Category: Software

MUMBAI: US broadcaster NBC has announced that from today, when its music competition series ‘The Voice‘ goes live, fans of the show will be able to vote for their favourite artists via a new app on their Facebook timeline.

The app, which enables people to share their viewing and voting with their friends, creates social voting options for any network competition series while providing a deeply engaging experience for fans.

The timeline app was announced by NBC Universal Digital Entertainment president Vivi Zigler and Facebook director of platform partnerships Justin Osofksy.

Zigler said, “What better show to launch a new Facebook timeline experience with than ‘The Voice‘? This app gives our already socially savvy fans another way to connect and share. From declaring their favourite artist to discovering friends‘ preferences to interacting with more content, the app creates a fully social online voting experience.”

With the timeline app, fans will be able to show their support for their favourite teams and artists by casting their vote each week, connecting with their friends and other viewers, tracking their artists and seeing if they made it to the next round. The new app also will allow them to discover new content, including performance videos and blogs. Additionally, people using the Facebook app on their iPhone, iPad and Android devices will also be able to engage with “The Voice” timeline voting app.

Osofsky said, “We‘ve always watched and talked about TV shows with friends and family. The Voice‘s timeline app for Facebook will make it easy for people to do this online, enabling fans to vote for their favourite singers and share their votes with friends.”

NEW DELHI: Airtel digital TV (HD), the DTH service by Bharti Airtel, has been recognised as ‘Product of the year 2012’ in an independent survey conducted by the research team AC Nielsen.

Product of the year is an internationally recognised standard that celebrates, champions and rewards the best innovations in retail basis feedback of consumers.

Bharti Airtel CEO (DTH) Shashi Arora said, “For us at Airtel, the genesis of all our innovations lies in the requirements of our customers. Therefore, this accolade is truly a fitting endorsement of our customer centric approach. It is also an acknowledgement of the hard work put in by our team since the launch of Airtel digital TV in India. Rest assured, we will continue to raise the bar for offering the best in digital TV for our stakeholders”.

To participate, companies have to first nominate the product which is subsequently funneled down by a panel of eminent citizens and very senior media people. The shortlisted names are put through an independent and 100 per cent face to face consumer survey conducted by Nielsen across 30,000 respondents in 36 markets.

MUMBAI: Tribune television stations have been switched off across DirecTV‘s 19 markets in the US after the two parties failed to reach an agreement over commercial terms leading to DirecTV subscribers being denied access programming provided by those stations.

DirecTV subscribers will also be unable to watch WGN America, Tribune’s national cable network.

Tribune Broadcasting’s contract with DirecTV expired at midnight 31 March.

As per US federal law, without an agreement in place, DirecTV cannot carry the signal of Tribune’s local television stations. Tribune’s local stations in the eastern time zone will be the first to be denied by DirecTV to its subscribers. Stations in other time zones will follow, the company said in a statement.

“This situation is extremely unfortunate. We don’t want anyone to lose the valuable programming we provide, but we simply cannot get fair compensation from DirecTV and we cannot allow DirecTV to continue taking advantage of us,” said Tribune Broadcasting president Nils Larsen.

Tribune contended that DirecTV has never compensated Tribune for the rebroadcast of its television stations and Tribune is asking for an agreement that is similar to those that DirecTV already has in place with hundreds of other broadcasters and programme providers.

“As baseball season gets underway, DirecTV’s inflexibility means sports fans in some of our local markets such as Chicago, Philadelphia, and Washington, will be deprived of one of baseball’s most cherished events—Opening Day,” said Larsen.

“In addition, local news, weather, traffic and sports coverage will also be lost, as well as the high-quality entertainment programming we offer on our local stations. This is a terrible outcome for the communities we serve and we regret that DirecTV has put us in this position.”

DirecTV subscribers who want to acess content provided by Tribune television stattions can, however, avail other options, “They don’t have to miss their regular news or favourite shows. Our broadcast stations are available for free in HD with a TV antenna or through an alternative pay-TV provider,” Larsen stated.

MUMBAI: AS Kiran Kumar, distinguished scientist and associate director, Space Applications Centre (SAC), Ahmedabad, has assumed the office of Director, Space Applications Centre.

Kumar took over the charge from Dr R R Navalgund.

Joining SAC/Isro in 1975, Kumar has made immense contribution to the design and development of Electro-Optical Imaging Sensors for Airborne, Low Earth Orbit and Geostationary orbit satellites starting from Bhaskara TV payload to the latest Terrain Mapping Camera and Hyperspectral Imager payloads for Chandrayaan-1 mission. He has made significant contributions to the task of evolving the observation strategy encompassing land, ocean, atmospheric and planetary studies.

As Associate Director of Space Applications Centre, Kumar has steered the design and realisation of communication, navigation, microwave and remote sensing payloads.

Kumar obtained B.Sc (Honours) degree in Physics and M.Sc degree in Electronics from Bangalore University as well as M.Tech degree in Physical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.

