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Mobile Apps Are Challenging TV In A Way The Web Never Did
Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/mobile-apps-television-time-spent-2012-12
A new study by Flurry, a mobile-analytics company, shows that usage of mobile apps is rapidly catching up with television.
Flurry CEO Simon Khalaf reports that the company has tracked a total of a trillion “events”—actions inside apps like finishing a game level or making a restaurant reservation. Those numbers have grown exponentially in the past two years.
All those taps and swipes translate to a significant amount of usage.
In the US, time spent on the Web has stagnated at 70 minutes per day. Television watching has grown slightly, from 162 minutes to 168 minutes. But app usage has almost doubled from 66 minutes to 127 minutes a day. At current growth rates, it should catch up with television within a year.
This isn’t necessarily bad for television content producers, Khalaf notes, who are increasingly adapting their shows to be watched alongside a tablet or smartphone—the “second screen” phenomenon.
“We believe that, with the introduction of connected TVs, TV shows will behave like apps,” he writes.
Flurry’s results match what other observers are saying, like Kleiner Perkins Internet expert Mary Meeker.
But as Peter Kafka of AllThingsD points out, the explosion of mobile usage doe! sn’t nec essarily mean a mobile-ad bonanza.
And since we’re not getting more hours in the day, it’s pretty clear that the increased usage of apps must be happening simultaneously with other activities—like, yes, watching television.
SEE ALSO: Mary Meeker’s Latest Must-Read Presentation On The State Of The Web
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How Much Physical Space Does the Internet Take Up?
Source: http://gizmodo.com/5965798/how-much-physical-space-does-the-internet-take-up
The internet is one of the most ethereal concepts in tech: it’s nowhere and everywhere, all at once. But if you could measure the thing, how much physical space would it take up?
Fortunately Randall Munroe of XKCD fame has answered the question in a fun way over on his What If? site. He explains:
There are a lot of ways to estimate the amount of information stored on the internet, but we can put an interesting upper bound on the number just by looking at how much storage space we (as a species) have purchased.
The storage industry produces in the neighborhood of 650 million hard drives per year. If most of them are 3.5″ drives, then that’s eight liters (two gallons) of hard drive per second.
This means the last few years of hard drive production-which, thanks to increasing size, represent a large chunk of global storage capacity-would just about fill an oil tanker. So, by that measure, the internet is smaller than an oil tanker.
In fact, this answer is just a snippet from a series of short “What if?” questions answered in a single post on his site. Go read the rest. [What If?]
Image by nrkbeta under Creative Commons license
7 Short-Term Car Rental Agencies Everyone Should Bookmark
Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/save-cash-with-short-term-car-rentals-2012-11
Owning a car costs an average of $8,776 annually, according to the American Automobile Association. That is based on 15,000 miles of driving and includes fuel, insurance, maintenance and depreciation.
Car rental companies will rent wheels by the month for as little as $589, according to Orbitz, which amounts to $7,068 per year — not including fuel, which is a major cost.
If you want to skip the bus, but still save on transportation costs, you could consider using a short-term vehicle rental service.
These vehicles are rented by the hour (or sometimes by the minute) and the rental company picks up all the usual costs of car ownership.
Short-term vehicle rental is an emerging trend that is currently only available in select big cities, but it is expanding. Here are the major operators:
Car2Go
This subsidiary of Mercedes-Benz parent Daimler, rents tiny Smartcars for 38 cents per minute or $13.99 per hour. You also pay a one-time $35 membership fee.
Renters can book one of the two-seaters online, or use a membership card to open and drive off in any of the blue-and-white painted cars they find parked around town.
Car2go pays for gas and when renters are done using the car, they simply park in any designated space, usually located downtown or in heavily trafficked areas, and walk away.
Car2go currently operates in six North American cities and a dozen European cities.
Zipcar
This company operates like car2Go, except it rents more than 30 different types of vehicles.
Rates vary by location and plan, but in San Francisco, for instance, the occasional driver plan requires a $60 annual fee, $25 application fee and hourly rates of about $8.50.
Zipcar operates in 20 major U.S. cities as well as Canada, the United Kingdom, Spain and Austria.
DriveNow
This is a joint venture led by BMW that features the German automaker’s all-electric ActiveE sedan.
Renters pay a one-time membership fee of $39 and, after picking up the car at a DriveNow station, $12 for the first 30 minutes and 32 cents for additional minutes for a one-hour rate of $21.60.
DriveNow is available in four German cities and San Francisco.
Modo
Modo is a car-sharing co-op that requires a $20 initial registration, fee plus $50 per year and $7.50 per hour for rentals.
