There have already been some great shots, some howlers, some nice Dutch supporters, and even some North Korean “fans”, but the best of the show is yet to come. And there is finally a way to watch all the games live (!) on your Apple TV: World Cup 2010 app has arrived to Boxee. Find it in the app library, fire up and enjoy. Thanks Univision, thanks Boxee! Sadly, for those of you who don’t live somewhere between the RFK Memorial Stadium and the Home Depot Center, it is US only.
News
Whether Steve Jobs was bluffing at D8 conference when he said he didn’t have any idea how to succeed in today’s television market or not, one thing is for sure now: there was no word on any new set-top box (or platform) by Apple at Jobs yesterday’s WWDC10 keynote. But here comes Jason Calacanis, Mahalo founder & CEO, bringing hope to our wounded hearts once again. He says Jobs is “an excellent liar” and he claims that Steve will be doing a new television soon, so that we can expect next Apple TV coming to our living rooms by the next Christmas. Watch the interview with Calacanis and tell us in comments whether a) you absolutely love Jason because he reminds you that there is always a HOPE, b) you think “htf does he know what’s in Jobs’ brilliant, A4-powered head?!,” or c) you are just bored to death with all these next-apple-tv rumors and you will never ever read this blog again if we mention a single rumor once again.
Steve Jobs was on stage at the D8 conference and he shared with us some of his thoughts on the television market. Well, taking his words literally and assuming that Steve honestly shared ALL of his most important thoughts on the TV market, we’d say there will be no new Apple TV coming at WWDC 2010. We’d also say that nowadays Apple has no idea on how to succeed in the television market.
Listen to Jobs:
The problem with innovation in the television industry is the go-to-market strategy. The television industry fundamentally has a subsidized business model that gives everybody set-top box for free, or for $10 a month and that pretty much squashes any opportunity for innovation, because nobody is willing to buy a set-top box. Ask TiVo, ask ReplayTV, ask Roku, ask Vudu, ask us, ask Google in few months. Sony tried as well. Panasonic tried. A lot of people tried. They all failed.
Engadget has just revealed some details on the next version of Apple TV. According to their sources “very close to Apple”, our new shiny boxes will run iPhone OS 4, will be powered by A4 CPU and will bring 1080p straight to our fancy wall-size plasmas (without the necessity of hacking). And all this for shocking $99. Yes, only $99.
“The device is said to be quite small with a scarce amount of ports (only the power socket and video out), and has been described to some as “an iPhone without a screen,” says Engadget.
Engadget also claims that Apple will be focusing the new ATV on cloud-based storage, although there will still be an option to utilize a Time Capsule as an external storage component.
We can’t say we are surprised. We say: this is exactly what we expected to see happening.
Boxee has just released next version of the Boxee Beta, which now includes:
• File Identification Progress (shows how many files Boxee is scanning, has identified, and doesn’t recognize within the media collection)
• Manual Movie & TV Show identification (you can now tell Boxee what’s in your collection and/or change incorrectly labelled files)
• Facebook & Twitter in your Boxee feed (recommendations from friends on Facebook & Twitter can now be seen within Boxee)
• New & Improved RSS Management (a brand new way to manage, discover and play RSS feeds in Boxee)
• hundreds of bugs fixes.
Find the latest version of Boxee here.
Source: Boxee
Hack Hack Hack, All Day Long,
Hack the phone while I sing this song,
Gonna hack TV too, gonna make it ring (bro?)
make it SMS & call, with Twilio
With these rhymes Andrew from Boxee tries to encourage developers to participate in “TV Meets Telephony” Hack challenge. Boxee has partnered with Twilio, a SF-based startup that has a very cool web-service API for telephony, to host a hackathon to see what kind of Boxee apps people can come up with using the telephone. The contest will culminate in a 29-hour Hack Day on April 10th and 11th in both SF & NYC.
More details here.
[update] And the winners are:
1st place: Bring the Popcorn (Drew Baumann and Brett Hazen)
2nd place: Find My Phone (Fuzz the Destroyer)
