Tag Archives: streaming

Start up: Google swipes ad injectors, streaming v vinyl, Galaxy S6 reviewed, FTC-Google scrutiny, and more

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Wait, is that from Amazon? Photo by star5112 on Flickr.

A selection of 9 links for you. None is an April Fool. (Apparently it’s necessary to say this stuff.) I’m charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.

Out with unwanted ad injectors » Google Online Security Blog

Nav Jagpal, software engineer for “safe browsing”:

To increase awareness about ad injectors and the scale of this issue, we’ll be releasing new research on May 1 that examines the ad injector ecosystem in depth. The study, conducted with researchers at University of California Berkeley, drew conclusions from more than 100 million pageviews of Google sites across Chrome, Firefox, and Internet Explorer on various operating systems, globally. It’s not a pretty picture. Here’s a sample of the findings:

• Ad injectors were detected on all operating systems (Mac and Windows), and web browsers (Chrome, Firefox, IE) that were included in our test.
• More than 5% of people visiting Google sites have at least one ad injector installed. Within that group, half have at least two injectors installed and nearly one-third have at least four installed.
• 34% of Chrome extensions injecting ads were classified as outright malware.
• Researchers found 192 deceptive Chrome extensions that affected 14 million users; these have since been disabled. Google now incorporates the techniques researchers used to catch these extensions to scan all new and updated extensions.

Tidal, Apple, Beyonce, and the future of streaming music » NextDraft Originals

First of two links on this. Point 8 (you should also read 1-7):

You just held a press conference with some of the biggest celebrities of our time. And the consumer buzz and press you got wasn’t even close to a Tim Cook Apple keynote. You’re in the technology business now. And we’re all in a new world. Today, product is a bigger star than any celebrity. That’s so important and so right, I’m gonna make it the chorus of this post and repeat it a couple more times. Product is a bigger star than any celebrity … Product is a bigger star than any celebrity. And in the high end tech business, we got 99 problems, but UI ain’t one. Seriously, if you think having a beef with another rapper is dangerous, try dealing with a product manager who disagrees with your vision. Here’s what the company that acquires Tidal should do to further differentiate itself…

9. Push back against the Internet-era dogma that we all hate having our music streams hosted by a human curator. That idea was never more than an assumption. And it’s one that needs to be tested. You’ll still have access to uninterrupted music when you want it. But when you want a radio station or a hosted playlist, then someone should let you hear a human voice.

True. Will Zane Lowe be the human voice on Beats?

Google and Asus announce the Chromebit, a sub $100 Chrome PC » MobileSyrup.com

Igor Bonifacic:

Thanks to Google and Asus, an entirely new type of Chrome OS computer is coming this summer. The two companies just announced the Chromebit, a $100 computer on a HDMI dongle.

Each one comes equipped with a 1.8GHz ARM Cortex-A17 processor, 2GB of RAM, 16 GB of solid state storage, Bluetooth 4.0, a dual band 802.11ac WiFi chip and a single full-size USB 2.0 port. Using its HDMI port, the Chromebit can be connected with any other HDMI-equipped monitor or television.

When it ships this summer, the Chromebit will be available in three different colours—blue, orange and grey. Google and Asus haven’t yet announced how much the unit will retail for in Canada, but based on a post on its Chrome Blog, it appears the company’s aim is to have the Chromebit cost less than $100 everywhere it’s sold. Of course, those that purchase one will still need to provide a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard.

So you need an HDMI monitor, mouse and keyboard. Who’s going to have those hanging around yet not have a PC?

Samsung Galaxy S6 review: the iPhone 6 has met its match » WSJ

Joanna Stern:

No, neither of the new Galaxys brings any original ideas to the evolution of the smartphone. If anything, Samsung has actually sucked out the differentiators, including the waterproof design and removable storage and battery. And Samsung still needs some schooling in the software department.

Yet with a series of improvements, the Galaxy now has a leg up on the hardware of other Android phones and the iPhone. It’s got me, a once extremely satisfied iPhone 6 owner, wishing for a better screen, sharper camera and faster charging.

One reason I probably like the new Galaxys so much—especially the white models I’ve been testing — is that the design looks like a compilation of the iPhone’s greatest hits.

