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Amazon launches Kindle Worlds publishing platform for fan fiction, will pay royalties to writers and rights holders

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Amazon’s taken a number of steps to bring different types of content to the Kindle Store, and it’s now venturing into an area that has a long history with the internet: fan fiction. The company’s today announced Kindle Worlds, a new publishing platform that promises to pay writers royalties for stories inspired by established works. Naturally, the original rights holder needs to be a willing participant as well, and they’ll also be paid a royalty for all fan fiction stories sold. So what are your options for now? For the launch, Amazon has partnered with Warner Bros. Television Group’s Alloy Entertainment to open up three of its series to fan fiction enthusiasts, giving you the chance to write stories set in the world of Gossip Girl, Pretty Little Liars or The Vampire Diaries. The company’s promising that additional licenses are on the way, but for now you can check out the finer details in the press release after the break and at the source link below.

Filed under: Amazon

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Source: Kindle Worlds

Hands-on with BBM Channels: BlackBerry’s trojan horse social platform

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“It’s more like Tumblr.” That’s how one BlackBerry rep described BBM Channels to us, the company’s new social networking service announced this past week at BlackBerry Live in Orlando. While Channels, alone, may initially seem like nothing new — it’s an iteration of a social communication model we’ve seem countless times before — the service actually speaks more to BlackBerry’s forward-facing strategy for BBM as a device-agnostic mobile solution. And, certainly, with the BBM messaging service heading to Android and iOS later this summer, BlackBerry only stands to gain from making its platform more robust, more engaging and more attractive to the big name brands, personalities and publications that draw followers.

Gallery: BBM Channels

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Software, Mobile, Blackberry

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KakaoHome is a Facebook Home alternative for Korea’s biggest messaging platform

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Author: Melissa Shroeder

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Facebook isn’t the only company that wants to give your Android experience a makeover. The Korean startup behind the massively popular messaging app KakaoTalk has just released KakaoHome — a launcher that lets you quickly reply to KakaoTalk messages without having to open the app, somewhat like Facebook Home’s vaunted Chat Heads. Reported by The Guardian, the app also lets you quickly check notifications for Kakao’s suite of apps, including the Tumblr-like KakaoStory, and KakaoGame, which is similar to Apple’s Game Center.

KISI Launches Its Keyless Home Access Management Platform On Indiegogo

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Author: Stefanie Jenkins

Munich-based startup and TechCrunch Disrupt NY Battlefield contestant KISI Systems is launching its Indiegogo campaign today. KISI and KISIBox together comprise a keyless entry solution that lets users provide timed, revokable access to their own apartments on an as-needed basis. It’s the perfect complement to collaborative consumption services like Airbnb and TaskRabbit and in general a very useful addition to any household.

KISI takes its cues from enterprise-grade tools that allow businesses to control who can and can’t gain access to a facility – co-founder Bernhard Mehl explained that he and his co-founders decided it was an idea that would make perfect sense when applied to a consumer setting, too.

The KISI system is a combination of hardware and software, with a set price of $ 479 up front when it hits retail. Initially, backers can get it for $ 249 for the first Indiegogo supporters, and the best part is that the service is included with the hardware purchase, so this isn’t something that you end up necessarily paying for on a continual basis. There is a SaaS model planned as well, for people who’d like access to premium features, but Mehl says that in general, they aren’t interested in making homeowners feel like they’re renting the locks on their doors.

“We stripped an enterprise product down to a consumer-friendly version, and provide very easy-to-use key-management tools, so we have a web app and you can manage or see who accessed your apartment, or who currently has access on their smartphones,” Mehl says. “It’s a more decentralized or democratized access, so that it’s not the house owner who controls all the keys, but the resident themselves.”

KISI is designed for apartment tenants primarily, and can be made to integrated with your intercom system to provide complete building access from a web-based dashboard. Mehl says that where in the past this has been accomplished through sharing of hardware keys, that’s a dramatically outdated prospect, since it involves granting a type of access you can’t easily revoke, at least not without changing your locks. The platform is why KISI isn’t just another Lockitron, providing things like integration with an intercom system, and a record of when keyholders have accessed your apartment, and for how long.

The big opportunity for KISI is to take advantage of the rise of services like Airbnb, Exec and TaskRabbit, and collaborate with those companies to help provide temporary access to service pros who might only need it for a few minutes, a week or an afternoon.

“All the hardware parts are installed in your apartment, and you can open even the front door of the house with your smartphone, and yet nothing changes for anyone else who has physical key access” he said. “Up to now, you had to change the whole system to get automated access, but the cool thing is that we’ve managed to accomplish that without requiring a complete overhaul.”

KISI has already impressed enough to win an entrepreneurial startup grant from the German government, and they’ve won various prizes, including from the NYCEDC, which provided them with $ 25,000 for the “Next Idea” award.

KISI will launch in New York City and Munich first, and will then expand to other markets after that. It doesn’t replace existing standards like Z-Wave, but works with them, and can also be used in combination with existing devices like Lockitron, so there’s opportunity for it to grow into existing home automation systems.

