Devices that sense motion are called accelerometers. Recently, accelerometers have been miniaturized as silicon-based devices for consumer electronics folk. New products such as the hugely popular “Guitar Hero” from Activision, Apple’s iPhone, and the Nintendo Wii are built using them and accelerometers have revolutionized the user interface. And the reward are being reaped by those who manufacture the MEMS (Micro Electro-Mechanical Systems) accelerometers that reside at the heart of these devices… those companies would be the likes of Analog Devices for the Wii, STMicroelectronics for the iPhone and Freescale Semiconductor. According to ABI Research Senior Analyst Douglas McEuen, “The MEMS accelerometer market will see strong, solid growth in the next five years, driven mainly by the technology’s great potential for user interface transformation across multiple industries. We expect the market to show a compound annual growth rate of 27 percent to 2012.” If you’d like to know more, ABI Research’s “MEMS Accelerometers” study is now available at the company’s website—Scottsdale, Arizona
Harris Corporation has been selected by
CNNMoney.com is reporting IAC/InterActiveCorp is about to invest heavily in expansion projects in China through the creation of services for local users. Over the next two years, IAC is also going to launch their ASK.COM service in China, with all of their offerings localized and created with the Chinese market in mind. According to company CEO Barry Diller, one reason others have not bee as successful as they could have been was due to the fact they attempted to bring product into China that was designed for the U.S. and other foreign markets and not specifically for the Chinese user. China is the second highest Internet user population, just after the U.S.—they have approximately 162 million folk using online services. The new China ventures will see about a $100 million investment by IAC, according to Diller.
Chat has it, birthed by the U.K. site TechCrunch, that Mountain-View, California-based LinkedIn is busy having discussions with Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. regarding an acquisition by the mega info corp. Currently there are some 12 million users of LinkedIn which has ingested some $27.5 million in VC during 3 rounds from such money havens as Bessemer Venture Partners, Greylock and Sequoia. OpenSocial Integration (OSI) seems a worthy involvement for firms seeking capital infusion from those that have there wherewithal… online ops and networking of the social kind seem to be of particular interest to publishing firms whose print divisions are on a forced diet, thanks to decreasing advertising revenues…
Peripherals and systems compatible with the Panasonic P2HD Series will now be built by leading broadcasting equipment manufacturers, thanks to a new agreement between them and Panasonic. The P2 Series is Panasonic’s, tapeless, solid-state memory broadcasting and pro video recording system. P2-compatible solid state memory cards for broadcasting purposes will be supplied by FUJIFILM, starting in the spring of 2008—From FOR-A will come a proprietary media management system that conforms to the AVC-Intra codec, which will allow the system to ingest and manage content of P2 cards as metadata, to be released in 2008—DVCPRO HD and AVC-Intra will be supported by Thomson’s Grass Valley video servers, which already support AVC-Intra in their EDUIS line of NLEs, with Grass Valley to offer a complete, end-to-end workflow based on P2, from directing editing on P2 cards through to playout—Omneon will provide realtime encoding and decoding of HD material via the AVC-Intra codec via their new 56—series MediaPort modules for the Omneon Spectrum media server and the Omneon MediaDeck integrated server, available in 2008. Panasonic’s P2 series was released in 2004 and the P2HD Series for HD recording is being marketed worldwide.
Joining one of the leading providers of IP over broadcast satellite is a new vice president of corporate and business development. Mr. David Richardson is joining UDcast with more than 20 years of broadcasting and media industry experience under his belt. He was previously the Director of Business Development for NDS in North America. He will join UDcast at their headquarters in Sophia-Antipolis, France. He will contribute to the development of new products, market channels and alliances in the rapidly developing fields of Mobile TV and WiMAX. His background is extremely impressive—co-inventor of NDS’ DVR technology known as XTV, the most widely deployed DVR solution in the world—NDS liaison for News Corp. (NDS’ corporate parent)—participated in the development of satellite data broadcasting technologies as well as IP multicast and interactive applications. We wish Mr. Richardson well in his new post as member of the UDcast executive team—Sophia-Antipolis, France
Voyant International Corporation [OTCBB: VOYT] and Wysiwyg Distribution, Ltd., a provider of digital distribution services for broadcast quality media content, have signed partnership agreements to increase the content library of Wysiwyg and the entertainment industry market reach of Voyant’s RocketStream, Inc. subsidiary. Voyant Productions, a business unit of Voyant International, will aggregate high-quality motion picture content into Wysiwyg’s digital services business. This business provides original content producers with a turnkey path to the digital marketplace. Content producers supply their content and Wysiwyg provides the technology and resources for monetization. Wysiwyg increases the efficiency of legacy distribution processes, provides original services and creates multiple revenue streams by monetizing every aspect of the content creation and delivery process. Wysiwyg will also promote the RocketStream data transfer acceleration software suite to its customer base. RocketStream can provide more than 100x acceleration over traditional file transfer methods such as FTP at a fraction of the price of competing hardware-based solutions. RocketStream’s Window-compatible software has been available since March 2007—a Macintosh-compatible version is currently being released to over one hundred beta registrants.
digiBITS…
An agreement between Yahoo! And SONY BMG has been signed. This accord extends the video-on-demand license and also expands the existing relationship between the two firms into more territories around the world. Sony BMG music videos will be available for distribution across Yahoo! And off-network through a Yahoo-branded video player and Yahoo! Users will be able to use various Sony BMG audio recordings in user generated AV content.
Seen at last week’s Government Video and Technology Expo in Washington D.C. were two new pro cameras worthy of notice. They included the Panasonic HPX500, which packs a list price of $14,000 sans lens and brings into play variable frame rates in 11 steps between 12p and 60p for undercranking/overcranking—the Sony XDCAM PMW-EX1 with support for 1080p, 720p and 1080i HD using the MPEG-2 Long GOP CODEC and 140 minutes of recording time on two 16GB SxS Memory Cards with a list of just under $7,800.
NewBlue Inc. has released new, updated NewblueFX plugins for the Sony Vegas software family. There are three new collections and four version 2.0 upgrade collections. The new collections include 3D Explosions, 3D Transformations and Film effects. The upgrades to v.2.0 include Art Effects, Art Blends, Motion Effects and Motion Blends. Video AND audio effects are offered with bundle purchase options. Further details…
With the holiday season just around the corner, the number of digital entertainment releases increases for consumer consumption of content. Here are the titles of the expected releases for Monday, November 26th, include:
