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alexbelov

Audible's new Channels audio content subscription service is a bet on a voice-powered f... - 0 views

  • Amazon-owned Audible announced a new service called Channels today, one that differs from its typical audiobook business in offering more bite-size content from original content producers, as well as recordings of news stores from NYT, WSJ, The Washington Post and others. The original programming will be rolling out over time, covering comedy, investigatory journalism (think Serial) and talk shows – which is really Amazon applying the Netflix/Prime Originals model to audio content.
  • The potential Amazon and Audible sees in Channels is the same potential that many others have been picking up on in podcasts. Podcasts present a way to provide multi-genre, opt-in entertainment to consumers with relatively low cost of entry, and unlike most other types of media, it can be consumed concurrent with other activities.
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    Amazon-owned Audible announced a new service called Channels today, one that differs from its typical audiobook business in offering more bite-size content from original content producers, as well as recordings of news stores from NYT, WSJ, The Washington Post and others. The original programming will be rolling out over time, covering comedy, investigatory journalism (think Serial) and talk shows. It's similar to podcasts, which provide multi-genre, opt-in entertainment to consumers with low cost of entry, consumed concurrent with other activities.
Maria Gurova

The Public Costs of Private Distribution Strategies: Content Release Windows as Negativ... - 0 views

  • “copyright extremism” – a term he used to describe extended delays in content distribution, which often result in content reaching foreign markets months after it is released in the United States.
  • Essentially, “extremism” is another way of saying that piracy is more a business model problem than a policy problem. 
  • The strategy of windowing has long been practiced because it is believed to maximize revenue opportunities for a given film.  By giving successive distribution channels exclusive rights to the work, a film distributor aims to extract maximum revenues from licensees in each channel.
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  • Even if film distributors were to reject the conventional wisdom of windowing, those windows are jealously guarded by their respective sectors.  The theatrical exhibition window is particularly so
  • announced in September 2014 that they would distribute a sequel to the 2000 hit Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon simultaneously via Netflix and IMAX theaters worldwide, movie theater chains swiftly circled the wagons and announced a boycott of the Weinsteins’ film.
  • “value of ownership for the consumer” is a euphemism for “consumer willingness-to-pay.”  The longer a consumer must wait before they can watch a movie on their Netflix subscription, the likelier that consumer is to pay for a DVD
  • numerous industries have attempted to insulate themselves from disruption by persuading lawmakers to prescribe their exclusive industrial role in public laws, including auto dealers and beer distributors
  • windowing has been widely criticized as contributing to piracy, and “leaving money on the table.”  Empirical evidence bears that out.  Content producers are not unaware of this data; their calculus is that the revenues attributable to aggressive windowing (and avoiding friction with their distributors) exceed losses associated with piracy.
  • Windowing alienates consumers and arguably undermines respect for copyright in countries that receive content late
  • In the content distribution example, compensation might involve repayment for government resources expended on attributable piracy, perhaps based on a user-fee model that various government agencies already have.  If the windowed release distribution model generated more revenue than the costs it incurs, it would continue, taxpayers would be made whole, and the externality would be “internalized.”
Maria Gurova

YouTube Kids App Blasted as 'Deceptive' by Consumer Groups | Variety - 0 views

  • Google’s YouTube Kids app, which offers a walled garden of content aimed at the 5-and-under set, is the target of a coalition of consumer groups urging the Federal Trade Commission to investigate the service as a potential violation of rules about advertising to children
  • “Many of the video segments endorsing toys, candy and other products that appear to be ‘user-generated’ have undisclosed relationships with product manufacturers in v
  • iolation of the FTC’s guidelines concerning the use of endorsements and testimonials in advertising,
Maria Gurova

