The free agency of LeBron James (and other star players like Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh) is attracting an unprecedented amount of attention. It’s such that Vitamin Water has released their own series of sponsored raps call The Choice is Yours , which is hyping up the various places that James might go.
Those involved in the tracks include Jadakiss, Nipsey Hussle, Brisco, Mikey Rocks, Chip tha Ripper, and Um. Check out the sample and the full downloadable mix tape at www.complex.com.
Companies like Panasonic and Sony have been pushing hard on 3D television technology, riding in the wake of 3D blockbusters like Avatar and Alice in Wonderland. However, a survey by Kakaku.com said that 67.4 percent of Japanese respondents weren’t interested in buying a 3D TV and 31.2 percent said they were considering or wanted to purchase a 3D TV.
“Television makers’ expectations for 3D are high but looking at the degree of interest among consumers, there is a big gap with the enthusiasm of manufacturers,” said Tsuyoshi Kamada, head of Kakaku.com’s media-creative section.
Of those not interested in purchasinge a 3D TV, 70 percent cited the hassle of wearing special glasses, 57 percent said prices were too high and nearly 40 percent said there was not enough 3D content.
Source: Reuters
A revelation from Apple has shed light on the iPhone reception issues that have once again come to the forefront with the launch of the iPhone 4. Apple recently admitted that iPhones have been inflating signal strengths and masking poor reception in a flaw that goes back to the first iPhone models.
“Upon investigation, we were stunned to find that the formula we use to calculate how many bars of signal strength to display is totally wrong,” Apple said to its iPhone users Friday.
Many cases saw the iPhones display two more bars than they should have, meaning the signal strength of dropped calls wasn’t strong to begin with.
“I’m still in awe that it took them four generations [of iPhones] to figure this out,” said Tina Teng, analyst at ISuppli Corp. “They’re not giving consumers a satisfactory answer. It still goes back to how you hold it.”
Source: Los Angeles Times
While Leo Burnett is trying to get LeBron James to come to the Bulls, another ad company is taking a different approach to lure the two-time MVP to Chicago. Creative Underground has thrown their hat into the ring to recruit James . . . as a summer intern.
“LeBron James has long seen himself as a worldwide brand and it’s always important people have solid understanding of brand strategy prior to entering a new market, as we expect him to do,” says Dan Gershenson, Creative Director.
James would learn about writing, design and strategic development while joining managers for client meetings and participating in brainstorms. Creative Underground will cover costs for transportation to and from the agency and will provide James with a Brand Audit, their strategic playbook for helping brands grow over a 6 – 12 month period.
“We have a long history of winning, a stable organization and if LeBron would like to add someone like Chris Bosh, we’ve positioned ourselves well to have room in our company for him as an intern too, adds Creative Director Tom Olivieri.
Even if they don’t sign him long term, Creative Underground does have locations in South Florida and Chicago, both potential places for LeBron to end up with the Heat and Bulls, respectively. “Even if he decides to go another way on Thursday, we fully anticipate working with LeBron by the summer of 2011, added Olivieri.
Activision CEO Bobby Kotick has made it clear there are things he’d change about the business situation if he could, saying that he’d like to make Call of Duty into an online subscription service if possible. Now, he’s expressing discontent with the Xbox Live business model.
We’ve heard that 60 percent of Microsoft’s subscribers are principally on Live because of Call of Duty, said Kotick. We don t really participate financially in that income stream. We would really like to be able to provide much more value to those millions of players playing on Live, but it s not our network.
Kotick noted that Activision would support efforts to increase the connectivity between PC and TVs. We have always been platform agnostic. Consoles do a very good job of supporting the gamer. If we are going to broaden our audiences, we are going to need to have other devices.
Source: Financial Times
Archetype (recently discussed in an exclusive [a]list feature) is setting itself up as an online FPS titles made from the ground up for iPhone. Check it out in action below.
The first trailer for Rango recently released, which represents the debut effort for a 3D animated movie from ILM. Starring Johnny Depp, the film focusing on a neurotic chameleon in the Mojave desert looks to appeal to adults when it releases March 11, 2011.
Lingerie can be a quick and easy thing to potentially market just have some attractive looking models wear your undergarments, and you’re done. Fortnight is taking a different approach, however, with a super sexy Heimlich maneuver.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=ADE3t7uB3AM%26amp
Recently, a bunch of unknown and similar apps surged to the top of the App Store at the same time numerous users reported that they had received charges for apps they never bought. 41 of the top book applications were roughly coded and in Vietnamese, suggesting the work of hackers and impeding the sales of legitimate apps.
“I had hoped things would get back to normal thinking that, eventually, these weird apps would just go out of fashion,” said Romanian developer Alexandru Brie. “There was a drop in sales, not only for me but for all the developers whose apps had been shifted by the 41 apps in question.”
“It looks like the Books category has been hijacked by an app publisher named mycompany/Thuat Nguyen,” said QuickReader developer Patrick Thomson. “His apps now occupy 40 of the top 50 ranks in the Books category on the app store. These are apps that typically wouldn’t rank in the Books category and most of them don’t have any ratings or reviews.”
It is believed that this issue has been going on for at least a couple of weeks. The few comments the apps have come from users who say their accounts have been hacked.
“It would appear that this publisher is hacking accounts and buying his own apps in order to drive up his rankings in the Books category,” Thomson wrote. “This is having a negative impact on our apps, which are being pushed down in the rankings and losing visibility, plus it makes for a bad user experience.”
Most of the applications had been removed when it became plainly obvious there was a problem. However, a couple of suspicious applications in the top 200 remained. “I noticed these ones haven’t been removed as of yet,” Brie said. “Perhaps Apple is investigating them in more detail, as they are not as obvious as the first ones.”
Source: PC World
SCE’s President of Worldwide Studios Shuhei Yoshida recently commented that demand for the God of War Collection has made Sony more interested in doing additional conversions of PS2 games to HD. While The Sly Collection has already been confirmed, Yoshida’s aware that another series is in even more demand.
“As soon as we released God of War in an HD collection, there were people that were giving us suggestions,” said Yoshida. “And ICO and Shadow of the Colossus is on the top of the list. And we are very aware and we want to see and play it in HD with a better framerate as well, so that’s something we are very, very aware of.”
Source: Joystiq
