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Amazon Preps Up Kindle for iPad, Will Apple Approve It?

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If you were Steve Jobs running Apple which is about to release a magical and revolutionary product that has one of its features going up against the Amazon Kindle, will you allow the Kindle application on the iPad apps store? I mean knowing pretty well that this will compete with the iPads iBooks application?

Well, it seems Amazon is hoping that Apple will not mind this at all. After all, the Kindle for iPhone and recently Kindle for Mac were approved. But the thing is the iPad iBooks is not yet fully operational and full operation will commence only as soon as the iPad is released to consumers.  Publishers are expected to get into the iPad frenzy, making sure that their e-book catalogs make it through the iBooks app store.

Still, there’s no harm in trying. After all Amazon was clever enough to market its upcoming Kindle app  not as specific to the iPad but for other tablets as well. Hence calling its Kindle Apps for Tablet.

Kindle Apps for Tablet will have the same features as the other iteration of the Kindle app. Be it for the iPhone, BlackBerry, PC or Mac. Specific for Tablets are some enhancement in the user interface including:

  • Tailored to the size, look, and feel of your tablet computer
  • Customize background color and font size to ease eye strain
  • Adjust screen brightness from within the app to make reading easier
  • Page turn animation replicates the look of turning a page in a book. Or choose Basic Reading Mode for a simpler and unadorned reading experience

So there, will you be getting your e-books from the Kindle Store once you get your iPad or will you stick to the plan and get it from the iBooks app store instead?

Originally posted on March 22, 2010 @ 5:25 pm

Internet TV Guide Clicker Redesigns its Homepage, Goes Full Blast with New Features

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Clicker, an Internet TV guide which just launched 3 months ago is gearing up for a full blast operation as it launches a new homepage coupled with some new features.  If you’re like me who just learned about this site now, Clicker’s dictum is to help you, Internet TV consumers to find the right show, right when you need to find it – as in Now.

What Clicker does is to catalog all broadcast programming online including TV-quality web original shows. It then delivers a seamless and well organized experience for you to find what’s available to watch and watch isn’t. It also tells you where to watch the Internet TV show as well as which of these shows are well worth watching.

And to make all these happen, Clicker has redesigned its homepage and peppered it with social, personalization, recommendation and management features.

Key features of Clicker’s new homepage include the following:

  • Search on top – to make it easy for users with small screen resolution to use Clicker’s main service – Search
  • Headliners – include important shows and episodes, breaking news and other important TV content
  • Popular Shows/Episodes – a placeholder for soon to be personalized recommendations feature of Clicker
  • Clicker Right Now – lets you peek into what other Clicker users are doing/watching
  • Categories – browsing Clicker’s catalog by subject
  • Playlist – used to be buried on the second layer of Clicker’s site and is now place prominently on the homepage

So there, if you’re into Internet TV programs, check out the newly redesigned Clicker.com now.

Originally posted on March 5, 2010 @ 9:42 am

TiVo Premiere Will Change the Way You Consume Media Content

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TiVo, a multimedia company popular for providing advanced television services has just launched TiVo Premiere and TiVo Premiere XL Boxes.  Basically what these two boxes do is to provide you with a one box that aims to change the way you consumer various forms of media content.

TiVo Premiere combines cable programming, movies, web videos, and music all in one box  that will unlock the real value of your HDTV set. It is energy efficient and promises to even surpass what the DVRs have done to our media viewing and listening habits.

If you’re multimedia consumer, there’s probably no reason why you would hesitate in getting the TiVo boxes. Well, of course that’s assuming that you are ready to spend $299 or $499 for either of these two TiVo boxes. And these will all happen come April 2010 when the TiVo Premiere and TiVo Premiere XL will be released.

Don’t worry whichever you choose to get, you’d still get the same features such as broadband and broadcast integration, TV Baby Browser, easy to use HD layout, built-in Adobe Flash Player, 45 hours of HD storage or 400 hours of standard definition programming feature.  If you want more recording capacity, you can opt to get the TiVo Premiere XL box instead. This option offers 150 hours of HD or 1350 hours of SD programming.

Are you getting one of these TiVo boxes? Or are you satisfied with your current TV box.

Originally posted on March 3, 2010 @ 10:11 am

Samsung Embeds Skype into LED HDTVs

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Samsung has just unveiled their latest HDTV line-up, the LED 7000 and LED 8000 series. Wait, before you stop and say that these are just another one-of-them Samsung HDTVs, well think again because they are actually not just your ordinary HDTVs.  These HDTVs are quite unique because of the fact that they come embedded with Skype software.

Yes, folks this simply means that you can now have the comfort of making video and voice calls through these Samsung HDTVs. Do you have any idea how crisp and clear the person you are Skype-ing with would be? Well, the idea is pretty cool for me and I would love to get one of these new Samsung HDTVs. Although we may all have to wait for quite some time since Samsung is launching the new TVs worldwide sometime before the second hald of 2010.

Going back to the two Samsung LED 7000 and 8000 series TVs. These two products will come with Samsung’s free InternetTV service as well which will let you access selected online content.  And you also need to buy the FreeTalk  TV Camera to enable the high quality video calls.  Voice calls on the other hand will be handled by Skype’s SILK audio codec which is capable of producing super-wideband audio quality.

If you don’t have a Skype account yet, you can create one using the TV’s remote control via the TV’s simple Skype interface. Of course, the bottomline is that voice calls and video calls will be free provide that you are communicating with another Skype user.

Cool? Yes, of course!. So, I’ll watch out for those Samsung LED HDTVs if I were you.

Originally posted on February 25, 2010 @ 5:52 pm

Wal-Mart to Enter the VOD Market, Eyes Vudu Movie Service

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Wal-Mart has been in the DVD retailing business for quite some time now. And while this has been doing good for them, the company lacks one service which has been the the more popular way of bringing digitial movies to U.S. consumers – video-on-demand service.

But Wal-Mart may be preparing up to enter this arena soon, as New York Times is reporting that the video company is eyeing Vudu, an online movie service provider. Although the deal has not been confirmed yet by both companies,reports had it they have began informing Hollywood studios about the deal.

If the deal is indeed true, Wal-Mart maybe facing up stiff challenge against the likes of iTunes, Netflix and other online video-on-demand services. While Vudu for its part has been pretty much making some noise especially during the recent CES Event wherein the company managed to struck some deals with LCD TV manufacturers in putting Vudu services in their products.

Previously, Vudu has been advocating the use of a separate device that would connect to home TVs but could not manage to get some leverage. Since then, the company concentrated on delivering online movie service instead.

We’ll see whether this deal would make some headway in the coming days. It will be exciting to watch how Wal-Mart would put up a challenge against iTunes, Amazon, and other big names in the video-on-demand service. And whether which one will emerge as the households’ choice of VOD provider.

Originally posted on February 22, 2010 @ 5:32 pm