Mick Darling's posterousAll my blogging in one spot. (mostly)Filed under: readerEnable Concurrent Remote Desktop Sessions in Windows with This Patch [Remote Desktop]
Windows: The built-in Remote Desktop (RDP) feature in Windows is a convenient way to access your computer remotely, but it's limited to only one user accessing the PC at a time. TechSpot shares this patch to get around that limitation. More »
Even in 2012, More Americans Own TVs Than Cellphones [STUDY]No matter how big you think the mobile world or the Internet have gotten, neither has quite beaten the television set’s popularity, at least not in the U.S. Some 290 million Americans, in 114.7 million households, own at least one TV. Compare that with 234 million cellphone owners, 211 million Americans who are online, and the 116 million (ages 13 and up) who surf the mobile web. A recent Nielsen report examines media consumption in the U.S., through TVs, the Internet and mobile phones. Internet users have nearly caught up with mobile users, with 234 million consumers and 211 million consumers respectively. Nearly one-third (35.9 million) of TV-owning households have four or more televisions. Just 17.5 million households have exactly one television, the least popular number of sets among all TV-owning households. Are you surprised by how much TV ownership continues to outpace Internet use? Let us know in the comments. ![]() Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Bim More About: cellphones, internet, Nielsen, study, TV For more Entertainment coverage:
Twitter to Host Its First Live Streaming Concert, Starring DJ Tiësto [EXCLUSIVE]HP and Intel will be hosting the first-ever live stream of a concert on Twitter next week at the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show. The headliner: electronic music master DJ Tiësto. The concert will kick off the launch of a new 10-episode series on YouTube called “In the Booth” — a behind-the-scenes look at how Tiësto uses technology to make music and connect with fans. The private event at the nightclub XS at Encore in Las Vegas will stream live from HP and Intel’s newly enhanced Twitter brand pages. Tiësto will play a 90-minute set starting at 10:00 p.m. PT. It will then play on a loop on HP and Intel’s Twitter page for the following 48 hours. “We have offered streaming on the site before, but this is the first-time ever that the site will feature a live concert,” Rob Pietsch, Twitter’s director of West Coast sales, told Mashable. “HP came to us with the idea and we couldn’t be more excited to hear how the company and Intel will be using their Twitter brand pages to reach out to the public and become destination sites. “It’s a first for us, and we expect in the future that more companies will integrate streaming video into their pages.” In December, Twitter announced that it would be introducing Facebook-style brand pages for companies to customize and highlight content. HP and Intel are among the first 21 brands invited to test out the new platform – other companies include Dell, Disney, JetBlue, Nike and Paramount Pictures. The company said it expects to make the new brand pages for companies more widely available by the end of the first quarter of 2012. Twitter users will also be able to interact with others on the site while watching the live stream next week. HP and Intel execs will also be live tweeting from the show via the hash tag #TiestoLive. “This will change the way fans interact with brands on the site. Companies can tell fans to check out their pages and features by saying @HP or @Intel, instead of giving a long URL that doesn’t roll off the tongue,” Pietsch said. “In addition, this is a concept that isn’t even available on Facebook, since it’s a closed community. Here, anyone can watch the live stream and chat with anyone else with the same interests. We expect to see some powerful things come out of brand pages in the future.” The Web series – produced by Believe Entertainment Group – will launch Tuesday, Jan. 17 on YouTube and each video will be between five and seven minutes long. “I’m always connecting with my fans directly through Twitter and other social media, so this was an exciting way to help launch the show and do something special for my fans,” DJ Tiësto told Mashable. “One of the key reasons to collaborate with technology giants