Facebook trials real-time adverts
The social network is currently testing the new service on five million of its 500 million users. A Facebook spokesman said: “We are currently testing a feature that simply helps surface relevant advertising more quickly.” According to advertising magazine, AdAge, this is how it will work: “Any utterance will become fodder for real-time targeted ads. For example: users who update their status with 'Mmm, I could go for some pizza tonight,' could get an ad or a coupon from Domino's, Papa John's or Pizza Hut."
Trio of alliances focus on rural wireless broadband
All the headlines may focus on the 4G plans of the big four US cellcos, but about 60m US citizens live in areas underserved by broadband, and many of these get their mobile services from local rural players rather than the big names. With LTE and WiMAX expected to be used heavily to fill some of those broadband gaps, the local operators have a new opportunity, but they also need to find better economics for 4G build-out to reflect their relatively small revenues. Three new alliances are addressing the issue - LightSquared has teamed with rural access start-up OpenRange; Ericsson is working with the NetAmerica Alliance to supply LTE kit to small players; and now LocaLoop and Runcom have formed a partnership geared to rural 4G.
‘Technology census’ shows most Britons use web to find deals
The report, compiled by electronics shop Comet to coincide with National Census Day, found that 84 per cent of people use the internet at home to search for deals. The second most popular web activity was online banking, and the third was checking news. Comet polled 2,600 people across the UK to discover changing habits in the usage of the internet across different households. Searching for discounts was more popular than social networking, which came seventh in the top 10 list of web activities.
Android partners furious at Honeycomb delays
The danger of open source is that a platform becomes fragmented and the implementations can be of varying quality. This dilemma is highlighted in Google's decision to delay broad release of the tablet optimized version of Android, Honeycomb, a move that has reawakened fury over a 'two-tier approach'. Developers and OEMs claim that, in a truly open source environment, they should get equal access to new releases, but in fact, Google is restricting Honeycomb, for now, to its primary partners, such as Motorola, HTC and Samsung. Google said it was holding back on general release of Honeycomb's open source code because it still had "more work to do" before the OS was ready for "other device types including phones".
Scientists develop plastic chips
Euro scientists have used 4,000 plastic, or organic, transistors to create a plastic microprocessor. The chip measures two centimetres and is built on top of flexible plastic foil and is being touted as an alternative to silicon. According to Jan Genoe at the IMEC nanotechnology centre in Leuven, Belgium such a chip is cheap as er chips and can be flexible. Technology Review points out that the new chip is hardly up to supercomputer power yet. It can only run one simple program of 16 instructions. These have to be hardcoded into a second foil etched with plastic circuits that can be connected to the processor to "load" the program. It runs at 6Hz and can only process information in eight-bit chunks at most. This is slightly slower than the PC of a mate of mine who, in the 1980s, said Amigas were not fast enough.
Diamonds are a geek's best friend
Flawed diamonds might be the best way to create a working quantium computer. Scientists have come up with a new process for creating qubits using flawed diamonds and lasers and double sided sellotape. A new way of manipulating nitrogen atoms inside of flawed diamonds may allow for large scale, room temperature quantum computers. According to Escapist, a top scientist at the University of California, David Awschalom, said perfection was not all it is cracked up to be and the way to create a quantum computer was to rely on defects.
London School of Economics dismisses piracy claims
Claims from the music industry that piracy is responsible for its woes have been dismissed by the economic thinkers at the London School of Economics. A paper written by Bart Cammaerts and Bingchun Meng contends that the decline in sales of physical copies of recorded music cannot be attributed solely to file sharing. According to AP, the paper said that the music industry was hit by a perfect storm of different factors including changing patterns in music consumption, decreasing disposable household incomes and increasing sales of digital content through online platforms.
Guide Aims to Remove AR Confusion
A new study into Augmented Reality (AR) shows that 62 per cent of b2b and b2c marketers are considering using the technology, but the majority are still unsure about exactly how to use it, or what its benefits are. The research, conducted by AR firm Hidden Creative, was commissioned to coincide with the launch of ‘Augmented Reality Marketing Strategies: The How-to Guide for Marketers, which looks at the commercial uses of the technology.
New F1 Season Accelerates Racing Game Download Numbers
Demand for mobile racing games has surged in the last month, according to statistics from mobile ad network BuzzCity. Data from its mobile gaming site Djuzz (m.djuzz.com) reveals a sharp increase in racing game downloads. GTS World Racing had 4,700 downloads per day in March, compared to less than 100 daily downloads in January. BuzzCity's CEO KF Lai comments "Since Djuzz launched last year, motorsports games have appealed to our audience and downloads have been on the increase. With the start of the F1 season this week, this upward curve looks set to continue, as fans reignite their interest in the sport via these games."
RIM forecasts weakened earnings due to PlayBook costs
Shares in BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion (RIM) slipped by as much as 13 percent yesterday after the firm revealed that costs relating to its new PlayBook tablet would eat into profits in its current quarter. RIM said that its earnings per share for its fiscal first quarter (ending 28 May) are expected to be in the range of US$1.47 to US$1.55 per share – well below the US$1.65 forecast by analysts in a Reuters poll. “This guidance range reflects a mix shift in handset towards lower ASP products in the first quarter and an increased level of investment in R&D and Sales and Marketing related to our tablet and platform initiatives,” said RIM in a statement. Revenue in the quarter was tipped to be in the range of US$5.2 billion to US$5.6 billion, also slightly below most expectations.
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