Digital Media News (week 3)
Date:
09 January 2012
Weekly bulletin collating public sector, industry and company news for creative industries by David Hartley.
Local industry
From Scotsman
"Scotland’s computer games industry can teach lessons to its counterpart south of the Border...In his New Year message, Richard Wilson – chief executive of Tiga – said Scotland had “hit back” after Dundee-based Realtime Worlds went bust in 2010, with lots of smaller companies rising from its ashes. He highlighted the closure of Bizarre Creations in Liverpool, Black Rock in Brighton and Codemasters in Guildford all in the past year and said the towns could learn lessons from the way Dundee has coped. Wilson also praised the Scottish Government for its support."
From The Drum
"Video-on-demand service STV Player is now available on the iPad and iPhone. The service is free to use and lets users catch up on national shows such as Coronation Street and X-Factor and regional programmes like STV News. Alistair Brown, chief technology officer at STV, said: "It’s becoming clear that multi-media consumption is one of the most popular uses of mobile tablet devices, so we’re delighted to be making the STV Player available via iPad, alongside the iPhone."
From The Mirror
"A major dictionary publisher is making its content available free online on a dedicated website for the first time. Visitors to the Collins Dictionary website will be able to check spellings and definitions from December 31 by accessing 120,000 dictionary entries, which will rise to 220,000 entries by March. The site, developed in Scotland, also offers 350,000 translations of the most frequently used English words in 35 languages. For those unsure how to pronounce words there are a million audio pronunciations with British and American differences offered where necessary, as well as translations of English words in every major global language. Images from photo website Flickr will appear alongside words to help people grasp their meaning."
From Scotland On Sunday
"A Scottish online video maker will open offices on America’s east and west coasts in the New Year as it prepares to seal a £3 million funding deal...The firm also plans to open a base in London as demand rises for its video websites, which allow clients to run their own online television channels.. The company is receiving support from Scottish Enterprise and Scottish Development International."
From BBC
"A video games company launched in Dundee earlier this year with the creation of 150 jobs has released its two debut titles. Outplay Entertainment has developed two games - Word Trick and Booty Quest - for Facebook. The company, which also announced new board members, specialises in games for mobile phones and social networks."
From The Drum
"The Drum “Blipfoto has released a video to promote its campaign to create a film for Burns Night 2012 called Scotland The World Over. The film will be made frame by frame using images sent in from the public featuring a Saltire in the middle of the image. The promotion video unveiled by Blipfoto includes some of the images which have been submitted already."
From pocket gamer
"With the dawning of the freemium era on mobile and social platforms, the role of data analyst has become a requirement - not a luxury - for most game developers. Our ultimate goal at Tag Games is to become a leader in the use of metrics in order to enable better game design and support more effective commercialisation."
From scottishgames.net
"The Edinburgh-based company is a leader in speech synthesis and text-to-speech systems. Now, the company’s emotional speech synthesis system has been granted a patent, giving Cereproc a huge advantage in the rapidly evolving market. Cereproc is the company behind Roger Ebert’s synthesised voice, which was created for the famous film critic after surgery for thyroid cancer left him mute. Cereproc recreated Ebert’s voice from hours of interviews and recordings."
From The Drum
"Tennent’s Lager is launching a location based mobile advertising campaign in Scotland, created by Whitespace, which will direct users to where they can find their nearest pint. The campaign was booked on the STV News app, using a location based Compass advertising solution from JiWire. It includes the strap line ‘You’ve got your city down to a T’, based on the above-the-line campaign from Newhaven Communications, and promotes the regional Tennent’s pint glasses."
From Gamasutra
"The first ‘Play for Good’ initiative will see a unique alliance between Giverboard creators Playmob, UK mobile games developer Fat Bob Games and UK accessible games charity SpecialEffect , who will launch the game Drop Catcher on iOS on Tuesday, 20th December. The campaign is scheduled to run for 1 month. Drop Catcher, which is given away free on the AppStore, will offer paid extra content, where 50% of the receipts which will go to SpecialEffect."
From Scotsman
"Scottish social networking firm Kiltr has secured a third round of funding that will pave the way to the UK launch of the service in the coming weeks. A pilot has been trialled since August 2010 and the full service will have new features and add-ons designed to improve the user experience. An international launch to reach out to the estimated 40 million people of Scots descent around the world is expected in the summer."
