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Google has kicked off the inaugural gadget competition for students in East Africa and will announce a winner in August.
In the next four months, Google expects students enrolled at universities in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Rwanda and Burundi to work on their ideas and submit functioning gadgets on July 14.
A large number of students from the region registered and submitted their gadget ideas by April 4, the deadline for submissions, according to Louise Welch, Google’s project manager for Global University Programs
“We have enjoyed broad participation from students and universities across East Africa. We cannot release exact numbers for confidentiality reasons, but we’ve had robust participation across the board,” Welch said.
While the competition seeks innovative gadgets that can be used globally, it is also encouraging the development of gadgets for local use.
“There is no formula to what makes a good gadget, but there are certainly things to think about when creating one. Does it provide useful and frequently updated information? Or does it provide service that people will need to use frequently? Is it diverting? Fun? Attractive?” Google notes in the advertisement sent to participating universities.
The gadgets will be judged on their functionality, including gadget completeness, cleanly written code and technical sophistication. Ease of use and design scalability of design and originality are also judging criteria.
The categories the devices can win include best education specific gadget, most technically sophisticated gadget and gadget most likely to get international traffic
Students participating in the competition will receive a Gadget Winners Certificate, a Google shirt, pen and notebook. Five students will receive a US$350 stipend and one student will receive a $600 stipend.
Regarding use of language, Welch was noncommittal about whether Google is encouraging development of gadgets that can use local language or whether all gadgets must be in English. Ethiopia’s national language is Amharic and Tanzania uses mainly Kiswahili, which is also widely used in Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi.
GENEVA, April 8 (UNHCR) – Representatives of the UN refugee agency and Google on Tuesday unveiled a powerful new online mapping programme that provides an up-close and multifaceted view of some of the world’s major displacement crises and the humanitarian efforts aimed at helping the victims.
The “Google Earth Outreach” programme gives UNHCR and other humanitarian agencies the ability to use Google Earth and Maps to highlight their work on behalf of millions of refugees and other populations of concern in some of the world’s most remote and difficult areas.
“It’s absolutely fantastic. The potential for us and the potential to serve our interests and to serve the refugee interests round the world is quite substantial and we need now only seize the opportunity and move ahead with it,” Deputy High Commissioner for Refugees L. Craig Johnstone told more than 250 staff and invited guests at a launch ceremony in the atrium of UNHCR’s Geneva headquarters. “I think we will all be beneficiaries of it at the end of the day.”
Johnstone said the pilot UNHCR layers, which went live on Google Earth Outreach earlier Tuesday, made it possible for staff and clients to zoom in on specific refugee situations. He said the tool would be particularly useful in extending UNHCR’s outreach and visibility as well as for its own internal administration.
The UNHCR layers, which were compiled by technical and editorial staff within the agency’s communications service, currently focus on three of the refugee agency’s global operations – Chad/Darfur, Colombia and Iraq – but plans are under way to expand.
“In 2008, we are going to spread around the world and try and capture all of the major sites and make sure that they are all available so that people can see what the actual situation is on the ground,” Johnstone said. “It will make it possible to bring that suffering [of refugees in harsh environments] to people, so people can understand where the responsibilities actually are,” he added.
“We’re very excited to participate with UNHCR,” Rebecca Moore, manager and founder of Google Earth Outreach, told the audience, before giving them a demonstration of the tool and showing them some of the new UNHCR layers. “The idea is to take an abstract concept – refugees in some country that people have never visited and may in fact never visit and take them there virtually – so that they can get an intuitive understanding of what the real issues are,” she said.
Google’s outreach programme provides humanitarian agencies with the skills and resources to use Google Earth and Maps to highlight their work to a mass audience. The agencies can overlay text, audio and video information onto Google Earth in the so-called layers, enabling them to explain and illustrate their humanitarian work to a worldwide audience.
Moore said she was “very impressed” by UNHCR’s layers. These show three levels of detail. The first provides an overview of UNHCR itself and takes the user on a journey to Chad/Darfur, Colombia and Iraq operations. The impact on neighbouring countries is also explored, and refugee camp locations are highlighted on the Google Earth maps.
The second layer brings the user even closer to the life of those in exile, exploring such elements as refugee health, education, water and sanitation. Pop-up windows linked to precise geographical points in camps and refugee communities provide written explanations, photos and videos of specific needs and operations. The third level, the “macro-view,” takes the online visitor right down to the local level within a refugee camp, allowing examination of schools, water points and other infrastructure found in a typical site.
UNHCR’s technical experts say that as it grows, the Google Earth programme will allow UNHCR and its humanitarian partners to build and share with each other a visual, geographic record of their joint efforts on the ground to help refugees. This could include, for example, cross-border mapping of population flows as well as the location of displaced people in relation to their places of origin – useful data in logistical planning for eventual repatriation operations.
