WebProNews » Digital

Microsoft Reveals Kinect 3D Desktop (Video)

Chris Gabbard — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 16:04:45 +0000

Microsoft has pushed the boundaries between physical and digital worlds with their popular gaming interface Kinect. Now they plan to test this technology in the desktop PC market, with a Kinect-intigrated 3D desktop.

Microsoft Research reveals at their recent TechForum a prototype 3D desktop that allows users to manipulate 3D digital objects in real space. The desktop features a fold out transparent OLED Samsung display, where the user places his hands behind the screen to work the real keyboard and interact with objects on the virtual display.

Users can scroll through files, move and resize digital objects, and accomplish everything you can with a mouse, with your bare hands. It’s as close as you can get to physically reaching into your monitor and manipulating the objects on your screen.

Kinect sensors track and display your hand movement, while at the same time detecting your eye positions to deliver a 3D image with depth and perspective based on where you are.

Microsoft Research has also revealed these new concepts in Kinect sensor technology:

The Number of Gamers Is Increasing, Says ParksAssociates.com

Billy Thomas — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 19:38:32 +0000

According to a study done by ParksAssociates.com, people are really transforming into gamers. The website defines a gamer as an individual in a broadband househols who plays at least one hour per month. The report mentions that 135 million people play at least one hour per month.

It seems that most new-comers are attracted to free-to-play games on social media sites like Facebook. The report says this is one reason the gaming population has spiked so much since 2008. Games like Farmville and online slot machines on Facebook keep players engaged for long periods of time.

Games are becoming quite popular on mobile devices such as smartphones as well. With games like Angry Birds and Temple Run, mobile gaming is just as addictive as any other platform and the results don’t lie; there’s money to be made.

The mediums which gamers use to fulfill their playing desires varies from PC/laptop to actual gaming consoles such as Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. The graph below illustrates the variances in preferences among gamers.

Since the introduction of tablets a few years ago, the mobility potential exploded. Tablets, being much like smartphones-minus the phone-are now a great and popular mobile device. With the ability to support apps, tools and games, this device is a real asset to mobile device users. With that being covered, the tablet mobile gaming platform has substantially gained momentum in past months as mobile/tablet games have become increasingly popular.

Is Twitter Setup For Easy Stalking?

Mike Moran — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 14:22:38 +0000

No, it’s not just the bird. And, no it’s not my opinion. One of my teenagers told me that Twitter is creepy. And I saw a recent post by Paul Dunay where his fourteen-year-old’s friends "wanted nothing to do with [Twitter]." Given the meteoric rise of Twitter, how can it be that at least some members of the digital generation have such negative reactions? These very same kids are active in Facebook beyond all bounds of time management, so they are not cyber-shy. I think it has to do with Twitter’s user experience.

I had lunch with Paul today and we briefly talked about that common experience that our teens have with Twitter. I think one of the clues to the perception lies in another comment my daughter made. Upon walking into my office, she saw Twitter up on the screen and said, "Oh yeah, that’s your stalker site."

Stalker, eh? There’s a brand image that any company would love to have, huh? Well, maybe not. And I have to wonder whether some of that negative perception is driven by the simple choice of words. In Twitter, you "follow" someone, which certainly connotes more of a stalker connection than Facebook’s "friend."

But perhaps there’s more here. On Facebook, friends request to be connected and you must approve, while on Twitter, they follow freely and you must block them to prevent it. You can lock your Twitter stream to force approvals of anyone with a follow request, but it’s not the default, so few do. The default is "opt out" rather than "opt in," a subtle difference, perhaps, but it might lead to an out-of-control feeling. About such things do perceptions revolve, in case you haven’t paid due deference to usability gurus. For some reason, Facebook seems comfortable while Twitter seems creepy.

I wonder if the new digital generation can perceive creepiness in a Web site as easily as us oldsters can see it in a person’s face. Perhaps they’ve become so attuned to the digital world that they perceive things that we miss. Well, a sample size of a few teens does not give us enough data to reach a conclusion, but I’ll be interested to see the next study that shows Twitter users by age.

