Videos on the iPad and other tablets look great, and increasingly apps are being created specifically for watching videos on tablets. There is just one problem: they cannot be found by search. This problem is true for information in all apps in general, but it is particularly one for video.

A couple weeks ago, I moderated a panel at Beet.TV’s Video Strategy Summit where this topic came up. In the video clip above, Ross Rubin, director of industry analysis at the NPD Group, points out that there is no electronic program guide for video apps, which “makes it very difficult to discover video.” If you have a thousand video apps, that makes it very hard to find any one video. Akamai chief strategist Chris Van Noy says that apps have the upper hand when it comes to video viewing right now, but he suspects that will change over the next 18 months as HTML5 makes it easier for video to be published once and played anywhere across devices.

Kevin Krim, head of Bloomberg’s web properties, thinks apps can create loyal relationships, but they depend on home runs. He prefers to play short ball and get “good search exposure.” Bloomberg currently has 13,000 videos archived online and adds 50 to 100 every weekday. “I want that to all be in Google search results and get traffic from that,” he says, “you can’t do that in apps. Every time someone watches our video, that’s a single. I can pile those up all day long.”

In the video below, ABC Digital Media executive VP Paul Slavin agrees that search and other forms of Web discovery are key. He estimates that 70 percent of ABCNews.com’s video views come in “through the side door” from search or links from other sites.

Locking up videos in apps makes them invisible to most of the people who might otherwise watch them. Of course, that is why video publishers double up their videos on the Web and inside apps. But someone needs to figure out how to search inside apps, and not just for videos.

The title of this post is both a very old idea and a very new one. With the prevalence of fiber connectivity and pervasive broadband speeds, this year has been a hot one for bringing together the home computer and the living room TV. While companies like Apple and Google battle over share of TV viewers, they have left open and promoted the web for content distributors to control their own experience through HTML (and, especially, HTML5).

To that end, it looks like Apple has one-upped Google by opting to privately pre-arrange distribution deals with traditional studio networks beginning with ABC and FOX, while Google has no deals in place at all, hoping the networks will just “allow” consumers to watch Web videos on their TVs. But Google TV is getting a slap in the face from several networks who pulled the plug, right on the big release day. Just as reviews were rolling out in favor of Google’s new living room effort, ABC, CBS and NBC are exiting stage left.

The interesting thing here is that the networks are not sending Google cease and desist letters, they are just simply blocking this particular device from accessing their otherwise free websites, using a free and open protocol. If you normally like to visit http://abc.com on your computer to watch video content, no problem, but if you want to access the website on your Google TV browser by going to abc.com, currently, you will be blocked.

These tactics by the networks are part of a clear strategy that has been at play for some time, Google could have anticipated this would happen. Remember the Hulu vs. Boxee battle? Boxee pumped Hulu through to the TV, but Hulu blocked Boxee because Hulu is restricting their content to computer screens. So Boxee worked around it to get Hulu to the TV screen. Then Hulu blocked the workaround, so on and so forth. Boxee was confident that they were within the boundaries of the law because they were picking up on signals that Hulu was sending out with a free and open protocol, via the world wide web.

Now the same networks behind Hulu are sending the same message to Google in exactly the same way. They are saying you can watch their content with a browser on your computer, or phone, but when it comes to the Google TV set in particular, just like the Boxee, or any other living room TV set, it’s a no go. They are discriminating by device.

Here is what is going on. If you have a TV now, you are almost certainly paying for TV content with a monthly cable bill and if you start to get your TV content through the web, it will be just a matter of time before you will cut your cable bill. The cable companies know this and they appear to be doing everything they can to force the networks to comply with their demands to block their streaming Web video from appearing on TVs. The networks have their hands tied because almost all of their revenue comes from cable right now and if they break up with cable, and go hard-core internet on their own, they will likely implode overnight. For, as you know, Google TV is not offering them anything, and Apple isn’t offering a good enough deal to exist on. So there you have the problems of the traditional TV networks, once rivals now conspiring to sustain their long held control of a medium that is slipping away.

As for the rest of the world, you can’t stop us. Developers of Web video distribution platforms forge ahead. Apple is offering to lure them in with partnerships, Google is giving them the opportunity to figure it out for free. Neither Apple nor Google, nor anyone else is waiting any longer. The time is now. You can feel it. The rest of the video world marches on, bringing the internet and the TV closer together.

Moving Ahead

For most people, Google TV vs. Apple TV is about something different. They are fighting a war for capturing people at the hardware and operating system levels. Apple is succeeding in selling hardware by locking people in with an integrated operating system, while Google is capturing people on the operating system level, with Android, and then integrating Google services from there. Google is giving Android away for free so they can tag along for the ride.

From Google on the Google TV, October, 2010 :

We are working hard to open source the code for the GoogleTV project, and hope to release the source code next year.

From Apple on the Apple TV, October, 2010:

If you can’t add or play a movie in iTunes or QuickTime Player, then you won’t be able to convert it to play on Apple TV.

When Steve Jobs says, “Open doesn’t always win,” he’s talking directly to Google about this war. But for those in the TV business who wish to distribute their content to both Apple TV and Google TV audiences, it doesn’t really matter.

In the past, with this same closed strategy, Apple may have captured the content of the music industry business but I suspect Apple doesn’t really care about the TV content business too much. The studios are traditionally full of wacky businesses and the pool of valuable TV content is a relatively small one with a profit margin that is expected to shrink. How many hit series are there at any one time anyway? Not that many. And of all the series in the past how many are still in high demand?

