Nielsen is out with a new report on media consumption by teens and the results are counter-intuitive to what we commonly believe to be the norm. According to the How Teens Use Media report (PDF), "teens exhibit media habits that are more similar to the total population than not."
Key takeaways from the report:
- Teens are not abandoning TV for new media: In fact, they watch more TV than ever, up 6 percent over the past five years in the U.S.
- Teens love the Internet, but spend far less time browsing than adults: Teens spend 11 hours and 32 minutes per month online. Far below the average of 29 hours and 15 minutes.
- Teens watch less online video than most adults, but the ads are highly engaging to them: Teens spend 35 percent less time watching online video than adults 25-34, but recall ads better when watching TV shows online than they do on television.
- Teens read newspapers, listen to the radio, and even like advertising more than most: Teens who recall TV ads are 44 percent more likely to say they liked the ad.
- Teens play video games, but their tastes aren't all for the blood-and-guts style games. Just two of their top five most-anticipated games since 2005 have been rated "Mature."
- Teens' favorite TV shows, top Web sites and genre preferences across media are mostly the same as their parents: For U.S. teens, American Idol was the top show in 2008, Google the top website and general dramas are a preferred TV genre for teens around the world.
One of the more interesting findings from the report is the realization that today's teens are not uniquely wired, but are an "artifact of larger, demographically broader shifts in media behavior. Teens are wildly different--not from other consumers today, but from teens of generations past."
Follow me on Twitter @daveofdoom.
Speaking at a press conference in Los Angeles on June 19, the two guitarists said "they don't believe video games are an ideal way for people to be exposed to music or learn to play instruments."
As much as I enjoyed Guitar Hero, I have to agree that it's annoying that the game doesn't teach you to play an instrument and depressing that game buyers aren't really interested in the music itself--just how hard the game makes it to play the songs. The silver lining is that bands such as Dragon Force would be even more obscure if it weren't for the game.
... Read more"It's depressing to have a label come and tell you that Guitar Hero is how kids are learning about music and experiencing music," White said. He added that although he doesn't try to dictate "which format people should get their music in...if you have to be in a video game to get in front of them, that's a little sad."
Page added that he can't imagine that people are really learning anything significant about playing instruments by playing video games.
"You think of the drum part that John Bonham did on Led Zeppelin's first track on the first album, Good Times Bad Times," he said. "How many drummers in the world can play that part, let alone on Christmas morning?"
Monday's rumor that on-demand business intelligence provider LucidEra was shutting down has turned out to be true.
I received a number of pitches from competitors about why their solution is better, cheaper, etc., and one particularly well thought-out e-mail from Brad Peters, CEO of Birst, another on-demand BI provider. I've pasted the e-mail below with permission and it will end up on their blog sooner or later.
My understanding is that while LucidEra's shutdown is unfortunate and a bit of a drag for customers, there are multiple providers that customers can easily switch to and that LucidEra are being helpful with the data transference.
LucidEra, right and wrong
Brad Peters, CEO, BirstIt's always unfortunate to see a fellow startup shut its doors, even when you compete with it, since strong competition validates an overall concept--in our case, on-demand business intelligence. The benefits are real. The value to customers is real. Unfortunately for LucidEra, their particular approach--specific applications, instead of general BI solutions--proved weak in the marketplace.
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So, when I saw that the company launched a new "Dunkin' Run" iPhone application today, I bought the shiny new Apple product. But then I was dismayed to learn that Dunkin' is not in the San Francisco Bay Area (or really west of the Mississippi.)
Dunkin Run is basically a social game, with a payoff of coffee and baked goods. Users can start a "Dunkin' Run" from their computer, mobile device, or iPhone, and let everyone know they are hitting the road. This type of application that comes with a tangible payoff would drive membership in a variety of social networks, and would certainly keep me logged into my otherwise useless Facebook profile.
Dunkin' Run brings customers a completely new and unique social online group ordering experience and tools. To begin, "Runners" can initiate a group order on www.DunkinRun.com through their computer or mobile device, or via an iPhone application available for free download at the iTunes online store. Immediately, interactive alerts are sent to the Runner's list of friends or co-workers, telling them when a trip to Dunkin' Donuts is planned along with a personal message inviting them to place an order online. Invitees can view the Dunkin' Donuts menu to place their order, and registered users can select from their own personal list of favorites and/or previous orders. All Dunkin' Donuts core foods and beverages are presented using interactive product images to make personalizing an order both simple and fun.
