#Montreal is living its “Maple Spring” with student protests for the past 100+ days, social media is a key driver - here’s the first real-world hashtag i’ve seen
In “How to Build an Android,” David Dufty tells the stranger-than-fiction story of roboticist David Hanson, who in 2005 cobbled together a group of technology experts to design and build an android replica of science-fiction author Philip K. Dick, who died in 1982.
Solar-powered device turns children’s swings into a game of set challenges | Springwise -
Now if only children’s screams could power toys and household appliances, a la Monsters Inc :)
Technology has already benefitted playground users in the form of the KaBOOM! Playspace Finder, which allows parents to rate the quality of children’s areas online. Now the Son-X Octavia device aims to bring a different kind of adventure to the playground – by turning swings into more interactive, challenge-based games.
Developed as a collaboration between Denmark-based startup playITsound and Swedish playground manufacturer HAGS Aneby AB, the device is a semi-spherical sensor and speaker kit, which produces noises depending on the swinging pattern of the user. Based on the idea that sound boosts children’s imaginations, the device can be attached to the rope of any swing in order to gamify it, with users rewarded by applause sound effects for completing a challenge. Using concepts children find familiar from video games, the device encourages kids to get outside and exercise, and research from the startup indicates that it increases the amount of time children spend on the swing. In one game, an applause sound gets louder the higher the child swings, for example.
Unilever partners with News Corp and Viacom for digital content-"going back to its soap opera past" -
Everything old is new again :)
Unilever has done deals with Fox, owned by News Corporation,and the owner of Paramount Pictures, MTV and Nickelodeon, Viacom, to sponsor made-for-web women’s dramas and classic footage.
A new Facebook app from Paramount that allows consumers to access three hours’ worth of clips from the company’s well-known films, such as ‘Grease’ and ‘Top Gun’, is sponsored by Magnum.
Unilever is also sponsoring WIGS, a YouTube content channel celebrating extraordinary stories about extraordinary women, which is marketed by News Corporation.
WIGS is a joint venture between filmmakers Jon Avnet and Rodrigo Garcia and is dedicated to delivering high end, original, scripted dramatic series and short films about the lives of women.
It stars well-known actresses such as Jennifer Garner, Julia Stiles, and Virginia Madsen, as well as emerging talent, such as Lily Collins and Caitlin Gerard.
Traversing the Valley — Consumerization of enterprise tech and the enterprising of consumer tech. -
In Walter Isaacsonʼs biography of Steve Jobs, Isaacson describes the time that Jobs cold called Wendell Weeks, the CEO of Corning, Inc., to learn about Gorilla Glass (which is now used in more than 500 devices). Weeksʼ assistant refused to put him through, but offered to take a message. Jobs described that as “typical East Coast B.S.” In response, when Weeks returned the call, he was told by Apple’s receptionist to put his request in writing and to fax it.
When the two finally did meet, Jobs tried to impress Weeks with his knowledge of glass, and Weeks had to tell him to shut up — Corning, of course, has been making glass and ceramics for a century.
This anecdote is partly funny, partly troubling. It is made funnier by the fact that Corning, due to customer NDAs, cannot publicly confirm that the meeting ever took place. It is troubling, because few Valley companies look at companies in Kansas or Kenya as anything more than potential suppliers or partners — though their CEOS are happy to fly there to close a big customer sale.
In broader terms, it is symptomatic of how little the Valley knows about how much technology is being developed in corporate America. And in reverse, it hints at how little corporate America knows about the world class operations of many Valley companies. Both sides should wake up to the consumerization of enterprise tech and the enterprising of consumer tech.
