Netflix Xbox 360 app updated with new contrast settings, zoom, and Facebook integration

Netflix has updated its app for Xbox 360 today with a few more features. The headline change seems to be a new contrast setting that the company says makes "colors more vivid and black more pure." Along with the new contrast settings, the update introduces a zoom feature that'll let you get rid of those letterboxes and fill out the entire screen with video — at the expense of cropping the image on the left and right, of course. Additionally, there are new skip forward and skip back buttons that promise to make navigating through TV episodes quicker and easier, and in every country but the US the app now features Facebook integration. Netflix hasn't yet introuduced Facebook features to the US because of the VPPA act, which the company is actively trying to change. If you're looking for the update, you'll be prompted to download it next time you open the app on your Xbox 360.

OnLive Desktop now based on Windows Server 2008

For a while there, we were worried that OnLive's streaming Windows 7 cloud desktop service might have legal trouble due to a Microsoft complaint, but it seems that OnLive isn't using Windows 7 any more. As you can see in the image above, it's now Windows Server 2008. Before you worry that the service will be diminished in any way, you should probably know that both operating systems are functionally pretty much the same, and other than a much-improved touchscreen keyboard, it's actually rather difficult to tell them apart, anyway. In fact, the only really interesting part of the change is the hope that OnLive found a way around Microsoft's licensing conflict.

"Literally, millions of seats."

When we asked, OnLive confirmed the changes, but wouldn't say whether they had anything to do with the licensing complaint: "OnLive has never commented on any licensing agreements," a representative told us. Without any evidence that the streaming provider is out of the woods, it's perhaps too early to say, but the company's definitely bullish about the future of the service. In fact, OnLive told us it has millions of seats worth of enterprise, government and education customers on the waiting list:

We're steadily improving OnLive Desktop at all levels. Some of the changes are visible (e.g. we rolled out a much-improved on-screen keyboard), and some are behind the scenes and would only be picked up by technical people. These have all been in the works for a long time, and it looks like the only reason a change was noticed was because of the keyboard, but there have been many updates since launch.
As you know OnLive is the only technology that seamlessly delivers Windows with video and Flash on any device (tablet, PC, Mac, thin client), over almost any network, including cellular 4G and Wi-Fi. OnLive works with all versions of Windows and Linux as well, and our cost per user is far less than existing remoting technologies, none of which support media at all and often are barely usable on tablets and consumer networks. With OnLive, remote feels local, and OnLive's advantages across the board have not gone unnoticed. We've been overwhelmed with requests from enterprise, SMB, organizations, government, schools—all seeking to replace their current remoting technology with OnLive as quickly as possible. Literally, millions of seats.
What you are seeing with the OnLive Desktop consumer product updates are features we are trialing with enterprise customers who are looking to displace their current remoting technology with OnLive (it happens fast because the change is in the data center for the corporation, not device-by-device, like a Blackberry being displaced by iOS or Android). The change in the corporate world will be tectonic. When you see the names with 10s of thousands of remote seats that are dropping remoting technology they've been using for over a decade for OnLive, that will be the big news. So, these changes in our consumer offering is a preview of what's coming, and needless to say, we need to support all the versions of Windows (and Linux) these corporations use.

We're not yet sure OnLive's Cloud Desktop will vastly displace existing remote desktop services or lead to "tectonic" corporate change, but we're definitely excited about what a virtual gigabit ethernet connection could do when developers get wind of the possibilities.

Why Nokia and Microsoft are the perfect match

Stephen Elop sits in a Nokia boardroom, surrounded by a multinational group of execs sweating beads of anxiety. It's not exactly Downfall, but it's close. The freshman Canadian CEO is looking for answers, but all around him he finds sternly vacant faces and overdue roadmaps. Can we evolve Symbian quickly enough to make it appealing for the midrange? No. Can we build MeeGo and the Qt ecosystem up to take on the iPhone? Oh shit. No. Having already conducted meetings with Eric Schmidt and Steve Ballmer in the preceding months, Elop knows that his options for Nokia's future have narrowed down to the two external choices: Android or Windows Phone.