All of the orders are integrated onto a single page/screen which the Runner either prints or uses their iPhone or mobile device to bring to any Dunkin' Donuts store. Dunkin' Donuts crew members will use this checklist to fulfill orders quickly and ensure order accuracy. The Runner can also use this page as a checklist to ensure that everyone in the group gets what he or she ordered.
My coffee addiction aside, this is actually a great idea and I'm surprised more takeout places and coffee shops haven't gone down this path yet. The obvious next step is a receipt generator to see who's not paying their share so you can humiliate them across your social network.
Follow me on Twitter @daveofdoom.
If any organization needs to make sense of unstructured data it's the government--especially agencies like the CIA and other intelligence groups that comb through a myriad of disparate information on an hourly basis.
Last week, In-Q-Tel, the technology arm of the CIA, invested in Lucid Imagination, which provides support, maintenance, and add-on software for Apache Lucene and Solr. According to Lucid, the Lucene/Solr technology is downloaded more than 9,000 times per day, and more than 4,000 organizations are using the software for enterprise search.
I've wondered aloud quite a few times as to whether or not open-source projects (and specifically Apache projects) can turn into businesses or if they are simply the cogs and wheels that make other products function better (aka the Oracle syndrome).
I probably would have argued that enterprise search would fall into one of those no-man's lands where the technology is important but not quite a standalone business. There has been a huge amount of venture capital investment in search but few big winners in the category.
But the investment from In-Q-Tel adds some credence to the value of the function as well as the technology in the respect that the government is actually using the software and not just making an investment as we see in the venture capital world. Lucene and Solr are "sufficiently complex" open-source products that require a commercial entity to support ongoing efforts once they are adopted. This gives Lucid a legitimate shot at building a business.
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The Nintendo Wii has already changed the face of video games and recently started breaking new ground in advertising and social gaming. With the recent launch of the Wii-no-ma service in Japan, Nintendo has figured out how to make gaming a family event.
According to Cyber Media Japan, Nintendo researchers found that 87 percent of Wii users use it on the biggest screen in the house, which is still the one in the living room.
Accordingly, Nintendo believes that new forms of advertising--especially those encouraging togetherness in viewing ads and watching videos on the Wii--are bound to make money.
I didn't think much of the initial announcements, but after talking to a friend in Japan, I realized that Nintendo may have figured out how to become the entertainment consolidator that so many other companies have been gunning for.
Cable companies, Tivo, Yahoo, and AOL all come to mind as groups that have tried to consolidate content and games, but the diversity of user experiences along with the way people choose to consume content has proven to be difficult to manage.
Nintendo is looking to broaden the variety of things you can do with a single gaming device by establishing the Wii as the machine that provides more options than those available from a handheld device like the DSi, or a more gamer-oriented product such as the Xbox. (I wrote about the Wii catering channel here.)
... Read moreAs the world pushes ahead with cloud computing and business users demand software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications, many IT departments are struggling to keep legacy applications on life support. Many of these zombie applications are there only for storage and audit purposes, not for real-time data interaction.
Even if applications have been "turned off" the data continues to live on in databases and file stores, continuing to take up storage space and software licenses. The result is a state of paralysis, with application retirement merely a dream.
U.K.-based Clearpace recently unveiled a cloud-based data archiving service called RainStor. RainStor's technology is being used to solve a completely overlooked problem domain: application retirement. I spoke via e-mail with RainStor CTO Andy Ben-Dyke to understand how the service works and why it makes sense.
RainStor's Instant Application Retirement service works in 3 steps:
1. Send--Structured data from any RDBMS is automatically compressed by 40x or more, encrypted and sent to the cloud using a client-side software appliance. The extreme compression that is applied significantly reduces the time to transfer large volumes of data to the cloud.
2. Store--The encrypted data is stored in a private archive on Amazon's highly available and secure storage cloud (S3). Though compressed, the original schema format is preserved and RainStor is able to layer on additional archives which reflect any schema changes (e.g. add or delete of columns).
3. Search--Running on Amazon's highly scalable compute cloud (EC2) RainStor allows you to query data through any industry-standard reporting or BI tools over ODBC or JDBC with lightning speed. Providing "point-in-time" query capability based on its ability to store schema evolution changes.
The RainStor service can be had for as little as $1 per GB of data stored per month with no commitments, including Amazon storage and resource costs. Clearpace is also offering a 90 day free trial.
Given that there is a untold fortune of hardware and software tied up in legacy apps waiting to freed up, turning off those apps and sending the data to "heaven" in the clouds just seems like a no-brainer.
