PS - MGOMD

Idea of the week: World's worst War

2008-09-24T04:48:00.000-07:00

Sky signs Nintendo Wii as Gladiators sponsor

2008-05-16T02:54:00.000-07:00

Nintendo gaming brand Wii signed a deal with BSkyB to sponsor the new series of 'Gladiators', which returned to UK TV screens after an eight-year absence on Sunday 11th May.

Nintendo Wii has signed up as the exclusive broadcast sponsor for 'Gladiators', giving it exposure during the 15 one-hour-long primetime shows.

Nintendo also have opportunities for brand communication during spin-off programmes 'The A to Z of Gladiators' and 'Gladiators Ready! The Gladiators Story'. It also sponsors Sky's on-demand content of the show.

Nintendo activity includes opening and closing idents, as well as bumper ads at either end of commercial breaks. The brand appears in promotional trailers for 'Gladiators', which are currently airing on Sky's channel network, and online at the 'Gladiators' microsite.

The show is presented by Ian Wright and Kirsty Gallacher, who are joined by original presenter John Anderson. It sees 32 competitors take on a series of challenges, including The Joust, The Wall, Hang Tough and The Eliminator.

Earlier this month Sky unveiled the 12 Gladiators who appear in the show, labelling them as "bigger, badder and better than ever before". They include Battleaxe, Destroyer, Panther, Oblivion and Spartan.

The first show attracted an impressive average audience of 1.5m, just proving the strength of the current trend for everything ‘retro’.

Grand Theft Auto – the film?

2008-05-16T02:37:00.000-07:00

Uwe Boll, the German director who makes bad films from good computer games (examples include Alone in the Dark, House of the Dead & BloodRayne), recently confessed in typically modest style that he’s the perfect man to helm Grand Theft Auto: The Movie and he would make a “very brutal” adaptation.
“Grand Theft Auto would be super interesting for me, and I think I would actually be the right guy to do it, because my movies are all bloody and violent and I don't have a problem with action scenes,” said the director.

Unsurprisingly, Rockstar Games has chosen not to comment on the offer.

This is becoming more popular as we saw with the film release last year of Hitman and this year will see Mark Wahlberg take the lead role in the movie version of Max Payne.

Out with ‘Project Kangaroo’, in with ‘SeeSaw’

2008-05-16T02:26:00.000-07:00

Project Kangaroo, the video-on-demand service from ITV, BBC Worldwide and Channel 4, is expected to launch under the name SeeSaw.

SeeSaw has been described as "wanting to do for broadband what Freeview did for digital TV", which will see BBC Worldwide, ITV and Channel 4 have an equal share of the joint venture and will offer more than 10,000 hours of TV programming. The service will initially be available via the web, with shows available either streamed or to download. However, the ultimate aim is to deliver SeeSaw content direct to televisions. BBC iPlayer has recently launched on Virgin Media’s cable platform. It aims to "build on the experience" of the broadcasters' existing media players, ITV.com, 4oD and the BBC iPlayer.

The BBC Worldwide’s involvement in SeeSaw has yet to be approved by the BBC Trust. Also no consensus on the commercial model has yet been agreed for 3 reasons, ITV wants a free-to-view proposition, some of Channel 4’s US content must be pay-per-view and the BBC is concerned with linking ads to its content. These issues are meaning the launch, which originally was pencilled in for late summer, may be delayed until next year.

From an industry point of view, one of the benefits of such a service is advertisers could potentially access BBC programming. The service could also grow the use of VoD, by having a central source for content and therefore encourage consumers to browse more of the available content. The amazing success of BBC iPlayer & 4OD is already evident with almost half of Virgin Media TV’s customers accessing its VoD service on a monthly basis. Also there are currently 4.25m plays per week on the BBC iPlayer, 2m views per week on ITV.com and 1m views per week on C4 on-demand service. SeeSaw will provide another way for TV contractors to role with the times and access a new breed of audience.

2008-05-15T07:54:00.001-07:00

This is one of the best things I have ever seen...a good enough reason to put it on this Blog.
Imagine the effort this took. Not sure if it could happen in London, but in Buenes Aires it's all good.

