Menu

DisplaySearch Evaluates the Multi-Billion Dollar Touchscreen Market

By
August 14, 2012
  • With the rapid adoption of touchscreen mobile phones and tablets, an increasing number of suppliers have entered the touchscreen market, which is expected to double to $31.9 billion in 2018, according to DisplaySearch.
  • The market has grown significantly in the last few years: $4.3 billion in 2009 to $11 billion in 2011 to $16 billion in 2012. Unfortunately, this year saw a 27 percent oversupply for the touchscreen module industry. The smaller demand equates to drops in prices for suppliers.
  • “As you can probably guess, it’s hard to make money in the display business with so many suppliers. The overall display industry still loses tens of billions of dollars a quarter, particularly due to the saturation of flat-screen TVs,” VentureBeat reports.
  • DisplaySearch calculates that more than 200 suppliers have entered the touchscreen market. In addition to major players such as Corning (Gorilla Glass) and cover lens finishing supplier Fuji Crystal, companies including Atmel, Synaptics, Cypress, EETI, and Elan manufacture touchscreen controller chips.
  • According to DisplaySearch’s Jennifer Colegrove, new technologies will expand the touchscreen demand. “Those include putting the sensor for touch on the cover, or a third piece of glass that protects the actual screens that sandwich lighting materials in a liquid crystal display. Other methods include in-cell and on-cell technologies that, like sensor-on-cover, reduce the cost, thickness, and weight of touchscreens,” notes the post.

Summer Olympics 2012: Twitter Records More Than 150 Million Tweets

By
August 14, 2012
  • It was common for the recently concluded 2012 Summer Olympic Games to be called “the first-ever social media Olympics,” and it lived up to that title, drawing more than 150 million tweets during its 16 days of competition, according to a Twitter blog post.
  • Usain Bolt, Michael Phelps and Tom Daley were the most popular athletes to tweet about. “Bolt’s gold medal-winning run in the 200 meters final drew a tweets per minute record of more than 80,000 for any competition,” according to Twitter.
  • But the Spice Girls’ appearance at the closing ceremonies faired even better, reaching more than 116,000 tweets per minute.
  • “Twitter also said that beyond Bolt, Phelps and Daley, seven other athletes drew more than 1 million tweets each during the Olympics. U.S. swimmer Ryan Lochte, followed by gymnastics star Gabby Douglas rounded out the top five athletes in this regard,” according to The Hollywood Reporter.
  • The others were Andy Murray, Kobe Bryant, Yohan Blake, Lee Chong Wei and LeBron James.

Warner Music: Jump in Digital Sales Outweighs Loss in Physical Sales

By
August 14, 2012
  • Despite early concerns, it turns out music streaming services may actually be a great source of revenue for labels, if Warner Music Group is any indication. The company brought in about $54 million from streaming services in the second quarter, reports AllThingsD.
  • Streaming services such as Spotify, Rhapsody, Pandora and others made up 25 percent of Warner’s digital revenue in Q2, amounting to around 8 percent of the label’s total revenue for that period.
  • For these purposes, Warner defines its “streaming” revenue as money earned from subscription services (Spotify, Rhapsody) and Web radio (Pandora, Sirius, Clear Channel). Warner does not include cloud/locker services (Apple, Amazon), but does include YouTube.
  • “What’s more encouraging for Warner — and, presumably, the rest of the big labels — is that streaming revenue is growing quickly, but doesn’t seem to be cutting into traditional digital sales from outlets like iTunes,” the article states.
  • Another positive sign for the music industry: According to Warner, the jump in digital sales was larger than the loss in physical sales. “That’s the goal the industry has been aiming for since the late 1990s,” notes AllThingsD.

