Consumers Show Interest In Tablet PCs

The iPad has been a huge hit with consumers, says Forrester Research. Only a couple of months after the launch, 1.3 percent, or 2.5 million, U.S. online consumers report that they already own an Apple iPad, and an additional 3.8 percent (7.4 million) say they intend to buy one.

The success of the Apple iPad has created a halo around tablets in general: About 14 percent, or 27 million, U.S. online consumers say they intend to buy some kind of tablet in the next 12 months, more than any other type of device.

The Data Digest: Consumers Show Interest In Tablet PCs | Forrester Blogs

Video Game Sales Hit Lowest Level Since 2006

August 2010 console video game sales fell to their lowest level in four years, according to NPD Group. The belief that sales had begun to recover, based on numbers from late spring and early summer, has proved to be wrong.

U.S. video game sales dropped 10 percent to $1.6 billion compared with August of 2009, according to NPD Group.

One has to wonder whether mobile and online gaming is starting to displace some amount of demand for console games. It would be easy to blame the recession, which undoubtedly has had some effect. But the popularity of games in the Apple App Store, if any indication, suggests people now are spending more time with simpler games they can play on the go.


According to the NPD Group, 20 percent of the U.S. population ages six and older reports having played a game on a social network in the past three months.  That suggests 56.8 million U.S. consumers were social gamers in the quarter.

About 35 percent of social network gamers say they are new to gaming, never having  participated in any other type of gaming before they started playing games on social networks. Females and older age groups are more likely to be new gamers than other groups measured in the study.

Interestingly, despite the perception that social network gamers are primarily females, the study finds that social network gamers are fairly evenly divided between genders, at 47 percent male, and 53 percent female.

"Although 35 percent of social network gamers are new to gaming, it's clear that a lot of existing gamers have been drawn into the social network gaming arena as well," said Anita Frazier, Industry Analyst, The NPD Group. "This impacts both the time they spend with other types of gaming, as well as the amount of money they’re spending on gaming. As more players are drawn into these games, the entire games industry is going to feel, and have to adjust to, the impact."

While you can play these games for free, it is worth noting that 10 percent of social network gamers have spent real money playing these games and 11 percent indicate that they are likely to make a future purchase.  Social network games are also impacting spending on other types of gaming activities as gamers report spending 20 percent less on gaming overall since they started playing social network games.

Video Game Sales Hit Lowest Level Since 2006

Europeans Want Android Tablets

What would the average eWEEK Europe reader want for leisure time? The answer, it turns out is an Android-based tablet along the lines of the recently announced Samsung Galaxy Tab.

Twenty-six percent of the people responding to eWEEK Europe’s gadget poll said they’d love an Android tablet like the Galaxy, while another 18 percent said their next personal-use gadget would be an Android phone.

Apple did poorly in the poll, even though the short list held three Apple devices, including the massively-hyped iPad, the recently re-launched iPod and the Apple TV, which is sure to spark another Apple frenzy.

eWEEK Europe Readers Want Android

Google: Mobile Search grew 4x This Year

Google director of product management Nick Fox says Google has seen a 400 percent increase in mobile queries from fully featured mobile browsers in one year.

Google: Mobile Search grew 4x this year

Google Maps With Street View

I'd have to say, of all the features I like about Droids and my Evo, the navigation application has been the most significant.

Google Adds Walking Directions for Android Google Maps

Google has added "Walking Navigation", a marriage of walking directions, turn-by-turn GPS navigation and satellite imagery, to the newest version of Google Maps for Android. The Street View is visually appealing, though often I prefer the more-basic "map-like" directions.

The latest addition comes as a part of Google Maps for mobile 4.5 for Android. It takes walking directions, which takes advantage of pedestrian pathways, overpasses and other such things, and pairs them with turn-by-turn GPS directions and satellite imagery.

Amazon Simplifies Checkout

Amazon has made it easier for merchants to use Amazon checkout without leaving the shopping context.

Cloud Computing Market is Bifurcated

Newer enterprises founded within the last 10 years are twice as likely to use cloud computing as are older firms, says the Yankee Group.

On the other hand, though cloud usage is significantly rarer among older enterprises, which hold a conservative view of the technology, those firms are most likely to choose more established names for their cloud needs, especially service providers and vendors such as AT&T, IBM and Microsoft, than newer cloud upstarts.

As often is the case in the communications and technology businesses, there is a natural bifurcation of supply and demand. Enterprises may prefer to work with other substantial companies, while small businesses will be more comfortable using smaller suppliers.

