Internet & Websites News - Page 88

Sony has announced their new video store application which includes a snazzy new intuitive interface which allows easier and smarter navigation, "Video Unlimited - preview" is available right now for PlayStation Plus subscribers who are living in the United States or Canada. PS Plus subscribers can download the new application and experience a new way to navigate and discover video content on the PlayStation 3. While mirroring content found on the existing PlayStation Store video delivery service, the new app delivers a totally fresh experience by providing endless related search results via a whole new way to discover content for purchase and or rent.

All PlayStation Network users will gain access to "Video Unlimited - preview" on October 11, 2011. The new UI does indeed look very, very nice and the search functions look surprisingly easy to use. Hopefully this trickles down to all Sony-related gear in the future!

What I think people will love about it is shown in the video below. Being able to browse a movie, then say an actor within that movie. Once within the actors details, it'll show their movies in a list. You can then browse into that movie and then dive into a new category, say, "action". Within "action", it'll display a list of action movies. It's intuitive enough that it just seems so, so easy and you'll think "why hasn't anyone done this before?". It really does feel fresh.

Alright, we were a little too hasty in our previous news post saying that Spotify would be the provider of music on Facebook.

It turns out that Spotify is just one of the partners that will provide music playback on Facebook. It will be very easy for you to discover what songs your friends are playing and listening to via the ticker notification system. All you will need to do is click on the song and the song will playback on the music service which you use and it will play in the area where you usually see the chat window.

This does make more sense - if Facebook did just use Spotify, it would only work in countries where the service is supported. Mark quickly mentioned that he thinks all music should be free as in his opinion it enables users to discover new music which will encourage them to buy more in the long run. That's an interesting theory since nowadays if you are in the right part of the world; you don't need to pay a cent for the music you enjoy.

Kogan have begun a new phase in their mission to make the latest technology affordable for all. How will they do it? They're now sourcing brands like Canon, Nikon, Apple and Samsung by cutting out the middle man and sourcing the products higher up the supply chain, then selling direct to customers via Kogan.com. Until now, Australian-based customers have been ripped off by consumer electronics with prices significantly above World averages.

Kogan is already globally renowned as the place to go for best value consumer electronics that they design, assemble and deliver, including TVs, Blu-ray players, Digital Internet Radios, Home Appliances and more. The initial products that Kogan will add to their ever-growing list will include popular Digital SLR Cameras and Tablets. As with all Kogan products, they'll come with a 12 month warranty, extendable to up to 5 years.

As for pricing, how good is it? Well, let's use 2 examples:

Facebook for iPad has been a long time coming and between you and I, it should've been here weeks after the iPad launch 18 months ago. But, are we edging closer to social network goodness on the iPad? Possibly... It looks like we might see the iPad app unveiled at Facebook's "f8" developer conference which is being held in San Francisco on September 22. The f8 conference is aimed at getting Facebook app developers together or people who want to integrate their website with Facebook in order to showcase Facebook's newest feature additions.

At the last f8 conference, the "Like" feature was unveiled which let you spread the word about a website, brand, product, video or anything else of interest to your Facebook friends. This years f8 conference is being held at the San Francisco Design center which will be the largest stage ever used for an f8 event, which is leading people to believe Facebook is set to unveil something quite large.

As with other f8 events, the event will focus on demonstrating new tools within the site which are set to work more efficiently with the current ones, as well as a live Q&A session which will allow developers to ask questions from the Facebook crew, as shown on the f8 website:

Anonymous has had quite the resume built up, responsible for attacks on the Pentagon, News Corp and others have now set their targets on Zuckerberg's love child, Facebook. Anonymous have vowed to destroy Facebook on November 5 citing privacy concerns and the difficulty involved in deleting a Facebook account. Anonymous hopes to "kill Facebook," and the "medium mof communication [we] all so dearly adore."

The full announcement is below (and in the full post of this news) for your reading pleasure. Let's just hope V for Vendetta is not involved because we all know what happens on the 5th of November.

