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Yahoo Debuts Axis, Their New (And Impressive) Desktop And Mobile Search Experience

A D M I N — Thu, 24 May 2012 06:38:11 +0000

Late last year, Yahoo filed for a trademark on the phrase “Yahoo Axis.” The filing raised more questions than answers at the time, but after six months Yahoo has finally spilled the proverbial beans — Axis is both a new search-oriented add-on for your web browser, and a new browser app for iOS. Before I talk about what it’s like to actually use Axis, let’s first discuss why the hell they’re doing this in the first place. TechCrunch spoke to Yahoo’s Director of Product Management Ethan Batraski, and he told us his his job has been to figure out what search looks like over the next few years. Yahoo Axis was one of his answers. “No one’s innovated on ‘How do I get rid of the search results page altogether’”, Batraski said. “That is what we want to do.” That’s exactly what they did. Once you download, install, and log into Axis with your Yahoo credentials (you do have Yahoo credentials, don’t you?), a small back bar will begin to live in the bottom left corner of your preferred web browser. Right now Axis plugs into Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Internet Explorer, though Batraski didn’t completely rule out the possibility of Yahoo eventually releasing their own browser should there be enough interest. That little black pill has a search bar nestled in it, and mousing over it causes it stretch across the bottom of your browser window. Actually clicking in the search box and plugging in a search query makes the bar expand to fill roughly the bottom third of your browser window, displaying easily-scannable thumbnails of Yahoo’s search results. Yahoo’s idea here is to give their (or perhaps more accurately, Microsoft’s) search engine its own flexible space to live in outside of the traditional browser paradigm. With Axis installed, users who need to find things online don’t need to tear themselves away from the page they’re currently looking at by navigating to a different page or opening a new tab. There’s no question that it takes a little getting used to — as a longtime Chrome user, it’s become second nature to open a new tab a bang a search query into the address bar — but it’s been very thoughtfully executed. When Axis works (which is most of the time) it works very well. Occasionally, the black search box will fail to close properly, leaving behind a partial remnant of the last search result thumbnail in its place. Perhaps one of the most annoying things about Axis (at least on a Mac) is scrolling horizontally through the thumbnails of search results. Users can click and drag through them with a mouse or hit buttons mounted to the left or right of the results panel, but scrolling side to side with a trackpad can be tricky. It causes the results to move over three results at a time, which sometimes means you miss seeing some results.It’s a relatively minor point of contention (and one that’s probably easy to fix), but still, there you have it. But Axis on the desktop is only one part of the equation — its other half lives on your iPhone (or your iPad). Yahoo has also whipped together a standalone browser app for iOS that seeks to bring that same revamped search experience to the mobile space. This is where Yahoo actually manages to make me swoon a little bit. The iOS app is surprisingly good — it’s more than handsome enough, it runs very smoothly (thanks mostly to its WebKit underpinnings), and your bookmarks sync between devices quickly once you make sure you’re logged in. I’ll also admit right here that I’m a bit of a sucker for their font choices, but let’s not dwell on that. If anything, the big thumbnails for search results play out even better on a small screen. There’s no angling to make sure your finger touches the link just right. That said, I’m not sure it’ll be replacing the stock Browser app for me — what’s great about Axis for the desktop is that it fits into whatever browser you’ve decided you like enough to use. On iOS though, there’s no way to set a default browser so it takes a conscientious effort to use Axis there. For now, the Axis browser app remains an iOS exclusive. It’s not entirely impossible that we’ll see a version make its way onto Android someday, though I imagine Google may not take too kindly to a another search company trying to set foot in their territory. Batraski referred to Axis as an “experiment,” but to my utter pleasure, it’s a pretty damned good one. Is it enough to make a dyed-in-the-wool Googler convert? Probably not, but with nearly 700 million users still using Yahoo, I reckon a solid chunk will find something to enjoy here.

