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Blockbuster’s Last Gasp to Occur in 2011 [Rip]
Source: http://gizmodo.com/5584255/analyst-blockbusters-last-gasp-to-occur-in-2011
Blockbuster? We knew it was dying, courtesy Redbox, Netflix and the changing ways people consume their entertainment, but when will it finally expire? Probably next year, according to one analyst and the company’s own balance sheet. Updated.
It’s a balance sheet that’s continually losing money, with the latest blow coming last quarter, when Blockbuster bled $65 million, reported 24/7 Wall St analyst Douglas A. McIntyre. Life’s become so dire, in fact, that Blockbuster is mulling Chapter 11 to eliminate debt.
While the remaining 6,000 stores is nothing to sneeze at (my late hometown one not amongst them), there is precedence for massive, simultaneous closures in rival Movie Gallery. That company had 2,400 stores, you see, and it shuttered them all back in February.
Ending on a positive note, the company could have a Redbox/Netflix hybrid future with its existing supermarket kiosks and mail service. So here’s hoping that happens, some people can keep their jobs, and Blockbuster’s predicted “demise” in 2011 is merely a metamorphosis into something a bit leaner and meaner. Competition is good, and all that.
Update: Reader Josh writes in with an additional bit of depressing news for Blockbuster:
[W]hen considering the future of Blockbuster kiosks, Blockbuster doesn’t actually own any of kiosks. NCR owns and operates all of them. Blockbuster just gets a small licensing royalty for them. So, Blockbuster definitely doesn’t have a chance at sustaining itself on those kiosks.
Social Gaming Network OpenFeint Coming to Android
Source: http://gizmodo.com/5581997/social-gaming-network-openfeint-coming-to-android
Good news for Android users who are miserable due to the limited game selection on their devices: Social gaming network OpenFeint is coming to Android and it’ll hopefully encourage development of more games for the mobile operating system.
OpenFeint To Bring World’s Largest Mobile Gaming Developer Community To Google’s Android Platform
Mobile Social Games Network’s Expansion to Android will Accompany Titles from Glu Mobile, Digital Chocolate, And Hudson Entertainment.
Burlingame, CA – July 8, 2010 – OpenFeint, the leading mobile social gaming ecosystem for iOS devices, today announced that its 9,200 member game developer community with thousands of published games will soon have a complete solution to thrive in the Android apps economy. Launching later this summer, the company’s complete solution will include its de facto standard SDK, a game discovery store and mobile payment options. It will also include high quality content from leading publishers Astraware, Digital Chocolate, Glu Mobile, Hudson Soft and independent studios like Distinct Dev (Moron Test), ustwo (Dot Dot Dot), Pik Pok (Flick Kick Football) and RocketCat Games (Hook Champ).
With a strong set of partners at launch, OpenFeint’s ecosystem provides Android users the most compelling way to discover and buy high quality online games. In addition to incorporating Google Checkout and leading community features into its developer SDK, OpenFeint will extend its wildly successful Game Spotlight discovery app to Android. Interested parties can register at www.openfeint.com/developers/android for details as they emerge.
At the same time, OpenFeint continues to invest in and expand its efforts on Apple’s iOS devices and maintains the largest mobile social gaming ecosystem on that platform with over 28 million users and a presence in over 2,200 live games.
“Android is an evolving gaming platform that will greatly benefit from OpenFeint’s industry leading online gaming and community technologies,” said Niccolo de Masi, CEO of Glu Mobile. “OpenFeint is leading the charge for game developers on Android, helping simplify and improve the game discovery and purchase process for players on the platform.”
OpenFeint also announced that its expansion to Android is backed by a recent strategic investment by leading Chinese online gaming company, The9. This marks the path for a significant expansion for the company as it rolls out its cross platform strategy. As always, OpenFeint will remain open source and free for both developers and players.
“OpenFeint continues to demonstrate leadership and innovation in building community technologies which drive considerable discovery and monetization for publishers,” said Jason Loia, COO of Digital Chocolate, one of the industry’s most highly-rated publishers of mobile and social games. “We are excited about their entry into the Android ecosystem and we look forward to partnering with them to bring the best gaming experience to the Android platform.”
With over 160,000 Android powered devices shipping daily, Google’s mobile platform is growing rapidly and leading game developers recognize the tremendous opportunity to bring quality content to the platform.
“This is a big step for OpenFeint and an even bigger step for Android as it becomes a serious mobile gaming platform,” said Jonathan Goldberg, Analyst at Deutsche Bank Equity Research. “OpenFeint ushered in mobile online gaming for iOS devices and we think they’ll lead the revolution on Android.”
