thenextweb

Like a fine scotch, Netflix just keeps getting better with age. The company will rolling out 1080p streaming this year for its army  of subscribers.
The company is moving away from DVDs as quickly and strongly as possible, attempting to get out of the saddle of a dying horse. The CEO of Netflix has expressed pessimism with physical formats, a bold move for a company that was built on shipping DVDs at light speed.
The company will also be addressing a long time gripe among its customers, the 1080p streaming will support 5.1 surround sound. Many users through time were annoyed when some streams, labeled HD, did not have surround sound.
There is no firm date set for this feature roll out, but expect it to consume bandwidth like an oil well fire.
According to CNet, to connection speed needed to stream 720P is around 5mpbs. Given that 1080p contains around twice the data, much faster connections will be needed to handle the new resolution.
Netflix is pushing the curve, making it so that in a few more years, you will never have to wait to see the movie that you want to see.

In October 2009, after 2.5 years of using Twitter every day, I wrote a piece that explained the limits of Twitter that we’ll have to look past Twitter to see solved, because Twitter doesn’t seem to be trying to solve them.
Tomorrow, we hear, Google will announce a product that aims to take on Twitter. If so, here’s a list of features to look for. Any of these features would give Google a serious edge over Twitter. Maybe they thought of some things I don’t have on my list. It’s always nice to put your stake in the ground. I did it with the iPad with some hilarious results.
So here’s the list of must-have features:
1. Reliability. Twitter still has trouble dealing with high-flow events like last night’s SuperBowl. Lots of Fail Whales. So if Google is able to offer reliability, no matter how much of an advantage Twitter’s installed base is, it won’t matter. When Twitter goes down everyone will reassemble on Glitter.
2. Enclosures. Can you imagine if you couldn’t enclose a picture or an MP3 with an email message? Why do we jump through so many hoops just to tweet a picture?
3. Open architecture metadata. Let developers throw any data onto a status message, giving it a name and a type, and let everyone else sort it out. It would result in an explosion of creativity.
4. Relationships with hardware vendors. I still want a one-click Twitter camera. If I can’t have it from Twitter, I’ll take it from Google.
5. No 140-character limit. I debated this one with myself. At first I compromised and said okay let’s have a 250-character limit, or a 500-character limit. But I really don’t want a limit. If I want to write short status messages, no problemmo. We’ve already made the cultural transition. We know how to do it. But sometimes a thought just can’t be expressed in 140 characters. No one is wise enough to know what the limit is, so let’s just not have one.
6. No URL-shorteners. I’ve explained this so many times. They’re stupid and ugly and they hurt the web. I like it when developers take the time to craft their URLs so they make sense to users. That’s all the shortening we really need and all we should have.
Those are some of my wish-list items. It seems likely Google will offer #1 and #2. Very unlikely they’ll do #3 (they don’t trust developers any more than Apple does). Probably not #4, though it would be easy to get some people from Kodak and Sony to come on stage with them. #5 would take a teeny bit of guts. It’s a perfect way to throw some serious confusion at Twitter. I’d recommend going all the way, but if they can’t go to 500-characters. Get some editors and authors on stage to say how nice it would be. Because they’re making a commitment to their own URL-shortener it seems unlikely they would outlaw them on their status network, but one can hope.
I usually don’t subscribe to the idea that new products aimed at the user base of an established product are “killers” — but it’s been a long time since we’ve seen a product as ripe for killing as Twitter. (Lotus 1-2-3 was probably the last great example.)
The hubris of Twitter is the assumption that the product is unassailable because of the features they leave out. Sooner or later one of their competitors is going to test that theory, and I’m pretty sure it’ll prove incorrect. And where they include horrendous features that a competitor might leave out (I’m thinking of URL-shortening) they don’t seem to feel any pressure to take it out. Yet almost every user would enjoy a Twitter with real full URLs that didn’t take up any of the 140-character space. Hard to imagine anyone objecting.
OTOH, Google is a big clunky Microsoft-like company with strategy taxes, and they don’t trust the web or developers, or each other, and their internal politics drive most of the decisions they make. To compete with Twitter is an easy sell inside Google, but to actually have the will to be cut-throat about it, that’s another thing. It’ll probably have to pay homage to Google Wave (remember that?) and therefore will have some elements that are completely incomprehensible. Twitter likely won’t get killed, because Google’s product will likely fall far-short of what’s needed to get us all to think they can be trusted.
The usual disclaimers apply. This is all tea-leave-reading, I have no actual information, and I’m usually way wrong with these prognostications, but it’s still good to share the thought process.

