iLounge

Over one quarter of the videos on the Internet are now available in H.264 format, according to the latest analysis from MeFeedia. Based on the company’s checks of its video index, 26% of videos available on the web are now available in H.264 format, compared with just 10% in January. Notably, most sites that support HTML5 automatically detect iPad users and switch to a compatible format, many recent news stories are available in H.264 while most older news content has yet to be re-encoded, and there is very little HTML5 supported episodic content available from major TV networks. MeFeedia’s video index includes over 30,000 sources, including Hulu, CBS, ABC, YouTube, Vimeo, DailyMotion, MTV, and CNN. [via Fortune]

Verizon Wireless is working with Google to develop a tablet computer that would compete directly with the iPad. The Wall Street Journal reports that the development was confirmed by Verizon Wireless CEO Lowell McAdam, who declined to discuss details on the timing or manufacturer of such a device. “What do we think the next big wave of opportunities are?” Mr. McAdam said in an interview. “We’re working on tablets together, for example. We’re looking at all the things Google has in its archives that we could put on a tablet to make it a great experience.” Google declined to comment on the WSJ article, apart from saying that anyone can use its mobile software to create phones and other devices.

Lala.com, the music streaming service Apple purchased last December, will be shutting down on May 31. Around the time of Apple’s acquisition, it was said the company wanted to use Lala’s technology and streaming expertise to offer a streaming service on iTunes in addition to the its normal purchase and download model. According to the site, Lala users will receive iTunes credit for all money spent purchasing web songs, wallet balances, and unredeemed gift cards. Lala launched in June 2006 as a CD trading service before re-focusing on digital music uploads and streaming the next year. [via Engadget]

HP and Palm have announced that they have reached an agreement for HP to purchase Palm at a price of $5.70 per share, or a total price of roughly $1.2 billion. The deal has been approved by both respective companies’ boards of directors. The announcement states that the “combination of HP’s global scale and financial strength with Palm’s unparalleled webOS platform will enhance HP’s ability to participate more aggressively in the fast-growing, highly profitable smartphone and connected mobile device markets. Palm’s unique webOS will allow HP to take advantage of features such as true multitasking and always up-to-date information sharing across applications.” Former Apple senior vice president and current Palm CEO and chairman Jon Rubinstein is expected to stay with the company; the move will put HP into direct competition with Apple in the smartphone category, where Palm’s Pre and Pixi smartphones compete with the iPhone.

“Palm’s innovative operating system provides an ideal platform to expand HP’s mobility strategy and create a unique HP experience spanning multiple mobile connected devices,” said Todd Bradley, executive vice president, Personal Systems Group, HP. “And, Palm possesses significant IP assets and has a highly skilled team. The smartphone market is large, profitable and rapidly growing, and companies that can provide an integrated device and experience command a higher share. Advances in mobility are offering significant opportunities, and HP intends to be a leader in this market.”

“We’re thrilled by HP’s vote of confidence in Palm’s technological leadership, which delivered Palm webOS and iconic products such as the Palm Pre. HP’s longstanding culture of innovation, scale and global operating resources make it the perfect partner to rapidly accelerate the growth of webOS,” said Jon Rubinstein, chairman and chief executive officer, Palm. ”We look forward to working with HP to continue to deliver industry-leading mobile experiences to our customers and business partners.”

USA Today, along with several other large companies, is preparing to run online advertisements specially-formatted for the iPad. The company will run its ads through mobile ad platform AdMarvel, which teamed up with rich media advertising firm PointRoll—owned by Gannett, which also owns USA Today—to create the ads. Max Mead, VP of business development at PointRoll, said that the iPad “has a large enough screen that you can do more with an ad. With an expandable ad, it’s almost the size of a sheet of paper or a desktop screen.” Mead said USA Today will join “an automaker, a large retailer, a large CPG conglomerate, and a pretty large hotel chain” in launching iPad-formatted ads. “You could very easily run pretty much the same ad as you do on the iPhone on the iPad,” explained Mead, “but that would not really be fully leveraging the potential…You have an opportunity on the iPad to do a lot more.” [via AppleInsider]

