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How a Small Studio Pulled Off a Major 3-D Film Using Energy-Saving Technology

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5583881/how-a-small-studio-pulled-off-a-major-3+d-film-using-energy+saving-technology

Despicable MeTraditionally, only the mammoth Hollywood studios could afford to work with 3D—it’s too expensive to build the necessary, air-conditioned 24 hours a day, server farms. The company behind Despicable Me decided to try something new, and cut the AC.

Illumination Entertainment, the company behind Despicable Me, decided to try something new. Instead of using air-conditioned server farms to render images, the company asked IBM to built a customized server farm using the iDataPlex system, a processing system that cuts down on energy use by 40% compared to traditional server farms.

The iDataPlex has two key advantages: a flexible configuration that doubles the amount of systems that can run in a single IBM rack and the ability to run an ambient temperature room (no costly air-conditioning required). The system has been on the market for over a year, but Illumination is the first studio to use it for animated film.

This doesn’t mean that any scrappy studio with a dream can now produce a high-end 3-D animated film. Illumination used a 330-person team of artists, producers, and support staff to produce 142 terabytes of data. And the rendering farm, which processed up to 500,000 frames per week, was built in conjunction with Mac Guff Ligne, a French digital production studio.

But the iDataPlex gives Illumination a leg up in the graphics rendering process. Illumination Entertainment’s server farm, for example, is the size of four parking spots. That’s half the amount of space the company initially allotted to the farm. “Oftentimes a small studio like Illumination really wants to put their energy behind creating as compelling of content as possible,” explains Steve Canepa, Vice President, Media & Entertainment Industry at IBM. “By minimizing the technological issues associated with building and managing the [rendering] environment, we allow studios to reduce the amount of time, energy, and resources necessary to create an underlying technological platform.”

It’s a compelling idea for studios—even major ones—that want to cut costs and look environmentally conscious at the same time. IBM is already working with a number of other studios to implement similar solutions. Canepa concedes that studios could build similar systems by purchasing off-the-shelf racks and processors, but the iDataPlex’s unique configuration of servers packs a lot of processing power into a small space—and that’s not easy to replicate. Don’t expect these rigs to be appearing in suburban garages anytime soon.

How a Small Studio Pulled Off a Major 3-D Film Using Energy-Saving TechnologyFast Company empowers innovators to challenge convention and create the future of business.

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Monday, July 12th, 2010 news No Comments

The Half-Life Of A YouTube Video Is 6 Days (GOOG)

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-the-lifecycle-of-a-youtube-video-2010-5

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A video on YouTube gets 50% of its views in the first 6 days it is on the site, according to data from analytics firm TubeMogul. After 20 days, a YouTube video has had 75% of its total views.

That’s a really short life span for YouTube videos, and it’s probably getting shorter. In 2008, it took 14 days for a video to get 50% of its views and 44 days to get 75% of its views.

Why? In the last two years, YouTube has improved its user interface, which helps videos get seen early on. Also, the world has gotten more adept at embedding and sharing videos in real-time via Twitter and Facebook. (And there’s probably more video to choose from.)

What’s this mean for publishers? For one thing, publishers should have advertising/monetization schemes ready to go for their videos right when they’re published, because the hits come early.

It also means companies should be actively uploading videos to YouTube, says David Burch, a rep at TubeMogul. He notes that major companies like the NBA have been good at getting clips on YouTube quickly. If they didn’t act fast, then they could miss an opportunity to get eyeballs.

chart of the day, youtube video lifecycle, may 2010

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Friday, May 28th, 2010 news No Comments

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Friday, May 28th, 2010 Uncategorized 1 Comment

40 percent of iPhone sales are enterprise, Android ‘built with a very specific focus to consumers’

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/27/atandt-40-percent-of-iphones-are-enterprise-android-built-with/

iphone enterprise 2 beta 40 percent of iPhone sales are enterprise, Android built with a very specific focus to consumers

It isn’t just Verizon’s Lowell McAdam with fascinating commentary at this Barclays Capital tech conference going down in New York this week. Ron Spears, who leads up AT&T’s Business Solutions division, had some notable things to say about enterprise mobility — specifically, the iPhone’s role in taking businesses to the road, a magic trick typically associated almost exclusively with BlackBerry over the past ten years. Basically, Spears says that he’s seeing extraordinary uptake on the business side with the iPhone since 2008 and the introduction of the platform’s first enterprise-focused features; in fact, he claims that “four out of every 10 sales” are to enterprise users these days and that it has all but caught up to BlackBerry for the kind of modern, tight, full-featured security that your average IT department needs. On a related note, Spears says that he hasn’t “seen the Android platform yet in the enterprise space,” but that he figures it’ll evolve over time to become “hard to ignore” to the enterprise segment. Of course, considering that AT&T has virtually no presence in the Android market at the moment, we’re not surprised that he’d take a lukewarm tack — so here’s hoping that changes fast. Follow the break for more highlights of Spears’ comments.

Continue reading AT&T: 40 percent of iPhone sales are enterprise, Android ‘built with a very specific focus to consumers’

AT&T: 40 percent of iPhon! e sales are enterprise, Android ‘built with a very specific focus to consumers’ originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 27 May 2010 17:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Friday, May 28th, 2010 news No Comments

AT&T Takes a Commanding Lead… In Dropped Calls

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5535410/att-takes-a-commanding-lead-in-dropped-calls

AT&T Takes a Commanding Lead... In Dropped CallsAT&T may have improved their dropped call performance lately, but they’ve still got a lot of work to do. According to a recent survey from ChangeWave Research, AT&T customers experience 3x the percentage of dropped calls as Verizon users. Ouch.

