Derek E. Baird :: Barking Robot

Infographic: How Mobile Phones Shape the Lives of College Students

Created by: HackCollege

Oscar 'All Access Pass' Gives Viewers A Rare Peek Behind the Scenes Look at Hollywood's Biggest Night

Here in SoCal, we have five seasons: Spring, Summer, Winter, Fall and Award Season. The grand finale of 'Award Season' are the Academy Awards.

This year the ceremony takes place on February 27, 2011 at the Kodak Theatre and will be hosted by Gen Y stars James Franco and Anne Hathaway.

It's been a rough couple years for the annual telecast with ratings taking a bit of a hit---especially among Millennials. However, last year the Academy Awards made a concerted effort to attract youth to the show and it paid off with a 14% boost to Oscar TV ratings among 18-49 year olds.

The 2010 Oscars youth strategy included a more social media experience, the inclusion of teen friendly stars like Miley Cyrus, Zac Effron and Taylor Lautner as presenters, two original Oscars web series (Behind the Dress & The Road to the Oscars), extra video features and live streaming of the Red Carpet arrivals.

 

This year The Academy of Motion Picture Art & Sciences is once again rolling out the red carpet in a bid to attract a more youthful and technically savvy demographic with a new interactive technology that gives online Oscar fans the ultimate insider's view of Hollywood's biggest night.

The new premium feature is called Oscar All Access, and gives fans an insider’s view of the evening from the Red Carpet all the way through the Governor’s Ball.

Members (signing up is $4.99) actually will have the ability to control their own experience using the groundbreaking “360 cam” technology to control multiple cameras along the Red Carpet, at the Awards show, and afterwards at the Governor’s Ball.

 

In addition to Oscar All Access experience, the Academy also has an official Backstage Pass iPhone and iPad App that allow you to have a more interactive social entertainment experience with the Academy Awards show. Hopefully next year they will expand the Backstage Pass to include all types of Android mobile devices.

It's great to see The Academy embracing new media and providing fans with a more interactive experience. Last year was a step in the right direction and hopefully their social TV friendly approach will pay off in big ratings boost among younger and tech savvy demographic groups.

You can also connect with the Oscars on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

P.S. As long as I have your attention, if you haven't already--go see Oscar host James Franco in his Oscar nominated role for the film 127 Hours. The story, the acting, the cinematography are amazing. Go James! Go Danny Boyle!

 

Infographic: The U.S. Media Universe

From smartphones to 3D televisions, The Nielsen Company provides a view of the device usage and audiences in the U.S. For more, download Nielsen’s State of the Media – U.S. Audiences and Devices report (pdf).

view large | via blog.nielsen.com

Going Native: The Anthropology of Mobile Apps

Think of mobile OS platforms as cultures. Deciding which platform to target and how to design for each—whether web or native—doesn’t hinge only on tech specs or audience reach.

In an era where consumers suddenly perceive mobile apps as richly personal, where software is content instead of tool—culture matters.

 

Going Native: The Anthropology of Mobile Apps

View more presentations from Josh Clark.

Josh Clark is a designer, developer, and author specializing in mobile design strategy and user experience. He’s the author of the O’Reilly books "Tapworthy: Designing Great iPhone Apps" and "Best iPhone Apps: The Guide for Discriminating Downloaders."

 

Weekly Wrap: Oprah's Mobile Apps, Facebook Open Graph 101, Mobile Gaming Soars, Foursquare Marketing, Teen Texting Stats, Youth Media iPad Apps & More!

Oprah Launches Oprah Mobile Apps: The application, available for the iPhone, BlackBerry, Palm Pre and Google Android platforms, offers video clips and previews from Winfrey's talk show, ticket alerts, weekly polls, and articles and photos from Oprah.com, The Oprah Magazine and Oprah Radio.