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Yahoo Debuts Axis, Their New (And Impressive) Desktop And Mobile Search Experience

Google Redesigns Its iPhone Search App To Be Faster And Prettier

admin — Wed, 23 May 2012 21:25:10 +0000

Google today launched version 2.0 of its search app for iPhone . Google completely overhauled the design of the app , which now looks and feels more like the app’s iPad version the company launched last November. The new version feels significantly faster than the last one and the new design works especially well for image searches. In line with last year’s iPad update, the new app now features the ability to easily swipe back and forth between your search results and the pages you clicked on. It’s also become significantly easier to switch between Google’s various search features like images, places, shopping and videos. Whenever you swipe up to the top of the search results page now, a new menu opens up at the bottom of the screen that lets you switch between the different search features. The app, of course, also still support voice search and gives users access to all of Google’s other services like Google Goggles, Gmail and Google+. One interesting feature is its ability to detect which other Google apps you have installed on your phone and then allows you to switch to them instead of using the company’s HTML5 apps. Overall, the app is a nice improvement over the previous version. It builds upon a trend we’ve seen lately from Google toward better mobile apps, including the recent Google+ for iPhone redesign. For the most part, though, most users will likely continue to do most of their searches from their favorite mobile browser.

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Google Redesigns Its iPhone Search App To Be Faster And Prettier

YuMe Adds Another $10 Million From WestSummit Capital

A D M I N — Wed, 23 May 2012 21:12:07 +0000

Online video advertising startup YuMe has picked up another $10 million in financing from China-based investment firm WestSummit Capital , closing out a $22 million strategic round that was first announced last November. The round was led by Samsung Ventures and also included Translink Capital. YuMe founder Jayant Kadambi confirmed the raise, and told me by email that the funding will be used primarily to expand into more connected devices. YuMe provides a platform for delivering ads against online videos, but has recently been adding support for connected TVs. “[W]e are using to expand our Connected TV business across OEMs and publishers globally. We are continuing to expand our business out of our Chennai development labs, as we see tremendous media business growth opportunities across all of Asia,” Kadambi wrote. That’s the primary reason for Samsung’s interest in YuMe, as well as a previous strategic investment from Intel . Other YuMe investors include Menlo Ventures, Accel Partners, Khosla Ventures, BV Capital, and DAG Ventures. Altogether, YuMe has raised nearly $75 million since being founded in 2007.

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YuMe Adds Another $10 Million From WestSummit Capital

Forget Those Scraps Of Paper, SnipSnap Lets You Save And Share Coupons From Your iPhone

blogger — Wed, 23 May 2012 00:03:56 +0000

There was a time when I would watch shows like Extreme Couponing with a sense of morbid amusement — there was clearly plenty of money to be saved by clipping bits of dead plant matter out of a newspaper, but the process of keeping track of or remembering them when I go to the store has always stymied me. That may no longer be the case, if Ted Mann and his Philadelphia-based team have anything to say about it. They’ve just released a new iOS app called SnipSnap that’s meant to simplify the process of snipping, saving, and even sharing those money-saving scraps of paper. Click to view slideshow. In a nutshell, SnipSnap lets you snap pictures of all your coupons and save them on your iPhone so they’re handy when you’re put in the field. Taking the picture is just the beginning though — from there, the images are uploaded to SnipSnap servers where all the pertinent information (barcode, expiration date, cashier code) are pulled from the image and and saved alongside it so your cashier won’t have to try and scan or read something off a photograph. The idea for SnipSnap came to be after co-founder (and father of two) Ted Mann found himself at the store buying diapers at full price after realizing he left his much-needed coupons at home. After chewing on the idea for a while he rallied local techies Kostas Nasis and Kyle Martin to become the company’s CTO and VP of Product respectively, and got to work building the app towards the end of last year. There’s a strong social aspect at play here too. Unlike some other competitors in the mobile coupon space, SnipSnap relies mostly on users to clip the coupons they find interesting and share them with others. Though that means there may be fewer coupons to discover during the early days, they’re coupons that other people have found worthy of saving. Oh, and my favorite bit — if you have, say, a Target coupon saved in SnipSnap, the app will issue a push notification whenever you’re near a Target store. On top of that SnipSnap also lets you know when individual coupons are close to expiring, so you can plan your next shopping trip(s) accordingly. I’m not the sort of person who normally even pays attention to coupons because of the hassle they usually entail, the app managed to make a convert out of me. The moment I managed to get 10% lopped off of a bill at an Indian restaurant thanks to a coupon someone else shared sealed the deal — I’m a couponer now (my girlfriend will be thrilled). As useful as SnipSnap sounds in theory, it isn’t without its potential headaches. While the service was still in its beta testing phase, some users found that certain stores just wouldn’t accept coupons that weren’t physically in customers’ hands. There’s not much the SnipSnap team could do to change store policy, so they added the ability to report on whether or not the coupon worked a la RetailMeNot . SnipSnap also doesn’t play well with manufacturer coupons (like the kind you get at the grocery store), though Mann assures me that the team is working on getting that functionality live as soon as they can. While they’ve been slaving away on the app, they’ve been honing their monetization plans too — SnipSnap aims to generate revenue by offering coupons and affiliate offers to users based on the coupons they’ve already scanned and redeemed in stores. If you’re a big pet lover and have scanned handsful of pet store coupons for instance, don’t be surprised if you get pushed a full-screen offer for PetSmart (just an example). The company is also looking at partnerships with major retailers, and Mann noted onstage that they just recently linked up with Aeropostale. Disrupt Q&A Q. What’s stopping retailers from not taking these coupons? A. We leave that up to the retails, but our coupon success ratings are a good indicator of which coupons to use. Q. What demographic is most likely to clip coupons? A. Usually females from between 30 to 50 years old. Q. What’s the barrier to entry here? It seems straightforward enough to copy this. A. Pulling in data and interpreting coupons isn’t a simple thing to do, and we’re going to move as fast as we can to stay ahead of the competition. Q. Is a focus on analog coupons the right move right now, with digital deals becoming more popular? A. We’re building our user base by taking printed coupons and turning them digital, but we’ll be offering more digital deals over time.

