Digital Media News (week 15)
Date:
03 April 2012
Weekly bulletin collating public sector, industry and company news for creative industries by David Hartley.
Public sector
From Creative Scotland
"A new programme to support digital development of Scotland’s culture sector will be unveiled at the Digital 2012 conference in Glasgow on Friday, 30 March. Developed in partnership with NESTA, AmbITion Scotland and Sync, this integrated programme will support digital experimentation or new business models, as well as raising the threshold of knowledge and skills within creative organisations to harness the opportunities offered by rapid advances in technology."
From the Technology Strategy Board
"... invest up to £1.8 million in feasibility projects that address the converged nature of the digital landscape. The programme will be delivered in three parts during 2012. We are seeking projects that focus on convergence in hyper-local media models, content origination tools, and analytical feedback and metrics tools… Projects must be business-led and are open to small and micro companies working either singly or in collaboration with one another… Projects should last up to 12 months and are eligible for grants of up to £56,250 or 75% of total costs. Total project costs must not exceed £75,000. Challenge 1 opens on 23 April 2012."
Digital Innovation Contest - TV and Film
From the Technology Strategy Board
"The 'Digital Innovation Contest – TV & Film' run by IC tomorrow, in conjunction with a selection of commercial organisations and charities, is offering businesses up to £30,000 for each successful innovative commercial prototype application or service in [a number of] challenge categories [including] two awards of £30,000 in the 'second Screen' challenge."
From NESTA
"Nesta has just announced four projects that we will be funding through our Make it Local Scotland programme, helping councils open their data and work with a software developer in order to develop entirely new, web-based public services. We will be working with five local authorities in Scotland, spanning Scotland’s largest cities as well as rural areas - including an island at (nearly) the most northerly tip of the UK."
Local Industry News
From Kotaku
"Quarrel Deluxe: Another unlikely mutation of word games fuses letter combination with the territorial land grabs of Risk. Speed's also a factor in how successful your alphabet army is dominating the colorful cartoon landscape"
From the Scotsman
"Whisky apps are slowly but surely popping up on Apple’s App Store, but as The Scotsman discovers, only a select few measure up; the rest leave a rather bitter aftertaste… Whisky Online: Ardbeg Distillery, £0.69 a series of apps (from Edinburgh based Story UK) profiling Scotland’s major distilleries, among which is the Ardbeg Distillery in Islay. The app offers a wealth of information about the location of the distillery alongside a brief history of the distillery itself."
From allmediascotland
"The world's oldest magazine still being published is now available as an app for iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch. It means The Scots Magazine, first published in February 1739, joins for four other titles owned by publishers, DC Thomson - The Beano, The Dandy, The People’s Friend and Animal Planet magazine - as an app on the Apple Newsstand."
From scottishgames.net
"At Game In Scotland Red Radiant emerged, as if from nowhere, with a number of fantastic announcements about new games, new projects, new partners and major plans for the rest of 2012 and much of 2013. The first of these was Moops, an original new title being developed in conjunction with Darkside Animation. Moops is somewhat platform-y, in which the player has to hunt and ‘thwack’ critters, so your trusty companion can vacuum them up and rid Barrel City of the nasty things. Moops is due out in May 2012 for iOS devices."
General industry
From the Guardian
"Ebook editions of JK Rowling's bestselling Harry Potter titles went on sale for the first time today, marking what is being described as digital publishing's "Beatles moment". The seven Potter ebooks were initially scheduled to launch last October on Rowling's new venture, the website Pottermore."
From the Telegraph
"The new figures, released by Microsoft, show that Xbox Live Gold members in the US are now spending an average of 84 hours per month accessing content through apps on Xbox Live. Entertainment app usage has more than doubled year-on-year and there has been a 30 per cent increase in the total number of hours spend on the platform around the world."
From the Telegraph
"Thirty-six per cent of Britons have admitted that they no longer watch live TV, preferring to either access content via catch-up sites or through personal video recorders, such as Sky+ or Virgin Media. Nearly two thousand Britons, aged 18 and over, were polled by discounts site, My Voucher Codes, to find out how prevalent time-shifted and on-demand viewing was throughout the UK."
From Ad Week
"Children’s TV may have a problem on its hands: to a large slice of its target demo, a television is just a dumb iPad. Consider these stats: Cable viewership among kids 6-11 was down 13 percent in the first quarter, following a 6 percent decline in Q4 2011. Meanwhile, some 70 percent of children under 12 in homes with tablets use them regularly, and 51 percent of kids between 5 and 8 across all households are on the computer several times a week."
From The Next Web
"Wonders of the Universe is an incredible feat. It’s an iPad app that packs in a custom 3D rendering engine, tons of video, text and image content from Professor Brian Cox’s Wonders series and a brand new interface that works like nothing else you’ve seen from an ‘interactive book’ before."
From the BBC
"The calm, industrious mood inside Double Fine Production's office masks the elation that erupted into champagne-splashed toasts earlier this month. The San Francisco-based video games developer is making history by bankrolling its next title using only crowdsourced cash. Within 24 hours of seeking pledges over the internet it had bagged more than $1m (£630,000), overshooting its initial target of $400,000. By the campaign's end it had reeled in a total of $3.4m from more than 87,000 supporters for its point-and-click adventure game."
Reports
From the Telegraph
"The figure is a 50 per cent increase on levels seen in 2005 as eight in 10 adults go online using an array of different devices wherever they are. Smartphones, the continuing rise of social networking websites and the number of older people using the internet are credited for the rise. Research by the broadcasting watchdog Ofcom also found that concern about the internet has fallen dramatically even though a quarter of social networks say their personal information could be seen by strangers."
From Pocket Gamer
"Research from Games Investor Consulting estimated that the mobile games market was worth $7.9 billion in 2011 and says its projected growth would see the market worth $12 billion in 2013. In contrast, EA predicted the global mobile games market (including handheld digital downloads) would be worth $5.1 billion in 2013, although the likes of Juniper and Gartner reckon it's higher - up to $11 billion by 2015."
Compiled by David Hartley