Daily Bits

Media

Video Games In 3D!

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Believe it or not, but video game sales have gone down this year. By how much? Statistics say that they’ve gone down by 11 percent! That may not mean much (what’s 11 percent anyway?) for some, but given the figures involved in video game sales, that a whole lot of money!

So naturally, video game creators are looking for ways to increase their sales and get people to buy their games more. So you probably know that the E3 is ongoing right now. This could very well be the biggest thing that happens in the gaming world, although we all know that it is not how it used to be.

Anyhow, big players Sony and Nintendo have made some announcements to the effect that they are going to enter the world of 3D. This is not really a big surprise. After all the movies that we have been seeing in 3D, it really was only a matter of time till the video game companies followed suit.

So yesterday, Nintendo introduced 3DS. They showed off a device that will allow players to see images in 3D WITHOUT the need for those bulky and sometimes irritating 3D glasses. Now how cool is that? Here’s a clip from YouTube.

Of course, Sony will not be left behind in this race. While they didn’t announce something as radical as Nintendo (in my mind at least), they did demonstrate some games that are 3D capable.

I am certain that we will be seeing more and more of 3D games in the market as the years – months even – go by. Anyone out there excited about the fact?

Who Wants To Be A Twitter Jockey?

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You read that right – there is now such a thing as a twitter jockey! Forget about being a DJ OR a VJ, for that matter. The cool thing – or the next cool thing – is to be a Twitter Jockey. (So does that make that person a TJ?)

MTV has just announced its plans of making social networking a larger part of their operations. No one can deny just how popular social networking sites are today, and it is not surprising that an enterprise such as MTV will not jump into the bandwagon and try to take advantage of what’s happening.

As such, they have launched the first-ever (I am under the assumption that there has never been a TJ search) search for a TJ. So what exactly will this kind of jockey do?

The idea is for the person – whoever it is – to “serve as a bridge between the audience and network bosses, with Twitter and Facebook, among others, as platforms.” Not much unlike what a lot of (PR) people already do for other companies, is it?

Of course, MTV has already selected some contenders, who will appear in a show specifically created for the TJ search. The network aims to get 20 people who are vying for the position. These 20 will then be narrowed down to 5. The top 5 will then take part in the finale, which will be aired live on the 8th of August.

Anyone interested in the position? I think the last 2 slots are open for nomination.

Google Buzz Posts Are All Auto-Feeds

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Here’s an interesting look into the current buzz being posted on Google Buzz. The study was conducted by Post Rank which tracks engagement activities on over two dozen social networks and recently added buzz posted on Google Buzz.

During their analysis of  Google Buzz feeds, Post Rank found some interesting points regarding all the noise that have been building up on Google Buzz.

Turns out, approximately 60% of the content on Buzz is from Twitter! Many users have hooked up their accounts to automatically repost their content from Twitter either directly, through FriendFeed, or via another service.

The runner up to Twitter? Another set of bots! This time, it’s automated alerts from feeds, e.g. CNN publishes a new story and a bot pushes it out to the Buzz stream. All in all, those two sources account for almost 90% of the Buzz stream, and even in the remainder there is a long tail of Google Latitude updates, ping.fm, and others. Unfortunately, there just doesn’t seem to be much original and/or human-generated content in Buzz. Perhaps you shouldn’t hurry to install that Buzz button on your site just yet…

What does this all mean. If you’re a social media marketeer eyeing to implement some marketing campaign on Google Buzz, well you might want to hold back for awhile as there is no clear chance that your campaign would reap higher engagement.

It seems that the activities on Google Buzz right now are all automated. Well, of course you might be engaging with “real people” in your own Buzz streams and that’s pretty understandable since you’ve selected people to follow on Google Buzz yourself.

But then as what Post Rank’s study yielded, majority of Google Buzz posters are actually non-human.