In New York Dining, the Appeal of Exclusive and Artisanal - NYTimes.com -
DANIEL DELANEY, 26, decided recently that he wanted to smoke and sell brisket, bringing small batches of what he called real Texas barbecue to New York. Read more articles in this week’s Metropolitan section. Multimedia Slide Show The Appeal of Being First in Food Connect with NYTMetro Follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook for news and conversation. Mr. Delaney, a New Jersey native who produced a video podcast about street food called VendrTV, had already held a few supper-club nights for 20 people in his Brooklyn apartment, charging $45 for admission. In another era, Mr. Delaney might have tried to start a restaurant or a wholesale product line. Instead, on April 21 he posted an offer to his social media contacts, inviting them to register for a limited supply of handcrafted barbecue, $25 a pound, to be served at unspecified events in the future. “I needed it to feel cool, and I’m not a cool person,” he said. “It had to feel underground, secretive, exclusive.” So he stressed the brisket’s scarcity, urging people to pay now for a product that did not yet exist, from a chef with very little track record. He expected about 300 people to sign up. Instead, he got 4,300 registrations in a little over a week, selling more than a ton of meat. “I took in $60,000 in 48 hours,” he said — enough money for him to hold 25 or more events, then graduate to a pop-up, or temporary, restaurant. “I’m not a religious person,” he said, “but that was a godsend.”
Netflix has started to roll out promos for its original series, Lilyhammer is their first
How 'The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel' Became This Summer's Surprise Indie Smash -
“The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” is poised to leap out of the arthouse and into the mainstream.
The story of a group of British retirees, grappling with illness and financial burdens, who decide to move to India is hardly the stuff of summer blockbusters. Yet the Fox Searchlight and Participant Media film has quietly racked up nearly $90 million worldwide, with $9.2 million of that haul coming in the United States.
It has accomplished this feat largely by being the anti-“Avengers.” While the Marvel superhero blockbuster has packed theaters with teenagers, “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” has instead focused on a neglected moviegoing demographic — senior citizens.
“This community is always looking to go see something where they don’t have to listen to things explode or guns being shot,” Jim Berk, CEO of Participant, told TheWrap. “They just want a lovely day at the movies.”
Prada Releases Short Movie That Ends With An Unexpected Twist #mediaquake
Fred Wilson: Content owners, don’t fear the future -
“I think those (traditional media) industries will survive and thrive, they just need to move from a fairly monopolistic distribution system to a wide open distribution system,” Wilson said.
He said while there are some examples of good collaboration between technology companies and progressive content owners, in most cases media companies fear the unfamiliar. But he said history continues to show that new technology — whether it’s radio, the VCR or iTunes — brings in new revenue. He predicts music subscription services will have the same effect.
In a perfect world, Wilson said he’d like to see a system similar to a DNS registry in which content owners would register their content and make it available with rules in exchange for copyright enforcement. That’s the fair compensation for society already enforcing the rights of copyright holders, he said.
“If we have rules for TV, films, music, books, games we’d see an explosion of innovation. All sorts of services and business models could get created,” he said.
'Battleship' Fallout: Lessons From a Box Office Sinking (Analysis) -
When a big movie like Battleship tanks, inevitably a sense of dread ripples through Hollywood, accompanied by an impulse to look for the lesson that prevents the disaster from happening again.
In this case, several top industry insiders think they can skip looking for answers because so many saw peril from the start in making a $210 million-plus-budget film based on a board game. “Nobody here thought Battleship was worth the investment,” says a leading agent. “No stars, an [intellectual property] play that made no sense, and nobody thought the script was good.”
PHOTOS: 28 of Summer’s Most Anticipated Movies
Nonetheless, the Peter Berg-directed film’s low $25.5 million domestic bow has caused industry anxiety as well as speculation — apparently unfounded — about the future of the executive regime at Universal. A top NBCUniversal source says there will be no management changes at the studio, though sources say it likely will lose $150 million on the movie.
The general unease is caused not only by the fate of Battleship but also the recent battering of other expensive films: Disney’s John Carter, which prompted a $200 million write-down and led to the ouster of studio chief Rich Ross; Warner Bros.’ Dark Shadows, which sources say cost more than $150 million but opened to less than $30 million domestic; and Paramount’s The Dictator, which the studio says cost $65 million but multiple industry sources say really ran to more than $100 million after reshoots.
Behind-The-Scenes Photos Of ‘Back To The Future’
A crazy dream to build a computer animation industry in Argentina