AT&T launches Digital Life home automation and security platform

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Author: Randy Miller

It’s been a long time coming. Seriously. AT&T first teased us with Digital Life way back in February of last year. Now the home security and automation platform is finally ready for prime time. Starting today customers in the 15 launch markets (Atlanta, Dallas, Chicago, Houston, LA, Miami, SF, Seattle, Austin, Philly, Riverside, St. Louis, Denver, Boulder and the New York/New Jersey metro area) can put in their orders, provided they live in a single-family, detached house. There will be two packages to choose from: Simple Security and Smart Security. The former is a pretty standard alarm system with sensors, an HSPA-based base station and a 24-hour backup battery, for $ 30 a month and a one-time installation fee of $ 150. Smart Security is where the real fun happens, though. The basic version starts at $ 40 a month, with a $ 250 installation fee, and includes your choice of three additional features including a motion sensor, carbon monoxide sensor, glass break sensor, smoke sensor or a takeover kit. From there you can add on additional packages, like energy management or a camera system, for between $ 5 and $ 10 a month, plus the cost of installation. Those costs can quickly add up too. Those two add-ons alone could push the price of installation as high as $ 650.

To go along with the launch AT&T is also releasing its remote control app, which will be available on iOS, Android, Windows Phone 8 and, “eventually,” BlackBerry. Through the app you can lock doors, adjust your thermostat, turn on and off lights or appliances and check your security cameras. The most powerful feature, though, is the ability to create programs that can automate tasks, send alerts and trigger events based on data from the sensors. For example, if the glass break sensor on the kitchen window is tripped, the system can be set to turn on the lights in the room and start recording a video. Eventually, AT&T even sees the ability to integrate with the location services on a cellphone for additional automation options. If you’re hankering for more details, check out the PR after the break.

Gallery: AT&T Digital Life hands-on

Filed under: Household, AT&T

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Facebook buys Microsoft ad platform Atlas

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Facebook has officially bought Microsoft’s Atlas advertising platform. In a statement, the company said Atlas would give advertisers a better idea of how their campaigns were doing and would “help advertisers compare their Facebook campaigns to the rest of their ad spending across the web on desktop and mobile.” Atlas, Facebook says, is already in use by many advertisers on the site, but the company is planning to build out both its measurement systems and its user interface, making it easier to use and offering a more complete picture of campaigns. As Facebook works to monetize its system, this will become particularly important — despite fast growth, it’s been hard to find good metrics on how well its ads actually work.

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Microsoft job listing hints at unified Windows and Windows Phone development platform

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Author: Jon Daniels

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Microsoft has been touting the importance of the “shared core” between Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 since last year, but a recent job posting indicates the company may be taking things a step further. As spotted by WMPowerUser, Microsoft had posted a job listing for a software development engineer to help bring the development platforms for Windows Store apps and Windows Phone closer together. It’s since been removed, but a Google cache of the listing reveals the pitch — “Do you wish the code you write for Windows Store apps would just work on the Windows Phone and vice versa?” — and states that among other responsibilities, the position would focus on solving “the technical challenges of bringing a platform built for desktops and…

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Vimeo introduces content ratings for videos, keeps its platform in check

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Vimeo’s certainly made its presence felt inside multiple media-delivery mezzanines, but the video service isn’t forgetting all about the essentials: its own platform. As such, Vimeo today revealed some even more changes to its site, which will see the introduction of a content rating system for released videos. The most recent alterations, as seen in the photo above, add an evaluated score badge to a user’s video, making it a requirement to brand any uploads as “All Audiences,” “Mature,” or “Not Yet Rated.” According to Vimeo, these content ratings are “the initial step along a path that will make Vimeo more easily accessible to more audiences,” adding that in some cases it’s a a good concept to let individuals know “if a face is going to explode or if somebody is going to take their jean shorts off. “

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Chumby platform could die in February as funding for open source project dries up

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Author: Margo Tipton

Chumby 8

An avid development community has actually managed to keep the Chumby platform alive even after Chumby Industries went bust last year. In spite of having no clear path forward in the time because, Chumby users haven’t yet abandoned the business’s line of equipment: over 40,000 gadgets continue to be in “energetic use” according to stats published on the Chumby online forums late last week. However now it appears the money required to keep the open source project going could possibly quickly dry up. After Chumby the business went under, financing has been passed in between the Chumby estate, an assignee for the possessions, and most lately “a company that does not wish to be determined,” according to the post. However that’s set to end in February, with monthly repayments that total between $ 4,000 and $ 5,000 …

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QNX’s Car platform 2.0 puts a 1080p display, LTE, and video calling in your car

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Author: Gabe Hall

QNX Car platform 2.0

QNX might be best understood for providing the underpinning for RIM’s BlackBerry 10 and PlayBook running systems, but it additionally has actually been constructing embedded systems for years, consisting of those that run lots of auto manufacturers’ navigation systems. At CES 2013, the business was demoing its brand-new Auto platform 2.0 in a Bentley Continental 2.0, and displayed some quite cool brand-new attributes and individual interfaces that could wind up in your next vehicle.

The star of the Automobile platform is 17-inch, curved 1080p display that makes use of Texas Instruments‘ DLP innovation to support 512 point multitouch. Thanks to the DLP innovation, the show can even track a finger prior to it even touches the screen and provide various features relying on exactly what mode the system is in. QNX …

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Posts Tagged ‘Platform’

Amazon launches Kindle Worlds publishing platform for fan fiction, will pay royalties to writers and rights holders

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Hands-on with BBM Channels: BlackBerry’s trojan horse social platform

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KakaoHome is a Facebook Home alternative for Korea’s biggest messaging platform

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KISI Launches Its Keyless Home Access Management Platform On Indiegogo

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AT&T launches Digital Life home automation and security platform

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Facebook buys Microsoft ad platform Atlas

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Microsoft job listing hints at unified Windows and Windows Phone development platform

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Chumby platform could die in February as funding for open source project dries up

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