ITV

Category: Software

  • Zapak Mobile Games launches Brainbots vs. Zombie mobile game

    Zapak Mobile Games launches Brainbots vs. Zombie mobile game

    Mumbai: Zapak Mobile Games, a developer and publisher of mobile game from Reliance ADAG, has announced the launch of a new mobile game ‘Brainbots Vs Zombies’.

    Zapak has launched the game, which will be available for free on Google Play, keeping in mind the upcoming summer holiday season

    The mobile game that is set in the post apocalyptic future is a casual arcade game. The plot of the mobile game revolves around a herd of zombies and their quest to attack the last settlement of the brains. The brains, tired of protecting themselves decided to stay put and make a stand against the advancing zombies. The primary goal is to protect the brains by killing the zombies.

    The player in the mobile game can use the brainbot and smash all the incoming zombies to pulp, before they break in and eat up all the brains. The player can move the brainbot left to right and to kill the zombies the player has to drop the spiked metal ball on them. Over time the Zombies will attack the defenses and the player can repair them to prevent more zombies from getting in. If the zombies eat up all the brains, it‘s game over.

    Talking about the launch Zapak Mobile Games India business head Chaitanya Prabhu said, “Our newly launched game, Brainbots vs. Zombies is a complete package of adventure and thrill. This game is an addition to our current catalogue which provides highly entertaining and engaging mobile games to casual gamers across the world.”

  • Noah Falstein is Google’s chief game designer

    Noah Falstein is Google’s chief game designer

    MUMBAI: Google has hired the computer games veteran Noah Falstein to the position of chief game designer.

    He has been a designer and producer in the gaming industry since 1980. He has worked at LucasArts, 3DO, and Dreamworks Interactive.

    He most recently ran his own consultancy, The Inspiracy, which offered companies help on game design, development and business.

  • Condé Nast Entertainment announces over 30 new shows for digital video network

    Condé Nast Entertainment announces over 30 new shows for digital video network

    MUMBAI: In its bid to move from being a pure magazine publisher to a creator of online video content Condé Nast Entertainment (CNE) at its Newfront presentation announced the addition of original programming slates inspired by Vogue and Wired to its digital video network.

    Vogue programming will launch on 8 May with Wired following on 15 May. Further, another six new series inspired by Glamour and GQ will be added to those brands‘ previously launched programming slates. In total, CNE announced over 30 new series across the Glamour, GQ, Vogue and Wired channels. Later this year, channels inspired by Vanity Fair, Teen Vogue, Epicurious.com and Style.com will all launch on the network.

    CNE president Dawn Ostroff said, “Only Condé Nast can create a digital video network comprised of over twenty established and iconic brands, offering viewers diverse programming choices for every interest and passion. In the first partial month of our content going live, our channels jumped significantly in the rankings, and we saw incredible engagement and feedback from viewers. New programming inspired by Vogue and Wired will further extend our reach and add new content verticals to our growing digital network.”

    CNE has also announced strategic syndication partnerships with Yahoo!, AOL, Twitter, Dailymotion and Grab Media, which will make the digital video network programming available on even more platforms and devices.

    CNE executive VP chief digital officer Fred Santarpia said, “We are offering advertisers a unique proposition – premium content released daily, broad distribution, and tremendous marketing support.”

    “We‘re thrilled to be working with our new syndication partners, which are some of the biggest names in video and social media, to make it even easier for consumers to discover our programming” he added.

    To create digital series, CNE partnered with production companies Radical Media, Hud:sun Media and Magical Elves. These creative teams are behind shows like ‘Oprah‘s Masterclass‘, ‘Iconoclasts‘ and ‘Project Runway‘.

    The existing Glamour series being renewed include ‘Elevator Makeover‘, ‘Why Do Guys‘ and ‘Fashion Week Ride-Along‘. New Glamour series include:

    Glamour Video Gift of the Week – This is a weekly series featuring the hottest guys in hilarious vignettes that bring every woman‘s viral video fantasies to life.

