Windows Phone 7's copy and paste update now coming in March?

By Chris Ziegler posted Feb 10th 2011 12:47PM If you don't have a Windows Phone 7 device, you may have assumed that first major update with copy and paste support had been released to end users by now -- and we wouldn't necessarily blame you. If you do have a Windows Phone 7 device, however, you know how very untrue that is... and the latest rumors suggest that you won't be on track to get it this month. To be fair, Microsoft never promised that we'd see the update on handsets in February in any official capacity, but rumors at one time had suggested it'd happen; of course, they also suggested January, so you see how that goes. Anyhow, both Neowin and ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley are liking March 8 as a possibility, citing the difficulties in getting carriers and manufacturers on board for a coordinated launch of a firmware update that they're all accustomed to having more control over. Since early last year, Microsoft had said it'd be controlling platform updates pretty tightly -- certainly more tightly than in the disjoint Android world -- and we can imagine that takes a little bit of adaptation for the likes of LG and Samsung. Anyhow, here's hoping everyone's up to date on the 8th, eh?

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Amazon Launches Windows Phone 7 App

Shortly after launching an official Kindle app for Windows Phone 7, Amazon has launched an app that lets you browse, search and purchase products on Amazon directly from your Windows Phone 7 device.

The app is free to download, and it features support for Windows Phone 7-specific swipes, letting you quickly slide between product details, reviews, related items, etc.

Other features include one-click ordering, wish lists, package tracking and prime member support. If you’re worried about security, you’ll be happy to know that the purchases go through Amazon’s secure servers.

Amazon App for Windows Phone 7 is available here.

[via The Next Web]

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Brain-controlled robot arm kicks off new FDA program to speed up approval of medical devices

FDA Launches Medical Device Innovation Initiative

DARPA-funded prosthetic is first test case

SILVER SPRING, Md., Feb. 8, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ --Today the U.S. Food and Drug Administration proposed the Innovation Pathway, a priority review program for new, breakthrough medical devices and announced the first submission: a brain-controlled, upper-extremity prosthetic that will serve as a pilot for the program. The FDA also announced plans to seek further public comment before the Pathway can be used more broadly.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20090824/FDALOGO)

The new proposed Innovation Pathway program for pioneering medical devices, highlighted in a report published on the FDA's website today, is part of a broader effort underway in the FDA's Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH) designed to encourage cutting-edge technologies among medical device manufacturers.

The initiative will also seek to strengthen the nation's research infrastructure for developing breakthrough technologies and advancing quality regulatory science. Proposed actions include:

* establishing a voluntary, third-party certification program for U.S. medical device test centers designed to promote rapid improvements to new technologies during a product's development and clinical testing stages;
* creating a publicly-available core curriculum for medical device development and testing to train the next generation of innovators; and
* using more device experience and data collected outside the United States.

In addition, CDRH intends to engage in formal horizon scanning – monitoring medical literature and scientific funding in a systematic way to predict where technology is heading. CDRH will include public input in this process to prepare for and respond to transformative innovative technologies and scientific breakthroughs.

"Each year, millions of American patients benefit from innovative medical devices that reduce suffering and treat previously untreatable conditions," said CDRH Director Jeffrey Shuren, M.D., J.D. "CDRH's Innovation Initiative will help accelerate the development of and patient access to innovative medical devices, which often fulfill unmet public health needs."

The FDA has accepted its first submission from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to review a brain-controlled, upper-extremity prosthetic designed to restore near-natural arm, hand and finger function to patients suffering from spinal cord injury, stroke or amputation. The arm system uses a microchip implanted on the surface of the brain to record neuronal activity and decode the signals to actuate motor neurons that control the prosthesis. DARPA and the FDA have signed a Memorandum of Understanding addressing both the development and review of this project.

The proposed Innovation Pathway program includes the following features:

* products would have to be truly pioneering technologies with the potential of revolutionizing patient care or health care delivery;
* selected products would receive an Innovation Pathway memorandum from CDRH containing a proposed roadmap and timeline for device development, clinical assessment and regulatory review; and
* products would be assigned a case manager, their important scientific issues would be identified and addressed earlier in the development process, and they might be able to qualify for flexible clinical trial protocols.

Applications would be reviewed by the Center Science Council, a new oversight body currently being developed within CDRH comprised of senior managers and experienced scientists, who would facilitate this device development and evaluation process. Enrollment in the Innovation Pathway program would not change the scientific or regulatory standards that CDRH would use to evaluate device submissions and determine their appropriateness for marketing.