I have no doubt that Oprah's legion of smartphone carrying fans will make this app a hit! [Venture Beat]

Publishers Guide to Facebook Open Graph: Whether we like it (pun intended) or not, we have to understand what this move means. It impacts users, publishers, competitors and, of course, Facebook itself. In this post, we summarize what Facebook announced and ponder the impact this will have on everyone. Related: Facebook Social Plugins [RWW] [Facebook Developers]

Youth Media iPad Apps to Know: With more and more magazine, publishing and TV execs exploring the potential of creating interactive, social apps for the iPad, we thought we'd point to a few of those getting an early start for our latest Ypulse Toolbox. Related: 5 amazing iPad e-books for kids  [Ypulse] [CNET]

Mobile Gaming Soars on Smartphones: Mobile gaming is more than ever a tale of two devices: feature phones and smartphones. The U.S. population playing games on regular mobile phones fell by 35% last year to 29.5 million, while the number of smartphone gamers shot up 60% to 21.4 million, according to a new comScore report. [MediaPost]

7 Quick Steps to Foursquare Marketing: Marketing using Foursquare is beneficial because although a small user base, they are loyal.  It also takes up almost no time, so the ROI can be high. Foursquare marketing is most appropriate for brick and mortar businesses (people physically walk into your store to make purchases), but anyone can be taking advantage of Foursquare. [Real Time Marketer]

Millennials Want Social Sites to Delete User Data: Debunking the oft-repeated assertion that young people don't care about privacy, new research shows that Web users between the ages of 18 and 24 are highly protective of certain information about themselves. [Online Media Daily]

Mom’s Guide to Those Facebook Changes: What do these changes mean? And what should you do if you don’t like the prospect of automatically sharing your activity with everyone you know on Facebook? Related: Facebook Safety Resources for Parents, Teachers & Teens [GigOm] [Barking Robot]

Teen Texting Stats: Anne Collier, author of the must read NetFamilyNews blog and co-founder of ConnectSafely, has a great analysis of the Pew Internet report on teen texting. [NetFamilyNews]

I Want My Social TV: MTV Developing iPad TV Apps

MTV Networks is developing a "co-browsing app meant to be used while watching live TV," said one executive familiar with MTV's iPad plans. "This means the iPad could be the appendage that makes interactive TV a reality."

Kristin Frank, general manager of MTV and VH1 Digital, said MTV is focusing on two approaches to its apps, whether for mobile or the iPad: co-viewing apps that capture the social-media chatter around TV and awards shows and apps for video on the go. IPad apps for "Beavis and Butt-Head," "MTV News" and "VH1 To Go" are all due in April, she said.

"Fifty-nine percent of people are multitasking when watching TV -- that's something we've always known," said Ms. Frank, referring to recent Nielsen data quantifying a longstanding observation. "This is the next evolution."

via www.businessinsider.com

Sorta Related: tvChatter iPhone App Help TV Get More Social

Weekly Wrap: Fisher-Price Facebook Apps, I Want My Android TV, Justin Bieber for Old People, UK Entertainment Convergence, SXSW Roundup & More!

Fisher-Price App Aims for Moms on Facebook: Targeting the many moms online, Mattel’s Fisher-Price is launching a Facebook app Thursday that allows mothers to be more selective in choosing which of their friends can see photos of their children. Mothers who go online, particularly the influential group of “mommy bloggers,” present an important market for toy makers. [WSJ]

Android TV! | Google, Intel & Sony Join Forces: This trend is potentially much more disruptive than the introduction of 3D displays. Now a secret joint effort by Google, Intel and Sony to enter this field in partnership has been revealed. It will bring Google’s Android operating system and Chrome browser to TVs and set top boxes.

The technology has the potential to be disruptive to traditional TV by making the full range of Internet content available on television. [Collaborative Creativity]

What's TV's Next Business Model: It's hard to find TV content today that does not contain Web site addresses, Twitter mentions, and text-based messages throughout. It's accepted that even with these "light" reference points, as it stands now TV's long-term prospects pale in comparison to those of the Internet, mostly because TV content still has no direct-response mechanism.

