As technology advances, the notion of “big data” will become more applicable to everyday life.
People currently use big data to reduce crime, maximize milk production in cows, and reduce rugby injuries, but soon big data will infiltrate nearly every aspect of life.
“The scale of what we’re doing is far beyond anything anybody’s been able to put together before,” says scientist Dr. David Haussler. ” I think you’re going to start to see this sort of big data effort on several fronts — partly because of supercomputing capabilities that we haven’t had until recently and also because of wireless devices that are increasingly being used to transmit data.”
In the entertainment industry, big data is expected to transform the personalization of media.
“Intelligent media distribution powered by Big Data will mean that your TV (and tablet, and phone) will know what you like, when you like to watch it, and what you will want to watch next,” explains VentureBeat.
As big data changes entertainment consumption, viewers will become more engaged and fewer viewers will abandon videos. This translates to better experiences for customers and more lucrative advertising deals for content distributors.
According to a study from Harris Interactive, Netflix and Google-owned YouTube are the leading “must-have” streaming-video apps among smart TV owners and also among those who don’t own an Internet-connected television.
The next most popular apps are Amazon Instant Video, Facebook and Pandora.
“The Harris Poll of 2,634 U.S. adults also found that about three-quarters of non-smart TV owners said they aren’t that familiar (39 percent) or not at all familiar (33 percent) with smart TVs or Internet-connected TVs,” notes Home Media Magazine.
Harris indicates that only 7 percent of those unfamiliar with smart TVs are considering to purchase a new set in the next year, whereas 29 percent of non-smart TV owners who are familiar with the device are likely to make a new purchase.
“As the TV becomes a more overall entertainment device, it is only a matter of time before we see the mainstream use of additional content apps, such as Facebook, being used on the TV,” suggests Manny Flores, SVP at Harris Interactive.
“Yet, manufacturers and retailers evidently have to do a much better job of educating their consumers on what a smart TV is and the benefits of a smart TV experience,” adds Flores. “Increased familiarity appears to be the key to driving purchase consideration.”
Last week, ETCentric reported on the Ptch mobile app from DreamWorks Animation that enables users to create multimedia compositions and share them through social networks. This week we have a similar tool that leverages multiple “producers” based on their proximity to each other.
Vyclone is a new “social video creation, collaboration, and sharing app for the iPhone and iPod touch,” reports Mashable.
The free app enables multiple users within physical proximity of each other to create a collaborative video with multiple angles. Vyclone can even be used by others shooting iPhone videos who do not know each other or may not be aware the other people are recording video.
“Vyclone uses the GPS in your iPhone to determine your location,” notes the post. “If you’re recording a video with the app at the same time and place as another person, then the app will automatically edit together your two videos into one ultimate video mix. Bring four people together in the same spot and Vycone will combine all four video streams into a single synchronized mix.”
Completed videos can be shared with just the people you’ve linked to on Vyclone or everyone. They can also be shared on Facebook and Twitter.
The Vyclone site features sample videos created by early users.
Internet service providers Cablevision, Time Warner Cable, and Comcast have traditionally protected their users from spies and eavesdroppers. But a new alliance with Hollywood studios may lead to ISPs and media giants monitoring accounts together in an effort to combat piracy.
The Center for Copyright Information effort will implement a “graduated response plan” across all cable companies in the agreement. The ISPs can crack down on offending parties while sharing a standardized amount of blame since the companies will share the policy.
“The fact that they are all agreeing to participate makes it harder for any one company to win the disgruntled customers of those who have been disciplined by another,” reports CNN contributor Douglas Rushkoff. “But now that they’re free from individual blame, there’s also the strong possibility that the ISPs will be doing the data monitoring directly. That’s a much bigger deal.”
If companies begin directly tracking ISPs, they will open up numerous negative possibilities. Internet companies could use the software to track open networks and subsequently charge neighbors who tap into the network.
Also, users will lose their expectation of privacy when using the Internet. Privacy is especially important for users, such as doctors, who need to send sensitive information over their network. If cable companies begin to track user data and messages, people (and businesses) will consider hosting their Internet offshore.
“The risk of losing their ‘net [access] because someone accidentally streamed the wrong thing is a business prerogative significant enough to tunnel all their traffic to a country that provides sensible data privacy laws,” explains Internet security expert Josh Klein. “How much long after that until the rest of the company gets off-shored?”
The MIT Media Lab’s Camera Culture group wrote a paper outlining a new type of glasses-free 3D technology. The technology, called Tensor Display, uses layers of LCD displays to create a 3D illusion.
Tensor refers to “compressive displays that can create a wide field of view by splitting a 3D image into 2D slices for processing, in a similar way to a CAT scan,” according to Electronics Weekly.
