Monthly Archives: October 2011

Kinect TV And Sesame Street Hack The Next Generation Of TV

BY Gregory Ferenstein
Tue Oct 18, 2011

Xbox Kinect TV plans to bring interactive, immersive experiences to live action television and children’s books with the help of National Geographic and Sesame Street’s Workshop.

Xbox is unveiling a sharp idea for the next generation of television: interactive, live-action content, produced in partnership Sesame Workshop and National Geographic. Downloadable, linear episodes run like a normal television show but give children opportunities to play simple games with familiar characters and don virtual costumes that mold to their bodies and play around with the show’s environment. A series of interactive children’s books is also in the works. Dubbed “Project Columbia,” they allows burgeoning readers to explore the otherwise static world of a picture books with games, sounds, and augmented reality.

“An analog television show is not designed as a one-on-one experience,” Dr. Rosemarie Truglio, Vice President of Education and Research and Sesame Workshop, tells Fast Company. With an immersive environment, fluffy characters tailor the learning experience to different skill levels and invite children to explore imaginary and exotic locations. (more…)

A conversation with Woz

RealDan Namaste.
Welcome to my Blog
October 11th, 2011

Last week, in the course of reporting articles for Newsweek on the death of Steve Jobs, I spent two hours on the phone with Steve Wozniak, Apple’s co-founder. Woz reminisced about his friendship with 16-year-old Steve Jobs, their early days listening to Dylan bootlegs and what it was like as Apple took off. He recalled the times when they disagreed — but never, ever had a face-to-face fight or argument, he insists — and why he believes that Steve died happy. Woz told me about the early days when he and Steve were going door-to-door in the dorm rooms at Berkeley selling blue boxes, illegal electronic devices that let people make free long-distance phone calls. He told me about a prank call they made to the Vatican, and about getting robbed at gunpoint. Finally, Woz revealed that, owing to some kind of miscommunication, he never participated in the forthcoming Walter Isaacson biography of Steve Jobs. (more…)

Educated, Affluent and Hispanics Flock Online

Hispanic Marketing BlogOctober 2011
Post Date-August 26, 2010

A survey measured media use among specific demographic groups and revealed a trend toward  increased use of online sources for news and information among the college educated, Hispanics and those making more than $100K per year, compared with the general population.

Not surprisingly, the research also found that the younger the respondent, the more reliant that person was on online sources.

Key demographic differences:

  • Respondents with household incomes of $100K or more receive considerably more news and information from online sources (23.1% vs. 14.6% for the general population).
  • College grads report using online sources more frequently (20.0%).
  • Adults ages 18-34 report the highest reliance on online sources (22.2%).
  • Hispanics are more likely to prefer online sources (21.0%).

“The data showing an increase in online use and drop in daily newspaper consumption echoes what we’re hearing from consumers and media partners,”

Hispanics Flock to the Web for Communication and Entertainment

Add eMarketer to your Google Toolbar eMarketer
OCTOBER 17, 2011

The US Hispanic population is young, growing and online

The US Hispanic population is booming. According to the US Census Bureau, the Hispanic population in the US grew by 43% between 2000 and 2010, to 50.5 million, or 16.3% of the total population. This group is young, growing, and ethnically diverse.

It’s also online in large numbers. eMarketer estimates that 63% of the US Hispanic population accesses the internet at least monthly this year, rising to 73% by 2015. This group skews young an somewhat male.

“Hispanic internet usage has grown significantly in recent years, as this population uses all types of technology to access the internet,” said Lisa E. Phillips, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the new report, “Hispanics: Demographic Profile and Marketing Approaches.” “Entertainment, communication and shopping are major activities conducted online, although ecommerce activity still lags the non-Hispanic population.”

Hispanics may not do as much online shopping as some other populations, but they are major users of social networking sites. According to May 2011 data from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, two-thirds of online Hispanics use social networking sites, a level that’s slightly above the average rate. (more…)

The Internet in Africa – still an alien concept

internet

TNW Africa
16th October 2011
by

I remember visiting a school in Accra, Ghana earlier this year. Though many of its students could recite the lyrics of popular musicians in Ghana, none of them had heard of YouTube or even of the Internet. Such experiences bring one face to face with certain realities; first is that Africa remains the world’s least connected continent and second is that it will take tremendous effort by the continent’s private and public sector to reverse this reality.

