Author: Serkadis

In April, Amazon debuted 14 pilots for shows that could become its first originals. Five of them made the cut: Alpha House, Betas, Annebots, Creative Galaxy, and Tumbleaf. They will begin production, and air later this year, and in early 2014.

“We are thrilled at the enthusiastic customer response to our first original pilots,” said Roy Price, Director of Amazon Studios. “We built Amazon Studios so that customers could help decide which stories would make the very best movies and TV shows. It’s exciting to see the process in motion, doing exactly what we set out to do. The success of this first set of pilots has given us the push to try this approach with even more shows—this is just the beginning.”

Alpha House stars John Goodman, and was written by Academy Award nominee and Pulitzer-Prize winner Garry Trudeau and produced by Elliot Webb and Jonathan Alter. It’s a comedy about “four misfit senators turned unlikely roommates”.

Betas is a comedy set in Silicon Valley, following four friends as they try to get rich with a new mobile social networking app. It stars Ed Begley Jr., Jon Daly, Joe Dinicol, Charlie Saxton and Karan Soni, and is written by Evan Endicott and Josh Stoddard.

The other three are kids shows. Here are the official descriptions:

Annebots revolves around Anne, a young scientist, who creates three robot helpers to assist her scientific experiments in the back of her dad’s junkyard. This science-based series from creator J.J. Johnson aims to introduce kids to science and technology in a fun, new way.

Creative Galaxy is an animated interactive art adventure series, designed to inspire kids’ creative thinking through crafts, story, music and dance. The series was created by Angela Santomero, creator of Blue’s Clues and the Emmy-nominated literacy series, Super Why!

Tumbleaf was created by Drew Hodges and Kelli Bixler of Bix Pix Entertainment, the award-winning stop motion studio. The series, aimed at preschoolers, is set in a whimsical land where a small blue fox named Fig plays each day and discovers adventure, friendship and love around every bend. Children will be enriched by narratives that promote play through exploration and scientific thinking.

Each of the shows will appear exclusively on Prime Instant Video. The pilots are currently available for streaming.

Rumors about Facebook trying to acquire Waze have been circulating for close to a year at this point. The rumors picked up steam earlier this month, followed by talks of a bidding war among Facebook, Google and other unspecified companies. Some have mentioned Apple as a suitor, as it has struggled with its own Maps offering.

According to reports, it looks like Google’s competition has been reduced. AllThingsD’s Mike Isaac reports that Facebook is no longer in talks to acquire the company, indicating that talks fell apart in part due to “conflicts over whether or not the Waze team – which is predominantly based in Israel – would move over to the United States and fold itself into Facebook’s Menlo Park, Calif., headquarters, among other reasons.”

Neither company has commented on the situation.

Additionally, Apple CEO Tim Cook said at the D11 conference that the company did not make a bid for Waze. Technically, that doesn’t exactly mean Apple is out of the discussion, but it does clear some up some notions.

Reports of Google’s interest in Waze haven’t exactly been confirmed, but Bloomberg reported last week that Google was in the mix. As previously mentioned, Google could be an attractive destination for a company in the mapping area, given the success of Google Maps, and the continued expansion of imagery and features. It could also prove to be a defensive move on Google’s part, keeping competitors from gaining ground against its popular Maps service.

Google recently unveiled new Maps experiences for desktop, mobile and tablet devices.

SEOmoz has changed its name to simply, ‘Moz,’ to better reflect the growing industry of which it is a part. The company, however, isn’t only rebranding itself. It’s also launching a completely new product.

SEOmoz now redirects to Moz.com.

“The Problem: There isn’t a product that measures the effectiveness and impact of inbound marketing efforts,” a spokesperson for the company tells WebProNews. “Sure, Google Analytics can give you traffic data—but it doesn’t give you data for all your efforts across other channels. Moz Analytics is built to expose that data and give marketers insight into how to improve their efforts. It helps users answer a difficult question: What is the ROI of inbound marketing?”

“The Pitch: Moz is the result of two years of product development, based on a trend that was clear to our Founder and CEO, Rand Fishkin,” the spokesperson adds. “The world of search marketing has evolved. Social media marketing matters, content matters, and SEO matters—they all contribute to the greater picture of inbound marketing, or earned marketing, as we like to call it. Moz manages and analyzes those marketing efforts on a single subscription platform.”

