Internet & Websites - Page 17

://Amazon is opening up its Prime Video service to everyone today, allowing content creators to make money a la YouTube with a sub-service it calls Amazon Video Direct. ____

HBO has stepped up its measures to fight Game of Thrones piracy, following the hiring of anti-piracy partner IP Echelon.

Recently, thousands of copyright infringement warnings have been sent out to those pirating the first episodes of the show's sixth season; the company is also requesting takedowns to torrent sites (some of which have removed the torrents in as little as a few minutes -- much quicker than usual), and encouraging ISPs to take action against alleged pirates.

The requests in question also highlight the legal method, something new to these kinds of statements.

Spotify already offers music videos and TV show clips through its streaming service, and will soon offer original TV shows as well. The episodes on offer will range from a few minutes to 15 minutes and will be available to all Spotify users -- premium or not -- that live in the US, UK, Germany, and Sweden. All will be focused on music, and some will tie into albums.

"Music will always be most important, but our audience likes us and wants more from us," said Tom Calderone, Spotify content partnerships chief. "We have to figure out a second act, and I think it will come out of video. The idea is to make sure users know they can come here for something other than playlists."

Calderone joined the company in March of this year after spending 17 years at Viacom, where his put pop stars on the air and rappers on reality TV shows.

Hulu will be livestreaming TV next year and it looks as though YouTube will be doing the same, according to people familiar with the matter.

It's said YouTube has overhauled its technical architecture to accommodate the new service which could debut as early as 2017, and that the company has discussed plans with most major media companies, including Comcast, NBC, and many more. No rights have as of yet been secured, but it's possible the Hulu deal could help grease the wheels.

The service would be called Unplugged, a nod to the ever-growing community of people commonly known as cord cutters who refuse traditional cable in favor of streaming services.

Cord cutters rejoice: live TV streaming is coming to Hulu in 2017.

Hulu CEO Mike Hopkins announced that Hulu will expand to live TV broadcasts at the company's event in New York, confirming past reports. Hopkins didn't reveal any pricing information or channels, but the Wall Street Journal claims it could cost around $40 per month and possibly include--but not limited to--Bravo, E!, MSNBC, CNBC, Oxygen, Syfy, USA, ABC, ESPN, Disney, Fox, Fox News, FX and Fox Sports.

"This means our viewers will be able to enjoy live sports, news and events all in real-time without a traditional cable or satellite subscription," Hopkins said at the event. "We're going to fuse the best of linear television and on-demand in a deeply personalized experience optimized for the contemporary, always-connected television fan."

YouTube has had a pretty similar and somewhat chaotic design for a good six years or so, but it looks like that may finally change. A fresh and clean new design based on Google's Material platform has surfaced online, indicating it's likely in testing as you read this.

If you'd like to try it yourself, open Chrome and follow the steps below as outlined by redditor giorgiomarinel:

Note you may have to be on the US region setting, in Incognito mode, and/or sign out of your account to make it work. Happy Youtubing!

As internet data cap surcharges have become more and more impactful (some providers are now charging as much $35 per month for you to 'avoid' fees associated with usage caps), more and more customers are starting to notice and even take action.

The Wall Street Journal reports data limit complaints to the Federal Communications Comission (FCC) stood at 863 in the first half of 2015 before soaring to 7,904 in the second half. More than that, some said they were canceling streaming services like Netflix, Sling TV, and Sony PlayStation Vue, which are top sources of data consumption. This year looks similar with 1,463 complaints registered as of mid-April.

While companies like Comcast publicly state caps are necessary, leaked internal documents and comments show they're quite aware that's not true, making the situation all the more absurd.

The newest episode of Game of Thrones -- "The Red Woman" -- has been pirated via BitTorrent one million times in about 12 hours, according to TorrentFreak.

Those downloading the show are fairly evenly spread out across the world: 12.5% are in Australia, 9.7% are in India, 8.5% are in the US, and 6.9% hail from the UK, with Philippines, Canada, the Netherlands, Greece, South Africa and Saudi Arabia not far behind. Mind you, time differences will favor some regions more than others; a more complete and accurate picture will unfold soon.

