New Media BC Industry News

Sproose: Human Powered Search Meets Digg

Fri, 01 Jun 2007 12:59:26 +0000

Asking how many ways you can make a search engine is like asking how many ways you can scramble an egg, there are a number of different ways and although it’s not rocket science you can still end up with something inedible.
People powered search is the trendiest of egg scrambling search engine recipes at the [...]

There Is A Rock Paper Scissors World Championship

Fri, 01 Jun 2007 12:02:46 +0000

The greatest strategists from around the world will gather in Toronto October 13 for the right to become the champion of champions. The 2007 World Rock Paper Scissors (RPS) Champion!
It turns out that the 2007 International World RPS Championships are being organized by some folks in the Web 2.0 business who attended Mesh in Toronto [...]

Parallels 3.0: Another Compelling Reason To Buy A Mac

Fri, 01 Jun 2007 07:36:41 +0000

The hardest thing for a Windows user wanting to make the switch to Apple is having software and games that won’t run on a Mac. Likewise OSX is deficient as a gaming platform.
Parallels has long bridged the Windows/ Mac divide by providing Windows support from the Mac desktop. The upcoming version of Parallels, Desktop for [...]

Cell Phone Submitted Classified Listings: iqzone

Fri, 01 Jun 2007 04:41:00 +0000

Scottsdale, Arizona based iqzone has a solution for those seeking to sell items on the go: cell phone submitted classified listings.
Iqzone’s “Snap Send Sell” feature allows users to take a photo or video clip of any product or service, text a description and send as a Multimedia (MMS) message to iqzone. Iqzone then categorizes and [...]

Fix8 Brings Computer Generated Animation To The Webcam

Fri, 01 Jun 2007 02:40:53 +0000

Sherman Oaks company fix8 brings the world of computer generated animation to the webcam with software being pitched as “User-Generated Reality”.
fix8 combines video, animation and instant messaging that allows users to create their own partial or full custom avatars that mimic human movement.
At the heart of fix8 is H.E.A.R.T. (Human Expression Analysis and Rendering Technology), [...]

Animation Podcast 018 - Burny Mattinson, Part Three

Wed, 16 May 2007 00:26:40 -0700

In part three, Burny Mattinson continues the conversation on his amazing career, from Mickey's Christmas Carol, to the arrival of the Eisner era, through storyboarding on Beauty and The Beast. Burny has worked at Walt Disney Animation Studios for close to 55 years as an animator, story artist, director, and producer.

Animation Podcast 017 - Burny Mattinson, Part Two

Mon, 04 Sep 2006 02:36:15 -0700

Burny Mattinson has worked at Disney Animation for well over 50 years on such titles as Lady and the Tramp, Sleeping Beauty, Robin Hood, The Rescuers, Mickey?s Christmas Carol, The Great Mouse Detective, Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King, Mulan. In part two, Burny describes his transition from his short lived career as a full-fledged animator to a story artist and then to director. He also tells about the transition the studio made from Walt to the twilight of the careers of the Nine Old Men to the development of newer talent that has led the studio through the last 25 years.

Animation Podcast 016 - Burny Mattinson, Part One

Mon, 26 Jun 2006 02:43:27 -0700

Interview with Burny Mattinson, 50-year veteran of Walt Disney animation studios. A few films he has worked on include Lady and the Tramp, Sleeping Beauty, Robin Hood, The Rescuers, Mickey's Christmas Carol, The Great Mouse Detective, Tarzan, and Mulan. In part one, Burny recounts how he came to work at the Walt Disney Studios in the 50s, and eventually worked under many of The Nine Old Men animators there.

Animation Podcast 015 - Glen Keane, Part Two

Sun, 23 Apr 2006 22:18:42 -0700

Supervising animator of Ariel, The Beast, Aladdin, Pocahontas, Tarzan, John Silver and Director of the upcoming film Rapunzel. In part two of the interview Glen talks about training under Ollie Johnston and some of the artistic struggles and realizations during his career.

Animation Podcast 014 - Glen Keane, Part One

Sun, 02 Apr 2006 21:52:44 -0700

Ariel, The Beast, Aladdin, Pocahontas, Tarzan, John Silver. The list should say it all. Animation hero to many, Glen Keane has created many of the most memorable characters in modern animation with performances that rival those of any flesh and blood actor. In part one, Glen talks about being an artist, discovering animation, and his first years at the Disney studio.

Advertising Campaigns and Barriers to Creativity

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 -0500

The other day, I was driving down the road here in Cambridge, when an advertisement came on touting a car dealership. It caught my ear because it was one of those negative campaigns I've written about before. As I wrote...

