The incredibly popular, Skype which allows users to make voice calls over the Internet, will now be available on HDTVs. Skype has announced that in 2010, their software will be available on HDTVs of Panasonic and LG. Â 720p HD quality video calling will be delivered at thirty frames a second and with a resolution of 1280 x 720. People can now make HD voice+video calls on an HD TV with an internet connection, for example the LG 26 inch LCD and Plasma HDTV and the Panasonic 201 Viera Cast HDTV.
The software will already be embedded into Panasonic’s 2010 VIERA CAST-enabled HDTVs and LG’s new line of LCD and plasma HDTVs. Pretty cool, as you can now talk to your friends and family who live far away, right from the comfort of your bedroom or living room, without using a PC. But there’s a catch. A webcam is not included. Users will have to buy HD webcams, which Panasonic and LG will make, with prices up to $200.
But with the interest in HD TV escalating, this new gadget may work, and will surely be interesting to use.
The global search engine scene has always been very competitive. This is so because advertising through search engine, pioneered by Google, has become a very huge source of revenue for companies involved in the business of search like Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo! etc. Therefore, the competing teams behind the major search engines in the market are constantly trying their best so that they can outsmart their counterparts and achieve a higher percentage of the global market share.
Google is still at the top of the pecking order with a little more than three-fourth of the market share. Yahoo! has still maintained its second place with 11.75% of the market share. But the most noticeable point is that Microsoft’s Bing has risen to the third spot with a market share of 10%.
This shows us that the hotly contested search market is going through change due to a major shakeout. With its recent self re-invention, Microsoft has found itself again a major player in the market. Bing remains the smallest of the big three, but with its lightning fast product cycle, and friendly interface, not to mention strong search results; it seems only a short time until it finds a comfortable role as the second largest.
Bing’s momentum appears to be building both in terms of traffic and public acceptance. That is in part due to clever implementations of visual search and other shortcut tricks that make it more likely a search query will return exactly the factual information one is requesting. While Google may still dominate the sector, even if Bing becomes a strong second player in the space, that could mean a huge revenue boost for Microsoft.
The growing success of Bing asks the question – why is Yahoo losing share? The company will actually shut down its search algorithms sometime next year in favor of using the algorithms designed by Microsoft that power Bing. The most obvious reason for its declining share is that Bing is eating its lunch, a situation that Yahoo probably hoped would not occur when she signed the search engine licensing and advertising revenue sharing deal with Microsoft last summer. Bing has been making strong gains in the lucrative shopping vertical, a search space where Yahoo has long been the largest player.
For Yahoo, the risk of a total collapse in search is something the company has yet to contemplate but could possibly become a reality if Bing picks up considerable steam and Yahoo ends up trapped in a contract that hems in its ability to innovate in the search space. Apart from the big three, two other prominent but less popular search engines, Cuil and Ask are determined to fight harder and carry their search engine to the top.
