Twitter Places Shows Where That Tweet Came From [Twitter]

Gizmodo
Twitter's adding a feature called Places which allows you to associate tweets with locations. Along with this feature, the company is also rolling out the corresponding API as well as Gowalla and Foursquare integration. [Twitter] More »



Twitter - Online Communities - Social Networking - Gowalla - Foursquare

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A WSJ Tablet? News Corp Just Bought An e-Reader Software Company

The Next Web

News Corp, which among other properties owns Fox News, The Wall Street Journal and MySpace, just announced that they have bought an e-reader software company called Skiff  ”to deliver premium journalism to tablets, smartphones, e- readers and netbooks”. News Corp also made an investment in Journalism Online, which promotes well, “premium” journalism online.

So in one fell swoop, News Corp just announced to the world that it is going to take on the Kindle, iBooks and all feed reader apps out there. There is no other way to look at this.

Skiff & “Premium” Journalism

News Corp’s Chief Digital Officer Jon Miller said in the press release, “Both Skiff and Journalism Online serve as key building blocks in our strategy to transform the publishing industry and ensure consumers will have continued access to the highest quality journalism.” Yeah, and to build a Wall Street Journal app.

An interesting though also here, is the “premium” journalism part. Is this just to support the WSJ subscription service or is this also a sideways attack on blogging as well? What’s a “premium” journalist anyway? Maybe Skiff offers HTML in gold e-reader ink?

Skiff according to the release, “specializes in delivering visually appealing layouts for newspaper and magazine content. With the capability to deliver high-resolution graphics, rich typography and dynamic updates, this unique platform has the ability to retain engaging design elements that consumers enjoy while allowing publications to maintain brand identity and differentiation.” Ok, so no gold ink. But what they are saying is that we’re going to keep our content within the News Corp pay wall and we’re going to build attractive (paid) apps to make sure that you don’t go anywhere else to get our content.

A conglomerate looking for a Pad of its own

Now, if this was a single media entity, we could reasonably stop at them wanting to build a custom killer app for their publication, but News Corp is a media conglomerate (update: as our commenter below notes, News Corp owns HarperCollins) and we could certainly see them getting into the lucrative ebook market. They now have the technology to not only come out with solid book reader, but also the connections and clout to bring in other publishers as well as a hardware partner to build a reader (though they’ll most likely go down the software-only path, this is still a possibility).

Another interesting possibility is with video content. With MySpace, Hulu, 20th Century Fox, Fox, and Fox News, News Corp has tremendous video content that could possibly be transitioned to a tablet through custom apps the could conceivably build with relative ease. So basically, News Corp – as long as they could find a hardware partner – could build a stand alone media device that delivered you the Wall Street Journal, MySpace and all of their video content, plus ebooks. Add some other content – say games – and if the price is right, that could be an attractive base package for a tablet.

We know Rupert Murdoch would carry one around.

Original title and link for this post: A WSJ Tablet? News Corp Just Bought An e-Reader Software Company

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YouTube to curate breaking news with CitizenTube – will it take on iReport?

The Next Web

YouTube will be working with the University of California Berkeley’s journalism school to curate a breaking news feed of videos.

The channel/site called Citizen Tube has been around for awhile, but now it will consistently be updated with breaking video news stories. While the feed will be curated, the editors will also be taking tips from the public on their Twitter account. YouTube is asking for as much info as possible on submitted news, and it is unclear if there will be any algorithm element to selecting the news or if it will be completely human-curated.

With YouTube Lean Back and Google TV, this could effectively turn Citizen Tube into a TV news network. Of course, we’re assuming that YouTube/Google will push this channel out through apps (especially the YouTube iPhone app) which could be extremely interesting especially if they can include a way for users to add breaking news video from their phones (can anyone say iMovie?), through the app and to the channel – this could be a significant challenge to what CNN has done with iReport, making CitizenTube the defacto crowdsourced video reporting platform.

Image

Original title and link for this post: YouTube to curate breaking news with CitizenTube – will it take on iReport?

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Facebook Expands at the Cost of Local Social Networks

Facebook Expands at the Cost of Local Social Networks

worldmapofsocialnetworks_small2.jpgA year ago, we covered the global mapping of social networks by Vincenzo Cosenza, a public relations specialists and former Microsoft Italy marketer.

