Last year, the BBC's iPlayer launched in beta, presenting UK license holders with over 400 hours of free BBC programming on demand. Today, the 2.0 beta version was rolled out.
The BBC's on-demand TV service called iPlayer has received an overhaul since its release in beta last year, offering several design and feature upgrades.
The college rivalry cum legal brawl between ConnectU and Facebook that resulted in a settlement in April, has now been enforced by a California District Court judge.
As Harvard students, the Winklevoss brothers, Divya Narendra, and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg worked on a site called HarvardConnection, a campus dating site that eventually became ConnectU. According to the original suit filed in Boston Federal District Court in 2004, ConnectU accused Zuckerberg of stealing code from the project and using it in Facebook. Facebook volleyed the suit with a counterclaim that ConnectU had hacked into Facebook's user database.
Sony's plans for the near future, which company chief executives discussed today in Tokyo, include streaming video for both the Bravia line of TVs and the PS3. Looks like the game console could portend the future of media after all.
According to Kazuo Hirai, head of Sony's video game unit, the PlayStation 3 will be getting a movie download service before the end of the summer in the United States, with Japanese and European markets shortly thereafter. Rollout dates, video quality, and payment schemata were not discussed, but more information is expected from the company in July.
Unconfirmed reports have surfaced that Time Warner Cable has begun testing technologies providing a Comcast-like "powerboost" to the beginning portions of file transfers.
Comcast's Powerboost is an initial burst of bandwidth for large uploads and downloads, offering as much as double the regular connection speed.
Microsoft has opened a beta of Windows Live Mobile Homepage, the Windows Live portal designed for use on mobile handsets.
BetaNews tested the Live Mobile portal on a decidedly out-of-date Windows Mobile 5.0 device on the notably slow T-Mobile Web, yet it still gave a nimble performance.
Perhaps in response to consumer uproar, and perhaps responding to Congress, Charter Communications has suspended plans to test ads generated by its users' Web browsing habits.
Charter Communications has reportedly shelved plans to test market NebuAd's services following some bad press late last week that exposed the company's employees as veterans of spyware company Claria Corp.
The US' fourth-largest cellular carrier will be rolling out its T-Mobile @Home service on July 2, the final version of the Talk Forever Home Phone plan that has been in tests since February.
The roots of this plan go back almost one year exactly, when the company deployed its Hostpot @Home Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA) plan. Utilizing handsets with 802.11 connectivity, a T-Mobile branded Linksys router and an additional bill on the user's account, T-Mobile subscribers could receive calls over IP while at home. It can be thought of it as a less-sophisticated femtocell.
On Tuesday, Nokia made its new N78 handset available in North America both in flagship stores and online.
The device made its debut along with Nokia's N96 at 3GSM in Barcelona this year, and was expected to be launched simultaneously in Europe and North America compatible with their respective networks. Reports of the device going on sale in Finland in mid May showed the European market getting just a little head start.
Considered to be the most controversial of several cases of this kind, California ISP linkLine's antitrust case against the former SBC Communications will be heard by the US Supreme Court.
According to linkLine's original complaint first filed against Pacific Bell (which was later acquired by "Baby Bell" SBC, which itself later merged into the new AT&T), the telecommunications company and DSL service provider engaged in anticompetitive practices which violated section two of the Sherman Act (1890).
Panasonic has announced the upcoming availability of 6x BD-R media, claiming a data transfer rate of 216 megabits per second.
Developments in Blu-ray thus far have occurred on a fairly regular basis; on an average of every eight to ten months, the market receives a new generation of blue laser products. This month, just around 8 months after Blu-ray got widely bumped up to 4x, we have begun to see 6x devices and media.
On Friday, the Personal Democracy Forum (PdF) began an ongoing debate between McCain and Obama representatives on Twitter, moderated by prominent blogger Ana Marie Cox.
Representing Sen. John McCain is Online Communications Director for the Republican National Committee Liz Mair, and Georgetown professor and Technology, Media and Telecom advisor to the Obama campaign Mike Nelson (no relation to Michael J. Nelson from MST3K...although that might have been cool).
Talkster, a company that provides free ad-subsidized international calling, can now be used with Skypeout, which already enables Skype users to pay for calls to landlines as they go.
VoIP in Europe has been popular for several years, as it levels the formerly prohibitive costs of international dialing. Because of this, consumers currently have a wide selection of VoIP service providers, ranging from the now-classic desktop client, to mobile handset solutions in Wi-Fi equipped devices.
Like a side project of revered indie stars, Topspin features former stars from Yahoo Music, Digidesign, and Real Networks taking charge of the changing record industry landscape.
At a Billboard Magazine music industry panel discussion at CES 2008, Topspin's CEO Ian Rogers, then working for Yahoo Music, contributed to the dialogue about the value held by the subscription model for music sales.
Some would use the term "blogstorm" to describe the frenzy surrounding The Drudge Retort's run-in with the AP. Now that it has announced "case closed," and the storm is passing, we see a lone insurance salesman trudging through the clearing fog.
After BetaNews ran a story last week about the dispute between the Associated Press and the social news site and blog Drudge Retort that appeared to have led to the AP laying down a "pay per word" scheme for bloggers, Media Bloggers Association President Robert Cox sent us a message entitled, "Your story is entirely false."
Download Skype 4.0 Beta 1 for Windows from FileForum now.
Skype's 4.0 beta has moved away from Instant Messenger style layout consisting of multiple small windows, and has instead opted for a single, full-screen video chat window.