doubleTwist, the ‘iTunes for Android’ software that lets you sync your media files with dozens of devices, including Android phones, is one step closer to being a full-fledged solution for media sync on Android. The company has released a native Android application, available on Android Market for free, which offers users a polished media player capable of playing both audio and video.
Android is notorious for coming with a clunky default media player, and doubleTwist easily bests it, sporting a much cleaner interface, the ability to import iTunes playlists, and support for audio/video podcasts. That said, there are already plenty of third party solutions that also beat the stock Android player. So what makes doubleTwist different?
CEO Monique Farantzos says that the new doubleTwist Android player works directly with doubleTwist’s desktop software, in much the same way that the iPod and iTunes work together. Users can transfer ratings, playcounts, and other information back and forth between their phone and computer. Farantzos also says that online radio and support for wireless media sync (which would be big) are coming in the near future.
It’s worth pointing out that Android will soon allow users to stream their music from their PCs without having to physically connect their devices, but I suspect there will still be plenty of people looking to store and manage their media locally.
Just when the H.264 video codec is starting to take over a large portion of new Web videos, along comes Google to shake things up again. Today, along with Mozilla and Opera, it is launching the WebM Project, an open, royalty-free codec that can run in HTML5 browsers without the need for Flash.
Up till now, the battle between Flash and HTML5 video has centered around the H.264 codec, which is gaining broad adoption. Apple supports H.264 in all of its devices such as iPads and iPhones, and it is one of the technical reasons Steve Jobs cites for why there is less and less need to support Flash. H.264 is a modern codec, fast and light. It’s great except for one thing. It is owned by the MPEG-LA consortium, which doesn’t charge royalties for its use today, but currently plans to start enforcing royalties in 2015. The royalty threat is the reason Mozilla supports an older open codex called Ogg Theora in Firefox instead of H.264.
But Google is donating a much better codec, called VP8, which it acquired with its purchase of On2 Techchnolgies. The WebM Project is a new container file format for Web video. It includes the VP8 video codec, the open Vorbis audio codec, file extensions and a new mime type. Any video player can adopt it, including Flash. And, in fact, Flash is one of the 40 launch technology partners supporting WebM.
Chrome, Firefox, and Opera browsers will all support WebM, and Google will give it a big push by making YouTube videos support it as well. Will Safari and IE join as well? Apple is pushing H.264 pretty hard, but there is no reason it couldn’t support WebM as well in the future. If it doesn’t, we might have a Web video standards war on our hands.
Other launch partners include Skype, Nvidia, Qualcomm, AMD, ARM, Brightcove, Encoding.com, Kaltura, and HD Cloud.
We're not sure how we missed this one, but it's better late than never -- turns out some lucky jerks in China were given a Lenovo LePhone to play with back in mid-April, and the guys at Sooyuu have just finished the fifth and final part of their lengthy review, just in time for the May launch. We weren't expecting any changes since our last encounter at CES, but apparently the 3.7-inch screen's now been upgraded from LCD to AMOLED, and like the Palm Pre, the LePhone also sports a gesture area below the screen. Of course, there's also the never-before-seen packaging that we totally dig, not to mention the bundled goodies such as a leather case, a noise-isolation handsfree kit (but sans music and volume control), plus a magnetic dock adapter. As for software, the reviewer praises Lenovo's snappy, heavily customized Android with its vast Chinese social networking service integration, music store, video apps, and an impressive Chinese turn-by-turn navigation suite. We almost want to adopt this baby, only to be let down by its 3.2-megapixel camera's mediocre quality, lack of flash, and inability to autofocus. Anyhow, you can be the final judge -- head over to Sooyuu for plenty more pictures.
829diggsdigg HP has just announced that it's acquiring Palm to the tune of $1.2 billion, which works out to $5.70 per share of Palm common stock. The deal is planned to close by July 31, which marks the end of HP's third fiscal quarter of the year. Current Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein is "expected to remain with the company," though it's not said in what capacity. Press release after the break. There'll be a call to discuss the acquisition in more detail (well, we hope in more detail) at 5PM ET, so we'll keep you abreast as we learn more.
