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Augmented reality: reality only better

Valerie | 18 Sep 2009, 08:56

Imagine a world where clouds of information—Facebook statuses, business cards, Twitter posts—float above your head as you walk down the street. It might sound like something straight out of the Matrix but if its plaudits would have it, Augmented Reality is set to transform our lives.

As Business Week and many others have reported, the concept of Augmented Reality, or overlaying the real world with text or images seen via a mobile phone’s camera or a Web cam on a PC, has gained a lot of attention in recent months.

Car manufacturers such as BMW and Toyota have used the technique to show off their latest models, whilst games developers have embedded it in their programming, creating Hidden Park for example, an iPhone app that uses the phone’s camera, accelerometer and GPS to create a fantasy game set in real locations: local parks. With tech companies from IBM to Microsoft and Nokia developing mobile-phone software and services in this space, the hype has continued to gain momentum.

As the Economist points out, AR has in fact, been around for a few years, but with the global release last August of a significantly expanded version of an AR application called Layar - dubbed the world’s first augmented reality browser – the field has been energised by the ability to implement AR using mobile smartphones.

And with virtual reality never really living up to hype, AR is being touted as the next big thing for advertisers, gamers and tech geeks alike.

According to this FT article, with the advertising sector facing cyclical and structural upheavals, advertisers are currently rethinking their business models as they try to keep pace with consumer appetite for digital and social media experimentation.

Unsurprisingly, advertisers are viewing AR as the latest new tool for brands to engage with their consumers, with its endless possibilities for direct, personal interaction.

Ian Pearson, a futurologist with Futurizon envisages an age in which everyone “views the world through the prism of enhanced reality”, which will not only draw on data about the world around us, but also combine this with our personal interests and preferences, enabling advertisers for example to target discounts and offers specifically as part of your personalised, augmented reality.

We have clearly just seen the beginning of what AR apps can do. As the dividing lines between the real and digital worlds continue to blur, its potential will undoubtedly become even more compelling.

AR Apps

E-week’s list of “10 Augmented Reality Apps you need to know about”
Urban friendly AR apps
Marketers pick their favourite AR apps

Guardian Tech Media Invest 100: creative talent doing well despite the recession

Valerie | 07 Sep 2009, 20:16

SlicethePie, Playfish and Seatwave are just some of the companies to be featured in the Guardian Tech Media Invest 100, a list compiled for the first time of the top 100 players in today’s tech media space.

Picked for their innovation and creativity over the past year in areas as diverse as mobile applications, racing games and music recognition, the list of companies to watch indicates that despite the credit crunch, the UK entertainment and media market remains a hotbed of innovation, with growth expected again after 2010, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers, when the UK will be brought within $2bn (£1.2bn) of Europe’s largest entertainment and media market, Germany by 2013.

Unsurprisingly, of the trends that are expected to be big this year, social networking and microblogging are singled out to remain strong growth areas on the back of the success of Twitter. The report also highlights companies like Tweetmeme, a third party Twitter application and iDesktop.tv, which helps with searching and watching YouTube videos who are also finding success, riding on the waves generated by existing business models.

Of the investment climate, William Stevens, founder of Europe Unlimited, the business consultancy that organises the top 100, warns of both the difficult market and investment conditions but is nevertheless optimistic about the quality of international startups across Europe, “especially within industries such as tech media that have lower investment needs.“

Despite figures from the British Venture Capital Association showing that investments made by private equity and venture capital firms into UK technology and media companies generally fell from £2.8bn in 2007 to £265m in 2008, the companies listed in the Tech Media Invest 100 are clearly testament to the fact that an innovative idea can find support. Indeed, the overriding message appears to be “perseverance pays”.

Erik Jorgensen, an Intel Capital investment manager, and one of the board members said:

“For those companies with proven business models and very good prospects, it is not too difficult to raise venture financing”.