Blending Internet elements into TV content makes for a seamless experience - and, in my opinion, is tomorrow's preferred business model. Related: Business Exchange > "Social Television" [MediaPost] [Business Weekly]

US Children get Playboy, not Bugs Bunny in Cable Mix-up: Young viewers of children's television programs in North Carolina got a glimpse of something far more risque than their favorite cartoons, when a cable glitch broadcast two hours of the Playboy channel. (Oooops!) [Yahoo! News]

Entertainment Convergence in the UK Digital Home: The UK is still at a relatively early stage of convergence when it comes to digital entertainment such as TV shows, films, short-form video, games, music and social networking. But momentum is building. [eMarketer]

Vodafone gives $1 million grant to Web Foundation for Web-enabling entrepreneurs in Africa: While only 25 percent of the world population uses the Web today, more than 70 percent of the world’s population has access to mobile or fixed communication devices capable of displaying Web content.

In Africa, where the Internet penetration rate is approximately 6.8 percent, furthering Web access can create learning opportunities for local entrepreneurs and support the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals to end poverty by 2015. [WWW Foundation]

SXSW Video Interview Roundup: SXSW 2010 was a gathering of innovative companies, forward thinking people, and interactive influencers. While I didn’t have a chance to talk to all 15,000 attendees, I was able to speak to a few choice companies that have progressive products in the social media and technology realm. [Edelman]

India's Rural Cell Movement: Just last month, nearly 20 million new mobile accounts were opened. That’s more than double the people than have high speed Internet in the entire country. Even in slums where people live on less than $2 a day, everyone has a phone. If “Slumdog Millionaire” was more accurate, Jamal wouldn’t have had to go on TV to find Latika. He could have just called her, or worst case, called a few friends until he found her number. [TechCrunch] [Yahoo! Movies]

Content Strategy is Much More than Web Copywriting: Where there should be content strategy and SEO strategy, we're often on projects where we're focused much more on target audience personas, design standards and project management charts, instead of content. The web writer is then brought in, given the creative brief, the wireframe and two weeks to "crank out the content." [Ignite Social Media]

The Justin Bieber Guide for Old People: Bad news, Old Person: No matter how much you try to avoid it, you will have to eventually interact with someone to whom Justin Bieber (BEE-BURR) is the sun around which their little life revolves. So we present this Justin Bieber Guide for Old People to help you avoid embarrassing yourself in front of your offspring, students, or patrons of your candy shop. [Gawker]

Flemish Digital Youthwork Practices: On the 8th and 9th of February 2010, Steunpunt Jeugd, Flemish knowledge and expertise center on youth, youthwork and youth policy, organized a big congress (JET) centered around youth, youth work and youth policy. One of these sessions is labeled "the 'e' in youthwork" that collected e-practices in Flemish youthwork. [Youth Work Online]

CauseWorld: A Location Aware Mobile App for Social Change

CauseWorld is the latest in a flurry of new location-based mobile apps that allow users to 'check in', connect with friends and earn badges. The free app comes in two flavors--iPhone and Android.

The downside of many location-aware mobile apps is that they tend to serve only as fuel for the "look at me" aspect of the social web. One of my Tweep's coined a great term for this trend: "geonarcissism."

Unlike other location-based social networks that put the focus on 'You', CauseWorld provides their community with an opportunity to focus on doing good, funding social change and benefiting others all with a few clicks (or taps) on their phone.

Here's how it works. All you need to do is walk into one of the many stores you most likely frequent anyway, such as common groceries, hardware stores, department stores, and many others. Pull out your phone, open the app, and check in. No purchase is required. When you 'check in' you earn "Karma Points." 

Your 'Karma Points' can then be converted into real dollars and donated, thanks to corporate sponsors Kraft Foods & Citi, to nine potential causes including Support A Classroom, Give Clean Water, Donate A Book or Provide Relief for Haiti. The CauseWorld community has already earned $6 million Karma's for Haiti. Like other location-aware games, you also earn badges for your 'Karma.'

This is also a perfect example of how brands can combine current trends like location-aware games, social media, cause marketing and mobile devices to deliver a unified experience for their customers.