What is Old is New Again: Beck Returns to 19th Century Music Publishing

By
August 14, 2012
  • Eclectic musician Beck is trying something new for his latest collection of 18 original songs and two instrumentals, by going back into the recording industry’s history prior to the phonograph.
  • “Beck’s new album — entitled ‘Beck Hansen’s Song Reader’ – won’t be on vinyl, CD, or iTunes,” reports Digital Trends. “Instead, it’s available only as a beautifully illustrated book of sheet music, published by the retro-fetishists of McSweeney’s.”
  • “The songs here are as unfailingly exciting as you’d expect from their author, but if you want to hear ‘Do We? We Do,’ or ‘Don’t Act Like Your Heart Isn’t Hard,’ bringing them to life depends on you,” explains the artist.
  • Many music fans may find the approach unsatisfying, but Will Burns, writing for Forbes, describes the idea as “brilliant.”
  • “As Burns points out, making an ‘album’ that only exists in printed-paper form is an effective end-run around the piracy industry, since there’s no easily reproduced digital bits to download,” notes the post. “And in an era when touring is how musicians make most of their profit, it’s sure to drive up interest in Beck’s next tour, where fans will (presumably) be able to hear the author’s own delivery in his unmistakable voice.”
  • For nearly a century, the music industry was the same as the sheet music industry (Tin Pan Alley never recorded a note). Treating performance and song as synonymous would come later.
  • “It’s a great adjustment to the modern era of participatory culture. McSweeney’s will be hosting renditions of the songs by select amateur and professional musicians on its website, and fans are already promising to put together bar bands and YouTube projects to record their own versions of the songs,” explains the post. “Beck is cleverly placing his music in the world of webcam performances and viral videos, making the listener part of the experience in a very direct way.”

BarryDriller.com: Fox Sues Aereo-Like Start-Up for Streaming Broadcast TV

By
August 14, 2012
  • Fox has filed suit against start-up BarryDriller.com for using a system of antennas to retransmit its Los Angeles affiliate KTTV without permission.
  • The Aereo-like service was created by Alki David, whose efforts to stream broadcast signals through FilmOn.com was shut down by a federal court in 2010.
  • “Last month, a New York federal judge, Alison Nathan, declined to immediately put a halt to Aereo, which streams signals to subscribers via thousands of dime-sized antennas,” reports Variety. “By declining to issue a preliminary injunction, Nathan delivered a blow to the networks, which say that such services undercut their business models. They are in the midst of pursuing an appeal.”
  • In the wake of the Aereo decision, David launched BarryDriller.com — the name of which serves as a play on Aereo’s most famous investor, Barry Diller.
  • It is an “homage to a great guy and at the same time it’s drilling him a bit,” David told the Wall Street Journal.
  • At $5.95 per month, the new service is offered at a lower price point than Aereo, and David says he’ll pay retransmission fees to the networks.
  • “David said that BarryDriller is in four major markets — New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Minneapolis — and plans to launch in San Francisco and Dallas in the next two weeks,” notes Variety. “He also said that FilmOn is launching its first broadcast channel in the country, KILM-TV Channel 64, in Los Angeles starting on September 1.”

Ambient Companion: Mobile App Combines Discovery with Location-Sharing

By
August 14, 2012
  • Seattle start-up A.R.O. has developed a new mobile companion that tracks your location 24/7 and reveals places you might like. The app focuses on three components: location-tracking, recommendations and gamification.
  • “You can think of Saga as Siri’s little sister, perhaps. Instead of asking it questions or giving the app simple tasks (what’s the weather, add meeting calendar, e.g.), Saga is there, quietly tracking your behavior, your location and learning about your preferences, in order to make smarter recommendations about what you should do next,” explains TechCrunch.
  • The post describes Saga as a combination of ambient location-sharing (similar to Highlight, Sonar, Banjo, INTRO) and local discovery and recommendation app Foursquare.
  • “However, unlike Foursquare, which still relies on the manual check-in to record your location, Saga will automatically locate you — and you don’t have to open the app for this to happen,” notes the post. “But if you do open the app while at a venue, Saga will tell you things like how long you’ve been there, how many times you’ve visited and it will even guess at what you’re doing, which you can correct when wrong.”
  • Saga can also provide users with a history of activity over time (day, week, month) including locations, distances traveled, most commonly visited places and more.
  • Recommendations go beyond Foursqaure’s offerings, explains TechCrunch: “For example, Saga could learn your commute and warn you about traffic. It could remind you that it’s been three weeks since you took your dog to the dog park. It could recommend a whole day’s activity based on a theme.”
Is this too much information being collected?

Game Center: Has iOS Become Next Generation Top Gaming Platform?

By
August 14, 2012
  • According to consulting firm Asymco, a comparison of Apple’s Game Center numbers to console sales indicates that iOS has become the most popular gaming platform.
  • “Their report ‘Measuring iOS as a gaming platform,’ suggests that while Microsoft and Sony may have had the big-name games, and Nintendo delighted millions, more people play games on iOS devices than any console,” reports Digital Trends.
  • Asymco counted the number of registered Game Center accounts and determined there are 130 million iOS gamers. The report then compared this tally to the most popular game consoles: 67 million gamers purchased Xbox 360s; 65 million bought the PlayStation 3; and Nintendo has sold 96 million Wii units.
  • “The triumph of the iPhone suggests that bird-in-the-hand convenience is the secret of market penetration,” suggests the post.
  • And what has been the industry’s response? “Sony’s PlayStation Minis was a clear attempt to get in on some of that cheap, small, downloadable game action,” notes Digital Trends. “Nintendo was so rattled by having real competition in the mobile gaming space that it blatantly copied competing products with the Wii U’s announced ‘app store.’ Even Amazon has adopted Apple’s neologism for its Android marketplace.”
  • The posts further notes that although iOS may be on the rise in the world of mobile gaming, Game Center’s numbers have not yet reached lifetime sales figures of the Nintendo DS and Nintendo Game Boy.