OpenFeint also re-affirmed its continued commitment to the Apple iOS device community where thousands of games are in development and several games are approved in the App Store daily with OpenFeint enablement.
More Kin Dirt Surfaces
Source: http://gizmodo.com/5581704/more-kin-dirt-surfaces
If people had talked this much about Kin while it was still alive, it might have stood a chance. Oh well! The battle continues to rage over who gets the write the final chapter in Kin’s history.
Mini-Microsoft has been a prime staging ground for these kinds of comments, with accusations aplenty being flung back and forth by current and former Microsoft employees. A sampling from today’s batch shows that Andy Lees is again a popular target:
All I can say as a former Windows Mobile employee who is now working for a competitor in the phone space is that this is good news for the rest of us. [...] Personally I quit because of the frustrating management and autocratic decision style of Terry Myerson and Andrew Lees. The only exec in the team myself and other folks respcted was Tom Gibbons who is now sidelined. Lees and Myerson don’t know consumer products or phones. Gibbons at least knows consumer product development. We often talk about how Andrew Lees still has a job but Microsoft’s loss is a gain for the rest of us.
And that the folks at Danger, acquired by Microsoft to help bring Kin to life, were confounded by the sudden perceived incompetence around them:
You are correct, the remaining Danger team was not professional nor did we show off the amazing stuff we had that made Danger such a great place. But the reason for that was our collective disbelief that we were working in such a screwed up place. Yes, we took long lunches and we sat in conference rooms and went on coffee breaks and the conversations always went something like this…”Can you believe that want us to do this?” Or “Did you hear that IM was cut, YouTube was cut? The App store was cut?” “Can you believe how mismanaged this place is?” “Why is this place to dysfunctional??”
Please understand that we went from being a high functioning, extremely passionate and driven organization to a dysfunctional organization where decisions were made by politics rather than logic.
So: we get it. All is not right with Microsoft’s corporate culture, which may spell trouble for Windows Phone 7. But in the meantime, can’t we just let sleeping Kins lie? [Mini Microsoft]
Google acquires ITA for $700m, dives headfirst into airline ticket search
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/02/google-acquires-ita-for-700m-dives-headfirst-into-airline-tick/
Look out, Kayak / Bing Travel — you both are about to have your respective worlds rocked. While Google has managed to stay on top (or close to the top) when it comes to almost everything search related, the company has curiously allowed smaller niche brands to handle the travel side. Even amongst the hardcore Googlers, avid flyers typically head to a place like Kayak to weigh their options, while vacation planners either do likewise or turn to Bing Travel. In a few months time, we suspect some of that traffic will be diverted back to El Goog. The company has just announced plans to acquire Cambridge-based ITA Software for a cool $700 million, which will put one of the world’s most sophisticated QPX software tools for organizing flight information into the hands of the planet’s most dangerous search ally. According to Google, the pickup will allow consumers to search and buy airline tickets with less hassle and frustration, though it’s quick to point out that it has “no plans to sell airline tickets [directly] to consumers.” For the travel junkies in attendance, there’s a high probability that you won’t find any better news coming your way today than this.
[Thanks, Matthew]
Continue reading Google acquires ITA for $700m, dives headfirst into airline ticket search
Google acquires ITA for $700m, dives headfirst into airline ticket search originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 02 Jul 2010 13:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Made-Up Word Advertising — “Retina Display” — is how Apple Launches New Products
A made-up word “retina display” had every major blog and news outlet scrambling to help explain what it was. Nearly 1.1 Million search results in 19 hours. It was covered on every evening news; look closely at the thousands of related news articles, etc. And all the major, powerful sites like Gizmodo, MacRumors, Engadget, etc. covered the event. Similarly 1.2 million search results on the “one more thing” feature — video calling on the iPhone called FaceTime. All entirely free primetime coverage — talk about the tens of millions of impressions achieved with NO media cost — they can definitely used the money saved to ensure Steve Job’s next keynote will have sufficient WiFi bandwidth for all those live blogging the event.
Look at the following graph of relative search volume. The spike in search volume for All-You-Can-Jet (in red) is about 4X higher than the orange line (Footlongs). And the blue line for “retina display” is 8X. Consider the cost of the paid TV media campaign supporting Subway’s Footlongs compared to the cost savings of the social media launch of JetBlue’s All-You-Can-Jet Pass and the no cost media for Apple.
Of course, not all companies will achieve the same mass coverage, but the techniques for product launches can be the same. Footlongs is an expensive paid media campaign by Subway and note how low the orange line is compared to the TWO no-cost launches.
And one more graph that shows Drobo plus 2 social media success stories — Groupon and FourSquare that even blow away Apple’s retina display — all for FREE.