Pablo Calamera, former director of MobileMe for Apple, has left the company to join mobile entertainment group Thumbplay as Chief Technology Officer. Calamera had spent ten total years with Apple, the most recent stint being 2006-2010, and has also worked with Sidekick-maker Danger and WebTV. In his new role with Thumbplay, Calamera will have oversight of all technology initiatives for the company, including its recently launched Thumbplay Music, a cloud-based music subscription service offering on-demand access to more than eight million tracks under license from EMI, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, and more than 25,000 independent labels. Thumbplay Music is currently being offered in the U.S. as an invitation-only private beta; the company says the service will be available on iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry devices in the first quarter of 2010. [via AppleInsider]

Warner Music Group has revealed that unit sales growth on the iTunes Store has decelerated since the move to a variable pricing scheme. AllThingsD reports that industry-wide, year-over-year “digital track equivalent album unit growth” was 5% in the December quarter, down from 10% in the September quarter and 11% in the June quarter. As iTunes makes up the majority of Warner’s digital revenue, growth is slowing in that metric, as well, with digital revenue up 8% year-over-year in the December quarter, compared with a 20% growth rate in December 2008. Warner CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr. said that music downloads are a “mature” business, and that the pricing change has been a “net positive” for the label, but also suggested that, looking back, the move to raise prices wasn’t the best idea during a time of recession. Apple announced the move to a variable pricing scheme, under which individual tracks are sold for $.69, $.99, or $1.29, in January 2009, although the changes didn’t take hold until April 2009.

Gameloft has said that it, along with other developers, is cutting back on Android development due to the low financial returns seen on the platform. Reuters reports that Gameloft finance director Alexandre de Rochefort, speaking at an investor conference, said, “We have significantly cut our investment in Android platform, just like ... many others.” “It is not as neatly done as on the iPhone. Google has not been very good to entice customers to actually buy products. On Android nobody is making significant revenue,” he added. Gameloft’s App Store offerings generated 13 percent of the company’s revenue last quarter. “We are selling 400 times more games on iPhone than on Android,” Rochefort said. Google’s Android platform has seen increased press coverage lately in part due to the release of several high-profile devices, including the Motorola Droid and HTC Droid Eris on Verizon Wireless.

Google has signed an agreement to acquire mobile advertising firm AdMob for $750 million. Founded in 2006, AdMob has become a leading provider of mobile advertisements on both the iPhone and Android platforms, across both web-based properties and within applications. According to a statement from Google, it believes the acquisition will enhance the company’s “existing expertise and technology in mobile advertising, while also giving advertisers and publishers more choice in this growing new area.” A letter from AdMob founder and CEO Omar Hamoui regarding the acquisition is available online.

T-Mobile in the U.S. has halted sales of its Sidekick mobile phones after a series of gaffes left users unable to access their data, and in some cases led to the data being deleted permanently. According to Microsoft/Danger—Microsoft purchased Danger, the company behind the Sidekick, in February 2008—the service interruption began on October 2, and continued for the next few days for most users. Some users never had their data restored, however, and T-Mobile has announced to those Sidekick users that “based on Microsoft/Danger’s latest recovery assessment of their systems, we must now inform you that personal information stored on your device - such as contacts, calendar entries, to-do lists or photos - that is no longer on your Sidekick almost certainly has been lost as a result of a server failure at Microsoft/Danger… [O]ur teams continue to work around-the-clock in hopes of discovering some way to recover this information. However, the likelihood of a successful outcome is extremely low.”

T-Mobile at first offered a free month of data service to those affected, but is now said to be letting upset users out of their contracts at no fee due to the problem. The timing of the incident and subsequent announcement couldn’t be worse for the Microsoft/Danger team, which has been the subject of a couple of recent articles describing how Microsoft’s attempt to refocus the Sidekick team on a secret feature phone project, codenamed “Pink,” has been a failure. Both articles contain information supposedly provided by inside sources, who told of disgruntled employees, incompetent management, and a policy of secrecy that kept the team isolated from the company’s other mobile platform teams.