Retail Slumps: Gamers Spend More on Digital, Rentals and Used Games

By
August 14, 2012
  • Retail sales of physical video games dropped 29 percent in June. Digital sales, however, rose 17 percent in Q2 from a year ago.
  • “Traditional boxed retail sales of video games have been down throughout 2012, including a 29 percent dip in sales in June 2012 with $699.8 million generated, according to The NPD Group. But a new report from that research firm… shows new revenue streams are bolstering revenue for retailers and game makers alike,” notes The Hollywood Reporter.
  • Despite the promising digital growth, U.S. consumer gaming spending dropped 16 percent in the second quarter with the lagging demand for physical software and hardware.
  • “In addition to the $1 billion spent in the U.S. by consumers on new physical video games and PC games in the second quarter of 2012 (April-June), the total consumer spend on other physical forms of content (used and rental) reached $386 million, and content in digital format (full game and add-on content downloads, subscriptions, mobile games and social network games) generated $1.47 billion,” explains THR.
  • “In the second quarter of this year, sales of content in a digital format have grown 17 percent over Q2 2011,” said analyst Anita Frazier of The NPD Group. “While this growth is in stark contrast to the declines in new physical software and hardware sales, the size of digital sales is not quite large enough to offset these declines, leading to an overall drop in consumer spending in Q2 by 16 percent.”
  • Research in the UK, France and Germany indicates a similar trend; however, it “differed from the U.S. in terms of softer mobile spending, but greater stability in rental trends,” notes the report. “Growth in full-game and add-on content downloads in the second quarter is surprisingly similar as the content behind this increase is suitable to both markets.”

SIGGRAPH: Futurist Claims Playing Games Can Help Improve Lives

By
August 14, 2012
  • Game developer and futurist Jane McGonigal delivered a keynote at least week’s SIGGRAPH Conference in which she suggested that playing games has helped people suffering from autism, ADHD, PTSD and cancer. She cited scientific studies and her own extensive research.
  • She also believes that games can help make people more optimistic and resilient. “McGonigal explains that games bring out positive emotions, including curiously, excitement, contentment, creativity, wonder, joy, relief, love, purpose and pride,” writes Carolyn Giardina for The Hollywood Reporter.
  • McGonigal is director of game research and development at the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto, California, and author of “Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make us Better and How they Can Change the World.”
  • “We are in the business of the art of shaping people’s destinies,” she told the crowd at the LA Convention Center. “We need skills and abilities to get the future we want … physical, mental, social and emotional resilience. When I think about games, I’m very interested in what abilities they create and also the destinies they lead us toward.”
  • McGonigal has created a resilience-building game called “SuperBetter” that is available at the App Store.
  • “During her keynote, McGonigal led an estimated 3,000 SIGGRAPH attendees through a sampling of the game,” notes Giardina. “Tasks included raising their fists in the air for five seconds — ‘worth plus-one physical resilience … every single second that you are not sitting still, you are actively improving the health of your heart, and your lungs and brain.’”
  • McGonigal told the crowd that those who played along during the demo earned an extra 7.5 minutes of life.

SIGGRAPH: HDRchitecture Real-Time Stereoscopic HDR Imaging System

By
August 14, 2012
  • Current digital cameras have limited dynamic ranges. Users typically expose for the highlights or the shadows or a compromise between them, and rarely get everything exposed properly.
  • To address this, University of Toronto researchers showed their HDRchitecture in the Emerging Technology section of SIGGRAPH last week. HDRchitecture is a real-time visualization system that can handle scenes with dynamic ranges in excess of a million to one.
  • The demonstration featured a welding scene in which attendees were able to clearly see the object being welded as well as nearby objects without the usual visual distortion. (Take a look at the video demo.)
  • The real-time HDRchitecture video system processes up to 120 frames per second in groups of three or four frames. Each frame has a different exposure setting. And together in a group, it captures both the highlights and shadows.
  • The system them composites the images together for viewing at 30fps on a lower dynamic range display. The system can render images at a high image quality up to 1920×1080 resolution and can accommodate stereoscopic vision.
  • HDRchitecture uses GPUs and multicore CPUs for real-time HDR processing. The system is compact enough that it might eventually be incorporated into eyeglasses.
  • Finally, the HDRchitecture system may be adapted to current digital cameras. One of the rigs shown consisted of a Canon DSLR with customized firmware. One limitation of that system, however, was a reduced frame rate of only 20fps.

