Yahoo! poaching YouTube content creators?

Yahoo has made a number of radical changes since Marissa Mayer took over the helm back in May 2012, Including the acquisition of Tumblr for $1.1 billion in May of last year. Since then Yahoo! Have rebranded many of their services such as Flickr and more recently their logo. In Yahoo's latest bid to stay relevant in a world where Google and other giants dominate they are turning their attentions to online video creators and in particular YouTube content creators.

Yahoo! Is reportedly looking to create an alternative to YouTube has reportedly began to try and lure away some of the most successful YouTube creators to join them with the promise of making more money. Yahoo hopes that offering better ad revenues, guaranteed advertisement rates and extensive marketing will lure away some of the content creators away from YouTube and the mighty Google.

Marissa has been particularly interested in video since taking over at Yahoo! and has signed some big partnership deals and releasing content through a new app called Yahoo! Screen. In today’s report by ReCode the new video competitor would have a similar focus and look to poach big YouTube stars rather than launching and open to all service. Whilst there is no solid date for a launch Yahoo! is said to be launching this new service in the coming months.

What are you thoughts on Yahoo’s venture into YouTube’s territory? As usual we would love to hear your thoughts in the comment section below.  

 

Will you be switching off for Earth Hour?

We take many things for granted these days from running water to electricity. Each year the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) runs a campaign called Earth Hour which takes place on Saturday 29th March this year from 8:30pm - 9:30pm. The campaign encourages us to turn of the lights for just an hour to support the environment.

As well as individuals switching off there is also many organised Earth Hour events where large cities around the world go into darkness to show their support for the cause. If you would like to find out if there is one near you simply visit the website earthhour.org for more details.

As a first this year the organisation has also set up a crowd-funding platform called Earth Hour Blue which lets you pledge your support for one of the many excellent conservation projects. These range from saving forests in Madagascar to protecting the panda’s in china.

Earth Hour has got me reflecting on my use of technology and the amount of electricity that I consume in a day. So this year I will be making a conscious effort to do a bit more and will be switching off not just the lights but all technology including my laptop, smartphone and television. I will likely take this time to either read a book by candlelight or good old fashioned socialising with family.

Will you be turning off the lights for Earth Hour this year or doing anything else in regards to the World Wildlife Fund’s campaign? As usual we’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments section below. Have a great weekend.

 

New Image features on Twitter

Twitter announced yesterday that it was rolling out some new features for images on Twitter. The first of the new features is the ability to add multiple images to a tweet (up to a total of 4) however this is currently only available on the official Twitter app for iOS with Android coming soon. At present it doesn’t seem possible to upload multiple images via the web interface, whether this will roll out or not remains to be seen.

Another feature rolled out is Image tagging, a feature that Facebook has had for a number of years now. You can now tag up to ten friends in a photo in a move which Twitter says makes photo sharing more social. Again this feature only appears to be available on the official Twitter apps for iOS and later Android and is not available on the web version.

To tag someone in a photo simply tap ‘Who’s in this photo’ and then type the persons username. Twitter will then send notifications to those users who have been tagged. Notifications can be customized if required and it’s worth noting that Twitter automatically opts you into the ‘Allow anyone to tag me in a photo’ option, which for those with a large following or those who are victims of frequent trolling may find this problematic. It’s simple to change this however under privacy setting and only allowing those who follow you to tag you or disabling tagging altogether.

Some people in the United Kingdom have reported that they have not got this update yet so it may be that Twitter is gradually rolling out these features as they often do. Whilst these new features are only available on the official Twitter for iOS app we will be getting an Android update soon.

Both the new photo-tagging and tweets with up to four photos will display in embedded tweets, according to a post from Twitter software engineer Cesar Puerta.

 

Facebook buys Oculus VR, Early Adopters Unhappy

Yesterday Facebook announced the latest in it’s acquisition spending spree with the purchase of Oculus VR the company behind Oculus Rift. Facebook announced that it bought the company for $2billion which compared to the amount they paid for SnapChat seems like small change. Oculus started out as a kickstarter project and was initially seeking $250,000 in funding but went on to rake in nearly $2.5 million in pledges.