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Forget Those Scraps Of Paper, SnipSnap Lets You Save And Share Coupons From Your iPhone

Tagbrand Gives Fashionistas An App To Check-In Their Brands

vertical8 — Tue, 22 May 2012 03:00:42 +0000

“All people wear clothes!” declared one of Tagbrand’s founders on stage at Disrupt today. That’s true, but let’s review. DailyBooth was (is still perhaps?) a phenomenon for a time as people became accustomed to sharing their daily lives in a more quirky manner than mere video can afford. (Ok, OK, it’s a bunch of teenagers sharing their zits, but work with me here, people). Now Tagbrand wants to apply that model to fashion, but with a tagging twist. The model is simple enough. Take and upload photos of what branded clothes you are wearing and tag them. Effectively, it’s a photo check-in for brands, or ‘Foursquare for fashion’, if you will. The twist is that users are encouraged to tag up pictures with a visual tag of what brand each item of clothing is. Alas, the site does not yet do visual recognition of the clothes. Maybe one day… TagBrand doesn’t call this check-ins, but – wait for it – “brand-ins”. People can then comment or vote on the brands their friends are wearing. Clearly the opportunity here is to capture a fashion-obsessed audience and provide a platform for advertisers. Thus, although Tagbrand is like DailyBooth if everyone on DailyBooth was obsessed with fashion, it’s this tagging element which looks pretty viral. The product combines contains brands, polls and e-commerce. There’s a lot of virality built into the service – every tags has a Twitter or Facebook button on it. But clearly the people who do this are obsessed with fashion. TagBrand gives them the tools to be obsessive. The polls certainly feature makes the experience more entertaining when you’re trying clothes out. Now, clothing brands and retail stores are constantly chasing these people. This is one way of delivering them a highly targeted audience. Tagbrand’s business model is based on creating a special marketplace for them which is visible while browsing the brand’s tag on a photo. The stores provide Tagbrand with a price-list and its system attaches them to a “Recommended” block. So while browsing their friends’ clothes, users see the real-world item beside the image and can purchase from there (click are on a CPC basis). Users also get delivered latest news on brands they such as new collections. Admittedly they have older competition in the UK operation, WIWT.com , but Tagbrand’s visual tags are a slightly cuter way of doing it. TagBrand has secured a $100,000 seed investment from Russian investor Glavstart, while founders Ivan Olenchenko and Alexandr Kobozev have been working on startup projects in Russia for a while now. (And we should add they did a pretty good pitch at a TechCrunch meetup in Moscow last year). Q&A Judges asked about extending the app into giving users the ability to upload their own home made brands, and that seemed to be on the cards according to the founders. Currently in Russian and English, the app launches today in the US. The Judges also had an issue about copyright and the images uploaded, which seems a fair point. Right now 80% of usage of the product is on the iPhone app versus 20% on the web. So far they’ve had 15,000 registered users in 2 months with no promotion/marketing just in the Russian market. With about $4.5 billion spent annually on advertising clothes, they reckon there’s plenty of money to be made out there. Da!