such as HP and Intel on my new show is the chance to try new things and go after big ideas.” HP and Intel said they both plan to expand their brand presence on Twitter this year by offering new ways for fans to engage with their companies. “Twitter was the perfect platform for us to try out an innovative new concept with DJ Tiësto and allow people to interact with our brand at the same time,” said Natalie Malaszenko, director of worldwide digital marketing & social Media for HP Personal Systems Group. “We have had great success with Twitter before and very high engagement rates, so we hope to do a lot more through our branded profile page in the future.” More About: CES, CES 2012, Facebook, HP, intel, Twitter, twitter brands Politicians’ Spending on Digital Ads Skyrockets
The survey found that U.S. political campaigns in 2011-2012 have spent 100% more to buy online advertisements than they did during the 2010 midterm elections. The information was collected in a flash survey of executives from top political media advertising agencies. Online advertisements have several advantages over ads in more traditional forms of media. They can be targeted by location and demographic, as Mitt Romney’s campaign did with YouTube ads in Iowa leading up to the caucus. They also provide more accurate data about engagement. It’s easy to tell how many Internet users clicked on or watched an online ad, it’s harder to tell how many radio listeners or TV watchers turned down the volume during commercial breaks. Which platform is getting the lion’s share of those ad dollars? Facebook, by a wide margin. 92% of respondents said they considered Mark Zuckerburg’s social network to be the “top social medium of choice” for political advertisements. Twitter was ranked second by 46% of those polled, while YouTube and LinkedIn tied for third at 31%. Google+, which is still relatively new but gaining users at an astonishing rate, ranked last at 23%. Mobile advertising, however, isn’t yet a major part of the ad game for electoral contenders in 2012. 85% of respondents noted that less than a quarter of political clients have spent money on mobile ads. Do you think digital ads are the future of political campaigns? Let us know in the comments below. Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Tommydickson More About: 2012 presidential campaign, barack obama, digital advertising, Mitt Romney Everything You Need to Know About CES [INFOGRAPHIC]Listen. Can you hear it? It’s the distant sound of thousands of AMOLED touchscreens being loaded into the Las Vegas Convention Center. That’s right — it’s almost here. CES 2012 promises to be the biggest, baddest tech extravaganza since … well, CES 2011. In anticipation of the yearly Geek-a-Palooza, the folks over at Sortable have created this visual guide to the upcoming show. It also includes a fun look back at CESes past. Check out which gadgets and games made their debut at the conference over the years, and grab some stats on what will undoubtedly be a breakout year for a pile of new products, services and companies. Infographic courtesy of Sortable.com More About: CES, CES 2012, Gadgets, infographics, Tech Amazon’s LoveFilm Signs TV Streaming Deal With BBC WorldwideAmazon’s LoveFilm has signed a deal with BBC Worldwide, giving its members access to BBC’s archive of shows as well as those commissioned by other British broadcasters, the company has announced. The deal covers shows such as Doctor Who, Life On Mars, Spooks and Whitechapel, as well as documentaries such as Planet Earth. LoveFilm has also signed a deal with ITV, giving members access to shows such as Marchlands and Inspector Morse. LoveFilm Instant, which is the name for LoveFilm’s streaming service, already offers members TV and movie content from broadcasters such as Disney, Lionsgate, Sony Pictures and Warner Bros. With more than 1,500,000 members, LoveFilm is currently the biggest UK-based provider of on-demand, streaming video, but it will get a very serious competitor in Netflix in early 2012. In preparation for the UK launch, Netflix recently signed content partnerships with Lionsgate, MGM, Miramax and, most recently, the BBC. More About: bbc, BBC Worldwide, lovefilm, streaming, TV For more Entertainment coverage:
Next-gen Google TV to use ARM instead of AtomA statement issued by Marvell Thursday revealed that the next-generation Google TV reference design ditches x86 in favor of ARM. The Google TV products that are going to be unveiled at CES use Marvell's ARMADA 1500 SoC, which has a dual-core 1.2GHz ARM CPU. This marks a big change for the Google TV platform, which was originally intended to run on devices with Intel's Atom chip. The Google TV product line provided the initial motivation for Google's efforts to officially support the x86 architecture in the Android software platform. Android is used at the core of Google TV. The first generation of Google TV products failed to attract consumers due to high prices and limited functionality. A bitter dispute between Google and content providers led to users of Google TV products being blocked from some prominent streaming video sites. The Google TV platform was recently overhauled in a major update that improved usability and exposed more functionality to users. One particularly significant improvement is that Google TV products are now capable of running ported third-party Android applications. Moving from the x86 architecture to ARM will improve the availability of third-party Android software on future Google TV products, because ARM-based Google TV devices will theoretically be able to seamlessly run existing Android applications that rely on native code. The move doesn't look good for Intel, which has struggled to extend Atom chips outside the realm of netbooks. Intel and Google are still collaborating on Android's x86 support, however, and recently demonstrated Android 2.3 running on a Medfield smartphone prototype. Read the comments on this post from Ars Technica http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2012/01/next-gen-google-tv-to-use-arm-ins...5 Predictions for Online Data in 2012Josh Jones-Dilworth is the founder and CEO of Jones-Dilworth, Inc., a public relations consultancy focused on bringing early-stage technologies to market. In the spirit of the new year, I’ve determined my online data predictions for 2012. And because I’m attempting to make this an annual experiment, let’s begin my looking back at how my 2011 predictions shook out. 1. Personal data management matures into an industry. I’ll admit the prediction was largely a fail. Ambitious startups like Singly + The Locker Project got off the ground, but did not pick up steam. Many new, related startups are in the works, but none have even come close to the goal of managing one’s data the way he manages his health or wealth, for instance. An end-to-end platform may emerge, but it will take time. 2. The flood gates of corporate data open widely. This prediction has come close to being true. It certainly has become important to mine, parse and manifest corporate data for internal and external uses alike. The predominant question has indeed shifted from “Should I make my data open and available?” to “How can I do it best?” But at the same time, a lot of people are still sitting on the sidelines, waiting to see how things develop. 3. Big data gets regulated. Facebook agreed to submit to independent privacy audits as part of its long-gestating FTC settlement. I’d argue that we’ll see more regulation in 2012. Congress has taken an active role, and the big Internet companies have only further increased their lobbying spend. Controversies surrounding Carrier IQ, Apple and SOPA have accelerated public interest. Of course there’s good regulation and bad regulation. Anyone doing business in or with data is going to have to understand how government works, and play an active role. 4. The trend itself gets old and tired. Another outright fail. It is certainly true that everything is becoming, or has already become, data-driven, but we haven’t yet had the hangover I predicted. If anything, we’re full-steam ahead, and as ebullient and ambitious as ever. This is good and bad — escalating investment of both human and real capital will spur innovation and speed up the inevitable. But the pace also makes us more vulnerable. Data for data’s sake, or data for self-justification is an ongoing risk. 5. Data scientists become the new community managers. I think it’s fair to say that this happened, by a large margin. Check out this chart from Indeed that chronicles the explosion of data scientist jobs. CMSWire explores the particulars in more detail.