No Need For Apps

The world is obsessed with apps right now. An app is just software for your computer, and developers are being forced to recreate the same experience dozens of different ways. It’s a constant re-inventing of the wheel. What a waste of time. Now Microsoft is getting into the game too. While it’s easy for a consumer to ignore by just sticking to their platform of choice, developers and content distributors need to figure out WTF they must do next to make their “app” look the same on Windows or some other new platform, like yep, Apple Lion.

Yes, the diversity in platforms is also needed and welcome. It’s in the best interest of the world overall to have many choices. There are many examples of wants-and-needs not being met by just one development platform. Special tasks require alternate solutions. But for TV content, distributed to the living room, none of this really matters because the place to be is not necessarily on the phone, and its not in an app store, its on the web, via HTML.

HTML5

Apple’s Steve Jobs on HTML5, April 2010:

HTML5, the new web standard that has been adopted by Apple, Google and many others, lets web developers create advanced graphics, typography, animations and transitions without relying on third party browser plug-ins (like Flash). HTML5 is completely open.

Google on HTML5, October 2010:

Your GoogleTV site can look great with the right mix of video, audio, and visual effects. HTML5 provides this kind of rich content and more, and it’s supported in GoogleTV’s Chrome browser. For ideas, tutorials, and guidance, check out HTML5 Rocks.

H.264

Meanwhile, while it may be frustrating that Apple TV doesn’t support Flash, and Google TV doesn’t support Quicktime, they do both support H.264 video playback. Apple says “H.264 is the base format” of it’s Apple TV while Google says the “hardware in the GoogleTV supports…H.264 decoders”

You have to ask yourself, if you are looking for scale, what is the lowest common denominator here?

For TV on the web, it pretty much comes down to H.264 video in HTML5. The future of TV is not your mom’s app, it’s the browser. Unless of course the magnets keep us pinned to the vortex due to the effects of a fragmented market. Right now, all of us are unable to discover what we want, forcing Web video developers (and all others too) to tweak their apps for a hundred different versions of Android, on hundreds of different hardware platforms, plus all the iPhone, iPad, and Mac versions, plus Windows, plus this, and plus that, oh my. Jobs was right, what a mess.

Unless you develop for HTML5 with H.264.

Web First

For a publisher, the idea of charging for apps can certainly lead to a nice revenue stream. But giving away 30-50% of your revenue stream to someone for selling the app is not all that nice. In the long run, I’d rather have you come to my website, and I can just sell it to you there. If Apple has a store, and Android has a bunch of stores, and Nokia has one, and Sony and Windows, and everyone else under the sun has one, your business can have one too, no big deal.

The challenge then shifts from app building and revenue-share issues to discovery of your website. Yet the problem isn’t a new one, it’s a problem you face with apps anyway. As a distributor of TV content, if you want to get your content to the living room TVs, especially the ones on the market right now like the new Sony-Google TV or a nice new Apple TV, and you want to bypass the bureaucracy of others’ stores, and setup costs, and revenue shares, even as you want it to work great for the Apple TV experience and for the Google TV experience, and for any other living room TV integration—Boxee, Roku, you name it—format your website to detect the device and present the right display from your website. It’s that simple. Control the entire situation.

And even though you know you are going to develop apps for various TV platforms and other platforms anyway, especially because it’s a great way to get front and center, make them free and use them as a simple browser to get the apps built quickly and inexpensively. Consider developing for the web first so everyone can gain access and you can remain in control. There is a frenzy of “mobile first, web second” development philosophy in fashion right now, and rightfully so, but the living room TV isn’t mobile. It’s stationary. So when creating your apps, you can keep it simple and just point them to your own website where you can manage your own community, special features, distribution, promotion, advertising and sponsorship through a unique, centralized, cross platform environment called the web.

The beauty of HTML TV is that it’s a fancy protocol which everyone loves, it’s open, and it’s free.

Guest author Andrew Baron is the founder of Rocketboom and video discover site Magma.

Image via Danny Sullivan.

The wheels are in motion. The rumors have persisted for a while now that a new Apple TV (soon to be called “iTV”) is approaching. It’s thought to be a cheaper, smaller version of the current device that puts an emphasis on streaming rather than storage. The killer app of such a device could literally be apps — as in, the iPhone/iPad/iPod touch variety. But don’t forget about the iTunes content.

While apps (and particularly games) will be great to have in the living room, that room first and foremost remains the place that people consume Hollywood entertainment. A ton of it. While Apple was successful in getting the music industry to bend to its will, they so far haven’t been able to do the same with Hollywood. But they’re going to need to with this new Apple TV. So now they’re apparently calling on an old friend in their latest attempt to make that happen: the trusty $0.99 price.

A report today in Bloomberg states that Apple is in “advanced talks” with News Corp. about a new television show rental program for iTunes. Viewers would get access to individual shows for $0.99 and they would be able to view them for 48 hours, according to the report. News Corp. is the parent of the Fox network (as well as other cable channels). Apple is also said to be in talks with CBS and Disney (which owns ABC, and counts Apple CEO Steve Jobs as its largest shareholder) for such a deal.

But such a deal is also a bit odd. After all, who wants to rent single episodes of TV shows? People usually watch entire seasons (unless they’re old shows that they’ve seen before). Currently on iTunes you can buy television shows either on a per-episode basis or by the season — but judging from the top lists, it seems as if people are simply buying individual episodes as they progress in a current season (perhaps they missed a show, or they’re simply buying each episode in a whole season individually).