    Style to Kill – This competition series, developed with Magical Elves features two up-and-coming stylists who compete by making over one lucky Glamour fan per episode. Glamour editors judge the competition and decide who wins the chance to style a Glamour photoshoot.

    The existing renewed GQ series include ‘Fighting Weight‘, ‘10 Essentials‘, ‘Car Collectors‘ and ‘Jogging with James‘. New series include:

    Casualties of the Gridiron – This is a documentary series that looks at the physical and mental effects that football has on NFL players and how they cope with their post -NFL lives.

    GQ How To – From how to tie a tie, to how to make the perfect cocktail, this is the next generation of How To for men looking for answers from the brand that has all of the answers.

  • BBC.com unveils culture section

    BBC.com unveils culture section

    MUMBAI: UK pubcaster the BBC‘s site BBC.com has launched BBC Culture, its fourth bespoke feature section and the first of two additions to the site this month.

    BBC Culture is a fusion of videos and images coupled with editorial content from journalists and commentators, offering an alternative lens on global trends across the arts.

    At launch BBC Culture will comprise nine columns including:

    • The Reel World: BBC film reporter Tom Brook examines the latest trends on screen and in the movie industry such as ‘Hollywood seeks inspiration from the bible.‘
    • The Measure: Maya Singer casts a fashion eye over the news and culture – and gives the insider‘s take when fashion is the story, asking questions such as ‘Can luxury fashion ever be punk?‘
    • Counterpoint: Clemency Burton-Hill shares the biggest stories from the world of classical music including: ‘Philip Glass and Linz Opera: A classic combination.
       

    BBC Culture will also include a section titled ‘Big In…‘ featuring relevant and topical cultural stories from around the world as reported by the BBC‘s network of correspondents, as well as linking to content from its sister sites BBC Travel and BBC Future and BBC Autos.

    International users will be able to continue their journey and conversation with Culture Editors and other fans by the specially created Facebook and Twitter profiles.

    This latest geature section is produced by the UK-based editorial team under editorial director Matthew Littleford with Matthew Anderson, taking on the role of editor.

    Over the coming weeks BBC.com will bring users the fifth feature section BBC Capital focusing on personal wealth management, leadership and career and a new season on BBC Future ‘Building Tomorrow‘ which will kick-off with a commission from sci-fi author Bruce Sterling.

    The launch of BBC Culture is supported by, Visa in the US, Amex in Canada and Vacheron Constantin in Europe; Middle East, Africa and the Asia Pacific. The sponsorship arrangement was facilitated by BBC Advertising, which sells advertising and sponsorship solutions on behalf of BBC World News and BBC.com.

  • CBS, News Corp risk disenfranchising viewers by going pay: Aereo CEO

    CBS, News Corp risk disenfranchising viewers by going pay: Aereo CEO

    MUMBAI: During Ad Age‘s Digital Conference Aereo CEO Chet Kanojia addressed the threat by CBS and News Corp to stop their channels from being free to air.

    “The real question is a consumer question: Can you rightfully disenfranchise 50 million consumers? Is that what the preferred policy is?” he asked.

    “They‘re independent businesses. They can choose to do what they wish to. I‘m just sort of the engineer at the bottom of the food chain. I have no idea what these guys do or not” he added.

    Aereo pulls down over-the-air content by using an antenna. It then streams this content over the Internet to various devices. It plans to expand across the US.

    It recently won victories in court.

    He doesn‘t believe that Fox or any other broadcaster will follow on their threat to go to cable as their reach is great. “It‘s such a large audience, I don‘t see how those customers aren‘t going to get served”.

    But if the networks follow through Kanojia feels that other content service providers will replace them as public broadcasters. “That spectrum is incredibly valuable. Somebody‘s going to take advantage of that”.

