Ireland has been named as the most investable country in Western Europe according to Site Selection’s fourth annual Best to Invest rankings.

IDA Ireland, the agency responsible for attracting foreign direct investment to Ireland, were pleased to tweet the findings earlier this afternoon,

Site Selection’s “Best to Invest Rankings” places Ireland as the top country in Europe to invest – bit.ly/MjJwxm

— IDA Ireland(@IDAIRELAND) May 16, 2012

Ireland ranks ahead of the United Kingdom, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Italy in Western Europe, scoring higher in categories such as business environment, business risk, and foreign direct investment and infrastructure, but also in new and expanded facilities announced in 2011.

In other parts of the world Hungary ranked highest in Eastern Europe ahead of Poland and Slovakia, Singapore ranked highest in the Asia-Pacific region ahead of Australia and Malaysia, South Africa ranked highest in the Middle East and Africa ahead of Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, and Mexico ranked highest in Latin America ahead of Brazil and Costa Rica.

With regard to the most investable city in Western Europe, Dublin was proudly placed ahead of all others – ahead of Frankfurt, Edinburgh, Birmingham, Belfast and Paris.

Earlier today, 10 promising startups pitched their ideas to 200 of the world’s top venture capitalists on Dublin’s Barrow Street as part of Startupbootcamp Dublin 2012.

Image credit: The Sociable/Darren McCarra

Earlier this week it emerged that Facebook is testing a somewhat ridiculously-sounding feature that would see normal Facebook users actually paying to make their status updates more visible. Now it looks as though Facebook are considering serving targeted ads on third-party websites as well. Currently Facebook’s monetisation mechanisms exist solely within its own ecosystem.

Facebook’s privacy head Erin Egan appeared in a live web chat earlier today for a follow-up question and answer session on recently announced proposed changes to the network’s privacy policy, during which he reminded us that the current policy allows for serving of ads outside of the Facebook platform.

“We’ve always said in the data use policy that we may serve ads off Facebook and we may use that same information to serve you an ad off Facebook”

So a typical Facebook ad on a third-party site may suggest that you Like certain brands based on the interests of those in your social circle, those that have liked a particular brand before you.

It’s something Google has been doing for years – displaying ads based on your interests, and most recently displaying ads with Google+ social annotations – although with Facebook the delivery of ads based on your social interactions would be more obvious and may come with increased context like “Darren likes Nike”.

Each week Twitter will send out a summary of the top tweets and stories shared on the service, organised in similar fashion to the recently updated Discover tab. Twitter’s Discover section is designed to allow users to find tweets that they otherwise wouldn’t see and ultimately hopes to increase network value and engagement.

Twitter’s email digest will also include tweets seen by the people you follow, and will indicate who from your network retweeted or favourited these. Crucially, users can tweet their own offerings or opinions to the content they discover directly from the email.

Weekly digests will roll-out globally over “the next few weeks” but, as always, any unwanted notifications can be turned off here.

Max Salzberg, one of four Diaspora founders

Diaspora, an alternative privacy-centric social network still in private beta, has reportedly joined startup accelerator programme Y Combinator and hopes to eventually launch sometime after this summer.

The Diaspora open-source project began two years ago, hoping to capitalise on Facebook’s apparent disregard for users’ privacy. Facebook had just changed its privacy policy to include tracking on third-party sites its using social plugins and community uproar ensued.

Diaspora moved quickly, raising $200,000 in crowdsourced funding to create a new social network where users owned and fully controlled their data. After delays and legitimate setbacks, including the death of one of its co-founders last year, the Diaspora project still hasn’t launched to the general public. The team even made a desperate plea for further funding last October to keep their idea alive.

According to a Bloomberg Businessweek profile, however, things may be improving for the ailing startup,

“In June the team will move to Mountain View for three months to join the program [Y Combinator]. Y Combinator helped launch the cloud storage startup Dropbox, the vacation rental site Airbnb, and the presentation-sharing hub Scribd and has a reputation for guiding startups to a clear product and eventually linking founders with investors. The team expects Diaspora to evolve during the summer program and will later open it to the public.”

With Diaspora joining Y Combinator this summer to receive intensive mentoring and the possibility of investment, it’s hoped that the project is once again on track and may launch sometime in the months following the programme’s completion.

New Maps application mock-up

Apple will debut its own completely self-engineered Maps application at its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) next month as it unveils the latest version of its mobile operating system, iOS6.

Currently the Maps application for iOS uses Google Maps data that sits behind an Apple-skinned interface. Now with iOS6, the Maps app will be a complete in-house built solution for the first time.

Apple’s intention to create its own mapping service has been clear for some time, having acquired three relevant companies – Placebase, C3 Technologies and Poly9 – in the last three years.

C3 Technologies street view maps

Perhaps the most exciting feature of the new Maps app will be the integration of C3 Technologies’ photorealistic 3D maps. The technology can “rapidly assemble extremely precise 3D models, and seamlessly integrate them with traditional 2D maps, satellite images, street level photography and user generated images”. Quite frankly, they look incredible.

