Friday, September 3, 2010

Apple TV Deal with Disney, Fox Not Exclusive

Apple TV's plan to stream some Fox and Disney content for 99 cents does not have universal support, judged by the content companies that are not participating.

However well the offer is received, it will not be exclusive to Apple. The same content could be offered by Google, who supply the broadcast networks with content, hate Google, Amazon, Netflix or others.

YouTube Becoming an Ad Venue for Copyrighted Videos

YouTube complies with requests by video copyright owners to remove copyrighted material uploaded without permission.

But more than a third of the two billion views of YouTube videos with ads each week are uploaded without the copyright owner’s permission but left up by the owner’s choice.

Advertising revenue is the explanation for the benign approach.

Those two billion views, a 50 percent increase over last year, according to the company, are just 14 percent of the videos viewed each week on the Google-owned site. But that’s enough to turn YouTube profitable this year, and enough incremental revenue for content owners to cause the new relaxed attitude.

Mobile Phone Sales: Something Has to Give

Samsung, one of the five largest mobile phone manufacturers in the world, recently raised its forecast for 2010 unit sales to 25 million. The South Korean company also expects to sell 50 million handsets next year.

No one believes that the mobile phone market will double in 2011, so the Samsung statement suggests it expects to take a significant amount of market share.

If the company is right, the only real question who loses. It won't be Apple, as Samsung is stronger in the feature phone market. For similar reasons, it shouldn't be Android devices.

That leaves the other big players in feature phones, or the weaker players in smartphones. Either that, or Samsung is just wrong.

Social Networking, Gaming Key for Tweens, Teens

Social networking and gaming increasingly are prevalent in children's lives. Facebook is now the favorite website among tween (8 to 11) boys and teen (12 to 15) girls.

Online games dominate for boys and girls ages 8 to 11. 91 percent of tween boys and 93 percent of tween girls play games online.

Google TV Today

It's hard to tell what Google TV, or similar initiatives, will look like and feature in the future. But here's what it offers today.

Teens Text 5x More than Adults

Teens ages 12 to 17 send and receive a median of five times more texts per day than adult texters, according to new data from the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

But that's probably not the most-important finding. The data also show that use of texting is growing in every age demographic.

Slightly more than half (51 percent) of adults who text send one to 10 texts per day, compared to 22 percent of teens.

The percentages of texting adults and teens who send 11 to 20 and 21 to 50 average daily texts are fairly similar. Where teens begin to outpace adults is in the percentage who send 51 to 100 average texts daily (18 percent of teens, seven percent of adults) and more notably in the percentage who send 101-plus average texts daily (29 percent of teens, eight percent of adults).

Angry Bird Creators on Why Such Games are So Compelling

If you like games, "Angry Birds" is worth a try. If you fear wasting too much time, don't go there.

Net AI Sustainability Footprint Might be Lower, Even if Data Center Footprint is Higher

Nobody knows yet whether higher energy consumption to support artificial intelligence compute operations will ultimately be offset by lower ...