Because of the transformative nature of the devices that would be eligible for this pathway, CDRH expects them to generally be approval pathways intended for either high risk or novel products.

The FDA could conduct premarket reviews of products in the Innovation Pathway within 150 days, nearly half the time it currently takes the FDA to review most premarket approval applications.

CDRH has set up a public docket to solicit public comment on the Innovation Initiative and will host a public meeting on the topic on March 15, 2011 at the Center's White Oak campus.

For more information:

http://www.fda.gov/deviceinnovation

Consumer Inquiries: 888-INFO-FDA

SOURCE U.S. Food and Drug Administration

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Verizon iPhone’s Arrival Creates AT&T iPhone Aftermarket

It looks like many smartphones were abandoned by those rushing to be among the Verizon iPhone’s first users when the device hit shelves Thursday morning. In fact, eBay has already made 130,000 offers to purchase these used phones, and most of them are for AT&T iPhone models.

In anticipation of a phone-swapping trend, eBay announced a two-week promotion on February 8 that guarantees at least $200 for select models of functional used smartphones on its Instant Sale platform. For some phones, eBay is offering a price more than $100 higher than Verizon’s trade-in value.

It looks like the anticipated wave of resellers will pan out. Three days into the promotion, 130,000 eBay site visitors have requested offers for used smartphones. It’s too early to tell how many of these will actually send their phones to eBay in order to actually redeem the offers.

Most of the offers have been for used iPhones, and various models of the phone have taken six spots on the list of the top ten most requested offers during eBay’s promotion. BlackBerry and Android phones split the remaining four spots.

This iPhone majority doesn’t necessarily indicate that AT&T is experiencing a mass exodus in favor of Verizon. Android phones only started outselling iPhones in the first quarter of 2010, which means there are more of them out there to resell. There’s also a possibility that eBay’s offer guarantee prompted the rush to resell old phones on the site rather than the Verizon iPhone launch itself.

Even so, the interest in selling even the latest model of the iPhone (early adopters of the iPhone 4 still have more than a year to go to finish their 2-year contracts) must be less than comforting to AT&T.

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The Daily Show And Colbert Report Return To Hulu Via New Viacom Content Partnership

Hulu has just struck a content partnership with Viacom to return “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” and “The Colbert Report” to the content platform.

The deal also includes other TV Shows from Viacom’s media networks, including Comedy Central, MTV, BET, VH1, Spike TV, and TV Land to the Hulu Plus subscription service. Viacom had previously pulled the two Comedy Central shows from Hulu last March. Financial terms of the new agreement were not disclosed.

From the release: Under the agreement, current full episodes and clips of “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” and “The Colbert Report” will be available on the free ad-supported Hulu.com service and through the Hulu Plus subscription service beginning February 2, 2011. In addition, Viacom will make available to Hulu Plus subscribers a selection of current programs, like Jersey Shore, Tosh.0, Teen Mom 2, Manswers, Let’s Stay Together, and Hot in Cleveland 21 days after they air. Viacom content availability on Hulu Plus will vary on a show-by-show basis.

This is a big deal for Hulu. Even when Hulu first convinced Viacom to distribute Colbert and The Daily Show back in June 2008, it was a major milestone for the then young video service. Viacom subsequently pulled the content, deciding that they needed Colbert and Jon Stewart more than they needed Hulu, especially since Vicacom wasn’t really monetizing the content on Hulu.

But with Hulu’s subscription plans and massive advertising, Viacom sees the potential for pulling in revenue now that Hulu is pulling in hundreds of millions in revenue. Hulu’s subscriber count is expected to pass 1 million this year and Hulu Plus as a business will have a revenue run rate north of $200 million this year. And Hulu now has 30 million monthly users, traffic which Viacom simply cannot ignore. Clearly, there must be some sort of revenue share but neither company is revealing the terms.

Of course, Viacom has not brought CBS’ content to Hulu. Yet. Perhaps the media giant is testing the waters before bringing all of its television content to the platform

But with Viacom putting its content back into Hulu, this shows that big media companies have confidence in the platform once again. And this is surely going to help Hulu’s planned IPO in 2011.

For Hulu CEO Jason Kilar’s take on the new partnership, check out his post on here.