3D maps will likely be processor-intensive so it’s possible that this capability will be reserved for Apple’s latest and most-powerful devices, like the iPhone 4S and new iPad. Hopefully they won’t make us wait until the release of the iPhone 5 in October to try the new Maps app out.

Then, what if they were joined by 10 of the most promising start-ups fostered in Ireland, who were looking for funding?

Sounds exhilarating/terrifying? – This is Startupbootcamp Dublin, and it’s taking place next Wednesday.

Startupbootcamp is a leading European startup accelerator.  The organisation runs divisions in half a dozen European cities; Copenhagen, Dublin, Amsterdam, Madrid, and Berlin all of which are at various stages.   Dublin’s 2012 programme is coming to an end while London’s Startupbootcamp will launch later this year.

Wednesday’s Investor Day will be the end of an intensive three month training and mentoring programme for the entrepreneurs.

“Investor Demo Day will bring together some of the world’s most talented start-ups, respected mentors and leading investors which will result in an explosion of outcomes and entertainment.”
- Dublin’s Startupbootcamp MD, Eoghan Jennings

On the day the 10 companies will be pitching ideas for industries as diverse as advertising to oil;

• Adfaces  – which aims to democratize outdoor media for SMEs.
• CleverMiles – which aims to enhance road safety.
• Easyprove  – which aims to improve businesses’ purchase management processes.
• Getbulb  – which converts numeric data into visual data.
• MavenHut  – a wager-based casual gaming system.
• NotesFirst – a secure tablet and app system which will give doctors access to their patient’s data.
• Opara – a complete food-chain tracking system.
• Outline  – extracts and helps you mange tasks and other data from emails.
• Pombai  – buy or sell tickets for regional passenger transport in countries across the world.
• Skynet – turning paper-based drilling data into corporate value for the oil and gas industry.

Investor Day takes place in The Factory on Barrow Street.

Assassin’s Creed III moves away from the usual Renaissance-era of previous games to a more contemporary setting – the American Revolution.

Latest trailer

Weapons trailer

Alex Hutchinson, creative director, interview

An adapted version of Internet Explorer may be arriving on the Xbox 360 later this year, bringing a true web browsing experience to one of Microsoft’s most successful products for the first time.

The Verge reports that, according to their own sources, Microsoft is currently testing a tailored version of Internet Explorer on its Xbox 360 entertainment console, and may even reveal details of such at this year’s E3 event in June.

Internet Explorer for Xbox will feature integrated Kinect gestures and voice control, allowing users to perform a Bing search, for example, by speaking commands or browse back and forward through web pages using only hand gestures.

Kinect won’t be the only way to control the browser but, as seen with the PS3, doing so with a normal console controller gets very cumbersome, very quickly.

Recently Furious Tribe forged an exclusive partnership with Vodafone, Ireland’s largest communications provider, to bring mobile consultancy services to Vodafone business customers, but also to develop custom mobile strategies, and build and deploy specific mobile solutions.

We quizzed Patrick on this partnership, the importance for enterprise in developing a mobile strategy and on Furious Tribe’s ability to be a stand-out company.

How important is it for businesses to develop a mobile applications strategy? What are the implications for businesses who ignore this?

I think it is essential for all businesses to develop some kind of mobile strategy, it doesn’t have to be centered around applications though. In fact, small businesses are far more suited to tailoring sites for mobile than building applications. Mobile apps typically cost more to develop and facilitate a richer user interaction, whereas mobile sites are relatively inexpensive to develop and can simply provide product or location information about a business. In 2012 when your customers are constantly on the go, it makes perfect sense for companies to reach out and engage them in a mobile way.

The number of smartphone subscribers has begun to equal the number of feature phone subscribers in certain parts of the world, namely the United States. Could 2012 be described as the “tipping point” at which a strategy in mobile becomes a requirement for businesses, especially for those involved in retail?

I definitely think 2012 is the year of the mobile device, it’s certainly true that smartphones have matched feature phones in western nations, but you can’t ignore the continued growth of the feature phone in India and parts of Africa. The fact is that mobile subscriptions are increasing worldwide, and to remain competitive companies will need to engage on mobile platforms, regardless of whether it’s a feature phone or a smartphone.

Why have you decided to provide a specialised consultancy service with a partner like Vodafone?

From the beginning, Furious Tribe has been providing a specialised consultancy service that helps leading brands to develop mobile strategy and engage with their customers. Our recent partnership with Vodafone aligns with our vision for the way mobile will be adopted in enterprise. Working in close consultation with Vodafone we aim to create the next wave of mobile experiences that help businesses deepen the relationship between their brand and customers.

What makes Furious Tribe a stand-out company? Its ability to deliver cross-platform apps or the unique content management platform Apptivate?

Furious Tribe has a number of unique selling points. Firstly we offer mobile strategy and then combine this with award winning user experience abilities. Another key competitive edge is our unique Apptivate platform that produces cross platform mobile apps and allows our clients to maintain them after launch.

All you have to do is open Firefox and download the NoScript addon (this allows you to prevent JavaScript from executing) and then head over to 199.59.150.41/thesociable.  This will show you your tweets on the older Twitter site design. You can change thesociable to be any username you wish.