Disney and Marvel strike super deal

Valerie | 01 Sep 2009, 20:10

The Walt Disney Company announced yesterday that it is to buy comic book giant Marvel Entertainment in a $4 billion (£2.5 billion) cash and stock deal in one of the largest US corporate transactions of the summer, the Guardian reports.

In addition to giving Disney ownership of cultural icons such as Spider-Man, the X-Men and the Incredible Hulk, the deal is also expected to inspire countless films, television shows and video games.

Whilst the comic and creative possibilities are endless, it is the commercial potential of Marvel’s Intellectual Property: 70 years of stories featuring over 5,000 characters that most believe to be the real motivation behind the deal. As the Guardian points out, Disney didn’t spend all that money to get deeper into selling comics, a business which is facing the print advertising slump just like everyone else.

Patrick Goldstein at the LA Times goes further, arguing that the Disney deal isn’t simply an acquisition, but a reinvention. He paints a picture of Disney as a “venerable animation factory” that had “run out of gas” and highlights one of the studio’s biggest failures of the last few years – its inability to broaden its traditional family brand appeal as illustrated by declining box office figures: since the studio’s lucrative “Pirates of the Caribbean” series premiered in 2003, Disney hasn’t been able to launch another broad-appeal international franchise.

As Disney’s President and Chief Executive Robert A. Iger explains,  the combination is “a perfect fit” with Disney, complementing its characters and stories with narratives that reach a different demographic. Indeed, and as this article argues, Disney is betting that with Marvel it acquires the kind of brand-name recognition it gained when it bought Pixar Animation Studios in 2006, especially among teens and young adults, who are the core drivers of the box office and are an audience segment Disney has struggled to attract.

In this respect, many commentators are surprised that the tie-in didn’t happen sooner, citing the similar business models held by both companies and the deal has, on the whole been welcomed, no less by comic book legend Stan Lee:

“Nobody can produce and market franchises better than Disney, and nobody has the extensive library of characters that would make great franchises that Marvel has.”

With analysts favourably describing the acquisition from the Disney perspective, as a meaningful growth opportunity, that will strengthen high-quality branded content, and allow the combined company to build the high-margin licensing business- change can only be a good thing.

New revenues, existing content

Valerie | 31 Aug 2009, 20:44

Content businesses are under increasing pressure to generate new business models and drive revenue streams. However, some companies are finding benefit in maximising the value of existing content.

Universal Music Group announced last week that it has acquired the rights to Frank Sinatra’s Reprise catalogue outside North America after it struck a long-term deal with Frank Sinatra Enterprises, a joint venture between the Sinatra family and Warner Music Group. Under the agreement, Universal gains the rights to thirty-eight albums, alongside select new releases and distribution rights for 14 audio-visual programmes on DVD.

Similarly Viacom, the owner of MTV and VH1 is betting on the Beatles’ 1960’s hits to attract new players and revive sales of its ‘The Beatles: Rock Band’  game franchise after falling purchases of earlier versions led to a 41 percent drop in second-quarter revenue at the division that includes games.

Launching on 9th September and in a bid to challenge Activision’s successful ‘Guitar Hero’, Viacom’s offering will come with 45 remastered songs, including tracks from the band’s Ed Sullivan Show appearances. The band’s label, EMI Group Ltd., will issue remastered CDs the same day and collect royalties from game sales.

A number of additional third parties stand to benefit from the deal. In addition to EMI, Viacom will pay royalties to Apple Corps and Michael Jackson’s estate, through its part ownership of Lennon-McCartney songs, also will receive a portion.

Nostalgia has been a successful tool for brands during the recession and betting on the selling power of two musical greats – remastered and brought alive for a new generation is surely win-win for everybody – distributors, as well as content creators.

Channel 4 announces creative overhaul

Valerie | 27 Aug 2009, 10:20

As we bid farewell to Big Brother – the long running show that turned reality TV into a global phenomenon, the final series of which will be broadcast next year – Channel 4 has indicated it will use the axing as an opportunity for the biggest creative overhaul in its 25-year history.

