broadcasting

Color for Facebook lets you update your status with a live video stream straight from your device's camera. It lets you broadcast streams using your standard data connection or Wi-Fi, and can even post photo updates (thought its strength is undoubtedly its video capability).

To broadcast a stream, tap the green camera button, then tap Host Friends. By default, a link to your stream will be pushed out to all of your friends' news feeds, but the app does give you a couple of seconds to tap and change that setting before the video starts rolling. You can make … Read more

A spectrum bill has passed through a subcommittee in the House of Representatives that authorizes FCC incentive auctions and also allocates spectrum to public safety.

On Thursday, the communications and technology subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee approved the Jumpstarting Opportunity with Broadband Spectrum Act (JOBS Act).

The legislation authorizes the Federal Communications Commission to create an auction for selling wireless spectrum voluntarily released by TV broadcasters. And it also includes provisions for allocating spectrum and funding a nationwide public safety mobile broadband network.

Chairman Greg Walden (R-Ore.), who sponsored the bill, said it would help create 100,… Read more

You thought this would never be possible.

But, because I am more idealistic and optimistic than you are, I merely waited for the day. It has duly come.

Please, then, watch the video I have embedded and bathe in the notion that everything is possible. For this video depicts iPhones and Androids making love.

It is thoroughly PG. It is thoroughly engrossing. And it gives us hope that our world can come together as one.

It was made by the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation. You might remember that this corporation got itself into a troubling bind when it planted a little green Android … Read more

ChannelCaster for Android lets users create and publish personalized "channels" that aggregate news from thousands of supported news sources. In addition to all of the expected big-name publications and blogs, ChannelCaster can pull feeds from Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, and Twitter. Its design is clean and visually appealing with its sharp, vibrant thumbnails, and its navigation is incredibly simple with only three main tabs along the top of the app.

The Favorites tab is really the heart of the ChannelCaster experience. This is where you save your most frequently visited channels, and presumably where you'll spend most of … Read more

Several free Microsoft apps will be hopping aboard Nokia's Symbian phones by the end of the year.

As described in a blog yesterday, Microsoft and Nokia will deliver the apps in the form of free updates sometime during the fourth quarter. The updates will only be available to owners of phones running Symbian Belle, the latest update to the Symbian OS, or to those who upgrade from Symbian Anna to Belle.

The mobile apps and updates scheduled to roll out this year include:

Someone from Yahoo has accused Google of overpaying for YouTube.

Oh, the irony.

Steven Mitzenmacher, a Yahoo senior director of corporate development, is skeptical that Google has recouped the $1.65 billion the search company paid in October 2006 to acquire YouTube, the Web's top video-sharing site. According to a story in The Wall Street Journal, Mitzenmacher was speaking on a panel at the Global Technology Symposium in Menlo Park, Calif., on Friday. Also on the panel were execs from LinkedIn, Adobe, and Google.

The paper reported Mitzenmacher was ballyhooing Yahoo's plans for "a very big year&… Read more

Amateur tinkerer Ian Anderson works in a wood shop and wears earphones to protect himself against a constant exposure to loud noises. To add a little music to his day, Anderson considered buying a set of noise-canceling headphones before committing to make a better pair himself.

Anderson started with a pair of Koss KSC75 clip-on style titanium stereophones that feature the same 60-ohm drivers found on the highly regarded Koss Porta-Pro model.

He embedded the KSC75s into a pair of Peltor 105 Professional Noise Cancelling Earmuffs using the tools in his garage and came up with a 3.5mm-compatible stereo … Read more

Switzerland prides itself on its neutral sense of justice.

Its definition of neutrality, of course, might not mesh with yours, especially should you have strong feelings about Nazi gold or women not being allowed to vote before 1971. Still, it's a neutrality that sometimes rears its beautiful head to quite bizarre effect.

So might I offer you an ad for the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation's iPad app? For reasons the corporation has tried to explain--reasons you might be tempted to doubt--at the 39-second mark of the ad, up pops a little green android standing among the throngs.

Now, you might be wondering whether this android is portrayed as a bad guy, a club-wielding, club-footed neanderthal trailing in the iPad's wake.

Yet, no. This very strange--one might almost call it very Swiss--iPad app ad suggests that the android is one in the army of good guys.

I thank AndroidGuys.com for quoting SBC and its artistic motives for this motif: "The android is here as part of the details we wanted to include, in this case a hint to the fact that we cover both platforms (Android fans might want to have a look at the swissinfoandroid channel)."… Read more

Links from Wednesday's episode of Loaded:

Google launches Boutiques.com for highfalutin shoppers

Google creates Hotspot to help you discover your friends' favorite haunts

Hulu Plus is now $2 per month cheaper and available on the Roku set-top box

Yahoo launches Amazon Studios goes live in a quest for the next big thing in movies

Yahoo Clues lets you track trending search topics

The Emergency Broadcast System is coming to your cell phone

Intel wants to put computer chips in football helmets to measure head trauma

A New York University professor is going to live-stream his life from a … Read more