All those pesky Windows 7 battery issues? Nothing to fret about says Microsoft, Windows 7 is operating as it should be.
The battery warnings that are cropping up among upgraders to Windows 7 are in fact correctly labeled, says Microsoft. The company has stated that the reason that the batteries are being flagged for replacement is  that they are not performing up to specification. Simple enough.
Not performing well, and you should around to perhaps “consider replacing your battery,” as the warning in Windows 7 goes. Please note that the warnings for battery replacement are new to Windows 7.
This is why people who upgrade from an earlier flavor of Windows have been consued when the errors appeared.
Sure to the point, Microsoft notes that most systems that are throwing the error seem to be older than 1.5  years, suggesting that indeed the reasons for the warning (use) might be sound.
More from the Microsoft blog post on the matter: “We have seen no reproducible reports of this notification on new hardware or newly purchased PCs. While we’ve seen the reports of new PCs receiving this notification, in all cases we have established that the battery was in a degraded state.”
There it is folks, Windows 7 is just so sharp on the ball, that even when we think it’s wrong it’s right. Odd day in tech when Microsoft was more reliable than we could have expected.
Of course, it might be fair to lodge a complain that the warnings are alarmist, but that would be a different discussion.

Apple products repair company iResQ claim to have their furry paw all over the parts for the iPhone 4G (note that the name is a fabrication).
We have put the images below for your viewing pleasure. Notes and a second picture after the jump. From left to right, iPhone 3G, 3Gs, and the purported 4G:

There has been some controversy if these are the actual 4G parts, which we will leave to you to draw your own conclusions on. If they are however, we are looking at a slighty longer phone with some sort of top reflective surface.
Feel free to hazard a guess in the comments about what it will do.

Google has just posted its first welcome post to its new Google Apps Developer Blog.
The post’s opening sentence explains that the blog is for “developers interested in building applications that leverage Google Apps.”
While Google Apps already allows developers to build for its Apps platform and has a marketplace for applications built, last week we brought you news of further developments into a full featured ‘Apps Store’. Although not confirmed by Google itself, the launch of this blog is a sure sign Google plans further developments of its Google Apps developer platform.
In the post Google also mentions its Google I/O event in May, when we’re quite likely to see the Google App Store come to full fruition.
Google Apps is a business-class version of Google Docs and includes souped-up Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Docs (for word processing, spreadsheet, presentations and forms) components along with administration capabilities.

4-chan has reportedly been blocked on Verizon Wireless devices.
In a statement on the official 4-chan status blog, the site’s enigmatic founder ‘moot’ claimed, “we’ve received confirmation from Verizon’s Network Repair Bureau (NRB) that we are ‘explicitly blocked.’”
While it does not appear that the block has extended to Verizon’s FIOS or Home Broadband services, moot also claimed that Verizon users from these services had been complaining about intermittent outages over the past few weeks.
At this time, Verizon Wireless is claiming that “some 4-chan sites were disrupting our network.”
If they were disrupting your network before, Verizon, then you’re really going to enjoy what’s going to happen next. The last time a similar block was thrown up against 4-chan, by AT&T in July 2009, it sparked a 4-chan firestorm. Some users responded to the block by blocking AT&T IP ranges and/or redirecting them to pages explaining why they had been denied service. Others boycotted AT&T as an ISP and switched their service to other providers. Fortunately for AT&T, moot called off the hounds before more than one report that the AT&T CEO had died was released.
While Verizon’s Twitter feed apologized for the down time as soon as they possibly could, it will be interesting to see whether or not this will be enough to hold off a similar reaction. Verizon’s best bet to avoid an interruption in traffic for their subscribers would be to apologize to moot personally. While the users of 4-chan don’t forget, a sincere apology to the site’s admin (who has a dedicated following) would likely keep the situation from getting too far out of hand.
Protip: don’t bite the hand of a crazy man.