So why not have a $10 to $15 option to rent a whole season? Well, perhaps Apple will, but it seems as if that was a sticking point in prior negotiations with the television networks. Why? Because they don’t want to piss off the cable companies.

Let’s say you have five television shows you religiously watch each year. If Apple sold a season pass rental to each for $15, that would be $75. Already, that’s cheaper than most cable packages. But cable packages are per month. That $75 would be for the five shows you really want to watch all year! Even if you double the number of shows, it’s still an insanely good deal. And the cable industry knows it.

Cable companies charge so much because they shove a bunch of content down our throats that we don’t want and are not going to watch. But they get money to bundle all this junk together from various networks who sell ads on all this content that people mindlessly watch.

But there’s a growing movement of people who are sick of this mind-numbing waste and are cutting the cord. But they need a simple solution. Currently, there are a bunch of somewhat convoluted solutions that work in concert with one another. This iTunes solution may be what a lot of people are looking for. A $99 device that cuts your bill from $1,500 a year down to $100 a year. Um, sold.

Unfortunately, this odd $0.99 per show rental system might be the only way Apple can convince the TV studios to bite on this right now. Undoubtedly, almost all of that money would be going to the studios to make up for lost ad revenue. But again, $0.99 is a killer price point for consumers. And it will still be a hell of a lot cheaper than cable.

Currently, to buy shows on iTunes it costs $1.99 for standard definition or $2.99 for high definition. Both are too expensive. Sure, you then own them, but how many of these television shows do you actually want to own? Most people buy them simply because they do not have the option to rent. Give them the option and they’ll start doing it.

Further, if people were forced to buy every show they wanted every year, they would very quickly run out of local storage space. That’s why the cloud is more vital for video than for music.

Now, I know everyone is going to shout about live sports and live news being two cable staples that an iTunes rental service wouldn’t replace. That would likely be true for now. But are those two things really worth over $1,000 a year to you? Why not just go to a local sports bar or a friend’s place for the games you want to see (or soon, use your Xbox). For the news, why not just read or watch it online and get it faster?

Will the $0.99 price point be enough to change the cable industry’s awful game? I don’t know, but it worked in music.

[image: Showtime]

To learn more about the app, our own Lora Kolodny ventured over the ABC News headquarters, where she interviewed anchor George Stephanopoulos and a pair of execs who helped create the application.

Stephanopoulos says that he was quickly enamored of the application’s globe, which is a running theme in the interviews (though he said that he hadn’t had a chance to play around with it too much at the time of the interview). On a related note, when guaging his affinity for gadgets on a scale of 1-10, he gives himself a 4.5 (he does own an iPad, but his family has issues getting the cable box to behave properly).

Andrew Morse, Executive Producer of Integration and Innovation at ABC News Digital, says that the globe is meant to be a “meandering experience”. He explains that on traditional sites, people complain that you only get what you’re looking for, and that there isn’t the discovery factor you get from a newspaper.

Isaac Josephson, VP Product Development for ABC News Digital, says that the team has been working on the app for a solid three months, and that it stirred up more excitement among traditional broadcasters than any previous product they’d developed.

My take on the app? Looks aren’t everything — if you want to catch up on the day’s top headlines at a glance, this might not be what you’re looking for. The globe may be fun, but in my experience it also has a habit of obscuring most of the app’s available content (only two or three stories are legible at once). You can flick the globe around a few times and be pretty confident that you’ve seen everything, but it’s hard to kick the nagging feeling that you may have inadvertently skipped over the day’s top story.

That said, the ABC team may be right: if you’re just looking to kill some time discovering random highlights from the day’s news, this may be exactly what you’re looking for. And if you just want the headlines, you can venture over to the ABC News HTML5 site, which is integrated into the app.

Following the 7 On Your Side report, there was “outcry all across the country,” ABC 7 reports. Not anymore. Apple has responded. Thank God.

Apple has changed its store policy to now accept cash and credit cards when customers want to pay for an iPad. “We want to make sure it’s as fair as possible for people to get iPads,” said Apple Sr. Vice President Ron Johnson tells ABC 7.

Effective immediately across the country, if you want to use cash to buy your iPads, you can now do so (provided you register for an Apple account, which you’ll need for the iPad anyway).

And that’s not all. Apple was so moved by the story of one woman feature in the investigation, that they decided to drive to her home and deliver her an iPad for free. Her key quote for the investigation? “Mr. Jobs, give a sister a break.”

A break, she got.

“What I would like to say to Steve is thank you,” the woman now tells ABC.

In all (okay, somewhat) seriousness, this part is somewhat interesting:

Johnson tells 7 On Your Side that grey market sales were never the issue, as many assumed. He says the policy was instituted to make sure the tablets were fairly distributed during a time of high demand. Now, he says, he hopes it will be even more fair by reaching customers who want to buy with cash.

So the policy was in place for a stated reason, that reason hasn’t gone away, and yet Apple just decided to change its policy? It sounds like some of Apple’s critics need to take a lesson from ABC 7 and this woman.

This is great news for anyone with with $500 to $1,000 in cash burning a hole in their pocket. Well, unless they actually want to buy an iPad. Those are still sold out across most of the country.

In preparation for the launch of the iPad tomorrow, iPad Apps are live in iTunes and we’re sorting through the best ones as fast as we can. But with more than 2,000 iPad apps in the App Store, the choices are already daunting.

To help you find the best apps at launch, we’ve put together the definitive list below. It includes all the iPad apps reviewed on TechCrunch, as well as other promising ones we have not gotten to yet. If you have a favorite you think should go on this list, tell us why in comments.

