Angry Birds Take Off On Roku

Photo courtesy of Rovio

Roku has come a long way over the years, from only streaming Netflix, to streaming hundreds of entertainment channels, to now entering the realm of casual gaming. The first game we’ll see out of its Internet TV platform is one of my all-time favorites, Angry Birds.

Roku will offer Angry Birds, Angry Birds Seasons and Angry Birds Rio video games, launch an Angry Birds video channel featuring Angry Birds animated shorts and sell Angry Birds merchandise all via the Roku Channel Store. The merchandise availability will be convenient – because of Angry Birds’ growing popularity, the merchandise (i.e., plush birds) are difficult to find around town.

“Angry Birds is the most popular and fastest-growing casual game, yet it has been trapped on mobile devices,” says Roku founder and CEO Anthony Wood. “We believe there’s a huge market for games like these on the TV. Just as we were the first to enable Netflix to stream instantly to the TV, we intend to be the catalyst for transforming the way people play casual games – starting with Angry Birds – on the biggest screen in the home.”

There aren’t many details out yet, but perhaps we’ll see this new casual gaming experience soon on a new player. It may even be compatible on the existing Roku hardware with some software updates. Stay tuned for details . . .

Logo courtesy of Twitter

Twitter Begins Photo and Video Sharing

At last week’s All Things Digital Conference, Twitter announced that Photobucket will power its new native photo sharing capabilities. After years of leaving picture and video sharing to third-party services, this will make it easier for tweeters to upload and share media with their followers. Expect it to be rolled out within the next couple of weeks.

Twitter’s new service means that photos and videos will be directly connected to your tweets and viewable on

Twitter.com without having to leave the website as you do now. At the moment, if you want to attach a photo to your tweet, you need to use TwitPic or yFrog, and links appear next to your tweet.

Photobucket currently has 100 million users and more than 8 billion uploads, making it the world’s largest and most robust dedicated personal media site, and robust enough to serve Twitter’s rapidly growing audience.

Photos on Twitter will be tagged “powered by Photobucket” and link to a page that allows you to sign up or sign into your Photobucket account via Twitter to further edit, share or save your photos. Additionally, those of you who use mobile versions of Twitter will be able to add photos and videos from your apps as well.