Now suspend your disbelief for a moment and imagine Eric Schmidt's otherworldly oratory had won Elop over to the Android side. Imagine that Nokia opted to leap off the burning platform and onto a ship of cutthroat competition and razor-thin profit margins. What would the landscape look like today?


There are too many variables at play to ever answer that question reliably, but there's one particular aspect I want to address today and that's competition. Specifically, competition among operating systems. Maybe it wasn't obvious when Nokia was making its fateful choice, but HP's webOS and RIM's BlackBerry OS have both failed to mount a challenge to the incumbent leaders, leaving the smartphone space dominated by iOS and Android. Their advantage in usability, third-party software and distribution is so paramount that any developer without a predisposition for an alternative platform will inevitably gravitate toward one or the other. And if you don't have developers seeding your ecosystem, these days you basically don't have an OS.

In such an environment, Nokia's arrival on Android would have undoubtedly been a coup for Google, but it would have been disastrous for Microsoft. Nokia sold a million Lumia Windows Phones in the first three or so months of being an active OEM, yet that was sufficient for it to become the best selling hardware partner for the platform. Think of the difficulty Microsoft is having in penetrating markets and convincing big-name app developers to jump on board, and then consider where that effort would be without the aid of Nokia's fiercely loyal fans and developers to spread the word.

Windows Phone is fighting an uphill battle. Microsoft still has work to do in terms of user experience and the big hardware partners like HTC and Samsung are starting to lose interest and putting in only token efforts. But Nokia is keeping the platform in the conversation. We're not willing to consign Windows Phone to the same level of hopelessness as the open-source webOS or the out-to-pasture BB OS precisely because Nokia is too big and too active a partner.

Where apps don't exist, Nokia is concocting them itself, albeit with limited success. More importantly, however, the Lumia 800 / 900 design gives Windows Phone a truly unique selling point that no other platform can match. The PureView technology that's next to come will do the same, but with cameras.

Microsoft now has a gritty underdog narrative to push — one where it only needs to alert people through campaigns like "Smoked by Windows Phone" so that they may learn of the exquisite design and other goodies Nokia can offer them. It's sad that Microsoft relies so heavily on the Finnish company to keep its platform in the public consciousness, but I would have been exponentially sadder to see Windows Phone's struggles without Nokia.

Can you remember the last Nokia phone that had Americans waiting in line?

A mobile industry dominated by two giants, without at least the twinkling hope of a third player disrupting them, is a recipe for stagnation. Microsoft's plans are relatively transparent: the Redmond company will aim to steal market share from the big guys with a massively overhauled Apollo update in the latter half of the year, but if it succeeds it will be in large part thanks to Nokia's efforts in the interim.

The Lumia 900 is the most heavily promoted and talked-about Windows Phone since the OS was first announced. Times Square was even taken over for a Friday night extravaganza, no doubt sapping the collective marketing budgets of AT&T, Nokia and Microsoft. No such pomp and circumstance have been planned for the simultaneously-launching HTC Titan II.

Now, I agree with our Lumia 900 review — it's not quite there yet — but I want Nokia and Microsoft in this game. By delivering that handset, Nokia has given AT&T its first exclusive on a true flagship phone since the iPhone and Microsoft a device that people actually feel emotionally connected to. Would the Lumia 900 have been a better phone if it were running Android? Probably. But that would have come at the expense of software competition and diversity in the broader mobile market. It's precisely because we care enough to wish this handset was running Android that we know Nokia as a phone maker still matters — and that can only be a good thing for the prospects of Windows Phone.

Lumia 900 suffering from data connection problems?

A number of early Lumia 900 buyers on AT&T are reporting that their HSPA and LTE data connections are dying, rendering the phone significantly disabled (voice and text appear to be unaffected). At least some of those buyers have been advised by AT&T to try a series of restarts, master resets, and SIM pulls; the technique has worked in some cases, though it appears that the fix may only be temporary.

Interestingly, we ran into this issue on one of our review units last week, though it was our understanding at the time that it was a problem specifically with provisioning of those units in AT&T's systems and wouldn't have an effect on retail units. It now appears that may not be the case. We've reached out to AT&T for comment — stay tuned for updates.

