The latest from TechCrunch
- The Apple Live Stream: What Does This Mean?
- Adioso, Flight Search For People Keeping Their Options Open
| The Apple Live Stream: What Does This Mean? | Top |
| Perhaps you’ve heard: Apple is having an event tomorrow . Normally, this means that a sea of tech bloggers descends upon the Bay Area to cover it live for those sitting by their computers at home. But this time things are a bit different: Apple is actually streaming the event live — something they haven’t done in a very, very long time. Cue Double Rainbow : what does this mean? It’s been so long since an Apple event has been live streamed that no one can seem to agree when the last one actually was. The consensus seems to be that it was a Macworld keynote (which IDG and not Apple produced) back in the 2003 or 2004 timeframe. But what’s interesting is why Apple streamed one of these last ones: as some recall, it was at least in part to show off their then-new streaming technology — QuickTime Streaming Server . Might that be a hint about the intentions for tomorrow’s event? Specifically, I’m wondering if Apple is streaming this event because streaming media will be a key part of the event. iTunes-in-the-Cloud is the big streaming service everyone is waiting for — but all indications are that this is still not ready to go just yet. What does seem ready to go are things like Netflix for the new iTV device. Guess how that would work? Yep, streaming. What’s not yet clear is if Netflix has built an app for this new device just as they have for the iPhone and iPad, or if Apple worked with them to build it into the system. If it’s the latter, it’s certainly possible it will be using the “ industry-leading HTTP Live Streaming ” Apple is touting in their live stream press release . Interestingly enough, HTTP Live Streaming is also a part of Quicktime Streaming Solutions alongside the aforementioned Quicktime Streaming Server. The other streaming wildcard here are the rumored new $0.99 television show rentals . It’s certainly possible that these will be downloadable content like current iTunes movie rentals — but perhaps Apple is intending to test out new streaming capabilities with them as well. After all, this new iTV is thought to only have something like 16 GB of storage space on board — that’s enough for only a handful of television shows in HD. You’d really have to rent them and them watch them right away if they are downloadable. So while it’s entirely possible that Apple just randomly decided to flip the switch to start streaming their events live after all these years — it seems just as likely that it’s a calculated move by Apple to tie everything they’re doing with streaming together around this event. If that’s the case, you can bet CEO Steve Jobs will mention it on stage — something like “it’s the same technology we’re using to stream this to all those people on Apple devices watching this live around the world right now!” They just better hope the stream holds up. If not, us lowly bloggers will still be there as backup. CrunchBase Information Apple Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| Adioso, Flight Search For People Keeping Their Options Open | Top |
| YCombinator -funded Adioso today launches its third iteration as an online destination for adventurous travelers who want to take vacations but are not constrained by specific days or even places. Yes, the online travel space is saturated, but the more mainstay search services like Kayak and Sky Scanner only let you find specific dates and destinations, failing if your desire is more vague. In contrast, Adioso allows you to search flights with complete flexibility, like if you want to go somewhere in Europe in November but are not committed to specific area or time. Examples of the natural language-enabled broad or open-ended searches specific to Adioso: Chicago to Boston next week San Francisco to Europe late September under $800 San Francisco to anywhere Says founder Tom Howard: “There are really no other services that let you know where you should go, and what days are the cheap days. You go to a website and you’d spend two hours trying to find the cheap deals, there was nothing that said these are the good days at this location.” Before Adioso, the only solution to the “What are the good days at this location?” kind of query was to manually do separate searches on different sites until you stumbled across what you were looking for (aka “The Traveling Salesman” problem). Adioso’s model necessitates some programming chops however, as open-ended search is harder to enable than constrained. Future plans include expanding the service’s airline and destination inventory as soon as the Adioso platform has stabilized, currently Adioso only covers a selection of airlines in Australia (the home country of founders Howard and Fenn Bailey), Asia, Europe and the USA. Howard and Baily hope that service will create an opportunities both for casual travelers (the most rapidly growing segment of the travel industry) as well for airlines who are looking for ways to best monetize left over seats on undersold flights. CrunchBase Information Adioso Tom Howard Information provided by CrunchBase | |
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