Category: Software

FremantleMedia US creates an online pet destination on Blip Platform

MUMBAI: Television format creator and distributor FremantleMedia‘s US division has partnered with the digital network Blip to develop a pet-related entertainment destination on Blip powered by its digital programming site The Pet Collective.

The new pet-related content will be available at Blip.com and across the web starting next month.

Creating a pet vertical on Blip with premium content from the FremantleMedia team behind The Pet Collective allows Blip to curate and deliver online pet content for their highly engaged audience to discover, watch and share with their friends. In addition, working with Blip enables the group to expand their distribution across the web on a complementary platform that will build new audiences.

The Blip pet vertical will be available to viewers on its website and across the web via Blip‘s distribution partnerships. The collaboration is attractive to a number of viewers and consumer brands due to the family-friendly content, the high quality production and the ability to watch anytime, anywhere.

Launched online in April 2012, The Pet Collective is a digital producer of animal-friendly content that celebrates the connection between animals and their human companions. It‘s designed as a celebration of pets and the enriching effect that they have on human beings through informative and adorable features. The programming is currently available online and has been extremely successful, with over 153,000 subscribers and 28 million views on YouTube. Some of the most popular series include: The Litter with Sharon Osbourne, Petodies, and the ultimate destination for animal livestreams.

FremantleMedia US CEO Thom Beers said, “Extending our digital reach with a fantastic new partner like Blip allows us to build our audiences and to work with talent we have developed on traditional platforms, such as the 2012 winner of ‘America‘s Got Talent,‘ The Olate Dogs.”

Blip CEO Kelly Day said, “Blip is developing and distributing topic-specific content for the millions of viewers out there looking to discover and share content they love. As the only premium animal-related brand online produced by industry leaders, The Pet Collective is a natural partner to develop a Blip pet vertical.”

May 2, 2013
Five DD channels licensed to ATN for Canadian diaspora

MUMBAI: Indian state-owned pubcaster Doordarshan is headed to Canada, the land of the maple leaf. And partnering it on its journey
there is Asian Television Network (ATN), Canada‘s largest south Asian broadcaster. ATN announced a short while ago that it would be launching five channels under a license agreement with DD in Canada.

The deal has ATN getting exclusive rights to the five television services, namely DD India, DD News, DD Bharati, DD Urdu and DD Sports. The channels will have the tag ATN added before them, according to a release issued by it.

Says DD director general Tipurari Sharan, “In Canada, Indians form one of the most respected and professionally accomplished communities who have kept their cultural roots intact while adapting to Canada and we have been striving to connect with the international audience rapidly. It gives me immense pleasure to announce our relationship with ATN for meeting this objective by distributing five of our main channels in Canada. Both ATN and DD have walked the extra mile in making this happen and I hope that this effort will help strengthen the feeling of togetherness through Doordarshan channels which are rich in cultural values, art, music, dance, entertainment and depict the crucible of culture, India has been for millennia.”

ATN president & CEO Shan Chandrasekar adds, “India is the world‘s largest democracy and has a population of over a billion People. We are delighted to be associated with the launch of India‘s official national broadcaster Doordarshan which is similar to the BBC in the UK and CBC in Canada. We have aggressive plans to add substantial value to our diaspora and enhance our strong customer base on cable, satellite and credible distributors across Canada.”

In addition to the existing subscriber base, with the launch of these new channels, ATN expects to gain new subscribers through cable, satellite and IPTV platforms across Canada.

May 2, 2013
People spend a quarter of their time online on social networking: Experian

MUMBAI: Insights from Experian, the global information services company, reveals that if the time spent on the Internet was distilled into an hour then a quarter of it would be spent on social networking and forums across UK, US and Australia. In the UK 13 minutes out of every hour online is spent on social networking and forums, nine minutes on entertainment sites and six minutes shopping.

The figures are similar in the US with 16 minutes spent on social media, nine minutes on entertainment and five minutes on shopping. Australian Internet users spend 14 minutes on social sites, nine on entertainment and four minutes shopping online.

Across all three markets, time spent shopping online grew year-on-year, but the UK emerged as having the most prolific online shoppers, spending proportionally more time on retail websites than online users in North America or Australia. British Internet users spent 10 per cent of all time online shopping in 2012, compared to nine per cent in the US and six per cent in Australia. This was in part due to a bumper Christmas season in the UK where 370 million hours were spent shopping online, 24 per cent higher than the monthly average.