The display requires a refresh rate of 360 hertz. Current LCD TVs have a 240 hertz refresh rate, suggesting that 360 may not be too far away from reality.
One of the authors of the paper, Douglas Lanman, explained that while many people see holograms as the future of 3D, “The problem, of course, is that holograms don’t move. To make them move, you need to create a hologram in real time, and to do that, you need … little tiny pixels, smaller than anything we can build at large volume at low cost. So the question is, what do we have now? We have LCDs. They’re incredibly mature, and they’re cheap.”
To create different perspectives from different angles, the scientists display different patterns on screens at different depths. Not all aspects of a scene change relative to the viewing angle, so the scientists use algorithms to isolate and change only the aspects that need to change with movement.
“This quality, called ‘multiview 3D,’ simulates the act of looking at an object in a whole new way,” reports the Huffington Post. “If you were to watch an outdoors scene, for example, and looked up at the screen while lying on the floor, you might be able to see up to the sky, even if it’s not visible when the screen is viewed straight-on. The fact that each of your eyes will see objects on the screen from slightly different angles will help create the illusion that you’re looking at something truly three-dimensional.”
“It’s definitely suitable for commercial applications, because each component is commonplace, and it sounds easy to manufacture, so this ought to be something that a consumer-electronics company would license,” explains Gregg Favalora, principal at the engineering consultancy Optics for Hire. “Honestly, this is a really big deal.”
MIT economist Abhishek Nagaraj analyzed the effects of copyright law on Wikipedia, especially “how digitized, public domain works dramatically affect the quality of knowledge,” reports The Atlantic.
Nagaraj’s research used digitized versions of Baseball Digest to analyze how public domain pictures and information can change Wikipedia traffic. Google digitized the journal in 2008.
After the digitization, “Nagaraj found articles on four decades of All-Stars between 1944 and 1984 grew by about 5,200 words per article,” according to The Atlantic.
But Nagaraj’s true findings came not from the length increases of the articles, but from the traffic driven to the Web pages. Copyright laws allowed articles from 1944 to 1984 to be in the public domain, so authors could use images from these articles on Wikipedia.
The image availability caused the number of pictures on articles to rise to 1.15 per article. Players with articles still under copyright law only had .667 pictures per article, despite playing in a more modern era.
“Copyright law affects to some degree what information makes its way onto Wikipedia, but what it more strongly affects is how we use that information once it’s there. In other words, digitizing any knowledge increases an article’s text, but only digitizing public domain images makes articles more frequently updated and visited,” notes the article.
Google’s algorithm favors updated Web pages and images, so perhaps this helps explain the rise in traffic.
At the Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference in Aspen last week, panels addressed the future of entertainment.
“Neil Smit, president of Comcast Cable and Anne Sweeney, president of Disney/ABC Television Group talked about how the two organizations agree on a strategy for ‘TV Everywhere,’ letting Comcast subscribers receive Disney content on any device,” reports PC Magazine. “Most interestingly, it is a ten-year deal, even though technology may change a lot over that time.”
Smit pointed out that Comcast is working to make identification and authentication easier for consumers.
“As TV is now available on more platforms, the ratings have gone down but overall TV-watching is up,” explains the article. “Including video on demand does change how the content is viewed and this is impacting scheduling, Sweeney said.”
NBA commissioner David Stern and Turner Broadcasting CEO Phil Kent discussed how live sports and social media are evolving.
“Social media has been a big part of fan engagement for the NBA, Stern said. The personalities in the league have led to enormous interest and social media has given the opportunity for the community to be more interactive.”
Stern said that the NBA retains the rights to its games, but that in general, social media involving fan videos on YouTube is still great for the game. Kent added that anything driving fan engagement leads to increased viewership.
In a related Brainstorm Tech post from Fortune, Jason Hirschhorn, CEO of ReDEF Group, moderates a panel on TV Everywhere and the future of video across multiple platforms. The 58-minute video features Courtney Holt of Maker Studios, Alan Patricof of Greycroft Partners, David Rhodes of CBS News, Eric Solomon of Nielsen and Anthony Wood of Roku.
DirecTV and Viacom reached a new long-term carriage agreement on Friday to restore Viacom-owned channels to subscribers of the satellite TV provider.
As previously reported, the channels (including MTV, Comedy Central, BET and Nickelodeon) had been unavailable to DirecTV’s 20 million customers since July 10.
“Financial and other terms weren’t disclosed, but sources said the deal will run for seven years,” notes The Hollywood Reporter. “DirecTV will carry all 26 Viacom channels, or 17 when excluding HD feeds, but said it is not required to carry Epix, the premium TV joint venture of Viacom, Lionsgate and MGM.”
