Twitter Gets Word Out For London Clean Ups

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Modern technology played a part in organizing the recent series of London riots, with Blackberries and Twitter used by riot instigators, with hacks threatened against RIM if they give out customer information to law enforcement. However, those same forces are being used to unite clean up efforts by the local community.

“After everything that happened last night, it’s good to see people can come together for something other than looting,” said resident Jina Creighton.

Clean up efforts have been has been improvised but enthusiastic. People read about the effort on twitter and have been showing up by the dozens.

“The police are stretched to the limit, so it’s down to them doing what they can and the people helping out,” said Alex May, a 32-year-old software engineer and clean up volunteer. “But the problem is that the riots happened in the first place. It’s something that has to be dealt with in the longer term.”

Twenty-one-year-old bartender Charles Jupiter set up a “Liverpool Clean Up” Facebook page put 100 volunteers onto the streets Tuesday morning. I thought, ‘Not in my city’,” Jupiter said. “People were posting, ‘I’m embarrassed to be English, I’m embarrassed to be from London or Liverpool.’ I reposted and said, ‘I’m not. That’s why I’m going out there to help clean up.'”

Most of the volunteers vowed to return to help with the clean up if the riots erupt again.

Source: AP {link no longer active}

Nintendo Acknowledges Communication Challenges For Wii U

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Nintendo has suffered from communication problems with the 3DS, since it is hard to convey its 3D capabilities without actually looking at the device. Wii Sports designer Katsuya Eguchi indicates that Nintendo faces a similar struggle when it launches Wii U late next year.

“You’re absolutely right, those are just some of the huge challenges ahead of us – getting people to really understand what Wii U can offer,” acknowledged Eguchi. “We have some experiences here right now – with Chase Mii and ‘shield Pose’ – and we have a great opportunity to give people time to play the games, so we’ll take advantages of expos, conferences and in-store demos.

“But we really want people to understand how the TV screen and controller screen interact and how that changes the experience. And we’ve come up with a variety of uses, he added. But you’re right, we can’t explain them all, and I don’t even think we’ve thought of them all. I’m sure there are many uses that haven’t been thought of yet.”

Source: Edge

Smartphone Addiction Clearly Creeping Into American Life

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A survey by Telenav found that 50 percent of Americans would rather give up caffeine, chocolate or exercise for a week rather than their smartphones. Interestingly, a third would give up sex as compared to their smartphones and 22 percent would be willing to part with their toothbrushes.

People are increasingly connected to social networks and online means of communication adults increasingly admit to sleeping with their phones and checking them often for fear of missing anything. Psychologists even discovered that most people would rather use their cellphones than directly interact with other human beings.

Source: businessinsider.com

Game Of Thrones Goes 16-bit

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Game of Thrones is a saucy fantasy tale that’s turned into an acclaimed HBO series, but what if it was a game… on the SNES Someone took some Final Fantasy VI era graphics and did a send up of the first season pretty hilarious all told even if you haven’t seen the series or read the books, though be warned there are some spoilers contained.

LivingSocial Taxi’s Wild Ride

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The deal-of-the-day company LivingSocial recently offered a special offer with a LivingSocial Taxi, letting users roll the dice and get chances to try out different fun activities. The activities, which range from chess boxing, pole-dancing fitness classes, chef master classes, a speedboat ride up the Thames, and the chance to feed a tiger, demonstrate the game’s unique brand promise.

 

Start Tagging Today – On Your iPhone

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Channel 4 presents the new Street Tag iPhone app {link no longer active}, which allows you to virtually graff any wall or surface, using your iPhone. The app turns your iPhone into a virtual spray paint can. Tag anything you want and share your tag with the world and geo tag it. A simple toolset allows you to craft your tag and change color, spray thickness and drippiness.

3DS Game Prices Need To Be Less, Says Analyst

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Nintendo has had to cut the price on the 3DS as a way to revitalize its portable gaming business. However, M2 Research analyst Billy Pidgeon says that selling hardware is not enough for the company.

“Nintendo needs to change its business fundamentally … Selling in hardware is important, but Nintendo must increase attach rates and third party opportunity dramatically,” said Pidgeon. “Lower 3DS hardware prices only address part of the problem. It’s more important to sell more software as packaged goods and paid digital downloads to each customer who buys a hardware unit.”

“I would like to see Nintendo cut the retail price of packaged software to a range of $20 to $25 for the 3DS. DS software should be $20 or less, adds Pidgeon.

Source: IndustryGamers {link no longer active}

Nielsen Online Campaign Ratings May Not Solve Ad Woes

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Nielsen is looking to push out its long-awaited internet Campaign Ratings, which will be the equivalent of GRPs for television. They will also include Facebook users along with select Nielsen homes.

This is a large feather in Nielsen’s cap, and online reaches audiences that the television just doesn’t anymore. Advertisers crave the stability that the GRP offers for television in an online standard.

“For packaged-goods, insurance, financial services, quick-serve restaurants and movie studios, this is your bread-and-butter and how you spend 80 percent to 90 percent of your budget,” said Dave Morgan, CEO of Simulmedia. “You cannot sell advertising to these folks unless they have a sense of the total audience they are reaching.”

Issues that have to be dealt with for online, however, are improper targeting, cluttered environments and fraudulent impressions. “We find most of our CMOs are less and less concerned with audience buys and more concerned about the performance of that investment,” said Wes Nichols, CEO of Marketshare partners.

Hopefully the move will help expand online advertising budgets from the world’s largest advertisers towards online, which is a change long overdue.

Source: AdAge

NPD Focusing On Digital Sales Reports

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The NPD Group has long been the best source of games sales data, though an increasing large blind-spot they’ve had is with digital sales. However, the company has announced that they will team with EEDAR to to develop a total market tracking service for digital transactions on consoles, mobile devices and online.

The NPD Group and EEDAR have always shared a common goal of providing information and insights to our clients in the games industry, said David McQuillan, President, Games, The NPD Group. The growth of the digital channel within the games industry presents numerous challenges and opportunities that we believe are best addressed for our clients through a formalized, collaborative effort between The NPD Group and EEDAR. We expect that this synergy of resources and vision will result in greater transparency into the total games market including digital forms of distribution as well as the established physical format.

With the rapid growth occurring on digital platforms, the importance of measuring and understanding the factors which contribute to the financial success of a product is a key initiative EEDAR is developing solutions for, said Greg Short, President & CEO, EEDAR.  EEDAR has always sought to embrace relationships that provide strong value to our clients and improve accessibility to key data for decision makers.  Our collaborative efforts with The NPD Group will help ensure that our research services will continue to evolve for the needs of the industry while specifically addressing transparency and the identification of success criteria for emerging markets.