Although relatively inexpensive and increasingly popular, Facebook advertisements are “quite unlikely to play a meaningful role in determining the fate of a political campaign or retailer,” a new report concludes.
After being exposed to political Facebook ads, voters were no more likely to vote for the candidate; while they did recognize the candidate’s name, Facebook users didn’t have any more of a favorable impression of the candidate, according to the study.
Conducted by Donald Green, a Columbia political science professor, and David Brookman, a graduate student at UC Berkeley, the study observed the effects of a week’s worth of Facebook ads for a state legislative candidate. Following the campaign, the researchers surveyed 2,984 district voters and found that many who were exposed to the ads didn’t even remember seeing them.
“Indeed, the results allow us to confidently rule out the proposition that this veritable bombardment of online ads increased the candidate’s name recognition in his district by more than 1.8 percentage points,” the authors state.
But Keegan Goudiss at Revolution Messaging says the study didn’t look at the right online tools. Instead, it should have focused on larger races — congressional or statewide — and Facebook’s “premium” ads.
Brookman rebuts, saying increasing “likes” does not equate to influencing the outcome of elections; he also notes the restrictive auction system the observed candidate had to use to acquire the ad space.
“This still could be the most cost-effective campaign tactic out there. We can’t rule that out,” he says, adding that you do pay for what you get. “There’s a reason TV ads are so expensive.”
A new Xbox update leverages the upcoming Windows 8 operating system to provide a cohesive second screen experience between Microsoft’s popular gaming console and various mobile devices.
With new content partnerships, the addition of an Internet Explorer browser and an app called SmartGlass, Microsoft is looking to provide a more enriched experience with its devices, which could in turn fuel sales.
“It’s a good reason to buy a Windows tablet,” says Yusuf Mehdi, senior VP in charge of marketing and strategy for Xbox’s services. “Conversely, if you have a Windows tablet, it’s why you will want to buy an Xbox.”
While the connectivity is only available within the Windows ecosystem, Microsoft expressed intentions to eventually connect devices that aren’t powered by Microsoft software — something that could give the company an edge over Apple, which only offers AirPlay on its mobile devices.
SmartGlass is a “free app that users can install on devices running Microsoft’s Windows Phone 8 software and the new Windows 8 operating system that becomes available Friday. Microsoft says it allows users of such devices to remotely control the Xbox 360, surf to websites, launch videos and other content, and send them to their TVs,” notes the Wall Street Journal.
Microsoft is also working with NBA Game Time, ESPN and UFC to offer supplementary information to mobile devices when watching sports programs.
For those interested in the second screen experience, Microsoft has made it easier to buy an Xbox with the extension of its Xbox subscription program, which lowers upfront costs and will be available at Best Buy, Wal-Mart, Toys R Us and GameStop.
As it gears up to release the new Wii U, Japanese gaming company Nintendo has significantly lowered its annual profit forecast in light of a strong yen and lagging console sales.
Following the Wii’s success of 100 million sales, the successor Wii U will go on sale in the U.S. on November 18. Nintendo expects to sell 5.5 million Wii U devices by March 31.
“The first hardware offering from Nintendo in six years boasts a tablet-like touch screen controller and a social network, and lets users record TV shows through TiVo and other digital recording services,” Reuters explains.
“Yet, growing competition from tablet PCs and smartphones that are increasingly eating into the $78 billion gaming market mean the Japanese company, which began making playing cards more than a century ago, may struggle to repeat the hit it had with the Wii.”
The Wii U’s success will indicate to Nintendo’s competitors — like Microsoft and Sony — whether advanced gaming devices can hold their own against mobile devices.
Nintendo also cut expectations for sales of its 3DS handheld gaming device, after weak demand forced the company to dramatically lower the price tag. Nintendo has, however, held its 2.5 million estimation for DS sales in the next 12 months.
“[The company’s] operating loss for the three months to September 30 edged down to 18.8 billion yen from a loss of 19.6 billion yen a year ago, and compared with an average loss forecast of 16 billion yen from four analysts,” Reuters adds. “Since the start of the business year, Nintendo’s shares have fallen 17 percent, compared with an 11 percent drop in Japan’s benchmark Nikkei average.”
Netflix has lowered its U.S. subscriber forecast for this year by more than a third. The company lowered its April prediction of 7 million new subscribers for 2012 down to 4.73-5.43 million.
The news knocked its share price down 16.3 percent in after-hours trading on Tuesday.