The Guardian reports that with up to 200 hours of peak-time airtime to fill from 2011 on the main network and digital entertainment service E4, the broadcaster will now focus on an overhaul of the programming lineup and a refocus on its public service broadcasting remit, including allocating an extra £20m a year for other TV genres such as drama.

Channel 4’s director of television and content Kevin Lygo said of the decision:

“Big Brother is still profitable for C4 despite its reduced popularity, and there could have been the option to renew it on more favourable terms. That’s what a purely commercial broadcaster would have done, but C4 has a public remit to champion new forms of creativity.”

The Channel 4 announcement comes as senior industry figures from the international television and media industry gather later this week to discuss the future of the sector at the annual Edinburgh Television festival. Issues to be discussed range from finding ways to generate new sources of revenue to the future of public service broadcasting and what opportunities are available for programme makers, channels and brands amidst technological advances and in the current economic climate.

The recession has hit advertising revenues hard, which has fallen steadily from a 2005 peak of £3.85 billion, according to Deloitte’s annual ‘state of the industry’ report. With the decline for 2009 expected to be as much as 17 percent year on year, broadcasters are being forced to re-evaluate their priorities.

Endemol’s chief executive and c&binet ambassador Tim Hincks sees the recession as a trigger to “start thinking slightly bigger picture and about the issues that are swirling round”.  Speaking to the Guardian earlier this week, he said:

“We are feeling the pressure and feeling the pinch. There’s no question that broadcasters’ budgets are down and we are making more for less.

“People are literally thinking about survival and looking for help and looking for ideas”.

3-D – coming to a TV near you soon

Valerie | 21 Aug 2009, 08:00

Getty Images

Much has been made of HD technologies in the film and gaming industries but as a recent article in the Wall Street Journal illustrates, the next big thing to hit our screens will be 3-D – but not as we know it.

This might conjure up images of watching blurry films through coloured spectacles but if the hype is to be believed, a spate of new films to be released in the format this year are heralding a new age of cinema and a rebirth of 3-D technology.

Led by the imminent release of James Cameron’s eagerly anticipated science fiction blockbuster Avatar, which was unveiled at the Comic-con International Convention in San Diego last month,  the surrounding hype has already been likened to that of the first Harry Potter film. Other films to be released this year in the 3-D format include Ice Age 3 and GForce. So is all the hype justified?

According to this BBC article, the technique has come a long way since the first experiments in 1915. Although, it was not until the 1950s that Hollywood tried it out on audiences threatening to be kept away by their televisions. The technique then made a comeback in the 70s and 80s, possibly as a reaction to falling audiences at the time when home video was becoming popular.

But it seems that the technology is much more sophisticated than in the past - the installation of digital projectors in cinemas means sharper and steadier images. And as the Times reports, ten British cinemas a week are upgrading to the digital projection systems necessary to show the 3-D films to their full effect.  Rupert Gavin, chief executive officer of Odeon cinemas, says the new 3-D technology is the breakthrough film fans have been waiting for.

And it seems that 3-D is reaching beyond the projectors to our TV screens, with the recent announcement from Sky that it is preparing to debut a 3-D television channel in the U.K. next year that will require specially-equipped TV sets. According to the Wall Street Journal, Sky plans to film and deliver its own exclusive 3-D content using existing HD set-top boxes used by more than 1.3 million of its pay-TV customers in the U.K in a venture that may be the most ambitious yet toward a large-scale 3-D television rollout, which remains absent from most big markets outside of Japan.

The 3-D onslaught won’t come without challenges – like the upgrade to 3-D cinema projectors, some programme including Sky’s will require expensive 3-D-ready television sets.

As this blog argues, it’s perhaps all too easy to believe that 3-D is being used more to hamper pirates than it is to thrill fans - few of the 3-D films of the recent era use the technology to enhance their storytelling power. 

Jerry Bruckheimer, producer of blockbuster hits from Bad Boys to Transformers who has been experimenting with 3-D echoes this point:
“You can have all the technology and special effects you can afford, but in the end it’s a story that captures the imagination and characters you love or hate that count.”