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

2008-05-15T07:43:00.000-07:00

An entertaining review of GTA IV by the chap behind Zero Punctuation. It makes some great points about the gameplay and has a little dig at the PS3 version...check it out

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/zeropunctuation/4902-Zero-Punctuation-Grand-Theft-Auto-IV

Google breaks the ice with Friend Connect

2008-05-15T00:58:00.000-07:00

Google has waded into the social networking arena with software designed to break down barriers between existing networks and link small websites into an overarching web of friends.

Google Friend Connect provides participating sites with plug-in applications to enable the exchange of messages, photographs, music, video and games. It will also allow anyone users to import their photos and friends list from Facebook, LinkedIn and a range of smaller social networks.

The software is based on the Google-led Open Social platform, which means that independent software developers will be able to write new programs to extend the scope of the system. It will be available to websites at no cost.

Last week both Facebook and MySpace said they would allow members of their networks to export information and applications from their profile to other websites.
Their announcements illustrate the attempts of the dominant social networks to extend their powerful web presence into new, more profitable areas.

Friend Connect is currently in a limited trial phase and will be available more widely in the next few months.

Brilliant Levi's viral

2008-05-14T01:36:00.000-07:00

This Video has clocked up over 2 and a half million views in a week.

There is no real overt branding which makes it even more brilliant. It shows a group of people doing stupid things but the best bit is that you can see yourself doing the same thing (well i can anyway!)

What do you think?

Path

What is Twitter?

2008-05-12T01:16:00.000-07:00

Twitter has been around for a while now, but is starting to gain a bit of popularity/usage.

I was planning on writing an explanation myself but i found the below article on the BBC website.

Path.

With so much information to go around, it seems that our appetite is changing: we want our information to be instant, we want it frequent and we want to be easy to consume quickly before we move on to the next thing. It doesn’t even have to be particularly well-formed.From SMS news alerts to simple communications from friends burning off their free credits, especially in the UK, we’re accustomed to receiving nuggets of information via text message. Combine this principle with the RSS feeds introduced by blogging and you get Twitter, the current web service du jour to come bounding out of San Francisco. You can use Twitter to send 140-character text messages via the website, instant message or on your phone, to anyone who has chosen to “follow” you. They will then receive those messages via the medium(s) of their choice.

The implications of this idea are still being explored: depending on who you talk to, it could be really useful (in the right hands) or maybe even psychologically harmful (for the wrong minds).Either way, it’s already very popular, and probably indicative of things to come. Tumblr, the self-styled “scrapbook” publishing tool, is likely to have taken its minimalist inspiration from services like Twitter and del.icio.us, encouraging users to provide a constant feed of info-nuggets without editorialising them too much.

One benefit of stripped-down information in this way is how it can quickly become more useful in conjunction with other types of data. Twitter itself doesn’t do much in this respect, but lots of people are mashing it up – see who’s most “popular” on Twitterholic, for example, or see where in the world people are Twittering from at Twittervision.

Twitter itself perhaps took inspiration from the slightly less snappily-named Jaiku, which not only updates with communications from its users but sucks in feeds from other places – and automatically combines this with location and “availability” data. They’re calling this “presence”, and soon we’ll all know exactly what everyone we know is doing and where they’re doing it. 24-7.

This presents a quandary: should we find less interesting friends so that we don’t feel we’re missing out, or should we encourage our friends to be more interesting so that we have something better to read?

Flogos

2008-05-09T02:46:00.000-07:00

We've all heard of high-level advertising but now Flogos has created flying logos. The cloud-like logos are the idea of Francisco Guerra of SnowMasters, a special effects company that specializes in creating snow and foam.

Made of helium and soap (the company promises they are environmentally friendly), a Flogo generator (think big, complicated bubble machine) pushes the bubbly creation through a stencil that gives it the desired look. Flogos can be molded into any form and you can see some examples on the company's website.