199.59.150.41 is a Twitter IP address which still hosts the older design of the website.

So other than the retro appeal of seeing how your Twitter account looked in olden times of yore *ahem* what are the advantages? Well, for a start the 199 address gives you easy access to your profile’s RSS feed (we’ve covered Twitter RSS feeds before) – this was something that was removed when the latest design was released in December. Which we miss.

To do this just click on the RSS link on the right of the screen, under the list of people you’re following, and change the http://199.59.150.41/ in the RSS feed’s address to http://twitter.com/.

What’s interesting about viewing the older design and the new design together is looking at the emphasis that the new design places on media and discovery over followers and lists.

Now all we have to do is find the same trick for Google+

Very important #sockies people

The finalists of the 2012 Bord Gáis Energy Social Media Awards have been announced, with companies like Dublin Zoo, Vodafone Ireland and Today FM among those shortlisted.

As usual, the #sockies organisers embraced free nominations and received double the number of entries on last year’s inaugural event by deadline day on March 30. Nominations were received from over 200 individual Irish companies and organisations and were shortlisted by a panel of over 100 judges.

“The awards aim to recognise talent in online interaction, engagement and innovation and highlight best practice and importance of social media in business.” – #sockies

The event organisers also noted the growing quality and use of video in social media marketing and that, unsurprisingly, Facebook categories received the highest number of nominations.

The awards will take place on May 17 in the Mansion House, Dublin and cheap tickets are now on sale. The finalists are as follows:

Facebook Page for a Business (Non Campaign) sponsored by Newsletter.ie

• DoneDeal.ie
• MyKidsTime.ie
• Jameson Ireland
• Guinness Rugby Supporters Ireland
• Today FM
• National Lottery
• Easons
• Marks & Spencer Ireland
• Universal Pictures Ireland

Facebook Page for a Business (owner managed)

• Tour America
• Brasserie Sixty6
• Republic of Telly
• Blacknight
• A|wear
• Evening Echo
• SPIN 1038
• GrabOne
• GrandGrand.ie

Facebook Page for Non profit/organisation

• Dublin Zoo
• Special Olympics Ireland
• ReachOut Ireland
• Triathlon Ireland
• Dublin Marathon
• Arthritis Ireland
• World Book Day Ireland
• Irish Autism Action
• Cork Opera House

Video/Video Campaign (non broadcast)

• First Fortnight
• Dingadeal.com
• Dublin Dance Festival
• 98FM Care 4 Kids Radiothon Video
• It’s Happening Here – Enterprise Ireland
• Vodafone Suicide or Survive campaign
• Wedding Dates – Kinsale Sevens Rugby Spoof
• SPIN 1038 “Call Me Maybe” Carly Rae Jepsen

Blog of a Business

• Curious Wines
• DingADeal.com
• ArgusCarHire.com
• Sage Ireland
• Spiderworking.com
• Write on Track
• Blacknight

Best Business Twitter account – marketing, sales sponsored by Burritos & Blues

• 98FM Twitter.com/98FMdotcom
• Curious Wines Twitter.com/curiouswines
• Bord Bia Twitter.com/BordBia
• Spin 1038 Twitter.com/spin1038
• Paddy Power Twitter.com/PPoffers
• SPIN South West Twitter.com/spinsouthwest
• O2 Ireland Shop Twitter.com/O2Irelandshop
• Eason Twitter.com/Easons

Best Business Twitter account – Support, CRM

• Iarnrod Eireann Twitter.com/IrishRail
• Eircom Twitter.com/Eircom
• Vodafone Ireland Twitter.com/vodafoneireland
• Blacknight Twitter.com/Blacknight
• O2 Ireland Twitter.com/o2irl
• First Fortnight Twitter.com/firstfortnight
• Lewis Glucksman Gallery Twitter.com/Glucksman
• Electric Ireland Twitter.com/ElectricIreland

Best Business Twitter Campaign

• Electric Ireland – Tweet em home Twitter.com/ElectricIreland
• io – io Bingo Twitter.com/thisisio
• Bord na Móna – Long Night In Twitter.com/LongNightIn
• Buyers Broker – #irishauction Twitter.com/BuyersBrokerLtd
• Easons – Pass the Parcel Twitter.com/easons
• UPC – Twitter.com/WeAreUPC_IE

Best Use of Social Media in an Election – Sponsored by Pi Communications

• John Paul Phelan General Election Campaign
• Seán Gallagher Presidential Campaign
• Michael D Higgins Presidential Campaign
• Irish Labour Party General Election Campaign

Best use of SM for a sponsorship campaign

• Electric Ireland and Electric Picnic
• SPAR SPARTAN Challenge
• Kaspersky Lab and Felicity Aston
• Meteor and Choice Music Prize
• O2 Ireland – Irish Rugby
• Bank of Ireland – Blue Magic Leinster Rugby
• Aviva and Aviva Stadium
• Vodafone Ireland – Dublin GAA Hill 16

Innovative Use of Social Media sponsored by DIT Foundation www.dit.ie/ditfoundation

• Gaza TV News
• RTE´s #HowToBeIrish project
• Electric Ireland #sharetheenergy
• 11890
• Dine in Dublin – Dine at your Desk campaign
• Today FM – Today FM’s Shave or Dye on Social Media
• Brando Digital – #tweetsweets
• AllAbout

As well as bringing Hangouts On Air out of beta earlier today, Google also took the time to append its Google+ Policies and Principles section with some interesting additions, placing responsibility for all content included in a Hangout solely on the person who initiated it.

