There's been a lot of discussion lately around web standards and HTML 5 in particular. People have been asking us how Silverlight fits into a future world where the <video> tag is available to developers. It's a fair question—and I'll provide a detailed answer—but I think it's predicated upon an oversimplification of the role of standards that I'd like to clear up first. I'd also like to delineate why premium media experiences and "apps" are better with Silverlight and reveal how Silverlight is going beyond the browser to the desktop and devices.

Standards and Innovation

It's not commonly known, perhaps, that Microsoft is involved in over 400 standards engagements with over 150 standards-setting organizations worldwide. One of the standards we've been involved in for years is HTML and we remain committed to it and to web standards in general. It's not just idle talk, Microsoft has many investments based on or around HTML such as SharePoint, Internet Explorer, and ASP.NET. We believe HTML 5 will become ubiquitous just like HTML 4.01 is today.

But standards are only half of the story when we think of the advancement of our industry. Broadly-implemented standards are like paved roads.  They help the industry move forward together.  But before you can pave a road, someone needs to blaze a trail. This is innovation. Innovation and standards are symbiotic—innovations build on top of other standards so that they don't have to "reinvent the wheel" for each piece of the puzzle. They can focus on innovating on the specific problem that needs to be solved. Innovations complement or extend existing standards. Widely accepted innovations eventually become standards. The trails get paved.

In the past, this has happened several times as browsers implemented new features that later became standards. Right now, HTML is adopting as standards the innovations that came from plug-ins like Flash and Silverlight. This is necessary because some of these features are so pervasive on the web that they are seen by users as fundamentally expected capabilities. And so the baseline of the web becomes a little higher than it was before. But user expectations are always rising even faster—there are always more problems we can solve and further possibilities needing to be unlocked through innovation.

This is where Silverlight comes in. On the web, the purpose of Silverlight has never been to replace HTML; it's to do the things that HTML (and other technologies) couldn't in a way that was easy for developers to tap into. Microsoft remains committed to using Silverlight to extend the web by enabling scenarios that HTML doesn't cover. From simple “islands of richness” in HTML pages to full desktop-like applications in the browser and beyond, Silverlight enables applications that deliver the kinds of rich experiences users want. We group these into three broad categories: premium media experiences, consumer apps and games, and business/enterprise apps.

Premium Media Experiences

Examples include:

• Teleconferencing with webcam/microphone
• Video on demand applications with full DVR functionality and content protection like Netflix
• Flagship online media events like the Olympics as covered by NBC, CTV, NRK, and France Télévisions
• Stream Silverlight video to desktops, browsers, and iPhone/iPad with IIS Smooth Streaming

Even though these experiences are focused on media, they are true applications that merge multiple channels of media with overlays and provide users with full control over what, when, and how they experience the content. The media features of Silverlight are far beyond what HTML 5 will provide and work consistently in users' current and future browsers. Key differentiators in these scenarios include:

• High Definition (HD) H.264 and VC-1 video
• Content protection including DRM
• Stereoscopic 3D video
• Multicast
• Live broadcast support
• (Adaptive) Smooth Streaming
• Information overlays / Picture-in-picture
• Analytics support with the Silverlight Analytics Framework

Consumer Apps and Games

The bar is continually rising for what consumers expect from their experiences with applications and devices. Whether it's a productivity app or a game, they want experiences that look, feel, and work great. Silverlight makes it possible for designers and developers to give the people what they want with:

• Fully-customizable controls with styles and skins
• The best designer – developer workflow through our tools and shared projects
• Fluid motion via bitmap caching and effects
• Perspective 3D
• Responsive UI with .NET and multithreading

Business/Enterprise Apps

As consumers get used to richer, better experiences with software and devices, they're bringing those expectations to work. Business apps today need a platform that can meet and exceed these expectations. But the typical business app is built for internal users and must be built quickly and without the aid of professional designers. To these ends, Silverlight includes the following features to help make rich applications affordable:

• Full set of 60+ pre-built controls, fully stylable
• Productive app design and development tools
• Powerful performance with .NET and C#
• Powerful, interactive data visualizations through charting controls and Silverlight PivotViewer
• Flexible data support: Databinding, binary XML, LINQ, and Local Storage
• Virtualized printing
• COM automation (including Microsoft Office connectivity), group policy management

Other Considerations

For simpler scenarios that don't require some of the advanced capabilities mentioned above, Silverlight and HTML both meet the requirements. However, when looking at both the present and future state of platform technologies, there are some other factors to take into consideration, such as performance, consistency and timing.

Performance

The responsiveness of applications and the ability for a modern application to perform sophisticated calculations quickly are fundamental elements that determine whether a user's experience is positive or not. Silverlight has specific features that help here, from the performance of the CLR, to hardware acceleration of video playback, to user-responsiveness through multithreading. In many situations today, Silverlight is the fastest runtime on the web.

Consistency

Microsoft is working on donating test suites to help improve consistency between implementations of HTML 5 and CSS3 but these technologies have traditionally had a lot of issues with variation between browsers. HTML 5 and CSS 3 are going to make this worse for a while as the specs are new and increase the surface area of features that may be implemented differently. In contrast, since we develop all implementations of Silverlight, we can ensure that it renders the same everywhere.

Timing

In about half the time HTML 5 has been under design, we've created Silverlight and shipped four major versions of it. And it's still unclear exactly when HTML 5 and its related specs will be complete with full test suites. For HTML 5 to be really targetable, the spec has to stabilize, browsers have to all implement the specs in the same way, and over a billion people have to install a new browser or buy a new device or machine. That's going to take a while. And by the time HTML 5 is broadly targetable, Silverlight will have evolved significantly. Meanwhile, Silverlight is here now and works in all popular browsers and OS's.

Beyond the Browser

In this discussion of the future of Silverlight, there's a critical point that is sometimes overlooked as Silverlight is still often referred to—even by Microsoft—as a browser plug-in. The web is evolving and Silverlight is evolving, too. Although applications running inside a web browser remain a focus for us, two years ago we began showing how Silverlight is much more than a browser technology.

