Category: Software

MUMBAI: Vh1 and Nokia will partner to launch ‘Shot by You‘ an initiative which will see the creation of a music video with ‘User-Generated-Content‘.

The music video for Indian contemporary rock band Pentagram‘s single ‘Voice‘ will be created using video clips sent in by Nokia consumers. This is bound to push ‘user interactivity‘ into the mainstream media. The music video would be made for Pentagram‘s latest album, ‘It‘s OK. It‘s All Good‘.

Commenting on the partnership, MTVN India managing director Amit Jain said, “This partnership with Nokia best exemplifies ‘Viacom Brand Solutions‘, our approach that goes beyond traditional advertising or sponsorship and focuses on providing innovative marketing solutions to our key clients and brands.”

He further added, “We‘re happy that in Nokia we‘ve found a partner who is willing to take the leap of faith and associate itself with a ground breaking concept that takes their approach of ‘connecting people‘ even further.”

Nokia consumers are invited to listen to the latest track by Pentagram – ‘Voice‘ posted online on www.nokia.co.in, and use their camera phones or video recording devices to shoot video footage that they believe is most appropriate for the sound track and send them to Vh1. The most relevant of the video clips would be selected and integrated by Vh1 to create the music video, which will be launched exclusively on Vh1 in March 2007.

Starting February, Vh1 and Nokia will launch a nation-wide campaign to promote the concept across multiple platforms. The promos of the concept will be seen on Vh1, followed by multi-city ground activation.

Talking about the Nokia initiative Nokia India director marketing Devinder Kishore said “Nokia‘s association with VH1 is an extension of our ‘Music Connects‘ theme, aimed at giving young talent an opportunity to express their creativity with the fusion of music and technology “.

Kishore further added, “With the power of mobility, music enthusiasts will surely have an interesting experience by capturing, sharing and editing their interpretations and creating a video of Pentagram‘s chart topping soundtrack.”

Lead singer of Pentagram Vishal Dadlani says, “It‘s a great way to get our people directly involved with the music, and also, hopefully, to include a wider-than-usual audience. So many thanks to both Nokia and Vh1.”

MUMBAI: Dopod Communication (India) Private Limited, PDA phone and Smartphone provider, has launched a new Windows mobile PDA model called the D600 in the Indian market.

The D600 is powered with the Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0 and is bundled with applications which includes DirectPush Mail*, Internet Explorer Mobile, Office Mobile, Windows Media Player 10 Mobile, Pictures and Videos, Pocket MSN.

Additionally, the D600 combines a full featured quad-band mobile phone, with an inbuilt 2 Mega pixel CMOS Camera, a speakerphone with push-based wireless email, SMS, web browser and personal organizer applications – all on a large and high-resolution colour 71.1mm screen.

The launch follows from a favorable response to the previous three models – the 818Pro, the C800 and the C720W introduced in December 2006 by the company.

The D600 also offers users the option of a Voice Commander, allowing users to dial and control their music easily with their voice. All in all, the D600 model has been specially developed for active mobile professionals who want to manage their work wherever they are and also keep in touch with family, friends and access the latest news, informs an official release.

Dopod Communication (India), regional sales manager Ajay Sharma said, “The D600 has a highly advanced interface and offers Personal Information Management (PIM) which allows users to easily sync the phone with their computer. It also features a sleek and stylish design, resulting in an innovative yet powerful device that is ideal for mobile phone users looking to upgrade from their existing handsets.”

The D600 will be available at all leading counters from 10 February at a maximum retail price of Rs. 22,893 (inclusive of all taxes).

MUMBAI: Dopod Communication (India) Private Limited, PDA phone and Smartphone provider, has launched a new Windows mobile PDA model called the D600 in the Indian market.

The D600 is powered with the Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0 and is bundled with applications which includes DirectPush Mail*, Internet Explorer Mobile, Office Mobile, Windows Media Player 10 Mobile, Pictures and Videos, Pocket MSN.

