Google is on a mission to make the Web faster. One thing that slows down pageload times are fat image files. Even JPEG and PNG files can get pretty big. So Google is developing a new image format called WebP (which is a sister format to its WebM project for videos).
The key to making image files on the Web smaller without losing sharpness is better compression of the original file. Today, Google announced via the Chromium blog that the compression algorithms for WebP just got better and that they can even handle different parts of an image separately so that parts of it can be displayed without waiting for the entire image to be compressed and decompressed.
The images above, for instance, are from this gallery comparing JPEG to WebP. The WebP images are significantly smaller, but look just as sharp. Can you tell the difference? Unfortunately, WebP is only supported in Chrome and Opera browsers. Google products such as Gmail, Picassa Web albums, and Google Instant Previews also support WebP. But other than Opera, it’s pretty much an all-Google affair.
Websites aren’t going to start using WebP images just for Google Chrome visitors. But if it does speed things up without reducing the quality of images, other browsers will start supporting it as well or else be left behind.
The Internet radio space is crowded with sites like Pandora, Rdio and Slacker and more join the fray every day. The formula is a simple one: get blanket licensing to play songs in a similar way to terrestrial radio and plug in some ads for detergent or whatever product the music demographic seems to suggest.
Earbits is breaking that mold by offering the freedom to bounce around between genres, unlimited skipping of songs and advertisements that relate specifically to the artists being played. In fact, the advertisements become a sort of bulletin board that allows you to see upcoming shows, purchase merchandise that they have for sale and participate in promotions that the artist or their label has going.
I spoke with Joey Flores and Yotam Rosenbaum about what sets Earbits apart from the crowded space. They were quick to point out that the way that they licensed music was a big reason that the music playback experience on Earbits is superior. Because music is licensed for playback on Earbits and not in blanket ‘compulsory license’ fashion, like Pandora for instance, they are able to negotiate the ability to skip around freely and break their streams down into discreet genre channels.
Each of the 70 channels on Earbits has enough music for many days of casual listening. You can definitely start to hear a few repeats of songs after listening to a channel for a while but it should take much more time than it does on other services. In addition, you won’t have to listen to roughly the same mix of songs every time you log on as you do with Pandora. Currently, Earbits has 100 labels, 1,500 artists and 20,000 songs in its library.
Most of those artists are on indie labels so far because it’s easier to negotiate deals but Flores says that Earbits is definitely pursuing major labels as well. Some of the more popular artists taking part in the service include Weezer, Talib Kweli, KRS-One and Alkaline Trio. The unique control that Earbits gives artists over what gets advertised while their song is playing should have wide appeal. Instead of a random advertisement for detergent or Bacardi, the large display area dedicated to the artist will be filled with relevant information or offers.
You may see an advertisement for the artist’s album, a list of merchandise with purchase links or promotions that you can enter your email address in to win. Rosenbaum and Flores also said that soon Earbits will use Geotargeting to slide out a pane that shows you upcoming shows for that artist in your area. The pane will link you right to ticket sales for those shows. It’s a unique take on advertising with an app like this and one that is much more artist-centric and more likely to engage the listener. If you’re listening to a band that you love you’re more likely to click on an ad for their album or a show rather than a random ad for beer.
The greater level of choice in the songs that you listen to and the more focused ad system aren’t the only innovative features of Earbits. The Facebook sharing bar that appears when you log into Earbits via the FB connect option is also very cool. You’re presented with a bar across the bottom of the screen that has your Facebook friends lined up in a row. You can then send any song that you’re listening to as a recommendation to one of those friends. If the preferences of a friend’s Facebook profile suggests that they would like to hear the song that you’re listening to they will be highlighted in orange. This allows you to share songs with friends that you know will like them.
The artists’ bio sections on Earbits are also a very nice touch. There you can listen to more tracks from the artist, check out their website and Facebook page, read a biography and follow them on Twitter if available. This is much more involved than most internet radio sites and a refreshing change from the simple album/artist/artwork displays on sites like Pandora.