There are three areas of investment for Silverlight outside the browser: the desktop, the mobile device, and the living room. Powerful desktop applications can be created with Silverlight today. These applications don't require a separate download—any desktop user with Silverlight installed has these capabilities. These apps can be discovered and downloaded in the browser but are standalone applications that are painless to install and delete. Silverlight now also runs on mobile devices and is the main development platform for the new Windows Phone 7 devices. Developers that learned Silverlight instantly became mobile developers. Lastly, at NAB and the Silverlight 4 launch this year we showed how Silverlight can be used as a powerful, rich platform for living room devices as well.

Expect to see more from Silverlight in these areas especially in our focus scenarios of high-quality media experiences, consumer apps and games, and business apps.

When you invest in learning Silverlight, you get the ability to do any kind of development from business to entertainment across screens from browser to mobile to living room, for fun, profit, or both. And best of all, you can start today and target the 600,000,000 desktops and devices that have Silverlight installed.

If you haven't already, start here to download all the tools you need to start building Silverlight apps right now.

For more information on this topic, you can watch a video with more details here.

Brad Becker, Director of Product Management, Developer Platforms

Are you addicted to Twitter? Do you have an iPad? Even if the answer to both is “no” right now, after you see Twitter for iPad, those answers are going to change — quickly.

Yes, the wait is over. Launching tonight in the App Store is Twitter for iPad — the first official native iPad app from the company. We all knew it was coming (Twitter even said so a few months ago), but it has been a long wait. It was definitely worth it.

Like most people, I wander into hyperbole from time to time. But it has now been a few days since I first played with Twitter for iPad, and I still think it is hands-down the best iPad app out there. It’s that good. With all due respect to Reeder, Instapaper, Flipboard, and Pulse, this is now going to be my go-to app for just about everything related to reading news. It’s simply such a great experience for reading tweets — and more importantly, reading the links your friends share.

What Twitter has done is create an amazing user experience for reading information. This is thanks to an intuitive user interface that layers on top of itself. So, for example, if I click on a link in my tweet stream, I’ll have a new layer that rolls over to show that webpage in a customized browser window. If you’ve used Flipboard, it’s somewhat similar, but better because it’s much easier to go back to where ever you previously were before you clicked the link. You simply swipe something to the side to move it temporarily or swipe it again to get it off the screen (in portrait mode anyway, where there’s less space).

Something else that’s awesome: when you highlight a tweet by clicking on it, it’s now pinned to the top or bottom of the screen as you scroll through your stream. This is great if it’s something you want to reference. A lot of thought has been put into these type of saving state actions within this app. It’s simple to save a draft and go back to it, for example (much easier than with Twitter for iPhone). Or to reference one of these pinned tweets in your own tweet.

There are also some great new gestures that Twitter came up with for this app. For example, if you pinch-outward on a tweet, it will unfold to show you more information about the Twitter user. Better may be the way you can swipe down with two fingers on any tweet to see a full conversation in context. It’s the little things like this that make the app great — Apple-like, even.

Overall, the app looks and feels quite a bit different from Twitter for iPhone (which Twitter built from Tweetie — developer Loren Brichter’s client that they acquired earlier this year). But Twitter’s Leland Rechis assures me it’s using all the same stuff on the backend. In fact, Twitter is now a universal app — meaning it’s one app that will work on both the iPhone and iPad, it will just look different depending on which device you’re using it on.

Rechis also says Twitter started experimenting with some newer things on the iPad version that haven’t yet been brought to the iPhone version, but undoubtedly will. A great example here is that when you click through to a user’s profile page, you’ll see at the bottom a list of users similar to that user that you may like to follow.

Rechis also notes the importance of the logged-out view — something Twitter worked on before the iPhone version launch. Twitter wants to make the service as useful as possible to people even if they don’t have an account. The idea, of course, is that they’ll hopefully sign up for one — and this app may give them the most reason to yet. When logged out, you’ll be able to see tweet streams based on hot topics.

“Tweets in general are not just what I’m doing, they have an incredible amount of metadata,” Rechis says speaking to why they created this layering idea for the app. Almost 25 percent of all tweets now have a link in them, he says. This app is perfect for those tweets, and content consumption and exploration in general.

Rechis notes that one of his favorite things about tablets is how they eliminate window management. At the same time, you need some way to manage all this information. He notes that Brichter’s original concept was stacks of sheets of paper that you quickly shuffle through. Other members of Twitter including Rechis refined that idea and the end result is Twitter for iPad.

That’s roughly 750 words about the app — but you really just need to see it, and use it. It will definitely be my go-to way to browse Twitter from now on. It’s that good.

Look for it in the App Store shortly. It will be a free download.

Update: I should note that for some of these more advanced gestures, there is a slight learning curve. That said, you can do everything without using those gestures, so it’s not a big deal — it’s just icing on the cake. And yes, Twitter is trying to come up with the best way to teach users about these new gestures.

Today is the day that the Windows Phone team has been driving towards, and we’re very excited to say that we’ve reached the biggest milestone for our internal team – the release to manufacturing (RTM) of Windows Phone 7!  While the final integration of Windows Phone 7 with our partners’ hardware, software, and networks is underway, the work of our internal engineering team is largely complete. 

Windows Phone 7 is the most thoroughly tested mobile platform Microsoft has ever released.  We had nearly ten thousand devices running automated tests daily, over a half million hours of active self-hosting use, over three and a half million hours of stress test passes, and eight and a half million hours of fully automated test passes.  We’ve had thousands of independent software vendors and early adopters testing our software and giving us great feedback. We are ready.

I last posted on this blog when we reached the Technical Preview milestone, and we’ve received some great feedback since then which we’ve been able to respond to and improve the smart design throughout the OS. For example, folks loved the Facebook integration in the People Hub, but they also wanted ways to filter their contacts so only the Facebook friends they really know will show up in their contact list  – we’ve added support for that.  We’ve also made it easy to “like” a post right from the People Hub, or quickly post a message to someone’s Facebook wall directly.

This has been one of the most incredible product development efforts I’ve ever been a part of. Today’s milestone is exciting not just because of what we’ll deliver to customers later this year, but how it sets us up for success over the long term in the mobile space… we’re really just getting started.

We reached today’s milestone because of the tremendous efforts of the entire team including our partners, early adopters, and independent software developers providing feedback.  I want to send a huge THANK YOU to this extended team– we couldn’t have done it without you!