Weekly Wrap: Yahoo's Social Strategy, TweSMS for South Africa, Little Passports, 3D TV Hype, 25 UX Videos, Brands As Media, Power of the Social Experience, Mobile Apps & More!

Nielsen Preps TV, Online Video Report: Nielsen has set its schedule for reporting integrated TV and online audience viewing data. The initiative is called TVandPC, and the first "extended screen" estimates of the combined audiences will be available for the month of September as evaluation data, delivered to clients sometime in fourth quarter. The evaluation period will end in Feb. 2011.[Brand Week]

The 'Connect Wars': Not content to control only their own domains, social web sites are trying to conquer those of everyone else — by becoming the dominant log-in system for the web. Facebook, of course, is off to a quick and convincing start. [GigaOM] 

Yahoo's Social Strategy Takes Root in Asia: A series of deals with major social networks shows Yahoo moving away from its origins as a traditional portal, as it sets its sights on becoming a content-rich destination where people can interact with and navigate to all their favorite sites. [Asia Media Journal]

Twitter SMS Notifications for South Africa: TweSMS is a third party application that allows you to receive your twitter notifications and updates delivered straight to you phone via SMS message. [TweSMS]

Create Your Own Android or iPhone App in Minutes: Creating a self-branded iPhone or Android app just got a lot more accessible. iSites, a new service launching today, allows you to take your website’s RSS feed and data and quickly transform it into a full-fledged iPhone app. [Mashable]

Global Youth: Turn Kids Into Globetrotters: In an era dominated by electronic communication, people are embracing concepts from a slower age, like the company that transforms emails into paper letters and one that resurrected the classic telegram. Little Passports combines that nostalgia for 'real' mail and combines it with the convenience of a subscription service. [Little Passports] 

3D TV Is 'Mostly Hype': 3D has been getting boatloads of attention, especially during this week at CES where major electronics firms are unveiling their new 3D TVs, but while Sony and others would like you to believe that we'll all be playing video games and watching movies in glorious 3D this year, Forrester Research would tell you otherwise. Related: CES and Vegas 2010: Supersized Vulgarity [Industry Gamers] [Collaborative Creativity]

The Power of the Social Experience: This is why both employers and marketers interested in Generation Y need to realise that, while social technology is the new thing, just being on Facebook and Twitter won’t be as effective in attracting and retaining this cohort, as inviting Generation Y to experience the potential of what you have to offer with a friend or two. [Naked Generations] 

Social Marketing in Twenty Ten: As I believe, Social Media is not owned by any one department. The entire company will eventually socialize represented by each division that warrants an outward and participatory voice. Conversations always map to the activity that exists across multiple networks, spanning a multitude of subjects and potential outcomes. [Brian Solis]

All Brands Are Media: Why are brands choosing to become media companies? Because they can. Blogs, Web publishing, smartphones, tablets, e-book readers, netbooks and other tools providing access to the Internet allow firms to create media sites as easily as old-line publishers can. [IP Carrier]

Oprah's No Texing & Driving Campaign: It's the show that started Oprah's No Phone Zone movement. Watch a 15 minute clip or the entire episode about the dangers of distracted driving, then sign the No Phone Zone Pledge. Related: Buck Hollywood > No More Texting and Driving [Oprah Winfrey] [Buck Hollywood]

25 User Experience Videos That Are Worth Your Time: Rare are the opportunities to attend conferences or watch live shows on subjects that we’re interested in. That’s why we are presenting here phenomenal videos and related resources on the topic of user experience (UX) by different presenters at different events. [Smashing Magazine]

Barking Robot Mini: Be sure to also check out my Tumblr, Barking Robot Mini, for links, pictures and other stuff I've stumbled across during my digital walkabout!

Trend Watch: CES 2010 Television Recap

There were a ton of TV related hardware and content announcements at the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) held this week in Las Vegas. Here's a round-up of what you may have missed.

CONTENT, SOCIAL TELEVISION & TV WIDGETS

• Electus and Yahoo! Announce Original Content Partnership: Electus is a next-generation studio that connects content creators with advertisers and technology providers at the start of the creative process so they can produce content for global and multi-platform distribution.