Hangouts On Air is a Google+ feature previously in private beta that, in the coming weeks, will allow all Google+ users worldwide to live stream Hangouts on Google+, YouTube and on any website using an embed code. Once a hangout is complete, it will be made available on Google+ and YouTube for later and repeat viewing.

Hangouts On Air also means that for the first time non-Google+ users can view video sessions, both in real-time and delayed.

An interesting addition to the terms of service that all Google+ users must adhere to states that the individual who first initiates a Hangout On Air is solely responsible for the content it includes. The person who starts a Hangout On Air is automatically its moderator and will be held accountable for any policy breaches by others involved.

For this reason Google advises that you choose Hangout participants “carefully” and, if necessary, use Hangout’s blocking feature to remove any offenders.

“You are responsible for ensuring all content included in a Hangout On Air initiated by you complies with this Agreement, including content provided by other participants who may join you in the Hangout.”

The Agreement extends to the Google Terms of Service, the Google+ user content and conduct policy, the privacy policy, the YouTube terms of service, and today’s additional terms and conditions relating specifically to Hangouts On Air. So if a Hangout On Air includes a live performance for example, its initiator must ensure that all the necessary rights, consents and payments to any artists have been made.

Google+ users can click here to find out what’s happening live right now.

Ireland generates enough electricity from wind to power 1.3 million homes

Wind farms can raise ground temperatures in their immediate locality, which could lead to a “noticeable” impact on local and regional weather and climates, research suggests.

Researchers in Texas analysed nine years of temperature data between 2003 and 2011 over a mid-central region in the southern state where four of the world’s largest wind farms are situated. They discovered a “significant warming trend” of up to 0.72 degree celsius per decade of ground temperatures around wind farms when compared to nearby non-wind-farm regions.

This warming trend is most obvious at night when the air above the ground tends to be warmer than the ground itself. Wind turbines simply pull warmer air from above and mix this with the colder air below, raising temperatures in the process.

Researchers believe that this warming trend may not be mirrored to the same degree across over wind farms and regions, and that the warming effect would likely reach a limit if the number of wind turbines in a given farm did not increase.

The research team is now expanding its study approach to other wind farms and will build models to better “understand the physical processes and mechanisms driving the interactions of wind turbines and the atmospheric layer near the surface”.

Via: BBC News

Niall Dorr, Innovation Manager at Netwatch and Professor Noel O’Connor, a Principal Investigator in CLARITY

Netwatch, an established security company that specialises in crime prevention technologies, has developed a surveillance technology that can distinguish between human and non-human activity, greatly reducing the number of false alarms issued to key holders, security guards and members of the police force.

The technology analyses surveillance footage in real-time for human characteristics like shape, size and movement, verifying that an intruder is indeed human – and not some wild cat or other urban animal, for example – before activating the alarm system.

Netwatch has recently invested €400,000 in research and development, including the development of this new technology that is expected to market in Ireland, the United Kingdom and the United States within three months.

The Irish company partnered with a team of researchers from CLARITY, the Centre for Sensor Web Technologies at Dublin City University to develop the “alarm reduction system”. Principal investigator in CLARITY, Professor Noel O’Connor, commented,

“The approach that we have developed uses sophisticated video analytics coupled with machine learning to provide a new layer of information to Netwatch’s intervention specialists. It’s an example of how the research expertise in our universities can be leveraged to help solve real world problems being faced by key players in Ireland’s knowledge economy.”

Netwatch are no strangers to pioneering security technology, having launched real-time remote visual monitoring 10 years ago. Netwatch operators continually monitor surveillance footage and intervene when necessary, communicating via a speaker system to suspected intruders and often preventing crimes from taking place.

It was a roaring success: selling out as soon as it became available, bringing the top performance expected from the flagship single GPU card, all while undercutting the competition in price.

Now NVIDIA is launching the GTX 690, which will be available on the 3^rd of May. The GTX 690, similar to the previous 590 will be a dual GPU card, featuring two of the GK104 GPU dies, those featured in the 680. Along with 4GB of RAM, although not the first consumer card available with 4GB, it will certainly be out performing those cards already released.

Since the GTX 680 was such a cool and power efficient card, it allows the GTX 690 to fully use two GPUs without having the same problems as similar previous cards.

It features dual vapour chamber coolers, one for each GPU and an axial fan positioned in the centre allowing it to better cool both GPU’s simultaneously. Much older designs featured the fan at the rear of the card in a blower configuration as with the GTX 680 and AMD 7970.

Although this proved ineffective with dual GPU boards, as the hot air from the rear GPU would blow over the heatsink for the second, resulting in one chip running hotter than the other.