Additionally, the D600 combines a full featured quad-band mobile phone, with an inbuilt 2 Mega pixel CMOS Camera, a speakerphone with push-based wireless email, SMS, web browser and personal organizer applications – all on a large and high-resolution colour 71.1mm screen.

The launch follows from a favorable response to the previous three models – the 818Pro, the C800 and the C720W introduced in December 2006 by the company.

The D600 also offers users the option of a Voice Commander, allowing users to dial and control their music easily with their voice. All in all, the D600 model has been specially developed for active mobile professionals who want to manage their work wherever they are and also keep in touch with family, friends and access the latest news, informs an official release.

Dopod Communication (India), regional sales manager Ajay Sharma said, “The D600 has a highly advanced interface and offers Personal Information Management (PIM) which allows users to easily sync the phone with their computer. It also features a sleek and stylish design, resulting in an innovative yet powerful device that is ideal for mobile phone users looking to upgrade from their existing handsets.”

The D600 will be available at all leading counters from 10 February at a maximum retail price of Rs. 22,893 (inclusive of all taxes).

MUMBAI: Pyramid Saimira Theatre Ltd has entered into a joint venture with Kuala Lumpur based film distribution company M/s. Asian Integrated Industries Sdn. Bhd to set up a theatre chain in Malaysia with 150 multiplexes and single screen theatres in Malaysia.

An official announcement issued stated that the JV will be called as “Pyramid Saimira Entertainment Malaysia Sdn Bhd” (subject to approval of concerned authorities) in which both of them shall hold 50 per cent – 50 per cent each.

The investment in the proposed JV will be 2400 million INR (200 million RM) in which both the parties will contribute equally. The goal is to achieve this in next 2-3 years.

Currently, the partnership involves acquiring three screen multiplexes immediately and aiming to operate 10 multiplexes by March 2007.

The new JV will distribute Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam movies, Chinese and Hollywood films and other contents across Malaysia on theatres / DVD / DTH and other methods of exploitation.

Additionally, the JV will create an Eco system for local Malay, Tamil and Chinese film production using local talents and be a catalyst in distributing the same both inside Malaysia and outside Malaysia.

The company will also try to exploit all the upcoming community centers in Malaysia by operating theatres as well as convention halls with video conferencing and family entertainment.

MUMBAI: Online movie rental service Netflix has launched a promotional campaign, in cooperation with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (Amapas).

The aim is to promote tune-in to the 79th Academy Awards telecast while entertaining movie fans at Netflix‘s site. In India the Oscars will air on Star Movies on 26 February.

Rooted in this year‘s Academy Award‘s promotional theme, which highlights some of cinema‘s most unforgettable movie lines, the multi-platform effort will utilise online, broadcast, viral and print vehicles to give consumers a chance to learn more about the great movies behind the memorable Oscar quotes.

The promotion will feature a series of efforts, including specially created editorial content at netflix.com and oscar.com. The program will also gain momentum through a national movie quotes survey, communication on Netflix‘s iconic red mailers, a national radio promotion and a viral video programme.

The Oscar-themed messaging on Netflix‘s home and awards pages includes tune-in information featuring this year‘s Academy Awards key artwork. The site will showcase Netflix‘s library of Academy Award-winning films, and is designed to be a fun and interactive way for consumers to learn more about the movies they love. Oscar.com will in turn feature Netflix in relation to the quotes campaign. Visitors to the Oscar site will be given the opportunity to link to netflix.com to learn more about their movies of interest.

Netflix will also conduct a survey of its members to find out the most memorable and quotable movie lines from 2006. The Netflix viral video programme will capture recognizable personalities, and everyday people, performing their version of memorable movie lines from Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, The Godfather, A Few Good Men and Jerry Maguire.

