WildBlueSkies - Trends and strategies in Digital Media

Digital Material- Tracing New Media in Everyday Life and Technology

dhirender — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 21:09:37 +0000

Three decades of societal and cultural alignment of new media yielded to a host of innovations, trials, and problems, accompanied by versatile popular and academic discourse. New Media Studies crystallized internationally into an established academic discipline, and this begs the question: where do we stand now? Which new questions emerge now new media are taken for granted, and which riddles are still unsolved? Is contemporary digital culture indeed all about ‘you’, the participating user, or do we still not really understand the digital machinery and how this constitutes us as ‘you’?
The contributors of the book, all teaching and researching new media and digital culture, assembled their ‘digital material’ into an anthology, covering issues ranging from desktop metaphors to Web 2.0 ecosystems, from touch screens to blogging and e-learning, from role-playing games and Cybergoth music to wireless dreams. Together the contributions provide a showcase of current research in the field, from what may be called a ‘digitalmaterialist’ perspective.
Download the book here, or get it in print here from Amsterdam University Press.

Will Operating Systems Become Ad Supported?

dhirender — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 09:24:09 +0000

Steve Jobs, has applied for a patent titled ‘Advertisement in an Operating System’, and has listed himself as an ‘inventor’ of the application (US Patent Application 20090265214), says the Business Standard.
Is that the way that Operating Systems are going to go?
According to the application, the “the operating system can disable some aspect of its operation to prompt the operator to pay attention to the advertisement”.
The advertisements may include, for example, a rectangular banner ad, an audio ad, a video clip, an image file, executable code, embedded information, or any other media, content, or interactive advertisement.
Moreover, this is not limited to only computers, but could extend to include to cellphones, music players, etc.

Save 80 Hours A Year With eBilling

dhirender — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 18:51:06 +0000

The convenience of paying utility bills online, is contributing to the increasing online transactions. Telephone bills, mainly mobile bills, are primarily driving the transactions, followed by insurance premiums and electricity bills says the Business Standard.
Online payments and transfer of funds from one bank to another also contributed to a 100% year-on-year growth in online transactions. Inbetween HDFC Bank had started a charge of Rs. 5/- per NEFT transaction which seemed to be quite regressive. Thankfully, they have now reversed it.
Online transactions are going up by 10-12 %every month, according to data by Billdesk, which facilitates payment of bills over internet. A clear indication of the trust in online transactions.
An average Indian household in cities pays about 50 bills annually. An individual saves about 80 hours in a year by e-billing, with the business growing 200% and its size expected to touch 6.5 million by 2008-09 from the then level of 1.9 million, a survey by Assocham had found last year.

Google Net Income Up 27% At $1.64 Billion

dhirender — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 12:51:23 +0000

In yet another sign that the global economy may be on the mend, Google said that its net income rose 27% in the third quarter as brisker advertising sales lifted revenue 7%.
Google reported net income of $1.64 billion, or $5.13 a share, compared with $1.29 billion, or $4.06 in the period a year earlier. Revenue was $5.94 billion, up from $5.54 billion last year.
Net revenue, which excludes commissions paid to advertising partners, was $4.38 billion, up 8%, from $4.04 billion. Adjusted income, excluding the cost of stock options and other items, was $5.89, up from $4.92 a year earlier (on an average, Wall Street analysts expected Google to report adjusted income of $5.40 a share on net revenue of $4.23 billion).
While Google’s revenue growth was strong when compared with the first half of the year, it was only a fraction of what it was in prior years. Google grew at 31% in 2008 and 56% in 2007. It hit the slowest growth rate in its 11-year-history, 3%, in the second quarter. [Via]
However, the silver lining is that Since Google focuses mainly on performance campaigns, and hence their revenues would rise only if netizens are clicking on ads, the inference is that if consumers are clicking on ads, they are doing so with an inclination to buy, which in turn bodes well for the economy.

White Paper – Social Media Analytics

dhirender — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 12:17:42 +0000

It seems like everyone is jumping on to the social media bandwagon to target customers and engage them in conversations. But is there any way to measure the impact?
This whitepaper from Coremetrics will show you how to gain insight into performance and continually optimize the results of syndicated videos, blogs, user reviews, display ads, micro-sites and more.

