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Marissa Mayer planning to reveal her plans for Yahoo's turnaround tomorrow
The first "all hands" meeting of a CEO is always a time for high drama, so we're expecting big things tomorrow. New boss Marissa Mayer is telling employees about her plans to turn around the faded internet giant on Tuesday, with the same slides she used in closed-door board meetings in an act of "radical transparency." Yahoo's fortunes have been on the slide for a while, after Scott Thompson's scandal-ridden departure, patent clashes, security breaches and the sale of its Alibaba stake in order to spend $3.65 billion on quelling a shareholder revolution. A report from AllThingsD says that Mayer's likely to introduce progress and goal tracking as a measure of performance. The new system will run from the company as a whole right down to individual employees, something that she picked up from her tenure at Mountain View. The same report has revealed that Mayer's pushing to improve the consumer experience in its Homepage, Mail and Flickr offerings (amongst others) at the expense of advertising -- a move that'll win her plenty of fans used to the minimalist Google homepage.
Yahoo's IntoNow TV companion app for iOS adds screen grab, music recognition and chat features
At CES 2012 we were promised that Yahoo would integrate IntoNow's SoundPrint technology with its backend to pull up useful extra content about whatever TV program was being watched and now it's delivered that and more. IntoNow 3.0 for iOS (no upgrade yet for the Android version) enhances the app's TV companion experience in three key ways: TV / Music Sync, "CapIt" screengrabbing and finally Group Chat. The TV and music sync brings not only the associated info we'd heard about before, but also brings Shazam-style information about any music that might be playing. CapIt can pull screenshots from the cloud of any of the TV shows IntoNow's backend is monitoring, which adds up to about 13 million frames a day, then pops them up ready for meme creation and sharing. Group Chat does exactly what it sounds like, and lets you talk to friends or set up circles of fans around particular shows. We gave the app a try and found it worked as advertised, quickly identifying what was playing whether live or on DVR and popping up episode info, cast listings and Wikipedia links. The CapIt feature (shown above) pulls frames with surprising speed and ease, even on live broadcasts, and allows users to scroll backwards or refresh for new freezes to grab just the right one. It doesn't monitor what you're watching live, but punching the green TV icon in the upper left corner causes it to sync right away, which also creates an entry of what was being watched and when.
Yahoo! Connected TV setups draw web, TV closer in 2012 with mobile apps, IntoNow
While Google moves and Apple rumors have attracted most internet TV hype, Yahoo has been busy moving units, racking up 8 million widget TVs in the market and over a million active users every month. The broadcast interactivity it demonstrated at least year's show is already live on the 2011 lineup of Sony Bravias and will launch on the 2012 models soon, with access to trivia, interactive ads and the like. Last year we were also shown an iPad remote, which the company promises to deliver alongside apps for iPhone and Android devices in the first quarter of this year that can launch apps, control them and enter text. Finally, this year we'll also see the fruits of its IntoNow purchase, as the technology will be plugged into Yahoo's backend and allow sets to pull in relevant internet content alongside whatever is being watched. Hang on for our hands-on impressions and more details, and check out the press release after the break.
Skype for iPad: TUAW Best of 2011 iPad social networking app
While the voting in this category of the TUAW Best of 2011 wasn't exactly overwhelming, the readers have spoken -- Skype for iPad (free) was voted the best iPad social networking app for the year. Since the introduction of the iPad 2 with its built-in cameras, Skype for iPad has made it possible to make bi-directional video calls from the tablet with excellent sound quality and a host of other features. The app pulled in 42.9 percent of reader votes, topping second-place winners (both tied with 20.8 percent of the vote) IntoNow and Twitter client Echofon. Skype for iPad has a number of features that aren't available with Apple's own FaceTime app, including the ability to send and receive phone calls to and from landlines or mobile phones. Our congratulations go out to the Skype Software S.a.r.l team for their continued work on improving and optimizing Skype for iPad.
TUAW Best of 2011: Vote for your favorite iPad social networking app
The nominations are in, and the poll is ready to go! The TUAW Best of 2011 awards are all about you -- the readers -- and what you think is the cream of the crop of Apple or third-party products and software. To vote, select one entry from the top nominations made by readers. We'll be announcing the winner in just a few days. Vote early and often! TUAW is asking for your votes for the best iPad social networking app of 2011. Once again, we got only a few nominations in this category, meaning that most readers may use their iPhones more than their iPad for their social networking. In addition, several readers nominated apps that run on the iPad but are not designed specifically for the platform -- they've been disqualified. As a result, I took a quick poll of a number of tech writers and bloggers to get their take on iPad social networking apps. The nominees are: IntoNow, a rather innovative free app that "listens" to what you're watching on TV, and then provides information that is relevant to the show. It also links to Facebook and Twitter, tells you when friends are watching the same show, and more. Echofon (free, also a US$4.99 Pro version), a powerful universal Twitter client. Tapatalk Forum App ($2.99), which works to bring online forums using vBulletin, phpBB, and other systems to iPad users. Skype for iPad (free), which supports not only voice calling but video calls and instant messaging as well. Blogsy ($4.99), probably the most powerful blogging tool for the iPad, supporting WordPress, Blogger, and Posterous. You have a couple of days to vote, and the winners will be announced on January 3, 2012. Let the voting begin! %Poll-72412%
Yahoo buys TV companion app developer IntoNow and its database of sounds
Earlier this year IntoNow launched its iPhone app that could identify what TV show you were watching by the audio Shazam-style and then share it with others over Facebook or Twitter, pull in additional information, or add the DVD to your Netflix queue. Now, Yahoo has purchased the company and according to the press release (after the break) wants to integrate its SoundPrint tech with its existing services including the Connected TV platform. As NewTeeVee suggests, this could tie-in nicely with its existing plans to use audio watermarks to identify advertisements and display additional info on screen or work with a companion app, both of which it demonstrated at CES. That database of sounds reportedly stretches back over five years and is continually being updated, which could give a major lift to Yahoo over other smart TV platforms that goes far beyond just check-ins and badges.
Poll: How social is your TV watching?
Twitter and Facebook are common enough that even your grandmother probably knows what they are by now and studies have confirmed that watching TV with laptop, tablet or phone nearby is an increasingly common experience. Over the last year or so startups like GetGlue, Tunerfish, Miso, Philo and IntoNow have all tried to make checking in and other social media standbys a part of TV, while Boxee has arguably lead the way in social video sharing on connected TV platforms. So if you've added TV checkins to the Foursquare, Farmville and other data you're bombarding followers and friends with or just see them as another thing to filter out of your timeline, let us know how it's going below. %Poll-61890%