Terry

New York Times publishes allegations that PM's media adviser 'actively encouraged' unlawful practice while editor

The prime minister's media adviser, Andy Coulson, freely discussed the use of unlawful news-gathering techniques while editor of the News of the World and "actively encouraged" a named reporter to engage in the illegal interception of voicemail messages, according to allegations published by the New York Times.

Coulson, who resigned as editor of the News of the World in January 2007 after its royal correspondent was jailed for intercepting voicemail messages, has always insisted that he had no knowledge of illegal activity when he edited the paper or at any time as a journalist. He told a Commons select committee last year: "I have never had any involvement in it at all."

The New York Times website published a trail to a story due to appear in its Sunday magazine. It made detailed allegations likely to bring intense new pressure on Coulson and the Metropolitan police force, which stands accused of favouring Rupert Murdoch's newspaper group by cutting short its investigation, withholding crucial evidence from prosecutors and failing to inform victims of the newspaper's crimes against them. Coulson declined to comment on the allegations. The News of the World and Scotland Yard have denied all the charges.

Coulson resigned after the imprisonment of his royal reporter, Clive Goodman, and a private investigator, Glenn Mulcaire, for "hacking" into the voicemail messages of eight public figures. When the Guardian revealed last year that the scandal involved other journalists at the paper and numerous other victims, Coulson said he had nothing to add to earlier denials of involvement, and the Conservative leader stood by him. David Cameron said: "I believe in giving people a second chance."

The New York Times, which has had an investigative team at work on the story since March, is citing two former News of the World journalists who specifically claim that Coulson was directly aware of his reporters' use of illegal techniques.

An unnamed former editor is quoted as claiming that Coulson talked freely about illegal news-gathering techniques, including phone-hacking, and that he personally had been at "dozens, if not hundreds" of meetings with Coulson where the subject came up. "The editor added that when Coulson would ask where a story came from, editors would reply 'We've pulled the phone records' or 'I've listened to the phone messages'."

In addition, Sean Hoare, a former reporter who used to be a close friend of Coulson, is quoted as saying that when he worked with Coulson at the Sun, he personally played recordings of hacked voicemail messages for him and that later, when he worked for Coulson at the News of the World, he "continued to inform Coulson of his pursuits. Coulson 'actively encouraged me to do it', Hoare said".

Hoare, who was sacked from the paper at a time when he had drink and drug problems, says he personally listened to the voicemail messages of celebrities such as David and Victoria Beckham and that he has spoken out now because he believes it was unfair for Goodman to get all the blame.

Coulson told the Commons media committee last year that he had never even heard Mulcaire's name and that Goodman had been the only reporter involved: "I am absolutely sure that Clive's case was a very unfortunate rogue case."

The New York Times claims to have spoken to a dozen former News of the World reporters and editors who say that phone-hacking was "pervasive" in Coulson's newsroom. "Everyone knew," according to an unnamed senior reporter. "The office cat knew." Most former reporters are unnamed, but Sharon Marshall is named as having witnessed hacking when working under Coulson from 2002-04. "It was an industry-wide thing," she said.

The paper says that Coulson ran a highly competitive newsroom "with single-minded imperiousness". Former News of the World journalists claim that there was a "do whatever it takes" mentality and that reporters were told to "get the story, no matter what". "They described a frantic, sometimes degrading atmosphere in which some reporters openly pursued hacking or other improper tactics to satisfy demanding editors," according to the New York Times.

The paper gives a specific example of the involvement of an editorial executive: "Matt Driscoll, a former sports reporter, recalled chasing a story about the soccer star Rio Ferdinand. Ferdinand claimed he had inadvertently turned off his phone and missed a message alerting him to a drug test. Driscoll had hit a dead end, he said, when an editor showed up at his desk with the player's private phone records." Driscoll was later dismissed and awarded £800,000 by a tribunal, which found that he had been bullied by Coulson.

Bill Akass, managing editor of the News of the World, dismissed the New York Times claims as "unsubstantiated". He said: "We reject absolutely any suggestion or assertion that the activities of Clive Goodman and Glenn Mulcaire, at the time of their arrest, were part of a culture of wrongdoing at the News of the World and were specifically sanctioned or accepted at a senior level in the newspaper."

The New York Times goes on to quote unnamed sources from the Met suggesting that its inquiry into the phone hacking was hampered by a desire to avoid upsetting Britain's biggest selling newspaper: "Several investigators said in interviews that Scotland Yard was reluctant to conduct a wider inquiry in part because of its close relationship with the News of the World."

After a raid on Goodman's desk in August 2006, according to the New York Times, "several detectives said they began feeling internal pressure. One senior investigator said he was approached by someone from the department's press office, who was waving his arms in the air, saying 'wait a minute, let's talk about this'."

The investigator, who has since left Scotland Yard, added that the press officer stressed the department's "long-term relationship with News International". The investigator recalled furiously responding: "There's illegality here, and we'll pursue it like we do any other case." Scotland Yard says that operational decisions are made by police, not by press officers.

Former journalists told the New York Times that when Scotland Yard raided Goodman's desk, two senior journalists "stuffed reams of documents into trash bags and hauled them away". Police did not interview any other reporter or editor apart from Goodman. The material seized from Goodman and Mulcaire included paperwork which potentially implicated three named journalists. None was interviewed and, as the Guardian disclosed last year, the police failed to pass key paperwork to the Crown Prosecution Service.

The New York Times quotes an unnamed former senior prosecutor who was "stunned to discover later that the police had not shared everything. 'I would have said we need to see how far this goes' and 'whether we have a serious problem of criminality on this news desk', said the former prosecutor."

When the case came to court, police identified eight victims of the hacking. However, the New York Times claims that the officer responsible for the inquiry, the then assistant commissioner Andy Hayman, had been shown a "target list" of names and numbers taken from Mulcaire's home which ran to eight or 10 pages and which "read like a British society directory".

The Met told prosecutors that it would approach all known victims, but failed to do so. One who was approached, the then Respect MP George Galloway, told the New York Times that police warned him that his voicemail had been intercepted but refused to tell him who was responsible.