It's expected piracy this time is less than before in the US, as HBO was made free in the region over the weekend while the new season premiered.

Chat bots are becoming increasingly more complex with the ability to actually hold down a real(ish) conversation. Microsoft has been previewing some of their advanced AI (not the now failed Tay project) through Skype, but it has previously only been available to users of Windows, Android or even iOS. The desktop (and larger mobile) Apple crowd had been left out. That's changed, just in case you'd rather not talk to humans.

The Mac client now natively supports talking to the bots, as does the web client, of course. Bot integration is now available because sometimes talking to real humans can be a pain in the tuckus. Though this isn't an example of advanced interaction, you're able to try speaking to six different bots that are in a beta state. These six bots are able to spit out basic information to queries you make. You can ask for the latest news, weather, and other things like that. They even understand natural language, so you shouldn't have to modify how you ask questions to get the proper response.

Now, to actually make them available you'll have to take a number of steps. On your Mac in the Skype app, navigate to Contacts, then select Add Bot. Easy enough really. In the web client, all you have to do is click on the Discover Bot on the left-hand side. Then you'll be able to interact with relatively intelligent assistants, which is what it amounts to at the moment.

Back in January, Netflix began getting serious about cracking down on VPN users, which utilize various software to gain access to other countries' broader catalogues. It made good on its word which has since prompted over 40,000 people to sign a petition demanding the company back off. Despite this, it's not concerned, calling the uproar 'inconsequential' in its earnings call this week.

"It's a very small but quite vocal minority," said CEO Reed Hastings. "So it's really inconsequential to us, as you could see in the Q1 results."

That said, Netflix sympathizes strongly with that minority, having stated publicly many times it eventually wants all of its content to be globally available, thus eliminating the demand for VPNs among its users.

Streaming services like Spotify and Amazon Instant Video offer the option for offline playback -- the key benefit of which is the ability to listen to or watch content in situations where Wi-Fi is not available -- and it may only be a matter of time before Netflix offers the same. Its CEO Reed Hastings, when questioned on the prospect in an earnings call this week, clearly indicated it's not something he's opposed to.

"We should keep an open mind on all this... as we expand around the world where we see an uneven set of networks, it's something we should keep an open mind about."

Should the service one day implement it, it's likely stored content would disappear after 48 hours.

Comcast is America's cable giant and Netflix is the poster child for new wave programming, so it's only logical to compare the two in light of their recent company reports. As fate would have it, Comcast boasts 33,347,000 cable subscribers, but Netflix does them about 22 million better with 44,740,000: a 100.2% differential.

Mind you, Comcast does business by charging a lot lore to fewer customers, whereas Netflix charges a lot less to a lot more. So while the user gap is major, the revenues for the competing services would tell a different story.

Meanwhile, subscriber growth rates show Comcast doesn't really have a growth rate (not too surprising given how long cable has been around), whereas Netflix has been increasing its base steeply each year.

Facebook is currently testing a significant change to its news feed that see it take on the form of a news aggregator site in many ways.

The new design features a tabbed categories section at the bottom of the normal feed where you can choose to see all news, World & US news, Sports news, and Food news, among others. By default, all of these categories will show up, but if you like, you can disable any of them.

Wordpress isn't taking any chances and will be automatically enabling HTTPS for all custom domain names that are associated with its website in addition to the subdomains that are already protected by the umbrella of the main domain, which they've been doing since 2014.

The project is a large and very complex matter, not to mention the usual cost of obtaining the appropriate amount of certificates needed for all the separate sites that happen to exist. Automattic, the owner and operator of Wordpress, have elicited the help of Let's Encrypt, a certificate authority that is providing them with free certificates for each domain, as well as managing the installation and any post-installation issues that might crop up. They're doing this in response to the EFF's Encrypt the Web initiative. Barry Abrahamson, a systems engineer at Automattic praised Let's Encrypt and their involvement, saying that "The Let's Encrypt project gave us an efficient and automated way to provide SSL certificates for a large number of domains."

