Seth Gilbert, 08-22-2008
It’s a presidential election year and mobilizing potential voters, especially young ones, is an important activity. To advance the cause, youth centered voting activist organization, Rock the Vote, has creatively partnered with Microsoft’s Xbox Live online gaming community.
Beginning Monday August 25, the first day of the democratic National Convention, Xbox LIVE members will be able to register to vote, share opinions, interact and participate in polls through the console community.
While we’ve covered some clever nontraditional uses of game consoles before, this has to rate near the top of the list. It is up there just slightly behind using Wii controllers for robotics or Stanford’s groundbreaking Folding@home molecular research project.
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Seth Gilbert,
Follow that phone… is the iPhone heading to Russia? Deal or no deal?
Reuters UK has reported it may be there in October. An unnamed source cited in an article from the news bureau says an agreement has been reached between Apple and Mobile TeleSystems (MTS), Russia’s largest mobile network operator.
No details have emerged and neither side has issued a statement confirming the report.
At this point, with only an an anonymous source, it remains very possible the story could turn out to be incorrect. Three mobile providers, MTS, Vimpelcom and MegaFon have all been vying for iPhone rights in Russia. As was the case with Japanese carrier rights before the phone’s launch, reports and rumor around the web and blogosphere (including the Reuters report) have, at different times, put Apple in discussions with all three.
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Seth Gilbert, 08-21-2008
Apple’s broken sales records in many of their recent quarters including the last but when forecasts were given for the current quarter, Apple was particularly conservative. Citing a “product transition” widely believed to involve Macbook notebooks, the company forecast only a Q4 earnings result of $1 per share on sales of $7.8b. Analysts were looking for $1.24 a share on sales of $8.3b. Midway through the quarter, some analysts are now starting to set out projections that turn Apple’s conservatism upside down.
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Seth Gilbert,
Yahoo’s proxy fight is over, the board seats have been filled, and the disruption of Microsoft’s bid seems past, but there continues to be some attrition at senior roles. The report today is that Yahoo’s senior vice president Todd Teresi, who’s headed the Publisher Channel for the last year, will jump ship to join Web site metrics firm Quantcast.
At Yahoo, Teresi was responsible for managing off-network partnerships. He was at Yahoo for about ten years. Prior to joining Yahoo!, he was a founding member of the high-technology mergers and acquisitions practice at PricewaterhouseCoopers.
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Seth Gilbert,
Convergence is the keyword and just about every media and technology company with a chip in the game is betting on it through some form of technology or content integration. Wednesday at the Intel Developers Conference, the biggest news among many announcements was the surprise pitch that Intel and Yahoo are joining together in a tie-up aimed at grabbing one of the biggest prizes: the marriage of Internet interactivity and traditional TV. They’re calling the offering “Widget Channel.”
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Seth Gilbert, 08-20-2008
When watching old movies, there’s always a prominent credit for Technicolor. When future generations look back on movies from our era, they may be shown a similar credit for Intel. The company known for being “Inside” our computers appears to be working just as diligently “behind”the scenes of Hollywood to advance the cause of 3D-Movie Making.
At the Intel Developers conference Wednesday, the 800lb Gorilla of the chip industry reaffirmed their deal with DreamWorks Animation. Jeffrey Katzenberg, the co founder and CEO of the studio was on hand to demonstrate what their joint venture is yielding.
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Seth Gilbert,
Wednesday was a busy day for Sony. The company’s gaming division used the Games Convention in Leipzig, Germany to reveal a number of new hardware offerings.
Topping the list was a new SKU for the Playstation 3 platform. With Sony’s focus evolving more and more toward connected entertainment, “PS3 owner’s are demanding more storage capacity,” said Jack Treton, President and CEO of SCEA. Sony will try and answer the call with a 160GB capacity PS3.
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