Scotland Yard denies cutting short its inquiry or being influenced by its relationship with the News of the World. The Press Complaints Commission was criticised after two inquiries into the affair failed to find evidence of wrongdoing other than that originally presented by police.

After revelations in the Guardian, the Commons media select committee held a second inquiry into the affair last year. Its report expressed concern "at the readiness of all of those involved – News International, the police and the PCC – to leave Mr Goodman as the sole scapegoat without carrying out a full investigation".

Coulson said tonight: "I absolutely deny these allegations."

People are increasingly sharing different types of information on Twitter. For example, Tweets point to web pages, photos, videos, hashtags, people, check-ins, and more. Exploring Tweets is a great way to discover new and interesting information. And with devices of all shapes and sizes connecting to the Internet, we’re constantly looking for new ways to make this easier. To date, we’ve created applications for a variety of mobile phones, giving you instant access to Tweets and great content when you’re on the go.

Today we are bringing Tweets to a device that really lets content shine - the iPad. Twitter for iPad takes advantage of the iPad’s fluid touch interface, letting you move lots of information around smoothly and quickly – without needing to open and close windows or click buttons. There are a few things we want to point out that make this app a really fast and fun way to read real-time content.

Panes: Tapping on a Tweet opens a pane to the right. Depending on the content in that Tweet, you’ll see a video or photo, or maybe a news story, or perhaps another Tweet. You can continue tapping on Tweets, opening new panes, and getting new content as long as you’d like to. And, it’s really easy to move between panes by swiping to the right or left.


Media: When you tap a video link or open a web page with an embedded video, you can play that video inline. And, let’s be honest, video is great but sometimes it can take some time to load. The panes in Twitter for iPad let you look through your timeline while a video is loading, and then you can just swipe back to the video when it’s ready to play. You can also pinch on a video to watch it fullscreen.

Gestures: You can pinch on a Tweet to quickly view details about the author and to take actions on a Tweet, such as reply or retweet. Put two fingers together and pull down on a Tweet to peek at the replies, showing the entire conversation leading to that Tweet.

It's no secret that Twitter for iPhone (née Tweetie) is often regarded as the gold standard for mobile apps -- it blends functionality, performance, and usability together with a dash of playful quirkiness that works so well Twitter just bought the app and hired developer Loren Brichter in back in April. That delayed the release of an iPad version, but Twitter's finally come through -- and as you'd expect, Twitter for iPad does things just as uniquely as its sister apps on the iPhone and Mac. In fact, we'd go so far as to say a few of its interface conventions will become as commonplace as slide-to-refresh, which was first introduced in Tweetie for iPhone -- but let's not get ahead of ourselves. Read on for more!

Continue reading Twitter for iPad review

Twitter for iPad review originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 01 Sep 2010 23:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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…as I said, “more to come”.

You may have heard of the Double Rainbow Video. The guy who filmed this, Paul “Bear” Vasquez, lives in Yosemite and in the past month has gotten huge traffic for his ‘vivid’ reaction to that double rainbow. We hooked up with Bear to learn more about him & show him how to capture a full on double rainbow with Windows Live Photo Gallery using our panorama stitch feature. It’s so intense!

Some more background…

When I first showed the Windows Live team the famous “Double Rainbow” video back in July they thought it was hilarious. But when I said I wanted him to come and do a video with us, they looked at me as if I had been seeing rainbows all day…they thought I was kidding. I e-mailed Bear that night and sure enough, he responded, and with great enthusiasm.

I called him and gave him the lowdown on the project and asked if he would do a “Double Rainbow” redux. He was ecstatic! So we jumped right on it. He flew to Seattle and we had an absolute blast. After a 10 hour shoot we shared stories, ate delicious Vietnamese food (his favorite), and hung out with the crew.

 

Photo Caption: Bear and our crew. From left to right: Connor Lanman, Max Lanman, Adam Collins, Matt Garrett, Bear, Austin Chick, Michael Fishman, Andrew Sobey, & Shawn Anderson not pictured: Tommy Yacoe & Brendan Schlagel

We did a second video called “Meet Bear” where talks about his experience posting “Double Rainbow” and his love for sharing photos and videos with the world using Windows Live Essentials – video coming soon (will update post when its up). UPDATE: You can check out the second video called “Meet Bear” by clicking here!

Bear is something special. He’s entered the world of social media in hopes to share laughs, smiles, and insights. It’s not about the product, it’s about the people. It’s about the viewers, the users, it’s about you. And more importantly this project also shows how powerful sharing photos and videos can be. If tools like Photo Gallery and Movie Maker didn’t exist, Bear and I wouldn’t have met.

People can now share their lives with everyone and anyone, and can influence each other’s lives in a positive way. That’s what is so cool about Bear’s story.

Till next time,

-Connor

A new study by email software purveyor Xobni confirms what we bloggers know to be true, there’s actually no such thing as a day off in the Internet age (Want more visceral proof than an email study? Check out the timestamp of this post).

Information anxiety has pretty much put the kibosh on “time off” as two out of three Americans and Brits check their email outside of regular business hours (ha) and half of Americans email while on vacation (double ha).

The Xobni study, an online survey of 2,200 British and American adults conducted in August, holds that the traditional 9-5 work day has gone the way of the Dodo, due to the fact that Americans and Brits can’t stop checking their email. Apparently we sneak a peak at our inboxes while on vacation, weekends, sick days and even when we are (gasp!) in bed.

The press release blames this behavior on the down economy and the iPhone, but I blame it on the fact that we now live most of our lives online, and we feel compelled to check our email/Facebook/Twitter because that’s where most of the exciting stuff is happening anyways.

More highlights from the study/the life we have chosen:

* The 9-5 work day has gone the way of the Dodo. 72% of Americans and 68% of Brits say they regularly check their email on vacations, sick days, and at home in bed.

* Yes, IN BED. Conveniently for Xobni, work email in bed is apparently, you know, like a thing, with 1 in 5 Americans checking email as the first thing they do in the morning or the last thing they do at night before falling asleep (Again I can personally vouch for this).

According to Xobni, email has become an addiction, and like most addictions it is fueled by peer pressure:

* 27% check email outside of regular working hours because they feel it is expected.

* 26% of Americans feel they can’t handle/overwhelmed by the number of emails they receive during vacation.