Okey doke. The one thing the S6 does have: a dual-app view. Hard to pull off, but potentially useful. The cameras (S6 v iPhone 6) seem like a dead heat.

And this isn’t where the battle will be fought. It’ll be in China, and Europe.

Noah Smith on Twitter: “10/And what near-future sci-fi used to be – Neuromancer, Snow Crash, etc. – is now just called “real stuff happening in the news”.”

What with the events in Turkey.. part of a larger tweetstorm that’s worth reading at Eugene Wei’s blog.

US recording industry dips slightly, streaming and vinyl jump » Billboard

Ed Christman:

The story within digital remains intriguing. While streaming revenue jumped nearly 29% – to $1.87bn from $1.45bn – download sales fell 9.5%, to $2.64bn from $2.92bn. That means that overall digital grew by $140bn, 3.2%, to $4.5bn, up from $4.37bn in the prior year.

Looking more closely at digital streaming revenue, paid subscriptions’ value jumped to nearly $800m, via 7.7m subscribers, up 25% from 2013’s $639m in revenue and 6.2m subscribers. The RIAA also reports that ad-supported streaming services’ contribution to the overall U.S. music industry grew 34%, to nearly $295m – from $220m in the prior year – while SoundExchange distributions grew 31%, to $773.4m.

CD albums fell 12.3%, to $1.85bn from $2.12bn in 2013. Overall CD sales, on a unit basis, were down 16.3%m to 144.1m from $172.2m…

On a bright note, vinyl sales continued to grow, contributing $320.8m to the total pie, from the prior year’s total of $213.7m – a 50% growth.

Got that? Ad-supported “free” streaming generated less revenue than vinyl in the world’s largest, most connected market. (This likely doesn’t include YouTube revenues, though.)

Key senator to take closer look at FTC-Google meetings » NASDAQ.com

A key US senator plans to ask the Federal Trade Commission for information about meetings it had with Google Inc. executives during the time it was investigating the company for possible antitrust violations.

Sen. Mike Lee (R., Utah), who chairs the Senate’s antitrust panel, will conduct a preliminary inquiry to determine what conversations took place between the FTC and the Internet giant during the probe, people in his office said on Monday.

The senator could later expand his inquiry to include conversations people in the White House had with the FTC and Google, these people said.

A Republican senator is looking at Google’s relationship with the White House? No doubt to irk Obama, but it makes Google’s blogpost thumbing its nose at the Wall Street Journal (in which it used GIFs of babies) look both incredibly jejeune and ill-judged. Even if (as is likely) this comes to nothing, I suspect it will be embarrassing for Google to explain the post, which detailed visits to the White House by Google staff.

Criminal charges against FBI agents reveal staggering corruption in the Silk Road investigation » Forbes

Sarah Jeong describes

a sprawling case tainted by an unbelievable web of corruption. A state’s witness took the fall for an agent’s theft, thus becoming the target for a murder-for-hire—a murder that was then faked by the same agent. The Silk Road case was compromised again and again as Force and Bridges allegedly took every opportunity to embezzle and steal money. With so much bitcoin on their hands, the two had to coax various bitcoin and payments companies to help convert their ill-gotten gains to dollars. When companies resisted, investigations were launched, subpoenas were issued, and civil forfeitures were sought in retaliation.

Someone’s gotta be writing the screenplay, right? More to the point, I wonder if there was some assumption that bitcoin transactions would be anonymous on anyone’s part..

Amazon Dash Button » Amazon

Dash Button comes with a reusable adhesive and a hook so you can hang, stick, or place it right where you need it. Keep Dash Button handy in the kitchen, bath, laundry, or anywhere you store your favorite products. When you’re running low, simply press Dash Button, and Amazon quickly delivers household favorites so you can skip the last-minute trip to the store.

I know, it looks like an April Fool’s. But it isn’t – it’s real. Amazon is making it easier to order stuff directly, with a very clever, Internet of Things approach.

Next question is whether people will trust Amazon to always be the cheapest to deliver this. Miles ahead of supermarkets – though what’s to stop them doing the same? Maybe your washing machine will be festooned with buttons offering lights showing which is cheaper at any time (excluding P&P, of course).

