The Hollywood Post Alliance has announced the 2012 winners of its HPA Engineering Excellence Award.
“The coveted honor is an integral part of the HPA Awards, which have become the standard by which creative and technical excellence in the art, science and craft of post production is measured,” reports TV Technology.
This year’s winners include: Cinnafilm’s standards transcoder Tachyon; Crossroads Systems’ file-based, portable storage solution StrongBox; the Dolby Atmos sound system from Dolby Laboratories; and Sony’s F65 CineAlta digital motion picture camera system.
“The Engineering Award not only represents the creativity of technology and technical innovation, but also helps to enable the creative power of our artistic community,” notes Leon Silverman, president of the Hollywood Post Alliance. “The products and processes that we honor with this award continue to demonstrate the important engineering work that is done behind our industry’s scenes and screens.”
The 2012 HPA Engineering Excellence Awards event is slated for November 1 at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles.
The NPD Group has released a new report showing that 2012 has seen a loss of 12 million gamers in the U.S., a five percent decline from 2011. Even so, mobile gamers increased from nine to 22 percentage points and now make up the largest gamer segment.
The study divided gamers into six categories: mobile, digital, core, family+kid, light PC, and avid PC. The family+kid gamers saw the largest decline at 17.4 million gamers.
Last year, core gamers made up the largest segment but they still spend the most of any segment.
“Given the long lifecycles of the current consoles and the increasing installed base of smartphones and tablets, it’s not surprising to see a slight decline in the core gamer segment,” said NPD analyst Anita Frazier. “It’s the revenue contribution of the core gamer segment that continues to outpace all other segments, and remains vital to the future of the industry.”
In the past three months, core gamers spent an average of $65 on physical games — notably higher than the overall average of $48.
In the same time period, game purchasers spent an average of $16 on digital games-PC/console/portable and almost 14 percent reported buying microtransactions/additional game content, up from 11 percent in 2011.
As mobile continues to expand, game publishers are putting more focus on social, free-to-play, the cloud, and of course, mobile gaming. And EA is no exception.
“Going forward, every EA game will have some multi-player or social component,” Forbes reports. “This doesn’t mean single-player games will cease to be a part of the EA catalog, it just means that even single-player games will have tie-ins across multiple devices.”
The article notes that this transition to the cloud is very beneficial for certain games, enabling users to to pick up where they left off on any of their devices.
“The problem is, an immersive single-player game that tries to force people to play minigames on separate platforms is probably going to lose whatever immersion factor it ought to have had,” the article suggests. Additionally, requiring social integration, like a mandatory Facebook login, could deter gamers from playing at all.
“That’s not evolving with consumers, it’s adapting to what many in the industry see as the wave of the future: mobile, free-to-play, and social gaming displacing more traditional games,” Forbes writes. “It’s also a bit of sleight of hand. For all the talk of fan service, many of these mobile and social tie-ins are little more than the gamification of viral marketing.”
Mobile gaming is not necessarily growing at the expense of traditional gaming. “The two experiences are fundamentally different, especially since mobile touch-screens are essentially the most limited and limiting type of game controller on the market,” explains the article.
In the world of competitive search engines, Google continues to reign supreme. However, Microsoft’s Bing search engine continues to make progress. Bing’s market share has nearly doubled to reach 15.4 percent, according to comScore.
Mike Nichols, corporate vice president and chief marketing officer for Bing, spoke with Fortune about what Bing is doing to continue its steady rise and hopefully compete with Google in the future.
Nichols claims that Bing’s searches are now preferable to Google’s by a 2-to-1 margin, according to independent research.
To prove these numbers, Bing is hosting the nationwide “Bing It On” challenge, an ad campaign which asks users to search for something on both Bing and Google and rate which answer is better.
“What we’re trying to do here is [encourage] people to compare Bing and Google head-to-head, and we believe that as people do that increasingly they will see that Bing is worth breaking… that Google habit,” says Nichols, “because of the quality of the search results, because it’s the only search service that includes useful information from your friends and experts from Facebook, Twitter, etc.”
Apple users can now edit Google Docs on the go, following an update to the Google Drive iOS app. The new features finally put the iOS app on par with the Android version.
“Google says that any edits on collaborative docs will appear in ‘seconds,’ and full rich text formatting is included as well,” reports The Verge.
“Even the basic function of creating a new document is no longer out of reach. Presentations have been enhanced, with new animation support as well as speaker notes — two crucial items for those living in the slide deck world.”
“Docs support isn’t the only big change, though — users can now upload photos and videos directly from a device to Drive, and it’s now possible to add folders and move (or delete) files directly from the app,” notes the post.
The Android app also received an update that offers the ability to add comments, reply to comments and view tables within the app.
