BlackBerry 10 gets homespun picture editor to reduce Instagram-envy (video)

BlackBerry users who routinely feel left out while friends share retro pictures of coffee and pastries on Instagram will soon have their own BB alternative. Slides released by N4BB reveal that a Scalado-powered photo editing app has been baked into BB10, which is due early next year. The software will let you tweak and enhance your casual snaps, but also offer a carousel of aged filters you can drag onto shots of your own taste-appropriate snack goods. After the break we've got an early hands-on with the app from the folks at Crackberry, which walks you through a non-working prototype.

[Source: Engadget]

Roku lands $45M in funding, plans hardware, media expansion

Roku, the maker of a popular player for streaming Web content to TV sets, has closed a new round of funding.

The company has landed a $45 million investment from companies including News Corp. and British Sky Broadcasting, it announced today.

Also participating in the round were prior Roku venture investors Menlo Ventures and Globespan Capital Partners, as well as an unnamed strategic investor. In addition to the cash injection, News Corp's chief digital officer, Jon Miller, has joined the Roku board of directors, while Roku CEO Anthony Wood remains chairman.

"Our philosophy is to give consumers the best streaming TV experience, with the most content and at the best value in the market; and it has served us well as millions of consumers have brought Roku into their homes," said Wood. "With the News Corporation and Sky strategic relationships, we are poised to further grow our leadership position and to become the TV distribution platform of the future."

Roku will use the funding to promote brand awareness, launch new advertising campaigns and enter new markets. It also plans to increase engineering and production to support the growth of both its hardware and the digital media services available on the Roku platform, including advertising, games, transactional and pay-per-view video, and content.

The company is set to release the Roku Streaming Stick this fall. The wireless, dongle-sized steaming device will be compatible with the latest television sets and consumer electronics, according to Roku, and will be the first step in breaking away from simply producing steaming players, and into connecting its platform to smart TVs and related hardware.

[Source: cnet]

Sky announces iPad remote control functionality, due later this summer in Sky+ app

Sky is announcing a number of changes to its Sky Go, Sky+, and Sky Anytime UK TV services today. Perhaps the biggest change is a promised Sky+ mobile app update for iOS. Due later this summer, the update will allow Sky customers to use their iPad as a remote control to pause and rewind TV by swiping within the iPad app. Sky HD users will also be able to view the planner feature within the iPad app and delete or add shows to the recording list. The update looks like it will arrive ahead of rival TV provider Virgin Media's own iPad offering — set for release in September.

Sky is also planning to add eight live kid's channels to its Sky Go application next month, boosting its offering to 32 live channels on its smartphone, PC, Mac, and iPad apps. Alongside the Sky Go updates, the company's Anytime service will include Channel 5 catch-up programs later this year — an addition that will help it compete with the broader catch-up services offered on Virgin Media's range of set top boxes.

[Source: The Verge]

Id America rolls out Metropolitan in-ear headphones

Id America has rolled out its new Metropolitan in-ear headphones. The Metropolitan features a lightweight aluminum housing in one of six colors, an in-line remote and mic module, a tangle-free fabric cord, three included sizes of earbuds for a precise fit, and an included microfiber carrying pouch. Id America’s Metropolitan in-ear headphones are available now and sell for $30.

[Source: iLounge]

Meet the 'bots' that edit Wikipedia

Wikipedia is written and maintained by tens of thousands of volunteers across the world. Those, in turn, are assisted by hundreds of "bots" - autonomous computer programmes that keep the encyclopaedia running.

"Penis is the male sex organ," the Wikipedia page in question read.

While that statement is undeniably true and thus may merit inclusion in Wikipedia, it belongs nowhere in the site's article on national supreme courts and their legal roles.

When an anonymous Wikipedia reader in South Carolina offered that contribution to the globally popular online encyclopaedia last week, it took just seconds for the blemish to be discovered and deleted.

The vandalism was caught not by a reader, but by a simple artificial intelligence programme called a bot - short for robot.

[Source: BBC - Click to read the full story]

Mountain Lion 101: The iCloud Document Library

One of my favorite features of Mountain Lion to demonstrate so far has been the iCloud Document Library. This is a way to store your iWork, TextEdit, and Preview documents in iCloud so that they are immediately accessible from other Macs on the same iCloud account as well as on connected iOS devices.

TUAW blogger and developer Erica Sadun told me the secret behind this on Wednesday. If you go to your Library folder and open the "Mobile Documents" folder, you'll notice that the name of the folder changes to iCloud (see screenshot below). That's where all of those documents are saved, and it's even possible to just drag items into the folder to add them to your iCloud Document Library.

In compatible apps, you'll find that selecting "Open" from the File menu displays a new Finder Open dialog with buttons for iCloud and "On My Mac". Selecting iCloud displays a very iOS-like dialog showing all compatible documents. Drag one document onto another, and you can create a folder -- another iOS feature. Likewise, selecting "Save As" from the File menu gives you the choice of saving a file to your iCloud Document Library.

[Source: TAUW - Click to read the full story]

With 50M Videos Indexed, Showyou Relaunches Its iPhone App With A New Back End And Easier Sharing

When the Showyou app first launched last spring, it was a bit of a revelation. The iPad app made discovering and watching videos on the iPad a breeze. And oh, are there plenty of videos to check out. With major partnerships at a number of the major video sites — like YouTube and Vimeo — it’s indexed more than 50 million online videos to choose from. But while Showyou is best known for its iPad app, it’s come out with a totally revamped app for the iPhone that it hopes will help people find and share interesting videos on the go.