Visible World's Partnership with Tremor Expands Ad Content into Online Platforms

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 -0500

An interesting new deal was signed this week that could have some continued effects on the ways in which online advertising is created. Visible World, a company known for working with major cable systems to be able to insert targeted...

GSD&M's Andy Hunter and Information Visualization

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 -0500

A wide variety of people read the Convergence Culture Consortium Weblog on a semi-regular basis but may not completely understand what it is we do. First off, all the information on what C3 is and what we do here at...

Fantasia Film Festival Programming Director Hired To Scout for Paramount

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 -0500

Fellow Convergence Culture Consortium Media Analyst Geoffrey Long recently passed some news my way that I found quite interesting. For those of you who might not have heard, the programming director of the Fantasia Film Festival has been hired by...

CW and MediaVest Plan for Series with No Traditional Ad Content

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 -0500

One of the most interesting stories stemming from the upfronts in TelevisionWeek was Jon Lafayette's piece on The CW selling a show with no traditional advertising in it. First, for those who haven't heard, the CW Network will be launching...

OK, now for some light relief?this is sooooo cute

Thu, 31 May 2007 13:21:56 +0000

Sony announced at GDC earlier this year this wonderful game that is being developed by Media Molecule�for Playstation 3: LittleBigPlanet.

It is described on the Media Molecule site as follows:
The LittleBigPlanet experience starts with players learning about their character?s powers to interact physically with the environment. There are obstacles to explore, bits and pieces to collect [...]

Sean Cubitt

Thu, 31 May 2007 12:52:41 +0000

News from Adrian’s blog is that Sean Cubitt has a blog. Now, Sean’s writing is not for the faint at heart but for the strong of mind. Eg:
The multidimensional mysteries facing the analyst of light in the early 21st century are neither more nor less characteristic of our times than the explorations of Groseteste or [...]

On Two-Faced Blogging

Thu, 31 May 2007 11:55:18 +0000

I’d like to just take a moment and share with you what it is like being in industry�and academia. This post is actually in response to Monique’s comment yesterday:
Hi Christy,
Ah the terming debate? sigh.
Now, what Monique is referring to is my�recent rantings about terminology on this blog. I highlight it because it may just be [...]

?Multi-Platform Storytelling? according to Tejpaul Bhatia

Tue, 29 May 2007 13:54:23 +0000

Tejpaul Bhatia, the founder of Tej�Media Networks & senior manager of international business strategy for ESPN New Media,�was recently interviewed on Kevin Roberts site SISOMO about “multi-platform storytelling”.
Multi-platform story-telling requires story-teller?s to think on multiple levels and in multiple dimensions. The audience is no longer in one place and no longer on a single device [...]

Clash of the literacies: Making a ?ludocinematic future?

Tue, 29 May 2007 12:36:21 +0000

Recently, a top Hollywood special effects company — Digital Domain – announced that they will be investing 25 million into making “creating a video game that matches the quality of a feature film”. Well, as you can imagine, the gaming community found this claim pretty insulting. Well respected game designer Clint Hocking rants at his [...]

CBS buys Last.fm for $280m, plans more ads

Wed, 30 May 2007 15:32:19 -0700

As hinted at back in February, Last.fm has been trawling around looking for a buyer and today it found its harbour in the form of a US media giant. The 'social music' site has been bought by CBS Corporation for $280m (�140m). This is less than the earlier rumour, but still the largest-ever buyout of a UK-based "Web 2.0" site.

The site was founded in the UK five years ago (you may have heard the stories about the founders sleeping on the office roof in a tent when they couldn't afford accommodation). It now has more than 15 million active users. Users basically connect with other listeners with similar music tastes, build their own personal radio stations and watch music video-clips.

Although the announcement today says that Last.fm's managing team (founders Felix Miller, Martin Stiksel and Richard Jones) will stay and the site will maintain its own separate identity, I can't see this staying this way forever, now that it's part of CBS, which will probably ditch the European sensibility of the service.

Stiksel reportedly said: "This move will really support us to get every track ever recorded and every music video ever made onto Last.fm." He also says LastFM will "put the users in charge. CBS gets this." Time will tell, time will tell.

Meanwhile for the less cynical among you, here is co-founder Richard Jones on the company blog today:

"The team here have spent a lot of time this year discussing what the future should hold for Last.fm, and while contemplating raising some additional venture capital we were approached by CBS. As you can imagine, we have been approached numerous times in the past few years from all the usual suspects regarding acquisitions and so on; CBS are one of the few companies who needed no explanation of what we are doing, and we were impressed at how progressive their plans are. This deal with CBS gives us a chance to really make Last.fm shine, and gives us more flexibility than other funding options would for doing all the crazy stuff we?re had scribbled on whiteboards for years."

