(De)convergence in TV: a comparative analysis of the development of Smart TV

Against the backdrop of media convergence, Smart TVs are developing rapidly in large parts of the world. Smart TV refers to the integration of broadband Internet and social media features into TV sets. From a media business perspective, the proliferation of Smart TV services may put pressure on the market structure of the TV landscape, and urge for new business models in order to capture the dynamics of media convergence. By means of a comparative analysis in four European markets (Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom), the development of Smart TV is sketched in terms of viewing patterns, business models and standardization. The conclusion is that national TV markets are evolving quite differently, so that service providers must adapt their marketing strategies to reflect local market conditions. Hence, the success of Smart TV ultimately depends on the local package of value-added services and the amount of strategic partnerships with content owners, TV broadcasters and pay-TV operators

AdSplit: Separating smartphone advertising from applications

A wide variety of smartphone applications today rely on third-party advertising services, which provide libraries that are linked into the hosting application. This situation is undesirable for both the application author and the advertiser. Advertising libraries require additional permissions, resulting in additional permission requests to users. Likewise, a malicious application could simulate the behavior of the advertising library, forging the user's interaction and effectively stealing money from the advertiser. This paper describes AdSplit, where we extended Android to allow an application and its advertising to run as separate processes, under separate user-ids, eliminating the need for applications to request permissions on behalf of their advertising libraries. We also leverage mechanisms from Quire to allow the remote server to validate the authenticity of client-side behavior. In this paper, we quantify the degree of permission bloat caused by advertising, with a study of thousands of downloaded apps. AdSplit automatically recompiles apps to extract their ad services, and we measure minimal runtime overhead. We also observe that most ad libraries just embed an HTML widget within and describe how AdSplit can be designed with this in mind to avoid any need for ads to have native code

TechNews digests: Jan - Mar 2010

TechNews is a technology, news and analysis service aimed at anyone in the education sector keen to stay informed about technology developments, trends and issues. TechNews focuses on emerging technologies and other technology news. TechNews service : digests september 2004 till May 2010 Analysis pieces and News combined publish every 2 to 3 month

Challenges of digital innovations : a set-top box based approach

The chapter analyses the challenges of digital technology for television audience measurement systems. First, the current state of audience measurement in Belgium is described. In the Belgian case, the traditional television audience measurement system is contested by small broadcasters and challenged by the opportunities that the emergence of digital television and, more specifically, the widespread diffusion of set-top boxes provide. Second, three major challenges for traditional measurement techniques are analysed. This section deals with people’s changing viewing habits, for example on-demand and time-shifted viewing, the provision of more accurate data by set-top boxes, and the increasing interests of platform operators acting as gatekeepers to access to this data. In the final section, conclusions are made

Interactive Newsprint: The Future of Newspapers? Printed electronics meets hyperlocal and community co-design

The news industry is currently in a well-documented state of flux, with publishers from across the developed world examining new business models, reinterpreting existing relationships between their income streams and readers, while maintaining their ability to generate editorial output that is relevant and interesting to the communities they cover. Interactive Newsprint seeks to add a new and revolutionary dimension to this media evolution by asking: can printed electronics and internet-enabled paper (technologies that utilise standard paper and printing processes and through conductive ink and battery power offer capacitive touch interactions similar to smartphones and tablets) create a new way of transmitting community-based news and information? Utilising co-design techniques and practices, the project seeks to produce community- relevant hyperlocal text and audio content and place it on a centuries-old platform: the newspaper. As a result of the paper's internet connectivity, the project is also examining potential benefits of transplanting some online features such as analytic data on user interactions. Led by the School of Journalism, Media and Communication (JoMeC) at the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan), the 18-month, EPRSC-funded project is therefore examining the potential for community co-design and printed electronics to transform paper- based news and information for the 21st Century, along with revenue and data generation that is unique to digital formats such as websites, social networks, smartphones and tablets. Building on work carried out on the EPSRC-funded Bespoke project, researchers from UCLan, University of Dundee, University of Surrey and commercial printed electronics firm Novalia are prototyping a series of paper-based community news platforms that are populated by content produced by community reporters and generated through an iterative co-design process. This paper will outline the methodology, technological potential of interactive newsprint and how the project is looking to embed analytic data into traditional printed-paper formats. It will also focus on how members of the Preston community are shaping both the news and platform over the 18-month process. As the project is mid-way through, the paper will present an overview of the project to date, outline the design methodology and describe and demonstrate the early-stage prototypes. The paper will also hint at new editorial construction practices as community and professional reporters all contribute to the hyperlocally-themed editorial output. The authors will present a discussion of the theoretical framework that underpins the project as a whole. In addition to the practical illustrations, the paper will outline the authors' initial thoughts on how interactive newsprint – through its internet connectivity and potential for data transfer – could revolutionise editorial and advertorial relationships

