The SEC filing revealing the deal between the two companies is about as brief as they come and its terms are confidential, so it’s impossible to say definitively what Apple (AAPL) is after here. Given Rovi’s business, though, it seems likely that Apple is after the same interactive television program guides the company licenses to digital cable/satellite providers and set-top box manufacturers. Certainly, that’s Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster’s theory. “We believe this announcement is further evidence that Apple is developing live TV and DVR features for its Apple TV product, and will likely launch an all-in-one Apple Television in the next 2-4 years,” he said in a note to clients today.

Makes sense, right? Of course it could also just as easily be evidence that Apple is planning to add device-to-device media synching to its hardware. Or simply an indication that Rovi holds a core patent in some area that Apple’s working in.

Liveblog

9:13 am PT: Quite a scene here this morning; the queue for media credentials is nearly as long as some of the iPhone 3G launch lines I saw a few years back. Moments ago, an Apple PR rep slipped through the doors of the Yerba Buena Center to ask that the press waiting outside take two big steps back. The last time that happened to me, I was at a Jesus Lizard show.

9:54 am: The doors open and the press enters the event hall. Initially, at least, the scene is pretty crazy. “This is like the subway in New York,” an attendee behind me jokes. More like the subway in Tokyo, I think to myself.

A Bob Dylan soundtrack plays as media and guests file in. It’s momentarily interrupted by a “please take your seats, our event is about to begin” announcement.

10:00 am: Interesting stage set-up today: Instead of an empty stage or a simple table, there are a black leather chair and side-table. Lights are dimming….

And Steve Jobs takes the stage to a standing ovation.

“We want to kick off 2010 by introducing a truly magical product, but first a few updates….A few weeks ago we sold our 250 millionth iPod…I didn’t want to let that moment pass without recognizing it.”

10:05 am: Jobs offers a quick overview of Apple’s retail operations and some of the new stores it has opened recently before moving on to the iTunes App Store. “A few weeks ago we announced that three billion applications had been downloaded from the App Store–that’s in 18 months…amazing.”
He notes, as he did in the company’s earnings release the other day, that Apple is now a $50 billion company.

Apple is a mobile devices company, says Jobs, “the largest mobile devices company in the world now. Larger than Sony’s mobile device business, larger than Samsung’s and, astonishingly, Nokia’s as well.”

10:07 am: A quick historical overview now. Jobs touches on the first PowerBook, introduced in 1991. He moves on to the MacBook and then the iPhone.

“All of us use laptops and smartphones, now. And the question has arisen lately: Is there room for a device in the middle?…We’ve pondered this question as well.”

This “middle” device, says Jobs, must be better at doing certain tasks than either the laptop or smartphone. If there’s going to be a third-device category, it must be better at browsing the Web, video, photos, music, etc.

“Some folks say this device is a netbook…. The problem is, netbooks aren’t better at anything.”

10:10 am: But we have something that is, says Jobs, “and it’s called the iPad.”

Photos of the device appear on the giant screens. Very thin. Very slick. “IPad offers the best Web browsing experience there is–way better than laptops.” There is no camera that I can see. That’s not going to go over well with folks hoping for a device that supports video iChat.

10:13 am: Further details: The “iPad is a dream to type on,” Jobs says, pointing out its life-sized onscreen keyboard. It’s also an awesome way to enjoy media. iTunes, iTunes University and YouTube HD support are built in.

10:14 am: Jobs sits down to demo the device: “Using this thing is remarkable. It’s so much more intimate and capable than the laptop.” He loads Safari and surfs over to the New York Times (NYT). The iPad loads quickly and Jobs is able to easily navigate the page, loading stories and zooming in on articles.

10:15 am: Demonstrating landscape and portrait now. “This device adapts to the way I want to use it.”

Definitely an impressive browsing experience. Fast and elegant.

Now, an overview of Mail. Also elegant. Nice split-screen presentation. Hit compose, and a nice onscreen keyboard pops up. Jobs types out a message to his colleagues at Apple. Seems relatively easy.

10:19 am: Moving on to iPad’s photo capabilities. It supports iPhoto’s Events, Faces and Places features. It also offers built-in slideshows complete with soundtracks and transitions.