Before the release of the iPhone, several iLounge editors used older versions of Sidekicks, which managed to gain a large share of the teen market and offered real-time AIM, email, and web access, with well-received hardware keyboard. Following the iPhone’s release, however, Danger struggled to move the platform forward with subsequent revisions of the device, despite maintaining a loyal userbase even in the face of strong competition from the iPhone and other more recent smartphones.

During a speaking engagement earlier today, Julius Genachowski, Chairman of the United States Federal Communications Commission, proposed a set of Internet neutrality rules for both wired and wireless connections. The six principles, which are available in full, along with Genachowski’s speech, on the new website openinternet.gov, include a provision forbidding network operators from accessing lawful Internet content, applications, or services of their choice, nor can they prohibit users from attaching non-harmful devices to the network, a non-discrimination principle stating that broadband providers cannot discriminate against particular Internet content or applications, and one demanding that providers of broadband Internet access must be transparent about their network management practices. The non-discrimination principle is of particular interest to iPhone owners, as it could pave the way for VoIP and other currently forbidden apps to operate over AT&T’s network.

In addition to Microsoft’s push to bring iPhone OS app developers to the Zune, Sony is attempting to lure iPhone developers to bring existing App Store titles to the company’s PlayStation Network store. The games would be aimed at Sony’s upcoming PSPgo pocketable gaming system. According to Pocket Gamer, the downloadable titles will be priced at 1, 2 and 5 Euros—roughly $1.40, $2.85, and $7.13, respectively—to stay price-competitive with the App Store. The article goes on to note that ported iPhone games will require some reworking for the PSPgo, to account for the difference in screen resolution—480x320 versus 480x272, respectively—and to map controls onto the PSPgo’s physical buttons. It also states that all games will be required to go through formal Technical Requirement Checks and a two-week quality assurance testing period, and that Sony will actively control the release schedule for games.

Microsoft has quietly been recruiting iPhone developers to create applications to run on its upcoming Zune HD media player. John Gruber of Daring Fireball reports that following a brief note he posted on the new 16GB and 32GB touchscreen media players, he received an email from the developer of an iPhone Twitter client, saying that he had been contacted by Microsoft and offered “a bucket of money” to port his app to the Zune. The developer in question turned down Microsoft’s offer, but assumes the company was pursuing similar agreements with the developers of multiple popular iPhone apps. Due to the fact that the developer turned down the offer early on, he wasn’t privy to what OS or SDK the company might be using for Zune development, but was adamant in the fact that the apps would be for the Zune, and not Microsoft’s Windows Mobile platform.

Notably, Microsoft attempted a similar strategy in 2006 when it recruited leading iPod developers to create car, home, and portable accessories for the Zune. Despite support from a number of well-known companies, which brought over designs that were originally developed for the iPod, the Zune accessory program ultimately resulted in little traction for Microsoft, and the products substantially faded from store shelves.

The four largest music labels—Universal, Sony, Warner, and EMI—are reportedly planning a new digital album format called CMX. The Times reports that the new format will offers customers a digital version of the sleeve notes that accompany a physical album, including lyrics and artwork, as well as videos. According to the report, the labels approached Apple about the new bundle format around 18 months ago, but were turned down; Apple is reportedly working on a format of its own, code-named “Cocktail,” which is expected to launch in the next two months.

One senior record label insider told the Times, “Apple at first told us that they were not interested, but now they have decided to do their own, in case ours catches on. Ours will be a file that you click on, it opens and it would have a totally brand-new look, with a launch page and all the different options. When you click on it you’re not just going to get the ten tracks, you’re going to get the artwork, the video and mobile products.” CMX-formatted albums are expected to be rolled out slowly, with only a few releases available at first. “We are not going out in force,” the label source said. “What you are going to see is a couple of releases thrown out there to see what people like. We are working with the retailers now.”

