Digital media

Facebook Home and the next stage of iPhone vs. Android

The home computing revolution of the 1980s and '90s was defined by a battle between two titans: Apple and Microsoft. After its IPO and the introduction of the Macintosh, Apple was riding high.

The company started losing the PC market in the '90s, though. Microsoft released Windows 3.0 as a cheaper alternative to the Macintosh in 1990, but it was the release of Windows 95, which brought a comparable GUI (graphical user interface) to PCs, that really hurt Apple. And Apple also suffered from a lack of vision, owing to the absence of its visionary leader, Steve Jobs, from … Read more

Ouya, apps, and the future of gaming

The annual Game Developers Conference, which attracts tens of thousands from the gaming industry, had all of the usual players this year: Nintendo, Sony, EA, Activision, etc. But they weren't the only players in town this week at GDC.

There was plenty of buzz about Ouya, the new $99, Android-based gaming console that broke Kickstarter records like Adrian Peterson breaks tackles.

Now, before the serious gamers out there savage me, let me be clear: The Ouya isn't going to be displacing the role of traditional consoles like the PlayStation or the Wii (although the Wii U has gone nowhere). … Read more

Death knell sounds for RSS, and Google knows it

Like some of you, I was once a power user of Google Reader. I needed it to do my job. But as Twitter started to gain steam, I started checking it less and less. It was less a pleasure and more a chore.

And then suddenly, I just stopped. I created a Twitter account to track tech news, and I never looked back.

I'm fascinated by the outcry resulting from the news that Google is shutting down Reader. The backlash shouldn't surprise anybody: Reader's power users consist primarily of hard-core bloggers, who were obviously going to complain (… Read more

A year later, AOL is heading in the right direction

I have to hand it to AOL CEO Tim Armstrong: after struggling with a flurry of departures and internal turmoil, he has steadied the ship and the markets have rewarded him as a result.

A year ago, the Internet media giant lost its CTO, its tech lead, its head of sales, TechCrunch editor Erick Schonfeld, and a slew of technology people in its West Coast office.

Activist investors were calling for a new board or directors, and some were even calling for a new CEO. This launched a three month internal battle that resulted in the AOL was going in the right direction, … Read more

Vudu's in-home Disc to Digital service: Promising yet lacking

It sounds ideal. Take all those DVDs and Blu-rays you own and, from the comfort of your own home, effortlessly gain digital copies for a low price. That's the promise of Vudu's new "In-Home Disc to Digital" service. Vudu delivers on that promise in some cases but disappoints in other ways.

Last year, Walmart-owned Vudu launched its Disc to Digital service that required people to go into Walmart stores for the conversion. Who wants to do that? This is where the "In-Home" version of Disc to Digital comes … Read more

How trapped are your digital movies and TV shows?

Have you decided to ditch DVDs and Blu-rays to instead buy movies and TV shows only in a pure digital format?

There are certainly advantages to that. But one of the biggest downsides of going all digital is that how you can view your content is largely dependent on the service you purchased it from.

Digital video providers In this column, I look at how "trapped" video content purchased from iTunes, Amazon, Vudu, Xbox and Google Play may be. The first four video marketplaces were listed yesterday by NPD as among the top ways people purchase digital video. … Read more

Keep your Blu-rays and DVDs, Hollywood -- I've gone digital

It had been years since I actually bought a DVD or a Blu-ray copy of a movie. But over Christmas, I bought one. I really wanted those extra features that a physical disk provides. Why not get a Blu-ray with a digital copy, I thought, and have the best of both worlds?

Why not turned out to be because redeeming digital copies is a nightmare. Are you getting a copy for iTunes? Or for Amazon? Or whatever on earth UltraViolet is supposed to be, something that finally crashed into my awareness as a new Blu-ray owner?

The film in … Read more

Zuckerberg's vision realized: One graph to rule them all

Mark Zuckerberg's vision for a world in which people are connected to each other for all time has remained unrealized, despite his best efforts with Open Graph and Timeline. But with Graph Search, he may have finally found the last piece of the puzzle.

"Our mission is to make the world more open and connected," the Facebook CEO said last year at the TC Disrupt conference. "We do this by giving people the power to share whatever they want and be connected to whoever they want, no matter where they are."

In Zuckerberg's world, … Read more

Why Bloomberg would be stupid to buy LinkedIn

Some people are suggesting that Bloomberg and LinkedIn would be a good business combination. I think it would be a complete financial disaster.

In an interesting but flawed piece, Reuters reporter Felix Salmon ponders the merits of Bloomberg acquiring the world's largest business social network.

From his post:

The acquisition of LinkedIn would be a clear declaration that Bloomberg had its eye on more than just the people with $20,000/year terminal budgets, and was interested in reaching the professional world more broadly. LinkedIn has not taken off as a messaging medium in the way that Bloomberg did, … Read more