• As the world's largest online media company, Yahoo! maintains the largest news, sports, finance, and entertainment websites, offering significant scale that will allow Electus to take its content to audiences everywhere.

• Future of TV? Content Everywhere: In the not-too-distant future, at least the one Microsoft subscribes to, TV consumption will be more portable than ever before as consumers see fewer and fewer differences between the screens belonging to their TV, the ones on their laptops and the ones on their mobile devices. [AdAge]

• Panasonic announced that its VieraCast service will also get Netflix streaming, the capability to place and receive video phone calls via Skype along with access to Pandora, Twitter, and Fox Sports news.

• At CES the Yahoo! Connected TV team announced new content partnerships with CNBC, NBC.com, Napster, DailyMotion.com as well as the release of the Yahoo! Connected TV Widget Development Kit (WDK) to the public. Yahoo! Connected TV Widgets are available for services like Amazon Video On Demand, Pandora and CBS, plus social sites like Facebook and Twitter. 

THE RISE OF 3D TV

• There were lots of big announcements on the 3D TV content and hardware fronts at CES. As I blogged earlier in the week Discovery, IMAX and Sony have struck a partnership to develop 3D programming.

• Also jumping into the 3D content pool is ESPN who announced their plans to launch a 3D network in June.

• RealD, a company who makes 3D eye wear, announced at CES that it has enlisted a raft of prominent partners in the TV including, Panasonic, Sony, Toshiba, JVC, Samsung, and DirecTV.

• Is 3D TV going to save the fledgling TV industry? Some think so.

MOBILE DIGITAL TV (DTV)

• Mobile TV Multiplies: This year at CES, early mobile-TV announcements included a USB dongle that plugs into computers and pulls down a signal; a portable DVD player by LG; and a Dell Inspiron Mini 10 netbook with Mobile DTV. [Wall Street Journal]

• The Tivit, also launched at CES, is a new device that lets you watch broadcast TV on your smartphone, including the iPhone and Blackberry devices.

Related: Trend Watch: TV 2.0 & Social Television & Mobile TV

Weekly Wrap: Saving Our Web-Addled Brains, Augmented Reality Marketing, TV's Decade, Mobile App Boom, Kindle's Killer Holiday, Texting In The USA, Social Media 2010, Brightkite AR & More!

10 Reasons This Was TV's Decade: Ten years ago this month, there was almost no reality television, and the networks still had a near-stranglehold on quality scripted content. People generally watched TV using that quaint device, a television set — and for most people, watching a show anytime other than in its regular time slot meant hauling out a VHS tape.

It's an understatement to say that, as we edge our way toward the second decade of the century, a lot has changed. Here are 10 of the things that have changed the most. [NPR]

The Novel Can Save Our Web-Addled Brains: The idea is that stories can do for us what they’ve always done—allow us to understand something that we can’t yet see, to experience something that might be geographically distant.

And if the stories break through our fog of information and self-absorption to shock us into awareness of what’s happening to the planet, then maybe we can do something about it. Maybe stories, with their narrative progressions, their beginnings, middles, and ends, their heroes, can save us from ourselves. [Double X]

10 Awesome Uses of Augmented Reality Marketing: Visuals are an important part of advertising, so it’s not surprising that so many companies have jumped on the augmented reality bandwagon, offering tools that visualize their products in a magical and memorable way. [Mashable]

Kindle's Killer Holiday: On Christmas day, Amazon customers purchased more Kindle books than physical books. [Amazon News Release]

Mobile Application Downloads to Hit Five Billion in 2014: The iPhone’s share of the app market will contract from its 2010 level during the latter part of the forecast period, but it will remain the leading platform for applications…The big beneficiary will be Android, which will see its market share of total application downloads increase from 11% of the market in 2009 to 23% in 2014. [ABI Research]

Vancouver 2010 and Young People: We also built stronger connections to young Olympic supporters with new initiatives on social media. Those efforts will increase as we near the opening of the first Youth Olympic Games in Singapore in August 2010. Related: Olympics Must Embrace Social Media or Lose Youth Audience [Olympic.org] [Barking Robot]