“Netflix has said that incremental domestic streaming subscribers are almost pure profit because its content costs are fixed,” reports the Wall Street Journal.
“But even taking the high end of Netflix’s new subscriber-guidance range, there will now be a shortfall of 1.57 million,” explains the article. “So multiplying that number by the roughly $96 those customers would have paid in a year ($7.99 a month) means gains to operating profit would be shaved by around $150 million.”
Netflix saw some international expansion with nearly two million new subscribers and says it lost fewer DVD customers than it had in the previous quarter. However, any loss in DVD subscribers is a significant problem in the minds of analysts.
“Those subscribers are four times more valuable than streaming subscribers in terms of their contribution to overall profit,” writes WSJ. “Netflix remains a grim picture for investors.”
Digital downloads, subscription streaming and video on demand grew from $1.3 billion in 2007 to $5.5 billion this year.
According to new research from Mintel, these digital formats will grow even faster over the next five years, resulting in a tenfold increase over 2007-2017.
DVDs are still alive in movie rentals. Mintel notes that nearly one-third of online consumers rented discs in the past 30 days.
“We’re not going to see DVDs disappear in the next five years. There will still be people who have DVD players and will still have DVDs within five years,” predicts Mintel analyst Billy Hulkower. “Unless you’re buying a DVD to buy a DVD, you could just buy the digital movie.”
Streaming services including Netflix and Amazon Instant Video are gaining in popularity. Mintel notes that one-quarter of respondents used online streaming over the past 30 days and 22 percent used video on demand.
“Once you start using a digital store for your purchasing, it’s sort of addictive to have that one-click access to content,” Hulkower says. “People are acclimated to immediate access to content. There’s a movie you want to see, you click a button and it’s there.”
“Google is opening a virtual window into the secretive data centers where an intricate maze of computers process Internet search requests, show YouTube video clips, and distribute email for millions of people,” according to CNBC.
The site features photos from eight Google data centers in the U.S., Finland, and Belgium. The company is using its “Street View” technology to offer a virtual tour of one North Carolina data center.
Google’s original data centers were intended to index all the pages on the Internet and provide accurate, quick search results. But as Google has evolved into a business giant beyond search, the data centers have grown to accommodate “videos, photos, email and information about their users’ preferences,” writes CNBC.
“Google studies Internet search requests and Web surfing habits in an effort to gain a better understanding of what people like,” notes the article. “The company does this in an effort to show ads of products and services to the people most likely to be interested in buying them. Advertising accounts for virtually all of Google’s revenue, which totaled nearly $23 billion through the first half of this year.”
While Google is providing a view into its data centers, it continues to remain vague on how many computers it owns, and also will refuse physical access to the centers.
The company is building additional data centers in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and Chile.
BuzzFeed posted nine celebrity photos taken by Mavrix Photo without properly compensating the photo company. Now Mavrix is seeking $1.3 million from the viral news site for copyright infringement, representing a popular trend in online media.
“Mavrix appears to be in the business of copyright trolling — scouring the Internet for unauthorized use of its images and threatening anyone who uses them with million dollar lawsuits,” reports GigaOM. “This practice has recently degenerated into lawyers recruiting other lawyers to hunt down a hit list of alleged infringers with a promise to share the bounty.”
“Instead of a simple request to take the image down (which most people would comply with), we get a legal train wreck,” adds the article.
Currently, copyright owners are entitled to seek damages of up to $150,000 for each infringement, a “nuclear option” to deter infringers, the article comments. But the popularity of trolling raises the question of whether copyright law is still functional.
“In an age when images are everywhere… the $150,000 nuclear option seems impractical and unfair except in the most egregious cases,” suggests GigaOM. “A better option would be for Congress to consider crafting some type of small claims court for copyright with graduated penalties for repeat offenders.”
Bravo plans to start using on-screen, real-time polls and graphics for all of its programming, reports AllThingsD. The graphics will first appear next month during the premiere of the new season of “Watch What Happens Live.”
Viewers will use Web browsers to participate in polls and contests, and the results will change on-screen in real-time.
Bravo reportedly spent a year on the new tech, which is built on interactive TV software from MegaPhone Labs.
While other programs have experimented with other types of “live” voting, these systems usually have used text messages, and results still had to be tallied.
Lisa Hsia, who heads up digital media for Bravo, explains that the Comcast cable channel will not overload users with graphics, and will only employ two or three the first time a show airs. She says that Bravo will use more graphics during repeat episodes in an effort to create “interactive episodes.”