Floating logos range in size from 24-48 inches and can last up to an hour, travel 20-30 miles, and reach 20,000 feet all depending on weather conditions. As for now, Flogos only come in plain, old, regular cloud white but the company plans to introduce a colorful options in 2009. But companies are already signing up for some high flying Flogos.

Rythm really IS the Dancer...

2008-05-08T06:30:00.001-07:00

I love this. A great ad playing on two different strands of nostalgia (one for Thunderbirds the other for cheesy early 90's dance music...) and fusing them together brilliantly!

What dance music would you like to see classic kids TV show characters dance too...?

Quickie Post It Notes

2008-05-08T06:08:00.000-07:00

Convergence within technology has been a hot topic for number of years now. Back in the dark ages the thought of being able to watch TV on your walkman or surf the interent on your mobile seemed a tad ridiculous. Obviously we can do all of these things and more now.

Great - but let's throw this into the mix...how ridiculous does it sound that in the future we may be able to scribble a post it note to someone and the message you write appears on their desktops, mobile phones or PDA's???!!! It sounds pretty far fetched huh? Well check this out...

Designed by a PHD student in India, the project explores how the use of RFID, Artificial Intelligence and ink recognition technologies can make it possible to create intelligent sticky notes that can be searched, located, can send reminders and messages, and more broadly, can help us to seamlessly connect our physical and digital worlds.

How it could realistically fit into our professional lives remains to be seen, exciting though isn't it?

Computer games to get cigarette-style health warnings

2008-03-31T03:06:00.000-07:00

Video games will be forced to carry cigarette-style health warnings under proposals to protect children from unsuitable digital material.

The report, commissioned by the Prime Minister in response to a growing moral panic about video games, will conclude that they can harm the development of children’s beliefs and value systems and desensitise them to violence. It will also recommend that retailers who sell video games to anyone under the age rating on the box should face a hefty fine or up to five years in prison.

The report, written by Tanya Byron, the clinical psychologist and television parenting guru, is also expected to address the dangers of children’s use of the internet.“Parents are afraid to let their children out,” she said. “So they keep them at home, but allow them to take risks online.”She will call for a massive campaign to educate parents, teachers and childcarers about how to ensure that children get maximum benefit from the digital world without being exposed to its dangers.This will include a drive for greater awareness of inappropriate content such as pornography.

Parents will be encouraged to monitor children’s online use and keep computers in living rooms rather than bedrooms. Dr Byron, a Times columnist who has two children aged 9 and 12, said that video and online games could have enormous benefits “in terms of learning and development”, but that there was too little awareness among parents about the associated risks they posed and how to manage those risks.“You would not send your child to the pool without teaching them to swim, so why would you let them online without teaching them to manage the risks?” she said.

Dr Byron said that the current classification system for video games was confusing and not tough enough. At present only games showing sex or gross violence require an age rating from the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) and fewer than 2 per cent of titles carry an 18-certificate.The alternative Pan-European Game Information system is considered to be ineffective because it uses symbols that are confusing and distributors effectively chose their own ratings by filling in a form about their product.Dr Byron wants a single statutory classification system.

Ratings would have to be displayed prominently on all packaging materials, like health warnings on cigarettes, as well as on shop display cases.“We have to make child digital safety a priority. If you are under 18, you should not be able to buy an ‘18’ game and if you are under 12, you should not be able to buy a ‘12’ game,” she said. She also wants all games consoles to contain blocking mechanisms that would enable parents to prevent children playing unsuitable games on them.

New pot noodle flavour - Guinness??!!

2008-03-18T02:18:00.000-07:00

Jonny seems quite good at finding comical videos on the old YouTube. Here's his latest one:

Dark knight virals...

2008-03-17T03:14:00.000-07:00

While looking at the below websites for the upcoming Dark Knight film, it occurred to me that this kind of stuff really piques and satisfies the interest of the hardcore film fan but also gives intermittent film goers some kudos/social currency among their friends by knowing a bit more than their friends... Its an interesting way of looking at the gamers vs social/party gamers audiences and how we can utilise the same content in different contexts.

http://www.thegothamtimes.com/

http://wearetheanswer.org/

http://www.gothamcityrail.com/

Path.