Start up: Steve Jobs v Neil Young, the robot nightmare, thoughts on watches, and more

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They’ve come for your job. Picture via sweenpole2001 on Flickr.

A selection of 9 links for you. Use them wisely. I’m charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.

In our horrifying future, very few people will have work or make money » Alternet

Robert Reich:

A friend, operating from his home in Tucson, recently invented a machine that can find particles of certain elements in the air.

He’s already sold hundreds of these machines over the Internet to customers all over the world. He’s manufacturing them in his garage with a 3D printer.

So far, his entire business depends on just one person — himself.

New technologies aren’t just labor-replacing. They’re also knowledge-replacing.

The combination of advanced sensors, voice recognition, artificial intelligence, big data, text-mining, and pattern-recognition algorithms, is generating smart robots capable of quickly learning human actions, and even learning from one another.

If you think being a “professional” makes your job safe, think again.

This is the Robert Reich who was Secretary of Labor for President Bill Clinton. You could argue that (1) he’s old and doesn’t know how this stuff is going to work out or (2) he’s seen these changes play out and is echoing what everyone else has, and that’s worrying.

Major labels begin to question Spotify ‘free music’ model » Rolling Stone

Steve Knopper:

In a speech last month, Lucian Grainge, Universal Music’s chairman, decried the ad-supported portions of on-demand streaming services as “not something that is particularly sustainable in the long-term”; Warner Music’s chief executive, Steve Cooper, has suggested the free and paid portions of streaming services should be “clearly differentiated.” Bolstering this point of view: Apple, according to major-label sources, is planning to relaunch Beats Music as early as this summer as a $10-per-month paid service to complement its free, ad-supported iTunes Radio.

At least one of the three major labels is in the process of renegotiating its contract with Spotify this year, sources say, and most are pushing for this sort of change to the free service. “It’s one of those rare things— artists and labels are unified about their skepticism of the model,” says a second major-label source. “You can’t have a service that’s unlimited, ad-supported, free. Every other service — Sirius XM, Netflix — doesn’t offer its product unlimited, for free, in any context.”

Spotify has an incredibly low conversion rate to paid subscribers, even with its Christmas giveaway (be interesting to see how long it takes to get those “new” subscribers who took up its free offer to stick). Problem is the music industry is setting too high a price per play. Something’s gotta give.

Chinese internet users: beware mobile payment frauds » TechNode

Emma Lee:

Nowadays, Chinese internet users tend to make payments and bank transfers on-the-go, via public WiFi networks because it is just there and free. However, this habit could make you easy prey for hackers who set up fraudulent WiFi in shopping malls or entertainment centers.

Once WiFi squatters connect their mobile device to this network, their personal information is in danger of being stolen. If they conduct any kind of purchase or transfer in the meantime, hackers can record their IP address and information at the back-end, and then steal their accounts and passwords.

Although QR codes never quite took off in the West, they have become immensely popular in China as customers scan codes to find friends, make payments, exchange information, redeem coupons, follow services on WeChat, and so on. Hackers can embed a virus to QR codes so that anyone scanning them will automatically download a virus to their smartphones. Personal information from phone numbers to bank details and passwords can be stolen in seconds.

In this case, hackers send out short messages in fraudulent bank service numbers to lure users to log in to a fake website. Once customers input bank accounts and passwords on the site, hackers will steal the information and be able to access the money in their bank accounts.

Huh.

Apple opens up iTunes Radio to automated buying through iAd » Advertising Age

Mark Bergen:

Rumors of iAd’s demise have been greatly exaggerated.
Starting on Thursday, Apple is extending its mobile advertising network to iTunes Radio, its web streaming service that competes with Pandora, through programmatic ad buying. Previously, advertisers had to buy through Apple’s lean iAd sales staff. The new feature also comes with updated targeting capabilities, using customer phone numbers and email addresses that can be cross-referenced anonymously against marketers’ data.

You’re (and I am) thinking: how does this match with Apple’s rhetoric about privacy?