Earbits is in the midst of proactively expanding their catalog and marketing the brand to customers interested in creating channels for their brand. The Viper Room in L.A. recently had a channel dedicated to songs from artists scheduled to play the venue. Deals like this will be a big part of Earbits future, says Flores, and they have deals coming up with large content providers for similar promotions.
Currently Earbits is funded by a number of investors including Geoff Ralston and Y-Combinator. You may remember Ralston as the CEO of LaLa, the music streaming service that was swooped up by Apple last year.
At the moment, Earbits is concentrating on the browser experience, although they do have Android and iPhone apps that have the simple listening features enabled. If you’re interested in listening to good music, largely consisting of fairly lesser known bands, then Earbits is worth your attention. If it manages to sell the larger labels on the individual licensing scheme that allows the increased amount of control and focused advertising options though, Earbits could become a major contender very quickly. Either way I’d recommend heading over to the site to check it out now.
Comcast saw fit last week to defund a nonprofit it supported after a critical tweet and at least one Comcast employee thought it was the right move. ReelGrrls, a nonprofit for teenage girls supported by Comcast, have had its funding pulled, and then reinstated, in the last few days after it expressed incredulity at former FCC Commissioner Meredith Baker’s new job at Comcast after she had helped approve its merger with NBC.
Comcast and Baker have come under scrutiny for Baker’s juxtaposition of actions, not least by ReelGrrls, a nonprofit to which Comcast had pledged to give $18,000 for its summer program. A member of ReelGrrls tweeted on May 12 an expression of indignant surprise at Baker’s hiring, a move that did not go unnoticed by Comcast.
A short time later, the Seattle-based nonprofit received an e-mail from Steve Kipp, a vice president of communications for Comcast based in Lynnwood, WA, stating that he "cannot in good conscience continue to provide [ReelGrrls] with funding—especially when there are so many other deserving nonprofits in town," given that "[ReelGrrls] is shaming us on Twitter."
Thursday afternoon, Comcast spokeswoman Sena Fitzmaurice said that this had been Comcast’s mistake, and they did not intend to defund ReelGrrls. “At the corporate level, we had no information on this action taken by a single employee in Seattle,” Fitzmaurice told Ars. In a released statement, Fitzmaurice noted that Comcast apologized sincerely for the “unauthorized action” of their employee.
Update: Reel Grrls is saying “thanks, but no thanks” to Comcast. Saying that Comcast’s funding revocation and subsequent reinstatement raised “serious questions” about how corporations are able to “stifle public discussion,” the nonprofit group is cutting ties with the cable giant and will go after other funding sources.
"We appreciate Comcast’s desire to rectify this situation and hope to encourage them to craft a corporate policy that clearly defends freedom of expression in order to ensure that this situation does not arise again," said Teresa Mozur, administrative manager of Reel Grrls in a statement. "[I]t is exactly this type of public debate that can be squelched by mergers that threaten to raise the price for access to information, limit consumers’ choices in entertainment and news and give large media corporations the power to decide which opinions will see the light of day."
The real-time web is becoming an increasingly important source of news, but many users still prefer to receive their content the old-fashioned way: Through a steady diet of RSS feeds. One of the best news readers out there is the web-based Google Reader. Although simple in appearance, it has some features under the hood that can help you greatly improve your news reading experience.
If you’re a new user, you might want to fill up your Reader with interesting feeds. If that’s the case, make sure you don’t overlook feed bundles, which you can add by clicking on “Browse for stuff” in the upper left-hand menu. Here you can browse through featured feed bundles, bundles from your friends or recommended feeds from users with similar interests as you.
Once you’ve populated the Reader with enough feeds that interest you, it’s time to start organizing them.