Kumar is the recipient of many laurels and awards like Indian Society of Remote Sensing Award for the year 1994, VASVIK award (Electronic Sciences and Technology) for the year 1998, Astronautical Society of India Award (Space Sciences and Applications) for the year 2001, Isro Individual Service Award 2006, Bhaskara Award conferred by the Indian Society of Remote Sensing for the year 2007, Laurels for Team Achievement Award 2008 of the International Academy of Astronautics and Isro Performance excellence Award 2008.

He is a fellow of the National Academy of Engineers and Corresponding Member of the International Academy of Astronautics. Kumar has represented Iro in international forums like World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) and Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS) and is currently the chairman of CEOS.

NEW DELHI: Mobile marketing agency ad2c, a joint venture between Japan‘s D2Communications and Singapore-based Affle Group, has acquired India‘s first mobile marketing company MobiMasti.

The acquisition will help ad2c to serve as an independent full service mobile advertising and marketing agency. MobiMasta was started by Anurag Singh, Viraj Singh and Alok Pabalkar as a full service mobile marketing agency to address skill gaps within the mobile marketing value chain. The client brand includes the likes of Samsung, Yahoo, Coca-Cola, Reebok, Adidas and NDTV.

ad2c founder and chairman Anuj Khanna Sohum said, “Backed by credible partners ad2c‘s entry in India will fulfill the need of an experienced and a competent partner to fuel innovations in mobile advertising and communications industry and this we believe would enable the disproportionate growth for mobile advertising in India.”

D2C CEO Takayuki Hoshuyama said, “We will bring to this venture the deep understanding of the mobile platform and the existing formats that can be adapted to the Indian marketplace. In our view there is an interesting similarity between India and Japan; both markets have seen the advent of typical smartphones in the last couple of years. Our success in driving mobile innovations in Japan was not limited by non-availability of smart phones. We will drive ad2c‘s success in the Indian market as our success in Japan.”

D2C is the first company in the world to specialize in mobile advertisement and was established in 2000 as a subsidiary of NTT DOCOMO INC., Dentsu Inc., and NTT Advertising Inc. It has the experience of having worked in the biggest mobile market in the world. According to the Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, in 2010, the mobile content market was about US$8 billion and the market for transactions, physical goods and services reached US$13 billion.

ad2c CEO Madan Sanglikar said, “We are delighted to have hit the ground running. We look forward to creating exciting and engaging innovations for Indian companies going forward. Mobile‘s popularity among the brands will be driven by the platform‘s ability to offer location based consumer offers, interactivity. It will drive immediate call to action and provide rich media content apart from giving high return on investments to clients. Those days of only 50 per cent of advertising working for brands are over. Mobile marketing will bring in greater accountability.”

Dentsu India Group executive chairman Rohit Ohri said, “We are delighted with the extension of the Dentsu family in India. ad2c will certainly add to Dentsu India Group‘s capabilities in providing latest and coolest mobile innovations to our clients. We are convinced about the growing importance of the use of mobile in the marketing mix of all brands. With ad2c‘s launch the important gap of a credible partner who could help in addressing marketing challenges and pushing brand messages using the mobile platform, has been filled.”

MUMBAI: DeNA Co, Japan‘s leading mobile social gaming platform operator, and The Walt Disney Company (Japan) have joined hands to create social mobile games through DeNA Group‘s Mobage social gaming platform.

The tie-up also underscores the push by Disney, which two years ago bought social network game developer Playdom, to get more of its characters online to help promote its businesses and films such as the upcoming “The Avengers.”

The two companies launched their first jointly developed social game, Disney Party, on 28 March on the Mobage network in Japan, which currently serves over 35 million in the country.

DeNA and Disney plan to launch their second title, Disney Fantasy Quest, on 2 April, and the third title based on Marvel Comics characters this summer in Japan.

Localised versions of Disney Party, Disney Fantasy Quest and the Marvel-based title are also scheduled to launch as smartphone apps after July on Mobage Global for North America and Europe, Mobage China, and Daum Mobage for South Korea.

The three titles will be DeNA‘s first jointly developed titles to be released outside of Japan. DeNA and Disney are considering development of additional new titles for worldwide market in the future.

Under the agreement, the two companies plan to work together in areas beyond social games, such as Disney movies, Disney TV programmes and Disney smart phone apps.

“Disney‘s characters and stories have cross-border and cross-generational appeal,” said DeNA Representative Director and President Isao Moriyasu. “DeNA has enormous reach around the world with its proven cross-device platform for mobile social games. Together, we can delight millions of players with games featuring Disney‘s and Marvel‘s beloved characters.”

“We are very excited about working closely with DeNA, which is the market leader of mobile games, to provide great new services,” said The Walt Disney Company (Japan) President Paul Candland. “We are also looking forward to inviting our audiences all over the world to enjoy Japan made original game content through DeNA‘s global platform.”

MUMBAI: US broadcaster Disney/ABC Television Group’s ABC Research team and media research company Nielsen have announced a new and significant initiative to substantially improve understanding of how people use iPads, for video consumption and other activities.

With Apple now reporting more than 55 million iPads sold to date and 3 million new iPads sold since 16 March, the importance of understanding how, when and where consumers use tablets is a top priority for the media industry.

