Digital Media

Would you pay $30 a month to watch TV via iTunes?

That's the pitch Apple has been making to TV networks in recent weeks. The company is trying to round up support for a monthly subscription service that would deliver TV programs via its multimedia software, multiple sources tell me.

Apple isn't tying the proposed service to a specific piece of hardware, like its underwhelming Apple TV box, or its long-rumored tablet/slate device. Instead, it is presenting the offer as an extension of its iTunes software and store, which already has 100 million customers.

A so-called "over the top" service could theoretically rival the ones most consumers already buy from cable TV operators--if Apple is able to get enough buy-in from broadcast and cable TV programmers.

That's a big if: Apple has told industry executives it wants to launch the service early next year, but I have yet to hear of a single programmer that has made a firm commitment to the company, which has tasked iTunes boss Eddy Cue with promoting the idea.

But industry executives believe that if anyone jumps first, it will be Disney, since CEO Bob Iger has shown a willingness to experiment with Apple and iTunes in the past: In 2005, Disney was the first player to sell its programming on iTunes, via a la carte downloads. And Apple CEO Steve Jobs is Disney's largest single shareholder, a result of Disney's 2006 acquisition of Jobs' Pixar animation studio. Apple didn't respond to requests for comment.

Network executives I've talked to are intrigued with the idea--they are eager to find new revenue streams--but are also wary, for multiple reasons.

Story Copyright (c) 2009 AllThingsD. All rights reserved.

Facebook plans to announce at a developer event Monday that it will open up user-contributed information to third-party developers, according to a report Sunday in The Wall Street Journal.

The move would allow developers to build applications and services that--with users' permission--access user videos, photos, notes, and comments. The move would be a significant change for the social-networking site, which had previously retained tight control over the site and how developers interact with it.

To allow developers to take advantage of the free feature, Facebook users would have to give the companies access to their data, and users' privacy settings would extend to new services built, according to the report.

Allowing developers to track shared data would be another salvo in its assault on micro-blogging site Twitter, which allows third-party developers to build applications and services on top of its service.

The move seems a continuation of APIs (application programming interfaces) Facebook launched in February that let developers access content and methods for sharing in Facebook apps including Status, Notes, Links, and Video.

Of course, all this hinges on persuading Facebook's 200 million users to share their personal data, a topic that ruffled some feathers in February. Facebook users threatened to revolt after the company announced changes to its terms of service that had meant that its license on user content--a longstanding but little-publicized claim to an "irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license" for promotional efforts--would no longer expire if a member deleted his or her Facebook account.

But facing a rebellion from thousands of users and a possible federal complaint from the Electronic Privacy Information Center, the social-networking service returned to its previous terms.

Continuing our special Web coverage of the 2008 presidential election, CBSNews.com and CNET are once again teaming up to offer special online programming for the debates, starting with Friday night's showdown between John McCain and Barack Obama in Oxford, Miss.

Be sure to tune into this CBS News link not only to watch the 90-minute debate live, beginning at 9 p.m. EDT, but also for follow-up live network coverage and then an exclusive Web-only show featuring Katie Couric and the CBS News political team.

On the Webcast, slated to begin at 11 p.m. EDT, Couric will talk with special guests and undecided voters, and the political team will answer viewer questions. You can submit questions now, or during the live debate coverage.

Later, we'll post the full Webcast, and will also offer audio and video debate coverage for download via iTunes.

And come back for the vice presidential debate on October 2, the second presidential debate on October 7, and the third presidential debate on October 15. All start at 9 p.m. EDT and will be followed by Webcasts with Couric and company.

SUNNYVALE, Calif.--On Friday, 300 programmers will descend upon Sunnyvale, Calif., to plant the seeds of what Yahoo hopes will be an answer to Google's Internet might.

Yahoo co-founder and Chief Yahoo David Filo

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET News)

The event is called Open Hack Day 2008, and at it the coders will be the first from outside the company to get their hands on a number of programming interfaces Yahoo is releasing in an attempt to enliven its stodgy but still powerful Internet properties.

There's no guarantee that the release, a key step in what the company calls its Yahoo Open Strategy, will improve Yahoo's financial misfortunes. But it holds promise a strategy that could help Yahoo without having to try to out-Google Google.

That's because YOS marries the best of what Yahoo is with the best of what's happening on the Internet today. More than 500 million people come to Yahoo sites each month, 300 million of them registered users who log on, and they're coming for Yahoo's content and services. Yahoo may not be able to match Google's search engine and accompanying search ad money machine, but YOS ultimately could help improve Yahoo's assets, attract new partners, and bolster the company's advertising revenue.

"We believe openness is going to happen with or without us. We'd rather be at the center of it," said co-founder David Filo in an interview.

Here's an example of YOS in action that Ash Patel, head of Yahoo's audience products division, showed Thursday. The Yahoo home page, which is being revamped to show content customized for each user, houses an application from Netflix showing the movies a user ordered and new recommendations. Yahoo search is augmented to let people order more movies straight from the search results. And an application within Yahoo Mail could let users rate their movies and chat with Netflix members on their buddy list who've already seen it.