Folders
The simplest ways to organize feeds is by creating folders. Click on the gear icon in the upper right-hand corner and choose Settings — Folders and Tags. Create as many folders as you’d like; for example, you might want to create a special folder for very important feeds, or create a folder for each subcategory of news you’re following, such as “tech,” “business,” and so forth.
Now, instead of always clicking on “All items,” you can read the feeds from each individual subcategory separately.
To move a feed from folder to folder, select it and click on the Feed settings drop-down menu, then click on the name of an individual folder to move the feed there.
Trends
A lot of users just fire up Google Reader, add some feeds and then stop tweaking and optimizing. However, if you subscribe to a lot of feeds, Google Reader can actually help you get rid of the ones you’re not interested in and focus on those which are important to you.
The best way to do this is to use Trends, located in the upper-left corner of the Google Reader screen. Click on it and you’ll see a lot of statistics on how you use your feeds. For example, you can see which feeds you click on and read often, as well as which ones you share and email the most. You can also check out which feeds are frequently updated and which are almost completely inactive.
If you find that you don’t use certain feeds at all, or that they’ve become inactive, you can get rid of them by clicking on the trash can icon next to the feeds in Trends. You can also erase active feeds that you rarely read or share.
If you frequently add new feeds to your Google Reader, you can repeat this process every few months.
Shortcuts
Did you know that Google Reader supports keyboard shortcuts? The mouse can only take you so far; power users will definitely want to remember some of these as they can make the process of skimming through hundreds of feeds much more efficient.
Here’s a list of some of the most useful shortcuts supported in Google Reader.
j/k – selects the next/previous item in the list space/shift-space – moves the page down/up n/p – in list view, selects the next item without opening it o – in list view, expands or collapses the selected item enter – in list view, expands or collapses the selected item s – stars the selected item shift-s – shares the selected item m – switches the read state of the selected item t – opens the tagging field for the selected item v – opens the original source for this article in a new window shift-a – marks all items in the current view as read 1 – displays the subscription as expanded items 2 – displays the subscription as a list of headlines r – refreshes the unread counts in the navigation shift-n/p – selects the next/previous subscription or folder in the navigation shift-x – expand or collapse a folder selected in the navigation shift-o – opens the item currently selected in the navigation gh – goes to the Google Reader homepage ga – goes to the “All items” view gs – goes to the “Starred items” view gt – allows you to navigate to a tag by entering the tag name gu – allows you to navigate to a subscription by entering the subscription name u – hides and shows the list of subscriptions ? – displays a quick guide to all of Reader’s shortcuts
Other Tweaks
Over the years, Google has been adding little tweaks and improvements to Google Reader, and it’s hard even for power users to remember all the options it offers. Here are a few lesser known options you might want to check out.
Sorting by magic: Click a feed, and select “Sort by magic” from the “Feed settings” drop-down menu. Instead of giving you the newest items first, this feature reorders the items in your unread feed based on your own past reading history and overall activity inside the Reader.
Next bookmarklet: For a really quick and easy way to browse through your feeds, Google has included the “Next bookmarklet” in its Settings page (under the “Goodies” tab). Just drag it to your bookmarks bar, and each time you click on it, it will take you to the next unread item, marking it as read in the process.
Note in reader: Similarly to the “Next” bookmarklet, Google provides a “Note in reader” bookmarklet on the same page, which lets you share items from a webpage with your followers in Google Reader with one click.
Netflix now has more subscribers than any U.S. cable or satellite provider, and it’s the only one really growing.
Netflix finished Q1 with 22.80 million subscribers, just squeaking past Comcast, the biggest cable provider, which had 22.76 million subscribers. The big difference is their growth: Netflix added almost 9 million subscribers over the last year, while Comcast lost about 700,000 video subs.
This isn’t to say that the cable companies should immediately be freaking out about Netflix — it’s still more of a complementary service to cable than a replacement.
But that could change, especially as Netflix continues to grow, and can start writing bigger checks to content companies — the sorts of checks that they could only get from the Comcasts of the world just a few years ago.
