Although numerous activities are available to get Americans off the couch, they still prefer to be there, a report from the NPD Group has found.
When asked how they'd spent their leisure-time hours in the past week, a whopping 81 percent of the 10,281 respondents had watched television, for about 10 hours on average for the week. It was the top leisure-time activity in the study, which covered people ages 13 and above. And that figure didn't even include watching movies on TV. It only included shows, news, and sports.
"There's a perception that families spending time in front of a glowing TV hearth has been replaced by glowing laptop or iPod displays," Russ Crupnick, entertainment industry analyst for NPD, said Tuesday in a statement. "And while that's true for some families, TV remains the top entertainment choice by far in the United States."
The NPD Group also found that traditional radio shouldn't be dismissed quite yet. Radio listening came in second place behind watching TV. A total of 78 percent of Americans listened to traditional radio, for more than five hours a week on average.
E-mail and instant messaging are also quite popular, with 70 percent taking part in those activities, for about four hours per week. The research firm also found that 60 percent of people still listen to music on CD.
About 47 percent of respondents said they visit social networks, for an average of five hours per week. And 11 percent of those surveyed said they tweet, for about three hours per week.
But it was the television that took the top spot for leisure activities. It seems that, when given the chance, most Americans choose the couch over anything else. Does that include you?
Got a case of information overload? You're not alone.
A study released Wednesday from the University of California, San Diego, reports that the average American consumes a whopping 34GB of data and 100,000 words of information per day.
Over the course of 2008, Americans as a group gobbled up 3.6 zettabytes of data. (In case you missed the definition of "zettabyte" in your daily data binging, that's a million million gigabytes.) For all you visual learners out there, the researchers helpfully point out that 3.6 zettabytes is equal to the "information in thick paperback novels stacked seven feet high over the entire United States, including Alaska."
Between 1980 and 2008, the number of bytes consumed by Americans increased 350 percent. The average annual growth rate was calculated at 5.4 percent.
Here's how TV and the Internet stack up in the "How Much Information? 2009 Report on American Consumers."
(Credit: University of California, San Diego)Dubbed the How Much Information? project, the study measured data consumption both at home and away from home. It includes several information sources, "including going to the movies, listening to the radio, talking on the cell phone, playing video games, surfing the Internet, and reading the newspaper."
Besides bytes and words, the study also noted the number of hours spent consuming information.
In terms of time, traditional media still has a strong hold on the U.S. The study reported that "a large chunk of the average American's day is spent watching television." On average, 41 percent of an American's day is given over to watching television shows, viewing recorded TV, or watching DVDs.
Noncomputer sources, the study says, account for more than three-quarters of U.S. households' information time.
But if bytes are the standard by which American days are judged, it's the video game that takes the top prize. Researchers found that the average American consumes 18.5GB of gaming data per day, representing 67 percent of all bytes they consume daily.
"Games are almost universal, but most of the gaming bytes come from graphically intensive games on high-powered computers and consoles, which have the equivalent of special-purpose supercomputers from five years ago," report author Roger Bohn, director of the Global Information Industry Center at UC San Diego's School of International Relations and Pacific Studies, said in a statement. "Games today generate their bytes inside the home, rather than having to transmit them over cables into the house, but gaming is increasingly moving online."
The study found that 16 percent of daily information consumption comes from the Internet. A staggering 79 percent of all American two-way communications is done through the Internet.
If you want to see what else UC San Diego found in its study, click here.
Video game developer Electronic Arts announced on Monday that it has acquired social-gaming company Playfish, paying $275 million in cash and $25 million in "equity-retention arrangements." Playfish also is entitled to up to $100 million if it meets performance milestones by December 31, 2011.
EA also announced later Monday that it planned to eliminate 1,500 jobs, or about 17 percent of its workforce, as part of a plan to reduce annual costs by about $100 million.
The acquisition of Playfish falls in line with EA's desire to be more than just a developer for traditional gaming platforms, like consoles and the PC. The company said in a statement that the acquisition "strengthens its focus on the transition to digital and social gaming."
Thanks to the explosive growth of social networks and games made for those platforms, Playfish is enjoying strong performance in the social-gaming space. The company has more than 150 million games installed on several platforms, including Facebook, MySpace, the iPhone, and Android-based devices. According to Playfish, more than 60 million active players per month are playing titles. Its Facebook titles include Pet Society, Restaurant City, and Country Story--all three are among the most-popular games on the social network.
The EA Interactive division, which Playfish will join, has done a fine job of capitalizing on the trend of online and mobile gaming. That division includes Pogo, one of the top casual-gaming sites on the Web. The Mobile side of EA Interactive has captured 34 percent market share in the U.S. with the help of Madden NFL 10, The Sims, and Tetris.
Updated at 10:20 p.m. with details of job cuts.
Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 has some inspiration from Twitter.