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Digital Downloads Coming To eBay, Live Nation, and Fairmont Hotels

Bruce Houghton — Thu, 07 May 2009 15:22:57 +0000

Perhaps if labels make it easier for fans to purchase, they will buy more music; or so the theory goes. MySpace Music, imeem and Spotify are just a few of the sites adding buy buttons. Now some new players who each already have millions of website visitors are entering the online music retailing game.

In an experiment that has already launched in Australia, eBay is selling downloads next to used CD’s. with Universal the first major label to sign on. The DRM-free MP3′s are priced about 10¢ cheaper than major competitors including iTunes at $1.59 AU with albums $1 AU cheaper at $15.99 AU. eBay Australia spokeswoman Sian Gipslis said the online auction house chose to add new digital music sales to the website after banning digital download re-sales last year.

Live Nation has experimented with downloads for some time as has its probable future partner…

Ticketmaster. Grabbing the new release when buying concert tickets seems a logical point of purchase and Live Nation has recently been expanding its offering. Buying opportunities for hit product with fulfillment by one of two Live Nation subsidies Music Today and Fanfire are spread throughout the site, as well as, aggregated as part of a Live Nation Superstore.

EMI has also just expanded its relationship with Fairmont Hotels to include a branded download store. As part of a music initiative, Fairmont is also extending discounts and additional benefits to members of its guest loyalty program including priority access and ticketing concerts featuring EMI artists.

The jury is out on the volume of sales that these kind initiatives generate. In fact,MySpace Music is already under pressure from labels to increase ita sales. But eBay, Live Nation and Fairmont Hotels each already have two advantages that increase their chances of success: 1) significant existing traffic and 2) on-file credit cards of potential downloaders.

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How Newspapers Should Adapt To Digital Era

Mike Moran — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 14:14:17 +0000

Image via Wikipedia

It’s not a news story–doesn’t really rise to the level of newsworthiness–but people do seem to be talking more lately about the death of newspapers. Recently even Eric Schmidt of Google discussed how newspapers must find a mixture of advertising, micropayments, and regular subscriptions to fund their futures. To me, all this talk about how newspapers collect money is misplaced. Instead, I think newspapers must think about how to flourish by remaining relevant in the new digital world.

Gee, really? Advertising and subscriptions? Who’da thunk it? Micropayments are just a high tech version of newsstand sales, just for individual articles. But the newspaper business is not in trouble because they don’t know how to charge. They in trouble because no one knows why they should pay.

Newspapers aren’t the first media business threatened by technology. Radio didn’t die with the advent of TV. It changed. When people stopped listening to Gunsmoke and started watching it, what did radio do? It started airing wall-to-wall music, news, and talk. It was the end of one era, yes, but the start of another. Newspapers face a similar situation, where they must face their problems in order to change.

Most newspapers suffer from the same problem as many local businesses struck by the Internet. They discover that their main advantage was that they are local. Your local mattress store doesn’t really have the best quality, the friendliest service, the widest selection, and the lowest prices, despite what the sign says. In truth, they were just the closest to your house. On the Internet, every mattress store is equally close to your house and they all deliver right to your house. To compete on the Internet these old line businesses must find some real differentiation.

Newspapers have the same problem. Every one of them syndicates their stories from AP and Reuters, their columnists in many cases, and their comics from King Features. They are all the same. You can read the same story in hundreds of papers every day.

In their hometowns, that’s worth something, because you can’t buy any of a hundred papers, but on the Internet you can read every one of them. Now some newspapers truly have unique content–the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and the Washington Post don’t have much to worry about. But most newspapers, including many owned by the same companies that own those papers, are in trouble, because they have no real differentiation.

Except one. They do have local news. Some newspapers are following the trend of hyperlocal news, where they work hard to run down every story on each little town school board meeting, expressly because that content is unique.

