Vizio, known primarily for its LCD TVs and home entertainment products, has announced it will start selling a variety of PCs this summer, including a pair of all-in-one PCs, a 15.6-inch laptop, and two ultrabooks.
“In a market that’s already crowded with competition from the likes of Apple, HP and Dell, Vizio is hoping that it can lure new customers by offering products that combine high performance and stylish design,” reports AllThingsD.
The all-in-one PCs come in 24-inch and 27-inch versions, both with a 1080p HD display, wireless keyboard and touchpad with multi-touch support. “Surround sound audio is also onboard, as well as dual HDMI ports, so you can connect your cable box, Blu-ray player or gaming console and turn it into a mini entertainment hub,” notes the article.
The company’s Thin + Light ultrabook series tout HD displays, a slim aluminum unibody design, 4GB of memory, SRS Premium Sound, 1.3-megapixel 720p camera, and HDMI and USB 3.0 ports.
The Vizio notebook features a 15.6-inch HD display and although not as thin and light as the ultrabook offerings, runs a more powerful graphics processor for users concerned with multimedia.
“All of Vizio’s laptops and all-in-one PCs feature Intel’s latest Ivy Bridge processors and ship with the Signature Edition of Windows 7, which means you won’t get any bloatware or unnecessary applications,” adds AllThingsD.
Microsoft has long been a software company, creating programs to run on other company’s machines. However, “the company will make its biggest-ever break from that tradition” when it launches “its own brand of tablets as part of an effort to reinsert itself into the market,” reports AllThingsD.
While Microsoft is not entirely new to hardware, it has experienced more misses (Kin, Zune) than hits (Xbox 360). And similar to how the Zune music player had to compete with Apple’s iPod, Microsoft’s Surface tablet will attempt to challenge the tremendously popular iPad.
Microsoft does bring assets to this battle, including Windows and Office. “The company also has its Xbox gaming abilities, plenty of licensing deals with Hollywood and the music labels, as well as the Barnes & Noble partnership it stuck when settling a legal battle earlier this year,” notes AllThingsD.
Microsoft unveiled its new tablet at an event in Los Angeles yesterday afternoon. Surface features a 10.6-inch screen and will run a forthcoming variation of Windows 8. “The tablet has a built-in ‘kickstand’ that will allow users to prop it up for watching movies, and a detachable cover that will serve double duty as a keyboard,” reports The New York Times. Pricing and availability have yet to be announced.
There could be a great deal at stake for Microsoft. Consumer expectations regarding the marriage of hardware and software have been impacted by the iPad — and Apple’s tablet is becoming more popular with business customers, a market that Microsoft has dominated in the past.
“We’re no longer talking about a peripheral, but rather the future of computing and the core of Microsoft’s business,” suggests AllThingsD.
The U.S. government has partnered with private corporations to create ultra high-speed broadband networks. The program is called US Ignite and invites private developers to build applications to advance the economy.
A White House press release explains that it envisions the program as “a test-bed for designing and deploying next-generation applications to support national priorities areas such as education, healthcare, energy, and advanced manufacturing.”
“US Ignite will challenge students, start-ups, and industry leaders to create a new generation of applications and services that meet the needs of local communities while creating a broad range of job and investment opportunities,” adds the release.
The network will expand to 25 cities in the next five years, says the White House, and aims to advance network speeds to 1 gigabit-per-second. This represents speeds 100 times faster than today’s Internet.
“In the 1970s, many doubted there were uses for even 50 kilobit-per-second Internet,” explains Bob Metcalfe, who co-invented Ethernet. “But soon application explorers came up with remote login, file transfer, and email. Pioneers have since found new worlds in telephony, television, publishing, commerce and social interactivity. Today, while investing in gigabit generations of Internet, we are again sending out our application explorers.”
A recent study projects that mobile advertising will become a $20 billion business in the future.
However, Monday Note questions that assumption given the challenges of mobile advertising — such as smaller screen size, diminished attention spans, and privacy concerns.
Even location-based ads may not offer the opportunity some believe. “Do we want barkers on our devices?” asks the post. “Is this the game changer for mobile advertising, yet another kind of spam?”
Monday Note examines the ineffective approaches to mobile advertising thus far and suggests the future will require more than simply resizing content to fit a different screen.