Running a slideshow demo, Jobs pauses and looks out at the audience with a Chesire Cat-wide grin. He’s clearly relishing this moment.

10:22 am:: The iTunes experience on iPad is much as you would expect. Similar, if not identical, to what the software currently offers. Calendar and Contacts apps are also nice and, again, similar to what you’d find on a MacBook or iPhone.

10:24 am: Demoing Google Maps now. The iPad supports Google Street View and the implementation is very slick.

10:25 am: Moving on to video. Jobs calls up an HD clip from Google’s (GOOG) YouTube and displays it in both portrait and landscape. That finished, he fires up iTunes and loads “Star Trek” to demo the device’s video features, scrubbing, etc. Then he shows us a clip from Pixar’s “Up.” Tap to go full-screen. “Isn’t that wonderful?”

10:27 am: Watching that is nothing like actually having one in your hands, says Jobs.

• iPad is one-half-inch thick, weighs 1.5 pounds, and comes with 9.7 inch IPS display–“very high-quality display”
• Full capacitive multitouch
• 16GB-64GB flash storage
• iPad is powered by our Apple’s custom silicon–“We did it inhouse and it just screams,” says Jobs.
• Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, accelerometer, compass.
• Battery life: 10 hours.

“And in addition to 10 hours of battery life, iPad offers a full month of standby time,” Jobs notes. “It’s also a good environmental citizen,” he adds, noting that it’s a very green device.

10:31 am: Jobs invites Scott Forestall to the stage to talk about apps on the device.

“We built the iPad to run virtually every app in the App Store right out of the box,” Forestall says.

Evidently, a built-in pixel-doubling feature automatically scales iPhone apps to full-screen iPad apps.

10:35 am: Forestall runs an unmodified racing game from the App Store. He first demos it in the screen size of an iPhone. Then, using the pixel-doubling feature, he blows it out to full screen. Very slick.

“So you can buy the iPad, take it home, hook it up and download all your iPhone apps and run them with no problem at all,” he says.

Forestall announces a new iPhone software development kit specifically geared to the iPad. He notes that iPad-specific applications will be featured “front and center” in the App Store.
He then invites Gameloft’s Mark Hickey to the stage to demo some new games the company has developed using the new SDK.

Hickey notes that the iPad’s additional screen space is a boon for developers, particularly those building games. He demos a first-person shooter that showcases this. “We’re now able to interact with the game world in ways that we weren’t able to before.”

10:40 am: Next up, the New York Times. Martin Nisenholtz takes the stage to talk about its iPad effort.

After talking up the Times iPhone app, Nisenholtz segues to the the paper’s new iPad app: “We think we’ve captured the experience and essence of reading the newspaper.”

The app is largely what you’d expect. Tap to resize text, zoom, breaking news updates, video. “This is everything you love about the paper and everything you love about the Web.”

10:44 am: Now, a painting application called Brushes that was famously used to create a New Yorker cover.
The app is impressive enough on iPhone; it’s even more so on the iPad. It supports “playback” of paintings, and as the presenter notes, brings us one step closer to a real virtual painting studio.

10:46 am: EA’s Travis Boatman take’s the stage. The topic of his presentation: Need For Speed.

“Building for the iPad is a little bit like holding a high-def TV screen a few inches from your face,” he says.

The iPad version of Need for Speed boasts a number of touch-activated enhancements: Tap on the car to view its interior, tap on the rear-view mirror to look behind you.

10:52 am: Up next: MLB.com’s Chad Evans. He demos the outfit’s iPad-optimized app, which uses the device’s additional screen space to display video excerpts and MLB TV.

MLB TV can be streamed like and enhanced with onscreen stats and data. “This big display really allows us to create a much more immersive experience,” Evans says.

10:52 am: Forestall returns to the stage to make another brief plug for the SDK before Jobs takes over for him.
“Let me show you another one of our apps that we’re very excited about,” Jobs says. “An e-book reader.”

Behind him a photo of Amazon’s (AMZN) Kindle appears. “Amazon did a great job with their reader and we’re standing on their shoulders here….Today we’re announcing the iBooks store,” says Jobs, adding that it will be supported initially by Penguin, Simon & Schuster and a number of other big publishers.