The specifications are very impressive, although as usual with dual GPU cards the Core Clock speed is slightly lower than that of the individual card. This is done to reduce the heat generated and power consumption within acceptable levels. Although thanks to Kepler’s Boost feature the max boost clock is still slightly higher than the Core Clock of the stock 680, meaning it will still be an extremely powerful card.

Despite the card featuring 4GB of VRAM, one must note that it’s actually 2GB per GPU, the same as on the reference 680. Although some manufactures will probably attempt to double the VRAM to 8GB; allowing both chips to have 4GB each. This is sure to eliminate any problems at very high resolutions.

What’s more impressive is the power consumption, usually these cards are very power hungry, but thanks to Kepler’s brilliant power and thermal efficiency it only has a TDP of 300W, which significantly lower than its predecessor’s (GTX590) 375W.

As expected NVDIA have produced their own benchmarks to showcase their new card, although marketing slides have a tendency to be a little bias. As such I would take them with a grain of salt and wait for other review sites to publish their results.

The performance shows is certainly impressive for a single card, although without a detailed breakdown of each game’s settings and the type of anti-aliasing used they might not show the full story. The price tag is a little off putting though, especially when comparing it to the previous dual card from NVDIA. Prices are sure to vary depending on where you shop and supply and demand will certainly play a role as well.

Even so the GTX 690 is bound to be an extremely powerful card and given its low power consumption (for a dual GPU card) it would be a great investment for anyone that wants the best performance available to them.

Unless you strongly favour the green team I would suggest holding off on purchasing one right away. Wait for AMD’s response and their expected dual GPU card, the 7990 before deciding on which monster graphics card to buy.

Which is to be expected, when you consider that the winner of the 2012 Unsigned and Online (@UnsignedOnline | Facebook) competition will walk away with over €10,000’s worth of online promotional backing to help kick start their professional music career, as well as a filmed studio performance and a live slot in Dublin’s The Academy Venue.

The competition challenges musicians and bands to gain as many votes as they can on the Unsigned and Online Muzu page by creating and promoting a music video for one of their tracks.  The musician or band with the greatest number of votes on Muzu (@muzutv | Facebook | Google+) will take home the prize.

To see how things are going, and what’s involved, we caught up with Microsoft Ireland’s Paul Shanahan.

Why did Microsoft decide to set up Unsigned and Online?

When we first started this initiative we felt that a lot of Irish acts were still only scratching the surface of what they can achieve with the technology available today. I’m a musician myself and I know how difficult it is for bands to build a fan base that doesn’t just consist of their friends and family.  So we wanted to create an initiative that offered a real difference to Unsigned Irish bands and musicians.

The Unsigned and Online competition is a platform that facilitates and rewards bands who wish to promote themselves using digital channels – a key ingredient today to any music act’s success. Clever promotion will help their music find its way to an audience that appreciates it.

More and more independent acts are breaking through via online channels. Some are creating clever viral videos, others just have incredible music, and some offer both.  Either way, the online era has meant more and more bands are waiting less and less for the record exec to come knocking on the door and instead are going at it hard themselves. Having a presence online opens the door to a global audience instantly! This is why the main focus of the prize is on online promotion.

Both Microsoft and Muzu TV have come together to offer the winner €10,000 worth of online promotion via MSN.ie, Hotmail and Muzu.TV. That’s the sort of package that can provide serious hit rates for any band online and potentially become the game changer for an unknown act.

Many great groups have come to prominence through social media, how can Microsoft help?

I think what Microsoft brings to the table here is access to our software tools, which are free, which enables bands and musicians create more freely than before with just a few clicks. Tools like Movie Maker and Sky Drive enable bands to collaborate and share in a way that allows them to be far more productive in a shorter space of time.

In addition, our partnership with Muzu TV adds real substance and reach to the social aspect of the competition. The team there have created a great platform for bands to promote their online content very easily and they’re rewarded duly for doing so. Muzu TV work a shared revenue model with bands so that they get rewarded financially based on hits to their channel. It’s an incentive for the bands to get socially active and unleash their music beyond the realms of local gigs and into new geographies and fan bases online. Combining what both of these offerings can add real value to artists when trying to build a fanbase.

You mention gigs, and of course one of the main prizes in the competition is a filmed studio performance and a slot in The Academy, tell us more about these.

I think this is straight away part of the prize that bands instantly relate to – performance!

As well as €10,000 worth of online promotion the winners will get the opportunity to perform a song acoustically in the Muzu TV studios, where they will be filmed and uploaded straight to the Muzu TV site. Again it’s all about driving that online promotion. To top it off then we’ve arranged that the band will play at Dublin’s Academy venue, which we’re hoping the attendance will be high given their new found fan base!

What advice would you give to musicians and bands that want to promote themselves online?

I need to wear my musician hat when answering this one too! I think bands need to be smarter about how they promote themselves online. Think like a business. Targeting people online, if done right, can be more effective than any other form of marketing. Do your research and make sure you have selected the right sites to promote yourself on. As well as that make sure you have selected the right people to market yourself to!

Strong content is absolutely key.  This does not mean you need to be John Landis of Thriller fame – you just need to capture your music in a way that people will remember and respond to.  Create videos people will want to share and you begin to realise just how far your music may actually travel – remember, you are not geographically bound online. Why not target an audience in another country to generate more momentum behind your campaign?