So why did CBS buy it? CBS radio is the largest radio group in the United States, with 179 stations in the top 50 markets, but traditional media growth is stagnating and all the action - as everyone knows, especially when it comes to music and the youth market - is all online. The purchase thus adds to an advertising portfolio that already includes conventional radio, broadcast and cable TV and outdoor services.

CBS now has a strategy of reaching as big an audience as possible, not on creating content. It sounds like they plan to rely more on the users and viewers themselves to do that. In fact, CBS CEO Leslie Moonves says Last.fm's community play us "central to CBS". In truth CBS is coming late to the now established idea that music is a natural community builder and therefore a very 'sticky' eyeball attractor. As an anonymous CBS executive has already said: "We see it as a chance to get new eyeballs ? or in this case earlobes."

As for the price, it looks easily affordable by US standards. Consider some earlier deals: News Corp bought MySpace for $580m (�290m) in 2005. Google paid $165bn (�82bn) YouTube in 2006. But according to the LA Times, the final price for closely held Last.fm could rise substantially if performance targets are met. Last.fm got its first round of funding last May from Index Ventures.

There may be a problem for LastFM in that in the US the recent ruling by the Copyright Royalty Board massively increases the royalties Internet broadcasters have to pay for streaming digital songs. This has already hit Pandora's plans to expand outside the US.

However advertising may offer more hope. Although LastFM recommends music for purchase, sales are not in fact a big revenue earner. Instead CBS will probably create sponsored channels, garnering bigger corporate deals with its existing sales contacts.

Expect also CBS radio stattions to start to appear on LastFM. Country AND Western anyone?

Google buys Feedburner to sell ads into RSS

Wed, 23 May 2007 21:02:17 -0700

No wonder Google has acquired RSS management service Feedburner. FeedBurner publishes feeds for PC World, Computerworld, Macworld, Reuters, USA Today, AOL, Newsweek and many many more big and small publishers. That means the bulk of the content from these sites passes through Feedburner, and what does Google love? Content and data, but especially eyeballs. According to TechCrunch (following an unconfirmed rumour on Vecosys) Feedburner is in the closing stages of being acquired by Google for around $100 million in cash. Google has effectively bought Feedburner to get into the RSS Ad market. The growth market for ad inventory - though still small outside of the tech sphere - is increasingly found in people reading site content via start pages like Netvibes, RSS services like Bloglines or RSS readers like NetNewsWire. These people never visit the actual sites, and yet their content needs to be monetised somehow. This is a threat to AdSense, which only appears on sites, not feeds. The answer? Buy a service like Feedburner, which had already set up its own advertising service. Bully for them.

Joost hunts down talent, avoids UGC

Wed, 23 May 2007 11:21:42 -0700

Joost is hiring talent scouts Creative Artists Agency to get Hollywood programming onto its service. Along with well known programming and a clutch of top advertisers Joost wants to offer shows from independent professional video makers rather than "wild" UGC/social media. Joost has $45 million from five backers and signed Viacom and sister company CBS for content recently.

DAB to be replaced - yet more confusion

Wed, 23 May 2007 11:08:53 -0700

DAB radios being sold in the shops today will not be able to receive any of the many new stations that will launch using the new "AAC+" format in the coming years. Many of the new AAC+ radios will probably launch within the next three years, some as early as summer/autumn 2007:

"How quickly it will be before AAC+ is used on DAB is dependent on the proportion of DAB receivers in the UK market that support the new DAB standard. The good news is that DAB is still in the relatively early stages of growth, and sales are forecast to really take off over the next few years."

Press Gazette relaunches site

Tue, 22 May 2007 23:25:26 -0700

The UK's Press Gazette magazine, a title for journalists, has relaunched its web site in a three column design. From the more colourful home page, drop-down menus lead the user into the various magazine and site sections. It seems clear that the main site is running on a fairly old-fashioned content management system still, while the blogs have shot ahead, with tag clouds, pictures, comments and blog rolls.

120pc UK mobile penetration?

Wed, 07 Mar 2007 12:46:44 -0800

Mobile Today has a neat graphic for subscriber takeup in the UK:

However, where is 3? As Ed Cross says:

What it looks really interesting is the total cumulative amount of subscribers in the study to be 66.7 million, this number does not consider "3", lets add maybe another 5 million for their probable share?, Tesco Mobile, Dot Mobile, and any other MVNO's i am not aware of (EasyMobile closed last december), lets add 1 million for these group?.