“In addition to the channels’ return, DirecTV customers will also gain the ability to see Viacom programming on tablets, laptops, handhelds and other personal devices via the DirecTV Everywhere platform,” according to the satellite TV company.
“The attention surrounding this unnecessary and ill-advised blackout by Viacom has accomplished one key thing: It serves notice to all media companies that bullying TV providers and their customers with blackouts won’t get them a better deal,” said Derek Chang, executive vp of content strategy and development for DirecTV. “It’s high time programmers ended these anti-consumer blackouts once and for all and prove our industry is about enabling people to connect to their favorite programs rather than denying them access.”
Written by ETCentric contributors Walt Klappert and Mike Nichols
Ironically during these years when Congress is blamed for doing little, the legislators passed the most significant changes in patenting since 1952. The Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (AIA) is going into effect in stages with some aspects currently in place.
One big change however, happens after March 16, 2013 — not long from now — when the United States goes from a first-to-invent country to a first-to-file country.
Opponents to this change argue a first-to-file system gives an advantage to large companies over small companies. They point out with the first-to-invent policy a small start-up company might have nurtured a new idea while they raised the money they needed to pursue a patent.
When first-to-file is in place these small companies may be in a race to the patent office in the hope of beating out bigger better-funded organizations even if the big company’s employees come up with the start-up’s idea later than the start-up did. For good or bad, this change puts the United States more in synch with the rest of the world.
On the other hand, the AIA cuts some patent-related fees by 75 percent for small entities, individuals and universities. Also, some new programs are going into place to move patent applications through the process faster, albeit by paying more.
Other changes are happening, too. For example in appeals, the AIA affects people trying to get intellectual property. In reexaminations, the law affects people trying to fight patents.
In the end, how the entire act will help or hinder entertainment technology is hard to predict, but certainly worth discussing. The good and the bad of the bill may depend on the size or type of company you work in, or for that matter if you work alone, or for a university. But if patents affect your business, it is pretty certain the America Invents Act will affect what you do soon.
Sony has announced its new Walkman F800 music player, an Android-powered challenger to Apple’s iPod touch.
“Announced alongside several more basic Walkman music players, the F800 takes some of the Xperia smartphone range’s style, throws out the phone functionality, and concentrates on audio prowess instead,” reports Digital Trends.
The F800 features a 3.5-inch screen, Tegra 2 dual-core processor, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, a pre-installed maps app, and direct access to the Google Play Store. It supports a variety of audio and video codecs including MP3, WMA, HE-AAC, PCM, MPEG4, AVC, WMV and FLAC.
“Sony has packed in its S-Master MX Digital amplifier, Clear Audio technology and the little device has an X-Loud speaker system too,” notes the post.
The new player uses Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, which should give it an edge over Samsung’s Galaxy Player 3.6 that still uses Android 2.3 Gingerbread.
“On the whole, that’s a decent and somewhat original set of features for a Walkman player,” reports CNET in a related post. “Yet, at $269 (or $299, depending on the memory size) the F800 doesn’t have enough on paper to entice anyone with an existing music player to make the switch. The promised battery life (20 hours of audio playback and 4.5 hours for video) is just average, and with just 16GB and 32GB version available, Sony didn’t push the boundaries of capacity.”
Sony also unveiled the E470 player, targeting a more cost-conscious market. The E470 is Sony’s slimmest Walkman to date, and will run $79 for the 4GB model, $89 for 8GB, and $109 for the 16GB version.
After introducing online registration in 2008, Washington State continues its progressive tactics to spur voting by introducing Facebook voter registration.
Prospective voters will access the Secretary of State’s Facebook page and then authorize an app (developed by Microsoft) to access their name and birth date. People will finish the process by manually entering driver license or state ID numbers.
“When the app launches early next week, Washington will become the first state to offer voting registration through Facebook,” reports The Verge.
“In this age of social media and more people going online for services, this is a natural way to introduce people to online registration and leverage the power of friends on Facebook to get more people registered,” explains Shane Hamlin, Washington State co-director of elections.
Hamlin stressed that Facebook gains access to no data, and that all the user information goes only to Washington State.
“You are giving your information to us, not Facebook,” he says. “Your name and date of birth are pulled from Facebook profile, then it operates exactly as it does if you’re not in Facebook. Our state database checks to see if you’re already registered. If you are, it will take you to MyVote service, [where] you can update registration information.”
During an earnings call on Thursday, Google SVP and chief business officer Nikesh Arora talked about growth at YouTube, “saying that the company had finally found a business model that works for the giant video site,” reports TechCrunch.