As it pitches advertisers, Apple is stressing privacy controls as paramount. When a brand matches Apple’s customer data with its own, Apple insists neither it nor the client can see which customer is matched. In recent months, Apple CEO Tim Cook has hammered home Apple’s devotion to privacy, particularly as he positions it against rival Google…

Any iPhone, iPad or Mac user who opts out of ad-targeting on their device is exempt from the targeting feature, said the executives working with iAd. Apple does not disclose how many of its millions of customers opt out. It’s a very small number, said an executive familiar with Apple.

Hmm. Even so, this seems to have the potential to sour the “privacy” story. Is iAd that important? Not in revenue terms, but maybe in tying advertisers to the whole concept.

This is what happened when Neil Young tried to make peace with Steve Jobs » Fast Company

This is coming out in dribs and drabs. Latest, by Chris Gayomali:

In the book Becoming Steve Jobs by Fast Company executive Rick Tetzeli and longtime technology reporter Brent Schlender, it’s revealed that Young tried to quash the beef by offering him a set of remastered vinyl editions of every album in his catalog. It was an “[attempt] to smoke the peace pipe,” writes Schlender:

I knew that Steve enjoyed listening to records on vinyl from time to time, so I agreed to call him to see if he’d like to get the LPs. Steve answered the phone on the second ring, and I explained what I was calling about. We had talked about Neil’s criticisms a year or so before, and I thought this might soften his grudge.

Fat chance. “Fuck Neil Young,” he snapped, “and fuck his records. You keep them.” End of conversation.

Jobs had a way with words, didn’t he. Wonder what he would have made of the Pono Player.

All four major browsers take a stomping at Pwn2Own hacking competition » Ars Technica

Dan Goodin:

The annual Pwn2Own hacking competition wrapped up its 2015 event in Vancouver with another banner year, paying $442,000 for 21 critical bugs in all four major browsers, as well as Windows, Adobe Flash, and Adobe Reader.

The crowning achievement came Thursday as contestant Jung Hoon Lee, aka lokihardt, demonstrated an exploit that felled both the stable and beta versions of Chrome, the Google-developed browser that’s famously hard to compromise. His hack started with a buffer overflow race condition in Chrome. To allow that attack to break past anti-exploit mechanisms such as the sandbox and address space layout randomization, it also targeted an information leak and a race condition in two Windows kernel drivers, an impressive feat that allowed the exploit to achieve full System access.

The future of the dumbwatch » Marco.org

Marco Arment:

The Apple Watch isn’t just a watch, interchangeable like any other. It’s an entire mobile computing and communication platform, and a significant enhancement to the smartphone, which is probably the most successful, ubiquitous, and disruptive electronic device in history.

Once you’re accustomed to wearing one, going out for a night without your Apple Watch is going to feel like going out without your phone.

I suspect smartwatches will be a one-way move for most of their owners, and most people won’t wear two watches at once. The iPod didn’t make people appreciate portable music enough to buy a Discman for the weekends, and the iPhone didn’t ignite interest in flip-phones or PDAs.

Some people will always want to own and wear traditional watches, but they’ll only become more of a niche, not a growing market

Yup.

HTC chairwoman Cher Wang takes over CEO role from Peter Chou » Bloomberg Business

Tim Culpan:

HTC Corp. Chairwoman Cher Wang replaced Peter Chou as chief executive officer after three years of declining sales at the Taiwanese smartphone maker.

“I know the company, I know the people, and I have the vision,” Wang, 56, told Bloomberg News in an interview. “I think I am the best candidate. I suggested it.”

Chou, 58, presided over HTC’s rise to the top of the U.S. smartphone rankings, the settling of a patent dispute with Apple Inc. and the purchase and sale of Beats Electronics. His reign also saw the stock drop and market share shrink as HTC suffered at the hands of cheaper models from Xiaomi Corp. and the broader lineup of Samsung Electronics Co.

“Peter had done poorly, but even with Cher’s return it will be difficult for HTC to turn things around,” said Jeff Pu, who rates the stock sell at Yuanta Financial Holding Co. “Her appointment may also imply that it’s difficult to find a fresh leader from outside.”

I love the bombast in Wang’s quote. But she was also the one who refused takeover approaches from Amazon a couple of years ago. She’s got her hands full now.

TAG Heuer and the future of the luxury watch… » Matt Richman

TAG Heuer’s smartwatch won’t sell. There’s no market for it.