After School assembly, switch on your nintendo

2008-03-17T02:29:00.000-07:00

It is a school child’s dream. Primary pupils are being encouraged to play on Nintendo DS consoles in class to boost their cognitive skills.
Under a scheme being tested on 900 pupils in 16 primary schools in Scotland, children are being given the hand-held computer games devices for free and encouraged to start their day by doing “brain training” exercises.
Trials of the game, Nintendo’s More Brain Training from Dr Kawashima, found that an early morning 20-minute daily session, involving reading, problem solving and memory puzzles, could boost maths attainment as well as improving concentration and behaviour levels.
Derek Robertson, of Learning and Teaching Scotland (LTS), the body responsible for the development of the curriculum, said that children in the trial were given a maths test at the beginning and the end of the ten-week experiment. Their scores showed a 10 per cent average improvement.
Game-based learning can provide dynamic and culturally relevant contexts that engage, motivate and challenge today’s young learner,” he said.
Nintendo DS consoles are already used in Japan as an aid to teaching children the “alphabet” of more than 2,000 Kanji characters.
Primary school children are each given a device and provided with software that tests their ability to remember the characters and write them correctly on the lower screen.
Schools that have started using the consoles – devoting about 20 minutes at the beginning of each “koku-go” (Japanese) lesson to the tests – report substantially higher test scores when the children take mainstream exams.
A few mathematics teachers in Japan’s high-intensity cram schools have adopted the Nintendo DS as a way of testing mental arithmetic speed.
The Japanese games software industry has responded quickly to the growing demand, churning out dozens of titles that could practically be used by teachers, though the Ministry of Education has been slow to endorse national adoption of the idea.
In Scotland, LTS said it was providing 480 Nintendo DS consoles for the project, with 30 going to each school. They will remain in the schools during the trial. Once the scheme is over, LTS will use the consoles for other educational projects over the next few years.
The Scottish experiment follows research in England that suggests that many state schools are failing to get the most out of new technology in the classroom.
Research from Becta, the Government’s adviser on IT in schools, found that although schools were spending £1 billion on cutting-edge information technology a year, 80 per cent of them were failing to make full use of it.
The research also found that many teachers were intimidated by the equipment and struggle to cope, and that children have a better understanding of how it works.
The Government is determined to make every child computer-literate, but the research from Becta (formerly the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency) suggested that some schools were buying the wrong software, and support was often amateurish.

PSN commercial??

2008-03-17T02:06:00.000-07:00

During my daily trawl on PS3 Fanboy i came across this potential ad for the PSN...

I'm not sure where this was unearthed but i thought it was an interesting way of communicating the PSN.

Does anyone have any thoughts?

2008-03-14T03:23:00.000-07:00

Here is some very cool viral stuff I've come across on the interweb...

This is a great film for Adidas - taking viewers through the history and evolution of the brand in a really neat and emotive way...

Twitter in plain English – nice and simple. And in English (More American)

This is just brilliant. All I can say without ruining it.

www.dothetest.co.uk

RFID Tags in Japan

2008-03-14T02:48:00.000-07:00

A trial has just finished in the Ginza district of Tokyo, which used specially created wireless networks to deliver site-specific information to GPRS-enabled mobile phones and PDA devices. When passing through designated 'hot spots', participants could download specific information packs about their surroundings, via embedded RFID tags, IC tags or even infrared.

One of these spots was created outside Ginza metro station, where visitors could have a 3D real-time image of the whole area beamed directly to their phone to help them navigate their way around the metropolis.

The technology utilises an eSound Positioning system, which means that users with an earpiece were sent pre-recorded audio messages via RFID when they approached the relevant locations. If they liked the sound of what they heard, they could then walk in the direction of the voice and receive further downloads about that particular shop, museum, restaurant or landmark.

LittleBigFan.com

2008-03-13T08:03:00.000-07:00

Someone came across this earlier in the week and its a great insight into a possible community for LBP. For example, they are getting very excited that LBP is going to be at Play.com Live!

