Software : Samsung nabs exclusive access to new ITV Player app for Android devices

Samsung nabs exclusive access to new ITV Player app for Android devices
Internal document reveals $1B Microsoft offer for Nook maker
Canon expands Project 1709 beta for Mac users
Android tablets to get Office Web Apps
Is it time to give KVM hypervisor a go?
Did a massive Maps redesign just leak ahead of Google IO?
8-year olds the worst culprits as freemium games cost parents £30m

Samsung nabs exclusive access to new ITV Player app for Android devices

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ITV has launched a new version of its ITV Player catch-up application for Android with one catch: It's only available on select Samsung devices.

The brand new app, which brings a fresh interface as well as access to the last 30 days of content from ITV channels, will be an exclusive with Samsung phones until August 31.

The app is available to download for free from the Google Play store for owners of the Samsung Galaxy S4, Galaxy S3 and Galaxy S2 smartphones as well as a host of tablets.

Among the supported devices are the new Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0, as well as the original Note and Note 2 phablets and Galaxy Note 10.1.

Fragmentation to blame?

Users are able to play unlimited content from ITV1, 2, 3, 4 and CITV over 3G, 4G and Wi-Fi networks. However, there's no access to live television a la the BBC iPlayer apps.

ITV has said once the exclusivity period ends, the app will be rolled out to all users on the Google Play Store, but still, it remains strange that the broadcaster has chosen a single manufacturer to push the new app.

ITV said the fragmentation of the Android OS had played a role in its decision, which also shows the extent of Samsung's current influence in the mobile market.

Online Product Director James Micklethwait: "We are very excited to have launched the new ITV Player app on Samsung devices.

"The fragmentation of the Android ecosystem is well-known therefore, as a commercial broadcaster, it makes sense for us to partner with the leading manufacturer of Android devices to further increase our technical knowledge of the operating system."

Internal document reveals $1B Microsoft offer for Nook maker

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After spinning off its e-book division into a separate company last fall, bookseller Barnes & Noble may soon unload troubled Nook altogether to investor Microsoft.

TechCrunch reported Thursday that Microsoft may have an offer on table to entirely swallow up Nook Media LLC, the digital book company it invested heavily into last year.

According to an internal document obtained by the website, Microsoft has offered $1 billion to buy out the joint venture, which is co-owned by retailer Barnes & Noble.

Since its spinoff last fall, Nook has been on the decline with a 26 percent year-over-year drop in the holiday quarter, immediately sparking rumors that Barnes & Noble could buy back the company or even ditch hardware entirely.

Shift to Windows?

As part of the reported Microsoft buyout, existing Android-based Nook hardware would be phased out by end of the 2014 fiscal year in favor of app distribution through "third-party partner" devices.

Nook already has a solid presence on Windows, iOS and Android as well as having sold 10 million tablets and e-readers sold to date, so it's unclear if Microsoft's offer suggests a push to Windows 8-powered hardware or devices made by others.

Microsoft already has a 16.8 percent stake in Nook Media LLC following a $300 million investment made in last April, which $180 million earmarked for Nook Windows 8 software development.

Last October, Barnes & Noble shifted Nook Media LLC into a separate entity recently valued at $1.8 billion - considerably less than the amount Microsoft has reportedly offered.

Canon expands Project 1709 beta for Mac users

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Last week we heard rumours of a pending update to Canon's Project 1709 photo management platform.

Today Canon has made good and formally announced this long-awaited update.

The release of the Project 1709 Mac upload tool brings the full complement of three upload options on Canon's Project 1709 platform to Apple users.

In addition to this desktop upload tool, you can also make selective uploads via the Project 1709 website or choose to import your Facebook and Flickr photo collections.

However, the desktop uploader - already available for PC users - offers the most direct and efficient way to add your pictures in bulk.

Use it wisely

Compatible with Mac systems running OS X 10.7 Lion and above, the uploader app first needs to be installed on your system and then configured to sync with one or more folders containing pictures on your computer.