Everyone in the world agrees that managing email has become a challenge to our sanity. And various companies are scrambling towards solutions including Google with its recent Gmail Priority Inbox launch and Xobni, obviously. My favorite low-fi way to deal with the bottleneck is a service called Sentenc.es which makes it clear to your email reader that you are limited to short responses.

Even though I’m not sure how well that will work, in bed.

Video, vaguely related.

Email overload image above: Ario_

Yesterday, at the Apple music event in San Francisco, I had a short chat with Apple CEO Steve Jobs, as he strolled through the demo room for the media, just after he had announced various updates for the iPod, Apple TV and iTunes onstage.

One of the those was the introduction of a new social network for music called Ping that Apple (AAPL) has integrated within iTunes 10 and which looks an awful lot like the experience you get on Facebook.

Essentially, it is a vertical version–in this case for music–of the powerful social networking site.

Facebook has noodled for years about creating its own social music offering, including doing a partnership with Lala, which was bought by Apple last year and shuttered in June.

But its efforts have largely gone nowhere.

And Facebook is nowhere on Ping too. Currently, there is no linking, sharing or participation of any kind with Facebook–or Twitter or MySpace either–on Ping, which will work only on the iTunes software on computers, iPhones and iPods.

When I asked Jobs about that, he said Apple had indeed held talks with Facebook about a variety of unspecified partnerships related to Ping, but the discussions had gone nowhere.

The reason, according to Jobs: Facebook wanted “onerous terms that we could not agree to.”

Definition, according to an online dictionary: “Involving an amount of effort and difficulty that is oppressively burdensome; Involving heavy obligations.”

Jobs did not elaborate on those troublesome terms and also would not say if Ping would incorporate Facebook Connect–which would make it much easier to find friends to share music with.

“We could, I guess,” he shrugged.

And when I asked how to find friends, Jobs offered, noting iTunes had 160 million users across the globe: “You can type their names into search or send them emails inviting them to join.”

Okay, although being more open would work too!

As MediaMemo’s Peter Kafka noted:

“Maybe Apple plans on joining the rest of the Web, via an open API that will let Facebook, Twitter et al–maybe even the to-be-launched Google (GOOG) music service–play nicely with Ping. We’ll see.”

Facebook–including some execs who are definitely irked about how closely Ping resembles Facebook, right down to the blue color scheme–hopes so.

Consider the statement issued by Facebook to me–after attempts to get it verbally failed, due ironically to several dropped connections on the iPhone of the exec I spoke to:

“Facebook believes in connecting people with their interests and we’ve partnered with innovative developers around the world who share this vision. Facebook and Apple have cooperated successfully in the past to offer people great social experiences and we look forward to doing so in the future.”

In other words: Zing, Ping.

UPDATE: Oddly enough, a Facebook Connect feature appeared to be in Ping when some signed up–not for me–as noted by Cult of Mac. And Silicon Alley Insider’s Dan Frommer even spotted the wording in Jobs’ stage presentation. I have an email into Apple PR asking for a comment on the change.

In any case, at the Apple event, Jobs told me he had great hopes for the social music service, adding that Ping could be the most significant thing to come out of yesterday’s announcements.

But soon enough, he moved right onto the new iPods, declaring enthusiastically: “Isn’t the Nano amazing?”

App store analytics provider Distimo yesterday published its latest report, once again zooming in on the pricing of mobile applications across a variety of platforms.

Consistent with its previous findings, Google’s Android Market has by far the largest share of free applications available compared to other mobile app store, but the gap is also widening.

In July 2010, 60% of all applications on Android Market were free of charge, representing an increase of 3% since May 2010 when it was 57%.

As you can tell from the graph below, that share is more than double the share of free apps on other mobile app stores, with the exception of Palm’s App Catalog (albeit barely).

The share of free applications is smallest on Windows Marketplace for Mobile (22%), followed by the Apple App Store for iPad (26%) and RIM’s BlackBerry App World (26%).

(click image for full size)

Let’s take a closer look at the prices of paid apps across mobile application stores.

Distimo posits that the average price of the 100 most popular apps in Android Market and Palm’s App Catalog is higher than the average price of the entire catalogue of applications.

While the average price of all applications is only 16% higher in the Apple App Store for iPad than in the App Store for iPhone, the average price of the 100 most popular applications is nearly three times as high in the former.

More than 60% of applications are priced below or equal to $2 in the App Store for iPhone, Android Market, Nokia’s Ovi Store and Palm’s App Catalog. The proportion of applications priced
below or equal to $2 is much lower in the App Store for iPad and Windows Marketplace for Mobile.

Notably, it seems prices of apps for iOS devices are on the rise. The proportion of paid applications priced below $1 on the Apple App Store for iPad and Apple App Store for iPhone has decreased in both in July 2010, from 30% to 25% and from 49% to 45%, respectively.

(click image for full size)

(click image for full size)

Last month, Google CEO Eric Schmidt noted that Google was activating 200,000 Android devices a day. Obviously, that’s a massive number. Today during the Apple event in San Francisco, Steve Jobs took the chance to one up him — then take a shot at Google.

Apple is activating 230,000 iOS devices a day, Jobs says. He made a thinly veiled reference to the Android numbers, and said “we think some of our friends are counting upgrades in their numbers.” Jobs said Apple is not doing that — if they were, the numbers would be much higher.

The way he phrased it, you almost have to assume Jobs is including iPod touches in those numbers — but you don’t activate iPod touches (unless he means activating the iTunes/App Store on the device). So perhaps he just means iPhones and 3G iPads. Either way, I fully expect Google to announce they’re activating 250,000 Android units — like, tomorrow. I’m only half-kidding.

Jobs also noted that 120 million iOS devices have shipped so far. And said that 200 apps were being downloaded every second from the App Store.

Right now, many of you are likely downloading iTunes 10, the latest version of Apple’s media software. The most notable feature in this new version is Ping, Apple’s first stab at building a music social network (or really any kind of social network). It’s interesting on a number of levels, but even the most basic level is pretty interesting: Ping’s social graph.