Bravo’s largest challenge will be to figure out how to deploy the graphics without being distracting or annoying. “It’s our job to do it in a fashion that makes the fan enjoy it,” suggests Hsia.
Younger generations are growing up in a tablet and mobile world, and have little use for the computer mouse, first introduced at the Stanford Research Institute by Douglas Engelbart and Bill English in 1963.
“This fall, for the first time, sales of iPads are cannibalizing sales of PCs in schools, according to Charles Wolf, an analyst for the investment research firm Needham & Co.,” writes The Washington Post.
Whereas the mouse was once the “primary bridge to the virtual world,” it’s now becoming unnecessary as touchscreens, mobile devices and voice recognition software dominate the market.
“Kindergartners, as young as 4, use the iPod Touch to learn letter sounds,” explains the article. “The older students use iPads to research historical information and prepare multimedia slide-show presentations about school rules.”
“Even toddlers are able to manipulate a touch screen. A popular YouTube video shows a baby trying to swipe the pages of a fashion magazine that she assumes is a broken iPad.”
“The popularity of iPads and other tablets is changing how society interacts with information,” notes Aniket Kittur, an assistant professor at the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. “Direct manipulation with our fingers, rather than mediated through a keyboard/mouse, is intuitive and easy for children to grasp.”
Could we be witnessing the final countdown for the computer mouse?
Microsoft hopes its Kinect for Windows program will help revolutionize the way people interact with their computers. The goal of the program is to bring the hands-free gestures Kinect made popular on the Xbox 360 to all Windows devices.
This will not only change the way people interact with their devices, but will create new possibilities for interaction, such as hands free gestures for surgeons who cannot touch keyboards.
“We initially used keyboards, then the mouse and GUIs were a big innovation, now touch is a big part of people’s lives. The progression will now be to voice and gesture,” explains Peter Zatloukal, head of engineering for the Kinect for Windows program.
Kinect for Windows equipment sells for $249 and is available in 32 countries. Before Microsoft can reach the number of people it envisions, developers must create applications for the system.
While Microsoft is currently targeting only software developers, Technology Review suggests the company could bring the system directly to consumers if developers make enough software progress.
Another option would be to “encourage computer manufacturers to bundle it with desktops, laptops, or monitors in place of a regular webcam,” notes the article.
Apple and VMware are partnering to create an iPad cloud-hosted office system to directly challenge Microsoft Office. This news comes just as Microsoft nears the release of its new Office for iPad and iPhones.
“The iPad app combines VMware View virtual-desktop software with cloud-hosted versions of Pages, Keynote and Numbers — known as the iWork suite — running on Apple infrastructure,” reports CRN. “VMware’s Horizon Application Manager, a management tool that has been likened to an enterprise app store, is also included.”
“Apple wants Pages to be seen as a replacement for Microsoft Word, Numbers as a replacement for Excel and Keynote as a replacement for PowerPoint,” a source told CRN. The article does not indicate what the program will cost or when it will be released.
The high price of the Microsoft Office suite allows for other competitors to enter the space, suggests CRN.
The new version of Office has been redesigned to accommodate touchscreens. This is important, as Microsoft’s Surface tablet is set to directly challenge Apple’s dominance in the tablet and smartphone markets.
Microsoft’s emergence as a direct competitor to Apple may have convinced Apple to begin challenging Microsoft in its traditional spaces.
Apple announced a new 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display yesterday, expanding its high-end family of notebooks.
“At a time when PC sales are plateauing and profit margins for many manufacturers are shrinking in a race to build cheaper netbooks (such as Samsung’s $250, Web-only Chromebook), Apple is asserting its leadership position to build the state of the art in notebooks,” comments Apple Insider.
The new Retina display touts more than four million pixels. The company says the 13-inch MacBook Pro is the “second highest resolution notebook ever,” behind its 15-inch cousin.
“The 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display has nearly 2 million more pixels than an HDTV,” notes the article. “The 15-inch model has over 3 million more.” The Retina display is now available in the two MacBook Pro models and the iPad.
More pixels to push means additional graphics processing, rewritten software, and changes to the operating system and third party apps. This translates to more cost.
“The result is an expensive system,” writes Apple Insider. “The cheapest 13-inch model starts at $1,699, compared to basic PC notebooks selling for $600 to $800, and 13-inch netbooks selling for as little as $250.”