The iBooks Store interface begins with a simple bookshelf view. Tap the screen and it loads a more iTunes-like view. Purchase a book and it’s added to your bookshelf with a slick little animation.

The reading experience seems very appealing. Much more book-like. From where I sit, the pages look like they’re written on paper.

“We use the e-pub format, the most popular open-book format in the world,” says Jobs. “We think iPad is going to be a very popular e-reader not just for bestsellers, but for textbooks as well.”

10:58 am: And here’s another new product announcement: A new version of iWork tweaked for use on the iPad. Jobs invites Phil Schiller on stage to demo it.

“We have a completely new version of Keynote, a completely new version of Pages and a completely new version of Numbers–all optimized for multitouch.

Schiller demos Keynote first. Creating presentations appears intuitive and simple–a slide navigator on the left, tap to load individual slides in the main window, drag to rearrange.

Nice use of multitouch gestures to enhance the app. Pinch to resize photos, tap to insert animations and transitions. These are all fairly advanced techniques and the device seems to handle them well.

11:05 am: Moving on to Pages now. Also impressive, though creating a written document on a tablet device like the iPad seems like it might be a drag. A nice tool for editing, though. Simple controls.

11:07 am: Moving on to Numbers. This application also makes good use of multitouch gestures and boasts a data-entry keyboard along with some 250 built-in functions. The software’s gesture capabilities makes Excel look antediluvian.
Powerful and fast.

So what’s Apple going to charge for iWork? $9.99 each, says Schiller, who notes that all three applications are compatible with their Mac versions.

Jobs returns to the stage, grinning. “Isn’t that great?” he asks for what’s easily the 10th time. iPad, he says, will synch to Mac or PC via USB.

11:14 am: Evidently, there will be two iPad models–one with Wi-Fi-only and one with Wi-Fi and 3G. The 3G device will come with two plans: 250 MB per month for $14.99, unlimited data for $29.99.

And who’s the carrier? AT&T.

A small groan ripples through the audience.

Jobs allows that AT&T is also throwing in free Wi-Fi at its hotspots. He follows that up by noting that there are no contracts for the iPad. You can cancel at anytime.

All iPad 3G models are unlocked and they use new GSM micro SIMS, so chances are they will just work, Jobs says, after noting that Apple hasn’t yet worked out international carrier deals.

11:16 am: Now a quick overview as a wrap-up. Jobs touts the overall tablet experience along with the new iBook app and iBook Store. “This is an amazing product with tremendous breadth. What should we charge for it?…When we set out to develop the iPad we not only had aggressive UI goals, we had aggressive price goals, because we wanted to put this in the hands of as many people as possible….IPad pricing starts not at $999, but $499,” Jobs says to a huge round of applause.

$499 for 16GB base model.
32GB for $599.
64GB for $699.
Adding 3G requires an additional fee.

Apple will ship Wi-Fi models in 60 days and 3G models in 90.

11:20 am: Apple has created new accessories for the iPad: A standard dock and a second dock with a keyboard attached to it. “Keep one of these in your den and you can write the next “War and Peace” on it.” The final accessory, a new case that doubles as a stand.

Running a video now. It features a number of Apple execs enthusiastically talking up the iPad.

11:25 am: Let me circle back here for a moment to pricing. Adding 3G to iPad requires an additional $130. So we’re talking $629 for the 16GB model, $729 for the 32GB and $829 for the 64GB version.

Designer Jon Ives on the iPad: “In many ways iPad defines our vision, our sense of what’s next.”

11:32 am: Jobs returns to the stage and recalls the “middle device” scenario he mentioned earlier today. “Can we create this new category? The bar is set pretty high, but we think we’ve got the goods.”

“This is our most advanced technology in a magical and revolutionary device at an unbelievable price,” he adds. “The reason the iPad is going to be so great is because Apple has always strived to be at the junction of technology and liberal arts.”

And with that he concludes. Lights go up and Dylan begins playing over the speakers again.

