NEXT UPDATE: 5.6.08
Please note. The Daily Marauder will be on hiatus until next Tuesday. So that this doesn’t happen to me, your Marauder is taking a vacation. Even more shocking, I’m going to a place with no wireless service. How’s that for cutting the cord? Till next week y’all. . .
GRAFFITI 2.0
Wall.
Spray Paint.
Graffiti.
Right?
SO two dimensional. How about a little 3D in your graffiti?
The picture and video are part of a project called Tagged in Motion, created by Jung von Matt/next, a German interactive communication agency. Here’s how this works. A graffiti artist is outfitted with virtual reality glasses and begins to draw. Three motion capture camera capture his movements as he draws using a virtual spray can. The glasses allow the artist to see the artwork in 3D as it is being drawn. A Bluetooth controller helps the artist choose color, strength of brushstroke and texture of his/her work.
But this is only a tiny bit of the project called Nextwall.
Location
Hamburg, Germany
Objective
Combine street art with digital media.
Time Line
April ’07 until the end of ‘08
Interactivity
Quick Response Codes are 2D images of the barcodes you see on pretty much any retail product. As “read” by a mobile phone, these images can translate to pictures, links, or text allowing for a translation much like looking at those pictures that make your eyes go weird. In essence, the phone acts as a decoder ring.
A small transmitter located near the Nextwall permanently transmits a Bluetooth signal allowing information to be sent to users. If Bluetooth is activated on the mobile phone, an information guide will be instantly offered. How’s that for saving some trees?
Finally, the wall offers mobile vouchers. A viewer takes a photo of one of the colored images on the wall. Then he/she sends a text message to a mobile number supplied. Through object recognition technology, a link to a surrounding retailer will be matched and sent back to the mobile phone user offering a discount to a restaurant or store in the area.
Yup. . .that’s pretty hot.
Gemstar-TV Guide International’s shareholders approved the sale of the company to DRM provider Macrovision for $2.8 billion. The company says it wants to peel off TV Guide Network, TV Guide Magazine and horse racing channel TVG. (Cynopsis 4/30, http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080429/macrovision_gemstar_tv_guide.html 4/29)
Not surprisingly, Time Warner CEO Jeffrey Bewkes has decided to sell off the conglomerate’s stake in Time Warner Cable. “A complete structural separation of Time Warner Cable, under the right circumstances, is in the best interests of both companies’ shareholders,” he said. (Bloomberg 4/30)
Some on Wall Street and in Hollywood are asking: Can Sumner Redstone afford not to reunite Viacom and CBS? Former Disney CEO Michael Eisner says it is “suicidal” for the two companies to remain separate. Together, Viacom and CBS are “more like Disney or GE.” (http://blogs.mediapost.com/on_media/?p=159 4/30)
News service Reuters is reporting that CBS and NBC Universal will come together in the second round of bidding for The Weather Channel with a consolidated bid. Second-round bids are due May 8, and the joint offer from CBS and NBCU is expected to be in the range of $3.5 billion to $4 billion. (Reuters 4/29)
Hollywood studios and the Screen Actors Guild appear to have made little headway toward a new contract after more than two weeks of negotiations. The talks are said to have bogged down over how much actors should be paid across both new- and old-media platforms. (Iwantmedia 4/30, http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-sag30apr30,1,5608404.story 4/30)
Most of the major broadcast networks are dramatically scaling back the number of Los Angeles staffers they plan to send to New York for their upfront presentation to advertisers in May. CBS is said to be slashing its contingent by more than 50%. This year’s event seems “less relevant.” (Iwantmedia 4/30, http://www.variety.com/VR1117984827.html 4/29)
Household ratings are up 20%, to 2.1, for TNT’s coverage of the NBA playoffs so far this year. Through the first 17 games, TNT also is surging in key demos: up 32% among adults 18 to 34 and men 25 to 54. (Mediaweek 4/29)
HBO received eight Sports Emmy Awards, the most of any TV network, including the prize for outstanding sports journalism for a report on football-related concussions by “Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel.” ESPN won four Sports Emmys and TNT and ESPN.com each took home three. (Mediaweek 4/29)
FX is developing a motorcycle drama titled “Sons of Anarchy,” which will premiere in September and star Charlie Hunnam and Katey Sagal. The series will go spoke-to-spoke with HBO’s “1%,” another drama revolving around motorcycle culture. (Variety 4/29)
Fox News Channel will begin simulcasting in high definition Thursday with distribution from Time Warner Cable in parts of New York City and in San Antonio, Texas. Fox News HD will operate in the 720-line progressive format. (Broadcasting & Cable 4/29)
Verizon has received a cable TV franchise agreement from the city of New York. The agreement, which still must be approved by the city’s Franchise and Concession Review Committee, would pit Verizon against Time Warner Cable and Cablevision. (The Boston Globe/Associated Press 4/29)
ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA
CBS says it raked in $23 million in ad revenue from streaming March Madness this year and that CBS Radio’s online revenue grew to $30 million in 2007. Interestingly 92% of the tournament games were viewed at the workplace, according to Nielsen. (Cynopsis 4/30)
Barry Diller’s Internet company IAC/InterActiveCorp says first-quarter profit dropped 13%, but sales rose more than analysts expected. The results indicate most of IAC’s divisions are performing well as Diller prepares to break the company into five independent businesses. (Iwantmedia 4/30, http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601204&sid=aaOiow_O0QQk 4/30)
