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HBO Go is an online streaming service that lets subscribers catch up on HBO’s award-winning and ass-kicking TV content? It’s about to hit smartphones and tablets early next month. Android and iOS HBO Go Apps have been teased by a new video on HBO’s YouTube channel, with promises of “instant and unlimited access” to “every episode of every season” of your favorite shows, garnished with a selection of hit movies. The apps and streaming will be free to HBO subscribers, who’ll be able to get their Sopranos nostalgia on over 3G as well as WiFi. May 2nd is the date on which the teaser video ends, though it doesn’t explicitly say that the service will be enlivened then. We’ll just have to wait and see.

It seems Apple is making a number of changes with the app store’s ranking last week. There seem to be new weights on top of download numbers to determine the top apps. It’s too fresh to tell what the weights actually are. It is reasonable to assume however that Apple is considering factors such as active usage. After the changes one of the most significant jumps was the Facebook app which took over the number one spot in free apps in the United States where normally it was positioned between positions ten and twenty. Obviously the app will have high usage which gives credence to the idea that activity is now playing a stronger role in the rankings. According to AppData facebook app is used by 39.5 million users daily. Also shown is the movement of Netflix from between thirty and fifty to nineteen and Pandora which is now at six but usually was in the twenties. So it does look more and more like activity will play a big part on what apps are ranked at the top.
Me personally I think this ranking is a good idea. Instead of people spamming downloads to get the rankings up, people will actually have to do what you actually download it for, which is to use it! I hope that all companies follow these types of algorithms, such as blackberry and Android. It will help people in the marketplace not only find apps that are popular but are also used on a daily basis.

The file backup and sharing service Dropbox is hitting a milestone. It has reached 25 million users and 200 million files are saved daily with more than 1 million every five minutes. The growth is astonishing, just last year the company only had about 4 million users. The idea of dropbox is rather simple. It enables people to sync files and media across platforms and devices, and in order to have them available from any location. Dropbox also allows users to easily and efficiently share files with other users and you get 2GB of free space and can pay for more if you have an extensive library. These types of services are awesome and very useful. It would be interesting to see what type of revenues they are getting from customers that go over the 2GB. With 25 million users and 200 millions files per day I would say a good chunk of those people are paying something.

Gamers have been waiting years for Nintendo to finally release its Wii successor, and Game Informer has heard from multiple sources that the company will unveil it at E3 this summer if not sooner. There has been talk about an HD Wii for some time now, and the time is perfect – almost necessary – for Nintendo to jump start itself with this new system. The company has been feeling the bite since Wili sales have declined from the previous years, and this week’s news that Nintendo could be dropping the price on May 15th of the Wii and an attempt to move as many Wii units as possible out of the retail channel before the new system hits. There is no confirmation if this new system will be backward compatible with the Wii or if it will even carry the Wii branding as has often been rumored. It is our understanding that Nintendo is trying to embrace the western gamer and will likely launch a new brand with this console. Around the office we have dubbed the system Nintendo HD. However, this information at this point is conjecture.

As I posted in my blog yesterday Google had a great first quarter of 2011. One of the notable points is that 3 billion applications installed. To put the 3 billion stat in perspective, Apple just passed 10 billion apps in January. But thanks to the fast growth of the sale of Android phones, Google’s app downloads are growing fast. The first billion installs took 20 months, the second billion installs took another 5 months, and the third billion took only 2 months. It’s also important to note that because of Google’s open platform, Android users can download apps from a number of marketplaces, including Google’s Android Market. Amazon just launched an Android app store a few weeks ago. With fewer restrictions placed on Android developers it not hard to see why Android apps are moving so fast. Now it will be interesting to see how long it takes them to hit the 10 billion mark Apple hit in January.

Here is a sample of what Google did in the first quarter of 2011. To say the least they are growing at a good pace and with some of the new ideas they will be implementing in the future I could see their growth continue.

