via netnewscheck.com
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
Sandy Took Down 25% of NYC Cell Towers
NEW YORK (AP) -- Superstorm Sandy knocked out a quarter of the cell towers in an area spreading across 10 states, and the situation could get worse, federal regulators said Tuesday.
Many cell towers that are still working are doing so with the help of generators and could run out of fuel before commercial power is restored, the Federal Communications Commission said.
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The landline phone network has held up better in the affected area, which stretches from Virginia to Massachusetts, the FCC said, but about a quarter of cable customers are also without service.
The FCC did not have an estimate for the number of people in the affected area.
Call centers for 911 service have held up relatively well, with only a few failures, according to FCC chairman Julius Genachowski. Calls to those centers are being rerouted, but operators may not be getting the automatic location information that 911 centers normally receive.
Sandy left widespread destruction, but the water welling into southern Manhattan drenched one of the world's densest communications nodes, taking out popular websites and forcing telecom carriers to reroute international traffic.
As commercial power was cut to the southern tip of Manhattan on Monday, data centers and facilities of phone companies in the Wall Street area were forced to switch to diesel generators. Data centers that failed to keep running on backup power brought down news and gossip sites Gawker, Huffington Post and many popular New York-based blogs.
Gawker was still down Tuesday afternoon, but Huffington Post was back online. Their webhost, Datagram Inc., said power was out and flooding in their basement was preventing their backup generators from pumping fuel. Internet connectivity from three providers was also down.
Verizon Communications Inc., the biggest phone company in the region, had some of its facilities in downtown Manhattan flooded, shutting down phone and Internet service.
Further uptown, data centers hosted in a "telecom hotel" that spans a whole block and houses Google's New York headquarters were reporting outages as well, apparently because backup power failed when commercial power was cut Monday evening.
Renesys Corp., which monitors the pathways of the Internet, said the storm caused major outages in New Jersey and New York. The city is a major transit point for international telecommunications traffic, and the firm said carriers were scrambling to route traffic around it.
Cablevision Systems Corp., which serves parts of Long Island, New York City and New Jersey, said it's experiencing widespread outages due to the loss of power. The company said it doesn't yet know the extent of outages in New Jersey, which bore the brunt of the storm.
Time Warner Cable Inc., the other big New York-area cable company, said it had no reports of significant damage to its network, but customers without power had no cable service.
AT&T Inc. said there are "issues" in hard-hit areas, and it's in the early stages of checking for damage and restoring service.
via netnewscheck.com
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
Hurricane Sandy tests mobile's mettle for always-on capability
From Mobile Marketer
With Hurricane Sandy leaving its mark on the East Coast of the United States, mobile is proving its mettle as an always-on medium.
Industry experts agree that news and weather mobile sites are likely to see the biggest impact. Additionally, marketers are making sure they are monitoring their mobile site performance to make sure it is up-to-par.
“Keynote is going to be watching mobile and Web site performance closely today and throughout the storm and the cleanup,” said Daniel C. Berkowitz, senior director of corporate communications at Keynote Systems Inc., San Mateo, CA. “We expect problems, but we won’t know until the storm actually makes landfall.
Monday, October 15, 2012
Wii Price Cut
Nintendo Cuts Wii Price To $130 In U.S.
Nintendo announced Monday that it is dropping the price of its Wii console to $130 in the U.S. as it prepares to sell the next-generation Wii U in a little over a month. The new offer shaves $20 off the previous Wii price. To sweeten the deal on the six-year-old console, Nintendo is offering a complete package — a black console, a Wii Remote Plus, Nunchuck controller, and two-game bundle of Wii Sports, and Wii Sports Resort. Both games are on the same disc. The Wii U, Nintendo’s new console, is due in stores on Nov. 18 and will have a 23-game mix of original and ported titles already on other consoles. These include “Assassin’s Creed III,” “New Super Mario Bros. U,” and “Call of Duty Black Ops II.”
Washington Post
Nintendo announced Monday that it is dropping the price of its Wii console to $130 in the U.S. as it prepares to sell the next-generation Wii U in a little over a month. The new offer shaves $20 off the previous Wii price. To sweeten the deal on the six-year-old console, Nintendo is offering a complete package — a black console, a Wii Remote Plus, Nunchuck controller, and two-game bundle of Wii Sports, and Wii Sports Resort. Both games are on the same disc. The Wii U, Nintendo’s new console, is due in stores on Nov. 18 and will have a 23-game mix of original and ported titles already on other consoles. These include “Assassin’s Creed III,” “New Super Mario Bros. U,” and “Call of Duty Black Ops II.”