Next, pick your favourite network, set the monthly upload limit and nominate the day that you want uploads to begin on. The new upload tool will then operate in the background, and you can check its progress from your system tray.

Step-by-step information on how to use the new Mac uploader is available here.

Android tablets to get Office Web Apps

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Microsoft is to make it possible to edit Office Web Apps from Android tablets, matching the capabilities it already provides to Windows 8 tablets and iPads.

The move is part of its broad cross-platform browser support, an element of its plan to develop the cloud services that revolve around Office 365.

In an Office 365 blogpost Amanda Lefebvre, Technical Product Marketing Manager for Office Web Apps, says that Microsoft plans to enable Android tablet users to access Office content and tools through a Chrome browser.

She does not give a date for the development, but attributes the move to Office Web Apps being a key connection between Office and the expanding array of devices used by customers.

Lefebvre also outlines a move from same time to real time co-authoring on Office cloud applications. In other words, when two or more people are working on a document together, they will be able to see edits from the others as they happen without needing to refresh.

"This is a subtle change, but a great enhancement to enable even richer collaboration," Lefebvre says.

Microsoft launched Office Web Apps in 2010 as companions to Office desktop functions. Lefebvre says that, in addition to the cross-platform support, it is working on the user experience and social and collaboration tools.

Is it time to give KVM hypervisor a go?

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Most organisations have coalesced around VMware's vSphere, Microsoft's Hyper-V and Xen as their choice of hypervisor – the platform that supports virtualisation of their IT resources - but there is an open source alternative in the form of KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine).

This hypervisor is fast gaining ground with backing from the likes of IBM, HP, Red Hat, BMC Software, Eucalyptus Systems, SUSE and Intel. They are educating users on best practice on deploying this type of hypervisor, largely to promote an open environment for competition against the likes of VMware and Microsoft.

So why should a small or midsized business look at this alternative?

The number of companies behind it can give it the edge over the VMware or Microsoft-backed solutions, as the broader ecosystem can prevent vendor lock-in and provide a more competitive market.

KVM has been promoted by the companies mentioned above as part of the Open Virtualization Alliance, which was formed in 2011 to promote it as a viable alternative to vSphere and Hyper-V, and to encourage companies to develop products such as management software to make it a viable proposition.

Cheaper infrastructure

For the IT manager running infrastructure in an SMB, KVM gets the most out of the hardware it is placed on, which means cheaper infrastructure costs. In the latest SPECVirt benchmarks (developed by the not-for-profit Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation), the technology more than holds its own against VMware's ESXi (which costs considerably more).

This is one of the key value propositions for KVM: it has the potential to reduce the overall cost of virtualisation. IBM did some calculations on the cost of running KVM against VMware and Microsoft, and for a 100% Linux workload scenario, VMware worked out 42% more than KVM over three years.

But many IT professionals know that cost alone does not make a virtualisation technology any good. With cloud becoming more prevalent, virtualisation has to work well within an organisation's cloud and be easily deployable within that organisation's infrastructure.

The one cloud technology that has taken KVM to its heart is OpenStack, the open source infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) . This platform has been backed by Rackspace and Nasa for the past three years and uses KVM as its core hypervisor. This means that KVM can now be part of an organisation's IaaS, and OpenStack has management software to deploy virtual machines running on KVM hypervisors.

It has to be said if KVM wasn't a core part of OpenStack, its adoption within the industry would have been much slower.

Admittedly, OpenStack is not going to provide the incentive for many IT managers to use KVM in virtualisation or on their own private cloud, but HP and IBM also support the hypervisor with management tools, enabling their customers to adopt KVM.

For those wanting to use open source virtualisation management tools to administer KVM hypervisors, oVirt is one such option and is backed by Red Hat. It is focused on KVM but as it is built on the libvirt (a virtualisation API within Linux), and can also manage Xen and VirtualBox hypervisors as well. This toolset forms the basis for Red Hat's Enterprise Virtualization product.

Cloud options

For IT managers willing to use public clouds, KVM is listed by quite a few cloud providers in their self-service portal, allowing for the fast deployment of virtual machines running atop the hypervisor. Notably, in these instances customers can compare the cost of KVM against Hyper-V and vSphere as well as their compute resources.

