Finally, iTunes Is Getting A Huge Makeover
Via Bloomberg: Apple will give iTunes its most radical makeover to date, sources tell Bloomberg. Apple hasn't changed much about iTunes since it launched in 2003, but sources say the new version, due by the end of the year, will have tighter integration with social networks (long live Ping), better sharing and discovery features, a la Spotify, and better iCloud integration for cross-device consumption for the millions of Apple product users who use iTunes as their one-stop shop for music, movies, and television shows. That last feature will only become more important for Apple moving forward as competitors such as Google and Amazon beef up their own entertainment stores and on-demand services such as Spotify and Netflix offer consumers different media experiences.
With 310M Active Users, Google Chrome Is Coming To iPad, iPhone
In March and again in May, Google Chrome briefly surpassed Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox to become the world's most popular browser. While metrics vary as to which browser is truly the market leader, Google is indisputably nearing the top position if it's not already No. 1: As the company announced today, the Chrome browser now boasts 310 million active users.
The milestone is remarkable given Google's relatively short history in the space. While Microsoft has been battling in the browser wars for decades--and Mozilla for years as well--Google only joined the fight in late 2008, but quickly skyrocketed in popularity. And the company is looking to increase its browser's presence: Not only has the company pushed the platform on its Android and ChromeOS devices, but it unveiled today that the browser would be coming to iPhones and iPads too.
Later today, Google Chrome will supposedly appear in Apple's App Store, giving Apple's Safari browser some much-needed competition. Apple has long lagged behind other browsers in the PC space, but thanks to the dominance of its smartphones and tablets, Safari has become the market leader in mobile browser share. Perhaps that could change with Chrome sneaking into iOS users' homescreens.
In addition to the iOS version of Chrome, Google announced this week that Chrome for Android would be coming out of beta, and also showed off some new features of its Chromebooks, which have the browser at its core.
Supreme Court Rules On Obamacare, Explodes Twitter
The U.S. Supreme Court announced their decision to uphold the main points of President Obama's health care proposal. If you decided to follow the healthcare ruling on television, you missed the party that was exploding on Twitter at hashtags #SCOTUS, #Healthcare, #Chief Justice Roberts, #Medicaid, and several more.
The Supreme Court set up a live blog to cover the announcement and analyze the decision, featuring "4 web servers, 5 bloggers 2 tech teams" and "$25k for 20 minutes." After the decision was made public, the blogging team also live tweeted sections of the ruling.
Reporters at the Supreme Court live-tweeted developments, but rapid reporting got a bit out of hand. Seconds after the ruling went live CNN and Fox both reported, incorrectly, that the mandate had been struck down, and Twitter jumped to draw a comparison to the infamous "Dewey Defeats Truman" error that the Chicago Daily Tribune made in 1948. CNN quickly corrected its website to reflect the error, but not before a few hundred Twitter users grabbed screenshots of the flub. (AP later asked its reporters stop poking jibes at news outlets that got the news wrong.)
Amidst this chaos, Twitter's merry band of snarksters tweeted on, meming chief justices and mock-covering the ruling as if at an Apple event.
News Corp Confirms Plans To Split Entertainment And Publishing Businesses
News Corp, the multi-billion dollar media company led by Rupert Murdoch has confirmed plans to split into two companies, Wall Street Journal reports. Murdoch will remain CEO of the new entertainment and media company, which will include film studio 20th Century Fox, Fox broadcast network and Fox News Channel. The second company will include News Corp's publishing products including the Journal and The Times along with HarperCollins and others. The split is expected to localize the damages faced by the company as a fallout of the phone hacking scandals involving newspapers in the U.K. More details here: AllThingsD has published Murdoch's internal memo explaining the split.
New Survey Finds Third Party Cookie Web-Tracking More Prevalent Than You Think
A new survey from Keynote Systems has looked at the tracking behavior of 269 leading websites in the news, finances, travel and retail sectors and discovered that 86% of the sites had some form of web history tracking cookie that delivered customer web habit data to third parties. 60% of the sites had at least one tracker tha "violated good industry practices." And while the media and travel sectors were the worst offenders in tracking Netizen activity, a surprising three out of four financial services sites had one or more tracker that didn't comply with good practice. Worst of all of the 211 cookies discovered by the survey, only one had support for "Do Not Track" protocols.
DNT is a hot topic at the moment, as technology companies struggle to comply with legal pressure to protect consumers and on the other hand the advertising and marketing industry presses for more access. Microsoft recently courted controversy by saying DNT will be turned on by default in Internet Explorer 10--a move which is, curiously, disapproved of by Net regulating body the Worldwide Web Consortium. W3C has itself been trying to come to conclusive decisions about DNT, but has failed to achieve any yet, so much so that the privacy-conscious EU has this week been pressuring W3C to permit Microsoft's decision and to force Netizens to make a decision on their DNT settings in a browser pop-up window.
NZ Court Rules Dotcom Raid Illegal
A New Zealand judge has ruled that the raids on Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom's house were illegal, and that the police warrants that backed the entry into his house did not cover the hard drives which were subsequently seized. Following the raid, the FBI made copies of the hard drives and transported them to the U.S.--also a series of actions that the court ruled was a violation of Kiwi law. Dotcom is currently on bail, but the FBI has been attempting to extradite him to the U.S
Google Aims At Facebook Timeline, Lets Google+ Import All Your Past Social Media Updates
Google has revealed to VentureBeat that its upcoming Google+ APIs will allow the company's social network to do something unusual: It will be able to soak in all your previous social media updates from other services. Called the History API, the system will import updates like text entries, purchases, and imagery from sources like Foursquare and Twitter.
Essentially this is a quick and easy way for Google+ to vampire feed on its users previous social efforts in order to better populate every user's timeline, and is enabled by the full-featured APIs Google's rivals have long operated, even while Google demurred and didn't allow full access to Google+ itself via APIs to third-party apps. Though the History trick may seem trivial, it seems intended to create a flow of information in each user profile that rivals that of Facebook's new Timeline, and it's further evidence that Google is really resting a lot of its hopes, as well as spending quite considerable effort, on Google+.
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