Renters pre-book vehicles in half-hour increments and pay penalties for late returns, cancellations and no-shows.
Modo rents a variety of vehicles, but only in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Hertz on Demand
This service is an hourly offering of the world’s largest car rental company. It requires no annual fees and charges hourly rates ranging from $5 in Boston to $8 in San Antonio.
Renters pick up and drop off vehicles, which include Nissan’s Sentra, as well as Chevy Cruze and Malibu models, at designated Hertz On Demand locations.
Hertz On Demand is in a dozen U.S. cities as well as the United Kingdom, France, Spain and Germany.
Scoot
This startup charges $10 to join and $5 per month, plus $5 per hour to rent two-wheeled electric scooters, complete with helmets.
The service is available only in San Francisco and environs, and the scooters are only suitable for single passengers traveling at less than highway speed.
Breaking Down the Cost
The average adult spends just under an hour driving daily, according to the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics.
Based on average short-term rates of about $12 hourly, the typical adult driver could spend $4,380 per year on short-term rentals, which is less than half ! the cost of owning a car, while still driving the same amount.
Hourly car renters sacrifice some convenience and still must pay for parking tickets, lost membership cards and other incidentals.
But, for people who live where short-term rentals are available, drive the average amount or less, and don’t need a car at their beck and call, short-term rentals appear to offer an inexpensive way to get around.
DON’T MISS: The 10 most dangerous states for drivers >
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Facebook’s New Ad Exchange Has ‘Quadrupled’ The Market; Performs ‘Better Than Google’ (FB)
It’s been hard to gauge how big Facebook’s new real-time bidding platform for advertisers, Facebook Exchange, has become since it was launched in June, but global sales chief Carolyn Everson let slip just how big it could be in a recent conversation with Adweek and Group M digital chief Rob Norman.
First Norman said he believed FBX had “quadrupled” the size of the available market for advertisers who wanted to place ads based on real-time bidding in exchanges:
We love it. We absolutely love it. Massive, massive, massive increase in the amount of exchange traded media. We think it’s probably quadrupled the market in terms of availability of total impressions.
Then Everson said FBX was performing better than Google’s ad exchange:
So we are very excited about Facebook Exchange. We’re excited about the results that we’ve seen. Our performance so far in the Exchange is doing better than the Google Exchange, and Triggit and others have all spoken up on our behalf.
The caveat here, of course, is that quadrupling the supply of available ad inventory isn’t the same as quadrupling the demand for it. And the performance evidence from the demand-side platform companies who have been placing ads inside FBX, like Triggit, is so far only anecdotal. Those buyers say clients can get 16X ROI inside FBX. (Notably, FBX was not mentioned in Facebook’s recent 10-Q.)
Nonetheless, it’s yet another breadcrumb on the trail toward Facebook’s claim that it is on the way to gathering a new $2 billion ad marketplace.
Disclosure: The author owns Facebook stock.
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tablet shipments up 6.7 percent in Q3 2012, Apple’s market share drops to 50.4 percent
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/11/05/idc-tablet-shipments-Q3-2012/
Samsung may dominate Apple in smartphone market share, but the opposite is true for tablets. Third quarter figures from IDC suggest the tablet market grew by 6.7 percent during those three months, and 49.5 percent since the same period last year. Apple was responsible for over half of the 27.8 million shipments worldwide, but lost a significant amount of market share, dropping to 50.4 percent from 65.5 percent in the second quarter. IDC attributes this to consumers holding off for the iPad mini, but expects some of these procrastinators will choose Android tablets due to the relatively high entry price of $329 for the mini. Samsung was second on the leaderboard, shipping over five million tablets and increasing its market share to 18.4 percent, mainly driven by Galaxy Tab and Note 10.1 sales. Amazon and ASUS also had a solid quarter thanks to the Kindle Fires and Nexus 7, respectively, shipping around 2.5 million tablets a piece. Lenovo’s presence in
Filed under: Tablets, Apple, Samsung, ASUS, Amazon, Lenovo
IDC: tablet shipments up 6.7 percent in Q3 2012, Apple’s market share drops to 50.4 percent originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 05 Nov 2012 03:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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The 20 Biggest Corporate R&D Spenders In The World
Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/biggest-research-and-development-spender-2012-10
Every year management consulting Booz & Co. puts together a comprehensive report on the world’s 1000 biggest spenders on research and development, and the connection between that spending and performance.
Booz & Co. senior partner Barry Jaruzelski told us that “in the US, Europe, and Japan that’s fairly easy to put together, but to do it on every market, to get South Africa, China, India, Brazil, Russia, Israel, etc. takes a fair amount more effort.”