Apple Watch requires pairing with an iPhone, and TAG’s smartwatch will need to pair with a smartphone to even have a chance of being as feature-rich as Apple Watch.

Apple isn’t going to re-engineer iOS for TAG’s benefit, so TAG’s smartwatch won’t pair with an iPhone the way Apple Watch does.

In order to have even a chance of being as feature-rich as Apple Watch, then, TAG’s smartwatch will have to pair with an Android phone. However, TAG wearers aren’t Android users. Rich people buy TAG watches, but rich people don’t buy Android phones.

This is TAG’s dilemma… Ultimately, this dynamic is representative of the entire luxury watch industry. Replace TAG with Rolex, Omega, Longines, or any other high-end watchmaker, and the problem is the exact same.

It’s not quite true that zero rich people buy Android, but the Venn diagram of overlap between “people who buy Android” and “people who buy TAG/Rolex/Omega” is very small. Add in the third circle of “people who want a smartwatch for that” and you’ve got a really tiny number – hundreds, perhaps?

Start up: how much (little) ‘Happy’ earned on Pandora, Sony hack spills on, ‘inception’ mobile hack, QNX trumps Microsoft, and more

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Ford MyTouch, powered by Microsoft. Well, not in the future. Photo by HighTechDad on Flickr.

A selection of 10 links for you. Choking hazard in children under 3. I’m charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.

Project Goliath: Inside Hollywood’s secret war against Google >> The Verge

What is “Goliath” and why are Hollywood’s most powerful lawyers working to kill it?

In dozens of recently leaked emails from the Sony hack, lawyers from the MPAA and six major studios talk about “Goliath” as their most powerful and politically relevant adversary in the fight against online piracy. They speak of “the problems created by Goliath,” and worry “what Goliath could do if it went on the attack.” Together they mount a multi-year effort to “respond to / rebut Goliath’s public advocacy” and “amplify negative Goliath news.” And while it’s hard to say for sure, significant evidence suggests that the studio efforts may be directed against Google.

The Sony hack is laying bare huge amounts of the entertainment industry’s thinking. Read on for more.

Nation-backed malware targets diplomats’ iPhones, Androids, and PCs >> Ars Technica

Researchers have uncovered yet another international espionage campaign that’s so sophisticated and comprehensive that it could only have been developed with the backing of a well resourced country.

Inception, as the malware is dubbed in a report published Tuesday by Blue Coat Labs, targets devices running Windows, Android, BlackBerry, and iOS, and uses free accounts on Swedish cloud service Cloudme to collect pilfered data. Malware infecting Android handsets records incoming and outgoing phone calls to MP4 sound files that are periodically uploaded to the attackers. The researchers also uncovered evidence of an MMS phishing campaign designed to work on at least 60 mobile networks in multiple countries in an attempt to infect targeted individuals.

“There clearly is a well-resourced and very professional organization behind Inception, with precise targets and intentions that could be widespread and harmful,” the Blue Coat report stated. “The complex attack framework shows signs of automation and seasoned programming, and the number of layers used to protect the payload of the attack and to obfuscate the identity of the attackers is extremely advanced, if not paranoid.”

Ford dumps Microsoft for BlackBerry infotainment system >> CNN

Ford is upgrading its infotainment system to make it more like a smartphone or tablet – and it is dumping its longtime software provider Microsoft as part of the change.

Instead, Ford (F) will use BlackBerry’s QNX operating system for the new Sync 3 infotainment system. Ford Sync allows drivers to navigate, listen to radio and music, make phone calls and control the car’s climate through touch or voice commands.

Among Sync 3’s improvements will be the ability to expand or shrink the display with pinch-to-zoom gestures. Customers will also be able to swipe the screen’s display, as they do on a smartphone or tablet.

Wonder if it’s anything to do with the glitches in MyTouch that surfaced in 2011, when it said it “will send memory sticks to 250,000 customers in the US offering a software upgrades for its glitch-prone MyFord Touch system, which replaces the standard dashboard knobs and buttons with a touchscreen.”

A win for BlackBerry’s QNX, though unlikely to be a dramatic money-earner for a while, if ever.

