12/9 Tech Beat - BusinessWeek

Please add updates@feedmyinbox.com to your address book to make sure you receive these messages in the future. Tech Beat - BusinessWeek Boxee Names First Hardware Partner: It's D-Link December 7, 2009 at 9:40 pm There's a big party being held in Brooklyn tonight for Boxee, the Internet video service I wrote about in this story in May. One bit of news is the unveiling of Boxee Beta -- it has to date been available only in a Alpha version -- that has been rebuilt from the ground up. Engadget has a look at Boxee Beta. For those unfamiliar, Boxee is an elegant and free media center application for the Mac and Windows that in many ways represents what people imagine when they think of TV moving to the Internet. From within Boxee you can watch Web video in all its various forms: Video podcasts, YouTube clips, downloaded movies, and with some limitations TV shows on from Hulu on your computer. But it doesn't stop there. It's so good, that I've heard numerous cases of people actually dropping their cable or satellite TV service, in favor of connecting a Mac running Boxee to their favorite TV set. Others have been known to hack their AppleTV devices and install Boxee on them. That fact in particular suggested opportunity. One of the things founder Avner Ronen told me at the time was that he hoped to get the Boxee service built into consumer hardware, and that he hoped to have some news on this front in time for the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, which is now less than a month away. Ronen and his team have delivered, and that is I think the bigger news. I just heard that the first so-called Boxee Box (pictured) will be made by D-Link, the company behind scores of home networking products. In addition to video, Boxee plays music from your personal music collection, streams music from your favorite Pandora Radio stations, organizes your photos. It's also social: You can share what you're watching with your friends on Twitter and Facebook, and also discover things you might like from your Boxee-using friends. D-Link says the Boxee Box has already won a "Best of Innovations" award from the Consumer Electronics Association. No price has yet been announced, but they're promising to deliver the product to stores during the second half of 2010. More about the Boxee Box is here. Google Gets Real-Time, Personalized Search December 7, 2009 at 6:11 pm Even small changes to the world's most-used search engine inevitably affect how hundreds of millions of people use the Web. In the past few days, Google introduced two big features which could have major implications for the future of online search and for the company's evolving relationship to a handful of emerging rivals. Google Real Time Search, first announced during a Monday event at California's Computer History Museum, merges the frequent updates made by users of social sites Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace with Google's general Web search results. This means that if you're looking for information on events that are unfolding quickly -- such as a sporting event or an earthquake -- you can scan through messages posted in the last few minutes rather than news articles or Web sites that are already outdated. (And don't worry, Google only plans to include public messages from Facebook Pages rather than the private status updates that make up the bulk of the social networking site.) Google had to strike deals with each of these companies to make the real-time feature possible, but it's a maneuver many believe will help the search giant compete with these very players. Before, the best way to find out how the general public feels about a speech from President Obama, for example, was to scan through Twitter -- now the upstart microblogging service has one less advantage to boast. The announcement also may affect the do-si-do between Google and News Corp., which has threatened in recent weeks to prevent its stories from showing up on Google. As Google watcher Danny Sullivan points out in a post, it's unclear why the parent of MySpace is willing to give up data from the social network while at the same time being so protective of its journalism. Last Friday, Google quietly rolled out a feature which may have even greater impact on Web users -- though many are unlikely to notice. With something the company calls Personalized Search, Google will start showing different search results for different users, depending on which links they have clicked the most in the past. In theory this means that eventually, a car lover and a zoologist typing "jaguar" into the search field will wind up with two different sets of search results. Search tailored to individuals will no doubt make Google more useful. But what will it do to advertisers? Businesses that have spent years and millions of dollars optimizing their Web sites for search may find themselves gradually shoved out of the top 10 listings for choosy Web surfers who prefer non-commercial pages like Wikipedia and LinkedIn. Ultimately, businesses could decide to spend less money juicing their placement in "organic results" and more on the paid search ads from which Google derives the bulk of its revenues. IDC: Apple App Store to Top 300,000 Apps in 2010 December 7, 2009 at 10:31 am The Apple App Store will balloon to more than 300,000 apps by the end of 2010, up from more than 100,000 games, calendars and other apps being offered today, according to a new forecast from consultant IDC. This estimate may yet prove conservative. In the past year, the App Store's catalogue increased at a much faster pace, from 10,000 apps to more than 100,000 applications, according to Apple. Were the current rate of growth to continue, the App Store would cross 1 million applications in a year. So IDC forecasts a major deceleration in growth. There are a couple of reasons why this deceleration in developer interest in the App Store might happen. One, rival app stores, such as Google's Android Market, will continue to gain traction. The Android Market should grow from more than 12,000 apps recently to as many as 75,000 apps by the end of 2010, according to IDC. Two, many developers are growing increasingly frustrated with Apple's application approval process. They also complain that, as the App Store's catalogue grows, users will find it increasingly difficult to find their apps, and it will become increasingly challenging to make money in the App Store.   This email was sent to gamblusirus.jaid6@gmail.com.  Create Your Account Don't want to receive this feed any longer? Unsubscribe here.