(Credit: infinity Ward)Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 might have been designed by a capable team of Infinity Ward developers, but the company had some help: Twitter followers.
Infinity Ward Community Manager Robert Bowling told Develop Online in a recent interview that during the development of the highly-anticipated release, the developer called on Twitter users for help.
"During development, if we are sitting in a design meeting and we are arguing about something, no matter what it is, I can just turn to what is now 60,000 people and post the same question," Bowling told game developer news site Develop Online. "'Do we think players will like this?' well why don't we ask 60,000 of them and get a good representation of what we think they may like?"
But it was the next statement that might cause gamers participating in social networking to rejoice. Bowling told site that Twitter was "fantastic throughout development" and he "would recommend many, many more people adapted that into their design schedule."
Bowling also said that Infinity Ward didn't ignore any responses to its design questions. He said that developers "listened to all" of the suggestions, but filtered out those that didn't match the company's "design philosophy." Suggestions that asked for more gore, for example, ran against the company's design philosophy, Bowling said.
Regardless of whether or not Infinity Ward incorporated every idea into Modern Warfare 2, Bowling told the publication that now more than ever, gamers are getting closer to the development process.
"The average gamer is so much closer to the people who make the games than they ever were before," he told the publication. "And as a result of that they are so much more developer-aware. No longer is it an Activision game, but an Infinity Ward game, or a Treyarch game or a Bungie game. And gamers know where to go to offer their feedback."
Oh, how things have changed. When I was younger, I sent several snail-mail letters to developers asking for design tweaks in some of my favorite franchises. I never heard back. And it seemed that my plea had fallen on deaf ears.
Today, things are different. The developers of one of the most highly anticipated games to be released in 2009 were listening to gamer suggestions on a social network? Amazing. Let's hope for more of it.
TwitterPeek sells for $99 or $199.
(Credit: Peek)A new gadget designed specifically for people who want to tweet on the go was launched Tuesday by gadget maker Peek.
The device, dubbed TwitterPeek, does one thing and one thing only: it lets people tweet. It doesn't access e-mail. It doesn't make phone calls. It tweets. That's it.
TwitterPeek, which looks like a smartphone, features a QWERTY keyboard and comes in black or aqua blue.
The idea behind TwitterPeek is simple. After buying the device, users need only to input their Twitter credentials to get going. The gadget lets them tweet, reply, retweet, send direct messages, and download followers. It supports one account at a time. Users can also view TwitPics by clicking the "view content" option from the TwitterPeek menu. The company claims its battery lasts three to four days with average usage.
Included in the price of TwitterPeek is a service plan. According to the company, users can access Twitter nationwide through Peek's own "mobile network," which accesses mobile-phone networks. If users choose to pay $99 at the time of purchase, they will get the TwitterPeek device and six months of Peek service. After that, they need to pay $7.95 per month for network access. If customers plunk down $199, they'll get the device and service for the life of the product. In either case, TwitterPeek allows for unlimited tweeting.
It makes sense that a device designed exclusively for Twitter would come from Peek. The company already offers the Peek and Peek Pronto, which are designed exclusively for mobile e-mail and text messaging.
But TwitterPeek, while an interesting idea, will need to convince consumers that it's really necessary in the marketplace. There are a slew of mobile apps that allow people to tweet while they're on the iPhone, some BlackBerry models, and Android-based devices.
It's also debatable whether even the most ardent Twitter users will want to pay $199 just to have access to a tweeting gadget. Evidently, the gadget was built for people who don't have access to mobile Twitter apps. It may also be useful for people who access Twitter from their mobile browser; that experience tends to yield more headaches than value when people want to post a quick tweet.
If you're interested in picking up a TwitterPeek, you can buy it exclusively on Amazon.com for $99 or $199, depending on your desired service plan.
But will you? Let's hear it in the comments below.
For quite a while, I was nothing more than a social network hater. To me, social networks seemed like a ploy for those with so-called "notoriety" to massage their egos just a little bit more and provided no real benefit to anyone. After signing up for almost every social network in existence, I can say now that I was dead wrong.
Whether it's Twitter, FriendFeed or even Flickr, I'm extremely surprised by how much value each provides. And although I can't speak for everyone who uses these services, I honestly believe that each is unique and useful enough to justify your time.
Here's why:
... Read moreAfter trying to stay away from social networking for as long as possible, I've finally bitten the bullet and succumbed to all that pressure I received on TWiT this past week. I am now, officially, a proud member of the Twitter community. I thought this day would never come.
Anyway, feel free to follow me, add me to your friends list, whatever you do on this thing. And while I'm at it, you might as well add me on del.icio.us and Pownce too.
Twitter: http://twitter.com/donreisinger
Pownce: http://pownce.com/donreisinger/
Del.icio.us: http://del.icio.us/donreisinger
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