For the study, ABC Research commissioned Nielsen to build a proprietary, opt-in Nielsen metered iPad panel to aggregate and measure video consumption, app usage and other activity over the course of a year. Approximately 200 respondents will be asked to download the meter, which will measure reach, duration, frequency and page views of their iPad apps and web usage. As a result, the study will offer the first view of actual behavior – as opposed to self-reported data – along with demographic trends and yearlong
insights.

Disney Media Networks executive VP of strategy and research Peter Seymour said, “We have been actively studying consumer tablet usage through our own data for two years, and believe Nielsen’s proprietary technology has the potential to deliver unprecedented additional details about consumer viewing patterns. This study will help us — and ultimately the entire industry — to better understand our consumers, the complete tablet environment and the role our content plays on this fast growing and popular device.”

ABC senior VP, research Charles Kennedy will provide some preliminary results of the study at today’s Advertiser Research Foundation’s re:Think conference. Initial data will include information on when web and app usage is heaviest on the iPad, as well as an overview on “A Day in the Life” of a tablet user who interacts with the ABC Player app.

The on-going study will measure reach, duration, frequency and page views of respondents’ iPad apps and web usage using a propriety downloadable meter.

Nielsen executive VP Cheryl Idell said, “With our unique metering capabilities, this work with ABC represents a significant step forward in understanding how consumers are using and bringing the iPad into their day-to-day. The insight gleaned from this study, using these metering capabilities, is an example of how we meet our commitment to deliver cross-platform understanding to the industry and provide broader understanding of consumers.”

MUMBAI: comScore, which measures the digital world, has released an overview of mobile news access across the five European markets (France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK) using the comScore MobiLens service.

The study showed that nearly 37 per cent of smartphone users in EU5 reported accessing news sites via an app or browser in January 2012, showing an increase of 74 per cent over the past year. For EU5 smartphone users who accessed news sites on a near-daily basis, the growth rate was even stronger at 82 per cent. The UK showed the highest penetration with nearly half (46.8 per cent) of smartphone users reporting having accessed news sites at least once in the past month.

comScore Europe product manager for mobile Hesham Al-Jehani said, “The continued growth in smartphone adoption in Europe has fuelled the increasing consumption of news and information on-the-go. Today’s mobile consumer wants to be plugged into what’s happening around them every second of the day, and their smartphones are enabling them to do that. This rapidly changing trend brings with it significant incremental opportunity for news publishers to extend their audiences, but also the challenges of delivering their content effectively through the small screen.”

Spain Shows Highest Growth in Smartphone News Audience: In EU5, smartphone users accessing news sites via an app or browser at least once a month increased 74 per cent to 39.5 million during the three month average ending January 2012. The near-daily smartphone news audience showed an even stronger increase of 82 per cent (12.7 million) during the same time period. The Spanish smartphone audience reported the strongest gains in this behaviour in the past year with a 127 per cent increase in monthly news access and a 160 per cent increase in near-daily news access.

Growth in News Access Amongst Smartphone Audience:

More than 1 in 3 EU5 Smartphone users access news sites monthly. In the three month average ending January 2012, 39.5 million EU5 smartphone users accessed news sites via an app or browser on a monthly basis, representing 36.9 per cent of the total EU5 smartphone audience. The UK showed the highest penetration for mobile news access for all usage frequencies, with 46.8 per cent of its smartphone audience accessing news at least once monthly

MUMBAI: JCA, the London-based digital specialist, has announced a partnership with Shine International, the sales and distribution arm of media company Shine Group.

The deal will see JCA provide Shine International with services including tape duplication, encoding, digital delivery and quality control of both tape and file assets.

JCA will deliver services to Shine International through its online Media Window platform, enabling an end-to-end management system from initial order entry to final delivery tracking and even digital distribution of content.

Shine International head of operations Vicky Albon commented, “Shine International is responsible for the distribution of more than 3,000 hours of broadcast content annually. With the recent relocation of Shine International headquarters to London, it was important for us to select a local partner we could trust to assist fully in managing the transition from LA to London. JCA’s experience and expertise made them a natural partner choice and we’re delighted to be utilising their Media Window platform.”

CA’s two-year deal with Shine International directly follows its successful alliance with LA-based SMV Complete Media. Launching its international partner programme earlier this year, JCA is forming alliances worldwide in order to extend its services to global clients.

JCA commercial director Matt Bowman said, “Providing media companies with a first-class and reliable service is at the core of what JCA does and we look forward to supporting and facilitating Shine International in reaching its business objectives. Through the JCA Media Window, we can efficiently and effectively supply Shine International with services that will fully support its global reach.”

NEW DELHI: The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has extended till 3 April the last date for written comments on “Amendment in the ISP Licence Agreement for incorporating the terms and conditions mentioned in Notice Inviting Applications (NIA) dated 25.12.2010 for use of Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) spectrum”.
 
Trai had issued a consultation paper on the subject on 15 March and sought comments of stakeholders by 26 March.

However, the date has been extended as ‘some stakeholders have requested for further extension of time for sending their comments‘.