Do your research and find out what music is popular in the download charts – if your genre is all the rage right now in Germany then that’s your market! Your music and music video is your band’s product to sell – treat it that way.

Research, target and promote

What has the reaction been like so far from the public?

The response has been great to date – we have 15 bands entered into the competition already with over 15,000 views totted up after just two weeks . We’re expecting a few more entries and the views to really add up running up to the close of competition on the 13th of July.

We’ve had nothing but positive responses to the Facebook site, on affiliate sites and direct to Microsoft and Muzu TV. People seem genuine in their praise in the format of the competition and the prize offered to an Unsigned act!

What has the reaction been like so far from the participants?

We have received great feedback from the bands to date that this is a competition well worth taking part in. In some cases it’s actually prompted the bands to get out of the rehearsal studio and actually start working on the music video for that song they recorded ages ago.

3000 views later and they are delighted they entered! This is what the competition is about.

Unsigned and Online is running until June 13; you can see the musicians and groups participating so far over on Muzu’s Unsigned and Online page.

As game publisher Activision officially unveiled Black Ops 2 today, further details have emerged of the fifth Treyarch Call of Duty release and its unusual storyline.

The game is mostly set in the near-future of 2025 – a “second Cold War” – but also in the 1980s. It features drones and other robotic war machines that aren’t too removed from today’s reality.

The first level of the game is set in Los Angeles where the city is under siege by a fleet of US combat drones that have been hacked and are now controlled by terrorists. The player assumes role as David Mason, son of Alex Mason, a Black Ops soldier tasked with helping to escort the country’s President to a safe zone.

The attack on Los Angeles introduces much of the game’s weaponry, like armor piercing sniper rounds, a walking tank known as a Cognitive Land Assault Weapon (CLAW) and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that fire on the enemy autonomously from above.

The rebel leader responsible for initiating the drone attacks on American cities is Raul Menendez who threatens China with similar action, sparking fears of a global war.

As China and the United States bid to control rare earth elements that are essential to all electronic military equipment, Menendez is said to use both “as pawns in a larger end game”.

And yes, zombies survival mode makes a welcome return.

Via: VentureBeat

Business Photos initially launched last October in Australia, France, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States. Due to “positive feedback” from its initial run, the program has been expanded to Canada, Ireland and the Netherlands beginning today.

Businesses that wish to create 360-degree interactive tours of their premises are required to incur the costs involved in hiring a professional photographer to capture the imagery. Business Photos do offer a list of Trusted Photographers – although none appear to live outside of the United States – to which they actively invite other local photographers to join.

The aim of Business Photos is to help businesses, particular gyms, restaurants, salons and shops, better market their location and attract potential customers. The service is said to give people who are thinking about visiting your location “a sense of what they can expect when they walk through your doors”.

The Royal Courts of Justice, London

The UK High Court has today ruled that internet service providers (ISPs) operating in the UK must censor access to file sharing site The Pirate Bay.

Everything Everywhere, O2, Sky, TalkTalk and Virgin Media are expected to block access to the Swedish file sharing site within weeks. Britain’s largest ISP, BT, has requested “a few more weeks” to consider their its position on this.

The British Phonographic Industry had requested the group of ISPs voluntarily censor access to The Pirate Bay back in November 2011. However, when all ISPs rejected this the BPI began court proceedings that eventually culminated in today’s decision.

Eircom, Ireland’s largest ISP, has already had a similar blockade in place since September 2009, although this was achieved by way of an out-of-court settlement between Eircom and the four major record labels EMI, Sony, Universal, and Warner.

Virgin Media, one of the ISPs affected by today’s court order believes that BPI’s approach to tackling copyright infringement is short-sighted and only part of the solution.

“As a responsible ISP, Virgin Media complies with court orders addressed to the company but strongly believes that changing consumer behaviour to tackle copyright infringement also needs compelling legal alternatives, such as our agreement with Spotify, to give consumers access to great content at the right price.”

Rights groups have warned that such internet censorship measures are “pointless and dangerous” and only “fuel calls for further, wider and even more drastic calls for internet censorship”. After all, the arguably feigned blocking mechanisms that ISPs are forced to put in place can be easily circumvented using free and readily available proxy services.

Nevertheless, court proceedings do highlight very clearly and rightly the illegal nature of such file sharing website.

Source: BBC News

There’s nothing worse than a summer of sequels, right? Erh, wrong, summer 2012 is getting off to a great start, with the release of two sequels to classic game.  The games are of course Diablo 3 and Max Payne 3, both modern classics in their own right.

Diablo 3

Few games are as highly anticipated, not to mention as unexpected, as Diablo 3; many fans  thought they might never see its release. So, 12 years after the release of Diablo 2 (to be fair we didn’t have the 14 year wait we had with Duke Nukem Forever) and 16 years after the release of the original the day is close at hand that we’ll get our grubby mitts on number three. We’ll just have to wait until May 15^th to be exact.

So what should we expect from the latest addition to the Diablo family?

