Watch Netflix CEO, Reed Hastings, talking about the future of web TV. The points of success of the next generation web TV according to Hastings

• Broadband (already available)
• High definition screen (already available)
• Pointer instead of the usual 100 buttons TV remote (like in Nintendo Wii)
• Built-in Browser in TV sets (most game consoles already have built in browsers however with limited functionalities and codecs)
• Video codecs support like Adobe Flash

Pretty interesting talk, watch the video Read More »

The Swedish music service Spotify is streaming music for more than 4 million users in 8 countries, just after one year of the hyped service launching. Few weeks ago, Spotify took the next step with the Apple Iphone App and Google Android App.
However, streaming music from a server to a PC is not rocket science. You just need a fast and user friendly interface. The main challenge remains to convince the record labels that you have a good business model and sign DMCA contracts for millions of songs. This is what Spotify succeeded with, and showed that there is an alternative for illegal file sharing.

Everyone expects now a similar service for streaming movies and TV programs over the internet, but the case is not as easy as in the music world. The main issue is bandwidth. Video requires much more bandwidth than music which means that in the traditional streaming technology – streaming from a server to a computer or usual file sharing. When the number of users increases, capacity issues and hence costs will increase tremendously. If we take Youtube for example, many sources have said that the costs are much higher than the revenues. And yet they are only streaming short and low quality videos (HD is an option not available for all videos). Read More »

Started as research project at Microsoft Research, the innovative SenseCam Technology aimed at helping people with memory loss problems. The SenseCam is a digital camera that you wear on a necklace and takes a picture every 30 seconds without user intervention. It’s equipped with different sensors such as light-intensity and light-color sensors, a passive infrared (body heat) detector, a temperature sensor, and a multiple-axis accelerometer that create the input signal to automatically trigger a photo shoot.
This device has also a sound recorder, built-in GPS and all those nice features to create a digital copy of your life timeline.
Michael Arrington and the techcrunch readers discussed this life recorder and broke it down in all aspects (see the brainstorming here)
Some people were worried about device loss or theft. I wonder how do they protect their mobile phone or laptop? But what really amazed me in the discussion though is how most of the readers were concerned about the privacy issues. Ironically, the same readers are either facebook or twitter users. Furthermore, I think these people really need this device because they seem to have memory loss issues and forgot that they had privacy issues with social networking and blogging before they came a trend. As everything in this world, this trend either evolves or dies. Looking at the daily increase in the number of bloggers/facebook users/twitterers, I doubt the trend would die.
The SenseCam could certainly benefit from a SIM card to connect it to a network, yet another application for mobile broadband enabling remote storage, geo-tagging, face recognition, … Read More »