RealNetworks has announced RealPlayer SP, the latest version of its media player application. Among its many features, RealPlayer SP adds the ability to download and convert Internet videos—including YouTube videos—to the iTunes-friendly h.264 format, allowing users to load the content onto their iPods, iPhones, or Apple TVs. Other features include support for custom device profiles that let the user easily change settings based on device, the ability to create audio-only files from videos for playback on audio-only devices, such as the iPod shuffle, the ability to share videos via Twitter and Facebook, and support for the latest versions of Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Google Chrome. RealPlayer SP Beta is available now as a free download; h.264 video conversion and DVD functionality is available only to those who upgrade to RealPlayer Plus SP for a one-time charge of $40.

Hulu, the TV network-supported streaming online video service that was started in response to the growing video section of the iTunes Store, has recently released a beta version of Hulu Desktop, a full-featured client application for the Hulu service that allows users to turn a 2.0GHz dual core Mac or Windows PC into a Hulu media center. Hulu Desktop is designed to work with standard keyboards, Windows Media Center remote controls, or Apple remote controls, and can easily be controlled with just six buttons, allowing users to navigate between menus, select content to watch, play and pause content, scan forward or back through the currently-playing video and adjust the volume. An iPhone app version is expected in the near future.

In a recent interview with Tech-On, Sony Chairman and CEO Howard Stringer made several comments about Apple’s products, including the suggestion that the Japanese electronics giant may have been able to best the iPod had it made different business decisions. When asked about the importance of open technology, Stringer pointed to Sony’s Connect music download service as failure, saying its proprietary DRM scheme “created a problem.” Stringer added, “customers couldn’t download music from any Websites except those that contracted with Sony. If we had gone with open technology from the start, I think we probably would have beaten Apple Inc of the US.” Stringer also said that Sony needed to “grab” the opportunity to offer device-agnostic files before Apple, presumably referencing Apple’s DRM-laden movie files, since the iTunes Store has since gone DRM-free. In addition, he briefly pointed to the Apple TV as an indicator of how users are beginning to change their TV viewing habits, saying the company is “evolving the PS3 into a platform for Web services. TV development is also in a period of transition; the fact that sales volume is growing for the Apple TV, a kind of set-top box, might be evidence of an emerging trend.” [via Engadget]

Amazon has announced its third Kindle product, the Kindle DX. Designed to handle larger, more complex documents than the company’s recently released Kindle 2, which has been compared with the smaller iPhone, the Kindle DX features a 9.7-inch, 1200 x 824 E-Ink electronic paper display that can display newspaper and magazine pages at closer to full size. Kindle DX adds automatic screen rotation to landscape orientation, a built-in PDF reader—prior Kindle models could only read PDF-formatted documents after they had been converted into a Kindle-friendly format—4GB of internal storage, and a battery that supports four days of use with wireless on, or 20 days of use with wireless off. Like the Kindle 2, it also sports built-in EVDO Whispernet wireless downloading that is included for free for the life of the device, stereo speakers, a 3.5mm audio jack, a built-in dictionary, and more. Amazon’s Kindle DX is available for pre-order now for $489 and will be released this summer.

According to new images published by Engadget, Microsoft is preparing a third-generation Zune device, presently titled Zune HD. One of the images includes a direct look at the potential device, which appears to have a wide-aspect touchscreen and an Apple-like black and silver exterior, with the rest showing abstract illustrations. Microsoft has previously targeted both the iPod classic and iPod nano with its drive- and flash-based Zunes, respectively, but has yet to offer a model comparable in features to the iPod touch.

Both Amazon MP3 and Wal-Mart have raised prices on select digital songs following the iTunes Store’s move to variable pricing yesterday. Select tracks on Amazon’s MP3 store are now $1.29, matching iTunes’ top-tier pricing, while Wal-Mart has raised certain songs from $.94 to $1.24. Amazon’s decision to raise prices may seem unusual given that the service actually cut the price of many top-selling songs in its UK store ahead of the iTunes Store’s price hikes, cutting the minimum price on songs from 0.59 pounds to 0.29, or from roughly $.87 to $.43. CNet writer Matt Rosoff, however, suggests it wasn’t Amazon’s choice. “I can’t imagine Amazon’s excited about raising prices in a recession—they’re probably responding to price increases by the record labels, which were made possible by Apple’s capitulation,” Rosoff writes.