HTTPS is beneficial for keeping the Internet safe as well as adding in a slight bit of weight to SEO scores for websites looking to increase their visibility. It's also nice for visitors to know that at the very least they can authenticate the site they're visiting and ensure that any moderate attempts at surveillance or session hijacking can be foiled. HTTPS should indeed be the standard, not the exception. This is a move that makes it more accessible to more website owners, which it should be.

Netflix's original content is growing about 185% per year with an even higher rate expected next year and the results are strong on the user end: Netflix original programming is rated 11.5% higher than syndicated content on average, according to data mined by AllFlicks.

Netflix documentaries do best, rating 4.08 stars on average; shows do worst, but still beat out syndicated shows by 6.5%. Meanwhile, other content rates an average of 3.47 stars.

It's important to keep in mind total Netflix content has dropped 31.7 percent in two years as the company has emphasized original content, indicating a significant drop in syndicated works. As such, with more selection, it's possible syndicated works would be rated higher overall.

Facebook Live is being expanded in a big way starting today, with all kinds of new features and functionality.

A big one is support for Groups and Events: now you can stream live to select people, for a select event, or make the stream the event. Facebook imagines a few specific scenarios: streaming live from a birthday party for someone those that can't make it, taking fans who RSVP "backstage", or scheduling a Q&A session.

Other exciting features include invites (which allow you to watch live streams together with a friend) and discovery options (including a map that shows you broadcasts from all over the world), to name a couple.

Amazon Payments is getting beefed up with a new global partner program designed to make the service into an e-commerce competitor to PayPal and Apple Pay; Amazon is using the term 'global' loosely, as the program is available to partners in the US, Germany, UK, and Japan only.

The refreshed service is different than the current 'Login and pay with Amazon' feature -- pictured here -- that some individual merchants already use: it's intended for e-commerce platforms that provide secure payment features to those merchants. Currently on board are Shopify, OpenCart, and PrestaShop, among many others.

For the public, this means you'll no longer have to create a new username and password for different shopping sites: just use your Amazon Payments account for everything, à la PayPal.

Movie rental service Redbox tried its hand at movie streaming in partnership with Verizon back in 2013, but killed the project about 18 months later. Now sources say it's trying again with Redbox Digital, a closed beta for which may launch soon.

Responding for comment, a Redbox spokesperson said, "Redbox continually looks for ways to enhance our customer experience. For tens of millions of consumers, Redbox is their source for new release rentals without a subscription. As such, we regularly conduct tests of potential new offerings, that may or may not be brought to market, as part of our ongoing commitment to provide additional value."

This time around the service will be on-demand, as with iTunes and similar services, as opposed to the Netflix subscription model seen with its Redbox Instant venture. TV shows as well as movies can be rented for streaming or purchased for indefinite storage.

In January 2014, the Netflix catalogue boasted 6,494 movies and 1,609 TV shows. As of March 2016, it's dropped to 4,335 movies and 1,197 TV shows -- a 31.7 percent drop in a little over two years.

The company decided recently to sign deals with global rights only, which no doubt has increased its efficiency too, but with a significant impact on the amount of content it has available.

Some speculate the decline is also due to increased rights pricing caused by added competition from services like Amazon Prime. Whether this is true or not, Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos said last May that original programming -- like House of Cards -- "has been more efficient dollar for dollar" than licensed content and that "our appetite has only grown... we're moving (spending) from efficient to super-efficient."

To help you get in the mood or seal the deal when you're deciding what to watch, Netflix will soon be adding auto-play video trailers to your home screen whenever you're hovering over a movie, TV show or documentary.

As seen on Gizmodo, there was a bit of discussion based on advancements to the whole Netflix user experience at MWC 2016, particularly that of the home screen and how users choose what media to watch. This auto-play trailer feature is said to be taken from 'traditional' TV practices, meaning that there is always something engaging happening on the screen.

This announcement comes alongside our recently discussed mobile data saving feature, with these features both said to be currently in beta testing.