The footage will be posted on a video wall which can be accessed at www.netflix.com/oscars beginning on 12 February 2007. Consumers can also post their own video, showcasing quotes from the above mentioned movies, on the site. The first 500 participants will be rewarded with a one-month membership to Netflix. Netflix will also link from this dedicated page to oscar.com where pertinent information about this year‘s telecast will be featured.

Netflix chief marketing officer Leslie Kilgore says, “The Academy Awards are the Super Bowl of the movie business, and we‘re extremely pleased to collaborate with the Academy to promote the Oscars and to highlight many of the best loved and best remembered moments in film history.

“The multi-dimensional nature of the campaign will allow us to reach a wide audience and really engage people in an entertaining way.”

MUMBAI: With the prestigious Oscar Awards a few weeks away, Oscar.com, the official site for the 79th Academy Awards, will provide movie fans with a lot of video.

This includes behind-the-scenes content, a sneak peek into Oscar preparations, as well as online sweepstakes and interactive games. In india the oscars will air on Star movies on 26 February.

During Oscar Week, 19-24 February 2007 Oscar.com will feature behind-the-scenes video diaries from the host Ellen DeGeneres as she prepares to host the telecast.

Hosted by Allyson Waterman and Greg Vaughan (star of US broadcaster ABC‘s General Hospital), Road to the Oscars will cover the events that take place during the weeks leading up to the Academy Awards, including footage from pre-Oscar events, interviews and post-show coverage. Road to the Oscars will feature four weekly shows and a daily show from 19 -26 February 2007.

New to Oscar.com this year is a Q&A section with the nominees in which they answer questions. Fans can get to know the stars better. Also new is the Thank You Cam, where fans can see the first exclusive comments from the winners as they leave the stage with their Oscar statuette.

Tom Julian, Oscar.coms official fashion trend analyst, will give fans a look into red carpet style with exclusive one-on-one visits with fashion designers. Julian will also take fans back in time with the Evolution of Style page.

In addition Oscar.com will launch two exclusive promotions, Find the 79s and Predict the Winners. A watch-and-win contest, viewers can tune in during the live show to look for hidden 79s placed throughout the telecast. At the end of the telecast, viewers may log on to Oscar.com and submit a list of where the symbols appeared for a chance to win great prizes. Predict the Winners offers fans a chance to test their skills on their Oscar predictions. On Oscar.com fans may follow along with printable ballots.

Users can also log on on 26 February 2007 to watch backstage interview footage with the winners of the 79th Academy Awards.

Furthermore Oscar.com also has interactive games, including Your Perfect Oscar Date. This allows players to determine which celebrities would make their perfect Oscar night date. Which Character Are You? aims to keep players guessing about which memorable movie character they are most similar to.

The challenge for the Academy though will be viewership. Apart from The Departed which made over $100 million the other four films nominated for best picture have not made much money at the box office. Their combined box office take is only slightly more than what last year‘s nominees had made which was the lowest ever.

In fact Clint Eastwood‘s Letters From Iwo Jima a second world war film told from Japan‘s perspective has made only a little over two million dollars. The Queen which stars Oscar favourite Helen Mirren as Queen Elizabeth II made a modest $35 million. Babel made a little over $ 23 million.

MUMBAI: Tivo which creates television services for digital video recorders (DVRs) in the US has selected The Kaplan Thaler Group to serve as the creative resource for its advertising efforts.

Tivo VP consumer marketing, Katie Ho says, “Our desire to invest in marketing to educate consumers about the clearly differentiated feature set of the Tivo service requires us to develop a broader, more sustained national consumer advertising presence in the coming year. We‘re excited to partner with The Kaplan Thaler Group, given their strong strategic thinking, fresh ideas and their exceptional ability to capture the essence of our brand.”

The Kaplan Thaler Group CEO and chief creative officer Linda Kaplan Thaler says, “Tivo is a cultural icon and an incredibly strong brand among American consumers. This is a great, strategic win for us. We have the opportunity to not only work with a group of progressive and creative thinkers, but to apply our unique philosophy to get people to sit up and
take notice of Tivo.”