Facebook will give video makers a cut - 0 views

  • "There's a certain class of content which is only going to come onto Facebook if there's a good way to compensate content owners for that,"
  • "We've recently rolled out the business model for this. We'll give a revenue share on a portion of the views to content owners
  • To grasp the scope of change unraveling in content creation, which is increasingly fragmented, consider all the mobile apps on your smartphone.
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  • Studies consistently show users thumb through only a handful of apps on a regular basis
  • This is why tech bellwethers — from social media platforms such as Facebook to traditional hardware companies like Apple — are churning out news products, designed to court and engage audiences to their brand-ecosystems.
  • Facebook plans to announce the launch of Notify, a standalone news app, the Financial Times reports. Featured content will come from media partners including Vogue, The Washington Post and CBS.
  • Professional content already is splintered across content creators and technology platforms
  • Apple News, for iOS 9. The mobile app aggregates news from a wide range of sources into a mobile-friendly format,
  • Twitter Moments is a feature on Twitter that links tweets in a traditional story format, from beginning to end.
  • Snapchat has been partnering with publishers for Snapchat Discover. The app, widely popular with millennials, includes a "Discover" feature that showcases stories from publishers including Vice, People, CNN and National Geographic
  • For example, with instant articles Facebook directly hosts outside publishers' articles on its social network — and Facebook pockets the traffic
  • Facebook on Wednesday also said its daily video views have reached 8 billion, though some tech analsyts including Pfeiffer wonder if a single view is measured by only a few seconds on an autoplay setting.
  • Facebook in fact is testing its own, site-specific video hub, as Re/code has reported.
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    social media is rapidly moving towards serving as a one-stop destination for all consumer media needs 
Maria Gurova

Driverless cars, pilotless planes … will there be jobs left for a human being... - 3 views

  • From staff-free ticket offices to students who can learn online, it seems there is no corner of economic life in which people are not being replaced by machines.
  • One of the reasons Google is investing so much is that whoever owns the communications system for driverless cars will own the 21st century's equivalent of the telephone network or money clearing system: this will be a licence to print money.
  • The only new jobs will be in the design and marketing of the cars, and in writing the computer software that will allow them to navigate their journeys, along with the apps for our mobile phones that will help us to use them better
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  • The invention of 3D printing, in which every home or office will be equipped with an in-house printer that can spew out the goods we want – from shoes to pills – anticipates a world of what Summers calls automated "doers". They will do everything for us, eliminating the need for much work.
  • we have come to the end of the great "general purpose technologies" (technologies that transform an entire economy, such as the steam engine, electricity, the car and so on) that changed the world. There are no new transformative technologies to carry us forward, while the old activities are being robotised and automated.
  • The second is in human wellbeing. There will be vast growth in advising, coaching, caring, mentoring, doctoring, nursing, teaching and generally enhancing capabilities.
  • Notwithstanding robotisation and automation, I identify four broad areas in which there will be vast job opportunities.The first is in micro-production
  • The third is in addressing the globe's "wicked issues" . There will be new forms of nutrition and carbon-efficient energy, along with economising with water, to meet the demands of a world population of 9 billion in 2050.
  • And fourthly, digital and big data management will foster whole new industries
  • the truth is, nobody knows. What we do know is that two-thirds of what we consume today was not invented 25 years ago. It will be the same again in a generation's time
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    demand for the new expertise may impact not only the school and academic education, but earlier development stages
Vladimir Antonov

Project Skybender: Google's secretive 5G internet drone tests revealed | Technology | T... - 0 views

  • Google is testing solar-powered drones at Spaceport America in New Mexico to explore ways to deliver high-speed internet from the air
  • Project SkyBender is using drones to experiment with millimetre-wave radio transmissions, one of the technologies that could underpin next generation 5G wireless internet access
  • High frequency millimetre waves can theoretically transmit gigabits of data every second, up to 40 times more than today’s 4G LTE systems. Google ultimately envisages thousands of high altitude “self-flying aircraft” delivering internet access around the world.
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  • “The huge advantage of millimetre wave is access to new spectrum because the existing cellphone spectrum is overcrowded. It’s packed and there’s nowhere else to go,” says Jacques Rudell
  • However, millimetre wave transmissions have a much shorter range than mobile phone signals. A broadcast at 28GHz, the frequency Google is testing at Spaceport America, would fade out in around a tenth the distance of a 4G phone signal. To get millimetre wave working from a high-flying drone, Google needs to experiment with focused transmissions from a so-called phased array. “This is very difficult, very complex and burns a lot of power,” Rudell says
  • The SkyBender system is being tested with an “optionally piloted” aircraft called Centaur as well as solar-powered drones made by Google Titan, a division formed when Google acquired New Mexico startup Titan Aerospace in 2014. Titan built high-altitude solar-powered drones with wingspans of up to 50 metres
  • Project SkyBender is part of the little-known Google Access team, which also includes Project Loon, a plan to deliver wireless internet using unpowered balloons floating through the stratosphere.
  • In 2014, Darpa, the research arm of the US military, announced a program called Mobile Hotspots to make a fleet of drones that could provide one gigabit per second communications for troops operating in remote areas.
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    Could this be a next gen. technology that would bring hi-speed internet access literally to every place in the world?
Maria Gurova

