Group items tagged

Bloomberg is reporting that Microsoft will cease development of its family of Zune-branded music players due to weak demand and a desire to focus on its smartphone platform.

Haiti is using cell phones and Google maps to track fraud reports.

psfk's report summary- have we purchased the full report?

Zynga report from Raptr

one reports states google+ hit 10million users

It's interesting how these services are turing the "Pay to Play" model on it's head. With oligopolies all but removing price competition from the equation, I'd love to see a Netflix/Hulu/YouTube report that becomes the benchmark for how consumers choose their ISP.

My hypothesis is that the "digital broadcast" scramble to buy/merge everything is defensive move mostly by the traditional telcos & ISP's. They see the upcoming disruption from Wifi/mesh networks that will erode their primary source of revenue from cellular data.

"Almost as many Americans (236.5 million) watched TV on their phones during the second quarter of 2012, as watched it on a conventional TV set (283.3 million), albeit for much shorter durations. While the average American spends nearly 145 hours per month watching TV on a traditional TV, Nielsen didn't even report the average time they spend watching on their phones. But mobile subscribers watching video on their phones -- a smaller sub-segment of about 37 million Americans -- spend an average of five hours and 20 minutes watching TV on their phones each month, an increase of 31 minutes over the second quarter of 2011."

"At any rate, the 10.4 million figure seems to be at least marginally good news for Foursquare, which, according to one investor capital source, is having to work harder for funding these days than in years past. ComScore earlier this year reported Foursquare drew just between 5 million and 6 million users monthly from March to June.  The Nielsen number is likely informative for brands still in the consideration stage about cultivating their Foursquare presence through organic features on the app or via the platform's nascent ads offering. Whether or not it's a good number for three-and-a-half-year-old Foursquare is probably a matter of opinion. And it's worth noting that Nielsen ranks the geo-social company only behind Facebook (78 million) and Twitter (23 million) in terms of July mobile app users. Overall, Foursquare usage, per Nielsen, was up 118 percent during the month year-over-year."

"SundaySky's 2012 "State of Video in E-Commerce" report compiles data from internal and external studies to uncover the latest trends in online video marketing. SundaySky found that a short-form video advertisement without personalization had a 50 percent consumer completion rate. However, according to the study, a slightly longer long-form video advertisement with added consumer personalization will garner 2.5 times longer viewing times. "2012 will be remembered for the first online Olympics and the first digital election, perhaps not the year of personally relevant video, but we did learn that personalization is the key to increasing video engagement," said SundaySky VP of Marketing Kelly Ford in a blog post."

"News agency Reuters reports that Staples in the U.S. agreed to install Amazon Lockers. Similar to BufferBox, Amazon's service sends customers an email with a pickup code they enter on a touchscreen to open the self-serve locker containing the package. Shoppers have three days from delivery to pick up the package."

"In the case of Electiongrams, NBC is relying on a start-up called Chute that provides back-end tools for large-scale photo management to brands and large media companies. Chute helps its clients pull in photos that people share through email or sites like Facebook, but also offers human and automated moderating tools."

"To get a feel for the tablet vs PC market, I again looked to IDC for data on computer sales. Last month, it reported a total of 87.7 million personal computers were sold in the third quarter of this year; down 8.6 percent from the year ago quarter. That's not a favorable trend, considering tablet sales grew nearly 50 percent in the past year. If you were to ignore the smartphone for this exercise - which has surpasses sales of the PC early this year - and do a quick calculation of the total tablets and PCs sold, 24 percent of the 115.5 "computers" were tablets in the last quarter."

"But the increase in ad volume trumped the visitor increase. Using data from Media6degrees, AdExchanger reports that Weather.com had almost 7,000 percent more ads on Monday Oct. 29, the day Sandy hit, than it had the previous Monday. Accuweather.com and Wunderground.com also saw ad spikes, although they were far more modest, peaking at a 333 percent 7-day life Sunday Oct. 28 and 163 percent lift Saturday Oct. 27, respectively."

In certain locations, such as public squares, smartphone owners will be able to use an augmented reality app to project a virtual store - branded as Unlimited Yihaodian - over the top of their surroundings. Using the phone's accelerometer, customers will be able to move around digital rooms, displaying products available on Yihaodian's site, reports suggest. Account holders can then order items for delivery as they would if they were using the browser version.

Leap Motion, an $80 device that turns any computer into the one from Minority Report. The iPod Mini-sized controller sits in front of the keyboard and reads three dimensional hand motions, allowing the user to interact with the screen without touching it. (The user's hands have to remain with an 8-cubic-foot area.) Unlike some previous attempts at no-touch interaction, Leap Motion doesn't require the user to learn artificial movements.

Thirty-five percent of America's 170 million fans are using mobile devices to follow sports, which is up from 21 percent in 2011 and reflects overall web trends; 23 percent of these are using mobile to watch video