TWO NEW NYC OUTPOSTS FOR OUR FAVORITE BRANDS: APPLE & KINOKUNIYA
APPLE STORE: MEATPACKING DISTRICT
I set out with AD to discover the newest Apple Store installment in the Meatpacking District(opened 12/7), conveniently located around the corner from the uber trendy Soho House, on 14th Street and 9th Avenue. Of course, I documented my visit with photos.
The Jobs’ favorite translucent spiral staircase is definitely more impressive when not filled with hoards of people as found in the 5th Avenue location.
Yup, the staircase really looks amazing from every angle, but even more so when looking up from the bottom level.
The verdict: 3 floors with plenty of space but not as stylish or crowded as its NY siblings.
BOOKS KINOKUNIYA: BRYANT PARK
Nita convinced me that I would fall in love with this place upon entry and she was right. Kinokuniya is a Japanese bookstore specializing in English and Japanese manga. Their first store inNY has been located on 49th Street since 2000.This new store, located on 41st Street across from Bryant Park, openedin October. Kinokuniya opened their first store in the U.S. in San Franciscoin 1969 with locations in Los Angeles and New York to follow.
The store is massive with three floors devoted to anime, film, books, gift wrap, clothing, and other little odds and ends. In addition, the store houses a light version of the popular midtown Café Zaiya and a spectacular view of Bryant Park. If you sit at the window, you can even access Bryant Park’s free Wi-Fi while chowing down on your bento box. Yup, Marauder love on this one.
TVGuide.com is looking to help television fans endure the ongoing Hollywood writers strike by packaging full-length episodes of TV series within a new channel, dubbed the Strike Survival Guide. The new channel will pull content from 55 broadcast, cable and video Web sites. (http://www.adweek.com/aw/iq_interactive/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003691310 1/3)
For the first time, commercial-free Disney Channel beat all the ad-supported cable networks in primetime in 2007, averaging 2.694 million total viewers. Disney Channel, boosted by “High School Musical 2,” delivered more average viewers than any other first-place network in cable TV history. (http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117978395.html?categoryid=1275&cs=1 1/3)
Nickelodeon says it has no plans to pull the February debut of the fourth season of “Zoey 101,” despite the controversial real-life pregnancy of its 16-year-old star, Jamie Lynn Spears. Episodes of the show continue to average 2 million viewers since news of Spears’s pregnancy. (http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6516799.html 1/3)
Fresh off his victory in the Iowa caucuses, presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., will help BET kick off a series of political interviews Tuesday titled “What’s In It for Us?” The second installment of the series comes Jan. 15, when BET interviews Obama opponent New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. (Multichannel News 1/3)
Premium movie channel, Starz InBlack will begin a new hour-long live concert series, Hip Hop: Raw & Uncut starting tonight at 10p. Shot live in South Beach Miami the concert series will spotlight current and up-and-coming hip hop artists.
ABC and Harpo Productions revealed the cast for the new competition series Oprah’s Big Give debuting March 2 at 9p. Hosting will be Nate Berkus, interior designer and frequent contributor to The Oprah Winfrey Show and O, The Oprah Magazine. Judges will include chef and philanthropist Jamie Oliver, NFL player and Boys & Girls Club Hall of Famer Tony Gonzalez and wife of Chris Rock and charity founder Malaak Compton-Rock.
News Corp.’s fledgling Fox Business Network averaged 8,000 viewers in its first eight weeks on the air. Rival CNBC, in the same period, averaged 265,000 viewers. “That’s not very good,” says SNL Kagan analyst Derek Baine. “That doesn’t sound very exciting to me.” (http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-fri_phil_0104jan04,0,7781538.column 1/4)
NBC Universal will be the first-ever “pure content company” to present at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. NBC is also the official broadcast partner, with two studios for live broadcasts that will attract stars like Brian Williams and Donny Deutsch. (http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/2008/01/03/nbc-universals-pure-content-company-at-ces 1/3)
CBS is taking over the business operations of its college sports cable network, CSTV, which it bought in 2005, with the aim of creating a business model similar to Disney’s ABC and ESPN networks. The move will allow CBS to sell advertising across multiple platforms, including the Internet. (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=ayeLwEOTnkDs 1/3)
Despite the increasing popularity of online video and on-demand services, DVR penetration in U.S. television households will continue to expand, nearly doubling over the next five years, according to a new report from market-analysis firm JupiterResearch. ContentAgenda.com (1/3)
U.S. album sales plunged 9.5% last year from 2006, continuing a downward trend for the recording industry, despite a 45% surge in the sale of digital tracks, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Last year, Apple’s iTunes Music Store became the third-largest U.S. music retailer. (http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jGK2CZZu1nEJtZekM7K39jfiLhWAD8TUP10O0 1/3)
In a move that would mark the end of a digital music era, Sony BMG Music plans to sell songs without the copyright protection software that has long restricted the use of music downloaded from the Internet. Sony BMG is to become the last of the top four music labels to drop DRM. (http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jan2008/tc2008013_398775.htm 1/4)
A lucky unsigned musician will win a chance to perform with the Foo Fighters next month during the Grammy Awards. CBS and YouTube’s My Grammy Moment contest will allow eligible musicians to upload a 60-second video clip of their performance of part of a song by the Foos. (http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2008/01/03/cbs-youtube-offer-musicians-a-grammy-moment 1/3)
Wow. . .when did David Grohl get so old? It seems like just yesterday that he was sidekick to Kurt Cobain’s rasp. Thanks to Mary Cunningham from the Grammys for the hook-up on the link.