Ash Patel, head of Yahoo's audience products division

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET News)

The pressure's on
Here's the rub, though: YOS will take time to build, and time is not on Yahoo's side.

Yahoo, faced with near-term pressures from Microsoft and activist investor and now board member Carl Icahn, would have preferred a quick fix to its business, and perhaps a cash infusion from Yahoo's search-ad partnership with rival Google will help in that regard.

YOS is a longer-term strategy, though. It's taken months to rewire the company's infrastructure to accommodate the vision. It'll take more months to coax programmers and business partners into using it. And still longer to attract Yahoo users to adopt the new features.

As Yahoo languished in recent years, new online services squarely in Yahoo's back yard, such as Facebook and Twitter, had time to put down serious roots. And of course Google has encroached, too: its search-ad revenue has funded any number of affronts to Yahoo, including Gmail, Google Docs, Google News, Google Finance, Orkut, and Blogger.

Of course, Yahoo believes that its clout on the Internet will give it the necessary leg up. So the next start-up, for example, could get traction quickly by drafting off Yahoo's page views and user base.

Yahoo CTO Ari Balogh

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET News)

"Yahoo allows developers to create applications for the world's biggest audience," Patel said. "And they're able to do monetization for advertising. Those two are huge value propositions."

The company is betting the money will come its way, too. Yahoo expects to gain better insight into what users are doing, and consequently better predict what sorts of content or advertising the users want. "The better signals you have, the better you can serve the right content," and being able to target ads better means Yahoo can charge higher rates, said Chief Technology Officer Ari Balogh. "We expect lots of material benefit."

What's coming Friday
So what will be new on Friday? For those programmers who made the Hack Day cut, a pizza- and soda-fueled opportunity to toy with two broad categories of new Yahoo APIs (application programming interfaces), said Neal Sample, chief architect for Yahoo's platforms.

First is a collection of social APIs that let programmers use data such as a Yahoo user's address book contacts, status messages, profile information, and news feed items. Second is the Yahoo Application Platform (YAP), which will be used to write the applications that actually will run on Yahoo Web pages. YAP has some similarities to the OpenSocial project initially begun by Google but now supported by several others, including Yahoo.

The first Yahoo property to get the application support will be a redesigned profile page, a "control panel" site where people can record personal information, update their status, and see their social connections, Sample said. "We're going to get to the point where all our profiles can start coalescing so you have the concept of a single identity on Yahoo."

Neal Sample, Yahoo's chief architect for platforms

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET News)

Over this year and into 2009, the support will extend to the My Yahoo personalized home page, Yahoo Mail with its 270 million users, and the Yahoo front page that's being redesigned with a customization feature called the content optimization engine.

If all goes according to plan, the collection of new interfaces and applications will "light up a user's social graph," building Yahoo more deeply into a person's online interactions, for example by spotlighting a person's most important contacts in Yahoo Mail.

Fresh air
Yahoo will call Open Hack Day a success if it produces developers happy with the company and feedback about the interfaces, said Chris Yeh, head of the Yahoo Developer Network. But there's something in it for Yahoo, too: a breath of fresh air. "Big companies do become insular at times...We do everything we can to try to avoid that."

Programmers not at Open Hack Day will only be able to see the API documentation at first, but the final APIs will be public soon. "In a few weeks, we're making them generally available," after Yahoo gets feedback from the early testers, Sample said.

These new programming interfaces will join other parts of YOS already released recent months: SearchMonkey lets people write applications that spruce up search results with elements such as LinkedIn profiles or restaurant reviews. BOSS (Build Your Own Search Service) lets others build their own search engines on Yahoo's, reordering or modifying results however they want and sharing search ads or revenue if they get popular.

Chris Yeh, head of Yahoo Developer Network

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET News)

Newest is Fire Eagle can keep track of a person's location information, including a mechanism to let users control what services may employ that information.

A few other APIs are planned for later release, Sample added, including some for geographic services.

Proceed cautiously
Embracing openness--standards, open-source software, open interfaces--is a tried and true way technology companies try to leapfrog incumbent competitors. But retrofitting openness to a company that's been closed is difficult, and Yahoo clearly is concerned about breaking what it's built by moving at start-up speeds.

"Getting it right with hundreds of millions of users is harder than if you're starting from scratch," Filo said.

And it's not just about revealing APIs and doing some marketing. "We have to get the platform right so we can ensure the applications don't degrade the user experience," Patel said, for example by caching applications on Yahoo servers so pages load fast. "It is stuff that does keep us up at night."

Consequently, Patel said, the company will vet applications before letting them onto Yahoo sites--especially for Yahoo Mail site, where so much personal information resides.

Venkat Panchapakesan

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET News)

Yahoo also wants to ensure users are in control when it comes to the permissions they grant to applications, said Venkat Panchapakesan, leader of Yahoo's audience technology group.

So it's tricky work for a lumbering giant. If successful, though, Yahoo will be able to reclaim some of the Internet initiative it once had in spades, potentially rearranging today's competitive landscape.

