MediaFile

Comcast, the largest U.S. cable operator, is unveiling an app for the iPad that will allow its digital TV customers to watch shows and movies wherever they are.

The Xfinitiy TV app is both a TV guide and mobile video player according to Comcast, and will enable customers to use the iPad as a remote control, search for their favorite cable shows to watch on TV, On Demand, online or on the iPad.

Cable companies, grappling with increasing competition from Johnny-come-latelys like Netflix and Sezmi, are very keen to seek new ways to provide better value to customers for  ever-rising cable bills. The ability to watch what shows you like, when you want – even when you’re on the move — might be one way to provide that value and avoid the mythical or real threat of ‘cord-cutting’.

Comcast Cable Chief Neil Smit was due to show off the new app at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco as we went to press.

“This Xfinity TV app is part of a much larger effort to reinvent the way consumers interact with their televisions by transforming the way they search, navigate, discover and share entertainment,” said Neil Smit, President of Comcast Cable. “The remote control hasn’t changed in years and this app will enable millions of consumers to instantly search thousands of live TV and On Demand choices and also watch the best content whenever and wherever they want.”

A number of Web companies are fighting to become the primary service for people to “check in” to real world locations, like coffee shops and stores.  

But Meebo believes there’s an equally important need for people to check in to Web sites that’s been overlooked.

Meebo hopes to fill in what it says is a missing piece of Today’s social Web, creating a social network based not just on friends and contacts, but on personal interests.

We’ve recently been wondering who the real boss is at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. You know, the supreme chief, the head honcho, the generalissimo.  At one point we noticed the management team consisted of two co-chief executives, an executive chairman as well as a chief financial officer. All this with Martha herself hovering in the background.

Well we won’t have to wonder anymore. Or maybe we will.

It looks like the company’s top tier is slimming down with co-CEO Wenda Harris Millard stepping down to join Media Link, an advisory firm, less than a year after the ex-Yahoo exec was promoted to (co-) run the lifestyle brand.

Millard’s co-CEO Robin Marino will no longer hold that title but will continue to oversee the company’s merchandising business — and perhaps as consolation for her loss of title the company has recommended her for a seat on its board.