Google is working on getting the word out about AdWords to local businesses. The search giant recently gathered 150 AdWords partners at the Googleplex for a local markets symposium, which featured guest speaker Craig Newmark of Craigslist fame, among others. (http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/01/adwords-and-local-markets.html 1/3)
A patent application lodged by Google in July 2007 but recently made public seeks to patent a method where by robots (computers) can read and understand text in images and video. The extension of the application would be that images and video indexed by Google would be searchable by the text located within the image or video itself, a big step forward in indexing that has not previously been available. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/01/04/google-lodges-patent-for-reading-text-in-images-and-video 1/4)
As a loyal supporter of free ad-supported municipal Wi-Fi access, I commend Meraki for offering Wi-Fi on a mesh network rather than through stand alone Wi-Fi access points. This mesh network is cheaper than Google’s original plan. Now the only lingering question will be: Will local advertising revenue support the cost associated with establishing citywide Wi-Fi? Well, here’s a great market to test this out in. Free Wi-Fi is a service not only facilitating a community of techno-enabled; it’s also a service enabling the underprivileged. The cost of a computer has fallen drastically while the monthly broadband subscription has remained high, in relation to what low income families can afford. For more information on the digital divide, click here.
Spark Networks, the parent company of the popular Jewish online dating site JDate.com, is said to be putting itself up for sale. The company is already in early talks with suitors that include Yahoo, Barry Diller’s IAC/InterActiveCorp, and News Corp.’s MySpace. (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/04/technology/04deal.html?_r=1&oref=slogin 1/4)
NBC Universal will hold what is being likened to an “upfront” presentation for its digital out-of-home assets Jan. 16. The company is hoping to get more advertisers to consider NBC for placing ads on television screens in supermarkets, near gas-station pumps, in taxi cabs and other places. (http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=122861 1/3)
Fox will debut the pilot of Warner Bros. Television’s Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles on Yahoo! TV beginning tonight at 9 pm ET/Midnight PT. It will be available for streaming on Yahoo commercial free for a 24-hour period.
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles Trailer
Online video search engine Truveo.com catalogued its 100 millionth video in 2007, a 20-fold increase from the 5 million videos it began with at the beginning of the year. The company is predicting it will have 1 billion videos indexed by 2009.
Apple iPhone owners may soon be shopping for Ultimate Ears’ new Super.Fi 4vi headset. The headphone/microphone combination touts a 20- to 15,000-hertz frequency response in addition to a tuned filter to help reproduce bass. (The New York Times 1/3)
Motorola is expected to debut at the International CES in Las Vegas next week a new mobile device capable of playing live TV. The company also plans to launch its new set-top boxes and a device designed to link desktop computers to services based on WiMAX. (The New York Times/Reuters 1/3)
Aided by several hit titles, Xbox 360 consoles flew off the shelves in the last quarter of 2007, Microsoft reported, saying it sold 4.3 million units during the period. But the company also acknowledged glitches with its online gaming service and offered a free game to millions of its users. (Canada.com (CanWest News Service)/Reuters 1/4)
An antitrust lawsuit has been filed against Apple, which claims the company, by not supporting the Windows Media Audio format, has an illegal monopoly on the digital-music market. Apple officials, citing company policy, refused to comment on the ongoing litigation. (Yahoo!/TechWeb/InformationWeek 1/3)
The environmental benefits of emerging home-automation technology are expected to shine during next week’s International CES convention. And while the home-automation category is not new, analysts expect the nation’s renewed energy concerns to better shine a spotlight on the market this year. One Parks Associates analyst predicts the home-controls market will reach $6 billion by 2012. (The Boston Globe/Associated Press 1/3)