“If the industry hasn’t cracked the mobile advertising code after five years of energetic and skillful work it’s because there is no code to crack,” suggests the post. “The ‘$20B Opportunity’ is a mirage.”
Wooga and Electronic Arts announced they will both pull games from Google+, less than a year after the network first launched social games.
“The decision from two of the five largest social gaming companies comes as a result of the network’s struggles in engaging users, and the larger audience available on Facebook,” according to The Verge.
Wooga has already taken its “Monster World” game down and will remove both “Bubble Island” and “Diamond Dash” in early July. Additionally, the EA-owned PopCap plans to remove its “Bejeweled Blitz” game.
“After the game platform launched, Google+ received a lot of attention from game developers, in part because they were looking for somewhere else to go besides Facebook, but also because the company was sharing 95 percent of the revenue from virtual goods with developers, and was keeping only 5 percent for itself,” reports AllThingsD in a related post. “That was, and remains, much more generous than the 30 percent cut that Facebook takes.”
“Although the decision is a setback for Google+’s social gaming prospects, the network still has 40 games available including notables like ‘Angry Birds’ and several popular Zynga games; whether it’ll continue to attract new titles, though, is another question altogether,” comments The Verge.
In the wake of recent security breaches, experts have been discussing the importance of including non-alphanumeric characters in passwords.
“Adding a symbol eliminates the possibility of a straight dictionary attack (using, literally, words from a dictionary), notes ITworld. “Adding a symbol, especially an unusual one, makes it much harder to crack even using rainbow tables (collections of alphanumeric combinations, only some of which include symbols).”
Based on GRC’s Interactive Brute Force Password “Search Space” Calculator by Steve Gibson, the article examines the number of possible combinations based on passwords of six and 10 characters (comprised of letters and numbers, no upper- or lower-case and no symbols) and estimates how long it would take a computer to crack a password.
It then compares the results to those calculated by adding a symbol to the passwords, making “the crack several orders of magnitude more difficult.”
For example, 2.25 billion possible combinations result from a six character password without a symbol, whereas there are 7.6 trillion possible combinations when the same password includes a symbol. Check out the post to see how long it would take to crack the password online via a Web app, offline with high-powered servers or desktops, and offline using massively parallel multiprocessing clusters or grid.
“Take Steve’s advice: go for 10 characters, then add a symbol,” recommends the article.
MIT’s Technology Review reports that Facebook has amassed “the most extensive data set ever assembled on human social behavior,” that includes private conversations, family photos, records of trips, births, marriages, and deaths.
The social network also has personal profiles, “Likes” they have chosen, and in certain apps and websites the songs listened to or articles they read. To give you an idea of the scale, Facebook cataloged some 5 billion songs listened to in only five months.
Facebook’s Data Science Team is charged with analyzing all this information to advance both the business and social science generally. They research how people behave so they can influence them to the benefit of their advertisers.
“Our goal is not to change the pattern of communication in society,” explains Cameron Marlow, Facebook Data Science Team. “Our goal is to understand it so we can adapt our platform to give people the experience that they want.”
For example, last year Facebook found that rather than the six degrees of separation we have from one another, among its then 721 million people only four intermediate connections were needed. They have built a “gross national happiness” index by measuring words and phrases that signal positive or negative emotion. They are looking at why some ideas and fashions spread and others do not.
“In April, influenced in part by conversations over dinner with his med-student girlfriend (now his wife), Zuckerberg decided that he should use social influence within Facebook to increase organ donor registrations,” notes the article. “Users were given an opportunity to click a box on their Timeline pages to signal that they were registered donors, which triggered a notification to their friends. The new feature started a cascade of social pressure, and organ donor enrollment increased by a factor of 23 across 44 states.”
Poptip is a real-time tweet polling client that offers management tools for Twitter users. The brainchild of 22-year-old Kelsey Falter, Poptip is the latest start-up to emerge from the TechStars New York program and has already raised $640,000 in funding.
“Poptip’s simple premise — it lets brands conduct and analyze instant polls on Twitter and, soon, on Facebook — lines up very nicely with the recent heat around anything and everything that has to do with social media marketing,” reports AllThingsD.
