A major bug in Google Buzz uncovered!

In the social media space, where Facebook and Twitter have over 500 million and 100 million users respectively, our sweet Google launched a not so warmly welcomed service called Google Buzz, earlier in February this year. As per Google's statements, since its launch, "tens of millions of people have checked out the Google Buzz", but they have yet not shared any exact numbers on how many people actually follow the Buzz. The company launched the service targeted at bringing the updates from various services on to one platform, but probably the consumers think otherwise for managing their updates on the social domain.
The matter came into limelight when Leo Laporte found out that his Buzz(es) are not reaching his followers since last 2 weeks. Leo Laporte has 222,820 followers on Twitter and around 19,000 followers on Google Buzz. His 'This Week In Tech' podcast ranks amongst one of the highest downloaded podcasts on iTunes. He found that the updates that he was putting over Google buzz in the public domain was not reaching his followers. Later, writing to Google Buzz team, he got a revert that there was a serious bug, which allowed his buzz(es) not to reach his followers if even a single one of his almost 19,000 followers deleted his/her Google Buzz account. This caused a serious problem and people started writing about this in the public domain (don't trust me? Do a search for yourself).
Google says that the bug has been fixed this monday, but the matter of fact is that it has not been completely solved. According to the Social Media expert Louis Gray (he is also the Managing Director of new media at Paladin Advisors group), "With so many streams flowing by and so many sources and people demanding my attention, even the strong soldiers that fatigue during battle are left behind in our own self-directed charge up the mountain".
Although Google still has very high expectations from the product. In fact, according to Gmail Product manager Todd Jackson, "It has become a core belief of ours that organizing the social information on the Web is a Google-scale problem". I seriously believe it is a managerial issue with Google to expect to be number 1 in any business they enter, without thorough study of the consumers and their requirements. May be that is why, despite Google Buzz failing so badly in the market, they are gearing up for yet another product called 'Google Me'. Only time will tell, what market has in store for Google's bank accounts, but we can surely agree with marketing pundits that companies will like to spend only on the new media platforms, which take care of most possible time spent, for their target audiences.

Further Read:
1. Beware! money laundering through iTunes in UK
2. Social media, not the 'Most Important Thing' anymore
3. Media eating up 50% of your life?

Beware! Money laundering through iTunes in UK

Normally I do not tend to feature these kind of articles on this blog, as this may tend to impart some negative information to a lot many individuals, but this one is being featured here to make you aware of keeping your finances and your money safe.
12 individuals have recently been charged in UK, with laundering huge amounts of money through iTunes. They use to upload music tracks and put them up for selling through iTunes' digital music delivery services. In total, they were able to launder a total of $300,000 across just 4 months.
Just for your records, if I had scared some iTunes user with this article, this scheme does not reveal a security vulnerability with iTunes or any of other software company's services, this method stands as one of the many ways people use to steal money through credit cards.
If ever you see a third party transaction on your bank statements, just contact your bank and they should be able to help you with getting back your money.

Social Media is not the most-important thing

"Social Media is not the most important thing right now. It is the shift from computers to mobile based computing platforms", as suggested by the digital marketing leader - WPP Group.  With Facebook exceeding 0.5 Billion users, just under six years that it has been launched, many others have not done so well. Below is some 'hard data' to explain this. You'll also find a number of other contenders in this extremely useful research by The Nielsen Company, June 2010. With 250 million unique audience, Facebook still has a lot to offer for all the advertisers. What do you think?

Quattro dead - iAd gets the advantage.

Seems Apple is more keen on its own advertising platform iAds, rather than hovering on third party platforms. In the beginning of 2010, Steve Jobs bought Quattro's mobile advertising platform, but in August'10 (less than 8 months later), Apple has decided to show 'thumbs down' to Quattro due to its degrading market credibility. As per Reuters, Apple has sent an official letter to each existing corporate customer of Quattro, mentioning that the platform will be discontinued by 30th Sept' 2010.
Mr. Michael Chang - CEO Greystripe suggests,  "Apple's decision to drop support for major audience segments on non-Apple platforms is ultimately bad for their advertisers and developers. Advertisers care about audiences, reach and user engagement, not specific platforms." He also mentions, "As the Android audience catches up to iPhone, and Blackberry continues to improve the potential for user engagement, these smartphone platforms will become increasingly important for advertisers."
The Crisp Wireless's CEO, Mr. Boris Fridman suggests that the reason could be Quattro's losing credibility as a cross-platform ad network since the acquisition. He also believes that this loss to Quattro might bring new opportunities for other ad networks, specially on Android smart-phones. Apple's iAd Network have proved to be a capable mobile marketing platform, but it only works on Apple's mobile platforms.

