Google to Patent Status Updates that “Spread the Word”

Posted on April 10, 2010 by Mark Levy — No Comments ↓

Websites asking new users to “spread the word” by logging into their email accounts is not exactly new. Of late, it is not very uncommon to see the same thing happen with social networks. However, ‘The Mechanical Zoo’, the parent company of Aardvark – the social search engine that was recently acquired by Google has applied for a patent on the idea of viral ad campaigns via status messages.

In the application titled, “Online Word-of-Mouth Marketing of a Web Service Using Personalized Invitations via a Status Messaging Service“, the company has sought for rights on the concept whereby websites and web applications (like Farmville) that promote their service via the users’ status messages.

Here are a few screenshots of the idea that could now belong to Google.

Posted in What's New

Online video used like DVR and not a replacement for watching TV – Nielsen

Posted on March 25, 2010 by Mark Levy — No Comments ↓

: Image via CrunchBase

Each week, on average, Americans watched roughly 35 hours of TV and two hours of timeshifted TV via a DVR. Adults aged 65 and up watched the most weekly TV, 47 hours and 21 minutes; while teens aged 12-17 watched the least weekly TV, 23 hours and 24 minutes. The overall growth in viewing is due to a number of factors, the DVR brings added convenience while high definition programming and flatscreen TVs have boosted the quality of the experience. Digital delivery, via cable or satellite, is delivering more channels and more choice to the home than ever before, according to Nielsen.

Posted in What's New

MITEF Tackles The Semantic Web

Posted on March 24, 2010 by Mark Levy — No Comments ↓

While market leaders Google and Bing battle it out, new companies are taking search into uncharted territory.

Tonight MIT Enterprise Forum of the NW featured presenting company Evri, a consumer web company that is changing the way users filter, discover, navigate, and engage with content on the Web. Evri’s web platform scours content from more than tens of thousands of sources, such as real-time news, blogs, and Tweets. It then filters it by timeliness, relevance, and source credibility, and delivers that content to consumers in intelligent streams across multiple platforms.

Joining Evri’s CEO, Will Hunsinger, was a panel of leading experts, covering the challenges, issues, and opportunities in the world of search and information discovery.

Posted in What's New

Keep Your Cell Phone On During this Film…If You Dare

Posted on March 11, 2010 by Mark Levy — No Comments ↓

This is the technology from Last Call from 13th Street, an interactive horror film. Sometime, during the movie, an audience member’s cellular phone will ring, and it is up to this audience member to give the character on screen directions.

Watch the video to see how the startled damsel in distress from Last Call tries to escape from the mad slasher. Yes, she actually calls an audience member during the film, and his or her voice commands tell her to go left or right, up or down, and so on.

Tagged with: Movies
Posted in Interactive Movies, Movies

Our Cell Phone Obsession

Posted on March 6, 2010 by Mark Levy — No Comments ↓

Via: Cell Phones

Posted in Mobile

Mobile App Store Stats – Read Write Web

Posted on February 23, 2010 by Mark Levy — 1 Comment ↓

Written by Sarah Perez

At the recent Mobile World Congress 2010, Dutch app store analytics firm Distimo presented their findings on the six largest mobile application stores in existence today: the iTunes App Store, BlackBerry App World, Google Android Market, Nokia Ovi Store, Palm App Catalog and Windows Marketplace for Mobile. In their presentation, they analyzed everything including store size, store growth, the most popular applications and where you can find the best deal. They recently shared some of the highlights from that presentation by way of a slideshow embedded on their blog.

For mobile industry insiders, some of the findings won’t be all that shocking, just common knowledge paired with statistics. However, there were a few surprises that caught us off guard, maybe they will you too.

Distimo collects public application data from app stores and also offers developers an analytics tool which is used to monitor their apps and those belonging to their competitors. After examining and analyzing the data, the company releases market reports detailing their findings.

Tagged with: App Store, Apple, blackberry, Distimo, google, Microsoft, Nokia, Research In Motion
Posted in Mobile, What's New

Digital Marketing Budgets – More Science than Art

Posted on February 16, 2010 by Mark Levy — No Comments ↓

: Image via CrunchBase

The shift of marketing budgets from traditional channels to digital channels will continue to rise in 2010 with 46% of companies plan to increase their marketing budgets in 2010 and 66% will increase their investments in digital marketing channels. 28% of marketers are shifting at least some of their overall marketing budgets from traditional to digital channels, according to a new Econsultancy survey.

* 28% of marketers are shifting at least some of their overall marketing budgets from traditional to digital channels:

Tagged with: Digital marketing, Marketing and Advertising
Posted in Marketing

Teens Send an average of 3,146 Text Messages Per Month – Nielsen Study

Posted on February 5, 2010 by Mark Levy — No Comments ↓

The Cost of Texting

American teenagers send an average of 10 text messages per hour they are not in school or sleeping. By analyzing more than 40,000 monthly US mobile bills, in Nielsen new study determined American teens sent an average of 3,146 texts a month each during Q3 2009. Their counterparts 9-12 sent an average of 1,146 monthly texts each, or four per hour not spent asleep or in school. In comparison, the average number of monthly texts sent by all mobile users combined was a little more than 500. In Q4 2009, users 9-12 increased text usage by 8% and almost doubled their text message volume.

Tagged with: Text messaging
Posted in Digital Kids

Great Article on Online Video Trends from TechCrunch

Posted on January 31, 2010 by Mark Levy — No Comments ↓

Context is King: How Videos Are Found And Consumed Online

Editor’s note: This is the third in a series of posts by guest writer Ashkan Karbasfrooshan.Previously, he wrote about the State of Online Video, and 12 Surprising Things Holding Back Online Video Advertising. In part 3 today, he examines how videos are found and consumed online. Karbasfrooshan is the founder and CEO of WatchMojo , a producer of premium, informative and entertaining video content. The company’s catalog of 5,000 videos has generated over 110 million streams since 2006.

To try to understand—let alone guess—the future of video advertising, one needs to start by looking at the biggest trend in media over the past few decades. In November 2006, Bear Stearns Cable and Satellite analyst Spencer Wang published a study called “Why Aggregation & Context and Not (Necessarily) Content are King in Entertainment”. While Bear Stearns has since beenacquired by JP Morgan and is now a mere footnote in business books, the study’s findings are more relevant than ever. Let’s examine 8 key factors behind online video consumption

Posted in Online Video

Kids Spend Every Waking Minute in Front of a Screen [STUDY]

Posted on January 20, 2010 by Mark Levy — No Comments ↓

The Kaiser Family Foundation has the results in from its latest media usage study, and it was enough to shock the authors.

The last time the Foundation looked at the media usage of 8- to 18-year-olds was five years ago, when they were at just shy of six and a half hours of media consumption per day. At that point, the study authors felt that they must have hit a ceiling on media usage.

Not so, according to the latest study, which puts the average up more than an hour to upwards of seven and a half hours per day. Plus, for the first time, time spent watching TV actually dropped in favor of other forms of media, including listening to music, using a computer, playing video games, reading print publications and watching movies.

Posted in Digital Kids