Washington Post
Xbox Music Launched
Microsoft Launches Xbox Music Service
Microsoft Corp on Monday announced that Xbox Music, a digital music service to vie with Apple Inc's iTunes and Amazon.com Inc's Cloud Player, will be available for its Xbox game consoles on Tuesday. Xbox Music will offer access to a global catalog of about 30 million songs. The service will let consumers listen free to any song on computers and tablets running the latest version of its Windows software, as well as on the Xbox console. Microsoft will not initially limit how much music can be streamed, though that could change over time. The service will be expanded to Windows software-based computers and tablets, including the upcoming Surface tablet, from October 26, when Microsoft launches Windows 8. It will be expanded to phones shortly after that. The world's largest software maker has been trying for years to make the household living room an entertainment hub with its Xbox. More than 67 million units have been sold since 2005. About 18 months ago, the company realized that Xbox users were spending half to 60% of their time on entertainment services rather than video gaming, Xbox Music general manager Jerry Johnson said.
Reuters
New York Times
Microsoft Corp on Monday announced that Xbox Music, a digital music service to vie with Apple Inc's iTunes and Amazon.com Inc's Cloud Player, will be available for its Xbox game consoles on Tuesday. Xbox Music will offer access to a global catalog of about 30 million songs. The service will let consumers listen free to any song on computers and tablets running the latest version of its Windows software, as well as on the Xbox console. Microsoft will not initially limit how much music can be streamed, though that could change over time. The service will be expanded to Windows software-based computers and tablets, including the upcoming Surface tablet, from October 26, when Microsoft launches Windows 8. It will be expanded to phones shortly after that. The world's largest software maker has been trying for years to make the household living room an entertainment hub with its Xbox. More than 67 million units have been sold since 2005. About 18 months ago, the company realized that Xbox users were spending half to 60% of their time on entertainment services rather than video gaming, Xbox Music general manager Jerry Johnson said.
Reuters
New York Times
Friday, October 12, 2012
Owning News No Longer Sustainable
Andrew Miller, CEO of the Guardian Media Group, speaking at Guardian's Future of Digital Media event, said digital brings in 30% of GMG's revenue and that, while "digital is fantastic," he worried about the sustainability of the business: "It's a completely different place we're in now," Miller said. "News organizations 'owning' news just is no longer a sustainable business model."
via netnewscheck.com
Thursday, October 4, 2012
Ad Age: ‘Digital dimes are turning into mobile pennies’
by Jeff Sonderman Published Oct. 1, 2012 4:17 pm Updated Oct. 2, 2012 11:16 am
PEJ | Ad Age | IAB | Econsultancy
The Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism released the results of a significant study today on the state of mobile news consumption in America. Pew found that some people consume more news after acquiring tablets and that getting news is the second most popular activity on tablets behind emailing. It also sheds light on the difference between people who use apps vs. the Web to get their news.Poynter’s Rick Edmonds looks at the business implications: While tablet ownership doubled to 22 percent in the past year, those tablet owners don’t want to pay for content and they aren’t crazy about advertising either. That leads Rick to conclude that “bundled subscriptions are looking better than ever.”
Mobile ads don’t inspire hope
The state of mobile advertising is getting a lot of attention as well, as Advertising Week kicks off today in New York. Ad Age writer Jason Del Rey notes that desktop Web ads go for about $3.50 CPM on average, but mobile ads are fetching only 75 cents CPM.
If publishers once lamented that offline dollars turned into “digital dimes” as content and audiences moved to the Web, here’s what might be keeping them up at night: Digital dimes are turning into mobile pennies.
The "Pull" ad format is one of five "rising stars" the IAB is highlighting for the future of mobile ads.
There is some hope for the future of mobile ads. The industry-standard-setting Interactive Advertising Bureau is showcasing five innovative new mobile ad formats that leave Web banner ads in the dust. The ad formats are interactive and customized to suit mobile screens, and hopefully that premium quality could lead to higher revenue.