Developed world plays waiting game with mobile payments - FT.com - 0 views

  • High-profile mobile money launches by Apple and Samsung may have caught the headlines
  • But it is the developments in payments systems in supposedly less developed nations in Africa and Asia that point the way to the probable future for wider mobile banking.
  • the reality remains that the mobile phone as a means of payment remains relatively niche even in developed markets.
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  • But analysts anticipate a further shift as more financial services and greater interactivity are added, which is when mobile payments will become mobile banking.
  • In the UK, for example, just 1 per cent
  • the mobile phone is taking on extra roles as a place to keep money safe and move it around, as well as to acquire other financial services from trusted providers.
  • services are quickly expanding to include loan disbursement, bill payment and micro insurance.
  • In the next few years mobile banking apps will become the predominant means to access all routine banking services, from applying for a loan or overdraft increase to letting the bank know you are moving house
  • So while we are working closely with digital giants such as Apple, Samsung and Google to roll out their payment services, we’re also working with the banks to create their own payment functionality embedded within their existing hugely popular banking apps
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    The article is about a shifting consumer behaviour in mobile payments and that it's not driven by developed economies with the established finical systems but rather by the emerging regions, like Africa and Asia 
Maria Gurova

The Future of Advertising Hinges on Understanding Identity | Adweek - 0 views

  • . The future of identity lies in digitizing the physical world, and the context in which we collect data about identity needs to become transparent.
  • Will consumers understand that better identity data equals higher-quality messaging to them throughout their lives? Context will allow us to exchange value better and build deeper networks in physical world data collection.
  • We need better systems to understand and provide access to individuals’ identity by service and by object
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  • How do we get the right message to the right user to maximize the value to the consumer? In doing so, we can minimize waste and theoretically deliver a much more accurate and compelling experience
  • The Internet of Things phenomenon is in the early days of posing the question: Can we, or should we, bring the intelligence and efficiency of the Internet to everyday objects?
Ilya Vorobiev

Microsoft Hyperlapse: time lapse your videos - 1 views

    • Ilya Vorobiev
       
      Every vacation or important event we produce a lot of videos and photos that are hardly consumable in the future. This is big a challenge for image and video recognition technologies. Hyperlapse is a great example in this field that helps to convert minutes or hours of videos into short simple and nice clip. Video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZcBLc4ifuQ
  • Microsoft Hyperlapse is a new technology that creates smooth and stabilized time lapses from first-person videos.
  • you can time lapse those experiences, distilling them into easily consumable, enjoyable experiences.
alexbelov

Microsoft is bringing bots to Skype - and everywhere else | TechCrunch - 0 views

  • Microsoft’s own virtual assistant Cortana, aim to help pave the way for the future of communication, productivity, and interactions with businesses and brands.
  • In Skype, the company showed off rich Cortana integration which put the assistant directly into the app where she could help users do things like identify the persons, places and things in your messages, underline them, and then display more info in a card-like interface when clicked.
  • She is also able to help you perform a variety of tasks, like adding items to your calendar, booking travel or hotel rooms, or even pre-populating conversations to friends with text.
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  • The bots’ integration in Skype is rolling out today on Windows, iOS and Android as a preview.
  • The company launched the first-ever Skype Bot SDK, which lets brands, businesses and other third parties create their own bots that can work on Skype, seamlessly integrating into users’ chats. These aren’t just text bots, as many of the SMS-based virtual assistance startups we’ve seen so far – Skype bots can introduce both audio and video experiences
  • The company is also launching a bot directory, giving us a brief peek at a few bots it had created itself.
  • Bots “represent a huge opportunity to write new types of applications,” Nadella told developers
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    Microsoft jumps bots bandwagon by introducing bots ecosystem in skype, which includes bot development kit, bot framework and bot directory.
Oleg Batluk

Retail Asia Expo 2016 - Brand-New Internet Retailing Expo Introduces Cutting-Edge Techn... - 0 views

  • The Expo will bring the latest and finest products, solutions and strategies to feed retailers' hunger for impressing their customers and expanding their online territories
  • internet retailing business
  • Augment Paris HQ
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  • Imagine the needs and benefits of visiting a local physical retail store being replaced by AR. Even more accurately, it aims to improve and bring a brand-new shopping experience to consumers by using a digital model of a product to simulate its existence in everyday reality
  • The Alibaba Group, one of the world's biggest online commerce companies, will be participating in RAE's brand new feature: the Internet Retailing Theatre
Maria Gurova