Digital Trends places Poptip above its competition, including Klout, which it describes as “more or less a social network popularity contest.”
“There are other Twitter analytics tools of course, like TweetStats and Foller.me, but they don’t specifically pinpoint the efficacy of asking questions and getting answers on Twitter,” notes Digital Trends. “For that, you turn to poll stat clients, like GoPollGo or TwitPolls, or you start paying for enterprise CRM products — but the experience isn’t as woven into Twitter as many would like.”
Poptip’s dashboard tracks a user’s questions and corresponding answers with a simple, clear interface. It should prove useful for end-users, but Falter is targeting big brands for customer engagement purposes.
The AllThingsD post includes a 2-minute video demo.
In the face of new competition from Google Drive, file sharing and cloud hosting service Dropbox has announced new mobile and Web updates.
According to a Dropbox forum post and a follow-up developers announcement, Public folders will be phased out in favor of a new quick-link sharing feature.
“In April, we launched the ability to share any file or folder in your Dropbox with a simple link. This new sharing mechanism is a more generalized, scalable way to support many of the same use cases as the Public folder,” explains Dropbox. “After July 31, we will no longer create Public folders in any new Dropbox accounts.”
Initial response on the developer forum has been largely negative. The post notes that the new sharing feature adds a step on both ends of the folder sharing process.
“Power users who have virtually turned Dropbox into a server on their own system are naturally frustrated by the choice, but the casual or light Dropbox file and folder sharers out there likely won’t be very affected by the change,” suggests Digital Trends. “Dropbox is doing this because it’s a more scalable solution on its end — which is something worth considering, given that it has 50+ million users.”
On the mobile front, the latest Dropbox iOS app now has automatic photo and video upload capability over Wi-Fi and cellular. Additionally, users who give Dropbox permission to auto-log their camera rolls will be rewarded with 3GB of extra storage.
According to “a person familiar with the matter,” Microsoft plans to purchase enterprise social networking company Yammer for $1.2 billion, reports the Wall Street Journal.
“San Francisco-based Yammer is sort of like Facebook for companies: employees can post, share, and discuss items,” explains CNET. “It’s become an integral tool for many start-ups, but it’s also big among larger businesses. More than 80 percent of Fortune 500 companies use Yammer. If Microsoft buys Yammer, the move could help the tech titan modernize with social-enterprise tools.”
In addition to expanding its corporate information technology efforts, the deal could potentially help Microsoft compete against companies such as Google by strengthening its cloud computing offerings. It could also result in new social features for Microsoft Office.
Yammer was launched in 2008 and is one of a number of emerging companies — including Box, Jive Software and Basecamp — that are looking for creative and efficient ways to change how people approach workplace communication and collaborative projects.
“There is absolutely a next generation of enterprise technologies emerging, and it’s going to be the foundation of how companies work five or 10 years from now,” said Aaron Levie, co-founder and chief executive of online file-sharing start-up Box, Inc.
Last week on the YouTube blog, Google software engineer Ullas Gargi revealed a new social video feature to Google+ Hangouts.
“A new application within Hangouts allows Google+ users to queue up YouTube videos and allow everyone in the Hangout session to watch the video at the same time,” reports Digital Trends. “Friends can watch reactions and everyone can provide commentary about the video while it’s playing.”
The application also enables members of the session to queue additional videos and “save a playlist to share with friends that don’t have a Google+ profile as of yet.”
Users can activate the feature in Hangouts by simply loading the YouTube app at the top of the screen.
“The concept for a shared experience is somewhat similar to Turntable.fm, a music service that allows members of a particular room to queue up music and become a virtual DJ,” notes the post.
“It’s like your own VIP table at the world’s coolest YouTube party,” suggests Gargi of the new application.
Young consumers are watching less live television. As a result, networks are searching for ways to reach these audiences on smartphones, laptops and tablets.
Some cable channels are introducing shorter episodes to attract young viewers easily distracted by multiple devices and online content. Some are tracking social media conversations about shows — “in some cases even changing plot lines to suit audience tastes,” notes the Los Angeles Times.
“America’s 67 million baby boomers once commanded advertisers’ attention because of their spending power and sheer number,” notes the article. “But the prized demographic is now the millennial generation: the 98 million people ages 7 to 29. These digital natives represent nearly one-third of the U.S. population, and they’re proving an elusive target for networks and advertisers to reach.”