Move Over iPad, Here Comes the WePad

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There you go. What was being touted as an iPad killer even before the iPad was officially released finally gets to come out of the closet and was finally and officially launched. We’re talking about the WePad. It’s definitely not the plural form of the iPad but rather a different product, created by the German company – Neofonie.

Some of the things that we don’t know yet about WePad are pretty interesting. For example, reports said that there will be two WePad models – a 16GB WiFi and 64GB HD-capable unit.  The rest of the WePad specs and features are pretty impressive, well of course if you’re looking at it from the perspective of what a tablet should be.

The WePad boasts of 11.6-inch touchscreen display, Intel Atom N450 CPU, two USB ports, onboard webcam, and of course something which has been much sought after from the iPad – Flash support.

And some of the major features that you can enjoy with the WePad include – browse the Internet, watch YouTube, check email, chat with friends on Facebook and more.

The WePad is also banking on the open-source dictum, having built the WePad’s platform on Android and Linux.  So, you can just imagine the possibility of more apps coming into the WePad’s way once it becomes publicly available.

WePad is also promising something about “WeMagazine.” This is an ePublishing Open Platform that provides publishers with tools necessary to develop their publication-specific applications for the WePad.

Could the WePad revolutionize the web magazine  publishing industry? Will it be able to steal the thunder away from the Apple iPad?  Are Flash support and Android or Linux OS enough to convince you to get the WePad?

Farmville Player Spent £900 Using His Savings and Mother’s Credit Card

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I saw this news covered by a local news program yesterday but at first I didn’t give it much thought since I was waiting the the news program’s coverage of the iPad. Then I saw this new hitting the Techmeme’s headline right now and decided to give it a run.

After reading what happened to the 12-year old kid who spent £900 buying Farmville virtual goods, I could not help but sigh and felt relief that it didn’t happen to me. Two of my teen-age kids are into Farmville as well. But they don’t have access to my credit card.

So, the story goes that the kid spent around $900 to purchase Farmville goods using her mother’s credit card and his own savings. The credit card was used by the kid without her mother’s knowledge. All in the name of putting up the “coolest” farm in Facebook.

Zynga, the game developer refused to refund the amount since the kid lives in her mother’s house.  While the credit card company would only refund if the mother will report his son to the police and give him a police record. Now, what kind of mother would do that to her own son?

So, now. The son’s Farmville account was cancelled. The mother and the kid lost quite a sum of money. And Zynga earns. What a crappy system, right?

The kid and his mother should have read TechCrunch’s series on game monetization schemes of Zynga. This could have been prevented from happening.

Lessons learned?  You know that already.

iPad Official Numbers are Out, 450,000 Units Sold

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Just before Steve Jobs announced the upcoming iPhone OS 4.0, he also presented some official information about the iPad, one week after it was made available. The numbers although not that impressive are interesting enough and worthy of a second look from us.

According to Apple, around 450,000 iPads were already sold. First day sales figure was officially at around 300,000 units. While the iPad was able to beat the opening weekend sale of the first gen iPhone (around 250,000), the iPhone 3G however managed to get a sale of around 1 million units when it first came out in July 2008.

The iPad 3G versions won’t be coming out until last week of April. So we don’t know yet whether it would add up to the iPad’s current sales performance, or even perhaps whether it could match up the sales of the iPhone 3G. But then, these two Apple devices are different from each other so it’s not likely that the iPad could match with the sales performance of the iPhone. And both devices have their specific target consumers as well. But we have yet to see. Perhaps there are more buyers who are waiting for the iPad 3G.

Moving on to the stats on iPad apps. Apple was proud to report that about 1 million iPad apps were already downloaded from the App Store on the first day. Right now, total apps downloaded stand at around 3.5 million.

Now here’s the more interesting bit, there were 250,000 books downloaded from the iBookstore on the first day. And this increased to 600,000 downloaded books today.  What the numbers don’t say though is how many of these books were free and how many were paid. If Apple could determine these and present the figures, we would know whether the iPad is really a serious to Kindle and other e-readers.