Here is our list, which we will keep updating through the launch of the iPad:

iBooks

Apple’s answer to the Amazon Kindle, iBooks turns the iPad into an electronic book reader with 60,000 books at launch to choose from (the app is free, the e-books are not). Although the Kindle has many more titles (450,000), iBooks lets you flip through virtual pages with your fingers on a color screen. The built-in search and dictionary will come in handy. The font size and brightness can be adjusted. Pages can be bookmarked or highlighted. Books can be read vertically in a full-page view or horizontally in a two-page view like a regular open book. The book store is part of the app and looks like iTunes for books, with best-seller and most-popular lists. Every time you buy a book, it downloads directly to your iPad.

Price: App is free; Each book typically varies from $9.99 to $14.99, many are free. (iTunes link)

Kindle for iPad

Not to be outdone by Apple’s iBooks app, Amazon released its own Kindle app for the iPad which nearly matches the iBook app feature for feature: Full-color touchscreen app, animated page-turning, adjustable font size and brightness (plus you can change the background color), portrait or landscape mode, and the ability to buy books right from the app. Of course, Amazon has a lot more books to choose from (450,000 vs. 60,000). (Search and dictionary functions are “coming soon.” It also includes Amazon’s Whispersync technology, which lets you pick up where you left off on your regular Kindle, your iPhone Kindle App, Blackberry, Mac, or PC. And the Kindle store includes all the regular customer reviews you can find on Amazon’s site. Let the digital book battle begin.

Price: Free, books priced individually (iTunes link)

Tap Tap Radiation

From our post: “The new game is similar to the series of iPhone games in many ways — you still tap on-screen buttons in time to the music. But some key changes were made to optimize gameplay for the iPad. For one, most people will be playing the game with their iPads lying flat on a table or on their lap (as opposed to held at an angle with one hand like an iPhone). Because gamers will have both hands free, Radiation’s gameplay is more involved, prompting gamers to rhythmically tap these glowing blobs as they dance across the iPad’s entire screen. Multiple people will also be able to play simultaneously on the same device.”

Price: Free (iTunes link)

Netflix

From our post: “Assuming you’re a Netflix member, the new iPad app lets you watch as many movies as you want (assuming they’re available on Netflix’s Watch Instantly service) streaming to the device. Yes, this gives you access to some 20,000+ movies and television shows. You can also browse movies and manage your queue from the app. And you can even pick up watching them from where you left off on your TV or computer.”

Price: Free (iTunes link)

Loopt Pulse

From our post: “The iPad may be better suited for planning events around location, rather than actively participating in location. With Loopt Pulse, you load up the main screen to see where you are and everything that’s going on around you. On the left side of the screen you get a list of places, and on the right, you can see each of those places on a map and more details about them.

“These featured places appear because a lot of Loopt users liked the place, or are currently there. Or maybe the place has positive reviews in the local paper. You can also sort by events and friends. On the friends tab, you only see places that your Facebook friends like (you connect via Facebook Connect). But Loopt also wanted to take advantage of the iPad’s big, beautiful screen, so they also built a new feature that allows you to browse local places by pictures.”

Price: Free (iTunes link)

TweetDeck for iPad

TweetDeck’s iPad offering is very similar to its popular desktop stream reader. You can split up your Twitter and Facebook streams into different columns, and swipe across to see more or up and down to read through them. You can compose Tweets using the iPad’s touchscreen keyboard. One new feature is a map showing all the geo-tagged Tweets from the people you follow. It looks gorgeous. Watch the demo video.

Price: Free (iTunes link)

Captain’s Log

This may just be the best app in the iTunes store. It turns your iPad into a Captain’s Log from Star Trek. You can add your own notes, or use it to post updates to both Twitter and Facebook. This app may not have all the bells and whistles you’ll find in TweetDeck, but it will make you feel like a Starship captain. It’s so retro, yet so futuristic.

Price: $0.99 (iTunes link)

SGN’s EXO-Planet

From our post: “While some game developers are merely converting the iPhone apps to the iPad format, the multi-player EXO-Planet is trying to elevate the shooter game experience by giving the player access to eight camera angles with a single spin of the finger. The first phase of the game takes place in a futuristic training ground for elite forces. Players leap and zoom across the zero-gravity futuristic space, outfitted in “Juggernaut EXO-suits”— hefty metal space suits. In the training phase the objective is to capture the other player’s (or team’s) flag. The eight-camera-perspective creates a very seamless viewing experience. In addition, if you are trying to look past your fighter, the character will briefly appear transparent to maximize your line of vision.”

PriceL $6.99 (iTunes link)

Pandora Radio

From our post: “Version 3.0 of Pandora is a Universal app, meaning it includes builds for the iPhone and iPad. The iPad version takes advantage of the large 9.7 inch screen of the device. Rather than having to switch views to see things such as your stations, they can reside on the left hand side of the screen as your album artwork and artist information is on the right hand side. Artist information is a particular area of emphasis with this new app. The top player looks similar to iTunes now, with play and pause buttons, as well as thumbs up and thumbs down buttons. There is also an easy-to-access search box along the top.”

Price: Free (iTunes link)

Epicurious Recipes And Shopping Lists

From our post: “The app, which is similar in features to its sister iPhone app, is essentially a tabbed digital cookbook which allows you to access 27,000 recipes from both Gourmet and Bon Appetit. You can browse recipe collections, search via keyword, and filter your searches by what’s in your fridge, seasonal foods, holidays and more. You can add any recipe to your favorites box to save it as well as email recipes to yourself and others.