Almost a year to the day later, Cosenza remapped the global use of social networks.

Sponsor

Like his previous effort, Vincenzo's new maps were based on Alexa & Google Trends for Websites traffic data.

Among the trends the earlier exercise identified were Facebook's near-colonization of Europe and its 200 millions users; the status of China's QQ as the largest social network in the world, with 300 million users; and MySpace's loss of leadership everywhere except in Guam.

top social network graph.pngUnsurprisingly, the biggest change is the furtherance of a trend: Facebook's growth.

+Facebook is eating its local competitors
+Facebook now has almost 500 million users
+In terms of visitors, Facebook is now larger than QQ
+Out of 131 countries surveyed, 111 show Facebook as the leading social network

In-country exceptions to the Facebook rule includes China, where QQ still rules, and seems to still have a few more active users than Facebook and Russia, where Odnoklassniki and V Kontakte social networks remain the most popular. Orkut is still the most popular in Brazil but is losing significant ground in India, where Alexa, but not Google, gives Facebook the #1 position. A scattering of other countries retains its affection for local networks. Some of these, like Syria (Maktoob) and Iran, (Cloob) may have political considerations that effect their choices. The use of non-Latin writing systems may also have a part to play.

Cosenza concurs.

"In my researches (I'm director of Digital PR, an Italian social media agency owned by Hill & Knowlton - WPP) I saw that social networks adoption is driven by cultural, social and political factors. So I strongly agree."

Other interesting elements to note are the gain by Twitter against MySpace in Australia and Canada and the (slow) growth of LinkedIn.

worldmapofsocialnetworks 2010 large.png

Discuss

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Controller-Free Xbox Gets a Name: “Kinect”

Controller-Free Xbox Gets a Name: “Kinect”

USA Today has revealed that the Xbox 360’s new motion gaming peripheral will be called “Microsoft Kinect,” replacing “Project Natal,” the old development name. There are also some new details about the games that will be available for the device.

As we reported earlier today, one of the games will be a white water rafting simulation. It turns out that game (River Rush) will actually be part of a suite of games called Kinect Adventures. Another suite titled Kinect Sports will take on — yep, you guessed it — Nintendo’s Wii Sports. That package will include bowling, boxing, track and field, volleyball, table tennis and soccer/football.

A separate game called Joyride will be a bit like Nintendo’s Mario Kart or Sony’s ModNation Racers, but you’ll control your car by holding an imaginary steering wheel that you’ll push forward or pull away to control the throttle. No casual gaming lineup would be complete without pets, so Microsoft will also launch a game called Kinectimals, in which you’ll be able to play with or train 20 kinds of cats using motion controls.

Finally, MTV Games is working on a dance competition title called Dance Central, and franchise games featuring characters and settings from Disney and Star Wars movies are set for launch as well.

Stay tuned for pricing and exact release date — both will probably be revealed this week at the E3 games conference in Los Angeles.

As a side note, we’ll mention that an Italian video ad featuring the Kinect brand also mentions a new, slimmer version of the Xbox 360 console itself. That hasn’t been announced officially, but it seems likely since the leaked ad called the Kinect name too.

[via Kotaku]



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Tags: dance central, disney, games, gaming, joyride, kinect, kinect adventures, kinect sports, kinectimals, microsoft, motion controls, mtv games, project natal, river rush, Star Wars, xbox, Xbox 360


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We Might All Be Watching Online Videos by 2015 [STATS]

We Might All Be Watching Online Videos by 2015 [STATS]

According to recent research from the Pew Internet Project, 52% of the American population is watching videos online — that’s 69% of all Internet-connected American adults.

If online video watching continues at its current rate of growth, in just under 5 years, almost every American with an Internet connection (i.e., the vast majority of Americans, period) will be watching video online.

This includes video streamed from the web and downloaded video and encompasses sites such as YouTube, Vimeo, Hulu, DailyMotion and others.

In the current survey, Pew researchers found that the majority (61%) of American, adult Internet users watch short clips, television shows and movies on video-sharing sites such as YouTube. These sites have exploded in popularity over the past several years and are on a trajectory to dominate the space. By contrast, just 33% of Internet users in 2006 had watched a video on a vid-sharing site.

The groups of people most likely to watch online videos include younger adults, men, the wealthy and the well-educated — a factoid which bucks current wisdom about YouTube comments.