View the slideshow

PREVIOUSLY:

• Apple’s Tablet: A $2.8 Billion Business?
• Apple’s Tablet: MacBook Airbus?
• Apple Announces Jan. 27 Special Event: “Come See Our Latest Creation”
• Major Apple Product Announcement Set for Wednesday, Jan. 27
• Apple Pitching Tablet to Publishing Industry; Spring Launch Expected
• Time (Finally) for the Tablet? Apple Developers Supersizing Their Apps for January Event.
• The Apple Tablet Is Delayed? So What?
• $1.9 Billion in Capex? What’s Apple Planning?
• Apple’s Tablet: Read Different?
• Imaginary Demand for Mythical Apple Tablet Exceeds All Estimates
• Apple Tablet Coming to AT&T?
• New From Piper Jaffray Analyst Gene Munster: The Apple iPad
• Rumored Apple Netbook Actually an E-Book?
• iTablet: Apple’s Killer App for Higher Ed
• iFugly

The iLife software has integrated photo, video, music and Web-design applications meant for average, nontechnical consumers. It is better, in my view, than any comparable offering on the Windows platform, even those that cost extra.

This week, Apple (AAPL) released the latest version of the suite, called iLife ’09, and I have been testing it for a while. It includes five programs: iPhoto, iMovie, GarageBand, iWeb and iDVD. The new version will be bundled on new Macs, and current Mac owners can upgrade to it for $79.

This latest iteration isn’t a radical revision of iLife, and I wouldn’t say that it’s a must-have upgrade for current Mac owners. But three of the programs — iPhoto, iMovie and GarageBand — have significant new features that make them more appealing and useful.

In particular, iPhoto now has the ability to detect and identify faces in your photos; to identify and map the location where they were shot; and to directly post sets of photos to, and synchronize them with, the popular online services Facebook and Flickr.

I focused my tests on iPhoto’s sexiest new feature — face recognition. It worked OK, but it wasn’t as good as I had expected from software made by Apple.

GarageBand, a powerful but easy tool allowing nonprofessionals to mix and produce music, now offers beautifully produced video lessons in how to play the two most popular instruments: guitar and piano. There are some free lessons built in, but you can also buy, for $5 each, lessons from famous artists such as Sting and Norah Jones.

In iMovie, you can now do precision editing of clips. You also can insert one clip in the middle of another by simply dragging and dropping; insert animated maps into travel movies; and apply handsome themes that can make a home movie look like, say, a scrapbook. There’s also a new tool that stabilizes jerky footage, like video shot from a moving car, although Apple warns that this process can take hours.

For me, however, the most important improvements in iLife ’09 are in iPhoto, Apple’s program for organizing, editing and sharing digital pictures. The top two are face recognition and geo-tagging, the ability to tag a photo with its location. Neither of these features is unique to iPhoto. For instance, the Web-based version of Google’s (GOOG) Picasa photo software has face recognition, and Flickr, a Yahoo (YHOO) online service, has location tagging. But Apple has enabled them in iPhoto in its typical handsome, easy manner.

There are two new views of your photos in iPhoto ’09. One, called Faces, organizes all the photos in which faces have been identified. You click on a thumbnail bearing a person’s face and get an expanded display showing all of the photos identified as including that person.

The second, called Places, shows a Google map with pins in the places where the locations of your photos have been identified. Click on a pin, and see a display of all the photos shot at that location.

Face recognition takes several steps. First, iPhoto analyzes your photos to pick out the faces, which are then shown enclosed in a rectangle when you click the new “name” button. You then are prompted to type in a name under the rectangle identifying each face. Once you’ve identified the same person in multiple photos, iPhoto begins to identify that face in any additional photos. If you bring up a picture of a person you’ve identified, and click “confirm name,” iPhoto will show you other pictures it thinks include the same person, and ask that you confirm its suggestions.

In my tests, on two different Macs with thousands of photos, face recognition worked most of the time. But I was too often disappointed. In a surprisingly large minority of cases, iPhoto failed to detect the presence of a face, even when it was large and clear, or to correctly identify faces it did detect, even after I had named or confirmed the same face in dozens or scores of other pictures.

The program sometimes confused men and women, and in a few cases even claimed animals or inanimate objects were people. It rarely detected faces shot from the side, even if they were sharp and obvious. The program also was slow to analyze newly imported photos, or to synchronize name tags already entered on Facebook, a feature Apple touts.