There’s no way to know whether people’s appetite for that kind of news will save newspapers, but I think if they hire some of the bloggers with strong local opinions, and they tell their stringers to shoot videos of their stories, they have a good chance, because they’ll be delivering content that some people want and can’t find elsewhere.

But if they think that they can do what they’ve always done and just tell themselves that they’ll make it all up in micropayments, I think they are kidding themselves. It’s not about how you get paid. It’s about why someone would pay you.

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Digital Music Sales To Rise Dramatically In The Next 5 Years

Bruce Houghton — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 20:56:18 +0000

A new study by JupiterResearch, a Forrester Research company, predicts that digital music will grow from the current 18% to 41% of total sales in 5 years. Researchers credited stores like Amazon and the transition to mp3′s which make downloads portable for some of the increase.

The "U.S. Music Forecast 2008 to 2013" predicts that growth in digital music sales will not compensate for declining CD sales, with the U.S. music market shrinking over the next five years from $10.2 billion to $9.8 billion.

64% of subscribers to digital music services and 57% of those who download music also bought a CD in a store within the last year. Regular digital music consumers have shifted 60% of their music spending to digital. The study predicts that music on cell phones will only contribute 3% to overall sales or $300 million by 2013.

ANALYSIS: While the CD will continue to hang on, most..

major labels are already approaching 30% of revenue from digital. Last week Atlantic claimed that 50% of its revenue already come from digital. While some have disputed that projection, it seems that JupiterResearch has erred too far in the other direction. If digital does not account for 50% or even 60% of total sales by 2013, it will only be because the industry has continued to build roadblocks to its own success.

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SmugMug Taps Amazon For SmugVault Storage

WebProNews Staff — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 23:04:53 +0000

Image sharing site SmugMug opened a new service to handle the storage of larger image formats, as well as any other files their users wish to store.

The ongoing shift of people’s memories from analog to digital formats led to the creation of ever-expanding storage options. But even the most substantial memory cards fill to capacity, leaving people looking for either more cards, or an option to store their images externally.

SmugMug CEO Don MacAskill said his company’s new service, SmugVault, picks up where SmugMug leaves off in terms of storing images. SmugMug provides unlimited storage of common JPEG, GIF, and PNG files; photographers who wish to keep RAW, TIFF, and PSD files among others can opt for a SmugVault subscription.

SmugMug offers SmugVault via Amazon’s S3 storage service. They plan to charge 22 cents per gigabyte of storage per month, plus a recurring $1 monthly fee. Data transfer fees vary on gigabytes in and out of SmugVault.

Users manage the storage through their existing SmugMug interface. SmugVault accepts other file types like Word and Excel documents for storage.

The service should appeal to the casual photographer who wish to ensure the safety of their photos and other electronic documents on an ongoing basis. CenterNetworks cited Zoomr’s Thomas Hawk on the expense heavy photographers would incur: someone with only 500GB of images would have to pay $110 per month for the storage.

Ebay To Stop Allowing Digital Product Sales

Kenny Tran — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 22:06:01 +0000

This is quite a big news for those who is earning a living or just some pocket money from selling digital product on Ebay.

Hello…This is Brian Burke, Director Global Feedback Policy. Digital goods are often reproduced at little to no cost to the seller. On eBay, this creates the potential for Feedback Manipulation (both real and perceived). To preserve the integrity of the Feedback system, effective March 31 all goods that can be digitally downloaded or transferred electronically must be listed using the Classified Ads format.

Using the Classified Ads format, sellers receive a 30-day ad at a fixed price. This solution enables sellers to continue to market their digital goods on eBay; however, because Classified Ad listings are a lead generation tool and do not result in transactions that go through eBay, Feedback cannot be exchanged between buyer and seller.

Yes, no more selling digital products on Ebay from Mar 31 onwards. Thus, if you’re considering some book or ebooks about making money with Ebay, make sure that it won’t just cover digital selling only.

