Tag Archives: tuaw

Blockbuster coming to Tivo, iTunes?

March 27th, 2009

Dave Caolo on TUAW, who is apparently from Scranton, remarks on statements made by Blockbuster’s Vice President of Digital Entertainment Kevin Lewis that Blockbuster will be offering content through Tivo soon and maybe through Apple’s AppleTV (or iTunes).

I like his opening paragraph:

“On a January day in 1981, my sisters and I experienced unbridled glee when our father came home with a shiny new VCR. Imagine: Movies. In our own house. Whenever we wanted. What a world! It was an enormous, top-loading hunk of metal and plastic that I’m sure is currently at the bottom of a Pennsylvania landfill.”

How does he remember it was January?

Anyway, I’m not sure how to react yet since the Reuters piece mentions Apple but Kevin Lewis does not (at least not quoted directly in the article). We’re already seeing movie rentals and even HD movie rentals available in the iTunes Store so I am not sure how Blockbuster can directly improve the quality of Apple’s offering unless they give Apple a share of their OnDemand subscription fee. Who knows?

Either way, I’m happy to see Blockbuster moving forward.

Coda + Versions + Beanstalk = Drool

November 11th, 2008

Robert Palmer, writing for TUAW, writes “Coda is $99, Versions is free (while it’s in beta), and Beanstalk starts at $15 per month (which is the plan I have). Put together, though, it’s a million-dollar solution.”

I couldn’t agree more. I’ve been using this solution for some time now – in fact, many of the Viddler team members have. It strikes an excellent balance between simplicity, ease of use, and efficiency to help us get our work done.

Source: Friday Favorite: Coda + Versions + Beanstalk.

Exposure; the unofficial Flickr iPhone application

July 9th, 2008

Scott McNulty, friend and fellow-Pennsylvanian, is reporting on The Unofficial Apple Weblog that Connected Flow is going to release a free iPhone application called Exposure that allows you to browse and interact with Flickr.

Connected Flow, founded by Fraser Speirs, is very well acquanted with the Flickr API. Fraser developed both the iPhoto and Aperture plugins for Flickr. He also toyed around with a full Mac application that utilized Flickr, which was also called Exposure, but it was never publicly released. ((Though this application was never released, you can see screenshots here.)).

So Connected Flow is well-suited and in the perfect position to release an iPhone application for Flickr.  I said it was free above, but there will be a pay-version for $9.99 that will eliminate the ads.  This is very much the same model that I expect Twitterrific’s iPhone application to take, especially since Twitterrific itself does already.

Let me also say that I think this application is going to be extremely popular.  The fact that it will be a full-featured free application, with the option to buy, is going to make it a no-brainer for any Flickr + iPhone users.

Source: Exposure: two billion photos, in your pocket.
Connected Flow: Announcing Exposure. 

No, please, not Forstall

June 24th, 2008

Every since Steve Jobs started letting Scott Forstall, and others, help him out with Keynote presentations during Macworld, WWDC, and other presentations made by Apple to the media – I have wanted Steve to remove Scott from the line up.

Yes Scott’s presentation at WWDC of the underlying core of Mobile OS X with regards to the iPhone SDK was pretty impressive. Yes he’s obviously pretty “anal … about interface design” as Steven Sande of The Unofficial Apple Weblog recently wrote. But I still don’t think that makes him CEO material.

I don’t have any recommendations for who should be the next CEO of Apple. I’m hoping that doesn’t happen anytime in the near future (say 5 or 10 years) but I’m guessing it will. When it does, I think no matter who fills in the shoes of Steve Jobs it will be someone we’ll all be disappointed with because no one can fill the shoes of someone like Jobs. But, I really, really do not hope it is Forstall.

Scott, if you are reading this, nothing against you. I think you do a great job and are probably worth your salary (otherwise you’d probably not be at Apple). But Steve has big shoes.