And as more Americans get broadband access, more get online to watch videos. This correlation may or may not be causal; 75% of broadband customers watch online video, and 89% of online video watchers have broadband.

We’re collectively increasing our online viewership of comedy, educational and political videos, as well as professionally produced content from TV and film studios.

Video uploading is on the rise, too. This activity has doubled in occurrence from 7% to 14% of Internet users between 2007 and now. Moreover, social sites such as Facebook are equal in popularity to video-specific sites such as Vimeo or YouTube when it comes to choosing an online destination for one’s videos.


Do these numbers surprise you at all? Do you expect that online video will continue to grow in popularity until it’s part of all our lives, or do you think YouTube and its ilk will eventually plateau?



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Tags: ONLINE VIDEO, survey, youtube


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Apple’s New Direction: Will the Tablet Replace the PC?

Apple’s New Direction: Will the Tablet Replace the PC?

Yesterday at the D8 conference in Los Angeles, Steve Jobs laid out his vision of what’s to come. While Apple’s CEO went in-depth on a plethora of interesting subjects (e.g. Adobe Flash, the lost iPhone, iAds), he spent much of the stage time talking about the future of computing, specifically the PC.

Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg of AllThingsD asked Jobs whether the tablet is going to replace the laptop. Jobs’s response was an analogy:

“When we were an agrarian nation, all cars were trucks. But as people moved more towards urban centers, people started to get into cars. I think PCs are going to be like trucks. Less people will need them. And this is going to make some people uneasy.”

That short exchange says a lot about the direction Apple could take computing over the next decade. Apple still sells the Mac and the Macbook, and while the term “PC” is now synonymous with Windows machines, the meaning of PC — personal computer — can also apply to the Mac and Macbook.

Was Apple’s CEO referring to not only Windows PCs, but Macs as well? It’s tough to say for certain, but I think it’s very likely. Jobs clearly thinks PCs are on the way out, in favor of the more portable, less complex tablet and mobile form factors. His iPad has already validated the market for tablets, and we expect many more tablets to enter the market over the next few years.

Apple lost the PC market to Microsoft years ago. If Jobs has his way though, that won’t matter — the market will shift towards mobile computing devices like the iPhone and the iPad, both of which Apple has complete control over. The tech titan doesn’t have full control over the Mac OS or its desktop, which must be frustrating to a man who relishes control.

Will the tablet replace the PC? Not in the next decade, at least. Hell, the Windows XP operating system is still the world’s most popular OS. It takes time for disruptive technologies to take hold.

For now, the tablet will be a complementary device to the PC. The PC has had far more time to be fleshed out and performs countless tasks faster and better than the iPad or any other tablet device on the market. In a decade though, we may be singing a different tune.



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Tags: apple, Apple Tablet, D8, ipad, mac, macbook, pc, steve jobs, Tablet

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Online Video Will Push Internet Traffic to Quadruple by 2014 [REPORT]

Online Video Will Push Internet Traffic to Quadruple by 2014 [REPORT]

Cisco Systems has predicted that Internet networking traffic will have quadrupled between 2009 and 2014 in its Annual Visual Networking Index Forecast. It also predicted that online video will be the primary driver of that growth.

Cisco’s report says that 767 exabytes of data (one exabyte is the equivalent of one billion gigabytes) will be transferred online in 2014, and that 91% of consumer traffic will be online video, which will include both traditional web video and video-on-demand provided by television providers.

There’s also a closer milestone in Cisco’s research: Online video will surpass peer-to-peer traffic (which includes file sharing services like BitTorrent and a bulk of content piracy) for the first time this year. P2P has been the largest portion of consumer online traffic for some time now, and it will continue growing — just not anywhere near as quickly as online video.

We’ve already learned from comScore’s data that web users are watching more videos for longer than they used to, but Cisco also predicts massive growth in video calling. Remember how The Jetsons promised a future in which people made phone calls with video screens? That future is gradually becoming more than just a cartoon reality.

Devices like Apple TV and those running Google TV could contribute to increased online video usage up, too.


The Chart


You can create a custom chart at Cisco’s website for the Annual Visual Networking Index Forecast, but here’s the chart that shows how different forms of traffic will grow over the next five years.



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Tags: bittorrent, cisco, News, p2p, peer to peer, streaming video, traffic, video calling, video conferencing, visual networking index

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