SIGGRAPH: Highlights from the Computer Graphics Confab

By
August 14, 2012
  • SIGGRAPH 2012 wrapped on Thursday of last week. With extensive reporting from the show floor, fxguide discusses news from Side Effects, the RenderMan user group, NVIDIA, Massive, Open Source, DreamWorks and more.
  • Side Effects made several key announcements including a rebranding of its flagship product, Houdini Master, as Houdini FX; a new pricing structure ($4,495 for Houdini FX and $1,1994 for Houdini — formerly known as Houdini Escape); elimination of the $800 fee for the Annual Upgrade Plan; and a new asset marketplace called Orbolt, designed to help artists create and sell 3D assets.
  • The article notes that the new Houdini FX “includes all Houdini features with a focus on particles, fluids, Pyro FX, cloth, wire and rigid body dynamics.”
  • The Pixar RenderMan User group had an impressive turnout when it met Wednesday night. “RenderMan had a huge release with version 16,” explains the article. “The next release builds on this and improves performance. Gold mastering on the new RMS 4 and RPS 17 is very soon with a ‘wide’ beta starting the week after SIGGRAPH, and the final gold mastering planned for the end of September. Interestingly, with the new rolling release schedule, 17.1 b1 release will follow not long after around the 1st of November.”
  • NVIDIA unveiled its Maximus second generation workstation platform and the latest versions of its Quadro and Tesla cards.
  • “Maximus certified workstations (from HP, Dell, etc.) contain two NVIDIA cards — a matched Quadro GPU as well as a Tesla GPU,” explains the article. “This divides the tasks normally done with a single card; the Quadro drives the display and the Tesla card is used for computationally intensive tasks, such as fluid dynamics simulation, GPU rendering, and real-time color correction.”
  • The new Quadro K5000 will ship in October at $2,249 and the Tesla K20 is slated for December availability at $3,199.
  • Massive 5.0 was unveiled, the company’s first major release since February 2010. “The new 5.0 aims to address long-term user requests, new features and some interesting extensions,” notes the article.
  • “What is of even more interest is not just what Massive is releasing but how teams are using it. DreamWorks in particular presented a brilliant paper at DigiPro 2012 (SIGGRAPH co-located event) on accessing the Massive sim output data directly and using it to improve the characters that the agents drive by having a high quality render time deformation engine (RTD), where high quality character geometry is generated on the fly,” explains fxguide.
  • “This technique required significant changes to DreamWorks’ animation rigs. Character TDs created Multidimensional Rigs, where a character can run in a ‘service mode,’ interfacing with the RTD server to deliver any model in a crowd for any pose as requested by the renderer.”
  • Stephen Regelous, founder of Massive software, demonstrated the company’s latest work in crowd simulation, the details of which are provided in the article (including related videos).
  • This fxguide article features tech specs, video demos and performance evaluations for these products and others. An earlier fxguide write-up includes highlights of session reviews, tech papers and notable new software releases.

Nearly Indestructible Meshworm Robot May Have Range of Applications

By
August 13, 2012
  • Taking their cues from natural science, engineers have developed flying drones inspired by birds and swimming robots that emulate jellyfish.
  • The earthworm is the latest creature to inspire a team of scientists from MIT, Harvard and Seoul National University. Led by Professor Sangbae Kim, the team has created a robotic device named “Meshworm,” that crawls along the ground via the principle of peristalsis.
  • “The device is propelled by a spiral-shaped coil of artificial muscle made of a titanium and nickel alloy, a material chosen for a particular reason: It stretches when heated and contracts back to its original shape once cooled,” reports Smithsonian.com.
  • “The engineers used an internal battery and circuit board to apply a weak electric current to different muscle segments within the Meshworm, heating each of them in turn,” explains the article. “When each segment is heated, it expands in length, causing the outer circumference of the mesh to briefly contract, then return to its original size quickly afterward.”
  • The motion occurs successively at each segment of Meshworm, creating a wave of contraction that enables movement across the ground (the article includes a video of the lifelike movement). Steerage is controlled via lengthwise artificial muscles that are pulled when heated.
  • Since the Meshworm parts are all fibrous and flexible, it is nearly indestructible.
  • “The research is funded by DARPA…and some speculate that the robot could someday be used in reconnaissance missions, since it could be air-dropped, launched or thrown over relatively long distances and land without harm,” notes the article.
  • And since it can navigate rough terrain and fit into small spaces — quietly and inconspicuously — it may serve as a future robo-spy. The shape-changing artificial muscle technology may also be used for medical devices, prosthetics and CE devices such as mobile phones and portable computers.