The use case for the iPad and iPhone are clearly different, and that’s reflected in the engagement numbers: Showyou users on the iPad watch about seven or eight videos a session, which can average up to 35 or 40 minutes a piece. These people are watching during primetime hours, maybe in bed as a way to decompress at the end of the day. But iPhone users are typically video “snackers” — they watch three or four videos at a time by comparison, and their viewing sessions tend to be spread more evenly throughout the day.

[Source: Tech Crunch - Click to read full story]

Google updates YouTube, Nexus Q and Play Movies & TV apps in one fell swoop

As software updates go, this Mountain View hat trick scores low on the excitement scale. Starting today, a trio of version bumps are slated to rollout, bringing minor bug fixes to Play Movies & TV andYouTube, while also giving owners of older, non-ICS handsets the ability to control that latter app remotely. Additionally, tweaks have been made to improve the Nexus Q's guest mode, which should come in handy as support for that odd peripheral has now been bolstered to include devices running Gingerbread and up. Sure, this trine of refreshed Google apps won't necessarily set your pulses racing, nor will it satisfy your Jelly Bean cravings. But, hey, you take what you can get.

[Source: Engadget]

Google TV now lists movie New Releases, to let users control YouTube vids from phones and tablets

While hardware manufacturers like Sony and Vizio have been hard at work making new Google TV devices, the folks in Mountain View have been in the lab cooking up new software features for the platform. We got to speak with Google TV's VP of Product Management Mario Queiroz today, and he shared a couple of tasty tidbits with us.

Firstly, he informed us that there's now a New Releases section in GTV's listings, which makes it easier than ever to find the latest and greatest movies. Additionally, it turns out that GTV's taking a page from the Nexus Q and YouTube Remote playbooks to let users control YouTube videos on the big screen from their phones and tablets. Essentially, you'll be able to bring up a video on your mobile device and have it populate on your TV with the tap of a finger. However, unlike Apple's AirPlay -- which delivers a similar UX by streaming video from a mobile device to an Apple TV -- Google's tech simply has your Google TV device stream the video directly from the web. Naturally, Mario wouldn't dish out any more details about new feature, nor would he say exactly when this functionality will be pushed out to the public, but rest assured we'll let you know when it does.

[Source: Engadget]

YouTube breaks records with 4M Creative Commons videos

YouTube topped all records today by tallying up 4 million Creative Commons-licensed videos in its trove -- more than any other video hosting company in the world.

This means that users have literally millions of choices for snipping bits of footage, adding scenes, and building onto videos they're making. Everything in this collection comes branded with the Creative Commons Attribution license, meaning users don't have to get explicit permission to use the content from the creators.

YouTube launched its Creative Commons video library last year and since then it said its users have added in "40 years' worth of video." Much of the content is from well-known media distributors, such as C-SPAN, Voice of America, and Al Jazeera.

Creative Commons licensing has been available for some time on a growing number of video- and photo-sharing sites. Yahoo's Flickr has the record for the most Creative Commons-licensed photos, and Vimeo started up its Creative Commons-licensed videos in 2010.

[Source: cnet]

Podcasts iOS App to Receive Bug Fix Update Later Today [Update: It's Out]

After Apple's Podcasts app was released last month, many users had complaints about bugs, crashes and other issues.All Things D says that an update should debut later todaythat will fix the problems and "vastly improve it":

Podcasts users take note: Apple has been hard at work tweaking the app to fix the problems that currently plague it and sources say the company expects to post an update to it this afternoon that should vastly improve it.

Nearly two-thirds of reviews for the Podcasts app on the App Store gave it a one - or two-star review, with the app having a two-and-a-half-star review overall -- one of the lowest of all Apple's apps.

Podcasts had traditionally been housed in the iTunes app on iOS devices, but Apple has been working to streamline the user experience by breaking out some categories into their own apps, including Podcasts and iTunes U.

Podcasts 1.0.1 provides a number of improvements, including:

• Significant improvements to performance and stability
• Podcasts in your library now show the number of unplayed episodes
• Top Stations now show the podcast title if artwork is missing 
• Playback speed is now remembered when playing the next episode
• Fix for a problem where the Subscribe button is inactive
• Resolution of an issue where Top Stations artwork may not appear

[Source: MacRumors]

Apple Releases Firmware to Activate PowerNap on 2011 MacBook Airs

One of the new features found in OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion is PowerNap. PowerNap was introduced at WWDC 2012 and allows your Mac to continue to perform tasks such as receiving email and updating software even when it's sleeping. 

Apple lists the full capabilities in this Knowledge Base document. Capabilities include getting new Mail, syncing Calendar, Contact and Reminder changes, and more. When plugged into power, your Mac can download software updates and make backups with Time Capsule. 

Apple only supports PowerNap on 2011 MacBook Airs and beyond as well as the 2012 Retina MacBook Pro. The capability should move over to more of Apple's laptops as Apple makes a full transition to SSD. Built-in flash storage is listed as one of the requirements of the technology. Apple just released a firmware update that enables this functionality in the 2011 MacBook Airs, while support for the Retina MacBook Pro is said to be "coming soon".

[Source: MacRumors]