Media & Entertainment

YouTube is being reprogrammed for the iPhone and iPad amid the latest fallout from the growing hostility between Google and Apple. The changes are being made because Google and Apple didn’t renew a five-year licensing agreement that established YouTube’s video service as one of the built-in applications in the operating system that runs the iPhone Continue Reading →

Last week, we caught a blog post that Google wasn’t supposed to publish yet. In it, the company announced that it would soon bring editing features to the Google Drive app for iOS. Monday, Google made these updates official and Google Drive for iPhone and iPad does now indeed allow you to edit documents, just Continue Reading →

Waiting to use Spotify on the Web? Hang on a few weeks. Waiting to pay $8 a month for Spotify’s premium service? Don’t hold your breath. Yes, as TechCrunch reported yesterday, the streaming music company is getting ready to roll out a version of its service that will work on a Web browser, instead of Continue Reading →

Amazon has released a new version of its Kindle app for Macs, bringing support for Lion’s multi-touch gestures, such as panning and swiping. Version 1.10.3 also brings support for Kindle Format 8 books (which means richer formatting) and larger libraries, as well as the usual bug fixes and performance improvements. The update should be welcome Continue Reading →

Monday, Valve will launch the beta of Big Picture mode, a version of Steam designed for your television. That’s right. The de facto central hub of PC gaming is now designed to run while you’re lounging in your living room—and with a controller, no less. I’ve tried out Big Picture. It’s sleek, intuitive, and groundbreaking Continue Reading →

Amazon doesn’t want to drive even more customers Apple’s way, so it has done an about-face on its decision to include ads on the lock screen and main home screen of its new Kindle Fire tablets and is letting buyers opt out — for a $15 upcharge. Last week, Amazon introduced a slew of new Continue Reading →

There’s a certain amount of self-contradiction going on if you’re visiting a brick-and-mortar store to pre-order a device that’s all about e-commerce. If you relish the irony, Best Buy will gladly let you reserve Amazon’s $69 Kindle, Kindle Paperwhite, upgraded Kindle Fire and both sizes of the Kindle Fire HD (including the LTE model) at Continue Reading →

The next time you deliver a PowerPoint presentation that matters—a product launch, investor pitch, new client meeting— take a cue from Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and ditch the bullet points. When Bezos unveiled the all-new new Kindle Fire HD this week, his presentation slides were light on text and heavy on images. It’s a new Continue Reading →

The new Kindle Fire range was barely out of the oven before Amazon drew flak for its plans to include Special Offers on the lock screen for US models. In plainer language, the tablets ship with ads built-in — and unlike e-paper Kindles, there’s no option to pay for an ad-free variant from the start. Continue Reading →

Throughout its 17-year history, Amazon has helped change the way that books are sold, the format in which they’re read and how they are published. Now it could change how they’re written. In addition to the Kindle Fire HD and the Kindle Paperwhite, Amazon introduced a subscription book format at a press conference in Los Continue Reading →