Hydrocarbon fuel cell? 600 degrees Celsius. Large Hadron Collider? -271 degrees. Microwave drill? 2,000. Your run of the mill Core i7 MacBook Pro can't compete with these extreme temperatures, but that won't keep it from burning your lap. PC Authority recently put the latest edition of Apple's sleek silver classic through a series of torture tests, and found that running Cinebench could cause the CPU temperature to climb over 100 degrees Celsius. The metal shell proved ineffective at dissipating the heat as well as the similarly equipped Fujitsu Lifebook SH760, which finished the same test at 81 degrees, and actually required PC Authority to run the MacBook Pro on its side (see pic above) to complete certain tests. The site thinks that Apple's cooling solution may be inadequate for a Core i7, but these results could be a fluke -- in our experience with the machine, we actually noticed an improvement over the egg-cooking solutions of yesteryear.
Having a box sitting on your network and offering up terabytes of storage is a lovely thing, but it's even lovelier when that box can kind of take care of a variety of other problems as well. Such is Digital Cowboy's DC-MCNAS1, a case with dual 3.5-inch SATA bays into which you can slot whatever volume of storage your budget allows. Once connected to your network (over gigabit Ethernet) it can serve up MySQL instances, accept files over FTP/SSH, manage your printers, and of course handle however many torrents you can throw at it. The box ships to Japanese buckaroos next week and, while there's no price set on this one yet, hopefully it won't break the bank.
The World Bank Group said today it will offer free access to more than 2,000 financial, business, health, economic and human development statistics that had mostly been available only to paying subscribers.
The decision─part of a larger effort to increase access to information at the World Bank─means that researchers, journalists, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), entrepreneurs and school children alike will be able to tap into the World Bank's databases via a new website, data.worldbank.org.
Experts say the Bank's open data initiative has the potential to stimulate more evidence-based policymaking in developing countries by bringing more researchers and innovative analysis into the development process. The move is also likely to stimulate demand for data and increase countries' capacity to produce it, they say.
And, for the first time, data will be available in languages other than English, with an initial 330 indicators translated into French, Spanish and Arabic.
“It’s important to make the data and knowledge of the World Bank available to everyone," World Bank President Robert B. Zoellick said. "Statistics tell the story of people in developing and emerging countries and can play an important part in helping to overcome poverty.”
World Bank President Robert B. Zoellick speaks about the Bank's new open data initiative.
Data for Innovation, Empowerment
Hans Rosling, Gapminder Foundation co-founder and vigorous advocate of open data at the World Bank, said, “It’s the right thing to do, because it will foster innovation. That is the most important thing.”
He said he hoped the move would inspire more tools for visualizing data and set an example for other international institutions.
"The real power of open data is the enormous opportunity to turn data into knowledge and useful applications to enhance transparency and ultimately accountability of all actors in development," added Aleem Walji, manager of the World Bank Institute's new Innovation Practice. "Free and open access to data will empower citizens to get more directly involved in the development process."
Potential applications could "mash up" or combine global datasets from the World Bank's World Development Indicators with micro-level data on aid flows within a country to reveal the extent to which international aid responds to the needs of the poorest and most vulnerable and poorest segments of society.
Walji said the World Bank will launch an "Apps for Development” challenge later this year to give developers around the world incentives to “transform datasets into new applications to help tackle existing development challenges, such as infant mortality , literacy and extreme poverty."
Many More Eyes Will See Data
Researchers and development experts said they thought the Bank's decision to open its data will have a major impact.
"Absolutely, because our lifeblood is data," says James Foster of The George Washington University, an economist whose research often involves measuring poverty. "Being able to see the world as it is, and tell others about our interpretation in terms of what we see, this is what we thrive on.
"More than that, it’s going to have a great indirect—or maybe direct—effect on the well being of the poor around the world. Because the policies that we’re very interested in doing right are much better informed with better data. And you have many more eyes seeing that data now," Foster said.
In Morocco, economist and statistician Abdelkhalek Touhami from the Institut National de Statistique et d’Économie Appliquée (INSÉA) said the Bank's initiative "lifts a major barrier." Giving researchers access to quality data in a language they can understand will improve the quality of their research, and may inspire governments to open their data as well, he said.
“Right now, there is basically no data available, and it’s very difficult to have access to the data that exists. An initiative like this sends a signal to governments that they need to facilitate access to data,” he said.
Michael Tierney, coordinator of the Aiddata Initiative, which tracks development finance, said increased transparency in country data would promote better donor coordination.
