Aardverschuiving op komst in boekenwereld? -> Google deze zomer in e-boekhandel


Sent to you via Google Reader

Google deze zomer in e-boekhandel

Google gaat beginnen met de verkoop van digitale boeken. De boeken moeten op verschillende apparaten te lezen zijn.


Hoewel de precieze plannen nog onduidelijk blijven, moet het onder meer mogelijk zijn om de boeken te lezen via een webbrowser, zo meldt The Wall Street Journal. De nieuwe dienst, Google Editions, wil zich op die manier onderscheiden van (een deel van) de concurrentie die de e-books koppelt aan specifieke apparaten.


Ook in andere opzichten wordt het vrijheid-blijheid bij de nieuwe boekhandel van Google. Zo wil de zoekgigant boekwinkels in staat stellen om boeken van Google Editions via hun eigen site aan te bieden. Het grootste deel van de omzet zou dan ten goede komen aan de boekwinkels.


Aanvankelijk was het de bedoeling dat Editions in de eerste helft van dit jaar van start zou gaan, maar het lijkt er nu op dat Google dat net niet gaat halen. Het wordt nu eind juni, begin juli.

reageer

Sent from my iPad

Microsoft Announces Social Aggregator


Sent to you via Google Reader

Microsoft Announces Social Aggregator

spindex_logo.pngLili Cheng, General Manager of Microsoft's Fuse Labs, announced the debut of Spindex, the company's stab at a dynamic social media aggregation tool.

Aimed at bringing together the varied strands of a personal web at each point of a user's online experience, Spindex is currently only available in a tech preview.


Sponsor

"Spindex...aggregates your social streams (Facebook, Twitter, Bing, etc.), making it simple for you to find what's new, see personalized trending topics, and generally make the most of the time you spend being social on the Web."

Spindex seems learns from your online behavior, harvesting relevant information to a central page. It also links to Bing search information and allows you to use Evernote, another Labs innovation, within the application.


Discuss


Sent from my iPad

Ning Announces New Pricing Model, Free Nings for Teachers


Sent to you via Google Reader

Ning Announces New Pricing Model, Free Nings for Teachers

Social networking site Ning announced its new pricing scheme today, following its announcement last month that it will abandon the freemium model and eliminate free subscriptions.


Sponsor

In July, the company will roll out three tiers of service - Ning Mini, Ning Plus and Ning Pro - and subscriptions will range from $3 to $50 per month. These new product packages include the following:

Ning Pro: Offers unlimited membership, full control over branding, multimedia options including music uploads and branded players, and advanced customization. Price: $49.95 per month or $ 499.95 per year.

Ning Plus: Offers unlimited membership, full control over branding, and features including events, groups, chat, pages and Ning Apps. Ning Plus will also offer advanced customization options including the ability to edit CSS, add Javascript and make use of a Language Editor. Price: $19.95 per month or $199.95 per year.

Ning Mini: Offers access to Ning's core features including, blogs, photos, forums and video embeds, and the added ability to run custom advertising. Price: $2.95 per month or $19.95 per year.

In addition to ending their promotional links and advertising, Ning also announced they'd be replacing the Ning ID with a custom sign-in system, as well as support for Facebook Connect and Twitter authorization; adding new APIs to allow mobile and desktop application development; increasing sites' design flexibility; and adding enhanced reporting and analytics information. For those who are currently using the system but plan to move elsewhere, Ning will also offer a content migration tool.

"Our Network Creators are some of the most passionate and creative users of social networking technologies on the web, and by focusing on our three new product offerings, Ning will be able to extend the power and control we bring to our customers," said Ning CEO Jason Rosenthal.

The passion of Ning users was evident in the aftermath following the company's decision in April to end the free subscriptions. Many educators who found Ning to be particularly useful for both classroom communication and for professional development were worried about the impact Ning's decision would have on their networks, as well as on their limited budgets.

In response, Ning indicated today that K-12 educators would be able to continue to have access to free Nings, in the form of Ning Minis sponsored by an as-yet-unnamed educational company. W...

