A new MSN Video is coming, and it’s in Flash, not even in Silverlight. Now it is beta, take a look at this new experience that merges its traditional video offering with user video clips from Soapbox.
There isn’t a compelling reason to watch live TV on a phone
Live TV on cell phones: do we really need it?
Well, we live in time-shifted societies, where we record shows on TiVo and other DVRs to watch later, at our convenience. We download our favorite programs through iTunes, Amazon Unbox, Bit Torrent, Lime Wire, and other services, so we can watch them when we have the time on iPods, iPhones, or other portable devices.
It seems there isn’t a compelling reason to watch live television on a phone.
As ElectronicsWeekly says, when we’re mobile, we’re usually active doing other things. Watching TV on a cell phone (through services from CV/AT&T, CV-AT&T, VCast-Verizon or MobiTV ) comes with huge power consumption and it can handle signal interference. In addition carrier will charge you for the TV service no less than $15 month.
So it is really worth?
IBM offers a free alternative to Microsoft Office
IBM has announced last week in New York, free programs for word processing, spreadsheets and presentations, in its most ambitious challenge in years to Microsoft’s dominance of personal computer software. This software, called IBM Lotus Symphony, will be available as free downloads from its Web site. These offerings are versions of open-source software developed in a consortium called OpenOffice.org.
Free productivity software has long been available from this site, and has not yet made much progress against Microsoft’s Office. Analysts note that IBM has such reach and stature with corporate customers that its endorsement could be significant. Now OpenOffice is backed with the IBM brand and service. IBM executives compare this move with the push it gave Linux, making it mainstream technology.
IBM is also joining forces with Google, which offers the open-source desktop productivity as part of its Google Pack of software, which includes word processor and spreadsheet. Sun Microsystems launched its StarOffice suite years ago.
This technology has a crucial ingredient called OpenDocument format and based on an Internet-era protocol called XML, which makes digital information independent of the program and enables automated machine-to-machine communication. (For example, in a doctor’s office, patient records could be linked to hospital databases and updated automatically).
New York Times stops charging for its Website
Can we say I told you so?
The New York Times stopped charging for access to parts of its Web site and closed its Times-Select subscription program. And in addition to opening the entire site to all readers, The Times will also make available its archives from 1987 to the present without charge.
“Our projection for growth on that paid subscriber base were low, compared to the growth of online advertising,” NY Times executive said. “We didn’t anticipate the explosion in how much of our traffic would be generated by Google, by Yahoo and some others,” added.
The Wall Street Journal is the only major newspaper for to charge for access to most of its Website, which it began doing in 1996. It has nearly one million paying online readers, generating about $65 million in revenue. However, News Corporation, the new owner, is considering the possibility of making access to Journal free online.