From The Next Web
"Pugs Luv Beats, created by Lucky Frame, is one of the weirdest iOS games I’ve ever encountered. The game follows the story of a pug that found a ‘Beat’ (physically a beet but spelled ‘Beat’) and gave it some love. This caused the ‘Beat’ to grow, and then eventually, it exploded. Now, these pugs are lost in space and need your help! The interactive soundtrack goes hand in hand with the gameplay, and the bird’s-eye perspective feels very fresh. With this is mind, I actually recommend it."
From Scotsman
"Web technology developer AppShare has secured £500,000 in a fourth funding round designed to see the business through to profitability. The Glasgow-based company’s software – which allows large businesses to collaborate across different sites – will begin a three-month trial with haulier Eddie Stobart in January, marking the first large-scale use of the production version of AppShare. A beta version of the technology has been in development on a pilot basis with Robert Wiseman Dairies since May, where it is still in use."
General industry
From Next Web
"Continuing its massive push into the living room, today Microsoft turned on another eight television channels for the Xbox LIVE service. The channels are variously available in Europe and the Americas. Microsoft has recently released a slew of updates to its Xbox line, giving it greater non-gaming prowess in an attempt to attract an older and more diverse clientele to the console."
From The Guardian
"Google and Apple are preparing a rematch of the battle they fought for dominance of the smartphone, but this time the contest between California's technology titans will be for control of our television sets. LG Electronics, the South Korean manufacturer, will next week unveil its first internet connected or "smart" TVs to run on the Android interface, while Samsung will produce its first set using Google software later this year. Sony and Vizio already have Android models, and are planning more, Google has announced."
From The Guardian
"With more than 30m active users, TuneIn Radio is regularly cited as one of the success stories of the apps era. That said, the company has been around for much longer than the app stores, having been founded in 2002. The service, which enables people to listen to streaming radio stations and podcasts, is now available on more than 150 devices, including smartphones and tablets, but also connected hi-fis, set-top boxes and cars."
From Tech Crunch
"Once upon a time, Facebook game companies like Zynga fattened up their user counts thanks to viral distribution to non-gamers through the news feed. Facebook later curtailed this channel, forcing developers to concentrate on paid marketing and true word of mouth to grow. A new boom period could be coming, this time for mobile developers, as Facebook announced today that it is testing game stories in the mobile news feed. This could attract devs to its recently launched HTML5 mobile gaming platform with bait of reaching hundreds of millions of daily active Facebook mobile users."
From The Guardian
"Economics of the digital world are only too evident to the press as handheld devices strike a death knell for old business models. A million iPads and Kindles may have been unwrapped on Sunday – according to tentative analyst estimates – an influx of portable technology that is expected to hasten a decline in the already faltering sales of printed newspapers, adding pressure on traditional business models that have traditionally supported so many titles around the country."
Reports
From Tech Crunch
"There are now over a million mobile applications available across the top seven major app stores, according to mobile analytics firm Distimo in its year-end report for 2011. And, not surprisingly, the iTunes App Store is still the one to beat, especially if you’re a developer looking to make a profit. The iPhone App Store generates about four times the revenue that is generated by the Google Android Market, the report finds."
From Tech Crunch
"It was a very Android and iOS Christmas. Mobile apps research form Flurry released estimates on how many Android and iOS devices were activated on Christmas day, as well as how many apps were downloaded. On a combined basis, 6.8 million devices were activated, up 353 percent from the 1.5 million average activations a day over the first 20 days of December. And that number from 2.8 million combined activations on Christmas, 2010, the previous record."
From Next Web
"The last week of 2011 saw a massive jump in apps downloaded and devices activated as those receiving gifts jumped right in and started using them, downloading a combined 1.2 billion iOS and Android apps, reports Flurry. The bump was significant, as the previous weekly high was 857M downloads."
From CNN
"The times they are a-changin'. For the first time in history, digital music sales topped the physical sale of music. According to a Nielsen and Billboard report, digital music purchases accounted for 50.3% of music sales in 2011. Digital sales were up 8.4% from the previous year, while physical album sales declined 5%."
Events
From Creative Industries KTN
"If you are an Innovative UK Technology Company providing products and services across the fast emerging Machine to Machine (M2M) and Internet of Things sector value chain then this mission is for you offering the opportunity to: 1) visit the major centres for M2M and the Internet of Things in China & 2) to hold qualified one-one meetings with senior level business executives and Chinese Government officials."
Compiled by David Hartley