Sent from my iPad

Flash-Friendly Android Multi-Touch Tablet Prototype Spotted [Adobe]


Sent to you via Google Reader

Flash-Friendly Android Multi-Touch Tablet Prototype Spotted [Adobe]


A fellow from Zedomax spotted something curious at the Web 2.0 Expo's Adobe display: Some kind of Android multi-touch tablet prototype. Not many details about the device, but Zedomax claims that it "runs Adobe's Flash and Air apps flawlessly." [Zedomax] More »




Adobe Systems - Flash - Android - Multimedia - Development Frameworks


Sent from my iPad

Apps on Wheels: Developing Mobile Apps that Work at 70 MPH

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/readwriteweb/~3/6DyL1CuL4yE/apps_on_wheels_making_the_internet_work_at_70mph.php

ford_logo_may10.jpgWhen we talk about mobile apps today, chances are that we are mostly talking about apps for cell phones and - maybe - tablets. The latest trend in mobile apps, however, is apps for cars. One of the companies leading this trend in the U.S. is Ford, which just unveiled a number of apps that students at the University of Michigan created on top of Ford's platform.

Sponsor

Making Mobile Apps Work at 70 mpg

Earlier today, we got a chance to talk to K. Venkatesh Prasad, the group and technical leader of Ford's Infotronics Research and Advanced Engineering team. Ford unveiled its SYNC AppLink technology for controlling Android and Blackberry mobile apps through Ford's voice-driven SYNC interface last month, but as Prasad told us, the company is obviously also looking at mobile apps that are developed specifically for the car.

Cloud Computing in the Commute

ford_apps_recommendation.jpgAs Prasad stressed when we talked to him, developers have gotten very good at developing apps that work well at 0 mph, but interfaces that also work well at 70 mph are still in their infancy. Apps that run in cars obviously have to overcome a number of issues - especially with regards to safety - that aren't normally an issue for developers of mobile apps.

In order to tap into the creativity of students who grew up with mobile apps and social networks, Ford, together with Microsoft and Intel, teamed up with the University of Michigan and the university's professors and Ford's engineers taught a 12-week course entitled "Cloud Computing in the Commute." The students developed their apps using a Ford Fiesta with a built-in touch screen running. The software platform for these projects was Windows 7 and Microsoft's Robotics Developer Studio. On the cloud side, the students used Microsoft's Windows Azure platform.

Over the course of the semester, these students created six different projects, ranging from a gesture-driven Waze-like app that allows drivers to alert others of traffic jams, accidents and police cars along the road, to a ride-sharing app that taps into Facebook and an app that automatically uploads your fuel economy data to a cloud server. Some of these apps use Ford's SYNC for voice recognition, while others use gestures that drivers can draw on the car's built-in screen.

ford_caravan.jpg

Caravan Track

From these six app, Ford, Microsoft and Intel chose Caravan Track as the best app. Caravan Track allows clusters of vehicles traveling together to track each other during the drive - which sounds like a great application for anybody who has ever been on a road trip with more than one car. The app uses vehicle telemetry to track each vehicle, maps routes and sends alerts about stops and road conditions. The winning students will take a car that runs Caravan Track on a two-week road trip from Michigan to the Maker Fair in San Mateo on May 22.

Cars: The Next Big Market for Mobile Apps?

Even more so than just these apps, it's exciting to see how cars are finally becoming a part of the mobile app ecosystem. While there are still many user interface issues to deal with, systems like Ford's SYNC could potentially give developers the same kind of resources and computing power as a modern desktop machine.

Today, most car buyers assume that their experience with the car won't change much over the next few years of ownership. Once we get to the point where a lot of cars can run mobile apps however, we might see regular software updates that could greatly change the user experience at intervals that are currently unheard of in the automobile industry where upgrade cycles are usually measured in years.

Discuss

Sent from my iPhone

Weer speculaties over webversie iTunes

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/brightmagazine/~3/V1XcnbGK7Ds/weer-speculaties-over-webversie-itunes

Apple sluit de overgenomen muzieksite Lala, wat zou kunnen betekenen dat een 'iTunes-in-de-cloud' aanstaande is.


Muzieksite Lala.com sluit op 31 mei zijn deuren, zo werd vrijdag duidelijk via een boodschap op de homepage van de streamingdienst. Apple nam de site eind vorig jaar over en staat geen nieuwe gebruikers meer toe. De actie voedt de berichten dat Apple werkt aan een webversie van zijn iTunes Music Store. De Wall Street Journal schreef eerder dit jaar al dat Apple werkt aan het lanceren van iTunes.com deze zomer.

Lala.com liet gebruikers onder meer 10 dollarcent betalen om met een iPhone-app een liedje te kunnen streamen en tijdelijk op te slaan op het toestel. De webjukebox verkocht ook online toegang tot de streams van liedjes.

Volgens Techcrunch wil Apple de technologie van Lala.com gebruiken voor een iTunes-in-the-cloud. 'Met het sluiten van Lala.com is het duidelijk', aldus Techcrunch. 'Er broeit iets in Cupertino.' Wellicht is een bekendmaking te verwachten tijdens de Worldwide Developers Conference op 7 juni in San Francisco. Maar anderen, zoals Peter Kafka van All Things Digital, wagen dat te betwijfelen.