First of all, to use Ping at all you have to opt-in to it. While Apple CEO Steve Jobs touted the 160 million built-in users (it’s currently available in iTunes in 23 countries), that’s a bit misleading because many people won’t opt-in to using it — many of them for no other reason than they’re lazy or just don’t care. But assuming you do opt-in to it, the next social layer is interesting as well. Immediately, you’re taken to a Privacy Settings page where Apple asks you how you’d like to use the service. This is where you decide if you want to use the friend model, the follow model, or the lurk model.

To be more clear, Apple asks you to decide between two things: do you want to allow people to follow you, or do you want no one to be able to follow you? The latter is a nice option because you can still use Ping, you simply use it as a lurker. You can see what other people with public profiles are doing, but they can’t see what you are doing. The other option is to let people follow you — but there’s a sub option to this. You can either let anyone follow you (think: Twitter) or you can get notifications to approve everyone who wants to follow you (think: Facebook).

Leave it to Apple to come up with a social graph dynamic that is fairly complicated but made to seem simple. I mean, this is almost the opposite of many of Facebook’s convoluted social rules. My argument recently has been that Facebook should have a simplified option to allow you to have both friends and followers — you know, like what Apple is doing here. Instead, everyone on Facebook is a friend or they’re some sub-list quasi-friend that you really hate but are connected with anyway. Or something. Or you can make a Page — which creates double the work for you and those people who also happen to be friends and followers. It’s just so ugh.

I didn’t even consider this lurker option for Facebook because quite frankly, it would freak out a lot of people. But Apple does this smartly as well. While you’re free to roam and and see other public updates, if you do want to post something like a comment, your identity is shown. So no, there will be no anonymous trolling.

I haven’t used Ping enough to tell if it will actually be useful. Given that this is Apple’s first real foray into social, it wouldn’t be a huge surprise. But they’ve won the first battle: simple privacy settings. Facebook could learn a thing or two from this.

Curated.by is a new Twitter curation tool that makes it easy to gather and share collections of messages on any topic. The service is slowly letting more and more people create accounts, and I really hope it will launch soon so I can make public use of it.

It's quite simple: create a collection and drag Tweets into it, or use the service's new Chrome Extension to curate Tweets right from Twitter webpages. Then share your collections, embed them on a web page and subscribe to the collections of other users. Founder Bastian Lehmann, for example, curated a really good collection of Tweets about today's Apple event that I would have embedded below if the service had launched yet.

Sponsor

Other interesting examples of collections saved for posterity include All YC DemoDay Startups as seen by @davemcclure and Tweets about the Chevy Volt.

Curation is a beautiful thing and something that's still too hard to do online. Curated.by is likely to make a nice addition to any content curator's toolset. (See also Curated.info, a very cool blog subscription bundle sharing service.) The service still has some rough edges, and these sorts of tools tend to require more investment than most users are willing to make, but I'm personally very excited for it to finally launch. "Soon," Lehmann says.

Click to enlarge.

Discuss

An anonymous tipster – we have reason to believe it was actually a Microsoft employee or contractor – just casually pointed us to a new promotional video that was published on one of the Redmond software giant’s YouTube channels.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock the past few weeks, or are the type of person that goes out and actually interacts with people in real life on a regular basis, you’ll immediately realize they are riding the coattails of the (awesome) ‘Double Rainbow’ meme.

Update: here’s the corresponding blog post from the Windows Live team. The clip actually stars Paul “Bear” Vasquez, the guy who shot the original video, and there’s another one featuring him that’s being released in the future. Which pretty much means the ‘Double Rainbow’ meme is now officially a goner.

Not criticizing, evidently, since we’ve fooled around with it too, as have hipster Web startups and even Adolf Hitler.

Still, a slightly awkward, if totally intense way for Microsoft to promote that Windows Live Hotmail Gallery Photo Stitch Home service – or something like that.

Here’s the original video, and the one with that damn song that is forever stuck in my head.

Because we need more double rainbows in times like these.

Avner Ronen / Boxee Blog:
How Boxee Sees the Apple TV  —  Most of us at Boxee are Apple fanboys.  If it is silver and it has the Apple logo on it, we pre-order it.  If there's a line around the block, chances are we're in it.  And everything stops at Boxee HQ while we unbox the latest gadget to come out of Cupertino.

New York City startup BankSimple today disclosed that it raised its first venture funding in a round led by First Round Capital, Roger Ehrenberg’s IA Ventures, and Village Ventures, along with seed investors SV Angel (Ron Conway) and Nauiokas Park (Amy Nauiokas and Sean Parker), and . But it did not disclose how much it raised. I’ve confirmed that the round was $2.9 million, with an additional $190,000 raised last year in convertible debt (which converted to shares with this round), for a total of $3.1 million raised.

BankSimple has not yet launched. It is trying to develop a better interface for banking, working with financial institutions to actually hold the deposits. “Anything the customer sees is what we do,” says CEO Joshua Reich. BankSimple is creating a new front-end experience for bank customers both online and through mobile apps. The service will simplify their accounts into a single account and gives them a dashboard to see how much they are saving, how much they can spend, and how close they are to reaching financial goals.

The whole point is to simplify people’s financial lives by giving them a modern Web interface and realtime data linked to their accounts. So when you are about to reach an overdraft, you might get a notification on your phone. The first customers will be required to own a smartphone so they can download one of BankSimple’s mobile apps (iPhone and Android will probably be first). They will be able to deposit a check by taking a picture of one with their cell phone camera. Customers will also get a bank card tied to their account.

“The way banks work is they shove products down the throats of consumers,” says Reich. The more products you sign up for with your bank, the more fees they can charge. BankSimple will not make money from fees. Instead it will split the net interest margin with its partner banks (the net margin interest is the difference between the rate at which banks lend out money and the rate at which they pay depositors). It is looking to partner with wholesale banks to take care of the back end.

This strategy of focusing solely on the user experience contrasts with Betterment, a TechCrunch Disrupt finalist which also tries to simplify the online banking experience with a single, smarter account, but does hold deposits. Reich acknowledges that “we would certainly get more revenues if we did it ourselves,” but does not want to be distracted by regulatory compliance and managing large pools of money. Plenty of banks do that better than BankSimple could. Instead he wants to focus on what banks don’t do well: building a technology company and making the customer experience less harrowing.