“You can also add ingredients from your saved recipes to shopping lists and check off items as you buy them. . . . The nature of the iPad may breathe new life into cooking and recipe apps. While reading recipes on the iPhone and other mobile devices while cooking can be tough; the iPad’s large screen simulates a digital cookbook.”

Price: Free (iTunes link)

NYT’s Editor’s Choice

From our post: “The iPad application offers a selection of news, opinion and feature articles chosen by Times editors that can be downloaded automatically to the tablet device. It delivers two pages of content with the top eight to ten articles in latest news, business, technology, opinion and feature sections with accompanying videos and photo slideshows.”

Price: Free for now, but a paid app is coming (iTunes link)

The Wall Street Journal

A limited version of the paper with all of its free articles. Subscribers get the full paper. The iPad app mimics the look of the paper edition, and also includes market data, videos, and photo slideshows. Subscribers get to download a week’s worth of articles for later reading.

Price: Free, with paid upgrade (iTunes link)

eBay for the iPad

From our post: “eBay is launching an iPad app that aims to engage the user by putting the image at the center of the design, using oversized thumbnails and bleeding image close-ups to the edges of the device. The iPad’s touch screen functionality augments the traditional eBay search by letting users dash through several search pages with a few swipes of the finger. There’s also a price histogram at the bottom of the page that will let you narrow your search to a certain price range— the histogram also includes a volume chart so you can see how the goods are concentrated along the price scale. It seems to be a vast improvement from the website and the iPhone app, in terms of feel and design.”

Price: Free (iTunes link)

Gilt for iPad

From our post: Gilt Groupe’s sales on luxury goods on its properties, including Gilt, Gilt Fuse, and Gilt Man, can all be accessed directly from the app. The app allows you to receive real-time sale alerts, check upcoming sales and receive an instant Gilt membership when you download the app. The app’s shopping cart, that is always visible, allows members to quickly touch and drag desired items into their cart.

Price: Free (iTunes link)

Aurora Feint 3

From our post: “Aurora Feint is getting into the iPad game today with the launch of release of Aurora Feint 3, a free-to-play massively multi-player social gaming app based around virtual goods. Unsurprisingly, the game leverages OpenFeint X, which allows game developers to create Zynga-like free-to-play games including microtransactions and virtual goods. While the game is free to play, its main revenue source will be from microtransactions within its app. With the success of Zynga and PlayFish on Facebook, Aurora Feint wants to help grab a piece of the gaming pie, and wants to help create Farmville -like games on mobile devices.”

Price: Free, with microtransactions (iTunes link)

Red Fish

From our post: “Red Fish is based on a popular French kid’s learning Website called Poisson Rouge. FreshPlanet licensed the game and developed a version specifically for the iPad to start. There is no iPhone version. Red Fish teaches kids between 3 and 7 to count, read, spell, and even compose music all using the iPad’s engaging touchscreen. The app is free and comes with 12 different activities, but to unlock the rest (there are 50 total) will cost $9.99.”

Price: Free, with $9.99 upgrade (iTunes link)

ABC Player

ABC’s free episode player for the iPad streams ad-supported videos from the network’s roster of shows. You can watch full length episodes of select shows from the network including Lost, Grey’s Anatomy, and Modern Family. You can also browse through shows and episodes, pause an episode, watch it later and see your viewing history. The videos stream into a player that takes up the top half of the screen, while letting you browse other episodes along the bottom. (Presumably, there is a full-screen option as well).

Price: Free (iTunes link)

Kayak Flights

Kayak is one of the more useful travel search engines on the web, and its iPad app brings the same functionality to the tablet device. The app lets you compare prices for flights from Priceline, Expedia, Travelocity, Hotwire and airline sites. Plus the app will save your search history, map your searches, and allows you to book directly from the app.

Price: Free (iTunes link)

NPR

NPR’s iPad app is similar to its iPhone app, in that it features links to NPR programs and over 1,000 member-station streams, allowing you to browse news stories and listen to programs at the same time. The NPR website has been modified for the iPad to support HTML5 and includes an audio player at the bottom of the screen so you can listen to media easily.

Price: Free (iTunes link)

Scrabble

Scrabble’s iPad app features a more animated and entertaining vesion of its iPhone app, letting you connect with friends on Facebook and play up to 25 Scrabble games at once. And as you are playing, the app’s Teacher Feature will let you see what the best word choice was from your previous turn.

Price: $9.99 (iTunes link)

Yahoo Entertainment

Yahoo Entertainment is an interactive TV guide that streams in video from different Yahoo properties and partners (News, Sports, etc.)

Price: Free (iTunes link)

Square

From our post: Square comes with a peripheral credit card swiper that lets any store or business person take credit card (or cash) payments on iPhones, and now, iPads. It takes finger signatures on the touchscreen, generates email or SMS receipts, calculates sales tax, and comes with an online accounting dashboard to keep track of sales.

Price: Free (iTunes link)

Gmail For iPad

From our post: This isn’t an app you get from the App Store — it’s a web app. Just head to Gmail.com from your iPad and you’ll automatically be directed to this optimized version of Gmail. The HTML5-based site, which is automatically activated when you visit Gmail.com from device, features a slick looking two-column view, with a list of messages in the left column and message content on the right.

IMDb (Amazon.com)

From our post: Amazon’s second iPad app for the Kindle is an optimized version of its IMDb (Internet Movie Database) iPhone app. According to the company, the IMDb Movies & TV App for iPad lets customers access more than 1.5 million movie and TV titles with information on 3.2 million celebrities, actors, actresses, directors and crew members.