In the game’s universe we can expect Diablo 3 to be extremely dark and gritty where good and evil are quite real. The human realm of Sanctuary is under siege by the legions of evil and it’s up to the player (and friends) to discover just what is happening in the world, given that signs from ancient prophecies have been sighted and evil seems to be returning.

In the real world we might have our own battles (mainly with the servers); Blizzard recently hosted an Open Beta weekend, with the purpose of stress testing their servers in preparation for the game’s launch. The weekend saw the game’s server being completed overwhelmed, with many people not even being able to login to try the beta.

With the game so close to being released many people have wondered just how demanding it will be on their computers. Thankfully, the requirements are not as high as many would have thought. Blizzard has always been very good at bringing their games to many varied systems, even those that could be described as out-dated by gaming standards.

The title of the forthcoming Call of Duty release has been confirmed as Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 and pre-orders of the Activision title will begin as early as next week, May 2.

This confirmation comes courtesy of IGN and a leaked Target Black Ops 2 reservation card. Black Ops 2 is expected to be officially announced on May 1.

Activation has two games developers – Infinity Ward and Treyarch – working on the Call of Duty series concurrently, with staggered biyearly title releases from each. Infinity Ward is responsible for developing the main Modern Warfare game series while Treyarch concentrates on Black Ops and World at War titles. Since Infinity Ward released Modern Warfare 3 last year, it comes as no surprise really that Black Ops 2 would be this year’s release.

Infinity Ward is arguably the more popular of the two developers but sales of Black Ops 2 are still expected to be record breaking. The game will be released on PS3 and Xbox on November 13 for definite, with a PC, Nintendo Wii and Nintendo DS versions likely to follow.

Chomp - now iOS-only app discovery engine

Previously Chomp users were offered both Android and iOS app recommendations. Now, Chomp’s proprietary algorithm that “learns the functions and topics of apps, so you can search based on what apps do, not just what they’re called” is iOS exclusive.

Apple are expected to integrate Chomp’s functionality into the App Store to vastly improve organisation and discovery of its 500,000 or so apps. It’s often cumbersome trying to sort through the App Store’s extensive offerings, so we welcome this.

We may even see the fruits of such an integration as early as June this year when Apple is expected to unveil the latest version of their mobile operating system at WWDC 2012.

Content discovery engine StumbleUpon reached 25 million registered users this week, growing from 5.5 million just three years ago, according to CEO Garrett Camp who spoke to TechCrunch’s Anthony Ha.

Earlier this month StumbleUpon updated its Facebook app to make activity sharing easier, automated even. The service is now witnessing 1.2 billion Stumbles each month.

To give you an idea of just how much the service has grown in recent years, we need look no further than our own site analytics data. In the past 30 days StumbleUpon has been the third-largest source of referral traffic to The Sociable behind Twitter and Facebook. In fact, it’s referred three times more traffic to our site that Google+ has in a similar period.

“If we continue at this rate, we could see hundreds of millions of users” – Garrett Camp

StumbleUpon has three major considerations going forward; mobile, international expansion and an API.

Stumbles from mobile devices have grown 800% in the past year so, like most companies, StumbleUpon are realising the importance of this. It plans to launch new, improved mobile apps this year.

Around 85% of StumbleUpon traffic comes from North America. The company wants to expand into Europe and offer localised services in the United Kingdom, France and Germany, with additional nations to be considered after that.

Like all good social services StumbleUpon plans to introduce one. An API (Application Programming Interface) would allow third-party services to interact with StumbleUpon data and display related and highly recommended media by StumbleUpon users on their own site, for example.

The eight-year-old me who fell in love with The Avengers comic back in 1974 would have adored this movie, though I suspect he would have been a little baffled as to why it’s called Avengers Assemble. But I’ve ranted about that before, so let’s all just agree that the movie is really called The Avengers, and move on.

Good news is that the forty-six-year-old me who still has a deep love for The Avengers comic also adored this movie. Seriously, I can’t remember when I last saw a movie that was so much fun.

I’m a huge fan of live-action films based on comic-books, and for the most part even when they’re bad movies I still find something to like about them, so I admit it, I’m biased. The Avengers would have to have been exceptionally rotten – on the scale of Green Lantern or Batman & Robin rotten – for me not to get some enjoyment out of it.

Rottenness wasn’t likely with The Avengers because (a) the preceding movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe – Iron Man, Iron Man 2, The Incredible Hulk, Thor and Captain America – were all great fun, and (b) it was co-written and directed by Joss Whedon, the genius who revitalised television with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and Firefly.

Hawkeye, Captain America and Black Widow

On the other side of the lens, we get Robert Downey Jr. (Tony Stark / Iron Man), Chris Evans (Steve Rogers / Captain America), Chris Hemsworth (Thor), Scarlett Johansson (Natasha Romanoff / Black Widow), Jeremy Renner (Clint Barton / Hawkeye), Samuel L. Jackson (Nick Fury), Tom Hiddleston (Loki), Stellan Skarsgård (Dr. Selvig) and Clark Gregg (Agent Phil Coulson), all reprising their roles from the previous films. Plus there’s cameos from Paul Bettany as Jarvis and Gwyneth Paltrow as Virginia “Pepper” Potts from the Iron Man movies. There’s also Cobie Smulders as Agent Maria Hill, a character new to the movies but familiar to those who’ve read the comics.