  • Harmonic simplifies video delivery for Netflix

    Harmonic simplifies video delivery for Netflix

    MUMBAI: Harmonic which offers video delivery infrastructure, has introduced predefined transcoding presets for its ProMedia Carbon file-based transcoder that transform video and audio content into media formats optimised for Internet television network Netflix.

    Netflix director of content partner operations Christopher Fetner said, “With its ability to store and recall parameters that assure transcoded content meets our stringent quality standards, Harmonic‘s ProMedia Carbon plays a significant role in the digital supply chains of our content and services partners. Collaborating with Harmonic on the new transcoding presets for ProMedia Carbon, we‘re able to ensure content operators have greater ease when delivering to Netflix.”

    Powered by Harmonic‘s Rhozet technology, ProMedia Carbon facilitates the conversion of media content into a massive array of acquisition, editing, broadcast, Web, and mobile formats. The predefined transcoding presets designed specifically for Netflix include SD/HD and MPEG-2 I-Frame video formats at various frame rates, as well as stereo and 5.1 surround sound audio.

    The ProMedia Carbon also handles operations including Pal/NTSC conversion, logo insertion, color space conversion, color correction, and closed-captions extraction. Through a user-friendly interface or API, operators have complete control over every aspect of the transcoding process. Content providers also have the flexibility to deploy ProMedia Carbon as a stand-alone application or as part of a scalable, multi-node, fully automated transcoding farm under the control of the Harmonic WFS file-based workflow engine.

    Harmonic director of product management for cloud services and transcoding Yoav Derazon said, “Service providers today receive content from a wide variety of sources in many different formats. The challenge is to align the format and quality of that content, making it ready for distribution through Netflix, as well as other over-the-top (OTT) video providers.

    “ProMedia Carbon is one of the most ubiquitous transcoders on the market today, offering enhanced performance, efficiency, and scalability for the multiscreen environment. Leveraging our new predefined transcoding presets, new and existing ProMedia Carbon users can instantly create a consistent baseline format optimized for Netflix.”

  • Zing and Zee Cafe now available for Virgin Media

    Zing and Zee Cafe now available for Virgin Media

    MUMBAI: Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd (Zeel) has branched out to UK wide audiences with the debut of two more of its channels, Zing and Zee Café, on Virgin Media.

    With local shows, Bollywood entertainment, Hollywood insights, movies, music, drama, reality shows and more, Zing covers a novel blend of programmes that make it exclusive in the British Asian space.
     
    The channel will target its audience across various platforms, including millions of Virgin Media homes, Sky, Freesat, Yamgo Mobile, TouTube, Facebook and Twitter.

    Virgin Media audience will now be able to view the UK‘s first ever British Asian drama Cloud 9 on Zing, Monday to Friday 6.30 pm and 10.30 pm. Setting a record in the South Asian entertainment space, Cloud 9 is an English drama series. Zing will now be available on channel 813.

    Zee Cafe will be available to watch on Channel 811 with a mix of entertainment for everyone, including soaps, historic dramas, mythology, news, lifestyle, horror, cookery, movies and business.

    Both channels will be making quality content available to Virgin Media‘s pay TV subscribers and will be an addition to Zee‘s subscription channels already on Virgin Media‘s Asian Mela Pack which include: Zee TV, Zee Cinema and Zee Punjabi.

  • Kirstine Stewart to oversee Twitter in Canada

    Kirstine Stewart to oversee Twitter in Canada

    MUMBAI: CBC senior executive Kirstine Stewart is leaving. She will oversee social media Twitter‘s operations in Canada.

    She said, “I‘ve had some of the happiest moments in my life at the CBC, and I‘ve been honoured to represent such an important name to Canadians.

    “I‘m proud of what we‘ve done together these past seven years. I will miss the CBC family dearly, but I know that even when one leaves the CBC, the CBC never really leaves you. It‘s in my DNA, and I‘m all the better for it.”