Blockverse: A Cloud Blockchain-based Platform for Tracking in Affiliate Systems

Affiliate systems are a crucial piece of today’s online advertising. In affiliate systems, web traffic is directed from certain sites displaying ads to the websites of those company whose products or services are advertised. The way in which these ads are monetized is diverse and can respond to different models. In many cases, affiliates establish a cost based on impressions (displays of the ad) or on clicks. However, more intricate models are becoming widespread, such as the cost per action, where the affiliate incomes are due to the users performing certain actions in the target website. In particular, in the world of iGaming, it is frequent that affiliates charges are based on registrations, deposits or money lost on bets. In this scenario, Blockverse is a tool whose objective is to record transactions occurring in affiliate systems at large scale, using a permissioned blockchain implemented atop state-of-the-art cloud technology. Additionally, the system will be able to execute smart deals that generate income for affiliates based on the agreed conditions, and to provide real-time analytics in the context of the affiliate system

Multichannel in a complex world

The proliferation of devices and channels has brought new challenges to just about every organisation in delivering consistently good customer experiences and effectively joining up service provision with marketing activity, data and content. A good multichannel strategy and execution is increasingly becoming essential to marketers and customer experience professionals from every sector. This report seeks to identify the key issues, challenges and opportunities that surround multichannel and provide some best practice insight and principles on the elements that are key to multichannel success. As part of the research for this report, we spoke to six experienced customer experience and marketing practitioners from large organisations across different sectors. In Multichannel Marketing: Metrics and Methods for On and Offline Success, Akin Arikan (2008) said: ‘Because customers are multichannel beings and demand relevant, consistent experiences across all channels, businesses need to adopt a multichannel mind-set when listening to their customers.’ It was clear from the companies interviewed for this report that it remains challenging for many organisations to maintain consistency across so many customer touchpoints. Not only that, but the ability to balance consistency with the capability to fully exploit the unique attributes of each channel remains an aspiration for many. The proliferation of devices and digital channels has added complexity to customer journeys, making issues around the joining up of customer experience and the attribution of value of key importance to many. Whilst senior leaders within the organisations spoken to seem to be bought in to multichannel, this buy-in was not always replicated across the rest of the organisation and did not always translate into a cohesive multichannel strategy. A number of companies were undertaking work around customer journey mapping and customer segmentation, using a variety of passive and actively collected data in order to identify specific areas of poor customer experience and create action plans for improvement. Others were undertaking projects using sophisticated tracking and tagging technologies to develop an understanding of the value and role of specific channels and to provide better intelligence to the business on attribution that might be used to inform future investment decisions. A consistent barrier to improving customer experience is the ability to join up many different legacy systems and data in order to provide a single customer view and form the basis for delivery of a more consistent and cohesive multichannel approach. Whilst there remain significant challenges around multichannel, there are some useful technologies allowing businesses to develop better insight into customer motivation and activity. Nonetheless, delivery of seamless multichannel experience remains a work-inprogress for many

Augmented reality for high-throughput phenotyping

Master of ScienceDepartment of Computer ScienceMitchell NeilsenSmart glasses, like smart phones, have separate operating systems, and can execute many different kinds of software and games. Smart glasses can be used to add a schedule, map navigation, interact with friends, take photos and videos, and make video calls with friends through voice control. They can support wireless network access through a mobile communication network. Bluetooth is a radio technology that supports short-range communication between of the devices. It can exchange information between devices including mobile phones, wireless headsets, laptops, etc. Bluetooth technology can effectively simplify the communication between mobile devices. This thesis focuses on smart glasses applications for high-throughput phenotyping which requires a data monitor, data synchronization, Bluetooth service, and voice control between devices. On the Android side, the application, which is extended, is called Field Book. The new software called Field Book AR, includes a data monitor module and a Bluetooth server module to achieve data exchange with smart glasses. On the smart glasses side, the application is called DataReceiver. It receives voice commands from users and controls the actions of Field Book AR. Also, when Field Book detects data changing, it accepts new data and shows changes to the users

The Industry and Policy Context for Digital Games for Empowerment and Inclusion:Market Analysis, Future Prospects and Key Challenges in Videogames, Serious Games and Gamification

The effective use of digital games for empowerment and social inclusion (DGEI) of people and communities at risk of exclusion will be shaped by, and may influence the development of a range of sectors that supply products, services, technology and research. The principal industries that would appear to be implicated are the 'videogames' industry, and an emerging 'serious games' industry. The videogames industry is an ecosystem of developers, publishers and other service providers drawn from the interactive media, software and broader ICT industry that services the mainstream leisure market in games, The 'serious games' industry is a rather fragmented and growing network of firms, users, research and policy makers from a variety of sectors. This emerging industry is are trying to develop knowledge, products, services and a market for the use of digital games, and products inspired by digital games, for a range of non-leisure applications. This report provides a summary of the state of play of these industries, their trajectories and the challenges they face. It also analyses the contribution they could make to exploiting digital games for empowerment and social inclusion. Finally, it explores existing policy towards activities in these industries and markets, and draws conclusions as to the future policy relevance of engaging with them to support innovation and uptake of effective digital game-based approaches to empowerment and social inclusion.JRC.J.3-Information Societ