GoPro recently launched its new Hero 3 action cam lineup — three HD cameras that are 30 percent smaller and 25 percent lighter than the previous models.
The rugged new cameras, designed for extreme sports and outdoor enthusiasts, feature built-in Wi-Fi, boosted frame rates and 4K resolution (for one model).
“The latest cameras aren’t just your average next-gen improvements over the predecessors, either: GoPro has added a slew of new features that completely evolve the Hero,” reports Digital Trends.
The 1080p lineup comes in three different models: the $200 5MP white edition, $300 11MP silver edition and $400 12MP black edition (which also shoots at 60 fps). All three models include built-in Wi-Fi.
The black edition is capable of shooting 4K resolution when the frame rate is dropped to 12 fps.
“The question you have to ask, of course, is whether that’s useful at all,” notes Digital Trends. “Shooting at this resolution means, in addition to a low frame rate (hello, choppy video), your camera is creating massive files.”
A study from security protection company AVG surveyed 4,400 consumers from 11 countries and found that one-fourth of users aged 18-25 are friends with their bosses on Facebook.
Consumers in Italy and the U.S. were more likely to friend their bosses (33 percent) compared with the small eight percent of French participants.
“The study also revealed that 60 percent of Facebook users in the 18-25 age range who are Facebook friends with colleagues do not restrict any content from them,” reports Mashable. “Topping the list of the countries with the least restrictive users is Japan (73 percent do not restrict), followed by the Czech Republic (70 percent), New Zealand (67 percent) and the UK (66 percent).”
One in eight young adults reported having posted abusive content about their employers online.
“Our research shows that a good percentage of young adults between the ages of 18-25 do not filter personal or professional data or pictures that are posted online,” says Tony Anscombe, AVG’s senior security evangelist.
“They need to pay closer attention to how they interact with their bosses, colleagues and friends via social channels, and ensure they don’t negatively impact their future by sharing information in a careless manner,” he suggests.
Stamped is a startup launched a year-and-a-half ago to create “a new kind of review site that allowed people to discover and share their favorite things to read, listen to or eat,” reports AllThingsD.
Recently, the company was acquired by Yahoo for an undisclosed amount, so Stamped will close up shop by the end of the year and move to offices in New York.
“In a note on the company’s website, the founders of the team, which includes a handful of ex-Googlers, said: ‘We’re excited to start work again on something big, mobile, and new — but we can’t discuss the details just yet. And we’re really stoked to be able to hire lots of talented engineers and designers for this new project,'” notes the article.
The acquisition is Yahoo’s first under new CEO Marissa Mayer and reflects her strategy to invest in mobile with smaller, sub-$100 million deals.
Stamped had attracted some top name investors including Eric Schmidt, Ellen DeGeneres, Justin Bieber, Ryan Seacrest, Columbia Records and more.
JVC has announced its LED edge-lit 55-inch smart TV. Bundled with 4 pairs of passive 3D glasses, the new model will run $1,300 when it becomes available in January.
“When JVC merged with its subsidiaries to form JVC Kenwood Corps, many assumed — and the company’s public statements indicated — that it would be narrowing its focus, directing its attention towards home and car audio, and effectively ceding the TV market to its competitors,” notes Digital Trends.
“It has certainly spun a 180 by announcing its new 55-inch JLE55SP4000 XinemaView 3D HDTV. Further confounding industry analysts is the fact that the TV is just the initial entry in an entire line, which the company is calling BlackSapphire.”
Specifications include built-in Wi-Fi, a QWERTY keyboard, 1080p full HD and 120Hz refresh rate, built-in woofer and 45 watts of output power.
The set features USB, HDMI, component and composite inputs and comes pre-loaded with Netflix, Vudu, YouTube and Pandora.
“The TV has onboard 802.11n wireless and boasts a number of apps including, uniquely, the Slingbox Player,” reports CNET in its review. “This is the first TV that enables users to serve content from a Slingbox in another room, or anywhere in the world.”
LG recently held a launch event to debut its first Ultra HD television. The company says the 4K smart 3D TV will be offered for $19,999.
“The LG 84LM9600 has a native screen resolution of 3840 x 2160, four times the resolution of a typical 1080p television,” reports Digital Trends. “The 84-inch LED Ultra HD panel also includes LG’s proprietary ‘Resolution Upscaler Plus’ technology to up-convert 1080p content to the Ultra HD resolution.”
For gaming, the TV allows two people to compete in a multiplayer game without the need for split screen. “Using glasses that are sold separately, the television is simultaneously displaying two video feeds and each pair of glasses is designed to pick up a specific feed,” explains the post.
