Digital Media News (week 4)
Date:
16 January 2012
Weekly bulletin collating public sector, industry and company news for creative industries by David Hartley.
Public sector
From the Next Web
"Ten UK companies stand to receive up to £50,000 each from a government-backed project, to participate in preparatory studies to better understand how the country can move towards an application and services marketplace in the so-called Internet of Things.
"The £500,000 project constitutes the first investment in a government-backed initiative, and will be managed by the Technology Strategy Board, the UK’s national innovation agency. The winners include Stirling based Swirll."
Local industry
From AllmediaScotland
"A website that allows members of the public to upload a single photo per day expects to have soon built up a pictures database equivalent to 2,740 years.
Writing about Edinburgh-based Blipfoto, Sarah Bruce, Scottish Daily Mail, begins: 'It started as a simple idea in a Scottish bedroom - and even its creator didn't think it would last.'"
From scottishgames.net
"Lucky Frame’s quirky and deeply cool Pugs Luv Beats has been nominated in the Independent Games Festival’s ‘Excellence In Audio’ award category. The IGF is the world’s leading indie games competition.
It runs alongside the prestigious Game Developers Conference, which takes place in San Francisco in early March. All of the finalists will have their games on display throughout the conference. The awards ceremony takes place on March 7th."
From Nexxus Scotland
"Children with autism as young as 18 months could be helped to improve their socialising skills thanks to a new iPad app.
FindMe is a simple game that challenges children to find an onscreen character in different scenarios. Using the iPad's touch screen, players simply tap the character to move onto the next, more complex level.
App developers and Education and Informatics researchers from the University of Edinburgh have collaborated on the game, the first ever attempt to fuse autism research with iPad gaming. The research was funded by the Nuffield Foundation."
From Scotland on Sunday
"The Scottish firm behind one of the most successful video games series has come up with a teenager’s dream job by advertising for gamers to test its upcoming blockbuster release.
The company seeking testers is Rockstar North, which wants to ensure its Grand Theft Auto V (GTAV) meets the high standards of its predecessors, which have sold around 125 million copies worldwide."
General industry
From Tech Crunch
"Today at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Samsung launched its advertising platform, Samsung AdHub, for Samsung Smart TVs. With the new service, publishers and brands will be able to deliver video, 3D, and interactive advertisements to the living room through the Samsung Smart TV interface.
The advertisements will allow users to click to view video content, access new apps or services and will be able to launch the TV’s web browser. In addition, the new “Explore 3D” application, Samsung’s branded 3D VOD service, will allow advertisers the unique ability to launch native 3D TV ads on its TV sets."
From the Telegraph
"At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas television makers compete in the main battleground between televisions that connect to the internet and those which offer 3D pictures."
From Reuters
"Mercedes-Benz USA is bringing Facebook to its cars, with a special version of the service that is built-in to a new in-vehicle telematics system that will be unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week.
Accessing Facebook on the road is not the exactly the same as using the social network on a personal computer or a smartphone. The version of Facebook offered in Daimler AG's Mercedes is stripped down to a limited set of features, specially designed for drivers and centered around the locations of friends and businesses."
From the Guardian
"The evolution of books into interactive, digital products is far from over, according to Henry Volans, head of digital publishing at Faber & Faber.
Speaking at the Independent Publishers Guild's Digital Quarterly meeting in London, Volans said there is plenty more scope for innovation in book-apps and ebooks.
'The phrase which keeps coming up in my mind about ebooks is evolution,' he said. 'I have absolute certainty that we have not reached anything close to the evolutionary ideal of the ebook… I find it absolutely inconceivable that the book can't evolve and change and grow.'"
Reports
From Tech Crunch
"Mobile analytics firm Flurry has updated its report from last summer which compared mobile apps to web consumption and found that apps came out on top. In June, Flurry discovered that users were spending 81 minutes per day in mobile apps versus 74 minutes on the web.
As of December, the usage of mobile apps has skyrocketed to 94 minutes per day, while web consumption dropped to 72 minutes."
Events
From scottishgames.net
"The Scottish Games Jam is the local outpost of the massive Global Game Jam – an annual competition which challenges teams to build an original new game in only 48 hours… This year, Scotland has two locations running game jams.
Glasgow Caledonian university has run a jam since the competition started and has grown rapidly to become one of the largest jam sites in the world.
It was joined last year by a new jam, taking place at Edinburgh’s Napier University, which is back for 2012 and running its own jam site. The Global Games Jam takes place from January 27th – 29th 2012."
And finally
From the Herald
"A Scottish fitness equipment supplier has won the contract to supply and fit out the gym at Google's London headquarters. Anytime Leisure secured the six-figure deal after a competitive tender process and will begin the job this month."
Compiled by David Hartley