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Live from The Daily launch event, with Apple's Eddy Cue

By Nilay Patel posted Feb 2nd 2011 10:38AM

11:49AM And we're done! The Daily will be live in about 10 minutes, we're told.
11:48AM What's the split between ads and subscription revenue? It'll be more subscription at first, and then it'll go towards that magic 50/50.
11:48AM Can you talk about having consumers paying for subscriptions when there's a lot of demand from advertisers -- how big could the audience have been if you made it free? Rupert: I think advertisers would pay a much lower rate if it were free. It's better for advertisers -- we'll draw a better class of advertisers at a better rate.
11:47AM Newspapers tend to be targets up-and-down market, tabloids and broadsheets -- where are you targeting this? Jesse: That was the first question our publisher asked Rupert, and Rupert said, well, everybody.
11:44AM What's the editorial mix between news and features? Jesse: read it and find out. I haven't said it's fixed.
11:44AM Will The Daily be free on the web? You can see a page for free if you have a link, but you can't go to thedaily.com and see all the pages for free.
11:43AM Will any of this stuff be on the web? Jesse: Not everything you can do on the iPad can be replicated on the web. A feature that's built on touch UI doesn't make sense on the web. Text, headlines, pictures, that shareable on the web. So where we can do it, we make HTML pages that are on the web -- they're out there. We can use them to share and promote our content.
11:42AM How is this content discoverable on the web? How will search engines get it? Eddy Cue: We've had 10 billion apps downloaded, I think people are finding them. John: We feel good about it. We've focused on this medium and this device. We didn't want to make compromises, and the web demands that you make sacrifices.
11:41AM Has Steve Jobs said anything about the product? Murdoch: Steve called me last week and said that the app was really terrific, he was extremely flattering.
11:40AM What's the voice? Jesse: If you want people to come back, you have to make them think and make them smile. Need a little bit of wit, a little bit of attitude. How do you create content for people using this device? People spend 30, 35, 45 minutes with their iPad -- do we create content that's compelling enough to hold that attention?

11:39AM What are your favorite apps besides New Corp apps? Murdoch: I try playing some of the games, but my 7 year old beat me every time.
11:38AM How long do you anticipate exclusively being on the iPad given other tablets, and are you married to Apple? Murdoch: We've been quite honest with Apple, and we'll be on all major tablets. But we think last year, this year, and next year will belong to the iPad.
11:37AM Why choose to focus on the Daily and not an existing brand like WSJ? Murdoch: The WSJ was the first paper to be a paid app, and it was my excitement about that and how good it looked that made me consider what could be done on a tablet.
11:36AM What about an Australian version of the Daily? Murdoch: Mumble mumble.

11:36AM What is the political tone of the Daily, will it be more centrist? Murdoch: the editorial position will be in the hands of the editor. Jesse: We wanted a new brand. We're patriotic, we love America. We believe in free speech. As for specific editorials, well read it. You'll be surprised.
11:34AM How do you break in for breaking news, and how do you avoid overwhelming people? Lots of different ways to do breaking news -- tickers, twitter feeds, drop in new pages. We can change the front page whenever we want. This isn't a static product. But at the same time, as a consumer I don't like everything changing all the time.

11:33AM Rupert: Just take NY alone. We have two morning shows competing with each other, we have the WSJ, the New York Post, they're all competitive.
11:32AM What are your main competitors? You have to compete with everything now -- that's especially true on the iPad. You have to compete with Angry Birds on some level. That's part of the reason that we've focused on the voice, the style, the use of media.
11:32AM Asking about the Sony Reader snafu yesterday. Eddy Cue: Don't want to talk about the announcement yet, but we'll talk about that soon. We want customers to be happy.

11:31AM How will you determine is this is successful? Murdoch: Yes, when we sell millions. Our ambitions are very big but our costs are very low. We've spent $30 million so far, but it will be running at a cost of half a million a week. We're very confident.
11:29AM How will you measure readership for advertisers? We love advertisers, and we have tech to measure all the metrics they require.
11:29AM When will the subscription model be available to other publishers? Eddy Cue: Available on the Daily today, and there'll be an announcement for other publishers soon.

11:28AM How is back issue content handled -- how much memory is taken up, is there cloud storage? For launch, saved articles are the best way. For now it's on the web. We're working for more internal storage, but it's not there in 1.0

11:27AM They're struggling some chairs onto the stage for the Q&A, and the lights have gone deep, deep blue. We're about to get groovy in Murdoch town.
11:26AM And that's that! They're doing a group photo and then it's Q&A time.

11:25AM "We've built a whole new subscription billing that's as easy as one click. You'll be billed weekly at 99 cents or yearly at $39.99."
11:25AM "You don't have to live in Wisconsin to get the Green Bay Packers as the home team in your paper." Okay, now he's speaking our language.
11:24AM "I've been lucky enough to be using it for the last two weeks and it's amazing. Something of this production value done every day."