Other notable examples of using made-up word advertising include JetBlue’s All-you-Can-Jet Pass and Subway’s Footlongs. Further details about JetBlue’s launch of the All-You-Can-Jet Pass is here – http://go-digital.net/blog/2009/08/jetblue-all-you-can-jet-pass/
Earlier unfiltered results on Google within 10 hours of launch — there are 3.9 Million results which will be de-duped overnight.
Day 1 Stats – page 1 position 3 in 44.6 million results
Guy Wins $1,000,000 For Pitching A Perfect Game…In A Videogame
Source: http://gizmodo.com/5532088/guy-wins-1000000-for-pitching-a-perfect-gamein-a-videogame
The folks at 2K Sports offered $1 million to the first person to pitch a perfect game in Major League Baseball 2K10—a supposedly difficult task. 24 hours after the game was released, they had to write a check.
Using Braves pitcher Kenshin Kawakami as his avatar, 24-year-old Alabama resident Wade McGilberry was able to complete his million dollar game in less than 90 minutes after returning home from work.
Great news for Wade because he recorded his attempts according to 2K Sports’ rules, but not so great news for them because as “insurance companies couldn’t possibly come up with the odds of throwing a perfect game, 2K Sports didn’t take out insurance and now will pay McGilberry a lump sum of $1 million out of its own pocket.” Oops. [CNBC via Sporting News—Thanks, Ezra Tenenbaum!]
How Ginormous Is Apple Now?
Source: http://gizmodo.com/5501165/how-ginormous-is-apple-now
Well, just compare its market cap to the other top five publicly traded US companies—it’s sitting pretty at $207.99 Billion, right below Walmart, as of yesterday’s market close. BIG. [Data via Mac Daily News via Digital Daily]
Another day, another story about some cheap, plastic Wii motion control accessory finding an application outside of gaming. In this case, it’s the balance board, and not only is this device helping stroke victims recover, it’s saving them money, too.
In fact, doctors at the University of Melbourne found that the balance board, normally used for pseudo Yoga or navigating Mii’s down a virtual ski slope, was so sensitive it could very well replace traditional laboratory-grade “force platforms” doctors use to assess a patient’s balance.
When doctors disassembled the board, they found the accelerometers and strain gauges to be of “excellent” quality. “I was shocked given the price: it was an extremely impressive strain gauge set-up,” said lead researcher Ross Clark, in an interview with New Scientist.
Even better, Clark’s team has already published a paper that verifies the Wii balance board is “clinically comparable” to the nearly $18,000 lab force platform. That’s great news for many smaller physio clinics that would otherwise be unable to afford the traditional rig. [New Scientist]
Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/xZHNT92BICw/bing-could-catch-yahoo-by-the-end-of-the-year
Since Microsoft’s Bing search engine launched last summer, it has gained market share at the expense of Yahoo. If the trends stay consistent, Bing could pass Yahoo in the U.S. by the end of November.
To be sure, some (most?) of Microsoft’s gains have come with an expense: The company is buying up toolbar deals to become the default search engine for more users — less-valuable, paid traffic that Yahoo seems happy to give up. And Microsoft has spent a lot of money advertising Bing.
But there’s no doubt that Yahoo’s declining search business, long term, is bad news for the company. Especially because its deal to farm out its search technology to Bing will only generate revenue for searches conducted through Yahoo, not through Bing, even though Yahoo is selling the ads on Bing.
Map of IP addresses around the world used to commit Click-Fraud
A recently disbanded click fraud ring in China racked up $3 million worth of clicks in two weeks. $3 million that we’re aware of. Just how detectable is this whole business of racking up fraudulent ad revenue clicks?
That intricate mess of lines above represents a portion of DormRing1, the click fraud bunch that was caught in China. The lines show the relationship of some of the IP addresses involved in the fraud and how they are connected to some fraudulent ad clicks. The whole network actually “involved 200,000 different IP addresses and racked up more than $3 million worth of fraudulent clicks across 2,000 advertisers in a two-week period.” Impressive and scary at the same time.
The trouble is that no one really knows how much ad revenue DormRing1 collected before they were caught. Click-fraud monitoring services such as Anchor Intelligence, the ones behind this catch, are evolving to keep up with the scale on which these rings are operating. It’s still difficult to judge just how well they’re doing as they’re having to infiltrate forums and gain the trust of the perpetrators in a manner reminiscent of drug busts. But as the criminals are getting more elaborate, the investigations are too.
That good news aside, do me a favor: after you read this post, comment, and all that jazz, refresh the page a few times and—Ah…I mean, heh…just kidding. [Tech Crunch]
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