"If you could convince especially non-OECD countries … that there are benefits to transparency, then people like me that study foreign aid, or people who are doing aid coordination who work on, say, water projects in Guatemala, will benefit because then they’ll know, this is what the Russians or the Chinese are doing on water in Guatemala,” he said.
Access to Data From More Than 200 Countries
The new website at data.worldbank.org offers full access to data from 209 countries, with some of the data going back 50 years. Users will be able to download entire datasets for a particular country or indicator, quickly access raw data, click a button to comment on the data, email and share data with social media sites, says Neil Fantom, a senior statistician at the World Bank.
The website has something for everyone. It serves someone who "just has one minute and really knows what they’re looking for, to someone who wants to do research and explore the database, or an application developer who wants to link to the database directly, or to do what we call 'bulk download the database’ and just walk away with it," says Shaida Badiee, director of the World Bank's Development Data Group.
Data come from many different sources including the Bank’s 186 member countries and more than 30 international agencies, private and NGO partners. What is released today includes databases for the World Development Indicators, Africa Development Indicators, Global Economic Monitor, Doing Business, and Global Development Finance.
A Growing Trend
In opening its databases, the Bank Group is joining a growing “open data” trend; both the United States and United Kingdom are opening up government data to the public. The World Bank also recently partnered with Google to make 39 development indicators highly searchable and accessible.
"We’re excited to be part of the open data revolution," says Nicole Frost, among those leading an effort to modernize the World Bank website.
"We’re going to get a new audience for our data that we’ve never seen. The high school kids in Des Moines (Iowa), Dakar (Senegal), and Cairo (Egypt) are going to be getting access to Bank data. We’re going to be so integrated in all kinds of search engines all over the world that we’re going to reach a group of people we’ve never reached before and hope will continue browsing, learning about development issues and things that this organization is committed to."
Bank Changes Course
The Open Data Initiative marks a change in the way the Bank disseminates data. Previously, it relied on a network of private distributors to get the information to 1,000 sites and 25 million registered users worldwide. The World Development Indicators—a popular and widely used set of human development and other data—were initially available 15 years ago on CD-rom and diskettes.
This map showing deforestation in Rondonia, Brazil is one example of how Bank data can be visualized.
"Now we’re changing course and we’re going to attempt a much different distribution process that relies much more on having people come to us rather than our going out to people and seeing what kind of use they make of the data," says Eric Swanson, program manager and leader of the global monitoring cluster in the World Bank's Development Data Group.
"People now have the skills to access data, to make mash-ups, to make applications," adds Fantom. "When you look at the success of some of the application developers out there they’re using third-party data and we wanted to take advantage of that environment, and we see that as the model for pushing the boundary of use."
"I would like to see this promote the use of data in developing countries, in particular, stimulate evidence-based policy making in our client countries, and stimulate demand for data so that country capacity to produce these data can improve," he adds.
Sabina Alkire, director of the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative, felt lucky to be given a CD-rom with WDI data while a graduate student. "I could never have afforded it."
She said she hopes the World Bank's new open data policy will lead to more frequently updated poverty data and increased innovation.
"The more that people can have access to the data, the more they can really interact with it, think about it, digest it, and experiment with it. That has very good independent value, because in effect by doing so you’re releasing the creativity of many minds, to be able to create and innovate, experiment with the data, and see if they can come up with a more interesting analysis."
What a great service YouTube is. It’s all too easy to lose sight of how revolutionary it was when it first launched. It broke all kinds of rules and expectations of how we watch video, and how we relate to its distribution. It opened up broadcasting, allowing anybody at all with a video recording device to easily and quickly make their videos available to anybody, anywhere.
YouTube also did something curious to how we consume news: just about any story that hits the headlines is likely to have an accompanying video on YouTube. Remember when Michael Jackson died? It didn’t take long for recordings of the ambulance leaving his home to start popping up on YouTube. For many of us, YouTube’s become a frontline news service – along with Twitter.
Unfortunately, YouTube is far from perfect. From the small-minded, snarky comments, right through to the frustrating use of Flash. Nowadays I rarely visit YouTube at all, and when I do, it’s just to get a URL for a video, or to jump from that page to a different service.
Our site is well-known for its long lists of tips and app recommendations. This article is different: I’m going to recommend just three ways to make YouTube better.