My particular favourite image of sackboy is above.

A Review of Call of Duty 4 - with a difference...

2008-02-18T02:36:00.000-08:00

The next format war...

2008-02-01T08:51:00.001-08:00

Something that Jonny found...

EA giving away games free

2008-02-01T08:29:00.000-08:00

Electronic Arts, the computer game publisher, has signalled its intent to embrace new, internet-based business models, announcing a version of its popular Battlefield title that will be distributed free online.

Battlefield Heroes - a slimmed down, cartoonish version of its popular combat game, will be released for PC this summer. Instead of being sold for around $20 (£10), it will be available as a download for no charge. The makers aim to generate revenue through advertising and sales of weapons, outfits and other 'virtual items' that can be used in the game.

The move reflects a wider shift in the video game industry towards online distribution - both as a means of capturing new audiences and to take advantage of new revenue opportunities, such as the ability for players to make purchases within the game, and watch ads.

Already in South Korea, one of the world's most developed markets for games, companies such as Nexon have garnered huge audiences for so-called 'online casual games', which are free to play and often generate far greater profit margins for their creators than games sold at retail.

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Battlefield Heroes will be a simpler than previous installments - with an average target playing session of 10 to 15 minutes. EA hopes that this - along with its more cartoonish style - will attract new players.

It won't be EA's first venture in free, online distribution of games. Two years ago, it introduced a free version of its FIFA football game in South Korea, which allows players to buy shoes and strips, as well as to increase the speed and accuracy of their team.

The game now has more than five million players, and while most do not buy anything, a significant number end up spending between $15 and $20 a month, meaning that the title generates $1 million a month of 'in game' sales, an EA executive told The New York Times.

"Traditional publishers like EA are seeking to move away from the traditional model, which is building something very expensive and hoping it will generate sales within three to four weeks of going on sale, to building something cheaper, which it's possible to update," Piers Harding Rolls, an analyst at Screen Digest, said.

Computer games have long allowed players to interact with one another online. Both the Xbox 360 and PlayStation now have internet-based features, and so-called 'massively multi-player online games (MMOG)', such as World of Warcraft, are expected to have 12 million subscribers in the US and Western Europe by 2011, according to Screen Digest.

Unlike the latter - for which users must pay a monthly subscription - the new breed of 'casual online games' are free to download, and generate revenue through other means, such as the sale of virtual items and advertising.

"Many millions more people are playing these casual online games than console games," he said, citing the example of Kartrider, a racing game which allows up to 16 players to race against one another at the same time as well as interact in a virtual community.

A similar model is being employed by sites such as Stardoll, a fashion-based 'virtual world' aimed which now has more than three million users worldwide, and allows players to buy virtual clothes and accessories for dolls that they fashion.

The in-game advertising market, meanwhile, is expected to grow to $732 million in the US by 2010 - a 13-fold increase on the figure for 2005, according to Yankee Group, the research firm

"Games are a lean-forward medium, unlike television - they're 100 per cent engaging," said Ed Bartlett, co-founder the IGA Worldwide agency, which already sells ads to EA for use in the other Battlefield titles.

Mr Bartlett added that games allowed adverts to be highly targeted, as in the case of a recent promotion for a Discovery Channel programme about weapons, which was displayed inside another of the Battlefield games.

Yike-crosoft!

2008-02-01T08:22:00.000-08:00

Last week saw the announcement of significant job losses across Yahoo! as shares slumped. This week, Microsoft has launched an audacious $44.6bn (£22.4bn) bid for its internet rival in a deal designed to create an online advertising powerhouse to rival market leader Google.

Microsoft, which came late to the internet advertising market, is offering Yahoo shareholders $31 a share in a combination of cash and its own stock. The deal would rank as one of the largest dotcom takeovers since AOL and Time Warner merged at the height of the tech stock boom

Microsoft reckons the global online advertising market will grow from over $40bn last year to nearly $80bn by 2010 and as the market grows, advertising platforms must consolidate to get the benefits of scale. Yahoo, for instance, was once the undisputed market leader in online search, but now controls just 17.7% of the US search market compared with Google's 56.3%

Analysts were split over the merits of the deal. One called the 62% premium "exorbitant", but others suggested it could help the markets shrug off the recent financial turmoil.