Virgin Mobile’s MiFi is nearly like the ones offered by Sprint and Verizon but with three exceptions: an unlimited data plan, no contract and a $40-a-month service fee.

iTunes 10 is now live and available for download. It comes bundled with its own killer feature: music-centric social network Ping.

Announced just this morning, the new iTunes/Ping one-two combo pack a mighty punch. But can this dynamic duo deliver on its promise to revitalize music-based social networking? And will Ping be the MySpace killer all the tech pundits are speculating about?

We don’t have all the answers, but we do have a few first impressions to share with you. We were definitely met with a few surprises and even some disappointments when firing up the app for the first time. Here’s what we think so far; be sure to share your opinions with us in the comments.

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Signing Up and Getting Started

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First, download the new iTunes. Once it’s installed, you’ll notice a new link under the iTunes Store tab on the left side of the iTunes interface. The Ping tab is inconspicuous as it is exciting.

The service is opt-in, so you’ll have to turn Ping on and sign in with your Apple account and agree to a new Terms of Service. After that comes a simple profile form that gives you the opportunity to upload an avatar and write the standard social media “About Me” section. Additionally you can “like” up to three genres.

Our first nose-wrinkle moment with Ping came right here: We only get to pick three kinds of music? Almost everyone likes a few more than three genres. Still, this will force those pesky “I listen to everything” types to get specific, so we can’t complain too much.

After that, you get to make some privacy choices. You can specify how music you like, rate and review is displayed on your profile; you can also decide whether or not people can follow you and if they need your approval to follow you. Even if you don’t allow others to follow you, you can still follow anyone you like. It’s a fairly common asymmetric friendship model, much like Twitter’s.

You can also choose to connect your profile on Ping to your Facebook profile, if you wish. Once your accounts are connected, you can also follow your Facebook friends on Ping, too.

Ping already has some “Artists We Recommend You Follow,” among them, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Linkin Park and U2. These don’t seem to be connected in any way to individual users’ purchasing habits or iTunes library contents. In the “People We Recommend You Follow” section, you’ll find luminaries such as Def Jam head Rick Rubin and radio DJ Jason Bentley. It’s a shame these recommendations aren’t based on available user data yet; we’re hoping that as more artists enable Ping profiles and more users sign up and begin to exhibit certain behaviors based on demographic and psychosocial factors, the recommendation quality for first-timers will improve.

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Playing With Ping: UX/UI

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Once you’re in and set up, you’ll see a stream of recent activity. You can think of it in a couple ways. First, it’s a music-only version of your Facebook news feed. Second, it’s a huge recommendation — one that might work pretty well if your friends, or at least the people you follow on Ping, have similar taste in music.

You can comment on and like others’ activities. When you click through to another user’s profile, you’ll also see a run-down of his or her recent activities.

Navigation is a bit awkward; don’t expect Facebook’s plethora of tabs and menus. You’ll get a search bar and simple back and forward buttons in addition to the traditional iTunes navigation bar at the top of the screen. On another look-and-feel UI note, it’s new and jarring to have to use a web app from within a desktop app, but it’s something that Ping users will apparently have to get used to.

The other part of running a social network inside a desktop app is that it’s cripplingly slow — something that might seriously inhibit the platform’s growth. If there’s anything end users hate more than sites that constantly go down, it’s sites that run slowly.

You can search for artists, people or both. Either the search function is purely busted, or iTunes hasn’t got a large enough repertoire of artists on board with Ping yet. Artists have both their iTunes Store pages and Ping profiles. Ping search takes you to the former, which isn’t quite intuitive.

The artist Ping profiles show an activity stream as well as upcoming concerts and a few other links. And of course, the entire Ping artist interface contains built-in music-selling features.

Artists can also upload photos, videos and text updates, something we haven’t yet been able to do as non-artists. As for uploading content other than reviews, regular users are limited to comments on your and others’ activity only for now.

One interesting section of Ping is its Charts, a sort of recommendation engine that delivers a brief list of songs and albums popular among people you follow. It shows purchased music only, not liked, rated or reviewed items.

Other sections of your Ping profile might not be as easy to understand; for example, don’t expect to be able to write a review when you click on “My Reviews;” you’ll have to go elsewhere in iTunes for that. Controls for the interface are small and, shall we say, specific. In other words, you’d better be pretty accurate when clicking on that five pixel-wide arrow, or you’ll end up on a wholly different part of the site and have to start all over again.

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Is It a MySpace Killer?

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The big question for music fans, musicians, digital collateral creators and millions of other people is both simple and complex: Can Ping replace MySpace as the go-to marketplace to find and socialize around entertainment?

We pondered this question at length earlier today, when we were confident that this Apple-backed MySpace alternative, with its baked-in connection to the iTunes Store, would be a surefire success.

However, while testing the app this evening, we see that Ping has a long way to go if it’s going to be a better alternative. All the reasons that users have largely abandoned MySpace — the emphasis on gaudy customization, the constant stream of shallow user-to-user communication, the veritable sea of band-spam — have been avoided to a perhaps detrimental extreme. We love minimalist design as much as the next guy, but we also love self-expression, music-sharing and communication with friends. Much of that is curtailed here.

Moreover, the interface is still buggy and slower than molasses in January at the North Pole during a legitimate Ice Age. And that slowness is a big turnoff and an inherent factor of working within iTunes.

We don’t love Ping yet, but we don’t hate it, either. We suspect that much of the network’s value will be a wait-and-see proposition. Wait and see what happens when there are more artists, more curators, more well-known DJs and music bloggers, and more of your own friends on Ping. Wait to see what changes Apple makes in later iterations. But for now, it’s definitely an app worth watching.

What are your first impressions of Ping?

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After months of speculation, Apple CEO Steve Jobs finally revealed the new and improved Apple TV today. It has a lot going for it, including a low $99 price, redesigned hardware, and access to streaming media from the iTunes store.

At the same time, I can’t help but be disappointed — an opinion shared by Forrester analyst James McQuivey. Instead of being a revolutionary upgrade, the new Apple TV is just a smaller and cheaper iteration on what Apple has done before. Meanwhile, Google announced its Google TV service earlier this year — which will bring many of the Apple TV’s additions (Netflix, Pandora), alongside full access to the web on your TV, the ability to subscribe to audio and video podcasts, and more.