Q1 Financial Summary
Google reported revenues of $8.58 billion for the quarter ended March 31, 2011, an increase of 27% compared to the first quarter of 2010. Google reports its revenues, consistent with GAAP, on a gross basis without deducting traffic acquisition costs (TAC). In the first quarter of 2011, TAC totaled $2.04 billion, or 25% of advertising revenues.
Google reports operating income, operating margin, net income, and earnings per share (EPS) on a GAAP and non-GAAP basis. The non-GAAP measures, as well as free cash flow, an alternative non-GAAP measure of liquidity, are described below and are reconciled to the corresponding GAAP measures in the accompanying financial tables.
• GAAP operating income in the first quarter of 2011 was $2.80 billion, or 33% of revenues. This compares to GAAP operating income of $2.49 billion, or 37% of revenues, in the first quarter of 2010. Non-GAAP operating income in the first quarter of 2011 was $3.23 billion, or 38% of revenues. This compares to non-GAAP operating income of $2.78 billion, or 41% of revenues, in the first quarter of 2010.
• GAAP net income in the first quarter of 2011 was $2.30 billion, compared to $1.96 billion in the first quarter of 2010. Non-GAAP net income in the first quarter of 2011 was $2.64 billion, compared to $2.18 billion in the first quarter of 2010.
• GAAP EPS in the first quarter of 2011 was $7.04 on 326 million diluted shares outstanding, compared to $6.06 in the first quarter of 2010 on 323 million diluted shares outstanding. Non-GAAP EPS in the first quarter of 2011 was $8.08, compared to $6.76 in the first quarter of 2010.
• Non-GAAP operating income and non-GAAP operating margin exclude the expenses related to stock-based compensation (SBC). Non-GAAP net income and non-GAAP EPS exclude the expenses related to SBC and the related tax benefits. In the first quarter of 2011, the charge related to SBC was $432 million, compared to $291 million in the first quarter of 2010. The tax benefit related to SBC was $92 million in the first quarter of 2011 and $65 million in the first quarter of 2010.

In the next few weeks it is said that Apple is finally ready to sell white versions of the iPhone 4. It’s been delayed for about 10 months says people close to the plan of launching a white iPhone. By the end of April it is said this will be available for both Verizon and AT&T. The biggest issue and why it was taking so much time to get his phone out in white is said to be issues with paint that peeled off under heat and some other manufacture challenges. After releasing the iPhone 4 in June, Apple announced the delay of the white version, citing unspecified manufacturing troubles. Complications with a sensor used in the device were one difficulty, one of the people said. Until now, it’s only been available in black. Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of marketing, indicated last month that a white model would be available soon, writing on Twitter that it would be on sale by spring. The iPhone accounted for 39 percent of Apple’s sales in the fiscal first quarter, which ended in December. The Cupertino, California-based company is due to report second-quarter financial results on April 20.

For all of you video editing enthusiasts out there Final Cut Pro X is getting a rebuild from the ground up and it will have 64-bit support… YAY! Chief Architect of Video Applications Randy Ubillos demonstrated a beta release of the program at NAB. e “rebuilt from ground up” video editing suite — which now shares a similar look and feel with iMovie — will be shipped with 64-bit support to finally make use of more than 4GB of RAM, as well as handling 4K clips on 8-core editing rigs (by way of the Grand Central Dispatch feature on OS X Snow Leopard). Most notably, though, is that this new FCP will always be rendering instantly in the background, meaning you can edit on the fly much like you do on iMovie! There’s also a whole stash of other new features: editing before media ingest, magnetic timeline, people detection, instant color matching between clips, smart collection of media based on custom keywords and people, auto image stabilization on import, and many more. Itching to get your hands dirty with Cupertino’s new video tool? You’ll be able to download it from the Mac App Store in June for just $299.

Paul Ceglia an upstate New Yorker who sued Mark Zuckerberg last July claiming that, back in 2003 Zuckerberg had agreed to give him half ownership of the project that is now known as Facebook. There are many things that make this weird, for example, the seven years it took him to file such a case and also his past also could come into play as he was a convicted felon. Although he has brought some compelling evidence to the table, a signed contract for two projects on which they were working together on, one being called Streetfax and the other called the face book. The purported contract gave Ceglia a 50% ownership in “the face book” project in exchange for funding its initial development, as well as an additional 1% ownership of the project per day for every day that the project remained uncompleted past a certain launch date. Facebook doesn’t deny the Streetfax part but adds that the face book part is fabrication. given the time that had passed, Ceglia’s fraud conviction, and the lack of a payment trail for payments made to fund the development of “the face book” (as opposed to StreetFax), this indeed seemed the most logical explanation. It will be interesting to see how this all plays out in the end.

Walter Isaacson has the duty of writing the authorized biography of one Mr. Steve Jobs. The most interesting part is Jobs hasn’t wanted a bio put out and has fought the idea for a very long time. However, the news came as no surprise to anyone who has worked with Isaacson. If there is one thread that runs through his long career in journalism and public service, it’s his talent for spotting the most influential people in any room and finding a way to get close to them. How did Walter manage to win the trust of Steve Jobs, a man whose huge for secrecy — and his contempt for journalists — are legendary? Says Simon & Schuster editor-in-chief Priscilla Painton, Isaacson’s editor and a Time alumna: “It was Walter’s idea. And you know Walter — he just worked at it.” All I have to say is good luck Walter and I look forward to the chapter about his relationship with Bill Gates.