Also speaking at the Geneva launch was the Afghanistan-born photographer Zalmaï, himself a former refugee. “It’s our duty to give them some hope,” he said, as haunting images from his recent trip to Afghanistan appeared on a big screen behind him.
Google Earth has enjoyed spectacular success since its launch in mid 2005; some 350 million people around the world have downloaded it to date. Moore and other humanitarians in Google developed the idea of the Outreach programme, which has attracted great interest since its launch last year.
By Leo Dobbs in Geneva
longtail eMarketing was able to get Stafford Masie, recently appointed as South Africa’s Country Manager for Google, to come and talk to a select few about new Google eMarketing offerings. The presentation, held at the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, was aimed at educating attendees about the latest trends happening at Google.
Most importantly, we needed to hear – from the horse’s mouth – what Stafford Masie had to say about the latest trends with regards to Google Maps, Google Gadget Ads, Google Mobile Search, YouTube and other Google features that will soon be available in South Africa.
As always it is difficult to make notes of everything being said, so here are the highlights from our notes taken from the presentation.
Stafford started off by giving a little history on Google and said that Google’s aim is to 1.) educate people about everything online and 2.) to assist wherever possible. So, as Google’s Country Manager, Masie and his team of experts want to bring the Global Google solutions to South Africa.
think faster, better broadband!
Yes! Google South Africa is involved in trying to improve broadband locally and promise that in 18 months time, South Africa will go from the most expensive (and slow) broadband to the cheapest and fastest broadband connections in the World. According to Masie, this is what he is most passionate and excited about, getting South Africa up to speed with the rest of the world when it comes to broadband connections. That got me excited and pretty much every person in the room, I am convinced about that!
Hopefully low broadband costs will account for up to, and over, 20% penetration of the South African population.
Before I get into more detail about the future local Google services, here are some statistical information that Stafford mentioned regarding Google stats for both South Africa and international:
* 13% of total internet traffic in South Africa during the 4th Quarter of 2007 was spent on YouTube
* A 708% growth was recorded in this quarter
* Gmail is the leading free email service
* 90% of people use Google as their preferred Search Engine
In light of the above, Stafford addressed marketers and digital agencies and mentioned two very important points:
1. End user generated content or end user content generation
* YouTube provides 8000 minutes of video which is published worldwide per minute
* 84% of all internet activity is about people publishing content
* The internet today is not about taking, it is all about giving, sharing and participating
* Everyone is encouraged to experiment and engage!
2. Moment of relevance
* Knowing when someone wants something at the right time and to present them with what they want
* Google is #1 in mobile internet share and “click to sms” to come via ads which will deliver targeted ads when asked for
* Above 60% CTR in online video ads, again with the end user in mind, served at the right time
* Refining Search Engine Result Pages with Google Co-op – giving the user more than what they asked for
Stafford stressed again that online should never be ignored and that both the above mentioned points are crucial for everyone, especially marketers and digital agencies.
Finally, and in very short time, Stafford highlighted the exciting things to come from Google in South Africa and also services that we can make use of:
* Google Maps will be the biggest thing happening in a very short time with the local maps.google.co.za – Exciting developments in Maps such as virtual billboards on street view level and updated map gadgets.
* Mobile search will soon allow click to SMS on inline ads
* As faster and cheaper broadband will be available in South Africa, more people will be online, greater target markets and audiences.
* Google co-op is a new service allowing for refined search within search results
* YouTube channels is a unique way of making use of user generated content when users are provided with a platform or medium
* Syndicated search should be utilized more
Ok, so in a nutshell, that highlights Stafford Masie’s presentation on Google South Africa. Feedback that longtail received from many attendees was that it was informative and eye-opening. People loved Stafford’s enthusiasm and vision to educate and help wherever possible.
Be sure that longtail endeavors to provide further updates to many of the above mentioned solutions and also future events, so keep on “watching this space”.
7 Month old Google Kenya is starting to interact with the local hackers and devs. Just this Tuesday they sponsored the local Tuesday Skunkworks event, giving some of their thoughts on Kenya specifically. My friend, and fellow Kenyan blogger, Bankelele was in attendance and took notes.
Highlights. Google is…
* Mapping Kenya
* Partnering with the largest mobile carrier (Safaricom) and giving free email accounts to all subscribers
* Partnering with universities to make inroads with their web-based office applications and associated services
* Encouraging local content providers to get online (ex: NTVKenya on YouTube)
* Fighting for more bandwidth for all Kenyans
* Working with legislatures to create the right atmosphere to get the right internet infrastructure
Read the rest, and get more detail, on Bankelele’s blog.
It’s interesting to see how Google continues to look at new markets and move ahead in them, without any real profit there yet. Meanwhile, their main competition on the global level on the web (Yahoo!), doesn’t. Interestingly enough, Yahoo has had the mindshare and marketshare in East Africa, but didn’t capitalize on it. They basically left the door open for Google to come in and steal it all away… and they are.