Maybe the least surprising part of the survey was that those dropped calls led to consumer dissatisfaction, though this time AT&T shared the dishonorable mention with T-Mobile:
AT&T Takes a Commanding Lead... In Dropped CallsThere’s no question that AT&T has put serious resources behind improving their network, and major improvements are expected for this summer. But until users start actually feeling those improvements in their day to day lives—without having to resort to a MicroCell 3G—there are going to be a lot of folks interested in jumping ship if and when the iPhone ever hits Verizon. [ChangeWave via PC World]

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Tuesday, May 11th, 2010 news No Comments

Android ousts iPhone OS for second place in US smartphone market

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/10/npd-android-ousts-iphone-os-for-second-place-in-us-smartphone-m/

android skate 05 10 2010 Android ousts iPhone OS for second place in US smartphone market

“We’re number two” might not be the chant everyone’s after, but we have a feeling that Google is more than satisfied with that in this case… for now. According to market research firm NPD, Google’s Android operating system edged up into second place in the US smartphone market during the first quarter of the year, leaving it still well behind RIM’s BlackBerry OS, but marking the first time that it has moved ahead of Apple’s iPhone OS. Specifically, NPD found that RIM maintained a strong 36 percent market share for the quarter, with Android coming in at 28 percent, and iPhone OS in third at 21 percent. The growth for Android was attributed largely to strong carrier support — like Verizon’s buy-one-get-one free offer which, incidentally, also helped Verizon maintain a 30 percent smartphone market share, which is just slightly behind AT&T at 32 percent, and ahead of T-Mobile and Sprint at 17 and 15 percent, respectively.

Disclaimer: NPD’s Ross Rubin is a contributor to Engadget.

Continue reading NPD: Android ousts iPhone OS for second place in US smartphone market

NPD: Android ousts iPhone OS for second place in US smartphone market originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 10 May 2010 12:23:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Monday, May 10th, 2010 news No Comments

Twitter gains mass awareness but usage remains light

AWARENESS

2010 – 87% awareness

2009 – 24% awareness

2008 – 5% awareness

USAGE

2010

- 1,500 million pageviews per month (71 pageviews per month avg)

- 162 million visits per month (8 visits per month avg)

- 21 million unique visitors per month

Arbitron Figures

2010 – 7% active users (use at least once per month)

2009 – 2% active users

Source: http://www.digidaydaily.com/stories/digital-content-today-arbitron-posts-twitter-numbers

Digital Content Today: Arbitron Posts Twitter Numbers

Media usage tracking company is reporting some surprising numbers on Twitter usage. According to a report in RadioInk, a webinar fromArbitron/Edison Research revealed that 87% of Americans are now aware of Twitter, up from 24% in 2009 and just 5% when the question was first asked, in 2008. But in looking at how many Americans are active users of Twitter — defined as using the service at least once a month — that figure came in at 7%, or about 17 million people, up from 2% in 2009.

Those are huge numbers to be sure, but less that what the blogosphere and assumed ubiquity of Twitter actually seems to be. Edison VP/Strategy & Marketing Tom Webster said awareness of Twitter has soared over a very short period. Webster compared Twitter usage to that of Facebook, the “10-ton gorilla” of social networking, with about six times as many users as Twitter although awareness of the services is roughly equal, and said, “Given that awareness per se is not a constraint, I think the smartest thing you can say about this particular graph is that Twitter has yet to articulate its value to mainstream Americans.”

Arbiron/Edson says that 18% of active Twitter users access the service several times a day and 15 % report they use it at least once a day, while 22% say they’re on Twitter at least once a month. But more than half — 53% — of active Twitter users don’t post tweets themselves and are instead, Webster said, “driven to go there as consumers of broadcast content.”

Other data:
•    About 51 % of active Twitter users are white, 24% are African American — about twice the percentage of African Americans in the general population. The study speculated that African Americans may use Twitter more “conversationally” than other users.
•    About 19% saying they’re “among the first” to buy or try new products, compared to 10 % of the population as a whole. 25% say they buy or try products before others, but not first.
•    They’re also inclined to access the Internet from several locations, and 63% access social networking from a mobile phone, compared to 35 % of all social-network users. And for Twitter users, Webster said, SMS is “pretty much like oxygen”: 92% use SMS, and 73% text multiple times a day.
•    About 42% of monthly Twitter users say they use the service to learn about products and services, and 41% use it to post their own opinions about products, while 31 % seek others’ opinions.

Active Twitter users report spending four hours a day online, compared to about two hours for the general population. But, Webster noted, “the other media here aren’t proportionately lower.” Twitterers spend two hours, 41 minutes a day with radio, compared to two hours, five minutes for the general population, and they spend three hours, 22 minutes with TV, compared to three hours, 25 minutes.

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Monday, May 3rd, 2010 Uncategorized 1 Comment

‘we tried to buy a company called AdMob’

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/08/steve-jobs-we-tried-to-buy-a-company-called-admob/

iphone os 4 0294 rm eng we tried to buy a company called AdMob

We’d previously heard rumors that Quattro Wireless was Apple’s consolation prize after a deal with bigger mobile advertising rival AdMob fell through, and Steve Jobs confirmed it on no uncertain terms at the Q&A session following today’s iPhone OS 4.0 event: “we tried to buy a company called AdMob… but Google snatched it away.” Indeed they did, though that deal hasn’t yet been approved by the Federal Trade Commission while Apple’s already up, up and away with its iAd solution, so it seems like everything shook out for the best — if you’re an iPhone developer, anyway.

Steve Jobs: ‘we tried to buy a company called AdMob’ originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 08 Apr 2010 14:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Thursday, April 8th, 2010 Uncategorized, news No Comments