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Posts Tagged ‘Coup’

Open Messaging Here We Come: Tumblr Releases Twitter Client API

Twitter client developers will be pleased to note that popular light blogging platform Tumblr now supports a Tweetie and Twitterific compatible API. In a recent blog post, the company explains how the API will help Twitter clients support Tumblr. While the release allows for similar posting and reading capabilities to last week’s WordPress API announcement, it’s a coup for those looking to Twitter to become the open messaging standard.

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In response to today’s Tumblr announcement, RSS pioneer and blogger Dave Winer writes, “Conventional wisdom says that open standards are created by endless deliberations among experts and big tech companies, and those sometimes gain traction, but this is how it usually happens. Someone goes first. No one thinks of it as an open standard. Then someone clones it. All of a sudden people get ideas. Inspired, someone goes third. At this point it’s inevitable that there will be a fourth and fifth and so on.”

Last week ReadWriteWeb suggested that a publish/subscribe standard was already beginning to take shape with both the WordPress API and Twitter/Feedburner integration. As of today, we may be one step closer to a web where content feeds are standardized and portable across a variety of platforms and services.

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Google-branded phone coming early next year?

We’ve been hearing talk of thoroughly Google-branded phones since before Android was announced — and if you want to get really technical about it, you could argue that it’s already happened twice in the form of the Dev Phone 1 and the Ion. Thing is, those are strictly developer-oriented one-offs based on existing models, and TechCrunch is reporting in a rather authoritative tone today that Google’s just about to launch a consumer phone all its own designed to in-house, no-compromise specifications with signs suggesting that either Samsung or LG would be responsible for OEM duties. Allegedly, the device was supposed to be at retail in time for the holidays but ended up getting pushed back into early 2010, at which point we can expect a big marketing push — but the question is, why? Google had a heavy hand in the design and development of the chunky, geeky HTC Dream, so we already know they’re probably better off leaving the details of the industrial design to the guys who’ve been doing this for a while — and with strong new partnerships with Verizon and Motorola just now bearing fruit, it’s safe to say that Big Red wouldn’t be a launch partner. Our most interesting theory here is that AT&T — which has gone totally radio-silent for all things Android in the past six months — is responding to the probable impending loss of its iPhone exclusivity by scoring a coup on a gorgeous, aspirational device with the Google logo all over it. Given the time frame that TC’s suggesting, it sounds like we wouldn’t have to wait long to find out what’s what.

Filed under: Cellphones

Google-branded phone coming early next year? originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 18 Nov 2009 04:47:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Netflix coming next month to PlayStation 3

What a coup. After we’ve been hearing all along that Xbox 360 had a game console exclusivity to Netflix streaming, Sony just announced it, too, will be joining in on the fun. Timeframe? Sometime next month. Press release after the break.

[Via PlayStation blog]

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Netflix coming next month to PlayStation 3 originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 26 Oct 2009 00:11:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Switched On: Making book with ePUB

The ePUB standard, developed by Adobe, allows consumers to purchase books at a variety of digital stores and use them on a wide range of compatible devices without the manufacturer having to explicitly support them. That may sound a bit like the PlaysForSure initiative that Microsoft tried mounting to challenge the iPod but ultimately shifted away from (at least for MP3 players) in favor of the Zune, but ePUB has a better shot than PlaysForSure did.

First, unlike PlaysForSure, which was playing catch-up to the already dominant iPod, ePUB is appearing relatively early in the market; it need not break anyone’s “stranglehold.” Second, after attracting the support of Sony, the format achieved a significant coup with the support of Barnes & Noble, which noted last week that it was “excited” to be supporting the format in its forthcoming Nook e-reader.

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Filed under: Software

Switched On: Making book with ePUB originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 25 Oct 2009 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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