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Tagbrand Gives Fashionistas An App To Check-In Their Brands

Stevie Turns Your Social Feeds Into TV Shows

vertical8 — Tue, 22 May 2012 02:47:36 +0000

We spend more and more time on social networks, but sometimes it can feel like work. I mean, scrolling through your news feed isn’t work work, but it’s not quite as easy as vegging out on your couch and watching TV. That’s where a new startup called Stevie comes in, with a website launching today at Disrupt, along with mobile apps that function as remote controls. Stevie looks at content shared in your social network feeds and elsewhere on the Web, and it assembles that content into TV shows that you can watch, shows with names like The Comedy Strip, Music Non-Stop, and Celeb TV. Naturally, the shows incorporate video content that your friends have shared, but they also include things like Facebook status updates, tweets, shared headlines, and birthdays, running mostly as tickers under the video. Essentially, it’s a way to watch Facebook and Twitter on your TV. Co-founder and Chief Creative Technologist Gil Rimon argues that this is the right way to do “social TV.” Apps like GetGlue, which offer check ins and other social interactions around existing TV content, aren’t a good fit for how people watch TV now, because they ignore its essentially passive nature. Stevie takes the opposite tack — instead of trying to encourage new types of behavior, it’s introducing new content into the traditional couch potato experience. Rimon compares the app to Pandora. In the same way that Pandora learns your musical tastes and preferences, automatically delivering music that’s tailored to your tastes, Stevie uses something that the team calls “The Stevie Factor” to look at your social data (such as Facebook Likes) and automatically stitch together the videos and other content that you’ll probably enjoy. When Rimon demonstrated Stevie for me, I was particularly impressed by the look and feel. Granted, I don’t watch much TV aside from Game of Thrones and Doctor Who , but the video content struck me as quite bubbly and polished, especially for something that was being algorithmically assembled on-the-fly. Rimon’s experience in TV writing, editing, and presenting probably helps with that. I expect Stevie will become even more appealing when it’s available on connected TV devices. The company has raised $300,000 in angel funding from investors including Jeff Pulver and Gigi Levy, and it’s participating in the Microsoft Accelerator for Azure program in Tel Aviv. Oh, and if you’re interested in couples who run startups, here’s another one — Rimon is married to his co-founder and CEO Yael Givon. You can visit the Stevie website here , download the iPhone app here , and download the Android app here . (Again, the apps aren’t standalone experiences, but remote controls for watching on the browser.) Disrupt Q&A Q: How do you connect the Internet to the TC? A: We’re not delivering hardware — it’s a web-based experience, with more devices (starting with iPad) coming soon. Q: Who is your competition? A: No direct competition, though of course there are other video discovery companies. But they’re not replicating the TV experience. The real competitor might be old-fashioned TV channels. Q: Why hasn’t connected TV taken off? A: That’s changing — see, for example, the growth of Apple TV.

StyleSaint Wants To Turn Virtual Fashion Tear Sheets Into Custom Apparel

ACMAir — Tue, 22 May 2012 02:35:02 +0000

As we covered earlier today , the fashion vertical in tech has exploded, with myriad unique companies clamoring to take a bite out of Amazon’s lunch, and a chunk out of the trillion dollar apparel industry. One of the most unique premises I’ve seen thus far is StyleSaint , a startup which at first glance seems like a Pinterest for fashion, but with a unique real-life twist. To use StyleSaint in its current form, log in with Facebook or Twitter and create an account, once logged on, you can choose from over 55K “tear sheet” images from which to create your own Stylebook, once you’ve got more than ten tear sheets loaded, you can hit the “Create Stylebooks” link in the top right and StyleSaint will automatically import, then publish, the last ten sheets you’ve torn. Alternatively you can drag-and-drop the tears to create a custom stylebook. Click on “Create” to publish to the site. In addition the resulting books are Facebookable, tweetable and embeddable, the embeddable stylebooks function as an overlay on embedded sites, preventing traffic re-direction. In addition to social sharing layer, users who want to drill deeper into the StyleSaint community can apply to be part of the StyleSaint Creative Collective, the group of passionate editors that scours the web looking for, linking to and tagging stunning, fashion-related images. While the stylebook portion of the site is delightful as a content play, the most compelling thing about StyleSaint is that co-founders Brian Garrett and Allison Beal eventually want to use the collective data from the style booking activity to come up with its own line of clothing. “StyleSaint is the only company editorializing the phenomenon of image discovery and curation and combining it with a manufacturing, vertical eTailer ecommerce model,” Beal writes. “It will definitely be the hardest part of our site.” Hoping to come up with a new, wholesale product (5-10 SKUs) every couple of weeks, Beal tells me that all pre-production on the clothing line will take place in LA, as the company has teamed up with the same manufacturing partner who is responsible for producing the Mary-Kate & Ashley line, The Row, STQ, James Perse and Vince. Beal views the site’s competition as Modcloth, NastyGal & ASOS once the the eCommerce components come into play. The company wants to unveil the offering around fashion week next fall. StyleSaint is currently seed funded by Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst, Crosscut Ventures and LA angel investors. Beal hopes to raise a Series A in the next couple months, to finance its commerce arm. Judges Q&A Q: How exactly do you use the stylebooks to build fashion? A: We use them collaboratively, and build a meta-stylebook. Q: Have you thought about changing the business model? To pre-order or subscription? A: Yes, we’ve thought that pre-order wasn’t for us, and many people do subscription better. Q: You’ve talked a lot about inspiration, but I haven’t heard very much about your business model. A: We’d like to think of ourselves as Net-A-Porter meets Zara. The “Shop” button is going to be right next to “Explore” and “Create” on the site.