Operation Facebook

On August 6, 1991, British engineer and computer scientist, Tim Berners-Lee from the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) unveiled a project for organizing information, which would later result in it turning into what we use today as The Internet. He dubbed it the World Wide Web and posted a short summary on the alt.hypertext newsgroup.

The World Wide Web is really just a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. Within this, users can obviously access text, images, videos and other multimedia web pages. Navigation of these web pages occurs via hyperlinks. Berners-Lee is now the Director for the World Wide Web Consortium and back in March of 1989, he used concepts from earlier hypertext systems to write a proposal that would essentially become the World Wide Web.

The project was publicly introduced in December 1990 at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. Berners-Lee used a NeXT Computer as the world's first web server and also to write the first web browser, WorldWideWeb. By Christmas of 1990, Berners-Lee had built all the tools required for a working Internet: the first Web browser (which doubled as a web editor), the first web server, and the first web pages which described the project itself.

During Facebook's "Awesome" event that is going on now at Facebook's HQ in Palo Alto, CEO Mark Zuckerberg just announced "Video Calling".

It is a partnership with Skype and integrates into your current Facebook experience rather seamlessly. All you need to do is pop up your friends list in that chat area in the bottom right of the screen and select a friend. Then click on their name and click the "start a video call" camera looking icon.

For the first time you are asked to download the Facebook Video Calling Plug-in which is small and downloaded and installed very quickly. I'm going to give it a try right now! One last thought, now that Microsoft own Skype, does this mean we will see more Facebook and Microsoft joint efforts in the future?

As you may well know by now, Google introduced its social network platform last week called Google+. It was only opened up to a select group of people at the start, then others managed to find their way into the system by way of a little invite trick. The trick required that you have a Gmail email address, though.

Now obviously convinced of its readiness for the general public, Google has decided to open up its new social website to the general public.

It's still going by the name "the Google+ project" which still suggests it's in its early stages, but Google and its engineers and staff have been playing with Google+ for around 8 months now, according to an employee of Google who mentioned it during a "hangout". It's tuned rather well, but still has many featured to add in the following days, weeks and months.

Google are on a rampage this week, not only launching their social networking extravaganza Google+ (which is awesome btw) but now a new look Gmail is out and being previewed. The new look is virtually identical to Google+ which helps keep an overall theme for Google and has cut the clutter away and still keep it as a powerhouse e-mail solution. Google have stated it's a Google-wide effort to bring you, the user, an experience that is more focused, elastic and effortless across all of their products.

They've said that they are not going to change everything at once and will work on the upgrades gradually over the next few months which will allow users plenty of time to get used to it and incorporate feedback that will go into the ever-evolving design. Google are starting with two new themes for users to try as a sneak peak of things to come. Currently there's "Preview" and "Preview (Dense)" themes in the Themes tab in Gmail Settings.

Once you take a look around you'll realise it looks cleaner, with a more modern look yet has a few rough edges. Labs features will also look strange as they're not built for the current themes (yet). Google plan on fixing these issues once the changes are rolled out over the next few months. New themes will be released and will include the same design principles but are better suited to working in a dark environment (yay! I enjoy my dark Gmail background and will wait for this).

Google+ has been launched today and it is quite the bundle of joy. Included are multiple parts which create one large social networking web of connectivity, social fun and constant information on friends and more specifically the friends you want to know your whereabouts or specific posts.

Included are four major sections, +Circles, +Sparks, +Hangouts, +Mobile. First off +Circles is all about sharing what matters, to those who mean the most to you. Not all relationships and friendships are equal, +Circle allows you to create a "circle" which allows you to add the people you want to it and share what's new or something cool you found online. Instead of going out to all of your friends at once.

+Sparks allows you to strike up a conversation about, well, pretty much anything. Sparks delivers a feed of content from the internet in any topic you want across 40 languages. All you have to do is add your interests and Sparks will find relavant links and info on what you want to look at, again with the right circle of friends.