

The SxSW trade show floor, not surprisingly, is loud, crowded, colorful and wonderful– all at the same time. It’s cool because the vendors aren’t all specific to the Interactive Festival, so you get a great mix of people walking around from the Film and Music Festivals as well.

I listened to A LOT of elevator pitches on various products, apps and platforms today and wanted to share the ones that most intrigued me. Full disclosure: I haven’t had a chance to try any of these out yet as the wi-fi in the Austin Convention Centre was definitely struggling.

  • OtherInbox: “Regain control of your Inbox by automatically organizing email clutter, maximizing your real life relationships, as well as making your inbox more efficient and effective.” The demo on this app was really cool – you can search your inbox by keyword, industry type, attachment, etc. and it does appear to organize the information in a variety of logical ways. The one downside from what I can see it that you can only use this with a single email address. It won’t allow you to upload multiple addresses. But the app did just launch last week, so maybe with enough success and feedback that issue will be addressed.
  • Beautecam: “Beautecam is a new app that lets you check your skin condition by equipping your iPhone or iPod Touch camera with a special magnifying lens (sold separately) to take a magnified photo of your skin.” This one wins the award for most interesting, at least for me. The theory behind this is that once you go through the trouble and expense of uploading the magnified image of your skin, the app will make product and regimen recommendations for you (i.e. “The climate you live in is dry this time of year; it’s time for a heavier moisturizer. Here are a few recommendations.”) As someone who is regularly overwhelmed by beauty counters, this could be very helpful. You can buy the magnifying skin lens from within the app, but I haven’t been able to determine the cost on that.
    Trade Show Floor
  • Pointburst: “Manage all your social media content from one place using Pointburst’s cloud-based library. Simultaneously publish relevant communications such as messages, documents, photos and videos to your selected social media networking sites and to those of your affiliates with a single click.” So the concept behind this is one-click publishing to a variety of properties and it’s ideally suited to companies who want to push a message out to multiple branded social channels, but have the message appear as though it comes directly from that affiliate (i.e. an Association with individual regional Twitter handles who wants the message from the home office to be consistent but with a local branding). This could actually be a cool application for an agency managing multiple social accounts for a client.
  • Hibe: Coming to us from Canada, Hibe is a social network that allows you to have multiple profiles (up to 5 at this point) that you can tailor to your interest. So let’s say you’re a dad who also happens to be a professor who blogs about mountain biking in your spare time. Oh, and you’re looking for a job. You could have four profiles: Family, Professional, Job Seeking and Public, all with access and content customized to your audience. It’s an interesting concept and one that no other social network allows you to do, although you could argue that one could configure Google+ in a similar way. And it’s got a nice user interface. Unfortunately, I think it’s going to suffer from social network fatigue. Most people don’t want another social network and this one isn’t unique enough to draw users away from Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, etc.
  • Filmaster: “Filmaster allows you to discover the world of movies. It recommends what you should watch tonight at your local theater, on TV, or on Netflix, based on your unique taste in movies.” Filmaster is available for iPhone/iPad, Androind and Apple TV. You sign up, indicate any memberships you have (Netflix, etc.) and over time it learns your film preferences and makes recommendations for you. The coolest feature is that you can purchase the movie rental right from the app. It will also aggregate info from your local movie theaters, so it’s not just rentals in your recommendation pile. Of all the apps I saw today, this one is the biggest no-brainer.
  • Social Media Monthly: Our only entry in the old-school category, “Social Media Monthly” is actually (gasp!) a printed monthly magazine. As in, printed on actual paper. The cost is $6.99 an issue and while I haven’t had a chance to read through the current one, it is the only publication geared toward social media. Plus the Editor, Robert Fine, wrote “The Big Book of Social Media Case Studies, Stories, Perspectives” which I did thumb through and looked quite interesting.

from BostInno http://bostinno.com/channels/sxsw-interactive-day-four/

How to Back Up and Migrate Your Posterous Spaces to Tumblr, Blogger, or WordPress [Backups]

Yesterday afternoon, Twitter announced that they had acquired blogging platform Posterous, and by all indications, it was mostly for the talent. If you're a Posterous user, this means that your Posterous blog, called Posterous Spaces, is in limbo. Neither company has said there are any plans to shutter Posterous, and Posterous says nothing's changing right now, but there's no reason to wait for someone else when you can take control of your own data. Here's how. More »


from Lifehacker http://lifehacker.com/5892776/how-to-back-up-and-migrate-your-posterous-space...

What Men and Women Really Want, According to Social Media [INFOGRAPHIC]

As a fully-licensed and accredited man, I am wholly unqualified to discuss what women want or care about. That’s what social data is for.

Social media monitoring company NetBase analyzed a year’s worth of online conversations — 27 billion, to be exact. Using natural language processing, they parsed English grammar and gender voice in search of phrases like “I want X.” The data was then analyzed for sentiment, and condensed into a top 10 list for each sex. The fascinating results have been compiled in the punchy inforgraphic below.

SEE ALSO: 10 Reasons Twitter Is Sexier Than Facebook [INFOGRAPHIC]

We won’t spoil the fun up front — you’ll have to scroll down to see the winners. But it’s worth noting that food absolutely dominates social media conversation among both genders.

Here we are, the most interconnected civilization the world has ever known, and humanity’s greatest collective aspiration can be boiled down to, “Me likey pizza.”

Same as it ever was.


Infographic courtesy of NetBase.

More About: data, Food, gender, infographic, Social Media, trending


from Mashable! http://mashable.com/2012/03/12/men-women-want-social-media/?utm_source=feedbu...

GTVHacker teases Boxee for rooted Sony Google TVs

Since the Boxee Box and original Google TV v1 hardware share Intel Atom processors at their heart users have wondered about the opportunity for a port, and as seen above, that may have been achieved. GTVHacker tweeted out the picture tonight, promising "big things" in store for owners of rooted Sony Google TV devices while showing Boxee running on a Sony NSZ-GT1 Blu-ray player. There's no other details mentioned so far, but if you managed to open up the capabilities of your hardware before an update put the kibosh on rooting, you should have some extra capabilities coming your way shortly.

GTVHacker teases Boxee for rooted Sony Google TVs originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 12 Mar 2012 20:52:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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from Engadget http://www.engadget.com/2012/03/12/rooted-sony-google-tv-boxee/

Stop innovating, please: Kaleidescape loses DVD ripping case

A California judge ruled last week that Kaleidescape, the company behind a line of high-end home media servers, violated the terms of its DVD licensing agreement by allowing consumers to rip DVDs.  

The DVD Copy Control Association sets rules that all manufacturers of DVD players must follow. The organization objected to the DVD-ripping functionality of Kaleidescape's products and went to court to force them off the market. On Thursday, Judge William Monahan issued a broad injuncton barring Kaleidescape from selling its DVD-streaming products.

The case is a useful reminder that, thanks to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, major content companies continue to enjoy veto power over the design of digital media devices. Include a digital lock in your spec and the DMCA keeps anyone from bypassing it, even if the intended use might well be legal. Hollywood is using this power to prevent "DVD jukebox" products from reaching consumers.

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from Ars Technica http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/03/stop-innovating-please-kaleid...