Digital Media News (week 6)
Date:
30 January 2012
Weekly bulletin collating public sector, industry and company news for creative industries by David Hartley.
Public sector
From the Technology Strategy Board
"The Technology Strategy Board today announced that it will establish a Catapult centre for the connected digital economy. The new Catapult is a technology and innovation centre which will accelerate innovation and stimulate growth in this important area of the economy. It will bring together technological expertise to help the UK’s world-leading digital businesses to develop, test and apply new technologies, reducing the risk associated with creating hugely profitable products and services in the future".
From Gamasutra
"Organizers for Dare to be Digital are now accepting applications for their student game development competition, which will take place between June 11 and August 12 at Scotland's University of Abertay Dundee this year. The contest is open to students attending universities in Scotland, India, China, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Iceland, or Sweden".
From Gamasutra
"A UK-wide competition to design new games for Samsung’s mobile phone app store has been won by a team from the University of Abertay Dundee. Students from ten leading universities – including Oxford, Imperial College London and Trinity College Dublin – took part in the Samsung bada Student Developer Challenge, which began with tough 24-hour ‘codeathons’ around Britain. Abertay University also took the prize for the best university".
From the Technology Strategy Board
"The government is to invest up to £2 million to stimulate and support technological innovation by the UK's small and micro businesses. The Technology Strategy Board aims to stimulate innovation across a range of core technology areas to help ensure that small and micro businesses in the UK are well-equipped to respond to society's current and future challenges. Up to £2 million will be invested in feasibility studies through grants of up to £25,000".
The funding competition will focus on feasibility studies in four technology areas including Information and Communications Technology.
Local industry
From The Scotsman
"Internet pioneer Chris van der Kuyl, chief executive of Brightsolid, is to build closer links between the company’s range of family history websites and social network Friends Reunited, bought from broadcaster ITV for £25 million…Van der Kuyl also has his eye on the American market, having expanded the firm’s Find My Past brand into Australia, Ireland and New Zealand in the past year".
From Fast Company
"Pete Cashmore is the CEO of Mashable. At 19, he founded the tech blog in Scotland, which has grown into a monster site for social news. Mashable has more than 2 million Twitter followers…Mashable, the tech-and-social site that he launched with a blog as a 19-year-old, now attracts more than 20 million unique users a month. "We're a news site for the digital generation," he says. "It's our responsibility to show how social and digital is changing the world".
From MCV
"It’s not just games retail that is waiting for the Grand Theft Auto V style cash cow – music publishers see the release as a big opportunity too. GTA’s once unique ability for gamers to switch between radio stations when on the move means that huge libraries of content can be included on the disc. And for music firms this represents a great chance to monetise their back catalogues".
From allmediascotland
"Being hailed as "one of the most important steps" in its 200-year history, The Scotsman newspaper is to be available as an app for the iPad, from today. Trailed these last few days with full-page adverts in the paper, the app is being described as 'Scotland’s first dedicated multimedia news iPad app'. In a statement, John McLellan, Scotsman Publications’ editor-in-chief, is quoted, as saying: “This is a major development which keeps The Scotsman up to speed with the latest media technology".
From scottishgames.net
"Tag’s first title for its casual/social TagPlay label, Funpark Friends, has been nominated in the Best Social Games category in the 2012 International Mobile Games Awards, which are announced that the Mobile World Congress, which takes place in Barcelona at the end of February".
General industry
From the BBC
"Are television and the internet edging closer to a state of wedded harmony, forming a one-stop shop for consumers? I made it my mission to find out. That's why earlier in the month I took a road trip from Silicon Valley to Las Vegas (you can read more about my journey in previous posts). The main reason was to make a programme about the future of television, and the role that Silicon Valley's software companies might play".
From The Guardian
"Total global music sales dipped 3% in 2011 to $16.2 billion (£10.4 billion), according to estimates from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI)… Digital sales, meanwhile, rose by 8% in 2011, crossing the $5 billion mark for the first time, a welcome sign after the alarm of 2010's figures which saw growth more than halve year on year to 5%...This was fuelled by the international expansion of Apple's iTunes, Spotify and Deezer and a surge in users accessing content using smartphones and tablets".
From the BBC
"The value of the web economy in G20 countries will nearly double by 2016, according to Boston Consulting Group. Driving the spurt from $2.3 trillion (£1.5 trillion) to $4.2 trillion (£2.7 trillion) will be the rapid rise of mobile internet access. The study, commissioned by web giant Google, assumes that in four years 3bn people will be using the internet, or nearly 50% of the world's population".
Reports
From Tech Crunch
"Ownership of tablets and e-book readers saw a big spike over the holidays — in fact, it nearly doubled in the United States, according to a new study from the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project. The study was based on telephone surveys conducted in mid-December and January, which found that ownership of both device types nearly doubled in just a month. Now a total of 29 percent of US adults own a tablet or an e-reader, or possibly both".
From Tech Crunch
"In a new research report from Distimo, the app store analytics provider examined two different ways that allow mobile developers to get a bump in both their download numbers and revenue. One way, which is within the developers’ control, is putting the app on sale. Within the first day, iPhone developers see an average increase of 41% in revenue using this method, and see revenue increases of 22% by the sale’s end. Android apps, however, rose just 7% on day one, but closed out the sale with higher percentage gains than either iPhone or iPad".
Events
From Eventbrite
"This event, organised by ETAG, Interactive Scotland and Scottish Enterprise, follows on from the hugely successful ETAG Technology Solutions in Tourism 2011 and features leading industry speakers. If you are an Edinburgh tourism businesses or a digital media company developing solutions for the tourism sector make sure you are there".
The event takes place in Edinburgh from 9.30 on Thursday 23 February.
Compiled by David Hartley