WSJ is reporting that Google will soon release a new Twitter like feature for Gmail.
The feature is reportedly designed to make it simple for users to share status updates, photos, videos with relevant people in their contact list via stream like interface.
WSJ reports that the feature could be made available as soon as this week, possibly as an integrated feature or initially as a Gmail labs addon.
The feature will apparently link to Gtalk’s status update feature but also  provide a separate area to view a Twitter like stream, presumably with replies/comments too.
Where does Friendfeed come into the picture you ask? Well Google reportedly plans to integrate content that is shared through its YouTube, Picasa photo-sharing service and other services. Integrating Facebook and Twitter status updates should also be presumed likely.
This isn’t Google’s first venture into stream like services. Google acquired Finnish microblogging service in October 2007 only to see it crumble and opensourced late last year. Also, as Silicon Alley Insider notes, Yahoo integrated a similar service into its email service in August last year.
We’ve contacted Google for comment and will update if/when we hear back.
Image Credit

Social startup Pip.io has been enigmatic from the beginning. Claiming to be creating a web based “social OS,” they used to bill themselves as “what Wave should have been.”
You can now get a full look at just what Pip.io has envisioned for the future, today. The company has finally reached the end of their beta cycle, and have released their 1.0 version of Pip.io.
Along with some very welcome UI tweaks, the core of the product has been fully upgraded and is now, according to corporate sources, 60% faster with a half-size code base.
Applications and other open items can now be minimized to the top bar from the refreshed sidebar removing the clutter that was something of a problem in earlier releases. Pip.io has also introduced an app section where it is planning to build out different applications (think plugins for you system). According to the page only one is live as we speak, but applications for Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are coming “soon.”
The company will also be releasing a full API in the coming weeks to bring in external developers to build on top of the Pip.io platform. The company has promised that the API will be as open and flexible as possible.
While the company is today releasing the 1.0 verion of Pip.io, they claim that they will move to version 1.7 very quickly. They are holding back some features to test scalability, attempting to prevent any potential downtime.
Below is a screenshot of the new Pip.io:

The chat client inside of Pip.io has  been upgraded to allow for in-Pip.io video chatting. The video chatting application is built on peer-to-peer technology and requires no installation by users, unlike the popular Gchat video tool.
The most interesting part of 1.0 Pip.io that has been expanded from earlier versions is the room capability. Rooms are almost like groups, and can be set to private to block the wrong people from entering. Rooms can also be the epitome of narcissistic, with limited members contributing, and everyone following. You can almost think of them as aggregated Pip.io users into a single space that other people can follow.
The company does not want people to stop using Facebook, but instead use Pip.io as an add-along to what Facebook has accomplished. Whether that is true or not, Pip.io does provide a very different user experience. Traction according to the company has been excellent, with the invite system letting them track where new users were coming from.
The company told TNW that many existing users are beginning to use Pip.io with increased frequency. They expect the 1.0 to continue this trend. As a final feature note, they are taking a Twitter and not Facebook approach to friending. You can follow me, but I do not have to follow you.
What do I think of Pip.io? I have liked the product from the very first day that I used it. It has yet to become a product that I use every day, but if the vision that Pip.io gave me in our screenshare and chat was accurate, it is something that I might just open every day next to Gmail and Tweetdeck. When you sign up for Pip.io, if you use the code “thenextweb” you and I will be connected automatically. You don’t need a code to sign up. Get started here.

Real time voice translation is on the way and Google aims to pioneer it.
The Internet giant wants to develop its smartphone technology to translate speech in real time.
The company would combine its advanced voice recognition know-how with its text translation service to create a mobile phone that acts as an instant interpreter.
Head of translation services Franz Och said: “We think speech-to-speech translation should be possible and work reasonably well in a few years’ time.“Clearly, for it to work smoothly, you need a combination of high-accuracy machine translation and high-accuracy voice recognition, and that’s what we’re working on.”
‘Everyone has a different voice, accent and pitch,’ said Mr Och. ‘But recognition should be effective with mobile phones because by nature they are personal to you.’
Google has already created an automatic system for translating text on computers, which is being honed by scanning millions of multi-lingual websites and documents.
However Google admits speech will be an even tougher challenge than text but says a customer’s phone would adapt to its user by ‘learning’ their style of talking.
Source: The Times