Apple’s new 13-inch MacBook Pro has opted for solid state flash storage to increase booting and file copying speeds. Also featured: 2.5 GHz Intel Core i5 processors, 8GB of 1600 MHz memory, dual Thunderbolt ports, HDMI video out and an NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M graphics processor.
According to the press release, the new 13-inch MacBook Pro is currently available through the Apple Online Store and its retail locations.
As anticipated, Apple unveiled a smaller version of its popular iPad at a product launch event in San Jose yesterday. The new iPad mini starts at $329 and features a screen about a third smaller than the original iPad.
“But Apple’s smaller tablet is priced well above Amazon.com Inc.’s Kindle Fire HD and Google Inc.’s Nexus 7 — two tablets which are similar in size and some specs,” reports the Wall Street Journal. “Those devices cost $199 or $249 depending on the amount of memory.”
The screen of the iPad mini measures 7.9-inches diagonally. The tablet, designed to fit comfortably in one hand, weighs about half as much as the original iPad.
“A dual-core Apple A5 processor powers the iPad mini, and the device sports fast 4G LTE speeds like the most recent iPads,” reports VentureBeat in a related post. “It features the same 1,024 by 768 screen resolution as the iPad 2, but given its smaller screen that resolution will look much sharper on the iPad mini.”
Apple is offering more variety in an effort to maintain dominance in the tablet wars. “Rivals are releasing a flood of tablets and phones powered by Google’s Android operating system and other software,” notes WSJ. And Microsoft is expected to release its Surface tablet running Windows 8 on Friday.
“Others have tried to make tablets smaller than the iPad and they have failed miserably,” says Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior VP for worldwide marketing.
“He gave a side-by-side product comparison between the iPad mini and Google’s Nexus 7, and claimed that the mini offers two-thirds more space to surf the Web when turned on its side,” explains the article. “A Google spokeswoman declined to comment.”
Versions of Apple’s new iPad mini, along with the company’s fourth-generation iPad, will be available the first week of November.
Apple made more product announcements than expected at yesterday’s event at the California Theater in San Jose.
“Between hardware and software, Apple announced at least six new products… seven if you include Apple Fusion Drive, and a whopping 23 new products if you include different models and build configurations,” reports VentureBeat.
The company unveiled new iBooks software, a 13-inch Retina display MacBook Pro (two build configurations), a Mac mini (three configurations), at least two sizes of iMacs, the fourth generation iPad (six main models), Apple Fusion Drive and the much-anticipated iPad mini (six models).
The new $500-$830 full-sized iPad features an A6X processor (which Apple claims will double CPU and graphics power), support for more wireless carriers (including Sprint), faster Wi-Fi and an HD camera on front for video calls.
Apple’s Fusion Drive, available in the latest iMac and Mac mini, is a hybrid hard drive that blends solid state storage with traditional hard drive tech. It will come with a 128GB SD and the option of a 1TB or 3TB HDD.
CEO Tim Cook notes that iOS 6 has hundreds of new features and, in the month since its release, has been downloaded to more than 200 million devices.
Apple by the numbers: The company sold its 100 millionth iPad a few weeks ago, the iPhone 5 has shattered records with 5 million units already sold and App Store customers have downloaded more than 35 billion apps.
“Meanwhile, users of Apple’s Mac and iOS devices have combined to share 125 million documents in the cloud; they’ve also shared more than 60 million photos using the new shared photo streams service,” reports Macworld in a related article. “And iMessage users are now exchanging 28,000 messages per second.”
Government auditors have criticized the FBI for promoting cyber security awareness, but never showing any tangible success in educating Internet users. The FBI is looking to change that with its new cyber security education program for elementary students.
“‘Cyber Surf Island’ is a playable, Web-based game world for school children from grades 3 to 8,” explains Naked Security. “By playing simple games, the children learn about online threats ranging from malware to Internet predators to cyber bullies. Schools can compete against each other for points and winning schools get a visit from a real FBI agent.”
The FBI’s revamped Safe Online Surfing program intends to help teachers educate students regarding topics such as sexting, copyright violations, secure passwords and more. Teachers wanting to participate must create an account with the FBI to receive online IDs for each student.
The program separates content by grade level and includes tests to evaluate what students have learned — a good measurement for auditors.
However, occasionally “substance wins out over style on ‘Cyber Surf Island,’ with games that are heavy on the message but light on the entertainment,” the article notes. Also, a Facebook post about the initiative showed many users having problems like account takeovers.