Millennials aren’t channel surfing from their couches. Instead, they’re accessing a variety of media on multiple devices, and watching much of their television via DVRs and game consoles or other connected devices.
The CW has been addressing young viewers’ fickle habits by offering shows online hours after an episode’s TV airing. With a new mobile app, viewers can also access shows via iPhones, iPads and Android and Kindle devices. Nickelodeon and rival Cartoon Network have developed shows around characters that initially earned a following online.
Social viewing with discussions on Twitter and Facebook have also become increasingly important to young viewers, while complementary online content such as behind-the-scenes insights and video highlights is growing in popularity.
The article features an infographic that provides interesting statistics regarding the habits of millennials who are turning away from traditional TV while embracing the Internet.
Skype has introduced a new advertising model for its Windows version, called Conversation Ads, which will be displayed within the app during one-on-one audio calls.
These ads will only appear for users who do not have a paid Skype subscription.
According to the Skype blog: “While on a 1:1 audio call, users will see content that could spark additional topics of conversation that are relevant to Skype users and highlight unique and local brand experiences. So, you should think of Conversation Ads as a way for Skype to generate fun interactivity between your circle of friends and family and the brands you care about. Ultimately, we believe this will help make Skype a more engaging and useful place to have your conversations each and every day.”
“The company says that the ads will be ‘silent’ and ‘non-expanding’ and, unsurprisingly, Skype is attempting to spin the news as a positive for users, saying that the ads ‘could spark additional topics of conversation that are relevant to Skype users and highlight unique and local brand experiences,'” reports The Verge.
Editor-in-chief of Gamerlive.tv John Gaudiosi writes that in the wake of Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo all showcasing multiscreen experiences at E3, it is now more apparent than ever that software companies must take advantage of multiscreen gaming if they wish to succeed in the future.
Consumers are increasingly accessing games via consoles, PCs, tablets and smartphones. “According to new research from Newzoo, 22 percent of the 153 million gamers in the U.S. utilize all four screens,” writes Gaudiosi for CNN.
“Mobile devices will be the center of this convergence revolution,” suggests Kyu C. Lee, VP and head of mobile game publisher GAMEVIL USA. “Smartphones, tablets and smart TVs are the first devices that the new generation will adopt rather than old PCs or gaming consoles.”
President of GameStop Tony Bartel believes tablets will be complementary to the next generation of consoles: “While we believe consoles will still dominate the living room, tablets offer gamers the ability to interact with and expand the console experience. The portability factor of tablets is also extremely appealing to gamers, allowing them to extend their TV experience outside their living rooms through the cloud.”
Tablet gamers are slightly less mobile than today’s smartphone gamers, explains Gaudiosi, since they typically play games more in the home. “They also tend to purchase apps more and are made up of so-called ‘midcore’ gamers, versus the hardcore console players or the more casual smartphone gamers,” he writes.
This fall, Microsoft will introduce “NUads” — advertisements made possible by Kinect in which viewers can interact by using their voice or hand gestures.
“Advertisers will be able to ask viewers to answer multiple-choice questions by speaking ‘yes’ or ‘no way’ out loud, or by gesturing,” reports AllThingsD. “The results will appear in real time on the screen, so subscribers can see how others are voting.”
Companies to first sign up for the NUad program include Toyota, Samsung Mobile USA and Unilever. The ads will appear on the Xbox Live dashboard and within select TV apps. At least initially, you will not see them embedded into games.
Xbox advertising has grown by 140 percent from last year. Advertisers are drawn to this demographic because it is a segment of the population that has been hard to reach.
“It’s increasingly challenging to reach these people, because they are spending so much time on our platform,” explains Ross Honey, GM of Xbox Live Entertainment and Advertising. Xbox Live users spend about three hours per day on the system. “Advertisers see that time and they know they need to connect with users there, because they aren’t anywhere else,” notes Honey.
Vizio, known primarily for its LCD TVs and home entertainment products, has announced it will start selling a variety of PCs this summer, including a pair of all-in-one PCs, a 15.6-inch laptop, and two ultrabooks.