LG’s Ultra HD set will ship bundled with six pairs of flicker-free 3D glasses. The TV also includes a 2D-to-3D conversion feature.
“While the massive panel is just 1.57-inches thick, the television is over 150 pounds in weight plus another 25 pounds for the stand,” writes Digital Trends.
The set features built-in Wi-Fi, LG’s gesture system with Magic Remote, four HDMI inputs, three USB 2.0 inputs, and a 10-speaker system rated at 50 watts.
“The television ties into LG’s Smart TV ecosystem, so consumers will have access to plenty of applications like Netflix, Facebook, Vudu, Skype and Hulu Plus,” adds the post.
LG says the sales price in stores may eventually be closer to $16,999. The only comparable Ultra HD TV to be offered this year is Sony’s 84-inch model, which lists on the Sony site at $24,999.
Redbox Instant, Coinstar’s new venture with Verizon, has secured a deal with Warner Bros. to distribute digital movies.
Warner Bros. becomes the first studio partner for the upcoming subscription streaming and rental service created to compete with Netflix and Amazon.
“This agreement fits perfectly with Redbox Instant by Verizon’s vision for bringing people the movies that matter, wherever and whenever they choose, using the devices and media they prefer, at home or away,” says Shawn Strickland, CEO of Redbox Instant by Verizon.
In a separate multi-year deal, DVD titles released between January 1, 2013 and December 31, 2014 will come to Redbox kiosks 28 days after their retail release dates. Warner initially pursued a 56-day delay, which Redbox avoided by buying discs from retailers for day-and-date distribution.
“The Instant by Verizon digital service, which is set to launch later this year, can support and distribute Warner Bros. UltraViolet-enabled pics, a key part of the overall deal given Redbox’s easy interface with consumers,” reports Variety. “Redbox also announced plans to join the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem industry group to promote UltraViolet through marketing and promotions.”
“Streaming titles will be available in VOD and electronic sell-through format, and the pact covers a multi-year SVOD pact supporting feature-length content,” notes the article.
Local TV stations have collected $1.15 billion in political ad spending as of the end of September, reports analysts at Wells Fargo.
When considering network and national ads, the total increases to $1.33 billion. The total for September alone in local ads was $304.6 million.
“Of the $1.15 billion spent through September 30 at the local-station level, 42.2 percent was on presidential campaigns; 36.9 percent for congressional; 17.7 percent on ballot issues; and 3.2 percent ‘driven by’ presidential and senatorial advertising,” details TV Technology.
The top markets with the most exposure as a percentage of market revenue include Butte-Bozeman, Montana; Great Falls, Montana; Sioux City, Iowa; Davenport, Iowa and Glendive, Montana.
“Sinclair, Gray Television, LIN TV and NBC-owned stations have the most exposure in hot political markets,” notes the post.
The top markets in terms of absolute dollars include Washington, D.C.; Cleveland, Ohio; Las Vegas, Nevada; Tampa, Florida and Orlando, Florida.
“NBC, News Corp., CBS and Sinclair have the most exposure in these larger markets,” explains TV Technology.
The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences held its 64th Primetime Emmy Engineering Awards last week in Hollywood.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) and the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) both received Engineering Emmys.
“A first for the 92-year-old ASC, its Emmy was awarded for its ‘ASC Color Decision List,’ a development of the society’s technology committee that is used to communicate consistent color information from a shoot through postproduction — enabling cinematographers to create and maintain an artistic look,” writes Carolyn Giardina for The Hollywood Reporter.
“AMPAS was recognized for the Academy Color Encoding System (ACES), a standards-based color management architecture designed for the production, mastering and long-term archiving of motion picture and television (non-live broadcast) content.”
Additionally, Kodak was honored with the Philo T. Farnsworth Award for the company’s contributions to the television industry. Richard Green, founder and former president and CEO of Cable Television Laboratories, was given the Charles F. Jenkins Lifetime Achievement Award.
“During the ceremony, the participants also paid tribute to last year’s Charles F. Jenkins Award winner, industry visionary Bob Lambert, who passed away last month,” writes Giardina. “Lambert had been unable to attend the 2011 ceremony, and a clip from his recorded acceptance was played in his memory.”
During SMPTE’s annual conference this week, Roku founder and CEO Anthony Wood suggested game consoles and DVR devices will soon no longer be dominant players in the television realm, as users shift to streaming players and smart TVs.
Wood said that he sees television heading in a direction in which the “end point is where any piece of video is available in any language, anywhere [via streaming]. That is the world we are heading to.”