Mobile is the next mass medium

Wed, 07 Mar 2007 12:41:22 -0800

Or so says Tomi Ahonen on Communities dominate brands:

Mobile as the 7th mass media is as much superior to the internet, as TV is to radio. Today at 2.7 billion mobile phone users, there are three times as many mobile phones as personal computers (and over a quarter of all internet access is already from mobile phones). There are nearly twice as many mobile phones as TV sets. Twice as many people use messaging on a phone (SMS text messaging) as use e-mail on the web. But mobile was first a communication device. It emerged as the 7th mass media only by the year 2000. By far the youngest of the seven mass media, the mobile is also by far the least understood.

Don't have time to read the whole thing? His argument is neatly summarised by Nic Brisbourne thus:

IAB says it doesn't push the 'big' publishers

Mon, 27 Mar 2006 13:30:33 -0800

Guy Phillpson of the Internet Advertising Bureau spoke at The Media Guardian's Changing Media Summit.

He said the IAB doesn't push any one publisher when talking about online advertising. The IAB has large and smaller members, he said.

"We're format agnostic about it. We talk more in terms of disciplines like rich media advertising, not about platforms."

"If there's something [and advertising format] that's proprietorial then a publisher might get mentioned."

Lord of the Rings Online Review

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 -0500

The circle is now complete. With Turbine's release of Lord of the Rings Online: The Shadows of Angmar (LOTRO), the Massively Mutliplayer game figuratively eats the tail of its originator in ouroboros-like fashion. Tolkien's work begat Dungeons and Dragons, the PC gaming market, CRPGs, and finally Massive games, and last month's release of LOTRO beautifully reconnects the future with the past. Replacing dice-wielding friends around a table has even, wonder of wonders, been done well. Polished gameplay and cutting-edge graphics abound; In direct contrast to the lackluster response to Turbine's other MMOG, Dungeons and Dragons Online, Lord of the Rings Online has had an overwhelmingly positive reaction from fans. Read on for my notes from the experience of trying on Hobbit feet for a month, and a few words about why LOTRO's quality is notable and highly encouraging.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

DVR Viewers Push Ad Ratings Higher

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 -0500

An anonymous reader writes "It looks like DVRs and timeshifting has finally done what many people said it would do: increased overall viewership! USA Today reports: 'Among the things the report revealed is that many DVR viewers do not fast-forward through ads. The viewer total for broadcast network ads goes up 32% when DVR watchers within three days are included, according to Nielsen. For some prime-time shows, it means that DVR viewing, long seen as a threat to advertising, could even bring higher ad prices. NBC's The Office, for example, had a live-plus-three Nielsen commercial rating of 3.36 — higher than the 3.11 it got for the week of May 6 under the traditional Nielsen program rating system.' Makes me wonder where this will lead for my favorite genre shows which by their very nature have a higher DVR component and have seen declining viewership using the older methodology (BSG, SG-1, etc)."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft vs TestDriven.NET

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 -0500

Erebus writes "Jamie Cansdale released a free addin to Visual Studio back in 2004 to help developers build unit tests. His only problem was, he enable his addin for all versions of VS - including the Express addition which isn't suppose to support addins. After over a year of trying to talk with Microsoft and understand how and why he was in violation of their license agreement, during which they would never explain specifically which clause in the license was being violate, they sent the lawyers after him and pulled his MVP status. To top it all off, Jamie is actually a Java developer by day, his addin was originally developed just as a hobby project. A full account is available on his blog, including all email correspondence he had with Microsoft and the now 3 letters received from Microsoft lawyers. The lead product manager for Visual Studio Express has responded to Jamie's posts."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Battlestar Galactica's End Officially After Season 4

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 -0500

Ant writes "First it was off, and then it was back on. Yahoo is now reporting on a release put out by David Eick and Ronald Moore stating that they will conclude Battlestar Galactica at the end of Season 4. They said it was a creative decision, and that they wanted to end the show on their own terms. The show was always planned with a definite beginning, middle and end, unlike many other sci-fi shows and dramas. Sci Fi Channel has accepted the decision. The news had been foreshadowed this spring through statements from stars Edward James Olmos and Katee Sackhoff. Ronald Moore himself had said that the show was heading into its final act, although he said the final act could be one or two more seasons. Now we know that the final act will last for one season. The special 2-hr. episode 'Razor' starts off the season in November. The first regular episodes of Season 4 will air in early 2008."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Canadian Movie Camcording Addressed With Legislation

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 -0500

dottyslashdottydot writes "During Arnold Schwarzenegger's visit to Ottawa yesterday, it was confirmed that Prime Minister Stephen Harper will be introducing a bill to make camcording in movie theatres illegal in Canada. However, people are skeptical that this will make little difference in the amount of pirated movies available. Doug Frith, president of the Canadian Motion Picture Distributors Association was quoted as saying, 'is really the first step — not only for the movie industry — where the government has shown it will seriously address the whole area of intellectual-property theft.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.