Users can also use the app to watch movie trailers in HD, find localized movie showtimes in the United States, browse photo galleries and shop for DVD and Blu-ray releases. The app is free of charge – it hasn’t garnered any reviews on iTunes so far.

Price: Free (iTunes link)

Fwix

From our post: The app aims to simulate reading your local newspaper. Fwix’s app allows you to view news stories in a map format, showing you the exact geographic location of news. You can access news by your location and then filter stories by subject (i.e. sports, arts, politics, crime). And you can share all content on Facebook, Twitter or via email.

Price: Free (iTunes link)

Testers were challenged to search the sites for bugs – performing a combination of exploratory, functional and usability testing. At its conclusion, participants filled out a detailed survey in which they ranked each site based on video quality, ease of use, community features and actual TV content/shows. After carefully reviewing each bug and survey response, uTest awarded roughly $4,000 in prize money based on the quality of bugs and feedback.

Top findings:

- Nearly 50% of survey respondents chose video quality as the attribute most important to them when evaluating an online TV network. NBC.com scored highest in video quality.
- Ease of use was deemed most important by 33% of the participants, followed by TV content & shows (12%) and community features (5%). CBS.com scored highest in ease of use.
- 70% of respondents watch at least one show online each week, with more than one quarter watching four or more. 7% watch seven or more programs.
- More than 10% of the total reported bugs were found on mobile devices.
- None of the TV network support mobile video watching as they rely on Flash (tested on Blackberry, iPhone, Android and other mobile platforms).
- Cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities of varying degrees of severity were reported on three out of the four sites.

TV Network comparison (top-two box score of testers who rated each site as “excellent” or “good”):

Here’s the full report:

To paraphrase the great Joe Rogan, from last Saturday’s UFC 104, I don’t watch much TV, maybe the Discovery Channel here and there to see a documentary or two. I bring this up because I’ve been told to write about some TV show called “V,” and the beauty is that I have no idea what it’s about! My first thought was, “V For Vendetta? Oh, no? Oh, well, then yeah, not a clue.” Apparently it’s a re-make of an old sci-fi show. Thankfully, though, ABC, the network where this show will air here in the U.S., has just posted the first seven minutes online. Let’s watch it, together!

Note: I’m not sure if this video works outside of the U.S. Sorry if it doesn’t, but there’s no other source right now. So if you’re an international reader, feel free to skip all of this.

Opening scene, it’s the blonde woman, the former “Other,” from Lost, who, to be totally honest, was the only reason I watched Lost as long as I did, and I’m not keen on blondes at all.

Moving on, a priest looks ominously at a street lamp. He talks to a man in a wheelchair, saying nothing of any importance.

A man is trying to buy an engagement ring. “Can’t go wrong with a knee,” says the shopkeep, in response to a question if going down on one knee is corny or not when asking a woman to marry you.

We’re about a third of the way through, and the one thing that’s painfully obvious, given the spooky music and quick camera cuts, is that something bad is going to happen. Plus, everything is shaking for some reason. Shaking = bad.

The Lost woman is back. Her no-good son in at a doctor’s office in SoHo (following a party he wasn’t supposed to attend), which either means this is taking place in New York City, and thus totally unreliable to Middle America, or in London, which would be reasonably exotic and interesting. Fingers crossed!

The shaking has returned! Books fall off the shelf (to illustrate how severe the shaking is), and the priest saves that same man in a wheelchair from a giant, falling crucifix inside the church.

… and then a fighter jet crashes into the streets of, sigh, New York. The CGI here is abysmal. Goldeneye for the N64 had better fire effects. Oh, and Goldeneye was also fun. This? So far…

The pilot of the fighter jet, who’s presumably dead, floats down to the street via his parachute. Then the guy who was buying an engagement ring looks up and sees… something! They’re building suspense, that’s what they’re doing!

And we’re back to the kid who’s talking to his Lost mother. She tells him to stay where he is, but then his phone, an iPhone, cuts out. It needs to be said that the kid’s iPhone cutting out may be totally unrelated to the oncoming commotion because, as we all know, AT&T is a hunk of junk in New York City. So far, this is the most realistic scene in the show.

Now we get scenes of people looking up into the sky. Clearly something is up there, but what?

We get a better glimpse of what’s going on: a vessel of some sort is floating in the sky.

There it is! It’s a vessel of some sort, all right, and it’s shaped like a sting ray.

The cops are telling everyone to remain calm while the Lost woman’s no-good son arrives on a motorcycle, presumably to reinforce his tough guy image. He can’t be seen driving a Ford Fiesta, now can he? He tries to go against the flow of people to go home, but a soldier tells him to keep walking with the crowd, away from home. Oh, my.

Then we see some news footage of people talking nonsense, including some nerd kid who corrects his friend’s reference to the movie Independence Day. The one kid says, “Dude, this is Independence Day,” but then the other kid says something like, “Well, that movie was a ripoff of any number of other alien invasion movies.” I get it.

The engagement guy meets up with his girl, and they embrace. Guess they won’t be getting engaged today. Now that guy has to psyche himself up all over again, presumably after all of this craziness ends. That’s if they both survive, of course.

The Lost woman is looking for her son on the streets, but a solider tells her to hit the bricks. She crosses the police line anyway. If this were real life she would have been detained right then and there—you mean to tell me that no officer saw her cross the police line?—but not in the clever world of TV, where anything is possible.

Of course Lost woman finds her son. Why challenge the audience? What could be more terrifying than losing your child? Bring some emotion into this dreck.