Google: The new GE: Google, everywhere | The Economist - 0 views

  • Its latest purchase is Nest Labs, a maker of sophisticated thermostats and smoke detectors: on January 13th Google said it would pay $3.2 billion in cash for the firm. Google’s biggest move into hardware so far is its $12.5 billion bid for Motorola Mobility
  • With Google’s collection of hardware businesses, the common factor is data: gathering and crunching them, to make physical devices more intelligent.
  • Packed with sensors and software that can, say, detect that the house is empty and turn down the heating, Nest’s connected thermostats generate plenty of data, which the firm captures.
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  • This month Samsung announced a new smart-home computing platform that will let people control washing machines, televisions and other devices it makes from a single app. Microsoft, Apple and Amazon were also tipped to take a lead there, but Google was until now seen as something of a laggard.
  • it is likely to do what it did with driverless cars: take a technology financed by military contracts and adapt it for the consumer market.
evgeny lavrov

Google's Got a Plan to Make the Mobile Web Less Slow | WIRED - 0 views

  • it’s clear that in the future, tech companies—not publishers—will be the chief distributors of the news we consume.
  • Google’s AMP
  • is a continuation of that trend
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  • AMP aims to ensure that web content loads just as instantly, and looks just as sleek as it would in a native app.
  • This is about making sure the World Wide Web is not the World Wide Wait
  • The hope, among publishers, is that faster, cleaner content on the web will drive engagement. Attention spans on the web are short, after all, and there are plenty of other articles to read.
  • Google is opening this format to all publishers
  • It will also be interesting to see how Facebook responds to the news
  • While Facebook is onboarding publishers one by one
  • But now, more than ever, these platforms are not only determining what news matters to us, they’re determining the best way to present and publish it, as well
alexbelov

Experiencing the News: Immersive Journalism | Virtual Reality Times - 2 views

  • Immersive journalism is an emerging genre in which sound, video, and reporting are melded together and presented with virtual reality technology to put the consumer in the scene, usually experiencing it from the point of view of the participants.
  • The larger concept is the cultivation of empathy, using the information—sight, sounds—point-of-view—to cause the user to see things he or she wouldn’t have seen otherwise.
  • It isn’t unreasonable to suggest that the way stories are told and received may fundamentally change in the next twenty to thirty years.  There are many ways to tell stories and to engage an audience.  Immersive journalism places emphasis on engagement through perspective, placing the user inside of the experience.
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    Immersive journalism revolutionises documentary storytelling via use of VR. Placing the user inside of the experience IJ provokes deep emotions, empathy and engagement.
Oleg Batluk

Most preschoolers use tablets, smartphones daily - WDAM-TV 7-News, Weather, Sports-Hatt... - 2 views

  • The study of 350 children in a low-income, minority community suggests that an income-based "digital divide" is shrinking.
  • some parents might be using technology as a surrogate babysitter.
  • The older the children were, the more likely they were to have their own technology.
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  • one-quarter of 2-year-olds needed no help using a smartphone or tablet, the findings showed.
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    Mobile technologies are getting close to infant ages though might be dangerous as surrogate babysitting. 
Maria Gurova

I quantified my baby and wish I could get the time back - 1 views

  • It’s part of an experiment to see if technology can help with the daunting and seemingly Sisyphean tasks of a first time parent, to find out why a growing number of people are turning to gadgets to help with one of life's toughest jobs.
  • Attempting to simplify parenthood with gizmos and apps has perversely made it a lot more complicated. And as for peace of mind, forget it.
  • The concept of the “quantified baby” has been around for some time now, and there’s a large and growing market for smart infant products from anxious or diligent or curious new parents.
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  • But does it all help you to be a better father, or mother, or is it all a massive distraction from the serious business of parenting?
  • While tracking proved useful as a reminder of feedings, and gave an objective insight into longer term sleep patterns, there wasn’t much she could do with the info.
  • It's the same problem quantified self devotees have: what to do with all that data. Unless you're a math or data viz wizard and prepared to take it all incredibly seriously, the numbers that consumer gadgets and apps spew out can be pretty meaningless — even more so when you're dealing with an unpredictable baby.
  • The Mimo and the Owlet are just the tip of the emerging infant tracking iceberg.
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    does using all the tech can offer to monitor your infant health make you a better parent or ease the toughest job in the world. Based on the article - not really 
Maria Gurova

The Artificial Intelligence Company You Should Watch ⚙ Co.Labs ⚙ code + commu... - 1 views