AT&T spending up to $150 million to make the Lumia 900 another exclusive hit?

We knew AT&T was going big for the Lumia 900 launch, but now we may know just how big. While we had previously heard something in the neighborhood of $100 million, Ad Age is reporting the company will spend as much as $150 million to promote the new handset, even more than it spent on the launch of Apple's iPhone 4. The reason for dropping so much cash on the Windows Phone device is simple — having the hugely in-demand iPhone as an exclusive offering was a massive coup for the company, and it's determined to make the Lumia 900 its next hit now that Verizon and Sprint have gotten a piece of the Apple pie.

Between the iPhone's launch in 2007 and February 2011 things were going swell for AT&T. In 2010 alone the company added more than three times the net wireless subscribers that Verizon did. After losing iPhone exclusivity, though, the tables have turned, and Verizon is breathing down AT&T's neck with 32.2 million smartphone subscribers compared to AT&T's 33.8 million. Verizon's smartphone customer base grew an astonishing 81 percent over the course of 2011 — more than double AT&T's growth.

So what's AT&T to do? The same thing it did last time, it hopes — score a hot exclusive phone that drives people into its stores. The strong competition between Android OEMs means that while scoring a breakthrough Android device wouldn't be impossible, AT&T would have little chance of making a big impact with so many close substitutes on the market. That leaves the Lumia 900 and the tiny-by-comparison Windows Phone platform as the premier candidates to inherit the iPhone's exclusive spot, and AT&T is doing its best to exploit the opportunity. So far we're only seeing the first details of the launch's success trickle in, but one thing is for sure; however well the Lumia 900 does, it's highly unlikely any amount of marketing muscle is going to turn it into an iPhone.

AOL sells 800 patent portfolios to Microsoft in a billion-dollar deal

Struggling former web giant AOL is selling off over three-quarters of its patent portfolio. The company has just announced that it sold 800 of its roughly 1,100 patents to Microsoft for $1.056 billion, money that AOL will return to its shareholders. As part of the deal, Microsoft will also get a non-exclusive license to the remaining 300 patents, and AOL will retain a license to its former intellectual property.

AOL is obviously hoping to make its stock more attractive with this sale, but this also looks like another move away from being a web infrastructure company. In the past several weeks, AOL has laid off a number of employees, including virtually the entire AIM division, and is focusing more strongly on its media presence. AOL says it will continue to hold patents spanning "advertising, search, content generation / management, social networking, mapping, multimedia/streaming, and security," but that this deal "unlocks current dollar value for our shareholders" and will give the company more room to transition away from the web of yesteryear.

AT&T Mobile Transfer app now available for Windows Phone

AT&T's Mobile Transfer comes to Windows Phone handsets, offering an easy way for Lumia 900 owners to swap their contacts (along with up to 2GB of photos and videos) onto their shiny new handset. The app has previously been available for iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry users, as well as for a selection of featurephones available from the carrier, making it almost certain that it will work for you.

The data is uploaded from your old device to AT&T's servers, and is kept there until you activate a new device. Once your new phone's up and working, you're given seven days to download your data before it's wiped — a good security measure, but you shouldn't mistake this for a backup service. You can grab your data as many times as you like within those 7 days, though, meaning that you can reset your phone a couple of times if need be. The app's available now from the Windows Phone Marketplace on your handset, should you want to give it a shot.

Kinect was used to control 83-year-old, four-story high organ

Australian composer Chris Vik wanted to play the historic four-story tall Town Hall organ in Melbourne, and he decided that Microsoft's Kinect would be the best way to go about it.
While the organ was built back in 1929, it was upgraded to support MIDI in the 90s.
Meanwhile, Vik had already created his own software called Kinectar, which turns Microsoft's motion sensing device into a MIDI controller and was previously used to create dance-controlled electronic music.
When it came to playing the historic organ, Vik decided to compose an original song and team up with singer Elise Richards, and the duo put on a performance at the town hall last November.
Vik hasn't revealed what his next project is, but the composer / developer has only been playing around with Kinect since last April — so we can't wait to see what he comes up with next.