The vessel is opening! We see lights, and people are looking up!

And there’s a woman looking down from the vessel. She looks like Alyx Vance from Half-Life 2.

End of video.

Boring. I’m sorry, but you see one invasion angle and you’ve seen ‘em all. Granted, Alyx Vance may portend something not quite usual, but I can’t get behind another invasion angle. It’s played out. Not even the Lost woman will get me to watch it.

Feel free to disagree, but I shan’t be watching this show (outside of this here preview).

CBSNews.com is undergoing a major overhaul and redesign of its sites to make them easier to navigate, more visually compelling, faster and more focused on driving users to content.

The new home page features a rotating list of top stories on the left, next to the list of the latest and most important headlines. CBS News programs, as well as the latest videos, photo galleries and blogs, are all highlighted on the page. CBS News also plugs its program sites, including Evening News, Face the Nation, 60 Minutes, 48 Hours, and Sunday Morning, on its homepage. CBS says that the company applied technology from its sister site, CNET.com, to deliver pages from its servers to users’ screens more rapidly. Dan Farber, CNET’s editor-in-chief, oversaw the redesign.

Here’s what CBSNews.com used to look circa 2000 (left) and currently (right):

As you can see from the screenshot of the new design at the top of the post, this is a big improvement. The additional of images definitely make the site more aesthetically pleasing and easier to scroll through. But it seems that the new site is now a little too cluttered with pictures. Farber says the news site has undergone two major redesigns over the past ten years. A small percentage of random visitors to CBSNews.com will see the new look for pages on the site. CBS Says the site is still a work in progress and is undergoing changes and upgrades frequently.

This new redesign may be part of an effort to catch up to ABCnews.com and MSNBC.com (NBC’s news site). CBSNews.com only drew 3.2 million unique visitors in U.S. in April compared to 4.4 million for ABCnews.com and 30.7 million for MSNBC.com, according to ComScore.

According to a Reuters report however, the top four TV networks (ABC, NBC, CBS, & FOX) have all stated that they will continue broadcasting until the new shutoff date. This is sure to confuse many Americans as DTV educational PSAs have been a staple during primetime for months all preaching the February date. Those not ready are sure to breath a bit easier when February 17 expires though. Plus, it seems more cash might fund the DTV coupon program again.

Part of the gigantic economic stimulus program Obama and Co. are trying to railroad through Congress includes $650,000 to subsidize DTV converter boxes for more $40 vouchers. The original $1.5 billion ran out of money a few months ago and we hear that millions of people are on a waiting list. But apparently these DTV boxes stimulate the economy and procrastinators need to be bailed out. (Too much?)

Bad news, “Lost” fans. Well, those of you who download 720p caps of the show. It looks like ABC, per juicy message board rumors, is doing something screwy with the video as it airs in order to fit in more commercials—removing frames after the 2:3 pulldown, that is. So, when cappers convert the video into bite-sized x264 chunks for us, it results in jerky playback. (Dupe frames that are present in the original broadcast are removed from the cap.) You’re not going to notice the dropped frames when watching the show on TV (due to the nature of broadcast television), but it makes capping the show a pain in the neck. The resulting cap, less the dupe frames, plays back like garbage.

This dropped frames issue only seems to have affected S05E01—episode two doesn’t exhibit the same problem.

The moral of the story is, as “scene” cappers grapple with this dropped frames issue, we’ll have to wait longer than usual for “proper” caps, perhaps after the shows airs in the UK, where, presumably, Sky won’t drop frames left an right to fit in more adverts. Clever way for ABC to combat piracy, though.

Fans of ABC’s American Inventor should remember The Claw from last season. It’s a neat bike-hanging device that grabs and releases the bike, or other items, at a touch of the large button. The thought is all you need to do is lift your bike high enough to engage the button that releases the spring-equipped claws, therefore holding the bike in place. To release, you simple lift the bike into the button, which disengages the claws. Simple and clever.

However, what the judges of the show kept stating still holds true today that the main competitor of this $59 gadget is the $2 hook. Amazon has the now-called Gladiator GarageWorks Claw Advanced Bike Storage v1.0 up for pre-order if you’re too good for the simple hook and need a more upscale solution to hold your Kona Bike.

Fire up iTunes and you’ll find, for the first time, TV shows from the four major networks (ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox) in HD. It’s still $2.99 per HD episode, and that includes a standard-def version of the TV show for your iPhone or iPod.

HD shows now include hits like Lost, CSI, 30 Rock and The Office.

But we all know The Shield is the best show on TV now, so whatever.

About damn time. ABC is the last major network to make the HD jump but the network is using the Democratic National Convention to premier their nightly news in high definition. Both ABC World News, as well as Nightline, premiers tonight in 720p high definition. Following the DNC, and the Republican Convention after that, World News is going to return to the NY studio which they will, of course, continue the HD tradition. That date, September 8th, also marks the date that 20/20 and Primetime debuts in high definition. Enjoy!

via B&C

Sometimes you’ve got to wonder what goes through the minds of TV executives. Today, the Disney-ABC Television Group decided to launch its Web video studio, Stage 9 Digital Media, with the debut of “Squeegees” on both YouTube and ABC.com.

Lame doesn’t begin to describe this three-and-half-minute comedy about the hijinks of a window-washing crew. The acting is horrible and the jokes fall flat—drunk, naked window washer (don’t ask) scares kids in a day care class as he dangles outside their window. It is something that ABC, one hopes, would never put on television. So why subject Web audiences to something like this? In another clueless move, ABC has turned off the embedding feature in the YouTube player. I guess it doesn’t want people spreading the show around.