Innovative mobile podcasting start-up AudioBoo has now added vanity URLs and profiles to its service and hints at more surprises to come as the team gets ready to join the UK’s Digital Mission to this year’s SXSW Interactive event in Texas.
AudioBoo initially launched its audio-blogging software as an iPhone app, followed by a similar app for Android users.  For those wanting to share their thoughts from any phone, the UK-based start-up introduced PhoneBoo and, late in 2009, added browser-based recording.
Last week, AudioBoo enabled users to add profile information their accounts and even register their own vanity URLs, but the team has also been making some even bigger changes behind the scenes.
Speaking exclusively to The Next Web, AudioBoo founder Mark Rock confirmed that the database structure which supports the company’s paid-for Pro service which launched last year, aimed at media organisations, has been significantly overhauled.  The Open University and Royal Opera House are already Pro customers and will be amongst the first to use new features when they are launched later this week.
AudioBoo Pro will now allow multiple contributors to upload to a single account.  For an organisation such as a radio station, several journalists will be able to post to the main account under their own names.  The organisation will be able to moderate these recordings before deciding whether to keep them private or make them public, publishing them in the following example format:  ‘Tim Difford of The Next Web’.
The AudioBoo team has also been busy developing its original service too.  Its most recent iPhone app, launched in January, was approved in a mere six hours by the Apple App Store team.  This process, which usually takes around two weeks, shows that Apple’s processes are getting slicker, and demonstrates that the AudioBoo app passed with flying colours.
On other platforms, Gravity the Twitter app for Nokia handsets, has incorporated AudioBoo playback into its interface, as has Kinoma in its new release aimed at the Windows Mobile platform.  Both apps are set to launch very soon, with AudioBoo themselves now working on an app for Blackberry handsets.
As well as being on the Digital Mission to SXSW alongside several of the UK’s hottest start-ups, AudioBoo has also been shortlisted for the Mobile Premier Awards and the Smarta Top 100.

Dycder, a free online service, has launched to help women make decisions about their lives by putting dilemmas to other women to vote. 
Should you ditch your cheating boyfriend or give him another chance?  What to do about that annoying friend stealing your style? Dcyder lets you post it online and get the women of the world to help you decide.
Oddly enough, for a startup focused on delivering advice from women to women, the site was created by two men.
Australian co-founders Steve Hardisty and Stu Coleman explain the inspiration behind the site:
“Once upon a time women would seek advice from their mothers, or even write in to a magazine columnist or Agony Aunt for advice, but web 2.0 and social networking changes everything.  Why ask just one person, when you can poll the masses?”  explains Coleman.
“We provide a free service for people to anonymously post a dilemma and poll the online audience.  Not only do users have the option to vote, they can also opt to leave a written comment to further clarify their viewpoint and all with no registration needed.”
“It might seems a bit strange, having two men developing a website predominantly for women, but we developed the idea for dcyder.com, after identifying a gap in the market for this type of service.  And while we’re not women ourselves, we understand that women love giving advice to other women!” says Coleman.
Since a soft public release in mid 2009, dcyder.com has received dilemmas from users all over the world, including the US, Canada, the UK and Australia. Dilemmas are also promoted through social media (Facebook and Twitter feeds), with the site offering users the opportunity to invite their friends to vote.
“We’ve been delighted with the initial interest in dcyder.com, and so far it’s spread by word-of-mouth.   During the next 12 months we intend to extend the functionality of the site, and hopefully attract more users,” says Coleman.
It’s an interesting idea but I have to say that I don’t really see how, beyond saying that it’s a site to get advice from women, the team is making sure that women are in fact answering the dilemmas. Perhaps the strategy is to brand it as a destination for women and hope that enough female-oriented content is generated to make guys not want to participate. Then again perhaps they’re going for the Cosmopolitan Magazine effect, where you direct the content at women knowing full well that you’ll drag along a large male audience.
For now though, while the site aims to be something like FML meets Yahoo Answers for the better half of the population it still remains a fun and sometimes interesting read, no matter what your gender, and no doubt will be the source of good sisterly advice for some time to come.

Not to the surprise of the already disappointed, but perhaps to the fanboy’s chagrin, information detailing consumer demand for the iPad is quite weak.
Few people are claiming to wish to purchase the device, despite months of hype surrounding the gadget and a very well covered launch event.
In data collected by Retrovo both pre and post the iPad’s unveiling, consumer interest in the device has declined from before to after its lengthy introduction by Apple CEO Steve Jobs. The data speaks loudly for itself, take a look:

The percentage of people who know of the device and do not want one doubled after the announcement. The percentage of people who need more information, but might be interested rose slightly from 19 to 21 percent.
Of course, the number of people claiming not to know about the device while stating a lack of interest declined, with many from that camp stating that they have heard of the device, and are not still interested as we previously noted.
After the announcement a scant 9% of people polled want to buy the device outright. For a device that is supposed to open a new product category and revolutionize touch computing, that is a disappointing figure.
It looks like a rocky start for the iPad. Will this change before the device goes on sale?