  • YouTube says TV is passe; announces 1 bn unique visitors per month

    YouTube says TV is passe; announces 1 bn unique visitors per month

    MUMBAI: For long, traditional linear TV professionals have been kind of pooh-poohing the emergence of YouTube as a challenge to their traditional business model and as the destination for video consumption. Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt however cautions TV executives that the TV vs YouTube – if ever there was one – is over and has conclusively swung in favour of the online streaming portal.

    Speaking to advertisers in New York on Wednesday night at an initiative titled NewFronts (digital media‘s version of the TV tradition of promoting programming and selling ads); he disclosed that YouTube was now crossing a billion visitors a month. Last month‘s figures from YouTube claimed that almost one of every two people on the World Wide Web now uses the video streaming site, making it the third largest country in the world behind China and India.

    Google executives at the event said that visitors are watching more than six billion hours of video content on YouTube every month. That‘s a humungous number, which equals to one hour a month for every human on earth. Just three months ago, the figure was four billion. Schmidt expects the figure to go up soon and told attendees to wait “till the numbers rise to six to seven billion. The future is now for YouTube,” he said.

    Executives point out that a good proportion of the visitors are those under forty – the connected to the internet generation; and that there is no better medium to reach out to them than YouTube.

    “I thought that YouTube was like TV, but it isn‘t. I was wrong,” said YouTube‘s global head of content Robert Kyncl, “TV is one-way. YouTube talks back. TV means reach. YouTube means engagement.” He further added.

    Schmidt explained that YouTube is not a replacement for something we know. “It‘s a new thing that we have to think about, to program, to curate and build new platforms,” he pointed out.

    DreamWorks CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg made an appearance at the event to announce that his company had earlier in the day signed a deal to acquire AwesomenessTV, a popular teen focused YouTube network, for $33 million.

    YouTube meanwhile brought in its troops to coax brands to snap up media on the site, put in sponsorship dollars behind it and build channels. They cited a study saying that brands “that invest about 10 per cent to 15 per cent of their media budget on YouTube post a one per cent to three per cent sales rise.

  • Fashion One Goes Multi-screen with Toggle in Asia

    Fashion One Goes Multi-screen with Toggle in Asia

    MUMBAI: The international channel for fashion, entertainment and lifestyle ‘Fashion One‘ announced its first top service deal in Asia with personal entertainment service MediaCorp‘s Toggle in Singapore.

    The channel has debuted in Singapore and is now available on numerous devices with a continuous and engaging viewing experience to the subscribers.

    The international market would be covering the very latest fashion, entertainment, and lifestyle news, profiles of A-list celebrities, luxury brands, holiday destinations and red carpet events which would be more female oriented. Viewers also get to enjoy an on-going fashion news series Fashion Frontline and lifestyle series on yoga, health and well-being.

    Fashion One CEO Ashley Jordan said, “We are happy to launch the service with MediaCorp‘s Toggle which allows our subscribers to choose where and how they want to consume our programmes. With our full multi-screen rights on all contents on the channel, Fashion One will continue reaching out to more female viewers in the world and giving them an enhanced, comprehensive and engaging viewing experience with our new expanded suite of services.”

    Fashion One will also have a line-up of original programming consisting of reality shows, documentaries, beauty tips and street styling. All of these can now be availed on Toggle online, on iPads and iPhones. The app for connected TVs and Android devices will be available soon.

    “Toggle is proud to be the first in Singapore to offer Fashion One and make it available on multi-screens. We kickstart the partnership with two original programmes Eco Fashion Season 2 and Kick Up Your Heels. Eco Fashion is a groundbreaking docu-series that will take you on a mind-opening journey into the realm of environmentally sustainable fashion while Kick Up Your Heels is a fun lifestyle series that brings the high-heeled workout phenomenon right into the living rooms,” said OTT vice president – programming and marketing Julian Lit.