This strategic move may benefit Apple through focusing its resources and efforts in streamlining and improving the iAd Network, and hopefully convert existing Quattro customers to switch over to iAd for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch platforms. The Apple audience is too large to be ignored, but rather than create a single unified, cross-platform marketing campaign, advertisers will have to develop one for iOS, and one for every other platform.

Further Read:

1. Media eating up 50% of your life?

2. Watch Flash videos even on your non-Jailbroken iOS Devices

3. TV meets the web with Google

Amazon grabs 70 - 80% ebook market

I have always been an avid reader of eBooks, ever since I first came across the concept, around 4 years back. They provide quiet an easy way to carry all your favourite books on your smartphone which you can read any time on the train, in the car, on a ferry, in your office lunch time, waiting on a date, etc.

According to Ian Freed, Amazon's VP for Kindle:

1. The number of eBooks sold in first quarter of 2009 vs the number of eBooks sold in Q1-2010 has tripled.
2. Since the price of the device dropped to $189, the growth rate has tripled year over year.
3. 80% of Kindle books are being sold to Kindle users, using the software of their iPhone, any other smart phone, iPads, Mac or a PC.
4. After collecting data on books for last 15 years, Amazon has found that most of the consumers are shifting for eBooks which are priced at $9.99 or less.
5. Amazon had over 630,000 books which are not public domain titles and out of this, over 510,000 are sold for $9.99 or less. Out of The New York Times bestsellers, 80 of them are $9.99 or less.
6. A lot of authors didn't think of self publishing before the Kindle platform became so large. Now with the 70% royalty option, Amazon is sending a lot of these royalty cheques to the self publishing writers.
7. The American Association of Publishers say that eBook market is growing over 200% year on year and even faster growth in the Amazon's portfolio says for itself about the segment share.

So the market has a lot to offer and it seems as a reader and consumer, I am bound to get even better eBook deals in future.

So what is new-media?

Why is it important?
Typing 'new media' in your Google search gives you around 1.9 bn search results within 0.15 seconds. Typing the same keyword in Wikipedia, in dictionaries, in academic journals, in business plans give you all different kinds of meanings, terms and their relevances. Everyone in the market is talking about new media, the effect of new media, the impact of new-media, etc. But how many of these people actually know and understand what new media is and what is the benefit of using new-media instead of the traditional media, or ever replacing a fraction of your traditional media with our new-media school of thought?
Definition:
Well, 'new media' is the term coined to encompass the amalgamation of music, images, videos, words and symbols, etc with the computers and communication technology, mostly used in relevance with Internet and post-2000 era of media usage in our communications.
What is new media?:
With the advent of innovative technologies and their even more innovative usages, new media is growing at a much faster pace than expected. As far as time involved in the growth of new media is concerned, we can relate them, to a couple of related fields: Tim Berners-Lee, for instance, had 10 years of latitude to conceive of the Internet. Researchers from MIT, who were interested in space exploration got undefined amount of time to track signals from Sputnick, and what these people did in their time, changed the face of our today in a positive way - these experiments also led to functionality of our GPS devices.
According to Harvard Magazine(Oct-Nov 2009), "New media is changing the lives of University Students" in more number of ways then we can merely imagine. According to Kathline Carr from Harvard Business Review, to innovate in our media and regular life environments, we need to "create hunch-friendly environments". Therefore the advent of new media technologies and applications of today leads to many folds innovative applications in our near future. Why? Because it grows on a geometric progression and not just arithmetic progression. New media relates more to on-demand content availability, which also involved interactive participation from the consumer, to make its more dynamic form and evolution cycle.
While a typical mistake from newbie's to this terminology is, to consider digital consumption such as through a digital radio or HDTV, of a traditional content such as movie or a song to be understood as new media. In reality, this would still hold true for being a traditional media on a new channel. New media would be something like receiving a URL on your mobile phone through an MMS, where you can visit the landing page of the URL and post your comments or be a part of some discussions, would mean actual new media communication. Therefore, it is not just digitization of traditional media into computers and related technologies, but it has more to do with active content, which ever keeps on growing and modifying itself through active participation from the consumer.
Some good examples of new media would be: Websites with active content such as games, puzzles etc which involve active participation; blogs and discussion forums at some corporate websites; computer multimedia and games; softwares involving consumer participation in creation and distribution of content etc.