De muzieklabels reageerden onlangs afwijzend op een voorstel van Apple om een virtuele muziekkluis te koppelen aan iTunes. Zij willen voor elk nieuw apparaat waar hetzelfde gekochte liedje naar gestreamd kan worden een vergoeding ontvangen.

3 reacties

Sent from my iPhone

Face recognition across the web – Face.com gets an API

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheNextWeb/~3/FXWOh6C-rVs/

Face.comFace.com, the service that uses facial recognition to auto-tag your Facebook photos, is expanding across the web today with the launch of an API.

Developers can now tap into Face.com’s technology to add facial recognition to all kinds of web apps for free via the open API.

The company claims that its technology can  identify faces even in poor lighting or poor focus; or when subjects are wearing glasses, facial hair, and supposedly even Halloween costumes.

By way of demonstration, Face.com has provided three sites using the API for developers to try. CelebrityFindr uses facial recognition to find celebrity photos on Twitter. It seems quite effective, if skewed towards American celebrities. The facial recognition certainly seems to act as  good filter for removing tweets that mention celebrities but don’t actually feature them in linked photos.

Face recognition across the web Face.com gets an APIThe Tagger Widget can be embedded in any webpage to auto-tag photographs, while Poster Yourself adds Facebook photos to celebrity images. While there are already a few ‘face in hole’ sites out there, this demo does a great job at choosing photos that best fit the poster. For example, here I am as Darth Vader.

Face.com could be onto something with this API. We couldn’t find any other currently available free, open facial recognition APIs out there. The company’s technology was recently used in an impressive social Augmented Reality app so we look forward to seeing what other developers do with it.
Face recognition across the web Face.com gets an API
Face recognition across the web Face.com gets an API

Sent from my iPhone

Tomorrow Twitter Will Release New Tool For Embedding Tweets

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheNextWeb/~3/7ni-ziYcblA/

Tomorrow Twitter Will Release New Tool For Embedding Tweets Twitter thinks that a tweet is the new quote. Have you ever been quoted by an article or report, and had your words mangled as they went from your mouth to publication?

Twitter wants to change that, and tomorrow will release a tool that will help with the embedding of tweets on individual websites to prevent misquotes.

The company was tickled with ReadWriteWeb’s coverage of the Palm and HP story recently, where the publication used images of tweets that had pithy responses to the corporate acquisition as the meat of the story itself. While taking images of individual tweets and incorporating them into blog posts is not new, it has always been in Twitter’s words, “a bit of a hack.”

Tomorrow Twitter Will Release New Tool For Embedding Tweets

By building and releasing a tool Twitter will make it simpler and cleaner to embed tweets offsite, increasing the prevalence of the practice and giving it an aesthetic boost. As points of data, context, and accurate quotation the power of a tweet should not be underestimated.

Exactly what this tool will do, and how it will do it are still open questions. Louis Gray makes the point that if the tool is “customizable and elegant, like the company’s existing widgets,” it will be a very well received. Tomorrow we will bring you the new Twitter tool, with embedded tweets, of course.

Sent from my iPhone

Facebook Launches a New and Simpler Version of Facebook Events


Sent to you via Google Reader

Facebook Launches a New and Simpler Version of Facebook Events

Facebook has launched a new version of Facebook Events, simplifying the process of creating an event to one step.

The most noticeable change is the newly-added ability to create events right from your home page. There is now a box (pictured top right) that allows you to type in what you are planning, when it’s taking place, where, and finally who is invited. Facebook’s goal is to dramatically lower the barrier to creating an event, making it a more useful tool for planning impromptu dinners or small trips.

That’s not the only thing that has changed. The “Create an Event” page has also been revamped, with a focus on “What are you planning?” rather than just giving your event a title. At the same time, event creation has been streamlined, but at the cost of a few features. You no longer control whether people can post photos or message to an event’s wall: anyone invited to the event will have that capability be default. There are now just two types of events as well: public events and private events — there is no more open, closed, or secret options.

In its announcement, Facebook said that events created before today will maintain the same settings, but that new ones will have the new format. The feature still seems to be rolling out though, but we expect everyone to have the new version of Events very soon.

Is it a smart move by Facebook? Absolutely — events are hugely popular on the social network, but they tend to be time-intensive affairs, and thus impromptu events like a quick brunch don’t get planned on Facebook. We bet the new version of Facebook Events solves that issue.

Tags: facebook, Facebook Events


Sent from my iPad