The BBC has won rave reviews and a loyal following for its iPlayer catch-up service launched last Christmas in the UK. The BBC says 42 million shows have been viewed so far. (iPlayer has been so successful that it’s being blamed for slowing down ISPs in the UK, but that’s another story.) Now complete episodes of BBC programming are finally available digitally in the U.S. on ITunes, under the BBC America shingle. Robin Hood, Torchwood and Little Britain are currently available as single episodes or complete seasons, with more shows to come in the near future. (Cynopsis 4/30)
Microsoft is expected to make its next move in the three-month-old takeover standoff with Yahoo as early as Wednesday, as the two sides have failed to reach any negotiated acquisition deal. One option is nominating a proxy slate of directors to replace Yahoo’s board. (Iwantmedia 4/30, http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB120952733890355585.html 4/30)
Google and YouTube are announcing plans to hold a U.S. presidential forum in New Orleans in September. The forum will be a “live televised discussion.” Using YouTube’s video platform and Google’s technologies, Americans will be able to “engage in the discussion in important ways.” (Iwantmedia 4/30, http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2008/04/29/google-youtube-plan-presidential-forum 4/29)
Speculation about Twitter’s new round of financing is leading everyone to speculate on Twitter’s actual penetration into the “mainstream,” or lack thereof. Hitwise says web visits have increased 8x in the last year, albeit from a minuscule base. Compete shows about 900,000 U.S. monthly website visitors. Comscore puts the worldwide number at 1.3 million unique monthly visitors in March. None of that data is particularly useful, since so much of the action on Twitter occurs via mobile phones, instant messaging and desktop clients like Alert Thingy, MySocial24×7 and Twhirl. Many of Twitter’s most active users rarely visit the website. The key measure of Twitter usage is total users, total active users and total messages sent. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/29/end-of-speculation-the-real-twitter-usage-numbers 4/29)
Universal Music Investments, Sony BMG Music Investments and The Angels Forum 74 have invested $2.8 million into Berkeley, CA-based Mog, reports VentureBeat, nearly doubling its total capital intake. With the tagline “Where Bad Music Comes to Die,” Mog is another music discovery service (Imeem, Last.fm) that scans users’ hard drives for content to share, aggregating MP3s, news, reviews, and music videos. (Cynopsis 4/30)
Google Maps has integrated Street View imagery into its driving directions functionality. In the 44 cities where Street View is available, users can click on a camera icon to see a visual of what each step in their journey will look like. (Cynopsis 4/30)
Advertising execs need to embrace the changes in media, says Google CEO Eric Schmidt, speaking at the American Association of Advertising Agencies conference. Another speaker, TBWA chief Lee Clow, advises the 380 attendees to “stop whining” and “start hiring young people.” (Iwantmedia 4/30, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/30/business/media/30adco.html?_r=1&oref=slogin 4/30)
Video may be the next content revolution on the Web, but it is still unclear how to sell it best to advertisers, say media and Internet execs. With major television networks, advertisers have a sense of scarcity. But online, thousands of choices are said to produce “the opposite effect.” (Iwantmedia 4/30, http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9931592-7.html 4/29)
The World Wide Web is still in its infancy, says its British inventor, Tim Berners-Lee, on the 15th anniversary of the Web’s effective launch. He predicts that the Web could one day be used to help manage the planet. Every user will have access to “all the data in the world.” (Iwantmedia 4/30, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7371660.stm 4/30)
Tim Berners-Lee developed the web while working at Cern.
(Below) Wow. This show scares me. So reminiscent of college radio. . .and not in that cool independent kind of way. More like an awkward train wreck begging for someone to hit the close button.
A little confused about the whole social networking thing? Check out Social Brew, Revision3’s latest internet series featuring news, reviews and how-to’s for all the leading platforms. It’s hosted by Irene McGee, creator of No One’s Listening. (Cynopsis 4/30)
A “$10 million Viacom offer” is rumored to be “floating around” Hype Machine (hypem.com), a Web site that aggregates music uploaded to blogs. Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures once described Hype Machine as “the best thing to happen to music since the Rolling Stones.” (Iwantmedia 4/30, http://valleywag.com/385323/viacom-offers-10-million-to-buy-music-blog-aggregator-hype-machine 4/29)
IPTV platform Babelgum signed one of its biggest content deals to date, securing over a 100 hours of PBS programming for U.S. distribution including the award winning Empires series. Babelgum also launched an international PBS channel featuring 18 episodes of Scientific American Frontiers. (Cynopsis 4/30)
Top Visited US Broadcast Network TV Show Sites (Week ending April 26, 2008)
Rank Network Website Market Share of Visits
1 FOX American Idol 26.10%
2 NBC Deal or No Deal 7.77%
3 CBS Big Brother 9 7.68%
4 CBS Survivor: Micronesia 7.15%
5 ABC Dancing with the Stars 7.15%
6 FOX America’s Most Wanted 4.33%
7 ABC Lost 2.45%
8 NBC The Office 2.04%
9 ABC The Bachelor 1.75%
10 ABC Grey’s Anatomy 1.72%
Source: Custom report from Hitwise
Top Visited US Broadcast Network TV Websites (Week ending April 26, 2008)
Rank Network Website Market Share of Visits
1 ABC www.abc.com 24.81%
2 CBS www.cbs.com 24.70%
3 FOX* www.fox.com 24.43%
4 NBC www.nbc.com 17.86%
5 The CW www.cwtv.com 7.60%
6 MNT www.mynetworktv.com .60%
Source: Custom report from Hitwise, *includes traffic aggregated from stand alone websites americanidol.com, amw.com, familyguy.com, thelot.com and thesimpsons.com.