Many of the early supporters have hit out at the acquisition with one former supporter, Michael Cooper taking to the Kickstarter page and writing:

"What in hell was the point of Kickstarter if you sell out to a giant company like Facebook, This is very disappointing. I will no longer be supporting the Oculus Rift in anyway."

This is just one of a wave of comments that flooded the Kickstarter page soon after the deal was announced yesterday and every comment at the time of writing this is negative. Oculus Rift was was one of the most successful Kickstarter projects to ever be funded but it seems Facebook and Oculus have a lot of work on their hands to convince people that this was a good move.

It will be hard for Oculus to convince people especially when big companies such as Mojang, the creators of Minecraft have severed all ties with Oculus VR over this deal citing that Facebook creeps them out, according to owner Markus Persson

Sadly for disgruntled Kickstarter backers there is no such thing as a refund or money back guarantee so I guess you’ll have to just deal with the fact that your hard earned dollars helped pave the way for multi billion dollar payday.

 

Facebook video ads coming soon

Facebook have again been playing with the ‘News Feed’ again, no it’s not another layout or tweak to the user interface this time it’s Video advertising. Facebook first announced they were testing video advertisements late last year and rolled out a beta version of their video ad platform to advertisers in December of last year.

Before anybody gets worried about noisy adverts playing in their news feeds there is a silver lining in that video adverts will auto-play however there will not be any sound unless the user actually clicks on the advertisement.

Advertisements will be sold much in the same way that television adverts are sold and will be based on Targeted Gross Rating Points aimed to target a specific audience over a short period of time. Similarly the adverts will also be priced much like a television advert would be with prices ranging from $1 million to $2.5 million initially on launch. Judging from that we can assume that these video ads will be targeted at large corporations rather than small to medium businesses.

Facebook will be using Nielson and Ace Metrix to track and measure the video ads and work with advertisers to review the quality and proposed engagement level of each ad before it becomes available on Facebook.

So when will these adverts start to appear in your news feed? Facebook announced in a blog post that we should be seeing these video advertisements in the next few months. If you feel you really don’t want these adverts or they are too obtrusive it’s likely that popular adblockers will be updated in order to hide these from your news feed.

How do you feel about video ads in your news feed? Do you think they will be obtrusive? or will we just learn to ignore them like we have with other adverts. Let us know what you think in the comments section below.

 

Flappy Bird to return?

It's now been a month since developer Dong Nguyen took the decision to remove flappy bird from both the App Store and Google Play Store. The move was met with a wave of speculation about the reasons behind the decision ranging from things such as a lawsuit threat from Nintendo and death threats from angry gamers. However the developer continued to stick to his original story about his reasons and stated that it was due to people overusing the game and the amount of criticism and attention he had received as a result of creating flappy bird. Dong was hounded by the media after creating flappy bird and was apparently overwhelmed with the amount of requests from press organizations.

Not long after flappy bird was taken down a plethora of copycat apps flooded the App Store and Google Play with developers trying to cash in on the success of flappy bird including myself, though mine was more for fun and I didn’t try to monetize it either. Apple and Google have since taken action and are removing some of these apps that are either too similar or use the word ‘flappy’ in the title, that being said there are still a large number of these available to download in each store.

Just as we were all beginning to move on and forget about flappy bird and the news coverage had all but died a death, Flappy Bird is again back in the limelight after the magazine Rolling Stone managed to bag an interview with the 28 year old Vietnam developer. The interview is very interesting and talks about the reasons for creating flappy bird and the inspirations behind the app as well as revealing that Dong is considering re-releasing the app again but this time it would include a warning about safety and not over playing the game and the importance of taking regular breaks (sounds more like long distance driving advice) whether or not this comes to fruition remains to be seen and we have to question whether anybody really cares whether or not the app makes a return. The world of technology and apps moves very quickly and what is hot one week may not necessarily be hot the next. Personally I think flappy bird has flown the nest and that’s where it should be left, if Dong Nguyen decided to release a new game though that would be a different matter.