He added that although game consoles dominate the current streaming market, their lack of growth will hurt them as consumers shift to smart TVs and streaming players. Of course, this supports his self-interest as CEO of steaming player maker Roku, and the release of new game systems within the next few years could change the “flat” growth Wood mentions.
He also said DVRs are “going to go away. That is a stepping stone.” He suggests the DVR will first go to the cloud, and then will simply become integrated into the new on-demand world of television.
Wood also discussed Roku’s newest product, the Roku Streaming Stick. The $100 device is about the size of a USB flash drive and connects devices to Roku’s streaming services.
Filmmaker and inventor Douglas Trumbull likes to make films that are an immersive experience, and hopes to use larger, brighter screens as well as 3D and high frame rates to improve the cinematic experience.
“Most people rightly think movies are a storytelling medium, but for me it is an experience-creating medium,” he said during a SMPTE keynote this week in Hollywood. “I’m very passionate about the idea of creating movies that are powerfully immersive.”
“Trumbull — who developed the Showscan system that incorporated 65mm film at 60 frames per second — admitted to ‘tremendous disappointment’ when years ago his large format system didn’t get off the ground,” writes Carolyn Giardina for The Hollywood Reporter.
However, he argues that the current troubled state of the film industry calls for innovation. “For movies to survive as a business, we have to make it better. It is just not good enough when the multiplex is [also available in one’s] pocket,” he said.
“You can’t globally apply one frame rate to all movies,” Trumbull added, emphasizing the need for the right tool for each project. “24 frames per second looks great for dramatic performances. [Higher frame rates might be applied] to giant screens, hyper-reality, [viewer] participation in the movie.”
“Trumbull is aiming to provide an aesthetic choice by developing a system that effectively allows filmmakers to embed high frame rates such as 48 or 60 fps into a standard 24 fps movie,” writes Giardina. “He refers to this system as Showscan Digital.”
He is currently in the process of planning a movie to be shot at 120 fps using virtual sets.
TheHuffington Post receives up to 25,000 reader comments per hour, and has handled a total of 70 million comments already this year. Justin Isaf, director of community for the news and opinion site, says that although the comments are great in number, they actually are insightful and typically part of conversations.
Isaf says 70 percent of the comments on Huffington Post are replies to other posts, so even when an article reaches 100,000 comments, people are still having smaller conversations within the giant scope of comments.
Isaf acknowledges that the largest problem with managing huge numbers of comments is that as conversations grow larger, the probability that someone begins to post inappropriate content increases.
The other challenge, he says, is helping people navigate so many comments and be able to find the conversation they are most interested in.
Huffington Post hopes to solve the first problem through “pre-moderation” to prevent people from posting negative comments. To solve the second problem, Isaf says the site helps readers with a “fan” network where individuals can see what their friends are posting and find their conversations. Then, by finding their friends and engaging in their conversations, people will find new friends, and the commenter network grows.
To manage the sheer scale of comments Huffington Post receives each day, the site employs 30 full time moderators who work in six hour shifts to sift through hundreds of comments per hour.
The moderators are assisted by an artificial intelligence program called Julia, which knows multiple languages and can learn over time.
More than 250,000 customers have pre-ordered Nintendo’s Wii U at GameStop, and have shown preference for the more expensive Wii U Deluxe set, reports Polygon. The Wii U Deluxe set sells for $349.99 and the regular version retails for $299.99.
While Nintendo president Satoru Iwata is excited about the high pre-sale numbers, he cautions that Nintendo will lose money on the sale of Wii U hardware. The company hopes to profit from the sale of software.
“In addition to the yen’s continuous appreciation, the Wii U hardware will have a negative impact on Nintendo’s profits early after the launch because rather than determining a price based on its manufacturing cost, we selected one that consumers would consider to be reasonable,” explains Iwata.
“In this first half of the term before the launch of the Wii U, we were not able to make a profit on software for the system we we had to book a loss on the hardware, which is currently in production and will be sold below cost price.”
Customer demand for Wii U has outpaced production efforts. “As production only started this summer, it has now become more likely that it is our production capacity, rather than consumer demand, that will place limits on our Wii U prospects for this calendar year,” says Iwata.
“But we will make every effort to supply as many units as possible, and we will strive to continue to ship Wii U hardware without any interruptions in each regions even after its launch.”
Sony has continually discouraged the use of custom firmware on its PlayStation 3, but the company could have a harder time enforcing its proprietary system after hackers published a critical cryptographic key.
“The so-called LV0 key, released by a crew calling itself ‘The Three Musketeers,’ grants access to one of the most sensitive parts of the PS3,” Ars Technica writes.