The Places feature worked much better, automatically recognizing the location of pictures taken from devices with built-in GPS tagging, like Apple’s own iPhone, and optionally showing a map when you click on a photo. It was also easy to manually enter a location for an entire “event,” or group, of photos taken at one time.

I still like and recommend iPhoto and iLife. But, in my opinion, the new face-recognition system isn’t up to Apple’s self-proclaimed high standards, and isn’t reliable enough to justify an upgrade all by itself.

• Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free, at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090128/ilife-gets-better-just-dont-ask-it-to-find-a-face/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090106/macworld-all-about-the-mac-ilife-09/ http://allthingsd.com/20090106/macworld-all-about-the-mac-ilife-09/#comments Tue, 06 Jan 2009 17:09:08 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=10645 An appreciative Phil Schiller welcomes the crowd and thanks everyone for showing up. He says it’s an incredibly exciting time for Apple (AAPL), and offers a quick overview of Apple’s new retail stores. “Each and every week some 3.4 million customers visit Apple Stores worldwide,” says Schiller, who notes a resurgence in interest in the Mac. Says Schiller: This year’s Macworld will be all about the Mac. I’ve got three new things to tell you about.

The first: iLife ’09. iPhoto now offers a new feature called Faces, which categorizes photos by faces. The software uses a technology called “face detection” to ID the subjects of photos. It asks you to identify the subjects first and then scans the remainder of your photos; using face recognition, it identifies other photos in which those subjects appear.

Another new iPhoto feature: Places. It does the obvious. Using the GPS geotagging built into newer cameras and “the best cellphone in the world,” iPhoto identifies the location at which photos were taken and categorizes them accordingly. What about photos that don’t include those geotags? Manual entry solves that problem with a little help from Google Maps.

Apple has also added Facebook and Flickr support to iPhoto. Set up your accounts in iPhoto and the software will automatically send your photos to those services and allow your Facebook friends to tag them if you so choose. Beyond these features, iPhoto includes a slick new slideshow and book themes.

MacWorld 2009 Keynote Photos

• Phil Schiller signs off a the MacWorld 2009 keynote by thanking Apple employees worldwide.
• Tony Bennett at MacWorld 2009.
• Tony Bennett at MacWorld 2009.
• Tony Bennett gives the final musical performance at the MacWorld 2009 keynote.
• Tony Bennett, as seen from the jumbotrons at MacWorld 2009.
• Phil Schiller introduces Tony Bennett to the stage at MacWorld 2009.
• Phil Schiller, VP of Worldwide Marketing for Apple, gives the final Apple keynote at MacWorld.
• iTunes Music Store, now available through 3G networks.

View photos at SmugMug

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090106/macworld-all-about-the-mac-ilife-09/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20081118/a-search-engine-with-a-real-eye-for-videos/ http://allthingsd.com/20081118/a-search-engine-with-a-real-eye-for-videos/#comments Wed, 19 Nov 2008 01:52:03 +0000 Katherine Boehret http://solution.allthingsd.com/20081118/a-search-engine-with-a-real-eye-for-videos/ Web video has transformed the way the Internet is used, but finding the exact clip you want can be incredibly hard. And it’s no wonder, considering that sites like YouTube conduct their hunts by looking at a clip’s “contextual metadata” — tags, video title and description — and thus can often be misled by false information. For example, a homemade video about cooking might be inaccurately tagged with a popular search word like “Obama” so as to get more traction.

At the top of a VideoSurf results page for ‘Mad Men,’ users can search for clips featuring specific characters.

This week I tested VideoSurf.com, a site that claims to be the first to search videos by “seeing” images that appear in these videos. The company says its technology can analyze a clip’s visual content, as well as its metadata — especially when searching for people. VideoSurf has analyzed and categorized more than 12 billion visual moments on the Web to understand who the most important characters and scenes are in a video, and it uses this knowledge to sort clips according to relevancy.

Search results on VideoSurf spread out videos in a filmstrip-like format, distinguishing one scene from the next. Users can choose an option to show only faces, which helps if you’re looking for a specific person in a long video or movie. And when looking at videos from certain sources, you can select a scene from the filmstrip and jump ahead to that scene rather than sit through the entire clip.

