Tag: Europe
VWFE: Live-blogging 'In-world or off-message: what are the brand challenges in virtual worlds?'
This panel is once again moderated by Adam Pasick, Reuters Bureau Chief at Second Life, and features Daan Josephus Jitta, Direct Channels and Innovation, at ABN AMRO, and Marco van Veen, Manager, Web, Innovation & Collaboration Center, for Heineken.
Marco van Veen takes the stage first, and begins by admitting they don’t have a virtual world, however they are looking at featuring in virtual worlds, through advertising. Obviously being a beer manufacturer, he says they still have a responsibility to ensure minors aren’t targeted by their…
VWFE: Live-blogging 'Kidalicious: are kids and teenagers the future for virtual worlds?'
Ooh! Ooh! The good one we’ve all been looking forward to today. Alice Taylor, Commissioning Editor at Education at Channel 4, plus woman behind the brilliant Wonderland gamer blog, is on this panel, as is Michael Smith, the CEO and Founder of MindCandy, who are here today promoting Moshi Monsters.
Timo Soininen, CEO at Sulake and Habbo, Mark William Hansen from the Lego Universe, Mattias Mikshe, CEO of Stardoll and Marc Goodchild, Head of Interactive and On-Demand at BBC Children’s make up the rest of the panel, which is moderated by Adam Pasick, the Reuters Bureau Chief at Second Life.
Money made within games created for children is mentioned, and whether it’s worth adding a fiscal element to games. Someone on the panel argues that this is the first generation being hit with the wave of virtual games, and they’ll grow up accustomed…
VWFE: Live-blogging 'Conversation: convergence and mobile in the digital age'
The next panel in today’s Virtual Worlds Forum conference is alos moderated by Wagner James Au from New World Notes, who once again opens proceedings by describing how easy keeping up to date with online actions is now mobile phone use is so predominant.
“Integrating mobile phones with virtual worlds is so important”, he claims, and asks Rob Seaver, CEO of Vivox, a VoIP technology that works wirth virtual worlds, to take the podium.
They’ve worked with Second Life and Electric Sheep to allow users to chat to each other – perfect for discovering whether that blue furry elf really is the hot minx she makes herself out to be.
It’s not just the convergence with mobile phones which virtual worlds have seen, as an episode of CSI tonight shows a link-up with…
VWFE: Live-blogging 'consumers or community – what's the direction for brands?'
The next panel opens at the Virtual World Forums Europe conference, with the moderator Wagner James Au, from New World Notes starting proceedings.
He beings by talking about Second Life, and how Armani opened an online shop within the online game, so users could deck their avatars out in actual Armani clothing. He mentions how the clothing didn’t look right on the pixellated characters, and a simple clothing boutique two users within the game created, is much more popular amongst users than the luxury fashion brand.
Betsy Book from There.com takes to the stage, who talks a bit about her community, and how they work closely with several advertisers to ensure users aren’t bombarded too much with the adverts, but they’re tailored specifically for each gamer. She shows us a video of There.com, which allows for users to access goods from interactive kiosks….
After AT&T iPhone billing fiasco: Nonsense mobile bills lead to confusion and avoidance
After the farcically large iPhone bills sent to US consumers, detailing every last bit of web surfing, texting, and calling, a leading adviser on telecoms, IT and media says that European mobile operators need to simplify their mobile phone bills….
HD DVD player manufacturers to drop prices
As mentioned at Toshiba/HD DVD’s IFA press conference, a number of manufacturers are set to drop the prices of their current and new HD DVD players, with entry level machines now coming in at around €300 (£200-ish).
Oliver Van Wynendaele, a manager in Toshiba’s HD DVD group, said that was around half the current prices.
Heading up the cheap-n-cheerful crop of new players is the Ventura SHD7000, though it’s worth noting that it won’t play every high definition format, bombing out short of HD’s 1080p holy grail. Still, not bad if you’re on a budget.
European iPhone could come to Vodafone, but with changes, sources suggest
Rumours continue to circulate about who’ll snag the iPhone in Europe. The latest to surface is that Vodafone will do a European deal with Apple, but not without challenging some of the iPhone’s features first.
According to “sources”, executives at Vodafone aren’t happy about how the iPhone implements YouTube. They would prefer it to operate more like the desktop web version.
They’d also press for the iPhone to synchronise easily with Microsoft Exchange and Outlook — believing many European iPhone users will be high-end business customers — potentially requiring Apple to license the Microsoft Activesync technology to achieve this.
Opinion: Kids use age-old excuse — "everyone's doing it" — to justify media piracy. So what's new?
Andy Merrett writes…
I’m sure it’s the classic excuse for why kids and teenagers do pretty much anything their parents (or indeed, The Law) don’t want them to.
“But everyone else is doing it.”
Passing over the classic teacher retort “Well, if everyone else was jumping off a cliff [auditioning for a part in “Lemmings the Movie, perhaps?], would you” (oops), that seems to be the reasoning for kids who copy and distribute music, videos, or software over the Internet.
It has to be a lot less dangerous – at least physically – than jumping off that metaphorical cliff.
A study from the European Commission — which is seriously official and, therefore, must be true — found that a large number of kids knew that what they were doing was illegal, but still did it because they saw both their peers and their parents doing it.
The EC calls this an “implicit form of authorisation”.
I just call it kids wanting the latest music and being too poor to buy it. It could be laziness. Or the possibility that most albums contain mainly crap music and they want to make a mix tape of decent tracks.
Ultra-Wideband technology given UK go-ahead by Ofcom
Ultra Wideband (UWB) technology, which allows devices to communicate wirelessly at high speed over relatively short distances, has been given the go-ahead by Ofcom to be used unlicensed in the UK.
Normally, equipment which uses a part of the radio spectrum requires a license from Ofcom in order that any interference between different users can be managed. However, UWB technology has a low power output and shouldn’t interfere with other signals.
EU camera tax to hit top-spec models
Get ready to pay the cheese-eating pen-pushers in Brussels an extra 4.9% for the privilege of owning a decent camera soon, thanks to the EU giving the go-ahead for a new tax on digital cameras that are also capable of recording top-quality video.
The video recorder tax already exists – its charged on recording gadgets already…