How to:

Avoid the pitfalls of social media advertising by accurately measuring results with business-focused metrics
Uncover social media return on investment (ROI) so you can make better-informed budget decisions
Continually optimize every online marketing initiative by putting analytics data into action

Download it here (free registration required)

Tata Teleservices To Invest Another $1 Bln In GSM Service

dhirender — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 12:01:51 +0000

Tata Teleservices seems extremely bullish on India. Consider this, they had committed an investment of $2 billion for the GSM services when it was launched in June this year, which was supposed to be spent by the end of the current financial year, and now, they are planning to invest an additional $1 billion in Tata DoCoMo – their GSM service
The company intends to pump this money in a bid to enhance its network in the telecom circles where it has already launched GSM services.
Of the 23 telecom circles in the country, Tata DoCoMo was allotted spectrum to launch its services in 18 telecom circles. As of now, the company has rolled out GSM services in 11 circles, namely Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Orissa, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, Chhattisgarh, Kolkata, Mumbai and the rest of Maharashtra.
The company is planning to roll out GSM services in the rest of the circles by December-end.
The per-second and the per-character billing seems to be working for them. [Via]

Matrix Partners Invests Rs. 20 Crore In Ver Se’ Innovations

dhirender — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 11:47:34 +0000

Matrix Partners has invested Rs 20 crore in Ver Se’ Innovations, a Bangalore-based provider of classified services on mobile phone says the Business Standard.
Ver Se’ Innovations, which provides mobile classified services in categories like jobs, matrimonials and real estate, was seed-funded by OnMobile Global, a mobile VAS player incubated by Infosys, India’s second largest IT services firm. Besides, OnMobile had a global distribution agreement with Ver se Innovation.
Post the funding, Aravind Rao, chairman and CEO of OnMobile, and Rishi Navani, co-founder and MD of Matrix India, will join the board of Ver Se’ Innovations.
Ver Se’ intends to invest in business operations, product innovation and new business models.
Joberix seems to be one service from them, which seems to be a job aggregator.

3 Million Indians On LinkedIn

dhirender — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 10:56:32 +0000

By the time of writing this, LinkedIn will have whizzed past 50 million users worldwide, with Indians chipping at 3 million – today LinkedIn is growing at about 1 member every second (I think that might just match up with the population growth worldwide).
What is even more interesting is this snippet from the blog - When LinkedIn launched in 2003, it took 477 days — almost a year and four months — to reach our first million members. This last million took only 12 days.
About half of the total LinkedIn membership is international. There are now 11 million users in Europe alone. India is currently the fastest-growing country with almost 3 million users, while the Netherlands has the highest rate of adoption per capita outside the U.S., at 30%.

Haryana Fastest Average Connection Speed?

dhirender — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 13:12:36 +0000

With an average internet connection speed of 1,100 Kbps for the second quarter of 2009, Karnataka has been ranked second in a study of the top 10 Indian states for their average connection speeds. The state has recorded a 32% increase in the average connection speed over last year.
In its quarterly “State of The Internet” report, Akamai Technologies, has concluded that Haryana has the highest average connection speed in India at 1,271 Kbps which has increased by 19% compared to last year. Others states in the top five include Kerala, Gujarat and, Jammu and Kashmir. The average internet connection speed in India was seen to be maintained above 768 Kbps. Globally, the average connection speed was 1.5 Mbps and South Korea maintained the highest average connection speed at 11.3 Mbps.
The study also ranked Karnataka fourth in its top 10 Indian states by the number of unique IP addresses. Karnataka recorded 173,945 unique IPs which was a growth of 25%compared to last year. Delhi, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu were ranked as the top three Indian states in this regard.
Overall, India was ranked 20th globally for the number of unique IP addresses, with over 3 million unique IPs which was up 57% year-on-year, and 8% from Q1 2009. It was also ranked 107th globally for the average connections speed, at 895 Kbps. In terms of the observed traffic attack, China led the list followed by the US, South Korea and India. In terms of the number of unique IP addresses per capita, India was ranked 166th with 0.0029.
For the fifth consecutive quarter, the US and China continued to account for 40% of the observed IP addresses. [Via]

Is this report for real? Can the average connection speeds in India actually be about 768 Kbps? Where’s my average speed?

GSM Subscribers Rise By 8.59 Mln In September

dhirender — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 10:25:13 +0000

Subcribers to GSM based mobile services grew by 8.59 million in September, taking the total GSM numbers to 344.4 million, or a growth of 2.6% over August, says the latest data released by the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), the apex body of GSM operators
According to COAI, Bharti Airtel retained its lead with 2.5 million additions, taking its total GSM subscriber base to 110.5 million, and an overall marketshare of 32.08% in the nine-player market. Vodafone is next, adding 1.97 million GSM subscribers in September, taking its overall tally to 82.8 million subscribers. The government’s Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd gained 1.3 million subscribers, while Idea Cellular also added 1.3 million subscribers in September. [Via]