MUMBAI: The Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro)-built INSAT-4B, which is mainly meant for direct-to-home (dth) television services, is slated for launch from the European spaceport of Kourou in French Guiana on 10 March.

The Rs 3 billion telecom satellite, which is identical to INSAT-4A, carries 12 Ku-band and 12 C-band transponders. European space consortium Arianespace will carry out the launch. It will cost around $ 50 million, according to a press release.

As had been reported last month by Indiantelevision.com one likely customer for the KU band transponders is Kalanithi Maran‘s Sun Group, which had booked space last year on the failed Insat-4C for its DTH venture Sun Direct.

Sun TV had booked six transponders for DTH and one for DSNG (digital satellite news gathering) on Insat-4C.

MUMBAI: YouTube, the online video sharing site from Google faces yet another controversy as Viacom asks the website to remove more than 100,000 unauthorized clips from its hugely popular video-sharing site.

Viacom has been through several rounds of talks with YouTube and Google but has not managed a breakthrough as far as ‘filtering‘ or ‘revenue sharing‘ for clips and video is concerned.

Viacom said in a statement that after several months of talks with the website “it has become clear that YouTube is unwilling to come to a fair market agreement that would make Viacom content available to YouTube users.”

Viacom has repeatedly negotiated with YouTube and Google to deliver on several “filtering tools” to control unauthorized video from appearing on the site.Although the company is asking YouTube to take the clips down, it has not taken legal action.Under federal copyright law, online services such as YouTube are generally immune from liability as long as it responds to takedown requests. But the legal lines blur when another user posts the same video.YouTube said in a statement that it would comply with the request from Viacom and said that it cooperates “with all copyright holders to identify and promptly remove infringing content as soon as we are officially notified.”

In November, YouTube had agreed to delete nearly 30,000 files after the Japan Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers complained of copyright infringement.Some media companies such as CBS Corp. and General Electric Co., NBC Universal have made deals to allow YouTube to use video clips from their programming. But the site is yet to agree over ways to get compensated for the use of their copyrighted material.Universal Music Group had threatened legal action for copyright infringement and piracy of music videos. It later reached a licensing deal with them last year.Despite Viacom‘s problems with YouTube, the company‘s MTV Networks division reached a licensing deal last year with Google that allows the search company‘s video service to use clips from MTV and its sibling networks under a revenue-sharing agreement

MUMBAI: In a statemjent before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, US media watchdog Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman Kevin Martin notes that almost all of today‘s innovation is enabled by broadband deployment.

“Broadband technology is a key driver of economic growth. The ability to share increasing amounts of information, at greater and greater speeds, increases productivity, facilitates interstate commerce, and helps drive innovation. But perhaps most important, broadband has the potential to affect almost every aspect of our lives.

In 2005, the FCC created a deregulatory environment that fueled private sector investment. Since then, companies have begun racing to lay fiber to homes in the US. From March of 2005 to the end of last year, the number of homes passed by fiber increased from 1.6 million to 6.1 million, he notes.

Just as significant for consumers, the average price of broadband has dropped in the past two years. The Pew Internet and American Life Project (Pew) found that, from February 2004 to December 2005, the average price for home broadband access fell from $39 per month to $36 per month. For DSL, monthly bills fell from $38 to $32 (almost 20 per cent), while cable modem users reported no change from $41 during the same period.

The decline in price was accompanied by an increase in the number of Americans subscribing to high speed connections to the Internet. Such connections have grown by nearly 600 per cent since 2001. And according to the Commission‘s most recent data, high-speed connections increased by 26 per cent in the first half of 2006 and by 52 per cent for the year ending 30 June, 2006.

The FCC, he says, is making available as much spectrum as possible to put the next generation of advanced wireless devices into the hands and homes of consumers. In September the FCC closed its largest and most successful spectrum auction, raising almost $14 billion. The spectrum offered was the largest amount of spectrum suitable for deploying wireless broadband ever made available in a single FCC auction. “And we are currently preparing to auction 60 MHz in the 700 MHz band, spectrum that is also well-suited for the provision of wireless broadband” he adds

Moreover, the number of consumers who receive their broadband connection through satellite or wireless will continue to increase, as new satellite services are launched, rural wireless Internet service providers continue to grow, and Wi-Fi hotspots continue to sprout up across the country. “Indeed, there are nearly 50,000 Wi-Fi hotspots throughout the US, more than three times the number of any other country”.

Media: He notes that as has been the case with the telecom sector, consumers and companies are benefiting from technological developments and innovation in media. DVR‘s, Vod and HD programming offer them more programming to watch at any given time then ever before. Thanks largely to new services like these, cable operators‘ total revenue grew from $65.7 billion to approximately $73 billion last year.

At the same time while consumers have enormous choice among channels, they have little control over how many channels they are able to buy. For those who want to receive 100 channels or more, today‘s most popular cable packages may be a good value. But according to Nielson, most viewers watch fewer then two dozen channels. For them, the deal isn‘t as good.

The cost of basic cable services have gone up at a disproportionate rate – 38 per cent between 2000 and 2005 – when compared against other communications sectors. The average price of the expanded basic cable package, the standard cable package, almost doubled between 1995 and 2005, increasing by 93 per cent.

Martin notes that the increase in cable prices appears even more dramatic when viewed relative to the prices for a number of other communications services: prices for long distance, international, and wireless telephone service have all decreased dramatically during this same timeframe.

Progress in satellite: 10 years ago the satellite industry was nascent. Today, Direct Broadcast Satellite (DBS) provides consumers an important competitive choice. And satellite offerings are sometimes the only multi-channel video option for rural Americans. Between 2000 and 2006, DBS subscribership grew 100 per centand average revenue per user grew 32 per cent. Like DBS, satellite radio also has experienced significant growth. Subscriptions have increased from 1.6 million in 2003 to 13.6 million subscribers in 2006.

“The transition from analog to digital technology poses both opportunities and challenges for the broadcast sector. The new and better services that digital technology enables are great for consumers, who will have access to more free news, information and entertainment.

The way forward: Martin notes that there are four areas that deserve particular attention.

“First, we must continue to increase access to communications services. I will continue to make broadband deployment the Commission‘s top priority.

“As wireless technologies become an increasingly important platform for broadband access, it is critical to ensure that there is adequate spectrum available for providing broadband service.

“Second, we must continue to promote real choice for consumers. Competition and choice in the video services market will benefit the consumer by resulting in lower prices, higher quality of services, and generally enhancing the consumers‘ experience by giving them greater control over the purchased video programming.

“We need to continue our efforts to create a regulatory environment that encourages entry into this market and more choice for consumers. This includes making sure that competitive providers have access to “must-have” programming that is vertically integrated with a cable operator.”

Martin says that the FCC also needs to ensure that existing service providers are not standing in the way of the innovations currently occurring in the consumer electronics space. Consumers want to be able to walk into a store, buy a new television set or Tivo, take it home, and plug it in as easily as they do with a telephone.

Third, he says that the FCC must continue to protect consumers. “We must always be on alert for companies intentionally or unintentionally harming consumers.

Martin says that perhaps no other issue before the Commission garners more public interest then its quadrennial review of media ownership rules. This attention according to him is understandable given that the media touches almost every aspect of American lives. “We must make sure that consumers have the benefit of a competitive and diverse media marketplace. At our public hearings, the Commission has heard a consistent concern that there are too few local and diverse voices in the community. Certainly, we need to protect localism and diversity in the media. We must balance concerns about too much consolidation and too little choice, however, with appropriate consideration of the changes and innovation that are taking place in the media marketplace.”

Fourth and finally he notes that the FCC must work towards enhancing public safety.