Engadget reports from IBC in Amsterdam on NHK’s Super Hi-Vision camera that “doubles the capture rate from the standard 60Hz to a much speedier 120Hz, yielding sharper motion.”
“While the difference isn’t noticeable with static or slow-moving scenes, it certainly comes into play when filming rapid-motion sporting events or panning the camera,” notes the post.
“Filming a rotating image that paired ordinary objects and cityscapes with letters and numbers, you could see the difference instantly, with the 120Hz image on the right side yielding far shaper details, while the left side was often a blurry mess,” describes Engadget.
Since the higher frequency comes directly from the source, there is no software smoothing involved and “it appears perfectly natural, and much more pleasant.”
The post includes a series of stills and a video report from the IBC show floor.
Spotify is getting ready to launch a newly redesigned browser-based version of its popular streaming music service, according to multiple sources.
The overhaul is expected to focus on music discovery and will reportedly allow users to follow habits and playlists of influencers and friends.
“One source even said a lower subscription price for its mobile app could be in the works,” reports TechCrunch. “With a healthy user base and the record labels’ support, the browser version could help Spotify continue dominating the streaming music spotlight.”
Spotify launched one year ago and already touts 7.7 million daily users and 22.2 million monthlies, according to AppData.
TechCrunch notes that “4 million of them pay $5 a month for ad-free service or $10 for zero ads and mobile access.”
Magazine-style reader Flipboard has announced its partnership with Levi’s in a move that could be the next step in launching a new mobile shopping platform.
“For years now, reader apps have slugged along with an advertising business model that hasn’t exactly been lucrative,” notes Digital Trends. “With the debut of Flipboard’s new social shopping catalog, however, its e-commerce strategy could break ground for the experimentation of new business models among reader apps.”
The mobile-only app’s new Style category (located in the Content Guide) will include images uploaded from Instagram, articles by Levi’s staffers and a behind-the-scenes feature.
Flipboard is not the first to tackle m-commerce. Marie Claire and ELLE magazines are two examples of magazine apps in the iTunes App Store that integrate shopping within the magazine reading experience.
“This strategy could get the folks at Zite, Pulse, News.me, and other mobile readers thinking about supplementing their revenue with an m-commerce business model, and we couldn’t blame them,” concludes Digital Trends. “M-commerce is one of the fastest growing subsets within e-commerce.”
Online privacy company Abine offers a free service called DNT+ (Do Not Track Plus) that “claims to give control back to the user by providing insight into which social networks, advertising networks, and companies are tracking you,” Business Insider reports.
Unlike Microsoft’s “do not track” feature on Internet Explorer 10, Abine actually allows consumers to stop advertisers from tracking.
“Abine not only allows you to notify advertisers that you do not want to be tracked, but it also lets you both see who is tracking you and then block that advertiser from tracking you,” the article explains.
BI tested out DNT+ on various sites, finding social networks had the most trackers. The New York Times had 11 trackers: one for social networks, three for ad networks and seven for other companies.
By contrast, Facebook reported 154 trackers, all monitoring activity on other sites.
“For most of the networks and companies Abine identifies, the tool recommends that you block them,” the article states. “However, there are a few trackers that they suggest you allow. The reason, according to the company’s website, is that some trackers are identified as core technologies that are critical to how a site runs, such as playing videos or login functionality.”
Last week, we reported on ETCentric that the new lineup of Amazon Kindles would include advertisements that did not provide an opt out option for users.
Now the company has announced it will provide Kindle Fire HD customers with an option to purchase their way out of the ads for $15.
However, Business Insider suggests users may opt not to avoid the ads because they “won’t realize that they can turn off the ads, will be too lazy to turn off the ads, or, most likely, won’t want to turn off the ads.”
According to the post, “the ads look cool” and customers will most likely get used to them quickly and possibly find them helpful.
“But having the option to turn off the ads will silence everyone appalled by the idea that Amazon will shove ads down people’s throats while perfect Apple and Google won’t,” says Business Insider. “So it’s very much the right move.”
In an interview with AllThingsD, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos discusses the company’s eclectic business strategy that ranges from offering Web services to selling apparel.
“Our approach is, if we have a good idea, and if it’s something we think customers would care about, like AWS or Kindle Fire, then we don’t ask why do this, we ask why not do this?” says Bezos. “We have a high bar for doing those things. We don’t want to do me-too things. The people we’ve attracted over time to Amazon want to be pioneers. They want to be inventors. They want to do new things.”
Amazon has created its own approach to making a profit while offering cheap services and devices — an approach that Bezos admits doesn’t work for every company.
“In my view, you set up the business in a way that is aligned with the customer, or you can set it up in odds with the customer. When you have the option, you should figure out a way to be in alignment,” he explains, adding the make-money-up-front or make-it-up-on-the-backend approaches may work best for others.