Last year aside, what’s going to matter in 2012? 1. Future Tense Analytics — Hello, McFly?For a long time, were analytics defined by the past — what happened a day ago? A week ago? A year ago? The arrival of real-time technologies sped things up quite a bit. It’s now commonplace to ask, what’s happening? What’s trending? What’s changing? Today’s best data-driven technologies and strategies orchestrate insights in the present tense. Naturally, predictive analytics tackle the future tense. This isn’t a new notion, but the underlying technologies are finally mature enough for predictive use. Keep an eye on places like Decide.com. In 2012, future-tense capabilities will become widespread, and in high demand. 2. Mixing and Matching Data SetsOne of the things that comes right after wider availability of data is the desire to put that data in context. For instance, this type of mashup culture is what put Mashable itself on the map back in 2006 and 2007. For other brands and enterprises, 2012 will be all about crashing diverse data sets together, and seeing what clicks. I’m actually a dissenter when it comes to companies like Factual or SimpleGeo’s heavy emphasis on location as a single data vertical. Umbel‘s focus on audience definition and BlueKai‘s ad targeting are other examples of early leaders in a particular domain. It’s not at all that these companies aren’t cool or useful, but the most interesting things happen when you mash up data sources. For example, Umbel can provide incredible insight into your audience and its habits, but it’s even more interesting when merged with usage logs, comment streams and share counts. The year 2012 will be about putting corporate data alongside open public sources — internal data meets external data. This is why I continue to be a big fan of data marketplaces like Infochimps, a company I advise, which has bundled data sets and API surrounding key themes, instead of verticals. The most actionable insights come from a diversity of data. 3. The Data Scientist Talent GrabA few years ago, I remember reading job descriptions for Ruby on Rails programmers who should have “5+ years of experience.” This was funny, as Rails was only three years old at the time. That is what happens when a certain skill set spikes in demand. Employers assume market maturity when there is none, hiring gets very competitive, salaries rise, the very best practitioners give their employers an unfair advantage, and the market is flooded with wannabes (some of whom prove their mettle, some who do not). Training and professional development initiatives have taken center stage, and the land grab is on. McKinsey predicts that by 2018, the U.S. alone will face a 140,000 to 190,000-person shortage of professionals who have deep analytical skills, as well as a shortfall of 1.5 million managers and analysts with the know-how to analyze big data to make effective decisions. We’re even seeing venture firms like Greylock hire top 5% data scientists to work across the entire portfolio, as one solution to the problem. And companies are employing new means of data science outsourcing (see: Kaggle, Mu Sigma). Since it’s all still a relatively nascent field, I urge you to reinvest in the talent you already house. Knowledge of your own business is just as important as knowledge of data science. There are requisite skills of course, and it takes a certain kind of person, but in my own experience, there are bound to be many qualified individuals who are hungry and game. Soon there will be a much wider gap between the novices and the experts. However, don’t think of data science chops as just something you can hire for, and be done with. It’s a transformative trend, something that will eventually cut horizontally across your entire organization. In 2012, data science will appear in job descriptions left and right, and will become the most in-demand skill set in the technology sector. 4. Data-Driven EverywhereWe generally think of data as the domain of large B2B companies that sell enterprise software, or of advertising networks and targeting systems that have an easy way of assigning a dollar value to their work. But the legal, pharma and law enforcement sectors have also been natural fits. In 2012, we’ll see data-driven innovation and data-centric design emerge from the unlikeliest of places — think data-driven fashion, crop insurance, Hollywood box office and even humanities education. Essentially, don’t rule out the possibility of data-driven strategies anywhere. Even if a business doesn’t run on data, it absolutely produces very interesting exhaust that can be used advantageously. 