 

 

Windows 8.1 Update 1 Leaked to public

Today has not been a great day for Microsoft after the company made Windows 8.1 update 1 available on their servers to allow employees to update to the new version it was leaked to the public too. Microsoft intended to keep the public away from this update by labelling the files with non obvious filenames. Unfortunately for them people were able to access these files with a simple software tweak that fooled Microsoft’s servers into thinking they were internal Microsoft employees.

Microsoft have since patched this vulnerability meaning you can no longer download the files directly from their servers. However the damage has already been done, those who managed to download the files have released them to various file sharing services allowing anybody to download and install the update on their systems.

Windows 8.1 update 1 is not officially supported by Microsoft yet and even though Microsoft released the RTM version on Wednesday which is a good representation of the final product it’s worth noting that some hardware specific drivers and services may not be fully compatible yet. If you do decide to search out the update online you should proceed with utmost caution as with any unsupported software there will likely be issues.

As we mentioned on Tuesday Microsoft will be officially releasing Windows 8.1 update 1 on April 8th, about a week after their Build developer conference. Our advice would be to hold off until then rather than risk installing this released build from unofficial sources. For more information about Windows 8.1 update 1 check out our post from earlier this week.


 

How Much is your Mobile Worth

A lot of people have begun to sell their phones on after they have finished with them. Often, this is via the use of recycling websites such as Envirophone and Mazuma Mobile (there are many more) or even a highstreet store like Albemarle Bond. Now people are also starting to sell their mobiles on to get the value of the small amount of gold that can be used in the phones. Recycling your old phones can be useful in many ways. They can be taken apart and their various bits and pieces used to make other things. It also means you come away with a little extra cash in your pocket while being a lot more economical.

Gold can be used for micro voltages as they are a highly conductive metal – hence their use in a lot of things. One of the best uses of gold is that they don't corrode very easily, meaning the demand for it is a lot higher than you would think. The very small percentage of gold put into each mobile phone seems a minuscule amount, but put all this gold together, and there is a vast amount. Around one billion mobiles are made every year, each of them containing around 50 cents in gold. A lot of these aren't recycled, so it is a waste of the gold (and money) in this respect.  

Gold is one of the most important of metals in the industrial sector, particularly when it comes to electronics. Devices such as our mobile phones use such little currents and voltages and gold is the conductor used to try and carry the currents around your mobile and stop the corrosion from happening. This also means they are a lot more reliable. Devices such as televisions and calculators also have a bit of gold in them. You can also recycle these electronics although there aren't as many services readily available to do so.

References
http://geology.com/minerals/gold/uses-of-gold.shtml

Author - Chris Hutchinson

Roku's Streaming Stick takes on Chromecast

The world of online streaming has really hotted up over the last year with services such as Netflix becoming more and more popular all the time. People have even started to cut their cable subscriptions in favor of online streaming services which are cheaper and offer a more on-demand service.

Roku is no stranger to the world of online streaming as they have had several variations of the ‘Roku Box’ which is now on version 3. When compared with other solutions such as the Apple TV, Roku have always been very popular due to the sheer amount of content available with over 450 channels and counting available at the time of writing. Unlike Apple TV which has a very controlled approach to the channels that are available, Roku have always tried to offer as much as possible with services such as Amazon Instant, Netflix, Now TV and more recently YouTube. Whilst some devices like the Chromecast only work with particular services Roku appears to support nearly all of them.

With the launch of the Chromecast Google changed the way we thought about streaming devices, they were no longer clunky boxes that had to be placed on top or beside the television set, you simply plugged in your Chromecast stick into a spare HDMI port and you were away. It seems that Roku also thinks that this is the ways to go as they have just announced their own Streaming Stick which will offer over 1,200 channels when it launches. What sets apart Roku’s offering from the Chromecast is the inclusion of the Roku remote which has been included with all of their previous streaming devices.

The new Roku streaming stick is due to launch in April but you can pre-order it from many retailers before to avoid disappointment if they sell-out quickly. It’s important to note that unlike previous Roku boxes the streaming stick is only compatible with HDMI so if you don’t have HDMI capabilities you may want to look at the Roku 1 or 2 which allow connectivity via RCA instead. To learn more about the new Roku Streaming stick head over to Roku’s website.