With the excitement surrounding the arrival of undersea cables in Sub-Saharan Africa and the prospects of the smartphone revolution in bringing mobile connectivity to most parts of the continent, it is easy to forget for instance that the continent still has 1 domain per 10,000 users.

At the same time, the continent hopes to find solutions to some of its developmental problems through Internet based technology. In education, there are the vast prospects that e-learning provides for students, but doing this in a way that scales is difficult in Africa’s low bandwidth environment. There are also prospects in various sectors ranging from agriculture to finance each with its own unique set of challenges.

Perhaps the best representation of the level of Internet activity on the continent is an infographic of Facebook connections released late last year by a Facebook employee. As illustrated, compared to other parts of the world, most of Sub-Saharan Africa needs lighting up save for what looks like some level of activity in South Africa, Kenya andNigeria. (more…)

Relatively Speaking On Broadway

By ELAINE MAY
Published: October 13, 2011

Allen, Coen and May: 3 Wits, One Show

Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

The Plays of “Relatively Speaking”: clockwise from top left, Danny Hoch, left, and Jason Kravits in Ethan Coen’s “Talking Cure,”; Marlo Thomas, left, and Lisa Emery in Elaine May’s “George Is Dead”; and, from left, Bill Army, Ari Graynor and Steve Guttenberg in Woody Allen’s “Honeymoon Motel.”

THE producers of “Relatively Speaking” (which opens at the Brooks Atkinson on Oct. 20) have asked me to conduct an in-depth interview with Ethan Coen and Woody Allen, with whom it turns out I have written three one-act plays.  I have done this by submitting questions to both men who will presumably answer them in depth.  I’ve interviewed Woody Allen before but I have only recently met Ethan Coen and we have never spoken although our silence is friendly.  My challenge will be to ask the probing questions that will reveal the deeper, more complex nature of both men in a way that will not hurt ticket sales. (more…)

CNN Tech
By Doug Gross, CNN
Wed October 12, 2011

(CNN) — When word came down Monday that an ownership lockout would cancel at least the first two weeks of this year’s NBA season, players’ association president and Los Angeles Lakers point guard Derek Fisher had a three-word response.

“LET US PLAY.”

But they didn’t come in a press release or a statement in front of a bank of news cameras. Instead, they were on Twitter, the social-media platform where the league’s stars have millions of followers and where they hope their high profiles will win public sympathy during an increasingly bitter labor fight.

It’s not the first time pro athletes have used the site’s micro-blasts of info to make their case in such disputes. In fact, “let us play” was a refrain used by the NFL players’ association on Twitter during last summer’s labor negotiations, which were settled without any regular-season play being missed. (more…)

European Engagement on Entertainment Sites Grows 10 Percent in the Past Year

comScore, Inc.

comScore Releases Overview of European Internet Usage for August 2011

LONDON, UK, 11 October 2011 – comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released an overview of internet usage in Europe, showing 372.1 million unique visitors went online in August 2011 for an average of 25.4 hours per person. This release highlights internet usage in 49 European markets aggregated under the European region and provides individual reporting on 18 markets. Among the reportable markets, the United Kingdom showed the highest engagement with users spending an average of nearly 35 hours online in the past month, up 1.5 hours from the previous month.