Consumption of news content also increased across all three markets with Australian users emerging as the most voracious consumers of news online. Six per cent of all time spent online in Australia in 2012 was on a news website, compared to five per cent in the UK and four per cent in the US.

Meanwhile, the time spent on social media proportionate to other online activities declined across all three regions. The US, which has been the most dominant market for social media consumption in the last three years dropped from 30 per cent of all time spent online to 27 per cent. In Australia time spent on social dropped from 27 per cent to 24 per cent whilst in the UK it dipped from 25 per cent to 22 per cent year-on-year.

This highlights the rise in access via 3G and 4G networks as consumers spend increasingly more time online while on the move.

Experian Marketing Services digital marketing manager James Murray commented, “The online landscape is constantly changing and we‘ve seen some pretty dramatic shifts in consumer behaviour across different geographic regions and in the various vertical markets.

“Consumers are changing the way they interact online and the rise of 3G and now 4G mobile internet access means more visits are being made on the move, particularly in social and email. As brands become increasingly global entities it‘s more important than ever to understand the differences between regional online behaviours so that marketing campaigns can be tailored for better and more effective brand engagement.”

May 1, 2013
Twitter ads now available to all US users

MUMBAI: Twitter‘s senior director of product for revenue Kevin Weil announced the launch of its advertising options for all US users on Tuesday at TechCrunch‘s Disrupt in New York. The company had previously made advertising on the platform invite-only.

The first announcement was made on April 2010 by social media giant stating it would show ads. Since then it has openly promoted tweets and accounts, which lets people pay to get their updates seen and their profiles followed. Additionally, it announced limited availability of a self-serve tool for buying ads in March 2012, and an ads application programming interface (API) for programmatic buying of huge campaigns in February recently.

Last week, Twitter announced that its ads could be targeted based on keywords tweeted or within tweets engaged with by users, which lets Twitter move towards demand fulfillment like Google search ads.

Most recently, Twitter opened its advertising API to third parties, letting larger advertisers to create more refined campaigns on the portal. The company launched that program with five partners – Adobe, Hootsuite, Salesforce, SHIFT and TBG Digital.

“Over the past year we‘ve listened carefully to feedback from the thousands of businesses and individuals who‘ve had access to the self-serve tool, and made enhancements based on their suggestions, including more targeting and reporting in the UI,” the company wrote in a blog post. “It‘s because of this feedback that effective today, we‘re ending our invite-only period and opening signups for our self-serve ad platform to all users in the US.”

According to eMarketer the company, which is expected to go public within the next year, is projected to earn $1 billion in ad revenues in 2014.

May 1, 2013
Zee Cafe & idubba launch new app ‘icouch’

MUMBAI: Zee cafe in partnership with idubba has launched a mobile app for the viewers who use android phones.

Christened as ‘icouch‘, the launch of this app is in line with the channels objective of expanding its viewer base through the new season of American television drama series ‘Grey‘s Anatomy‘ which will be telecast on 1 May. The show will be aired on every Monday to Friday at 10.00 pm.

The channel is providing a platform for the viewers to chat with each other real time via an interactive chat room.

Touted as first of its kind, this app will enable viewers to chat with friends about the show, play contests, win prizes, take up quizzes and see their conversation Live on TV while the show is on air. The attempt is to unite all the fans of Grey‘s Anatomy on a common platform and keep them glued to the show.

Zee Cafe brings season seven, eight and nine of the medical series.

Zee niche channels business head Anurag Bedi said, “Given the popularity of Grey‘s Anatomy in India we want to give the viewers a chance to participate while watching the show. The rate at which various communication vehicles are seeing a decline, this initiative was taken to give the viewers a personalised bite into their TV viewing experience. This differentiated app has been developed in a creative and nimble way to get viewers talking about the show real time. With majority of urban population now making a shift to smart phones, creating such an app was an obvious choice for engagement for this kind of a show.”

idubba co-founder Rabi Gupta further added, “iCouch is definitely not another news or gossip outlet where we report things or events, in-fact here the news and gossip makers and breakers are the ardent fans of the TV show. It is a chat forum that has no bar, you are the one building and developing the discussion of your favourite show. It enables your thoughts be known not only to your friends and mutual lovers of the show but also to the cast and the crew of the show. iCouch is a platform that makes the current TV viewing scenario more charged up with entertainment, live gossips, snip-bits and chats.”