11:24AM "From the first day we met with Rupert and his team, we knew they were going to redefine the news."
11:23AM "In the past year, the iPad has launched a whole new category of mobile device... there are over 5000 new apps for iOS. iPad customers are huge consumers of news."


11:23AM "We are thrilled to be here today to help News Corp launch the first national news publication built from the ground up for the iPad."
11:22AM Eddy Cue from Apple now on stage.
11:22AM The Daily publishes every morning, with breaking news at every time. 99 cents a week with deals on the way. First two weeks are free courtesy of Verizon.
11:21AM Talking about touch UI -- they say it's great for adding interactivity to things like sports coverage. Sports pages are customizable for teams and players.


11:20AM There's an apps and games section with reviews and ratings -- it's linked right into the App Store.
11:19AM Showing off web integration -- in addition to links and the built-in browser, there are built-in Twitter feeds on certain pages.
11:19AM You can share articles on Facebook, Twitter, and email. "The Daily is not an island." Showing off the share screen now -- you can record audio comments as well as the usual stuff.




11:18AM Showing off the carousel, a CoverFlow-like view of the pages. There's a shuffle button to bring up new stories you haven't read, an audio button that reads to you like the radio, and a TV-style news anchor.
11:17AM "I think what you're seeing is the first all-media product... we're going to produce up to 100 pages everyday. How do you get through all that? We've come up with some innovative ways to find content in the Daily."




11:16AM Showing off 360-degree photographs and HD videos -- they'll have new content every day.
11:15AM "We have people from television, from newspapers and magazines, working hand in hand with designers and developers. The iPad allows us to tell stories in different ways than we did before."
11:15AM "We've been doing live production for about six weeks now... the staff of the Daily is fantastic, and they've been working around the clock." Showing off the Egypt package. "It's the kind of story that's made for the Daily -- the pictures and video are amazing."



11:13AM "We've taken a fresh look at what it means to tell a story." These are going to be live demos of real content.

11:13AM "Now it's my pleasure to introduce John, Jesse, and Greg to unveil the first edition of The Daily."
11:12AM "The Daily's success will be determined by its utility and its originality... The Daily is not a legacy brand. We have a license to experiment, and a duty to innovate. We believe the Daily will be the model for how stories are told and distributed."
11:11AM "Our target audience is the more than 15 million Americans who are expected to own tablets in the next year."

11:11AM The Daily will be just 14 cents a day -- there are no costs for paper, presses, trucks.
11:10AM "Our aim is for The Daily to be the indispensable source for news, information, and entertainment."
11:09AM "The magic of good newspapers -- and good blogs -- is a deft editor's touch."
11:09AM "There is a growing segment of educated and sophisticated consumers who do not read daily newspapers, but still consume media. This restricts their interests to what has been predefined."
11:08AM "Simply put, the iPad demands that we completely reimagine our craft."
11:08AM "New times require new journalism. Our challenge was to take the best of conventional journalism... and combine it with the best of new technology."

11:07AM "Good morning, I'm Rupert Murdoch and I'm here to welcome you to the launch of The Daily... first I would like to thank Steve Jobs. He's given us this incredible new tablet and given us a new platform. Steve has been a champion of The Daily since day one, along with the brilliant Eddy Cue."

11:06AM And Rupert Murdoch is on stage! A PR person is yelling "Rupert Murdoch!"
11:06AM Okay, the lights are going down -- here we go.
10:57AM The music has perked up with some Caribbean syncopation. If there were any people in this room it would be a real party.
10:49AM We're hearing the actual The Daily app is scheduled to go live at noon, but history suggests it'll go a bit earlier than that. We'll keep an eye on things.


10:44AM It's a pretty nasty day of sleet and snow here in New York and this room is surprisingly empty -- we'd say almost half the seats are empty with 15 minutes to go, and we've heard Rupert Murdoch has canceled a bunch of post-event interviews due to the weather. But we're here. Because we love you. And there were snacks.

10:42AM We're here and sitting down in very comfortable chairs. They are playing extremely chill jams, and the room is lit an a deep purplish-blue. It's kind of like the ultimate 1970s airport lounge experience. Missing: live percussion.
Is the future of media an iPad-exclusive daily newspaper that's delivered automatically overnight using a new subscription service? We're here at the Guggenheim Museum in New York for the launch of News Corp's The Daily to find out -- and Apple's VP of internet services Eddy Cue is scheduled to join Rupert Murdoch on stage, so things could get interesting. Join us, won't you?

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