  • taking these technologies out of the lab and into people’s everyday lives.
  • we're able to program physical objects to be intelligent, adapt and interact with their surroundings, and to surprise people with what is possible.
  • a video game programmed for the real world, is the first step for us and demonstrates what’s possible with Anki technology.
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  • physical objects to understand the real world and using that information to behave intelligently, we can treat these characters in the physical world as if they were just characters in a video game
  • elements that make video games so engaging and fun and literally program them onto physical characters to make an entertainment experience that has never been possible before.
  • a massive opportunity in consumer products to change the way people interact with the physical world around them
  • new category of entertainment that brings these technologies to people in a familiar and fun way
  • Almost anything we interact with in the physical world has the potential to act with autonomy and purpose, and the challenge is in identifying the truly high-impact opportunities at the right times
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    please also watch the demonstration of the Anki Drive from WWDC - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnsR-kZUx6o
Maria Gurova

Is it curtains for the big screen? - FT.com - 1 views

  • According to the National Association of Theatre Owners, US movie attendance peaked in 2002 and has been steadily declining ever since. To compensate, theatres have rolled out new technologies such as 3D, Imax and premium large-format cinemas, raising their ticket prices and thus keeping the box office at record-breaking levels
  • The majority of us are increasingly staying home.
  • At Cannes this year, the studio with the most films in competition
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  • was not one of the big studios, but the streaming service Amazon.
  • But blockbusters have a design flaw: their marketing costs are enormous — opening a movie typically costs anywhere from $20m — and they spend less and less time in cinemas. To take a recent example, ticket sales for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice dropped by an astonishing 68.4 per cent on its second weekend
  • “What you’re going to end up with is fewer theatres,” George Lucas said during a panel at the University of Southern California in 2013. “Bigger theatres, with a lot of nice things. Going to the movies is going to cost you 50 bucks, maybe 100.”
  • He argued that a film will come out in cinemas for 17 days — three weekends — which is where 98 per cent of films make 95 per cent of their revenues anyway. On the 18th day, the film will be available everywhere and you will pay for the size: a movie screen will be $15, a 75-inch TV will be $4, a smartphone will be $1.99.
  • “Fifty per cent of Americans did not step into a movie theatre last year, and of the 50 per cent that did go into a theatre, 95 per cent of them went to one or two films,”
  • Arguably, it’s more visual than television. It has our full attention: each frame must pull its weight in terms of narrative and spectacle. That is why it is a director’s medium: it envelops us. TV comes to us, into our homes, casual, familiar, favouring habit-forming episodic narratives. That is why it is a writer’s medium. The big screen glamorises — its stars are the stuff of myth; the small screen is more like a member of the family
  • And something like The Avengers, it’s too much fun laughing with the audience. These things are communal experiences.
  • But then many film-makers would argue that movies should be consumed differently from music: a song is a song wherever you play it, whereas films were built for the big screen.
  • “I don’t think that experience is going to die,” says Obst, “although I do worry that eventually we will all be inside on our huge computer screens, watching all of the different types of entertainment together
  • Nothing breaks the spell of the movie more instantly than the pause button.
Maria Gurova

HBO NOW Pushing the Cord-Cutting Trend - App Annie Blog - 3 views

  • In 2007, Netflix changed the landscape by introducing streaming on PC, allowing customers to instantly watch shows. By 2010, Netflix video streaming became available on additional platforms, including iOS devices. Today, video streaming services Netflix and Hulu have a strong hold among combined iOS and Android Top US Apps.
  • These convenient apps have set the stage for a preferred entertainment delivery. A whole generation of consumers have grown up with video streaming, rather than (or in addition to) paying for cable television: cord cutters and cord nevers. Major premium cable networks, HBO and Showtime, are now after a piece of the pie Netflix and Hulu have carved out
  • Both HBO NOW and Showtime are taking different approaches to standalone streaming partnerships. HBO NOW has gotten more traction in part to a heavy promotion from Apple, resulting in positive metrics. Showtime’s success is less clear, being married into Hulu’s already strong performance
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  • Netflix isn’t being left in the dust completely, kicking off their original film initiative with “Beasts of No Nation”, which will launch both in theaters and streaming video on October 16th. HBO, Showtime, Netflix and Hulu will still need to compete with each other to retain users in a new “entertainment as a service” landscape where retention is not a given, but an earned currency.
  • Cable provider Comcast hasn’t felt the heat from the cord-cutting trend, having its second best Q2 in nine years. Comcast is also in an advantageous place as a broadband provider, with 22.3 million total customers in Q2. Good quality video streaming relies on broadband internet, meaning cable providers that offer bundled internet service will still be valuable
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    the rise of streaming services and how cable networks are competing with video streaming services on their battle field 
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