“YouTube unites the world through video,” said Arora, citing the company’s relationship with the upcoming Summer Olympics as one example.
YouTube will serve as the live streaming platform for NBCUniversal in the U.S. and will provide video coverage for more than 60 other countries.
Arora discussed the growth in “monetization for its content partners,” noting that the company has “thousands of partners now making more than six figures a year,” according to the post.
He also said that Google is working on a way to show that ads are more effective on YouTube than on traditional TV.
“Arora claims that YouTube ads show a higher ROI than TV ads for brand advertisers. Not just that, but given the number of views and viewers, as well as the comparative CPMs between online and TV, YouTube could provide greater reach than comparable TV adverts,” writes TechCrunch.
While Congress’ attempts to block new technologies can seem unnecessary at times, GigaOM argues that people should take Senator Al Franken’s recent warnings about facial recognition software seriously.
“I think Congress should leave new Web technologies alone so they can grow organically and we, the people — who are actually perfectly able to adjust to them — can decide the limits with which we’re comfortable,” writes technology journalist Derrick Harris. “But facial recognition is a whole new beast.”
Harris suggests that the most dangerous aspect of facial recognition technology is that, at the current rate, anyone will have access to a wealth of information to identify strangers.
Technology will soon allow people to take a picture, analyze the picture using a database of Facebook and Flickr photos, and then discover an individual’s name. Once someone has the name, they can then discover the person’s personal information, and possibly even social security number.
Harris recommends using fair tactics to regulate the technology. While outlawing the technology may go too far, restrictions should be put in place to avoid dangerous consequences.
YouTube, for example, announced its face-blurring technology for videos this week, but it may not be enough.
“Blocking out dissidents’ faces so they aren’t the targets of authoritarian governments is a noble goal, but it doesn’t address the issue of me being able to blur out my face in someone else’s video,” notes Harris. “I’m not sure how such a capability would work from a business perspective, but citizens need some level of control over how and where their images are used.”
According to Senator Charles Schumer of New York, the current lawsuit against Apple and other e-book publishers “could wipe out the publishing industry as we know it.” The Wall Street Journal ran Schumer’s editorial on Tuesday.
The Department of Justice is targeting Apple, Hachette, Harper Collins, Macmillan, Penguin, Pearson, and Simon & Schuster for “allegedly colluding to fix e-book prices,” reports Ars Technica.
“If publishers, authors and consumers are at the mercy of a single retailer that controls 90 percent of the market and can set rock-bottom prices, we will all suffer,” comments Schumer in reference to Amazon, which led the e-book market until Apple’s introduction of the iPad and iBookstore.
“Choice is critical in any market, but that is particularly true in cultural markets like books,” he adds. “The prospect that a single firm would control access to books should give any reader pause.”
When it launched its bookstore in 2010, Apple decided to go with an “agency model,” which “allowed them to set their own prices for e-books,” explains Ars Technica.
The article further notes that “Amazon’s wholesale model allowed the company to sell e-books at prices below cost, a strategy that irked publishers because they felt Amazon was undercutting their prices and devaluing their products in the marketplace. Throughout 2010, publishers pushed Amazon to switch to the agency model as well, and eventually, it did.”
“As our economy transitions to digital platforms, we should be celebrating and supporting industries that find ways to adapt and grow,” writes Schumer. “By developing a pricing model that made e-book sales work for them, publishers did just that.”
“I am concerned that the mere filing of this lawsuit has empowered monopolists and hurt innovators,” he suggests. “I believe it will have a deterrent effect not only on publishers but on other industries that are coming up with creative ways to grow and adapt to the Internet.”
DreamWorks Animation launched a new mobile app for the iPhone and iPad this week. “Ptch” is an app from the first start-up launched through DWA.
The app “allows users to easily create and share personalized multimedia compositions called ‘ptches,’ using videos, photos, and music from their own mobile devices and social feeds,” reports Forbes.
“With the ability to use media assets from Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Google+, Tumblr, Twitter, and Viddy, the platform allows you to easily move pictures and video snippets around into frames that combine into one-minute video creations,” explains the article.
Users can produce the videos with fonts, colors, graphics and music (up to 100 hit songs included in the app) to tell a story in video form. And if producers would like to share the assets that comprise their videos, other users can use them to remix new videos.
“We talk about this as what we’re calling ‘living media,’” says Ed Leonard, CEO of Ptch and former CTO of Dreamworks. “What we’re thinking about is five years from now, everything is going to be living media. You see something you like, quickly change it a bit, and share it. It’s the idea of reshaping things.”
The article includes a 2-minute promotional video and links to samples of ptches made by early users.
As technology advances, the notion of “big data” will become more applicable to everyday life.
