L'Atelier US : The high-tech studio for a changing world

Netflix Video Streaming on Your Xbox 360

Jason Alyesh — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 02:40:43 GMT

Following-up on what we already covered in July, Microsoft released today the “New Xbox Experience,” which is a new user interface for the Xbox 360 gaming console. The highlight of the release is the ability to watch Netflix movies directly from the entertainment system. Users are also able to save high definition movies and television [...]

Touch Sight: First Camera for the Blind

Mark Alvarez — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 02:28:23 GMT

Touch Sight is a digital camera for the blind. Instead of on a digital display, the camera records 3D images on a flexible Braille screen. In addition to the image, the camera records three seconds of sound, which helps measure the distance of the photographed object and acts as a viewing reference. “The sound [...]

Fewer Consumers Opening Marketing E-Mails

Ivory King — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 21:32:45 GMT

Marketing e-mails are widely accepted as obnoxious, though they are the darling of the marketing team’s online arsenal. But the infamous inbox clutter may finally be losing marketing steam. A November 2008 study by MailerMailer shows that fewer consumers worldwide are opening marketing e-mails. The average open rate fell to 13.2 percent in the first [...]

85% of Companies Use Open Source Softwares, Study Says

Mark Alvarez — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 18:38:50 GMT

85% of companies use open source software (OSS), and the remaining 15% will begin in the next 12 months, according to a Gartner study. Ownership cost, cheaper development, and the ease of implementing new IT projects and software initiatives are the main reasons for the adoption. The software is used most often for customer service, [...]

Antitrust Enforcement: Stronger, Better Under Obama?

Jason Alyesh — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 17:31:27 GMT

Antitrust involves the prohibition of anti-competitive and unfair business practices, such as the restriction of free-trade among business entities, and the related supervision of corporate mergers and acquisitions. In the United States, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) are the primary institutions that determine whether to interfere on antitrust grounds. With [...]

Today.com: Get Paid for Each Blog Post and Unique Hit

Jason Alyesh — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 22:11:08 GMT

Most paid blogging Web sites will pay to advertise on a writer’s already existing blog, or offer writing topics to compete for. With Today.com, writers are paid on the basis of posts and unique hits to their exclusively managed blogs. For each post, one dollar is added to the user’s account. For every thousand unique [...]

Yahoo CEO Yang to Step Down

Ivory King — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 19:57:24 GMT

Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang (picture right) announced that he will leave the position of Chief Executive Officer as soon as a replacement is found. Only CEO for 18 months, Yang has been subject to intense shareholder pressure and criticism. While his heaviest load of criticism was received after turning down Microsoft’s unsolicited buy offer at [...]

Buying Gadgets is Easy, but Fixing Them…?

Mark Alvarez — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 17:43:11 GMT

Back before cable, all you had to do to fix a TV was hit it on the side with a kitchen knife (according to my step-grandfather, at least). With today’s ever-changing technology, on the other hand, where evolution and marketing cycles drives regular adoption of a host of new technologies, fixing new devices is [...]

Tech Job Losses Worst Since 2003

Mark Alvarez — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 00:48:56 GMT

There have been more than 140,000 job losses so far this year, according to a report from outplacement consultants Challenger, Gray & Christmas released Friday; nearly two-thirds of the cuts have happened since July. There were 55,818 cuts in electronics, 50,303 in computer, and 34,301 in telecommunication. Tech job cuts are now averaging 22,358 per [...]

Internet Sales Tax Might Come to Your State Soon

Mark Alvarez — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 17:29:12 GMT

With the worsening economy and state budget deficits, states are increasingly considering adding sales tax to online retail transactions. Legislation could be implemented as soon as 2009, according to Forbes. “States are coming up with huge deficits and looking for places to make money,” says Eric Menhart of CyberLaw. “All of a sudden, Internet taxation appears [...]

Real-Time Video Analytics with Ooyala

Jason Alyesh — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 00:23:53 GMT

Ooyala’s strength is in its SaaS analytics software, which targets Web sites that specialize in video hosting. The Mountain View-based company’s services enable its customers to know precisely when their viewers abandoned a particular video. Such information is important for determining appropriate video content and ad placement opportunities. The interface for Ooyala’s service, which it calls [...]

France’s Orange Offers “Cinema Series”, Multi-Platform TV and Film

Mark Alvarez — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 00:10:57 GMT

French telecom provider Orange launched the Cinema Series, a subscription-based, multi-platform TV service, yesterday. The cable service brings Internet-style viewing to French TV. “Orange is offering cinema addicts a new way of watching films and TV series. Apart from traditional broadcasting, all programs are available on demand and can be watched on any screen at any time [...]

News Coverage on Sarah Palin Finally Rights Itself

Ivory King — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 21:58:18 GMT

Much humbled and slightly discredited, the news/blog machine emerged yesterday from sourcing errors and false leads connected to Sarah Palin and her geographical knowledge. Fresh from the election, rumors rained down about the former Vice Presidential candidate. Fox News and other prominent resources ran statements that the Alaska governor believed that Africa was a country, not [...]