“For the past decade, we’ve fought to make SEO a legitimate, respected part of a web marketer’s arsenal,” says Fishkin. “Today that battle is expanding to include content marketing, social media, community building, brand tracking, and other inbound channels. While SEO remains a key part of our product, it’s no longer transparent or authentic to say we’re purely an SEO software company.”

The Moz Analytics platform includes SEO and link analysis features, social analytics and brand/web mention data. It will show where a brand, competitor, or industry topic is being talked about on the web, and companies can see where they’re being mentioned, but not linked to.

“The transformation of Moz over the past year is a direct result of the feedback we’ve received from our customers and community,” says Fishkin. “We’ve taken input from thousands of marketers, and built the tools they need to understand the impact of their efforts.”

Moz has over 25,000 customers, and boasts a community of over 300,000 online marketers. Moz Analytics is in private invite-only beta mode for the time being. They will start transitioning customers to the new software over the coming weeks.

Fishkin discusses the change more over on the Moz Blog.

Goodbye SEOmoz. Hello, Moz: bit.ly/thenewmoz

— Rand Fishkin (@randfish) May 29, 2013

Excited for @moz for many reasons, but finally working at a company whose name my grandmother can pronounce is a big one

— Rand Fishkin (@randfish) May 29, 2013

Google announced on Wednesday that it has added new New York imagery to Google Maps Street View, including imagery of neighborhoods struck by Hurricane Sandy, a tour of the 9/11 Memorial, and 360-degree imagery of Central Park.

“To create a space where the New York community can share memories from before, during, and after the storm, we partnered with Historypin on a community photo and video album called Hurricane Sandy: Record, Remember, Rebuild,” says Susan Molinari, VP of Public Policy at Google. In the album, you can discover and contribute old and new images of the places that mean the most to you.”

“For example, I found this photo of a house on Staten Island’s New Dorp Beach,” adds Molinari. “‘You can take our home but you can’t take our heart’ is scrawled across its boarded up windows. That’s Staten Island for you — we persevere and help each other up when we fall.”

The 9/11 Memorial imagery includes panoramic images of the North and South pools, which let you see victims’ names engraved along the edges:

For Central Park, Google partnered with Central Park Conservancy, and collected 360-degree imagery of trails, paths and plazas:

Although the Samsung Galaxy S 4 is one of the hottest selling Android phones currently, its size is just too much for some hands to take. So it makes perfect sense for Samsung to create a smaller version dubbed the “mini”. The company did the same with it’s Galaxy S 3 last year. It’s likely Samsung will introduce a Galaxy S 4 Mini at a planned June event in London, but we now have a good idea of what to expect.

Once again, mobile device benchmarking applications provide the details: All About Samsung, a German enthusiast blog, caught sight of the likely Galaxy S 4 Mini specifications on Wednesday. If you were expecting the same phone in a smaller version, plan to be surprised because Samsung has cut back in some areas as compared to its flagship Galaxy S 4.

Instead of using Samsung’s latest Exynos silicon, the tested Galaxy S 4 Mini uses a dual-core 1.7 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S400 chip and Adreno 305 graphics. In comparison, the Galaxy S 4 uses a higher-end 1.9 GHz quad-core Snapdragon S600 processor. And although the benchmarks don’t indicate it, I wouldn’t expect the Mini to offer all of the same gesture functions found in its big brother, based on that chipset: The required screen digitizer would also add to the cost.

The Mini also looks to sacrifice display resolution — in a big way. I would have expected a drop from 1920 x 1080 to 1280 x 720 resolution, but the tested Mini uses an older qHD res of 960 x 540. Still, on an expected 4.3-inch display, that works out to a relatively crisp 240 pixels per inch.

The benchmarks also indicate an 8 megapixel rear camera, 2.1 megapixel front camera, what looks to be 1.5 GB of memory and Android 4.2.2 installed. If the benchmarks are correct — and we should know in a few weeks — the slightly smaller Galaxy S 4 Mini is less of a petite powerhouse and more of a mid-range phone that would fit in the $149 with contract price band.

