Glenn Beck managed to lose roughly a million of his Fox News viewers in 2010, and his slide has continued into 2011. Beck’s viewership numbers have gotten so bad that he has been only able to top 2 million viewers three times in the month of January. Beck has seen his ratings decrease by half, and there seems to be no end in sight for the viewer exodus from his program.
Google ‘not happy’ with Android Market purchase rates, many changes coming
Having a Market full of apps is a very good thing for owners of Android handsets, but those owners buying few premium apps is a bad thing for developers who keep that Market full. That, of course, is also bad news for Google, which is making a variety of changes to appease devs, some of which Android Platform Manager Eric Chu outlined at the Inside Social Apps conference yesterday. After already nuking the 24 hour trial period Google is now working on an in-app payment system, which would enable the direct-selling of add-ons, costumes, and enough other bits and bobs to ensure you’ll never buy a fully-featured app again.
Google is also negotiating with more carriers to allow users to have app purchases appear on their bill, rather than using a separate payment system, as is already possible on AT&T. Finally, a team of honest to gosh humans is working on helping to weed out apps that violate the company’s terms of service, sifting through the Market to find bogus downloads, perhaps an admission that the “open and unobstructed environment” ideal isn’t working out. We wonder if they’ll also be looking for free apps that quite capably provide the functionality of premium ones. Those, it seems, are the greatest threat to the paid apps – and perhaps the greatest asset of the Market itself.
Lots of original ideas here.
I am ecstatic to announce that Pixelmator grossed a gigantic $1 million on the Mac App Store. And that happened in only 20 short days.
This is serious attention to detail. It’s not something people will show off to each other on the bus, or something that you can put on an advert or trumpet on a feature list. It just makes the app a bit quieter and a bit more well behaved. The addition of this extra detail has made the app less visible than if the detail wasn’t there. Lovely.
Senator Al Franken: No joke, Comcast trying to whack Netflix
Republicans have spent the better part of a year hammering against those arguments [in favor of the health care law], with very little response. Now, Democrats promise at least a week of fighting back.
Democrats Plan Attack on Republican Repeal Effort
Wow. A whole week.