Overview of European Internet Usage by Country Ranked by Total Unique Visitors (000)
August 2011
Total Europe Audience, Age 15+, Home and Work Locations
Source: comScore Media Metrix
Location Total Unique Visitors (000) Average Hours per Visitor Average Pages per Visitor
World-Wide 1,411,178 23.6 2,211
Europe 372,066 25.4 2,659
Germany 50,410 24.5 2,710
Russian Federation 49,991 21.7 2,332
France 42,441 24.7 2,484
United Kingdom 37,254 34.7 3,205
Italy 23,613 15.8 1,647
Turkey 23,100 32.7 3,706
Spain 20,930 23.9 2,029
Poland 18,193 24.1 2,794
Netherlands 11,977 32.8 3,181
Sweden 6,196 24.0 2,406
Belgium 6,006 19.9 2,116
Switzerland 4,712 18.3 1,882
Austria 4,710 13.8 1,513
Portugal 4,216 20.4 2,021
Denmark 3,665 21.2 2,172
Finland 3,368 24.1 2,312
Norway 3,249 26.1 2,327
Ireland 2,337 21.0 2,035

Engagement with Facebook in Europe Increases in August 2011
Google Sites continued to rank as the top European web property in August with 337.7 million unique visitors (maintaining a 6-percent increase from a year ago), reaching 90.8 percent of the total European internet audience. Microsoft Sites ranked second with 255.9 million visitors (68.8 percent reach), followed closely by Facebook.com in third place with 245.3 million visitors (65.9 percent reach). (more…)

Q&A: U2 Manager Paul McGuinness Reflects on Steve Jobs’ Passing

Billboard.biz
October 07, 2011
By Bill Werde, New York

Portishead
The Kitchen Debate: (From left) Interscope-Geffen-A&M Chairman Jimmy Iovine, U2′s Bono, Apple founder and CEO the-late Steve Jobs and U2 guitarist The Edge holdeing the black-and-red U2-branded iPod, the plan for which was first negotiated in the kitchen of Jobs’ Palo Alto, Calif. home. (Photo: Getty Images)

In the past few years, arguably no one has been a more prominent, more outspoken advocate on behalf of artists, record labels, publishers and other rights-holders in the digital age than U2 manager Paul McGuinness. McGuinness shepherded four young men (and himself) from the streets of Dublin to the top of the world, including a deal done in Steve Jobs’ Palo Alto, Calif., kitchen in 2004: McGuinness, Bono, Interscope’s Jimmy Iovine and Jobs ate lunch and agreed to a deal to use U2′s “Vertigo” in an iPod TV ad, and for Apple to create a black-and-red U2-branded iPod.

U2 hadn’t previously used its music in advertisements, and-heaven forbid-Apple had never released an iPod that wasn’t white. McGuinness recalled this moment during a keynote speech at the MIDEM Music conference in Cannes in January 2008, while also beseeching Jobs to “bring his remarkable set of skills to bear on the problems of recorded music.” McGuinness grouped Apple in with a number of other telcos and search companies that had “built multibillion-dollar industries on the backs of our content without paying for it” and urged them to take greater responsibility.

McGuinness caught up with us from his Dublin office, warmly remembering Steve Jobs the man, the music fan and, yes, the tough negotiator. (more…)

Exclusive Q&A: Bono on Steve Jobs’ Rock and Roll Spirit Music

October 7, 2011 6:10 PM ET

bono steve jobs ipod

Bono and Steve Jobs announce the release of the U2 Special Edition iPod.
Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images

Steve Jobs came out of a Sixties rock and roll ethos, which is fascinating.
That’s the big story. If you asked in the Eighties, “Who is going to invent the 21st century,” you’d probably have thought the Japanese or maybe the British or the Germans. No, it was sandal-wearing, anarchic music-lovers from California. And that is fucking great.

In the Sixties, bands from the Bay Area felt they were going to change the world, but they didn’t. They changed my world, they changed your world, but they didn’t change the world. Before that happened, they disappeared, like so many of us do, up their own rectum – drugs and the vicissitudes took their toll.

However, the next generation really did change the world. The people who invented the 21st century had their consciousness shaped by music and by powerful rock and roll music, and it’s not just Steve Jobs, it was Paul Allen, it was lots of people. I once put this to Bill Gates, I said, “I know you probably didn’t listen to Jimi Hendrix,” and Bill protested, “Are you kidding me, in all my time with Paul Allen, how could I have not been shaped by Jimi Hendrix? That’s all we heard 10 hours a day.” (more…)