But it could be perfect for folks like my wife: She pulled the SIM out of her iPhone 4S last week — she’s due for an upgrade — and popped it in the Galaxy S 4. Overall, she liked the phone, but said she couldn’t use it because it felt too big in her hands. Perhaps a Galaxy S 4 Mini would be the perfect fit?

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Amazon announced a new Login with Amazon service for websites, apps and games, which lets users login using their Amazon accounts. The company says it reduces sign-in friction and can drive higher customer engagement and conversions.

Obviously the feature would compete directly with offerings from companies like Google, Facebook and Twitter.

“Login with Amazon enables app developers and website owners to leverage Amazon’s trusted sign-in solution, allowing them to focus on providing a great experience for their customers,” said Michael Carr, Amazon Vice President, eCommerce Services. “Amazon customers now have a hassle-free way to quickly and securely sign-in to apps, games and websites, without having to remember yet another password.”

Amazon subsidiaries Zappos and Woot have been using the Amazon login feature, and the company says it has seen “significant” customer adoption. Zappos in particular saw 40% of its new customers choose to sign-in with an Amazon account. On Woot, new customers picked Login with Amazon two times more often than any other social login on the site. Those customers, Amazon says, had the highest conversion rate.

Amazon appears to be looking to capture users while they’re on properties across the web more than ever before. They also recently launched a “Send to Kindle” button for content, enabling users to send articles for later reading on their Kindle devices/apps.

You can find all the necessary documentation for Login with Amazon for web, Android and iOS here.

Alternative search engine Blekko announced the launch of a major site redesign today. The design leverages the API the company built for its mobile app izik, and breaks search results down into categories, offering curated results from “verified” sources of content. Search results pages also now include more results per page.

“Blekko’s new search results page will move away from the standard search result status-quo and introduce a remodeled homepage with an innovative new way to display results,” a spokesperson tells WebProNews. ” This new design will break down the spam-free search results into categories that will make it easier than ever for users to sift through human-curated content. The shift away from the customary 10 link search result archetype is the next big step for Blekko.”

The new site features responsive design, and has more images.

“It’s a great testament to our team that we’ve reached a usage level that almost no other search startup has managed to achieve in the past decade,” said Rich Skrenta, CEO of Blekko. “And now we’re ready to take things to the next level by radically redefining the search results page. Now every search is going to instantly return results from the best sources on the Web and break them down into categories to provide a richer, more accurate list of real information, not just links.”

Blekko says its user base is up to 12.5 million, with 5 million searches a day.

According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune…

The city of Eagan and Frontier Communications have reached an agreement under which Frontier will become the first telecommunications provider on AccessEagan, the city’s wholesale fiber network.

The agreement could mean faster Internet speeds and more service options for many businesses in Eagan. It also adds the city’s 16-plus miles of fiber optic lines to Frontier’s more than 302 miles of fiber in Dakota County.

AccessEagan is a wholesale fiber network owned by the city and open to any telecommunications carrier wishing to provide services to Eagan businesses. The city provides no retail services.

The AccessEagan lines are in central and north Eagan mostly, with an extension going in this summer in the Cedar Grove area, where an outlet shopping mall is being built.

It will be fun to see what happens both in terms of faster access and competition.

Republicans in the Senate have made no secret of their efforts to block the President’s constitutional responsibility to appoint federal judges. They have filibustered unquestionably qualified nominees, like Caitlin Halligan. And their obstruction of the confirmation process kept several nominees waiting more than a year for a vote.  In fact, on average, our judicial nominees wait more than three times as long as those of President Bush after being approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee.  And for no good reason.  Earlier this year, four Circuit Court judges were confirmed by the Senate after waiting at least 250 days – even though each one was confirmed with overwhelming bipartisan support.            

But now, Republicans are taking their attempts to manipulate the federal judiciary to an entirely new level. Right as our D.C. Circuit Court nominee Sri Srinivasan was confirmed unanimously, Republicans started pushing a proposal to reduce the number of judges on the D.C. Circuit from 11 to 8, a blatant attempt to shrink President Obama’s constitutional authority to fill this court. As President Franklin Delano Roosevelt learned when he tried to pack the Supreme Court, the three branches of government are coequal for a reason. Neither the executive branch or the legislative branch should use the third branch to a pursue a partisan agenda.

