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Listen up, college-hoops fans: I have good news and bad news about this year's version of the CBS Sports NCAA March Madness On Demand app.

The good: Unlike last year's version, it doesn't require a Wi-Fi connection to stream live games. Now you can watch over 3G or even EDGE.

The bad: CBS hiked the price from $4.99 to $9.99. But let's face it: For any hard-core NCAA fan, that's peanuts for the privilege of watching every game in the tournament on demand.

On the other hand, if you can live without the … Read more

Apple's plans for cloud computing go beyond music.

The company's representatives have recently spoken with some of the major film studios about enabling iTunes users to store their content on the company's servers, two people familiar with the discussions told CNET. That's in addition to streaming television shows and music.

Apple has told the studios that under the plan, iTunes users will access video from various Internet-connected devices. Apple would, of course, prefer that users access video from the iPad, the company's upcoming tablet computer, the sources said. Apple spokesman Tom Neumayr said Apple doesn'… Read more

Netflix currently offers its streaming software through the browser, and on all three major gaming consoles. Could the iPhone be next?

The DVD rental and streaming service is at least considering it. The blog Hacking Netflix reported Monday night that some customers are being asked if they would use a Wi-Fi version of the streaming software on their iPhone.

Here is the text of one of the questions in the survey:

Imagine that Netflix offers its subscribers the ability to instantly watch movies & TV episodes on their iPhone. The selection availability to instantly watch includes some new releases, lots … Read more

PandoraMan is a tiny app that lets you run the streaming-music service Pandora outside of--and without even opening--your Web browser.

Using Apple's WebKit engine, PandoraMan runs as a standalone app, and the interface is just a subset of the Flash-based Pandora window that you normally see when you go to the Pandora site: you see your stations, your current music stream, and playback controls, and you are automatically logged in after you first open the app. You can switch and make changes to stations, but if you click on any of the other drop-down features (for example, to search … Read more

Typically, natural disasters come with little advance notice. But after a massive 8.8-magnitude earthquake struck Chile early Saturday, much of the Pacific coast, including Hawaii, came under tsunami watch over the course of the day. That makes this was one time when the news media is poised to catch it all on film.

It may, in fact, be the first time that the developments leading to a potential natural disaster has been broadcast live in this way.

Of course, these days that means streaming on the Web, too; searching live-streaming site Ustream for "tsunami" will bring up … Read more

Facebook this week was awarded a patent pertaining to streaming "feed" technology, more specifically "dynamically providing a news feed about a user of a social network," complementing another patent filing that has been published but not yet approved.

The implications for this, as AllFacebook.com pointed out earlier on Thursday, are far-flung: Facebook may choose to pursue action against other social-media sites that potentially violate this patent. Twitter, as AllFacebook points out, is effectively one giant news feed, to the extent that it clearly has influenced some of the changes that Facebook made to its own feed technology.… Read more

We've been highly skeptical of the benefits of buying a Netbook with a built-in Broadcom Crystal HD video accelerator.

First, we're fans of Nvidia's Ion GPU, which not only provides similar HD video playback assistance but also basic 3D graphics support. Second, the Broadcom part wasn't supported by Adobe's Flash player, making it useless for streaming Web video, which is what we'd imagine a lot of Netbook owners would want to play.

But, as the Nvidia Ion in its current form is not available on Netbooks built around Intel's newer Atom N450 CPU, the Broadcom chip is the only game in town at the moment.

Fortunately, Adobe has finally made Flash 10.1 beta 3 available for download, which, according to the PC makers who offer Netbooks with the Broadcom Crystal HD video accelerator, provides better HD Web video streaming performance.

We took a Netbook with the Broadcom Crystal HD video accelerator, HP's new Mini 210, and ran it through several Web video tests to see if the new Flash player actually provided any benefit. A video overview of our results is embedded (excuse the occasional cameo appearance by my face in the overly reflective glossy screen). … Read more

Update: Check out our video of Flash 10.1 beta 3 in action!

With portable 10-inch screens and prices as low as $299, a Netbook would seem to be a great choice for video-watching on the go. Sadly, your average Netbooks can't handle HD video, so getting a good experience from Hulu, YouTube, or Netflix on Demand is out of the question most of the time.

One could always apply some lowered expectations and consume only SD video sources, but if that really the kind of world we want to live in?

One step in the right direction was … Read more

Let's say you'd constituted a drinking game for the aftermath of Tuesday's unveiling of Google Buzz, the odd new mishmash of status messages, geolocation, and social-media aggregation: Take a drink every time some pundit says Google is trying to "kill" Facebook, Twitter, or any number of the "geo" start-ups out there.

You'd have been totally blitzed.

The cries of "It's a Facebook killer!" and "It's going to kill Twitter!" are tedious, but completely understandable considering that this is one of the first big pushes from Google, … Read more