"Yes, we have lots of competitors," Filo said. "In some ways, we're opening up new level of competition by letting people build on top of us. Ultimately, this is good for the consumer and the Internet."

See also:
• Yahoo gives a taste of its 'open' overhaul
• David Filo: No browser for Yahoo
• Yahoo makes the case for Google search ads
• Yahoo 12-month price target cut
• Yahoo announces social networking app for iPhone
• Top Yahoo sales execs: One in, one out

Google's Photostream application is for viewing Flickr photos on Android phones.

(Credit: Google)

Google released on Thursday a new sample application called Photostream that will let phones running its Android phone operating system view photos stored at Yahoo's Flickr photo-sharing site.

Although Photostream is intended to be a tool to illustrate the use of various Android features, it also looks like a potentially useful application for when the phones start shipping later this year. The open-source program lets people browse a particular user's photos, in groups or individually, and create separate shortcuts to different Flickr accounts, according to a description at the Android developers blog.

Google is trying to attract developers to Android so the project has a rich set of applications. Part of the promise of the effort is to build an "open" foundation, not unlike personal computers, where people can install new software.

Users will be able to find new applications at the Android Market, though that online service likely will launch only with free applications, so developers hoping to profit from the site will probably have to wait.

Google is also moving technology from its Chrome browser to Android.

Here's an old photo of Hans Reiser from his Stanford days. A San Francisco Chronicle reporter said at his sentencing Friday, however, Reiser's hair was grown out and he looked more like Art Garfunkel.

(Credit: via Stanford University)

In what appears the final chapter of the Hans Reiser crime saga, the Linux programmer convicted of killing his wife was sentenced Friday afternoon to 15 years to life in prison under a deal he worked out with prosecutors in exchange for leading police to his victim's body.

Reiser--known to the technology world as the founder of the ReiserFS file system software--was found guilty in April of first-degree murder in the 2006 killing of his wife, with whom he was undergoing a bitter divorce. The jury convicted him largely on circumstantial evidence and despite the fact that Nina Reiser's body hadn't been found before trial.

First-degree murder carries a sentence of 25 years to life, compared with 15 years to life for second-degree murder. But in anticipation of his sentencing, Reiser, 44, brokered a deal with prosecutors that went generally like so: If he brought police to his wife's body and he gave up his appellate rights, he could plead guilty to second-degree murder and get 15 years.

And that's what happened in an Oakland, Calif., courthouse Friday, after Reiser pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, according to media reports. He'll be eligible for parole in about 13 years, having already served two years since his October 2006 arrest.

Nina Reiser

(Credit: California Department of Justice)

Throughout the drama-filled six-month trial, Reiser maintained his innocence. Arguing the so-called geek defense, his attorney said that while Reiser may be strange, arrogant, even abnormal, his odd behavior following Nina's disappearance wasn't evidence of murder. On trial, Reiser smeared the mother of his two children, alleging, among other things, that she was likely hiding out in her native Russia with money she stole from his now defunct company, Namesys.

Nina Reiser's remains were found in Oakland's Redwood Regional Park, about a half a mile from where she was last seen. Click image for full map.

(Credit: Google)

Reiser, handcuffed to his attorney, did in fact bring authorities to a grave site Monday containing his wife's remains in a heavily brushed, secluded area about 40 yards off a road in Oakland's Redwood Regional Park. The grave site was located about a half mile from where Nina was last seen in 2006 at Reiser's mother's house, where he was living.

It's unclear whether the cause of death was ever determined through an autopsy. But Wired reported that after the sentencing, prosecutor Paul Hora revealed some of the details from Reiser's confession. Reiser first punched Nina in the mouth, then strangled her to death, Hora said. Hora added that Reiser "stored the body in the bathroom, then moved it to his car, where it stayed for two days while he searched for a place to bury her," according to Wired.

Wired's David Kravets added that before he was formally sentenced, Reiser vowed to make up to society for what he had done and said he was putting Namesys and ReiserFS into a trust fund for his children. Reiser added that he hoped to earn money for his kids while in prison, assuming he's "able to get access to a computer and the Internet," according to Kravets.

TiVo announced Wednesday that it's hooking up with Entertainment Weekly to automatically record the TV programs highlighted on the publication's recommended viewing list.

Under the partnership, TiVo will record for its subscribers the programs on Entertainment Weekly's "What to Watch" listing. The service is slated to begin this fall.

TiVo subscribers will also be able to download Entertainment Weekly's EW.com original programming, such as Just a Minute, Ausiello TV, and Idolatry.

"This partnership creates an exciting new service for our fans, closing the loop between the entertainment choices we spotlight and our audience's ability to connect directly to those entertainment experiences," Scott Donaton, Entertainment Weekly publisher, said in a statement.

For TiVo, the partnership is just the latest it has struck this summer. In July, TiVo announced a deal with Amazon to allow subscribers to purchase products from the online retailing giant off their TV. And last month, TiVo touted plans to allow users to access YouTube videos via their TV.