Windows Live Gets 2.0 Makeover

Mark Alvarez — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 21:31:12 GMT

Tuesday Microsoft announced a series of radical changes to Windows Live, turning it into what many critics are dubbing “a Facebook competitor.” The overarching goal is to simplify Live. Windows Live’s new dashboard is an effort to integrate all of Window Live’s services, including photo sharing, calendar, video editing. It will aggregate content from [...]

RSS: Niche Media as Powerful Marketing Target Audience

Ivory King — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 19:51:30 GMT

RSS subscribers make a great target audience. Really Simple Syndication enables Web users to have automatically updating access to customized Web content. These RSS feeds are read in aggregator software, such as FeedReader, Google Reader or Bloglines. It is a less popular, but highly efficient method to access frequently updated content on news sites and [...]

Researchers Infiltrate Spam Network to Study Spamonomics

Mark Alvarez — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 23:29:09 GMT

Earlier this week, researchers from UC Berkeley and UC San Diego released results of an operation in which they infiltrated the recently shut down Storm spam network. There were two parts to the study: one measuring the conversion rate of spam emails, the other studying the propagation of Storm’s botnet through malware. The researchers set up dummy [...]

Google Flu Trends Tracks Flu Outbreaks. Fast.

Mark Alvarez — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 18:47:17 GMT

Can the global mind keep you from getting sick? Google Flu Trends, created by Google search results, might actually do that. Flu Trends uses geographically aggregated search data to provide a flu map in close to real time. Google found that there is a strong correlation between Web searches for flu-related information and the CDC’s flu surveillance [...]

Leaving Website Reviews Can Result in Lawsuit. Seriously.

Mark Alvarez — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 18:34:30 GMT

Consumer review sites like Yelp and CitySearch have revolutionized the way customers interact with commerce. But increasingly, negative views are being contested by businesses – in court. Strax Rejuvenation and Aesthetics Institute in Lauderhill, FL, is suing a woman over an eleven-sentence review that was posted on citysearch.com, and The Grand Palms Golf & Country [...]

European Union I-Way Project Developing Smart Roads

Mark Alvarez — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 20:44:03 GMT

I-Way, the three-year project funded by the European Union, aims to “enhance driver’s perception on road environment and improve his responses in time critical situations by providing real time information from other vehicles in the vicinity and from effectively located roadside equipment as well.” The system will be used to communicate information about hazards such as [...]

Will the Internet Kill the Two-Party System?

Mark Alvarez — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 18:48:11 GMT

In the Web 2.0 Summit panel The Web and Politics, New York Magazine’s John Heilemann, compared the 2008 presidential election to Kennedy’s 1960 campaign, the first in which television, then a new medium, influenced election results. Web and Politics panelists were SF mayor Gavin Newsome, Huffington Post editor Arianna Huffington, and media consultant and political analyst, [...]

Where Has the Web 2.0 Gone?

Dominique Piotet — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 04:19:25 GMT

Certainly not in any case at the Web 2.0 Summit, held at this very moment in San Francisco. Surprising, since it is with this same conference that it all began in November 2004. We expected Tim O’Reilly, and the speakers of the summit, to discuss the future of this great movement, the participatory and collaborative [...]

Encoding.com Saves Businesses Money with SaaS Model to Video Encoding

Jason Alyesh — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 23:46:00 GMT

In the early days of video encoding, companies required their customers to physically mail their VHS tapes, and upon receipt employees would hand encode and archive the video into the customer’s desired format. With the subsequent innovation of Internet and digital video, the companies that could afford it began developing infrastructure to encode high quality [...]

YouTube Video ID Success Still TBD

Ivory King — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 19:13:51 GMT

YouTube has provided a way that copyright holders can gain revenue on user-posted content: YouTube Video Identification. They have always provided Take-Down options available to flag legally inappropriate material, but this system provides an alternative to content removal. Video ID (still in beta) will “help copyright holders identify their works on YouTube” with “technology that can [...]

Technology a Problem Solver for the Obama Administration

Ivory King — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 00:21:13 GMT

As the nation looks ahead to Inauguration day, President-Elect Barack Obama prepares to fill his cabinet and make his first marks upon the United States. Here in the Internet, we are also preparing. What does Obama have in store for the politics of the Internet, technology, and information exchange? Formation of a new cabinet-level position [...]

Fourtune 500 Companies Failing at SEO

Mark Alvarez — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 17:36:30 GMT

Only 28 percent of Fortune 500 companies had any real presence in natural search, says a new study by Conductor. $10 billion annually is spent on search-engine marketing, but Conductor believes that most Fortune 500 companies are spending too much money on the wrong strategy, paid search. Natural search is the more difficult to leverage. While [...]