Internet advertising executives, meanwhile, welcomed the possibility of a stronger competitor to Google. "A Yahoo acquisition by Microsoft will improve competition in the European search market, which is overwhelmingly dominated by Google which has over 80% of the market in UK, France and Germany," said Andrew Walmsley, co-founder of London-based digital media agency i-level.

Manhunt... but not

2008-02-01T08:19:00.000-08:00

Amid the controversy of the banned title Manhunt 2, Brash Entertainment has announced it has signed the rights to develop a game based on grisly horror movie Saw.

The firm is promising the title "will have its own unique storyline, while answering questions left unanswered by the Saw films".

Brash, which added it will be "working closely" with creators of the franchise Leigh Whannell and James Wan, said it is developing the game using Epic's acclaimed Unreal 3 engine.

The game is being created for next-generation platforms and is slated for an October 2009 release, to coincide with the launch of the fifth film in the series.

However, at a time when the government is aiming to prevent such games from release, Brash Entertainment could well face a grilling from the British Board of Film Classification.

Tom Dunmore reviews the MacBook Air

2008-01-29T00:36:00.001-08:00

The joy of seeing the Macbook Air made me forget my hatred for Apple for a few minutes until i read the spec sheet. 1 USB port???!!!

Tom's review below:

Fox News vs Mass Effect

2008-01-29T00:12:00.000-08:00

Something i stumbled upon...

Basically Fox News have caused outrage among gamers for making a big deal of a 'sex scene' in Mass Effect.

The funny bit is that the psychiatrist/author they wheeled out to provide 'credible' authority on the subject hadn't actually played the game or seen the said scene.

She has now come out and said it is nothing worse than she had seen on 'Lost'.

Could it be something to do with gamers flooding Amazon.com's listings of her books with negative reviews?

Lesson Learnt...

Hey HD DVD: It's Not Just a Flesh Wound

2008-01-28T23:47:00.000-08:00

You've got to hand to Toshiba. Even now, when faced with overwhelming evidence that Sony's Blu-ray has won the high def format war, the mortally wounded HD DVD backer just keeps on prolonging the inevitable.

First, Toshiba decides to dramatically cut prices on its HD DVD players in the U.S. following Warner Bros. Blu-ray defection earlier this month. Now, for reasons that also escape us, the company has decided to buy a 30-second Super Bowl spot for $2.7 million to advertise its desperation those marked down HD DVD players.

Of course, none of this is really convincing consumers. As Ars Technica recently noted, in the week following the Warner Bros. defection, weekly HD DVD player sales tanked big time, falling from 14,558 the week previous to a measly 1,758.

Meanwhile, Blu-ray saw a reverse trend, climbing from 15,257 to 21,770. In fact, the format ended up capturing approximately 93 percent of the market that week, according to NDP.

On Monday, Toshiba received another blow, this time from the U.K.'s Woolworths chain. The retail store announced it will be switching exclusively to Blu-ray after it discovered that the latter titles outsold HD DVD 10-to-1 during the holiday season. Woolsworths will be the first major retailer to solely back one of the new high definition DVD formats, but I'm guessing we'll see plenty more when Warner Bros. goes Blu-ray exclusively in May.

Gartner also decided to weigh in on those HD DVD player price cuts on Monday -- yup, the ones that Toshiba is going to spend 2.7 million advertising -- and concluded that they amount to nothing more than "useless resistance" in the battle against Blu-ray, at best prolonging the format's life by a few months.

So why, after the market has clearly spoken (in a loud and deliberate tone), is Toshiba still pretending like it has a chance to win this war? We've already wasted close to two years waiting for this HD mess to resolve itself, and it seems more than a little insulting to have to endure Toshiba's prolonged death scene for another year.

So to the HD DVD camp I say this: You've put up a good fight, guys, but seriously, what are you going to, bleed on Blu-ray? Let's move on with our lives.