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Wishlist Widget Allows Digital Gifting

WebProNews Staff — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 16:21:33 +0000

Getting a virtual slice of pizza might be fun and all, but five-month-old startup gBox is betting that people would rather receive something more tangible this holiday season. It’s also betting social networkers will appreciate its new Wishlist widget more than Facebook’s Beacon program.

The Wishlist widget allows users to publish what gifts (right now, just music) they want on their social networking profile or blog, and friends can purchase it for them and send it digitally. The recipient receives an email telling them so-and-so bought them a gift.

gBox CEO Tammy Artim tells WebProNews that over a million tracks are available in gBox’s inventory, in MP3 or WMA formats from major music labels such as Universal and Sony, or from independent labels like Iota.

Though the initial release is for music only, Artim says the gBox platform will extend to videos and games, and eventually into hard goods. Mobile capabilities are also planned as the company works out details with the major carriers.

The company also contrasts its more controlled approach to promotion to Facebook’s Beacon fiasco. Instead of defacto endorsements like Beacon provides, users can more actively choose which products or artists they find desirable, and post them to their Wishlist.

"We think it’s a pretty cool way to get in front of the consumer," says Artim, also noting how it’s a follow-up to the popular practice of virtual gifting.

gBox’s Wishlist is only available for PC, but Artim says Mac compatibility will follow.

Law Firm Purges DoubleClick References

WebProNews Staff — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 15:46:53 +0000

The demand for the FTC chair to recuse herself from the Google and DoubleClick antitrust review yielded a surprising little twist.

In their motion for disqualification of Deborah Platt Majoras, the Center for Digital Democracy and the Electronic Privacy Information Center cited a newly discovered fact about the case. Majoras’ husband, John Majoras, works for a law firm retained by DoubleClick.

John Majoras is not listed as one of the five attorneys DC law firm Jones Day has advising DoubleClick on antitrust issues. However, searching the Jones Day site, and Google, shows references to DoubleClick no longer appear on the firm’s website.

A query through the Jones Day site search displayed this item as one of four results:

3. Jones Day - Services - Antitrust Mergers/Joint Ventures - Experience …DTE Energy Company. DoubleClick Inc. Acquisition by DoubleClick Antitrust counsel in the $3.1 billion acquisition…in the $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick by Google Inc. H&R… http://www.jonesday.com/services/services_experience.aspx? AdvancedServices=7deaa765-88f7-4368-8db7-443695819af3 12/7/2007 1:10:31 AM

Click the link, and DoubleClick does not appear in the resulting list. We expect this could be a simple administrative oversight, and look forward to hearing it has been corrected.

But the Jones Day webmaster will have more work to do. For one thing, this link should lead directly to a summary of Jones Day’s experience with DoubleClick. It’s blank, but you can see it in the CDD/EPIC motion.

We checked each of the five attorneys’ profiles on the site. EPIC and CDD listed Joe Sims, Thomas Jestaedt, Alexandre G. Verheyden, Michael S. McFalls, and Chris Ahern as the legal eagles providing counsel.

Each of those attorneys once had this listed in their Professional Biography – Experience:

DoubleClick Inc. Acquisition by DoubleClick Antitrust counsel in the $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick by Google Inc.

In each case, that reference has been scrubbed from the Jones Day site. One would imagine an attorney would want to tout being part of a multi-billion-dollar deal involving one of the biggest name brand companies on the planet.

Not at Jones Day, though.

(UPDATE: A DoubleClick representative responded to this story via email: "Simpson Thacher has been DoubleClick’s outside counsel since July of 2005 and was retained to represent it in all aspects of its proposed acquisition by Google, including with respect to United States antitrust matters. From the outset, Simpson Thacher has represented DoubleClick before the Federal Trade Commission and continues in that capacity. Jones Day has been engaged primarily with respect to European and other non-U.S. jurisdictions. Jones Day was not engaged to represent, and has not represented DoubleClick before the Federal Trade Commission or appeared before the Commission on DoubleClick’s behalf.")

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