rhunter's blog

Selling songs for use in major films and commercials is a big part of the music industry, and now two new companies will offer the same service for videos by small businesses, school groups, independent filmmakers, or even wedding parties. Cuesongs, backed by Peter Gabriel of Genesis, will license music from Sony and some other rightsholders, including Gabriel himself. Ricall Express, which builds off existing music licensing serviceRicall, will have songs from EMI and other independent publishers. The Music Publishers Association head stressed that nobody is trying to force someone to pay "to upload a clip of their child dancing to the radio." Instead, the licenses are meant for smaller commercial filmmakers or nonprofit groups like schools.

Apple just released a fairly major update to Final Cut Pro X, adding in multicamera editing functionality with the ability to sync cameras using recorded audio, more advanced chroma keying, deeper XML import / export support, and new support for Thunderbolt-based broadcast monitoring. FCP X 10.0.3 is the second major update since the new version launched seven months ago to deeply ambivalent reviews — Apple says it's moving away from 18-month release cycles, but it's also clearly feeling the pressure as pros have begun looking to other solutions.

FCP X 10.0.3's new multicamera editing feature supports up to 64 cameras, which can be resolution, codec, and framerate independent. Apple's Senior Director of Applications Marketing Richard Townhill says it's "the best multicam in the business," with "some really cool and innovative controls no one else has, even Final Cut Pro 7." Chief among them is the ability to sync up DSLRs and other cameras that don't record standard timecode by either their internal clocks or by automatically analyzing their audio recordings and matching things up. The system can be used to sync pretty much anything — Apple's demo video shows a commercial production using everything from an iPhone to a full Arri Alexa rig.

Citing a recent survey by Consumer Intelligence Research Partners, All Things D reports that since the debut of the iPhone 4S in October 2011, some 89 percent of all U.S. iPhone sales can be attributed to the newest Apple smartphone.

The CIRP survey shows that iPhone buyers weren't put off by the $399 price of the top-of-the-line 4S, which boasts up to 64 GB of storage, and reports that an impressive 21 percent opted for the highest capacity model while the 32 GB and 16 GB versions garnered 34 percent and 45 percent of sales, respectively.

A deeper look into the figures reveals that recent iPhone buyers are bucking the trend of waiting the two years for their current contracts to expire before buying the popular device, and suggest that a majority of 4S adopters bypass cheaper legacy models for the newer Siri-enabled device.

Apple's resurgence among business users was profiled in a report by Forrester analyst Frank Gillett entitled "Apple Infiltrates The Enterprise."

It further noted that companies buying Macs plan to increase their purchases by 52 percent this year. The study was based on interviews with 3,300 Information Technology decision makers and an additional 10,000 workers across 17 countries.

Forrester charted dynamic growth for Macs among enterprise users, noting that the percentage of companies issuing Macs to their workers has grown from 30 percent in 2009 to 37 percent in 2010 and 46 percent over the last year.

The research firm notes that among companies that deploy Macs, 7 percent of all computers being issued are now Macs.

   This morning at Lotusphere in Orlando, IBM is announcing the evolution of messaging as a social business tool. During the Lotusphere opening general session, IBM announced and demonstrated Lotus Notes and Domino Social Edition, the next feature release of the messaging and collaboration platform, along with IBM Connections Mail, where social networking meets work for more personal interactions. Both new releases are expected in 2012, with beta releases coming later this quarter. Together, Notes/Domino Social Edition and Connections Mail embrace the notion of a reinvented inbox, incorporating social analytics, contextual delivery, embedded experiences, and progressive disclosure. Fundamentally, we are evolving email and messaging into social mail -- the contextual component that the industry has dreamed of for nearly a decade, in solutions for both our existing messaging customers as well as for those with other email back-ends. 

Back in the day Elon Musk was well-known for being one of the co-founders of PayPal. Today, the former Internet entrepreneur is tackling no less than electric cars, solar rooftops and rockets. He’s the CEO of both Tesla Motors and SpaceX, as well as the Chairman of SolarCity.

The way I see it is that all transportation will go electric except for rockets, ironically. All that is needed is someone to provide compelling electric vehicles. That is something we’re doing at Tesla and that’s something I think we’ll see the rest of the auto industry doing over time. I don’t think there is such a thing as the electric vehicle market and the internal combustion market — it’ll all go electric. It’s just a question of producing a compelling product.

A former intern for Google's Android team has provided explanations for why Android experiences more touch interface lag than competing mobile operating systems from Apple, Microsoft and Research in Motion.

Undergraduate software engineering student Andrew Munn posted his observations on Google+, as noted by Cult of Mac. He did disclaim, however, that he will be starting an internship with Microsoft's Windows Phone team in January, adding that any opinions from the report were his alone.

According to Munn, Android has a difficult time dealing with the touch interface because it handles rendering "on the main thread with normal priority," as opposed to iOS, which treats UI rendering with real-time priority. He cites examples of website loading and the Movies app on Android where the operating system will continue to load while registering touch input.

J.P. Morgan bumped up its projections for shipments of Apple's iPhone in the December quarter to 28 million units, revising its revenue estimates for the company accordingly to $38.69 billion.

Analyst Mark Moskowitz issued a note to clients on Thursday announcing the revised estimates, noting that "Santa's sleigh needs more room for iPhones." Whereas the firm's previous estimate was 25.3 million units, he now predicts iPhone shipments of 28 million for the holiday quarter.

The analyst noted that U.S. carriers have been "surprised by the strong uptake" of the iPhone 4S, as well as the lower-priced iPhone 4 and 3GS models. The older iPhone models are also expected to aid Apple's penetration in emerging markets such as China.

After struggling to gain an edge over its competitors with its BlackBerry smartphones and tablets, Research in Motion has conceded some ground to Apple and Google with the announcement of Mobile Fusion, upcoming security software for the iPhone and Android.

Waterloo, Ont.-based RIM said on Tuesday that the device management software should arrive in the late March. Though the company declined to provide a price for the application, RIM vice-president for enterprise product management did say that it will be "competitive" with rival offerings.

AMAZON

Amazon's doing Cyber Monday a little differently and unlocking different deals at various times throughout the week. There'll be quite a few things offered, but from what we've seen the highlights will be a 250GB Xbox 360 holiday bundle that comes with Fable III and Halo Reach and an unlocked Nokia N8 for $299. There's also the usual collection of discounts on cameras and TVs.