May 1, 2013
DAS Stay extended to 4 June in Andhra Pradesh, court wants action taken report from Govt

New Delhi: The Andhra Pradesh High Court today extended to 4 June the stay on switch-off of analogue signals in Hyderabad and Vishakhapatnam, even as it expressed its annoyance against the Information and Broadcasting Ministry counsel not giving an action-taken report as directed by the court.

Adjourning the hearing of six petitions to 4 June, the Court also permitted other parties including the Indian Broadcasting Foundation to be impleaded in the case.

The division bench headed by the Chief Justice Justice N.V.Ramana posted the case for orders after the vacation.

The Court also asked the authorities not to take any coercive steps against Multi System Operators (MSOs) for not implementing digital addressability system in Hyderabad and Rangareddy districts.

The bench which was hearing arguments on a public interest petition passed a single order in five other similar cases including one by an MSO, Mr S V Krishna Mohan and another by the Greater Hyderabad Cable TV Operators Association, that came up for hearing before the bench.

The petitioner Chalasani Narendra filed the PIL saying the Union of India was ‘scuttling the constitutional rights of the citizens by blocking out the TV Channels in the guise of implementation of Digital Addressability System (DAS) without making any efforts for easy availability of Set Top Boxes (STBs) in the market’.

He also alleged that the government is also trying to favour the big corporate establishments in the cable and DTH industry in the guise of DAS implementation.

Hathway had also got itself impleaded in the petition saying that there is no need to extend the time for the implementation of DAS in Hyderabad. Hathway submitted before the High Court that Digitalisation of cable services brings out a lot of undeclared connectivity from the cable operators benefiting the Broadcasters, the government and the MSOs.

The Indian Broadcasting Foundation submitted that the Court should not grant any more time against the compulsory usage of STBs in Hyderabad.

According to figures published by the Ministry on 21 April, Hyderabad has 8,81,512 TV households of which 17,37,052 STBs have been installed, including DTH, with the total digitization going up to 193.83 per cent. Vishakhapatnam has 5,42,692 TV households, and only 1,58,291 STBs including DTH have been installed thus taking the percentage to 29.76.

Stay also continues till 8 May in Jabalpur, Indore, and Bhopal apart from Chennai with petitions pending in Madhya Pradesh and Madras High Courts, even as the Indian Broadcasting Foundation has moved the Supreme Court to ensure these petitions are not entertained.

April 30, 2013
AOL shuts down music service

MUMBAI: AOL has closed down its online music service AOL Music with immediate effect.

The music division included online music titles such as Spinner, TheBoomBox, The Boot and Noisecreep.

A tweet by a person associated with the music operations said, “Hey guys. Just found out from AOL that we‘re shutting down. Today is our last day. Seriously.”

April 30, 2013

Smartphone sales surge; Smartphone apps score over tablets

MUMBAI: Here‘s some food for thought. Even as Nokia is betting on its 1O5 $20 phone to ramp up its sales worldwide, IDC last week reported that sales of smartphones in Q1, raced ahead of sales of simple or feature phones for the first time in mobile phone history.

According to market research firm, International Data Corp (IDC), vendors shipped a total of 418.6 million mobile phones in Q1 compared to 402.4 million units in the first quarter of 2012 and 483.2 million units in the fourth quarter of 2012.

In the worldwide smartphone market, vendors shipped 216.2 million units in Q1 2013, which marked the first time more than half (51.6 per cent) the total phone shipments in a quarter were smartphones. The market grew 41.6 per cent compared to the 152.7 million units shipped in Q1 2012, but 5.1 per cent lower than the 227.8 million units shipped in Q2 2012.

The big trend in Q1 is the emergence of Chinese companies in the Top five smartphone vendors list. Huawei and ZTE hawked 9.9 million units and 9.1 million units each in Q1 2013.