Pharrell made less than $3,000 from 43 million Pandora streams of “Happy” >> Fusion

Through the first three months of 2014, “Happy” was streamed 43m times on Pandora, while “All Of Me” was played 55 million times on the service.

But how much money did all those streams make for the artists involved in creating the tracks?

According to an email from Sony/ATV head Martin Bandier obtained by Digital Music News’ Paul Resnikoff, “Happy” brought in just $2,700 in publisher and songwriter royalties in the first quarter of this year, while “All Of Me” yielded just $3,400.

Windows Phone wobbles: why users are losing heart >> Tim Anderson’s ITWriting

Unlike Ed Bott and Tom Warren I still use a 1020 as my main phone. I like the platform and I like not taking a separate camera with me. It was great for taking snaps on holiday in Norway. But I cannot survive professionally with just Windows Phone. It seems now that a majority of gadgets I review come with a supporting app … for iOS or Android.

Microsoft is capable of making sense of Windows Phone, particularly in business, whether it can integrate with Office 365, Active Directory and Azure Active Directory. On the consumer side there is more that could be done to tie with Windows and Xbox. Microsoft is a software company and could do some great first party apps for the platform (where are they?).

The signs today though are not good. Since the acquisition we have had some mid-range device launches but little to excite. The sense now is that we are waiting for Windows 10 and Universal Apps (single projects that target both phone and full Windows) to bring it together. Windows 10 though: launch in the second half of 2015 is a long time to wait. If Windows Phone market share diminishes between then and now, there may not be much left to revive.

Windows 10 and unified development won’t be Windows Phone’s saviour; mobile apps aren’t shrunken mobile apps (just look at a desktop website shrunken down to a mobile screen to realise that).

And the very first comment is from someone who has given up on Windows Phone. These are not good signs.

With WebRTC, the Skype’s no longer the limit >> Reuters

WebRTC, a free browser-based technology, looks set to change the way we communicate and collaborate, up-ending telecoms firms, online chat services like Skype and WhatsApp and remote conferencing on WebEx.

Web Real-Time Communication is a proposed Internet standard that would make audio and video as seamless as browsing text and images is now. Installed as part of the browser, video chatting is just a click away – with no need to download an app or register for a service.

WebRTC allows anyone to embed real-time voice, data and video communications into browsers, programs – more or less anything with a chip inside. Already, you can use a WebRTC-compatible browser like Mozilla’s Firefox to start a video call just by sending someone a link.

A terrific desktop browser technology that feels like it’s five or six years too late in reaching a standard. Video calling is on mobiles now, in a variety of different (incompatible) protocols, some cross-platform, some not.

Furious Google ended MPAA anti-piracy cooperation >> TorrentFreak

The leaked emails reveal that Google responded furiously to the perceived slur [in a press release put out by the MPAA in reaction to Google’s press release about its changes to its algorithm].

“At the highest levels [Google are] extremely unhappy with our statement,” an email from the MPAA to the studios reads.

“[Google] conveyed that they feel as if they went above and beyond what the law requires; that they bent over backwards to give us a heads up and in return we put out a ‘snarky’ statement that gave them no credit for the positive direction.”

In response to the snub, Google pressed the ‘ignore’ button. A top executive at Google’s policy department told the MPAA that his company would no longer “speak or do business” with the movie group.

In future Google would speak with the studios directly, since “at least three” had already informed the search engine that they “were very happy about the new features.”

Tablet Ownership is Growing Faster than Ownership of Any Other Connected Device, According to The NPD Group

Tablet ownership among US consumers is on the rise, and growing at a faster rate than that of any other connected device. According to The NPD Group’s Connected Intelligence, Connected Home Report, as of the third quarter of 2014 (Q3 2014) there were 109m tablets in use, up 35m from last year.

“Now that the tablet market is unmistakably past the early adopter stage we are able to gain visibility into what the user base is still doing with their devices, and in this case it’s often video focused activities,” said John Buffone, executive director, Connected Intelligence.