And on the merits, Senator Grassley’s “court unpacking proposal” fails to make any sense. In fact, in 2005, the Senate – including Senator Grassley – voted to confirm Judge Janice Rogers Brown to the D.C. Circuit as the tenth active judge and Judge Thomas Griffith as the eleventh active judge.  In 2006, the Senate – again, including Senator Grassley – voted to confirm Judge Brett Kavanaugh as the tenth active judge. Voting for judicial nominees for court seats under one president while proposing to eliminate those same seats under the president of a different political party smacks of partisan politics.

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On this week’s podcast, we spend a bit more time talking about the Chromebook Pixel as Chris has traded up from an old Samsung to the newest Chromebook. And the experience starts out with a Chrome experiment that you can try on any computer and phone that have the Chrome browser installed.

We also share some Pixel tips — including how to control the lightbar through a command line — and, of course, provide our extension of the week. A quick recap of what features are in the latest Chrome OS Beta software update round out this week’s audio episode.

Show notes

Hosts: Chris Albrecht and Kevin C. Tofel

• Chrome OS Beta gets up an update: what’s inside?
• Chris upgraded to the Pixel with LTE.
• Impressions of the latest Chrome Experiment: Rollit.
• New command in the terminal: ectool – provides battery info and much more!
• Extension of week: Turn off the lights

Got questions, tips or tricks for an upcoming GigaOM Chrome Show? Find Kevin on Google+, Twitter (@kevinctofel) or via e-mail ([email protected])

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Apple CEO Tim Cook on Tuesday kicked off what is sure to be an action-packed show at the eleventh annual D: All Things Digital conference with an 81-minute interview on stage with AllThingsD’s Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg. It was a very safe bet that Cook would stick to script and no surprises would be in store during his interview, and this was definitely the case. The Apple boss still covered plenty of hot topics though, including taxes, TV, the idea of Apple making Android apps, Google Glass and wearable technology in general, Apple’s nine recent acquisitions, upcoming new iOS APIs and more. The full 81-minute interview follows below.

Continue reading…

In the continuing trend towards featuring ultra-low power processors in new classes of servers designed to run Internet-scale workloads AMD announced the Opteron X-Series, a new family of low power server processors formerly known as “Kyoto.” Optimized for scale-out server architectures, the new X1150 and X2150 processors feature four x86 CPU cores.

“The data center is at an inflection point and requires a high number of cores in a dense form factor with integrated graphics, massive amounts of DRAM and unprecedented power efficiency to keep up with the pace of innovation of Internet services,” said Andrew Feldman, corporate vice president and general manager, Server Business Unit at AMD.  ”AMD has a proud history of server innovation, and the AMD Opteron X-Series processors challenge the status quo by providing unmatched capabilities to drive the most energy-efficient servers in the industry.”

At as little as 11 watts, AMD says the Opteron X2150 is the first server APU system-on-a-chip integrating CPU and GPU engines with a high-speed bus on a single die. This enables customers to take advantage of leading-edge AMD Radeon HD 8000 graphics technology for multimedia-oriented server workloads. The AMD Opteron X1150, which consumes as little as 9 watts, is a CPU-only version optimized for general scale-out workloads. The X-Series processors will be a good fit for initiatives like Project Moonshot, HP’s low-power, many-core servers converged infrastructure.

“Fundamental changes in computing architectures are required to support space, power and cost demands organizations need to deliver compelling, new infrastructure economics,” said Paul Santeler, vice president and general manager, Hyperscale Server business segment, HP. “The new x86 AMD Opteron X-Series processors integrated into future HP Moonshot servers will continue to push the boundaries of power efficiency for social, mobile, cloud and big data workloads.”

Both X-Series processors have four “Jaguar” 64 bit x86 CPU cores, up to 32 gigabytes of DRAM and 2MB of L2 Cache. The X2150 also features 128 Radeon HD 8000 GPU cores.  Both Opteron X2150 APU and X1150 CPU are generally available now.

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