Follow me on Twitter @daveofdoom
Oracle has decided to kill the Virtual Iron business and keep only the technology, according to a report in The Register.
Apparently, one month plus one week was enough for the database giant to float its latest acquisition into the dead pool.
While not surprising, this is an unfortunate situation for Virtual Iron customers and also feeds into BigCo sales tactics that tell customers to avoid buying from small companies. Oracle has long used the "bigger is better" sales tactic and this will falsely emphasize the perception that buying from start-ups and small companies is risky.
According to The Register:
In a letter to Virtual Iron's sales partners, Oracle says it "will suspend development of existing Virtual Iron products and will suspend delivery of orders to new customers." And in a second letter to a partner speaking with The Reg, the company says it will not allow partners to sell new licenses to anyone - including existing customers - after the end of this month (i.e. in 11 days). Before then, partners can only sell licenses to existing customers under certain conditions.
"Until June 30, 2009, Oracle may approve granting add-on licenses to existing Virtual Iron end customers, or licensing end customers who had demo'd or otherwise evaluated the former Virtual Iron products and do not require further delivery," the second letter reads.
Virtual Iron was certainly not a big dog like VMware or XenSource, but the company did hold a great deal of promise. In the acquisition announcement, Oracle described Virtual Iron as a "leading provider of server virtualization management software." Fellow CNET blogger Gordon Haff wrote that, in this instance, "leading" should be read as "on the roster but something like fourth-string backup quarterback."
As enterprise sales get harder to come by, there will be more of these types of deals. It remains to be seen if Oracle will do right by the customer and partner base, but I wouldn't bet on it.
Follow me on Twitter @daveofdoom
It seems like every few months I have to set up a wireless network for someone. And while it's certainly an easy task I am fairly sure that the security choices people make in the process are probably not the most iron-clad.
Whether by design or by default, every company and, now, most homes have a wireless network. Unless you understand, control, and manage this network, you are creating vulnerabilities that threaten network security. As more and more companies begin using wireless as a primary medium for data services, including VoIP and video, preventive measures should be taken to better safeguard your Wi-Fi.
I spoke with Jay Botelho, director of product management at WildPackets, who provided three tips to safeguard a wireless network:
1. Ad-hoc mode: Turn it off--forever.
I'm amazed how often I continue to see laptops in public places, like airports, coffee shops and trade shows, that are configured with ad-hoc mode enabled. Just "view available wireless networks" next time you're in a public place and I'm sure you'll find a neighbor or two with ad-hoc mode enabled. If they're a colleague of yours, do them a favor and tell them to disable ad-hoc mode--forever. There's nothing it can do for them, except create a possible security breach. And whatever you do, don't connect to an unknown ad-hoc network. You may just be taking someone else's bait.
2. Use WPA-2.
The word has been out for awhile, but usage of sub-standard wireless authentication/encryption, including WEP, is still prevalent. There's no reason to be using anything except WPA-2. Every wireless adapter and every AP for sale today supports WPA-2. Some of your gear is 4-plus years old and doesn't support WPA-2? Replace it! I'm sure there are some killer deals at your local electronics store. And the risk far, far outweighs the expense. You don't have to look far to find evidence of this--remember TJ Maxx?
3. Establish firm security policies.
The above concrete actions are just examples of what is truly needed: a complete security policy for your organization. The policy must tie overall network security with wireless security. It's all one network--it needs a single unified policy that incorporates all levels of network access. Wireless is only one of them.
Follow me on Twitter @daveofdoom
Major League Baseball has been on the cutting-edge of iPhone applications since it debuted the At Bat application at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference in June 2008. At Bat delivers audio and video highlights, but not real-time games.
Wednesday, MLB.com is releasing a new product--live video streaming of certain baseball games for the iPhone and iPod Touch, with an eye toward providing the full slate of MLB games (some free, some presumably for an additional charge) over the next several months as the season progresses. The new offering is based on the upgrades coming in the iPhone 3.0 software that is being rolled out Wednesday.
There will initially be two games each day, chosen by MLB.com. (The games are subject to local blackout restrictions with Thursday's 2:20 p.m. game between the Chicago Cubs and White Sox the first to be streamed live.)
According to The New York Times, "the video will play regardless of whether an iPhone is connected to a Wi-Fi network or a 3G network. MLB.com says its servers will detect the strength of the phone's connection and adapt the quality of the video accordingly. (It should be interesting to see the quality of the video over AT&T's sometime spotty network.) The application also has DVR features, so users can pause and rewind live games from their device."
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