Top Five Smartphone Vendors, Shipments, and Market Share, 2013 Q1 (Units in Millions)

Vendor	Q1 2013 Unit Shipments	Q1 2013 Market Share	Q1 2012 Unit Shipments	Q1 2012 Market Share	Year-over-year Change
Samsung	70.7	32.7%	44.0	28.8%	60.7%
Apple	37.4	17.3%	35.1	23.0%	6.6%
LG	10.3	4.8%	4.9	3.2%	110.2%
Huawei	9.9	4.6%	5.1	3.3%	94.1%
ZTE	9.1	4.2%	6.1	4.0%	49.2%
Others	78.8	36.4%	57.5	37.7%	37.0%
Total	216.2	100.0%	152.7	100.0%	41.6%

If one looks at the chart above, Samsung sold more smart handsets than the rest of the four in the top 5 combined.

Samsung‘s reign in the top five overall mobile phone shipment chart got stronger in Q1 with its share of shipments rising to 27.5 per cent. Nokia, however, saw its share dropping a quarter to fall to 14.8 per cent. Apple too reported single digit growth rates during Q1.

Top Five Total Mobile Phone Vendors, Shipments, and Market Share, 2013 Q1 (Units in Millions)

Vendor	Q1 2013 Unit Shipments	Q1 2013 Market Share	Q1 2012 Unit Shipments	Q1 2012 Market Share	Year-over-year Change
Samsung	115.0	27.5%	93.6	23.3%	22.9%
Nokia	61.9	14.8%	82.7	20.6%	-25.1%
Apple	37.4	8.9%	35.1	8.7%	6.6%
LG	15.4	3.7%	13.7	3.4%	12.4%
ZTE	13.5	3.2%	16.2	4.0%	-16.5%
Others	175.4	41.9%	161.1	40.0%	8.9%
Total	418.6	100.0%	402.4	100.0%	4.0%

What does the surge in sales mean for those of us in entertainment? Clearly, that mobile phone users are seeking more and more out of their handsets. They have simply moved beyond being just devices to be used as a long-distance talking tool.

Kantar Media‘s latest proprietary TGI Clickstream study, with data collated from October 2011 to September 2012, has revealed that the smartphone is the device that consumers prefer as their pocket companion, even though tablets sales have been climbing crazily worldwide .Says Kantar Media‘s TGI International head Geoff Wicked: “There‘s no denying that more and more people are purchasing tablets for both business and personal use, but the fact remains that there are a billion smartphones on the planet, and tablet sales are still in their millions. While tablets will continue to become both more accessible and more sophisticated, the smartphone is still considered the all-round communications device that stays with a user for nearly 24 hours a day.”

Kantar Media has been running a showcase theatre session at the Festival of Media Global, which is ending today Montreux, Switzerland.

According to the Kantar Media study, social networking is the most popular type of smartphone app, with 37 per cent of smartphone web users surveyed saying they had downloaded a social networking app in the past twelve months. While this was the second most popular kind of tablet app, just half that amount (18 per cent) of tablet web users surveyed had downloaded a social networking app in the past twelve months.

The biggest gap was evident across health and diet apps, which were downloaded by 11 per cent of smartphone web users but just 3 per cent of tablet web users – a difference of more than triple. The smallest gap was for property apps – downloaded by 4 per cent of smartphone web users and 3 per cent of tablet web users.

Music, the fourth most popular type of app across users of both devices, was downloaded by more than double the amount of smartphone web users compared with tablet web users (25 per cent vs 11 per cent). Obviously, who wants to carry a clunky tablet with her when she is jogging around Central Park in New York or taking a walk in Lodhi Gardens in New Delhi. Similar results were revealed for mapping apps, which are the fifth most popular across both user types, but are downloaded by 22 per cent of smartphone web users compared with 11 per cent of tablet users.

Mobile apps downloaded October 2011 to September 2012 (% of smartphone web users)	Tablet apps downloaded October 2011 to September 2012 (% of tablet web users)
Social networking – 37%	Entertainment (games, digital books etc) – 19%
Entertainment (games, digital books etc) – 32%	Social networking – 18%
Music – 25%	News/weather – 15%
News/weather – 27%	Music – 11%
Maps – 22%	Maps – 11%
Shopping – 18%	Shopping – 10%
Lifestyle – 11%	Lifestyle – 8%
Health and diet – 11%	Sports – 7%
Sports – 18%	Health and diet – 3%
Property – 4%	Property – 3%
Other practical apps – 20%	Other practical apps – 10%
Other – 12%	Other – 4%

April 30, 2013

TRAI gives more time to stakeholders to comment on its order relating to pricing of STBs

NEW DELHI: The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has extended till 3 May, views of stakeholders on its draft tariff orders prescribing standard tariff package for set top boxes in digital addressable cable TV systems (DAS) and consumer premises equipments (CPE) for direct-to-home (DTH) services.