Quietube
If you have to access YouTube via a browser – say you’re marooned on a Windows island for a few hours when someone sends you a link to a great new video – then Quietube immediately makes YouTube more usable. Just go to the site and read the simple instructions there:
Quietube
You simply click-and-drag the link within the box onto your Bookmarks Bar. Don’t just click it – you need to hold down the mouse button and drag the link. Otherwise you’ll find that you’ve been Rickrolled – we’ve warned you!
So, say you wanted to watch Big Buck Bunny on YouTube: you would open YouTube and search for Big Buck Bunny, and receive a bunch of results. You would click on one of them, and you’d see something like this:
The Standard YouTube Interface
Now click on the Quietube link in your Bookmarks Menu, and it’s all change:
Embrace the Simplicity
Click the ‘Black background’ link, and you get – uh – a black background:
Going Dark
It’s that simple. That’s all that Quietube does, but boy does it cut down on visual clutter and distracting, irritable chatter among the comments. Until recently, each page used to come with its own Short URL – you can see there’s a heading for that under the video – but for some reason that’s stopped happening recently. Having that made the job of sharing Quietubed videos even easier, but if you already have a bookmarklet for TinyURL, Bit.ly, or any of the other URL shortening services, then you’re set.
Cathodique
Now, take a look at what happened in iStat Menus as that video started playing on the original YouTube page – see the spike for Safari?
CPU Usage Spike
That’s what I mean about the resources YouTube requires. But wait…
Cathodique ($17.79) is a standalone YouTube player. It has built-in search, so you can find what you’re after from within the app itself. Once you’ve chosen a video to play, just double-click the preview on the left-hand side of the window and you’re away:
Using Cathodique
That SD at bottom-right is a menu from which you can choose to watch the standard quality or, where they’re available, 720p or 1080p versions of a video. The app also has a full-screen view, which is accessible from the controls overlay that displays when you mouseover the video as it’s playing.
Cathodique also has a bookmarklet, which you can use to launch the app from any YouTube page. So if a friend sends you a link, you can open it in your browser as usual, and then click on the bookmarklet and Cathodique will open to that video. You can close your browser window and watch in peace.
You’re much less likely to be disturbed by the sound of your Mac’s fans blowing, for one thing. Cathodique uses QuickTime to display its videos rather than the Flash player in your browser, so it’s much lighter on your system. Take a look at this comparison from the developer’s website:
CPU Usage Comparison
That’s good news for a bunch of reasons – perhaps most importantly because your laptop’s battery is going to keep going quite a bit longer. Cathodique is not free, but if you spend a lot of time watching videos on YouTube, it’s certainly worth the (pretty low) entry-fee.
Videobox
Another option you have is to download videos from YouTube and play them back on your machine. There are several different ways of doing this, but some require multiple steps to download and convert the videos into forms that you can watch on an iPhone or other device.
With all the time it takes to download and then convert, it’s probably not something you would do with just any video, but there certainly are times that you see a video that you’d like to keep to watch again later – say when you’re facing a long train journey and you just know you’re going to need to see a laughing baby to perk you up after a few hours…
Videobox ($15) is one app that does the job well, and makes it simple to get your YouTube fix offline, or save that special video for posterity. You start by dragging the URL of the video you want to download into Videobox’s main window – from your browser, an email message, or anywhere else:
Dragging into Videobox
The app then quickly identifies the video and gives you information about its encoding and the size it’ll be when downloaded. If it has any problems locating the video, it will open a mini-browser window and ask you to press play – it usually then manages to identify the video.
Download Details
Those buttons alongside the video details – the globe, downward-pointing arrow, x, and magnifying glass – open the page in your browser, start the download-and-convert process, cancel, and show you the file in Finder once the processing’s done. When you click the arrow, you’ll see a panel from which you can choose where the file’s saved to, and the conversion settings to be used:
Saving a File
Click Save, and the download begins, followed by the file conversion. This process can take quite a while, so you can go make yourself a cup of tea.
On your return you will find your video file all ready for playing in QuickTime, VLC or your video player of choice.
In Conclusion
So that’s a quick walkthrough of three tools that go some way to making YouTube better. These are just the services and apps I use; there are other options available – if you have any favourites, please let us know in the comments. Or perhaps you simply disagree, and think that YouTube’s fine just as it is – let us know!