An analysis on the Econsultancy blog asks, can the mobile ad market “really overtake television, which still generates more than double the revenue produced by all Web advertising?” Patricio Robles points out four factors holding back mobile ads: Small screen sizes, questionable effectiveness, user annoyance and a glut of inventory.
Forbes Chief Product Officer Lewis DVorkin writes that the tricky transition to mobile is what keeps him up at night. He concludes “there is really no magic bullet for mobile success,” but there are helpful steps Forbes is taking now.
Politico Pro chooses Web over apps
One more notable development: Politico Pro has relaunched its website with a responsive design that adapts to smartphone and tablet screens. Editor-in-Chief Tim Grieve tells me Politico Pro plans to forgo native mobile or tablet apps, since its new adaptive website “seems to do about 95 percent of what an app would do, and it gives us the flexibility to innovate on the fly in a way that a series of apps wouldn’t.”
The new site loads quickly and adjusts fluidly, thanks to a concerted mobile-first design effort, CTO Ryan Mannion told me. Developers reduced the number of embedded images, limited external javascript calls for plugins and ads, prioritized the loading of content elements, and used a heavy dose of caching to make page loading “faster and cleaner,” he said. Worth a look.
Related: Nat Ives’ in-depth report on The Daily, and whether it has a future (Ad Age).
Correction: This post originally misspelled the name of Jason Del Rey.
Tags: Advertising, Mobile, Politico, Responsive design, Tablets, Web apps
Related Posts
via poynter.org
Ad Age: ‘Digital dimes are turning into mobile pennies’
PEJ | Ad Age | IAB | Econsultancy
The Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism released the results of a significant study today on the state of mobile news consumption in America. Pew found that some people consume more news after acquiring tablets and that getting news is the second most popular activity on tablets behind emailing. It also sheds light on the difference between people who use apps vs. the Web to get their news.Poynter’s Rick Edmonds looks at the business implications: While tablet ownership doubled to 22 percent in the past year, those tablet owners don’t want to pay for content and they aren’t crazy about advertising either. That leads Rick to conclude that “bundled subscriptions are looking better than ever.”
Mobile ads don’t inspire hope
The state of mobile advertising is getting a lot of attention as well, as Advertising Week kicks off today in New York. Ad Age writer Jason Del Rey notes that desktop Web ads go for about $3.50 CPM on average, but mobile ads are fetching only 75 cents CPM.
If publishers once lamented that offline dollars turned into “digital dimes” as content and audiences moved to the Web, here’s what might be keeping them up at night: Digital dimes are turning into mobile pennies.
The "Pull" ad format is one of five "rising stars" the IAB is highlighting for the future of mobile ads.
There is some hope for the future of mobile ads. The industry-standard-setting Interactive Advertising Bureau is showcasing five innovative new mobile ad formats that leave Web banner ads in the dust. The ad formats are interactive and customized to suit mobile screens, and hopefully that premium quality could lead to higher revenue.
An analysis on the Econsultancy blog asks, can the mobile ad market “really overtake television, which still generates more than double the revenue produced by all Web advertising?” Patricio Robles points out four factors holding back mobile ads: Small screen sizes, questionable effectiveness, user annoyance and a glut of inventory.
Forbes Chief Product Officer Lewis DVorkin writes that the tricky transition to mobile is what keeps him up at night. He concludes “there is really no magic bullet for mobile success,” but there are helpful steps Forbes is taking now.
Politico Pro chooses Web over apps
One more notable development: Politico Pro has relaunched its website with a responsive design that adapts to smartphone and tablet screens. Editor-in-Chief Tim Grieve tells me Politico Pro plans to forgo native mobile or tablet apps, since its new adaptive website “seems to do about 95 percent of what an app would do, and it gives us the flexibility to innovate on the fly in a way that a series of apps wouldn’t.”
The new site loads quickly and adjusts fluidly, thanks to a concerted mobile-first design effort, CTO Ryan Mannion told me. Developers reduced the number of embedded images, limited external javascript calls for plugins and ads, prioritized the loading of content elements, and used a heavy dose of caching to make page loading “faster and cleaner,” he said. Worth a look.
Related: Nat Ives’ in-depth report on The Daily, and whether it has a future (Ad Age).
Correction: This post originally misspelled the name of Jason Del Rey.
Tags: Advertising, Mobile, Politico, Responsive design, Tablets, Web apps
Related Posts
via poynter.org
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