When it works, VideoSurf is one of those technologies that make you wonder why someone didn’t think of it sooner. The site aggregates content from about 60 sources, including YouTube, CNN Video, Hulu, ESPN and Comedy Central, and a sorting tool weeds out unwanted results like the irksome slideshows that are labeled as videos. VideoSurf can find videos on all kinds of subjects, but it really shines when it finds well-known people.

But VideoSurf has some rough edges and doesn’t always work as it should. In its defense, the site is still in its public beta, or trial, stage, and plans to be full-blown by early next year. Right now, one of its best features, the ability to jump ahead to specific scenes, works with video from only a handful of sources including YouTube, MetaCafe, DailyMotion and Google (GOOG) Video. Videos from Hulu.com confusingly allow jumping ahead only from certain screens.

Additionally, I came across a couple of videos that were no longer available, though they were listed in search results. And a customizable VideoSurf home page for users with accounts on the site saves searches but not specific clips; VideoSurf plans to fix this next week by adding a favorites page where users can store and share favorite videos with others.

Still, I really grew to like VideoSurf’s clear way of displaying content that would be otherwise buried within videos. Rather than trying to guess a video’s contents by looking at a single representative image, VideoSurf’s filmstrip views showed me exactly what I’d be watching. In many cases, I viewed a video I might not have otherwise watched because its filmstrip showed shots of scenes that looked interesting.

On the left-hand side of the search-results page, VideoSurf users can narrow results according to Content Type, Categories and Video Sources to see just what they’re looking for — or, often more important, what they’re not looking for. Content Type, for example, includes slideshows, Web series, full television episodes and full movies; a search can include only videos in a particular category (say, slideshows) or exclude that category altogether by unmarking the box beside it.

Most search-results pages include tiled still images at the top representing the characters in the videos. By selecting one of these characters, users can refine search results to show only videos with that character. For example, I typed the title of a favorite television show, “Brothers and Sisters,” into the search box and saw the names and images of seven actors on the show at the top of the screen. I selected Sally Field and was redirected to results of videos featuring only the mother she plays on the show.

I used VideoSurf to search for Beyonce’s “Single Ladies” music video, and then changed the date parameters to find only videos posted this week. This retrieved a Saturday Night Live skit in which the pop singer spoofs her own video with help from three men in tights — including Justin Timberlake. While the SNL skit ran, a list of related videos appeared in a column on the right, including clips of J.T.’s past SNL skits.

Occasionally, annotations appear on videos, but these come from the source — not VideoSurf. If overlaid text appears on YouTube videos, it can be turned off using an icon in the bottom right of the YouTube screen. Video-sharing sites that use introductory pages such as pre-rolls before each video will still show those pages.

VideoSurf makes it easy to send specific clips of videos to friends. I did so by selecting a Share option and adjusting slide bars to trim the clip to start and end at scenes I preferred. Clips shared with friends via email are sent with the VideoSurf filmstrip, giving others the ability to also know what the video will include so that they, too, can discern whether or not they want to watch it.

Clips can be shared on social-networking sites like del.icio.us, MySpace and Facebook, though VideoSurf’s helpful filmstrip didn’t show up on these sites like it did in emails.

I also tested an add-on for the Mozilla Firefox browser called Greasemonkey that works with VideoSurf. When installed, this displays VideoSurf’s helpful filmstrip beneath search results from Google Video, YouTube, Yahoo (YHOO) or CBS.com (CBS). Once installed, filmstrips illustrating important scenes appear along with the normal text results for videos, and some of the filmstrips enable jumping ahead to specific scenes. This somewhat techie Greasemonkey extension can save people the extra step of making a separate visit to VideoSurf.com to watch a specific clip.

VideoSurf uses smart technology that can save people the aggravation of watching videos that aren’t what they appear to be. Since so much Web content now includes videos, a visual search tool that can better assess videos like VideoSurf is a good idea. When this site improves its now-flaky ability to jump ahead to specific scenes in videos, it will be even more valuable.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

• Email us at mossbergsolution@wsj.com. Find this and other columns and videos online free at the All Things Digital Web site: http://walt.allthingsd.com

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