5. Data-Driven Non-profitsData has a higher purpose too — it’s not just a pageview multiplier, or a CPM lift. Data can help us understand how we are doing as a society and as a culture. Here I’m not talking about non-profits that use data to grow. I’m talking about non-profit initiatives that are built around data in and of themselves. Two great examples are CommonCrawl and the Earth Dashboard Project. Common Crawl builds and maintains a free and open crawl of the web and all its data, with the purpose of forwarding important research that requires large-scale analysis. The Earth Dashboard Project is an effort to build a living report card of sorts for the entire globe. It will be installed at the UN Headquarters in New York City as a way of reminding delegates and visitors of the bigger picture, our interconnectedness, and what we’re really working toward every day. There is a lot to be done with data, not nearly all of it profitable. In 2012, we’ll see five to seven new data-driven non-profits start to bite off important chunks of value that sit outside of corporate and governmental concerns. Image courtesy of iStockphoto, nadla More About: contributor, data, data collection, features, future, predictions For more Tech coverage:
Mashable’s Digital Predictions for 2012Celebrity Apprentice: Meet the Most Connected Cast YetCelebrity Apprentice host Donald Trump has been touting this season’s crop of contestants as “the best cast we’ve ever had.” We’re not sure about “best,” but the cast certainly has an unbeatable following on social media. The celebrities’ social networks could help them in challenges that require their teams to raise the most money to win. One Facebook status update or Twitter missive from a contestant could rally followers — even fellow celebrity followers — to donate money during one of those challenges. Trump and NBC producers likely monitor each contestants’ online sentiment — so fan comments on social sites and message boards also could sway who Trump fires when the season begins Feb. 12. Producers might want to keep contestants that incite significant online buzz, which may translate to better TV ratings. For example, actor George Takei of Star Trek fame posted a Facebook status update about the show Wednesday. It has attracted more than 25,000 “Likes,” 2,800 comments and 1,100 shares. NBC revealed the cast Wednesday, but searches for Celebrity Apprentice topics are trending high Thursday on Google. Singer Clay Aiken, who finished second on American Idol‘s season two in 2003, was the fifth hottest-searched topic on Google on Thursday, with Celebrity Apprentice at number 15. Whether that means Aiken is an early fan favorite is yet to be seen. Google searchers could just be looking up who Aiken is. We’ve reached out to NBC to find out how much access the celebrities will have during taping. We’ll update this post once NBC responds. For now, enjoy these 18 videos featuring each of the celebrities that will battle it out to avoid Trump’s signature “you’re fired” hand gesture. For full biographies of each, head over to the Celebrity Apprentice website. Note: Click on the celebrities’ names to go to their Twitter pages. Meet Clay Aiken“Former American Idol contestant Clay Aiken talks about the skills he brings to the show.” Meet Michael Andretti“Race car driver Michael Andretti talks about being competitive by nature, and his reasons for filling in for his son Marco.” Meet Adam Carolla“Adam Carolla doesn’t throw people under the bus… he throws them into a wood chipper.” Meet Tia Carrere“Actress Tia Carrere looks forward to hanging out with the ladies and vanquishing the men.” Meet Lou Ferrigno“Lou Ferrigno, better known as the Incredible Hulk, talks about his charity, the Muscular Dystrophy Association.” Meet Debbie Gibson“Debbie Gibson talks about her 25 years in the business since she was 16.” Meet Teresa Giudice“Real Housewife Teresa Giudice talks about the difference between her on-air persona and the people her friends now at home.” Meet Victoria Gotti“Reality TV star Victoria Gotti talks about her experience on reality TV, and why she’s sure she’s going to win.” Meet Arsenio Hall“Arsenio Hall talks about what the show means to him: that people in 2012 will know he’s alive!” Meet Penn Jillette“Magician Penn Jillette wants to show that the classic American individual can win playing by someone else’s rules.” Meet Lisa Lampanelli“Comedian Lisa Lampanelli, the “Queen of Mean” and a loud Italian, talks about her concern coming on a show with a lot of loud Italians.” Meet Dayana Mendoza“Miss Universe Dayana Mendoza gets emotional discussing her excitement being on the show.” Meet Aubrey O’Day“Singer Aubrey O’Day is not afraid to use her very strong voice.” Meet Dee Snider“Twisted Sister singer Dee Snider talks about his charity, the March of Dimes” Meet George Takei“George Takei — Star Trek‘s Sulu — talks about his chosen charity, the Japanese American National Museum.” Meet Paul Teutul, Sr.“American Chopper‘s Paul Teutul, Sr. talks about his first time meeting Trump on The Tonight Show.” Meet Cheryl Tiegs“Cheryl Tiegs talks about her chosen charity, the Farrah Fawcett Foundation.” Meet Patricia Velasquez“Model and actress Patricia Velasquez talks about the charity she started ten years ago, the Wayuu Taya Foundation.” More About: Celebrity Apprentice, Entertainment, Facebook, Social Media, social tv, television, Twitter For more Entertainment coverage:
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