Amazon has taken on expensive endeavors, like its Amazon Prime service and Kindle Owner’s Lending Library, both of which the company has spent millions to license while offering customers a low price.
“Despite what some have said from time to time, Amazon is a for-profit business,” says Bezos. “So, we looked at some numbers, and we believed that this would be a good program for customers and for Amazon — that’s the alignment I’m talking about.”
“These devices are not very useful unless they are connected to the Internet,” he notes, regarding wireless. “The whole point is to connect to the Internet, and that means Wi-Fi. Even for 4G, you want Wi-Fi.”
“This year, we wanted to build the best tablet at any price,” Bezos concludes. “Take away the price and it’s still the best tablet. It also happens to be only $499.”
New data from IHS iSuppli shows that cloud-based storage subscriptions are expected to pass the half billion mark this year, a sizable increase from the 300 million in 2011.
Next year, the growth is expected to remain high at 25 percent for a total of 625 million subscriptions. By 2017, IHS iSuppli expects 1.3 billion cloud-storage subscriptions.
Independent providers such as Dropbox have been strong players in the early cloud market, but powerful consumer technology and IT companies are now crowding in with new cloud services — Apple’s iCloud, Amazon’s CloudDrive, GoogleDrive and Microsoft SkyDrive, for example.
“The big question is how many of these consumers are using the freemium, as opposed to the paid, versions of these products,” notes GigaOM.
“Profitability is the tricky part. Ragdish Rebello, Ph.D., IHS’ director for consumer and communications, said these companies should realize — if they don’t already — that cloud services in and of themselves are not profitable so these vendors better be prepared to identify and provide value-added services that actually make money.”
LinkedIn announced it is adding Company Pages and a Facebook-style notification stream in its effort to increase user engagement.
“Launching today is our new notifications feature, which will keep you notified in real-time when someone likes what you’ve shared on LinkedIn, views your profile, accepts your invitation, and much more,” explains a September 5th blog post from Angela Yang, associate product manager at LinkedIn.
CNET reports that the notifications feature will take several weeks to go live to all members, “and push notifications for Android and iOS devices are also in the works.”
“LinkedIn is trying to graduate from a simple resumé-and-headhunting site into something big — Facebook big — in a sector where increased communication pays real dividends,” Ryan Tate writes in a related Wired article.
“LinkedIn’s ambitions are no doubt stoked by enthusiasm from Wall Street, which has bid up LinkedIn stock 36 percent since the company’s May 2011 IPO,” notes Tate. “Since Facebook went public in mid May, LinkedIn stock has climbed 14 percent, compared to a decline of 51 percent for Facebook shares.”
Facebook recently increased its automated efforts to remove “likes” that were generated from fraudulent accounts, according to a post on the company’s security blog.
Since Facebook often bills advertisers on a per click basis, Facebook’s own admission of fake likes will possibly cause an uproar in the advertising world.
“Facebook’s advertising system is built on the idea that consumers will be willing to build closer relationships with advertisers, ‘liking’ the advertiser’s pages, reading the advertiser’s status updates, and circulating content about the advertiser to friends,” explains Wired.
“If an advertiser’s popularity is exaggerated by fake ‘likes,’ it makes the business less trustworthy and less likely to be engaged by real consumers,” contends the article.
Facebook’s blog post references “vendors” of fake likes and the illegal practices of purchasing or selling Facebook likes. Facebook says businesses will only lose about 1 percent of their likes, but this could represent a huge loss for some of the most popular businesses on Facebook.
Facebook has almost seven times Twitter’s number of monthly users, sitting at one billion compared with Twitter’s 150 million. But Forbes contributor Eric Jackson argues that Twitter is now in fact a bigger company than Facebook because of mobile ads.
According to eMarketer figures, Twitter’s 2012 mobile ad revenue is $129.7 million, compared to Facebook’s $72.7 million. In the world of social media, mobile ad dollars mean everything.
“The stock market is obsessed with who will make money in the mobile space because the stock market — correctly — believes that all of us (or 90+ percent of us) will only access these services from mobile devices in a very short period,” writes Jackson.
Facebook is “really only a PC-based ad company,” he suggests, adding that Facebook’s Payments business has also struggled due to the rapid shift in mobile.
Admittedly, Facebook only began selling mobile ads in the second half of 2012 but Jackson counters, saying “Twitter’s mobile ad sales were likely also light in the first half of the year.”
“Maybe Facebook is going to ramp things up in the future,” concludes Jackson. “But given that they’re 7x as big as Twitter and to have their heads handed to them like this from the quirky little San Francisco company, it’s embarrassing.”