Read More:

1. Media eating up 50% of your life?
2. TV meets Google.
3. Online communities - The new era?

Media eating up 50% of your life?

At the end of each day, do you really feel that you have been looking at a screen for the entire day and did nothing? Don't worry, as you are not the only one.

According to media watchdog OFCOM:
1. Around 45% of your entire waking hours is being consumed by your very own gadgets, where you consume various media options such as rich text, pictures and videos, etc.
2. 25% of our entire day is being spent on Social networking portals such as Myspace,Facebook, etc.
3. As compared with that in 2004, we send over 4 times more texts now.
4. Of being online on a mobile device, 45% possibility is that you are on Facebook itself.
5. Multi-tasking is becoming a common phenomenon through more number of devices now.

According to Mr. Peter Phillips at OFCOM, "the divide between younger and older people's use of technology is starting to narrow. More older people are getting online & finding that things like e-mail are very important to them".

Some more numbers and figures for people who don't like to read too much text:
1. 37% households have a digital video recorder.
2. 22% households have recently bought a HD TV.
3. An average consumer watches 3 hours 45 min of TV everyday.
4. Through multi-tasking, an average user can fit in 8 hour 48 mins of media consumption into 7 hrs only.
5. Young people can fit nearly 5 hours of media hear into only 2 hrs.
6. Over 13.5 million users surf Internet on a mobile.

Still feel you are the only one? Cheers!

Further Read:

1. So what is New Media?

2. TV meets Google

3. Ofcom report

TV meets the web with Google!

There's a new interactive experience waiting for you, and your time. Being a constant innovator with web technologies and innovative use of media, Google has done it again this time. Google TV is a new experience altogether, which combines the traditional media platform of television, with speed and power of the internet.

Experts say, that Google is planning to supply QWERTY keyboards, along with the TV, to enable you with searches and browsing. Among many other major media partners, Google is currently working with Sony, Logitech, Intel, and DISH Networkfor co-branding and integrated media tie-ups. The developers are recently being approached, to optimize their apps for Google TV too. Have a look in the video below, for what it has in store for us.

New era of online communities

Apart from the social networking websites, large IT firms are also getting famous to provide their consumers with support anddiscussion forums, where users can come together, share their views and experiences, and be able to learn from each other. This new league of online communities is very different from the Yahoo Groups, and many other batchmates, colleages, etc. These online communities are much stronger in terms of data sharing, and are actively developing into discussion forums. The fruit theme based manufacturer Apple has also taken another innovative step in this league too now. The new discussion forums will be having more customisable features like adding pictures, liking comments and linking up with people of similar interests. Therefore this new era of online communities is arriving, which might cause the social networking websites of today, to take a back-step and loose fame in due course of time.

To test this Hypothesis, I started a discussion in one of Apple iPhone 4 communities, and across a weekend, I have achieved over 90 responses and over 6000 views: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2542409>

It  this the beginning of a new business model for companies?

Twitter on your TV's now?

Panasonic has been trying to do this for a while now, and has finally succeeded in doing so. Panasonic's current Plasma TV's enable users to make SKYPE Video and Voice calls, access Pandora, Fox Sports and Netflix, etc. Users can also have access to YouTube, Picasa (Google) web albums, Amazon's VOD and Bloomberg.

Today, 17th Aug 2010 Panasonic also announced that users of their Viera series of Plasma TV's, will be able to post twitter messages through their TV's itself. Panasonic's Internet-enabled TVs include the VT25- and VT20-, G25- and G20-series. There are many more Blu-Ray players by the electronics giant, which are also expected to be upgraded to access the web for similar services.

We will keep you posted on developments on the same.

Watch Flash videos even on your non-Jailbroken iOS devices now!

This should be a good news for all people who have been wondering how they will see Flash videos, specially on platforms like iOS. The popular video-sharing website, Vimeo has come up with a hybrid version of Flash/HTML5 video player which can detect the most suitable format to be played, according to the device you are using. They have really been working on getting this software running, for last over half year and now you can take a deep breath and watch your favourite Flash videos on your iPhone or iPad, without missing out on anything the Android guys are watching.

On the other hand, the largest video-sharing website Youtube.com is also in its testing phase for launching a similar service for iPhone, iPad but currently it is available on the Youtube App only. While all these web rivals are looking for alternatives, Adobe had already launched its Flash 10.1 on the HTC-Google co-branded Nexus One already. Experts are expecting to see the same on other RIM (Blackberry), Palm Pre and more Android enabled devices very soon.