I wouldn’t be so harsh on ABC, except that in the press release announcing the launch of Stage 9 and “Squeegees” there is this quote from Barry Jossen, the “Acadamy Award-winning short-form producer” who is now the general manager of Stage 9:

While the new media space is loaded with UGC, we feel the audience is missing the quality experience found in other forms of exhibition, and we are answering their need. This creative frontier gives us the opportunity to develop new franchises, discover and develop talent and, most importantly, expand the standard of excellence set by our parent company in creating superior episodic programming with great stories and production values.

Superior episodic programming? Please. ABC/Stage 9 has 20 more Web shows in the works, and maybe it will get it right with one of them. But with “Squeegees” it is not putting its best foot forward, and it is certainly not expanding the “standard of excellence.” I’ll take original Web shows like Rocketboom, WallStrip, or Pop17 any day over something half-produced. What ABC fails to understand is that when it comes to Web video, authenticity trumps production values.

There is nothing wrong with going the “quality experience” route, but you can’t go half way. Because it is ABC, people will expect more from any show associated with Stage 9 than from someone filming in their house. If it is going to try to teach the Web how video is really made, then it should have picked a different opening act.

Move Networks—which powers the media players and back-end streaming infrastructure for ABC, ESPN360, Fox On-Demand, and the Discovery Channel—released the following data today for videos streamed from all its customers’ Websites collectively:

· So far in November, more than 100,000 new individuals are watching long-form video (anything 20 minutes or over) online each day, twice as many as in August.

· In November, the average session length is more than 50 minutes.

· In October 2007, more than 6 million people watched long form streaming video online.

· Since March 2007, Move has streamed almost 50 million hours of television.

These numbers still pale compared to actual TV, but as the growth continues they will start to attract even more advertising dollars than they do already.

1: It’s all about choice

NBC and Fox, Hulu may have opened with reasonable reviews but it’s still a train wreck when it comes to combating piracy. Where do we start? No downloads for one. People want to take their media with them, and be able to play it on devices such as the iPod. Apple may not have been paying you what you wanted NBC, but its a lot more than the hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions of folks downloading your shows off BitTorrent are paying you, some of who were previously paying iTunes customers. Big TV needs to provide their shows in a variety of formats to suit as many people as possible..which really isn’t that hard.

2. Imposed geographic restrictions no longer work

If Hulu is in part about combating privacy by providing a legal, ad supported alternative, why does it block anyone from outside of the United States (and possibly Canada) from playing the content? It’s all about international distribution deals, the crappy deals that mean that viewers in Europe and Australasia can sometimes wait 2-3 years to view content broadcast in the United States. This delay is the reason 59% of the French watch television on their computers. You want to dramatically reduce piracy? Then open up your content to the world. The international content partners will not be happy with this, but pay them a cut of the advertising, in the same way Fox is already doing with affiliate stations within the United States. Like NBC and iTunes, the opportunity cost of not providing this service is zero revenue in an international context with direct views, and declining revenue over the longer term as non-American audiences watch less and less American television via FTA or cable. Take what you can and provide a legal alternative to your international viewers. People are willing to deal with advertising for a legal alternative when the legal alternative is available and it is easy to access..particularly when it’s easier than illegal alternatives.

3. Always On, Always Available

New episodes on Hulu will be available to view for 5 weeks, and not a day more. WTF? What if a consumer hears positive word of mouth 6 weeks after a series has started and wants to watch from the beginning. In NBC’s case no iTunes, no Hulu but yes, it will be on BitTorrent. Memo to big TV: let your consumers decide how long TV shows should be available as opposed to imposing arbitrary restrictions. You’re selling advertising based on views, what difference does it make if the show is available for 6 months instead of 6 weeks, aside from your DVD DRM infested show season sales…which is really what this is about.

4. Stop treating your audience as if it were stupid

Your audience is increasingly turning to alternatives because of your restrictive practices, and because of the quality of what you are producing. What’s the latest shows in development: Law & Order Special Parking Infringement Unit and CSI: Timbuktu? People are downloading more and more international content because of the complete garbage you now make. If you seriously want to win the hearts and minds of the switched on generation, you need to follow the first three points above, then start producing some decent content as well.

The move is said to be part of a push by Fox to expose iPod users to the new season of shows appearing as part of the new US television ratings season.

According to the LA Times, shows to be offered for free on iTunes include Prison Break, Bones, American Dad and “K-Ville; the idea being that by offering the earlier episodes for free now, viewers will return and watch the shows on TV as they are broadcast, or pay for downloads of these show later from iTunes.

The move follows a recent announcement that ABC will begin offering ad-supported free viewing of their shows on AOL.

Those of you who are keen to watch Lost or Grey’s Anatomy know ABC has been kind. For over a year now, ABC has let users stream episodes of all the hit primetime shows for free via a flash-based video player. Though it’s fantastic, a lot of users probably wanted to start jumping on the HD-bandwagon. ABC listened and is now offering users a beta of its video service in HD.

Got a 1024×768 resolution or higher? Broadband? OK then. Normally you’d just fire up a web player and sink into your chair, but ABC requires you to install a player from Move Networks. Sorry ABC, but myself and pretty much every Mac user just isn’t down with the third-party software. Call us when you figure out how to do it over a web browser. In the meantime, those of you who are qualified can check the beta out here.

ABC.com Launches HD Streaming (in Beta) [Business 2.0]

Sprint, ABC dial in to television on the go [USA Today]