Instagram Meteoric Success: Top Brands Take Photo-Sharing Seriously

By
August 13, 2012
  • About 40 percent of the world’s most popular 100 brands are active on photo-sharing service Instagram, according to a new report from Simply Measured.
  • Facebook boasts a 98 percent rate among the Interbrand 100, while Twitter has reached a 94 percent adoption rate.
  • While Instagram trails Facebook and Twitter in adoption, the young service has expanded much faster than its social media predecessors. Instagram has grown from 15 million users in 2011 to 80 million users.
  • Simply Measured expects Instagram to grow to 100 million users this fall. Facebook and Twitter took four and five years, respectively, to reach 100 million users.
  • “This aggressive growth has provided a massive marketing opportunity and top brands are taking that seriously,” explains Simply Measured CEO Adam Schoenfeld.
  • MTV is currently Instagram’s top brand with 813,201 users. Luxury brands do especially well, with Burberry, Gucci, Audi, and Tiffany & Co. all in the top ten.
  • In a related CNET article, Pinterest — the popular social network that encourages its members to “pin” images and videos — has begun open registration, allowing users to join via Facebook, Twitter or email login without having to wait for an invitation.
  • “We’re really excited to have the capacity to offer Pinterest to more people,” notes the Pinterest blog, “and if you’re a Pinner with friends who’ve been waiting on the sidelines, we hope you’ll let them know.”

High-Def Television Advertising Sees 150 Percent Increase in Two Years

By
August 13, 2012
  • From the second quarter of 2010 to the second quarter of 2012, high-definition advertising has risen 150 percent.
  • Additionally, more than 70 percent of all American homes have an HDTV set and 69 percent of all TV outlets are able to receive and air HD ads, according to a new report from video ad distribution and services provider Extreme Reach Inc.
  • Even so, HD advertisements still only account for 25 percent of all ads.
  • “Local broadcasters also continued lag in both viewer adoption and the rest of the U.S. industry, with only 53 percent of local stations being able to accept and air HD ads, much lower than local cable (74 percent), network broadcast (73 percent) and national cable (76 percent),” reports Broadcasting & Cable.
  • The “Q2 2012 HD Advertising Trends Report” found that political ads created a strong push for HD adoption and that cloud computing has significantly impacted the HD expansion.
  • “By taking advantage of advanced cloud-based solutions, advertisers have been able to leverage higher performance/lower cost workflows, and those efficiencies have helped fuel the rapid growth in HD advertising,” says Dan Brackett, chief technology officer of Extreme Reach.

Will the iPhone and Apple Television Revolutionize the TV Experience?

By
August 13, 2012
  • Reports from Strategy Analytics and Piper Jaffray indicate nearly half of Americans and iPhone users would buy an Apple television soon after its release.
  • But beyond the innovative design and simple user interface Apple is known for, the Apple television could very well reinvent how TV is distributed while essentially replacing gaming consoles and computers.
  • The Olympics has shown the power of social media on viewing as people choose which events to watch based on trending topics. It has also demonstrated consumers’ frustration with the current TV model, like being forced to watch time-delayed NBC coverage.
  • The Apple television could be the answer to these issues by incorporating multiple windows for social media tracking while also providing more content than just traditional broadcasting.
  • Many have speculated the TV “would carry channel content through conventional broadcasting, via iTunes and also through individual apps from broadcasters, which raises interesting opportunities,” reports Computerworld.
  • Companies like the BBC could then provide free apps with some free content and a wider catalog available to monthly subscribers — allowing Americans to access content from networks outside the U.S., such as real-time Olympics.
  • And from there, the Apple television could completely transfigure how people interact with their TVs — with iPhone or iPad remotes featuring Siri voice navigation — and what they use them for.
  • “Gaming is an obvious extra string to the bow. In theory any iOS app should be usable on the television. This would devour the console market,” the post suggests. “Image editing seems possible, as does full Web surfing (existing Web surfing on smart televisions remains an unsatisfying experience); email and social media communications; note-taking; FaceTime conversations; time-shifting of broadcast content.”

Top Stories
More News