The smaller and newer firms seem to be optimistic that the cloud will evolve into a primary IT platform over the next several years and are willing to buy services from newer cloud companies coming from outside the traditional IT market, such as Amazon, Google or Terremark.

Yankee Group :: Research Report:

OECD Essentially Says It Doesn't Have a Clue What to Do

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development says that world economic growth has slowed and will remain that way for some time. That isn't so much a problem. The bigger problem is that OECD doesn't seem to be able to explain why this recovery is unlike most others, and what can be done to get a more normal-looking return to growth, which would, at this point, be largely about employment growth.

Like so many other think tanks and experts, it seems satisfied to throw up its hands and say that there is no reasonable way for growth to be restored, says Doug McIntyre.

We ought to be skeptical about "experts" who cannot explain what is happening and for this reason cannot offer helpful policy advice. Arguing that some approaches be taken because that is what has been done in the past does not necessarily help if the economy is behaving in a different way.
Perhaps because this recession is unlike others? If that is so, we are going to face unusual dangers. Our experts might not know what to recommend. Worse, they might give flawed advice.
The agency says that “Growth in the Group of Seven countries is expected to be around1.5 percent on an annualized basis in the second half of 2010. U.S. GDP is expected to be in the 1.2 percent range in the fourth quarter of 2010.

The analysis concludes that the recovery from the recession is no recovery at all. What the OECD does not do is suggest what might be done to reverse the problem. Maybe they have no clue.
Read more: OECD Say Global Expansiton Will Slow - 24/7 Wall St. http://247wallst.com/2010/09/09/oecd-say-global-expansiton-will-slow/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+typepad%2FRyNm+%2824%2F7+Wall+St.%29#ixzz0z1pXaUEI

OECD Say Global Expansiton Will Slow

Google, Verizon Began Their Net Neutrality Talks 2 Years Ago

Very few people know that the highly controversial efforts by Google and Verizon to hammer out their own proposal for a broadband policy framework started nearly two years ago.

By 2008, Verizon had been slowly coming around to the ideas of openness that Google espoused -- at least relative to some of its fellow telecom giants, like AT&T.

Google, Verizon and the FCC: Inside the War Over the Internet's Future - DailyFinance

'Google Instant' On Smartphones: 4G Implications

 The beauty of "Google Instant" is that it could save users a lot of typing on a mobile keyboard, which is a hassle, especially if your phone has no physical keyboard. But there is another angle of importance to mobile service providers with fast 3G connections or 4G.

The use case might be that a user starts with voice search, which then displays results as the user is speaking.

As you say the words the search engine is not only trying to guess the next word in the phrase, but is also displaying search results for the search terms it’s guessing. But that is going to be a better experience with a faster mobile connection.

It isn't "the" killer app for 4G, but it will help differentiate the experience from the same app running on a 3G network, at least potentially.

'Google Instant' On Smartphones

Twitter Has Become a News Platform

Twitter has become a form of media, whether that is helpful to traditional media, or not; whether people like it or not.

Twitter is a publishing tool, and shows again how IP-based technologies, the Internet and the Web are transforming any number of legacy businesses, from retailing to telecommunications to video and music to education.

Like It or Not, Twitter Has Become a News Platform

Google Instant Will Save 350 Million Hours Of User Time Per Year

Productivity is hard to measure, but Google engineer Ben Gomes points out that Google serves up billions of queries every day, and that the average query length is 20 characters and the average time for a user to pick a result takes 15 seconds.

Google’s latest feature launch is all about speeding up this process.

“Google Instant will save 350 million hours of user time, over a year,” says Google VP Marissa Mayer. basing her estimate on a figure of each instant search saving two to five seconds of user time, in places where Google Instant is rolled out.

Google Instant Will Save 350 Million Hours Of User Time Per Year

Is Google Instant A Revolution in Search?

Google Instant will become the core search experience on Google.com for Chrome, Firefox, Safari and IE 8. It also will be offered to users in France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Spain and the U.K. who are signed in and have Instant-capable browsers. Over the coming weeks and months, Google Instant will berolled to all geographies and platforms.

Google Search Impressions Will Change Because of "Google Instant"

As Google Instant rolls out widely, the raw number of ads displayed per query will inevitably increase as Google displays a sequence of best guesses about its users' desired queries and shows results for the top guess.

For example, a search for 'a' displays results and ads for Amazon.com; an 'e' search does the same for eBay.com. That is going to require some tweaking of what an "impression" is.

To qualify as an impression, an ad exposure must last for at least three seconds, Google now says.

Even with that calculation in place, the effective click-through rate experienced by many Google advertisers may change.

Google Instant Will Impact Search Ads and SEO