News in Degrees: 8° June | Airtime | Kobo | Twitter | LinkedIn | Kindle Fire

8 June 2012

New Initiatives

The free Wi-Fi on the underground is starting to be rolled out with the first couple of stations, Kings Cross and Warren Street, now have free interest access, with Victoria and Euston joining this weekend.

The much anticipated project from Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning, dubbed Airtime, was launched this week, with a few hiccups. The premise of the idea is that you talk to people in your extended network with similar interests (it is integrated with your Facebook profile) over video chat. It has been likened to Chatroulette, without the indecency. It has received a few positive reviews and some not so positive, but the likes of Sean Parker and Mark Zuckerberg (see above) have been spotted checking out the service.

PlayStation 3 has revealed a new project tie up with the Harry Potter brand; a new augmented reality ‘book’ titled ‘The Book of Spells‘ that attempts to reinvent the story book. Xbox have also been revealing projects, as it unveiled ‘SmartGlass‘ that lets games consoles communicate with phones and tablets to control games on a touchscreen device. These new initiatives are direct opposition to Nintendo’s Wii U game pad that is due to be launched imminently.

Company Structure

The large camera manufacture, Olympus, looks to lose nearly 3,000 jobs over the next 5 years, after the emergence of heavy losses and hidden accounts.

Kobo has launched a self-publishing platform to match what is offered by Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Titled ‘Kobo Writing Life‘ the new platform is currently in beta stage but they are already discussing new features that will be added later on in the year.

Meanwhile, Amazon has bought a family owned book publisher ‘Avalon Books’ which will give Amazon the rights to a list of 3,000 books which are not available as digital editions at the moment.

Google has also had their wallet out with the acquisition of Meebo, the mobile chat platform, but as of yet no details have been disclosed.

Industry Moves

Simon Francis, the CEO at Aegis Media EMEA, has stepped down. He will be replaced by Nigel Morris, who is based out of New York. Francis has not revealed his plans.

Chris Lawson, Director of Content Sales and Marketing at Guardian N&M is also stepping down from his role. His departure has sparked a restructure of the marketing department. He will be exploring new opportunities after being at the publisher for 2 years.

Stephanie Fierman has been announced this week as MediaCom’s first CMO Worldwide. Before joining MediaCom Fierman ran her own business and has been in the intergrated marketing and business development field for more than 20 years.

Social Media

Facebook has launched its App Center [sic], which was only announced last month. At the launch event it was described as a place to find “high-quality social apps, whether they’re on the Web or mobile”. It currently has 600 apps including Draw Something and Pinterest.

LinkedIn faced a nightmare situation this week when hackers stole 6.5million passwords, which were later posted onto a forum. They have reacted quickly and have not only promised tighter security around passwords but have also alerted those who had their accounts hacked and disabled the passwords as well as offered precautions to take.

Twitter has redesigned its logo, though only slightly making it a darker blue and streamlining it a little, but it isn’t the only social network to have seen a design change this week. Foursquare has launched its redesigned app with photos now stealing the show in the ‘Explore’ and ‘Friends’ tabs.

Digital Product

On top of the LinkedIn Password fiasco, dating site eHarmony has also been hit, apparently by the same Russian hacker, compromising around 1.5million passwords. On top of this, Last.fm has warned this morning that some of their users’ passwords may have been compromised, urging users to change their passwords as a precaution.

The iPad is seeing continued success as the Kindle Fire is dwindling, according to a new report by ABI Research. It notes that Samsung and Apple have been the leading tablet providers in the past few months, and that unsurprisingly Apple is ahead by a large margin.

The Rest

To round off your week here is a cartoon about the differing success of the digital professional (and how they should be separated).

Have a great weekend.