After Apple’s announcement today, I’m still far more excited for Google TV.

Google’s aim isn’t just to offer another device that connects to your TV to deliver media. Rather, it’s going for a full-scale redefinition of the way we watch TV. Instead of scrolling through hundreds of channels with a clunky channel guide, you can use Google TV’s search to find content from live TV, your DVR, or web video instantly. Instead of waiting for Apple to include access to the hottest new web video site on Apple TV, you can simply browse to the site and view the video with Google TV’s web browser, which also has full Adobe Flash support.

And instead of hoping that Apple brings apps to the Apple TV, you can get access to the Android Market right on Google TV — which could conceivably allow a video streaming service like Boxee to find a home on Google’s platform.

Google is working with TV manufacturers and cable/satellite providers to integrate the service into TVs and set-top boxes, which could help put an end to ugly TV programming guides and other terrible user interfaces forced upon couch potatoes. This is the key to Google’s plan: Instead of going out and buying a separate device, users will inevitably get access to Google TV by default through their cable/satellite provider, or when they purchase a new TV. For those of us who want it right away, Google is working together with Logitech for a Google TV set-top box called the Revue.

Strangely enough, when it comes to this particular battle, Apple has the distinct price advantage. Many users wouldn’t think twice about spending $99 for the Apple TV experience — particularly if they don’t have any other way to get Netflix on their televisions. The Logitech Revue, meanwhile, doesn’t have a set price yet, but we can expect it to be between $200 and $300. Its internals are significantly more complex, whereas the new Apple TV is a stripped down device running the same mobile hardware as the iPhone 4.

Apple’s price lead won’t last forever though — you can bet that by next year, there will be a Google TV box around or under $99 as well. And if all goes according to plan, Google TV isn’t something  many customers should have to worry about buying anyway — it will be a part of their normal TV experience by default.

Apple will certainly sell truckloads of Apple TVs this holiday season, and probably for some time next year as well. But in the grand scheme of things, it’s Google TV that will significantly affect the shape of TV watching in the future. Apple could update the Apple TV to support apps, but even then it’s still locked down to a single box that users will have to buy.

Meanwhile, Google TV will have the same advantage as Google’s Android mobile operating system — it will be everywhere, making it unstoppable.

Tags: Apple TV, Google TV, Video

Companies: Apple, Google

People: Steve Jobs

Apple announced on Wednesday a cornucopia of new hardware and software: sleek iPods, a brand new Internet-enabled video streaming device and new versions of its iOS software and iTunes 10. However, the most impressive to me by far was Ping, the music-only social network that Apple is opening up its 160 million existing iTunes users.

No, I’m not blown away by the 160 million number. What I’m impressed by is the thinking behind Ping.

Ping may function like a cross between Facebook and Twitter for iTunes by allowing you to follow celebrities, create social cliques and get artist updates via an activity stream. I think it could have tremendous impact on social sharing and commerce.

From a content perspective, there are three different types of media we love to talk about: movies we see, music we listen to and books we are reading. These are accepted social norms. In fact, many relationships are made on the basis of collective love of a movie and many friendships have started with mixed tapes.

It makes perfect sense for a music service to be social. I’m not alone: The popularity YouTube, the fast-growing MOG and the sadly defunct iLike and Imeem show that people gravitate towards music as a common, collective experience. A recommendation from friends on Last.fm often resulted in me buying many-a-few music tracks. My friends who listened to Thievery Corporation turned me on to The Broadway Project and Chris Joss, which I ended up buying on the iTunes store or via Amazon’s MP3 store.

This click-and-go-somewhere-to-download model of affiliate links can never match a unified experience. Amazon, for example, encourages bloggers and others to link to things they like and then get a piece of the action. This separates social from commerce and treats them as two discrete activities. On the post-Facebook Internet, I don’t think anyone can afford to keep these two actions distinct.

Ping, from what little I saw during Steve Jobs’ demo, allows a similar level of social interaction. It can tell me who my friends think are cool and the top 10 favorites of people in my social graph. Some of my friends are famous deejays. Others just have eclectic musical tastes. They can collectively sift through over 10 million songs and help with the discovery of music. This social-powered discovery is part of the biggest theme of our times: serendipity. About two years ago, when I wrote about serendipity, I said:

The problem is that there’s too much data coming online too quickly, and the traditional method of search that involves first finding and then consuming the information is not going to work for much longer. There just won’t be enough time for us to do that and still have a life. It’s a problem, and therefore solving it is an opportunity — a very big opportunity.

My belief has only been affirmed by growth in the amount of data available. With 12 million songs and 250,000 apps, the best way for Apple to enhance the iTunes store – aka its shopping experience — is through the use of social. Back in 2007, I argued that social networking was merely a feature that had to be embedded into applications to enhance their value. Apple has done a great job of that, but it’s also gone one step further, not only by adding a social networking layer to iTunes, but by meshing it with its commerce engine, the iTunes Store. And it’s made this experience available on both the desktop and its devices.

Apple received much of this social capability with the acquisition of Lala, an online music service, which as a standalone company used sharing of social objects to drive folks towards paid music downloads. Now Apple is only closing the loop by further sharing what users bought. I wouldn’t be least bit surprised if sales of music on the iTunes store rocket upwards, thanks to social discovery.

Amazon, which recently started experimenting with Facebook Connect, has similar ideas, but its implementation leaves a lot to be desired. On Amazon, I’m reduced to reading reviews from absolute strangers for music. I have a handful of friends who have impeccable taste in non-fiction business books, are all members of Amazon, and they already use email to share new book suggestions with me.

What if they too could share their likes and dislikes via a social layer inside Amazon.com? Or what if I could follow my favorite authors and get updates on their books? Much like Apple, Amazon owns book-based social service, Shelfari, and should find ways to embed the social layer inside of all Amazon products and connect its tens of millions of users.

Like Apple, Amazon too has a lot more data about its customers and their behaviors and could create a compelling discovery experience. I believe with tens of thousands of products in its store, the retail giant needs to figure out ways to surface content and other offerings smartly.

Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d): Why Google Should Fear the Social Web

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Microsoft has released to manufacturing (RTM’d) the Windows Phone OS 7.0, company officials announced on September 1.