Tech

This week’s big Apple announcement featured one big disappointment: Apple TV’s relative lack of, well, TV. Out of all of the hundreds of channels available on cable and satellite, only ABC and Fox agreed to offer their programs for rent on Apple TV. The fact that Steve Jobs is the largest single shareholder in, and on the board of, Disney — owner of ABC — perfectly illustrates this digital divide.

People in Silicon Valley have focused on the set-top box as the lever to attack the cable industry. Cable boxes blow, but that's a losing battle. So why is Apple TV different? Because Steve Jobs has not just created a new set top box. He's actually created a whole new media ecosystem built around the mobile phone.

Video calls aren't for people to see you — they're for people to see what you see.

We know — the new Apple TV is really small, and cheap and easy-to-use. That's all good, but still not knocking our socks off despite being the ripest area for expansion by a company that has already firmly established itself on the computer, phone, portable media player and tablet. Here are five reasons Apple TV is still boring.

Apple audaciously seems to think the world actually needs another social network — one that you even need special software to be part of, to boot. With the introduction Wednesday of Ping, a music-centered community that exists only within iTunes, they are probably right — and then some.

Federal regulators are putting off efforts to regain authority over the nation’s internet providers while they seek renewed public input on net neutrality.

Breaking with a longstanding but unstated policy, Apple has decided to publish a live video stream of Wednesday's press conference. The stream will be optimized for Mac, iPhone and iPad users only.

Online video creators, advertisers and producers have an unhealthy fascination with viral videos, and that obsession is dragging down the entire industry. Why? Because viral videos are, at their core, no better than a fluffernutter white-bread sandwich, delivering little or no value to anyone.

Gmail users can now choose to let Google sort their inbox by the most pressing messages, thanks to a new feature called Priority Inbox — think of it as a sort of reverse spam filter which bubbles messages to the top of the queue based on what you read and respond to.

The venerable Oxford English Dictionary isn't even one-third finished with what will be only its third revision in 80 years. But already there is talk that the multivolume work, which has informed scholars and fussy linguists, may eschew print entirely when the new edition is completed in about decade.

We don’t know exactly what to call the online collaboration between Arcade Fire and Google that launched Monday morning, but it sure is neat. If music videos were invented for the web they might have looked something like this: The project uses the web browser itself as an artistic medium, showing off the HTML5’s potential for interaction and multi-paned viewing rather than just using the browser as a frame for a plain, television-style video.

Google is reportedly in talks with the major movie studios to launch mainstream, pay-per-view video rentals on YouTube by year's end. YouTube's movie rental program currently focuses on independent filmmakers and music artists and the addition would represent a significant development.

The social news site Reddit staged a mini-rebellion Friday, deciding to run ads for a pro-marijuana legalization campaign for free, after Condé Nast executives ruled against taking payment for the ads.

A long-simmering bill in North Carolina that sought to make community-owned broadband networks much more difficult to establish was sponsored by a prominent state lawmaker and backed by incumbent ISPs, including the cable lobby. But it’s not like those ISPs actually wrote the now-discarded bill, right? Um ...

Blockbuster CEO Jim Keyes and a team of restructuring consultants reportedly met with all the major Hollywood studios last week to tell them about a plan to file bankruptcy before interest payments come due on nearly $1 billion in secured debt at the end of next month. The company might be able to survive by restructuring its debt, according to the Los Angeles Times — but even a restructuring could entail bankruptcy. Either way, the company is in big trouble.

Diaspora, a nascent open competitor to Facebook that raised $200,000 from online contributors, will launch their much-anticipated service on Sept. 15, the company said today in a blog post

Philadelphia has been under fire on the web for what's been called a "blogging tax." As a Philadelphia blogger — and the newest member of the Wired.com team — I feel I have to dispel some myths guiding the "WTF?" reaction. But I also want to point to some larger problems beneath the surface. This problem is much bigger than blogs in my city.

Netflix releases an app for the iPhone, making it possible to stream your instant queue on the smartphone, the iPod Touch and finally catching up to the iPad, on which the service was available from day one. We applauded TV Anywhere and now do so again for what might be called "DVD Anywhere" on these far-more-ubiquitous mobile devices.

Google just made it easy for U.S.-based Gmail users to make and receive calls right inside their browsers using technology from Google Voice. The move has prompted some to speculate that Google is going after Skype, but the real target here isn’t a cheap telephony company — it’s Facebook.

Look out, Square — you have a new competitor, and it should go on sale in Apple stores before month’s end. Intuit and mophie have teamed on a credit card-swiping iPhone accessory that will allow any approved iPhone owner to walk out of an Apple store in as little as 15 minutes with the ability to accept credit card payments.