More than half, 55%, of tablet users report leveraging a video feature of their device. This includes video calling; taking, posting, and uploading videos; as well as watching video from a streaming service or app from a TV channel or pay TV provider. Video feature usage is even more prominent among younger consumers. Two-thirds (67%) of tablet users aged 18-34 use these video features compared to 53% of 35-54 year olds, and 45% of users age 55 and older. Further, watching video from a streaming service or TV channel app is the most common video focused behaviour.

By contrast, there are 176m smartphones in use, for the same population. You wonder why tablet sales are slowing at the high end (Apple)? Because the high end is saturated, and tablets probably have a four-year, not two-year, replacement cycle.

And video usage is going to suck the life out of the networks.

Workflow for iOS aims to simplify automation of complex multi-step tasks >> Apple Insider

Examples of tasks that can be accomplished with Workflow, as noted by developer DeskConnect, include:

• Add a home screen icon that calls a loved one
•
Make PDFs from Safari or any other app
•
Get directions to the nearest coffee shop in one tap
•
Tweet the song you’re listening to
•
Get all of the images on a Web page
•
Send a message including the last screenshot you took

Once an automated task has been created within Workflow, users can launch them from within the app, or via other apps using a Workflow Action Extension, in addition to the aforementioned home screen shortcut.

There are location-aware actions, and you can create a homescreen shortcut to call someone (that was the first one I created). Wonder if this – with its capability of putting shortcuts on the homecreen – will fall foul of Apple’s hokey-cokey app store policies.

Google shuts down Russian engineering office >> The Information

Amir Efrati:

Google launched engineering operations in the country in 2006, and its programmers, including a top coder named Petr Mitrichev, work on Web-search quality, developer tools and the Chrome browser, among other projects. It has a sizable Moscow office. Sales operations are expected to continue in some form.

It’s unclear exactly why Google is making the move now, but it is likely related to the Russian government’s decision to require Web companies, starting in 2016, to keep data related to its citizens within Russia as opposed to data centers outside the country. There also was an alleged recent raid by authorities of a high-profile foreign e-commerce firm in Moscow that sent shockwaves throughout the tech community.

Google’s flight from Russia follows similar moves by other well-known firms including Adobe Systems. Western venture and private equity firms also have pulled back their activities in Russia.

I think Efrati had the scoop on this; the WSJ followed it up.

Start up: streaming stick wars, land sale hotspots, iPhone 6 grabs phablet market, Ring calls back, and more

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Eye testing for colour blindness. Photo by joeyanne on Flickr.

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Note: this is the first of two Start Up: posts today (it’s an experiment). The next will be published in six hours’ time (1300 GMT). Let me know what you think – one post or two?

10% of US broadband households have purchased a streaming media device to date in 2014 >> Parks Associates

Roku is still the leading brand with 29% of sales, but Google Chromecast (20%) has supplanted Apple TV (17%) in second place. New entrant Amazon Fire TV is in fourth place with 10%. Consumer content choices are also increasing, with Showtime and Sony planning to launch their own OTT video services to compete with Netflix and HBO.

“Nearly 50% of video content that US consumers watch on a TV set is non-linear, up from 38% in 2010, and it is already the majority for people 18-44,” said Barbara Kraus, Director, Research, Parks Associates. “The market is changing rapidly to account for these new digital media habits. Roku now offers a streaming stick, and Amazon’s Fire TV streaming stick leaves Apple as the only top player without a stick product in the streaming media device category.”

Note that these are sales, not installed base. But the desire to stream stuff is clearly growing very quickly.

Data shows iPhone 6 Plus drives phablet sales growth >> Kantar Worldpanel ComTech

Although selling for just over a month, the iPhone 6, with 33% market share, became the best-selling model among iOS devices for the three months ending in October 2014. The iPhone 5s was the second best-selling iPhone model with 26%, and the iPhone 5c was third with 18%. The iPhone 6 Plus captured 10% of iOS sales.

In the Android camp, the Galaxy S5 remained the best-selling model with 22% of sales while the Galaxy S4 continued to show its longevity, maintaining second place with a share of 12%.

Of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus buyers, 85% were repeat iOS buyers and 9% churned from Android.

Also in the three months ending in October, smartphones sales reached 81% of overall phone sales and 59% of all phones in use in the US. 