That’s quite a list… Did I forget anyone? Yes, of course, I forgot Mark Ruffalo who plays the part of Doctor Bruce Banner / The Hulk. To be honest, I didn’t forget him. I just left him off that list deliberately. And here’s why…

In Ang Lee’s 2003 movie Hulk, the part of the good Doctor is played by Eric Bana. He’s great in the role, but overall the film is flawed. Though its action scenes are tremendously exciting (Hulk beats up a tank with bits of another tank – you can’t go too far wrong with stuff like that), the film takes itself too seriously. Plus I’ve seen it six or seven times and I’m still not sure what happens at the end.

The 2008 sequel / reboot The Incredible Hulk (directed by Louis Leterrier) is a lot better. Edward Norton takes over the role of Banner and he is spot-on perfect. The action is top-notch and on the whole it’s a much more satisfying experience. Norton was originally lined up to reprise the role in The Avengers, but negotiations fell through.

As soon as I heard that, I was worried. I mean, imagine if it had worked out – we could have had Robert Downey Jr. and Edward Norton on-screen together! Two of my favourite actors, in a superhero movie that also has Hawkeye in it – that would have been cinematic heaven!

But it was not to be, and instead of the great Mr. Norton we’ve been saddled with his hardly-a-household-name, what’s-he-been-in-again? replacement Mark Ruffalo.

An ensemble movie like The Avengers can handle one dud character because there’s so much else going on. So, phew, we’re safe! It’ll be all right: there’s a guy in powered armour who can fly, lots of explosions, a big exciting battle scene that would make any movie-director proud and which turns out to be only a prelude to the real climax which is even bigger and more exciting, and Hawkeye (who is cooler than cool and even cooler than that – please can we have a Hawkeye solo movie?).

So it doesn’t matter quite so much that Edward Norton isn’t in the movie. And what makes the deal all the sweeter is that Mark Ruffalo is so absolutely perfect as Banner that within minutes I’d completely forgotten about Edward Wossname. Seriously, Ruffalo is fantastic. I’m not kidding: he is the man – he’s the best thing in the movie, and that’s saying a lot. He plays Banner with incredible subtlety, his whole body-language hinting at constant restraint even when he’s being pushed. Banner has several scenes with Stark and the two work together beautifully.

Fact is, the character exchanges all-round are exactly what you’d expect from Joss Whedon. As his TV shows have demonstrated many times, he is a master at character interaction, and this is the movie’s strongest thread. Yes, the action scenes are thrilling and feature lots and lots of property damage – as is only right – and more attacking of things with hammers and shields and arrows than you could ever hope to see, but it’s the quiet moments that give The Avengers its power… And its humour: Whedon’s always been good at tension-dispelling humour and this movie is no exception. There’s a good half-dozen laugh-out-loud moments will make you want to jump up and applaud.

The editing / direction is nicely paced: nothing feels too rushed or too drawn-out, and for the most part the time given to the main characters is well-balanced.

I would have liked to have seen more of Thor (and perhaps a better explanation as to exactly how he manages to get to Earth – the ending of his own movie made it pretty clear that the door was – literally – closed on that point), and Captain America: though the good Captain does have a lot to do in The Avengers, his eponymous movie has only a couple of moments of the man-out-of-time aspect that makes the character so fascinating, and that’s only briefly touched on in this outing. I guess they’re saving that up for Captain America 2.

Also on the downside is the 3D aspect. I’ve only seen a few other 3D movies, so perhaps I’m not the best one to judge, but I don’t much care for it. It adds nothing to the movies, and only serves to constantly disrupt the suspension of disbelief: when it doesn’t quite work, you find yourself noticing it (a good special effect is one that you don’t even know is there: the Hulk, for example, is ten-feet-tall and green, and yet he always looks like he’s really on the set), and when the 3D does work – and a lot of the time in this movie it works very well – you find yourself thinking “Oh, that looks nice!” Filmmakers: we don’t want that. We want to be immersed in the escapade without being constantly reminded that we’re watching a film.

But those minor niggles aside, The Avengers is a triumph. The folks behind the scenes should be very, very proud of their creation. They’ve succeeded at a task that many believed impossible: taken a dozen established characters from five different movies and mashed them together into a new film that surpasses all of them and works as a stand-alone adventure.

My inner eight-year-old is already bugging me to take him to see it again… He doesn’t even need to ask.

While sharing of content to Google+ is currently possible via the now established +1 button, a dedicated share button makes this process quicker and easier, and removes some of the ambiguity and uncertainty that still surrounds the +1 button.

So with the current +1 button, a user is shown an optional share bubble after +1′ing a page (try it on this post!). The new share button does away with the need to first +1 a page before being able to share it directly to Google+.

On a practical note the text ‘Share’ is a far greater call to action than ‘+1′ and brings the button more on par with those offered by Facebook and Twitter. We wouldn’t be surprised if the Share button replaces the current +1 button, at least on publishers’ websites.

Expect the Google+ Share button to make its way onto our share column soon.