There’s an incredible amount of money in R&D. The top 20 companies alone spent $153.6 billion last year, which is more than a quarter of the total $603 billion by the world’s 1000 biggest spenders.
Here are last year’s top 20 spenders:
Read the full report here
NOW READ: The 10 Most Innovative Companies In The World
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Cleveland Clinic and IBM team up to make Watson a Doctor (video)
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/10/30/cleveland-clinic-watson/
Medical research facility Cleveland Clinic and IBM are teaming up to develop ways to let supercomputer Watson become a useful tool for doctors. The machine’s ability to analyze language and scour its database for answers is hoped to offer quicker and more exhaustive diagnoses for patients. As modern medical students spend less time memorizing diseases, they’re focusing on learning how to think critically and navigate the huge amount of available data. Big Blue is also hoping that the Jeopardy champion will learn how to digest a person’s medical records in order to match up their history with maladies. We’re just nervous that someone will give Watson a telepresence robot and send him out onto the wards — you’d be worried about his bedside manner if you’ve seen his ruthless quizzing manner.
Continue reading Cleveland Clinic and IBM team up to make Watson a Doctor (video)
http://w ww.engadget.com/2012/10/30/cleveland-clinic-watson/”>Cleveland Clinic and IBM team up to make Watson a Doctor (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 30 Oct 2012 15:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Google Street View car fleet gets ready to conquer (and map) the world
Ever wonder how Google can make such grandiose claims for the sheer amount of Street View imagery it collects? Here’s how. Google’s Masrur Odinaev has posted a snapshot of a central mapping car parking lot that shows dozens of the camera-equipped Subaru Imprezas amassed ahead of future runs. While it already represents more Street View cars in one place than anyone outside of Google would normally ever see, what’s most impressive is remembering that this addresses just a portion of the entire vehicle mix — aside from the local cars you don’t see in the photo, there are extra units worldwide providing street-level coverage alongside tricycles and underwater expeditions. Odinaev’s look reminds us just how much effort is needed to make Street View a common feature — and that there are are legions of Google staffers whose low-profile work goes a long way towards making our navigation easier.
Filed under: GPS, Transportation, Internet, Google
Visualized: Google Street View car fleet gets ready to conquer (and map) the world originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 15 Oct 2012 02:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Android users chew an average 870MB of cellular data per month, youngest gobble the most
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/09/28/npd-android-users-chew-average-870mb-of-cellular-data-per-month/
Ever wonder how much data you burn through every month on average? If you’re an Android user within the US, odds are that it’s quite a lot. The NPD Group estimates that Americans of the Google persuasion typically consume about 870MB of data on cellular networks every month. While it’s not an extreme amount next to the 2.5GB of WiFi usage, it’s enough to give anyone second thoughts about coasting on a basic data plan — and a reflection of how both 4G and media apps have changed our behavior. Not surprisingly, it’s a younger crowd more comfortable with smartphones that’s the most aggressive: the 18-24 set races through 1.05GB a month where the 55-plus audience uses a more modest (if still healthy) 750MB. We don’t yet know how iOS stacks up in current conditions, but the NPD is promising a comparable look soon. Something tells us the iPhone 5’s LTE will lead to just as much voraciousness.
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile
NPD: Android users chew an average 870MB of cellular data per month, youngest gobble the most originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 28 Sep 2012 13:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Fake Gold Bars Are Being Sold In New York
Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/fake-gold-bars-2012-9
Fox’s Ti-Hua Chang is reporting that fake gold has arrived in Manhattan.
Ibrahim Fadl bought the bar from a merchant who has sold him real gold before. But he heard counterfeit gold bars were going around, so he drilled into several of his gold bars worth $100,000 and saw gray tungsten — not gold.
The individual 10 ounce bars would normally be worth around $18,000 each. But bars filled with tungsten, which weighs about the same amount as gold, carry a new value of around $3,600.
“What makes so devious is a real gold bar is purchased with the serial numbers and papers, then it is hollowed out, the gold is sold, the tungsten is put in, then the bar is closed up,” reports Chang.
The Secret Service is reportedly investigating the matter
Here’s a video courtesy of MYFoxNY:
New York News | NYC Breaking News
SEE ALSO: Here Are Some Of The Practical Uses For Gold >
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Digital Consigliere
Dr. Augustine Fou is Digital Consigliere to marketing executives, advising them on digital strategy and Unified Marketing(tm). Dr Fou has over 17 years of in-the-trenches, hands-on experience, which enables him to provide objective, in-depth assessments of their current marketing programs and recommendations for improving business impact and ROI using digital insights.
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