Six Social Media Trends for 2010: So what could social media look like in 2010? In 2010, social media will get even more popular, more mobile, and more exclusive — at least, that's my guess. What are the near-term trends we could see as soon as next year? [Harvard Business Review]

Why Embeddable Virtual Worlds are the Future: Why are so many users migrating to graphically simple in-browser virtual worlds like Metaplace? Pixels and Policy looks at why increasing graphical capability is no longer the biggest deal in online gaming. Related: Game Over For Metaplace [Pixels & Policy] [Yahoo! Finance]

Teens Pump Up Texting Trend: Americans fired off 110 billion text messages in December 2008, according to data released this week by the Census Bureau. In the same month of 2007, they sent 48 billion. Related: Generation Text [Chicago Tribune] [Barking Robot]

Brightkite Launches AR Advertising: In addition to photos and posts from friends, users of the Brightkite layer can receive up-to-date and relevant location based advertising in an AR format simply by opening the application and pointing their phone at a participating business. [Android Guys]

Why Indie Directors Give Away Movies Free Online: Vuorensola took matters into his own hands: he used a Finnish social networking site to build up an online fan base who contributed to the storyline, made props and even offered their acting skills.

In return for the help, Vuorensola released Star Wreck in 2005 online for free. Seven hundred thousand copies were downloaded in the first week alone; to date, the total has now reached 9 million. [TIME]

Bank Pulls Plug on Fraudulent Android Banking App

I ran across this interesting tidbit the other day regarding a fraudulent mobile banking app developed for the Android mobile platform.

Here's the scoop: USAA, a financial institution that serves the military community, discovered a software developer was selling an impostor USAA application designed for use with Android phones.

The developer had posted it for sale within Google's Android Marketplace, but USAA took immediate action and had the application removed.

I think this is a great reminder to always think twice before you download any app (iPhone, Android or Facebook for that matter) that has access to your personal information.

While they didn't provide any details, I would hope that Google and/or USAA are pursing legal action against this developer for financial fraud and/or identity theft.

Moreover, I hope that Google has banned this developer from publishing anymore apps for the Android Marketplace. When it comes to banking apps, perhaps Google needs to take more proactive steps to guarantee that only legitimate financial apps are allowed into the Android Marketplace.

So what can you do to protect yourself from this new type of identity theft? I think one of the comments on the USSA blog said it best:

This raises a question, not just for USAA, but especially for other financial institutions. Wouldn't it be safer if financial apps could ONLY be downloaded from the institution website instead of the "Marketplace" where almost anyone can upload an app?

I think that's great advice--go to your bank's website and get the link to their mobile app. Kudos to the USAA team for monitoring the apps in the Android Marketplace and alerting their customers about this new type of identity theft.

Facebook: Mobile Key to Continued Growth

Earlier this week Facebook released some really interesting (and mind blowing) stats about the mobile versions of the popular social networking site.

The big news is, according to Facebook, that 65 million people around the world use a mobile device to connect to the social networking site.

This makes Facebook one of the most popular social networking sites on the mobile web and should remove any doubt that MoSoSo and other types of mobile media are here to stay.

Here are some more of the highlights:

• Mobile users as a group are twice as engaged as Web-only users, spending more time sharing photos, writing on their friends' walls or doing status updates.

• The bulk of Facebook's mobile users are in the U.S, Canada and Britain.

• Facebook Mobile is also growing rapidly in developing countries such as Indonesia, which has the fourth-largest number of Facebook Mobile users.

• Facebook has built mobile versions of the social networking site for Google's Android mobile operating system, a newly updates iPhone application, as well as versions for BlackBerry,Windows, Palm and Nokia smart-phones.

• Facebook's mobile sites are now translated into more than 60 languages, and the company does business with 180 mobile phone operators worldwide.

• Facebook said that if Facebook Mobile were a standard Web site, it would be the 31st largest on the Internet.