Another sign of maturity is the number of virtual appliances now available to run on KVM. It is nowhere near as big as for vSphere and Hyper-V, but moves by IBM to port all its virtual appliances to the technology is a indication of the intention of some players in the industry to make it a viable alternative to the market leaders.

Over the past few months, IBM has made a big push with KVM, opening up centres of excellence in Beijing and announcing another in New York devoted to stimulate the adoption of the hypervisor. It sees strategic advantages in KVM, believing its presence in the market can keep prices low and affect the way competitors do business, and that its direct access to low latency improvements to the Linux kernel makes it attractive in running high performance workloads.

IT managers can benefit from vendors that use KVM to bring simple, easy-to-use and affordable virtualisation to the mass market. It doesn't require licence fees for most of its functions and can enable access to enterprise software that's as easy as downloading the latest app.

Admittedly, KVM still needs more work to make it as attractive a proposition as vSphere and Hyper-V, but as licence fees for other hypervisors are now climbing, its appeal is likely to grow.

Did a massive Maps redesign just leak ahead of Google IO?

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A massive Google Maps redesign could be on the way as a host of shots of a new, more map-focussed interface hit the web ahead of Google I/O.

According to the Google System blog, the redesign will put the emphasis back on the map while retaining just a bit of Google's technological touches.

Before the days of internet interfaces giving us the tools to input coordinates on a virtual map to guide us to our desired destination, a map was just a giant hard copied picture with lines, numbers and names.

In creating better tools to help us navigate the world, the map itself was compressed; lost under a sea of check points, pop-ups and buttons to press.

But now it looks like Google plans to hark back to those simpler times when finding where you wanted to go was a matter of connecting lines, and everything else was secondary.

Mapping your world

Google Maps New

The biggest change reportedly coming to Google Maps is the new full-screen view, which does away with the compartmentalizing, and gives you a much cleaner perpsective.

The sidebar looks to be replaced with overlays, which will pop up when needed or are directed above the larger map.

Google+ will now be integrated as well, with recommendations appearing based on the advice of members in your circles.

New color schemes and icons will also appear, which are immediately noticeable in the leaked pics, as are the improved text styles - it may make it a bit easier to differentiate between the streets, businesses, parks, etc.

While the new Google Maps will probably look rather sharp on a desktop, the full-screen approach should translate well to mobile devices, too.

All of this could be the work of a prankster leading honest internet folk on a wild goose chase, of course, so don't take the above as gospel yet. While we asked Google for more on this possible new Maps concept, but with Google IO just a mere week away, we won't be surprised if the company waits until then to give us an inkling of where it's going.

8-year olds the worst culprits as freemium games cost parents £30m

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British parents are forking out an average of £34 as a result of accidental in-app purchases made by children using their smartphones and tablets, research from Microsoft has claimed.

The study from Windows Phone UK found that parents across the nation have ended up forking out a total of £30m as kids unlock levels, or buy coins or obtain other in-game items without their permission.

According to the research, over a quarter of parents with smart devices have been caught out, while 80 per cent of those have seen higher bills as a result.

It's those pesky 8-year olds who're doing the most damage, the Microsoft report found, costing parents a somewhat hard-to-believe £59 on average.

OFT smackdown on the way?

The subject of in-app purchases has been in the news quite a bit recently after parents who'd failed to switch them off or at least use a password to protect them, were met with huge bills.

The UK's Office of Fair Trading has launched a probe to ensure game developers aren't deliberately target children and putting parents under undue pressure to cough up dough as a result.

Brett Siddons, of Windows Phone UK said in a statement: "Parents are worried about the impact of app and in-app purchases on their bills and this can cause stress.

"With technology becoming more and more intuitive, it's important that parents can trust in the technology they use."

Microsoft, of course, has nothing to gain by trying to foster the mistrust of the in-app purchase system that Apple has taken much of the criticism for creating. Nothing to gain at all.

Yahuui Blog

Thursday, May 9, 2013