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StyleSaint Wants To Turn Virtual Fashion Tear Sheets Into Custom Apparel

Led By Former Microsofties, GitHub Brings The Party To Enterprise With New Windows Client

ACMAir — Tue, 22 May 2012 02:33:55 +0000

GitHub , the source code hosting and collaboration service, has been growing like gangbusters. The site now has over 1.6 million registered developers, hosting over 2.8 million repositories on everything from jQuery and Ruby on Rails to node.js and Redis. At the outset, Github was just a side project, a tool to make developers’ lives easier (its first slogan: “Git hosting: No longer a pain in the ass.”) Github is still a boot-strapped operation, but as both its user base and its own hacker collective (now at 73 strong) have grown, there has been an increasing demand for tools that fall outside Apple’s domain. Today, about 50 percent of GitHub’s traffic comes from Windows users, and, as a result, the startup has finally heeded demand and is now officially bringing the party to Windows, launching a desktop app to address the challenges of developing on Windows and to make it easy for Windows developers to collaborate in open-source and private repositories. GitHub released a similarly-targeted Mac client last year, which has since seen wide adoption. However, as popular as Apple has become, the majority of enterprise development still takes place in a Windows environment. As a result, GitHub has been looking to make its platform more appealing to corporate developers and enterprise, and its new Windows app intends to do just that. Developing in private or open-source for Windows has lagged behind in terms of adoption among developers because they’ve lacked a full toolset for project collaboration, GitHub CTO Tom Preston-Werner says, so, with its new Windows client, the startup just made it easier to get up and running using Git and GitHub on Windows machines. GitHub for Windows is a native app that runs on Windows XP, Vista, 7 and even the pre-release Windows 8, and includes a complete installation of msysGit. The app syncs users’ code to the cloud and allows developers to clone their repositories right from the app or directly from GitHub.com with its new “Clone in Windows” button. Of course, anyone who’s been following GitHub’s progress will notice that it took the team more than a few days to finally release its Windows client. As one might expect, the reason for this was, besides a need to tear down development hurdles for Windows developers, that the team wanted to create an app (and a toolset) they would actually use themselves. In order words, to build a Windows app by Windows developers — for Windows developers. To do that, GitHub has been amassing a pretty serious team of developers who collectively — aside from having cache in the community — own quite a bit of experience developing on and for Windows. For starters, GitHub brought on Phil Haack and Paul Betts, both of whom left Microsoft to join GitHub to help ship the app. Before GitHub, Haack led the development of both ASP.NET MVC and NuGet, among other things, during his four-plus year stint as a senior program manager at Microsoft. Paul Betts joined Github following a four-year run at Microsoft, where he worked on Vista, and created development tools, among other things. GitHub for Windows also relied on help from Tim Clem , Cameron McEfee (the guy behind GitHub’s Octocats ), and Adam Roben to get the startup’s new app ready for shipping. Developing tools that are useful to Windows developers right out of the box is essential to the success of GitHub. Of course, most big companies are still hesitant to put their code in the cloud, and although the startup puts most of its focus on open source project hosting, it’s free. The company makes its money off of its private repositories, and so better tools for companies and corporate developers could mean a significant boost in revenue for GitHub. Of course, it’s also for the love of a challenge. For more, find GitHub’s announcement here .