“Its availability should make it easier for hackers and modders to work around restrictions Sony places on the console. The key can be used to decrypt future security updates Sony issues for the console and to incorporate those changes into custom firmware packages not authorized by the Japanese company.”
The hackers had supposedly cracked the key a while back, but only recently published it because they feared another hacker group was using their work to build and sell its own firmware.
“It remains unclear just how damaging the key’s release will be to Sony’s attempts to stop the running of pirated games and other types of unauthorized software on the PS3,” explains Ars Technica.
“[Sony’s] going to have to depend on obfuscation as [its] primary security measure to keep people from decrypting [its] updates,” suggests Nate Lawson, a cryptographer at Root Labs. “It’s a cat-and-mouse game that’s now more closely in the favor of the attackers. But Sony has plenty of things they can still do. It’s just another link in the chain.”
The iPad mini does not have a Retina display and its A5 processor is a generation old, but the convenience of the new device’s size holds promise for increased mobile game play.
“We see a bunch of things that are good for gamers here,” explains Doug Scott, VP of marketing and revenue at DeNA’s Ngmoco game division. “It’s backward compatible with iPad software. And any time that Apple jumps into a market, it legitimizes it and brings a lot of attention to that device type. There will be a rising tide for mini tablets, and that will drive awareness for gamers who might not have considered a tablet.”
“It will use the same graphics and design as the iPad, this makes it easy for small developers have one app launch across many different devices, which give them access to more users without needing to do extra work or market to a different store,” says Rob Carroll, director of publishing at Tapjoy.
“The larger screen size allows for more detailed games over the phone size,” adds Carroll. “Better looking, richer experiences are good for developers, it allows them to create more immersive game experiences. The smaller size should bring in new users that weren’t comfortable with the larger tablet size, expanding the tablet market and giving developers more reach.”
On the other end, Jesse Divnich, VP of insights and analysis at EEDAR, suggests the device may cause fragmentation. “One of the many — and there are many — reasons why developers lead on the iOS devices, is that there is at least a good understanding that 60 percent of actively used iPhone’s are 2 years or newer.”
“My primary issue is that if the tablet market, much like the PC and laptop market, goes down this road of having both low-end to high-end processing power, it will be difficult to determine market sizes, and developers may be forced to program to the lowest common denominator.”
Other game developers suggest it will encourage Android to up its 3D capabilities. One exec says the mini could help double the size of the iPad gaming market in the next year.
According to Chartboost, the iPad currently accounts for 27 percent of iOS traffic, while the iPhone accounts for 56 percent. However, “the average number of daily game play sessions is 10 percent higher for iPad users than iPhone users,” notes the post. Apple’s Game Center currently has 160 million users.
David Pogue of The New York Times suggests “this may be the biggest week in Microsoft’s 37-year history.” Yesterday, the company demonstrated its very first computer — the Surface tablet, the new Windows Phone 8 operating system, and, “believe it or not, two PC operating systems”
“I’m not talking about Windows 8 and Windows RT, which are, in fact, two new and distinct operating systems from Microsoft,” writes Pogue. “I mean the two different worlds within Windows 8 alone, one designed primarily for touch screens, the other for mouse and keyboard.”
“Individually, they are excellent — but you can’t use them individually,” he adds. “Microsoft has combined them into a superimposed, muddled mishmash called Windows 8, which goes on sale Friday at prices ranging from $15 to $40, depending on the offer and version.”
Pogue suggests that these two environments, which he calls “desktop” and “TileWorld,” are confusing, inefficient and redundant paired together.
“Windows 8’s desktop is basically the well-regarded Windows 7 with a few choice enhancements, like faster start-up, a Lock screen that displays a clock and notifications, and more control over multiple-monitor arrangements,” he explains.
“Here, you can run any of the four million traditional Windows apps, which Microsoft calls desktop apps: Photoshop, Quicken, tax software, games,” he notes, adding that users can log into any Windows 8 PC with a Microsoft ID and have all their settings, accounts and information immediately available.
“TileWorld is modeled on Microsoft’s lovely Windows Phone software. It presents a home screen filled with colorful square and rectangular tiles. Each represents an app — and, often, that app’s latest data,” he writes. All the apps must come from the Windows Store. It works well on tablets, poorly on PCs.
“Two worlds means insane, productivity-killing schizophrenia. The Windows 8 learning curve resembles Mount Everest,” according to Pogue.
GoPro recently launched its new Hero 3 action cam lineup — three HD cameras that are 30 percent smaller and 25 percent lighter than the previous models.