And iPhone 6 Plus was 41% of US “phablet” [5.5in or more] sales, despite being on sale for only one month of the three-month period. One model taking 41%? (The Galaxy S5 has a 5.1in screen, so doesn’t count in that.)

One CSV, thirty stories: 15: Hotspots >>Whatfettle

Paul Downey has been experimenting with the open data from the Land Registry about property sales, and used it to build a heatmap of sales from 1995 to 2004:

I’m cock-a-hoop how this image has turned out. The detail looks like bacteria on a petri-dish, but zoomed out it’s apparent not just where people live, but where people buy and sell houses the most, with the coast of East Anglia, Eastbourne and Cornwall darker than you’d expect. I can guess this may be due to turnover of retirement homes or holiday cottages but it’s plain to see there are many more interesting stories begging to be discovered from this simple map weighted with other open data from the likes of the ONS.

The frantic turnover in London and cities you’d expect, but the coasts are much more active than you’d otherwise expect.

Ring CEO responds to critics >> Tech In Asia

JT Quigley:

[Takuro] Yoshida [CEO of Tokyo-based Logbar, which made the Ring] says that he never anticipated delays, despite only giving Ring a four-month window from Kickstarter to shipping. The campaign estimated delivery in July, but backers didn’t start receiving their pledges until October. The long wait would become a source of initial doubt, criticism, and refund requests before backers ever received the Ring itself – likely galvanizing negativity and setting Ring up for even harsher reviews than if it had shown up in mailboxes on time.

What was the Ring team doing on July first – the day shipping should have begun?

“We were still testing the hardware, hoping to ship in August” Yoshida says. “I have a lot of web and mobile app experience, so when there’s a bug I can fix it right away. But with hardware, it can take weeks to fix one problem.”

He admits that the final product wasn’t sent off for mass production until October 9.
In the meantime, Ring was receiving between 10 and 30 angry emails a day – and many more angry comments on its Kickstarter and Facebook pages.

“We had two people, from a team of only eight total members, replying to emails,” Yoshida explains. “With more than 5,000 backers, it was hard for us to respond to everyone, and we just couldn’t reply to the comments section because it kept growing and growing.”

He never anticipated delays because he’d previously worked on web and mobile apps. OK.

Windows 10 could prompt upgrades of 600M aging PCs >> Computerworld

Millions of PCs are aging, and those who have resisted Windows 8 will likely upgrade to computers with Windows 10. The initial reception to a test version of Windows 10 has been positive, as it resolves many usability issues affecting Windows 8.

There are about 600m PCs that are four years or older, and those systems are ripe for upgrades, said Renee James, president at Intel, at the Credit Suisse Technology Conference on Tuesday.

“When we see a healthy macroeconomic environment and an aging installed base we expect a new [OS] deployment. The [PCs] are fantastic and at new price points. That’s kind of a perfect storm, combined with a new OS, and the OS usually pushes the upgrade cycle,” James said.

Actually, the evidence doesn’t suggest that a new OS pushes an upgrade cycle. There’s a noticeable slowdown in purchasing ahead of each new Windows release; and then there’s a mild (over the past three releases) springback, but nothing that indicates that a new OS “pushes” upgrades – apart from the fact that consumers get the OS preinstalled.

Businesses, which is where many of those 600m PCs may be, are more likely to shift to Windows 7; or if they’re there, stick with it.

Startup tackles colour blindness >> EE Times

John Walko, on a Cambridge (UK) startup called Spectral Edge:

Content streamed to the STB [set-top box] incorporating the technology is enhanced on a frame-by-frame basis before transmission to the TV screen. Colour-blind viewers can then significantly better differentiate between red and green when watching, allowing them to see details that previously they could not. Importantly, [managing director Christopher] Cytera says, the enhancement has minimal impact on the quality of the picture seen by viewers not suffering from colour blindness.

The technology is said to use mathematical perception models to modify image colours, and is suitable for both still and moving images. The company suggests colour-blind viewers watching programs that normally contain a lot of red and green in their images – for instance sports and nature – will enjoy the biggest improvements in the “viewing experience.”

Now installed on an unnamed STB maker which is a “major, medium size, international player”. As 1 in 12 males and 1 in 200 females has colour blindness, you might be in need of this without realising it.