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Led By Former Microsofties, GitHub Brings The Party To Enterprise With New Windows Client

CallApp Uses Social Data To Build A Smarter Smartphone Contact Book

jos — Tue, 22 May 2012 01:23:35 +0000

One of my least favorite moments of the day comes when my iPhone rings and the number isn’t in my contact book. Is it an important call from an entrepreneur? A random PR person pitching me? Or just a telemarketer? I won’t know until I pick up. CallApp , a startup launching today at Disrupt, wants to eliminate those awkward moments, for starters. It’s creating what CEO and co-founder Oded Volovitz calls a “universal social contact book.” It’s drawing data from social networks and other data sources to give users more context about phone calls and other communication. The data also comes from CallApp users — users can edit CallApp listings, and if they choose, they can add their contact book into the company’s general database. So when you get a phone call, even if it’s from someone who isn’t in your contact list, you should be able to see information about them — say a photo, their most recent update on Facebook, and your most recent email exchange if you’ve corresponded with them. Of course, if your phone is already ringing, you’ve only got a few seconds before you need to pick up, but at least you can glance at your screen and go into the call with some basic context. CallApp should be even more useful when you’re about to make a call. Then, the social network updates can give you a way to start off the conversation, or tell you when someone has traveled out of the country, so maybe now isn’t the best time to reach them. You can also attach personal reminders to CallApp contacts, share your location with them, or set up a meeting. In some ways, the concept is pretty similar to an email plugin like Rapportive ( recently acquired by LinkedIn ) or Xobni. However, Volovitz says that bringing this information to the smartphone puts it in a different context. After all, when he gets a phone call, “I cannot wait until I can go to the Internet to see who is calling me. This is about giving you real-time, immediate, the most relevant information you can get, and the tools to execute on that information.” Volovitz also says CallApp, despite the name, isn’t just about phone calls — he estimates that he only uses it for phone calls 50 percent of the time. The app also lists and connects to other ways for reaching people, like WhatsApp Messenger and Viber. The core of the experience isn’t the phone call but the contact itself, Volovitz says. Nor is CallApp limited to personal contact listings. It includes businesses too, showing you things like Yelp reviews, Google Street View, or a menu for a restaurant where you’re thinking about making reservations. Moving forward, Volovitz says the company will be adding features that are more about encouraging “serendipity.” The app is available on Android phones (you can download it from Google Play here ). CallApp is developing a version for iPhones too, though Volovitz estimates that it will have 80 percent of the functionality of the Android version, due to “some technical issues.” Volovitz says the company isn’t monetizing the app (which is free) yet, but there are a number of possible business models, including affiliate fees. The company has raised $1 million in funding from undisclosed venture capital firms and angel investors. Disrupt Q&A Q : How does the iOS app differ? A: There are more limitations than in Android, like you have to use the built-in dialer rather than any dialer you want. Q : What are the viral hooks? A: If you use CallApp to share information with someone, they get an SMS message linking to the content and asking them to download the app. Q: Tell us about the technology. A: What we do is artificial intelligence, big data. The system knows how to link the right person to the right number, for example using location to narrow the search. Q: Why do other improved contact books fail, and why will you succeed? A: It’s all about the execution and the ambition. If you build an app on the client side, you only get a limited amount of information about contacts on your phone, versus CallApp’s crowdsourced, cloud-based approach.

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CallApp Uses Social Data To Build A Smarter Smartphone Contact Book

Comcast Is Finally Rolling Out The X1, Its Set-top Box In The Cloud

blogger — Mon, 21 May 2012 18:58:33 +0000

Comcast announced Monday that it will make its newest set-top box available in Boston over the coming weeks, with a rollout planned across the entire country later this year. It’s also introducing a mobile app to control the set-top box from the iPhone or iPad. The new set-top box comes after several years of development. Comcast has been working hard to develop a new set-top box that would take all of the smarts out of the box and put it in the network, essentially allowing the cable provider to launch new services and update the new features without having to totally rewrite applications or push out new firmware. With the X1, all the processing is done in the network. That will give Comcast the flexibility to quickly test and create new apps for customers, without having to worry about how outdated its set-top boxes are. It will also provide more personalized features, such as allowing customers to see which shows their Facebook friends are watching. The new X1 iOS app will improve navigation on the set-top box, allowing subscribers to use the virtual keyboard to search through all the live and on-demand channels more efficiently than using a traditional remote control. Users can also filter by genre and interact with other social media apps. Anyway, here’s how cool I think this thing is: I haven’t been a cable subscriber for at least a year and a half, but I might just have to sign up again, just to try out the X1. So bring this thing to San Francisco, Comcast, and I’ll pay for cable TV again.

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Comcast Is Finally Rolling Out The X1, Its Set-top Box In The Cloud