The previous date was 26 April and the extension is on the request of the stakeholders.

Under the order, the standard tariff packages for STB/CPE on rental basis are to be offered mandatorily by DTH and cable TV operators.

The Tariff Order also assumes significance as it attempts for the first time to give inter-operability to consumers of DTH players. The authority is of the view that the interests of the consumers can be largely protected through the provision for commercial interoperability of STB. The commercial interoperability provides an exit option for a subscriber in case he/she wishes to change the operator for any reason.

Accordingly, in the relevant Regulations/Tariff orders of TRAI, it has been mandated that the operators of Digital Addressable Cable TV Systems and DTH operators shall give an option to every subscriber to procure the STB either on outright purchase basis or hire purchase basis or rental basis, or in accordance with the scheme, if any, prescribed by the authority.

While interoperability is available to customers of LCOs, TRAI observed that in case of DTH services, ‘the predominant DAS platforms at the moment, the schemes for CPEs offered to the subscribers by the DTH operators, have wide variations and at times are such that no viable exit option is available to the subscribers. Instead the consumer has to re-invest in new hardware in case of migration from a particular operator or platform. The same may also hold well in case of the upcoming Digital Addressable Cable TV Systems.‘

Standard Tariff Package for STBs for DAS has been worked out. In addition to offering the STB as per the Standard Tariff Package prescribed by the Authority, the operators are free to offer their own schemes for supply of STB to its subscribers in accordance with the existing Regulations/Tariff Orders and the subscribers shall have option to choose from the Standard Tariff Package prescribed by the Authority and the alternative schemes offered by the operators.

The Standard Tariff Package for Cable TV operators has been worked out on the basis of the following facts and figures as provided by the Industry stakeholders/ Associations:-

a) The total cost of STB has been taken as Rs 1750.
b) Life span of STB has been taken as five years.
c) The residual value has been taken as nil.
d) Rental per month is based on cost of STB on Equated Monthly Installment (EMI) Basis @15 per cent per annum (@1.25per cent per month) for a period of sixty months.

The Standard Tariff Package for DTH operators has been worked out on the basis of the following facts and figures as provided by Industry stakeholders/ Associations;

a) The total cost of CPE has been taken as Rs 2250.
b) Life span of CPE has been taken as five years.
c) The residual value has been taken as nil.
d) Rental per month is based on cost of CPE on Equated Monthly Installment (EMI) Basis @15 per cent per annum (@1.25 per cent per month) for a period of sixty months.

The authority has also noted that no monthly rentals will be payable after the period of five years and the Customer Premises Equipment (CPE) will become the property of the subscriber (except smart card/viewing card) after the expiry of five years. An amount equal to the sum of security deposit to be refunded per month and interest per month on balance security deposit has been adjusted in Rent per month per CPE. The Full amount of security deposit stands adjusted in a period of five years.

Up to five years, on returning of the CPE, the Security Deposit shall be refunded, provided that the CPE is not tampered with.

In case of un-installation/discontinuance of service before the last day of the month, balance security deposit shown as refundable at the end of that month will be refunded on return of CPE.

No repair or maintenance charges would be levied by DTH operator on the subscriber, towards repair or maintenance of CPE up to the period of five years from activation of the same. The subscriber, however, shall be liable to pay repair and maintenance charges from sixth year onwards.

No installation charges or re-installation charges (except in case of shifting of connection) or activation charges or smartcard/viewing card charges is to be levied by the DTH operator on the subscriber.

April 29, 2013
Time Warner Cable to offer live mobile TV for iOS

MUMBAI: The Time Warner Cable (TWC) TV mobile app for iOS devices received an upgrade that now allows users to watch from anywhere some of the content which they predominantly viewed from home.

Until recently, to watch any programming through the app, users had to have a connection to the TWC Wi-Fi router in one‘s home. With this service, if users are away from home, they can use any Wi-Fi hotspot and gain access to up to eleven live channels.

The TWC TV app is free for Android devices, PCs, Macs and Roku Boxes, but at the moment it‘s only the iOS version that gets the “TV anywhere” upgrade.

April 29, 2013