A Skunkworks (blog) meeting yesterday was hosted by (7 month old) Google Kenya, and it was attended by an interesting mix of engineers, webhosts, designers, admins, bloggers and rivals of Google, – who all listened as Google employees explained their aps and maps.
some scribbled notes
– There’s an ongoing Google East Africa competition for students to develop gadgets for Google (closes March 17)
– They are mapping the country with Google map’s – started with Nairobi, Mombasa, Kisumu and Nakuru, with a Kenyan team, doing the mapping work, using the tools. Ideally the next step will be for maps to stream into local yellow pages
– Safaricom have the largest customer base of any kind in Kenya – 8 million strong – and so Google partnered with them to give all their subscribers free e-mail. Many people’s introduction was and still remains, accessing an email account.
– Ushaidi was cited as an examples of enhanced use of a Google platform
– Google in Africa for the long term, with an altruistic motive of sharing local content & information – and currently get less than 1% of revenue from Africa. They helped NTV set up a Youtube platform that has been a big success in terms of Kenyans abroad now able to watch local news online. They monetize in three ways – videoads, adsense, search box advertising. Kenya/Africa needs to get more local content up. Already some local web sites are making good money off adsense that is enough to sustain their online operations.
– Hot point #1 was bandwidth; or the performance of connectivity, service providers and other operators. They are known in the industry for short-changing consumers who are not wary and in the face of a regulator (CCK) who does not seem to care. There was a call for users to take the initiative, to test bandwidth speeds, and identify those with superior speeds and those who were short-changing consumers (a model from Australia called Whirlpool to test broadband was mentioned as a model that could be used to do this)
– Hot point # 2 was the lack of investment in infrastructure/or the wrong kind of investment. Examples: There are 4 ethernet cables in Nairobi, but no cooperation between providers. Government is building data centers, but with no servers there. Local loops are not benefiting end users. It would be nice of government required new building developers to also install connectivity in buildings
– Other challenges with local advertising – does it work? Yahoo never advertised in Kenya; yet have more e-mail accounts through word of mouth. Google is working with universities to give them free e-mail as a way of building a long term relationship. There’s also a move to alert local advertising companies to the presnce of local site to advertise on.
There were many other conversations but they were drowned out by sounds of mouths slurping pizza slices and mshikaki’s.
Dr Douglas Merrill: CIO & VIP of Engineering, Google, and Stafford Masie: Country manager, Google SA
MONEYWEB: I spent an evening, rather a very interesting…(audio loss) the campus, Dimension Data’s huge office park in the north of Johannesburg, where Google made its first appearance, publicly anyway, in South Africa. It was a fascinating discussion, and we’re going to be taking that through for the next half hour, because it’s not every day that you get the chief information officer or the “head geek” of Google joining us here in this part of the world – indeed, in this continent. But Dr Douglas Merrill is with us now in the studio, as well as the South African manager, the country manager, Stafford Masie. Google, if you don’t know much about it, is quite an incredible company – it was only launched just over a decade ago. There is, well, almost a fantasy-type story that happened, about two guys who went to university together, found a new way of doing things and are changing the world. Douglas, good to have you here in the studio. Google – how many employees do you have today?
DOUGLAS MERRILL: Just north of 16 000 worldwide.
MONEYWEB: And the market cap at the last count?
DOUGLAS MERRILL: Something north of $180bn.
MONEYWEB: The Google Story. David Vice made a lot of money out of this [book] – if you can just pick it up there on camera three? – if you’ve never seen it before, is this prescribed reading to anybody who joins your company?
DOUGLAS MERRILL: We actually spend a great deal of time with new hires – we call ourselves the Googlers – we spend a lot of time teaching people what our culture is about and how do we think about the world, and how did we get where we are, because it’s so important to us. Our culture is our greatest single asset. So, although it isn’t prescribed reading, a lot of people have read it. It’s a great book and there’s a lot of discussion internally of who we are and why we are.
MONEYWEB: The question was because there’s a lot of interesting information in there. Is it true, is it factually accurate?
DOUGLAS MERRILL: I’m sure a lot of it is.
MONEYWEB: All right, let’s move on to something else. On Friday we had the dean of the local business school in here, discussing The Future of Management, a book that Gary Hamel has put together – I’m sure your top team at Google has also had a look at that, because you are one of the three companies that he has analysed.
DOUGLAS MERRILL: Gary Hamel is brilliant.
MONEYWEB: He is, and the stuff in that book, can we believe that as far as Google is concerned?
DOUGLAS MERRILL: It feels pretty right. Google has a pretty interesting management culture. Our belief is that traditional hierarchical organisations are really quite good at doing the same thing multiple times. The problem is and problems many face, and we certainly face at Google, you’re not doing the same thing over and over again, you’re trying to figure out exactly what to do next. So our management style is very, very flat, non-hierarchical, and very communicative. We’re quite chatty, because we’re trying to figure out, “Oh, you solved that problem this way, let’s try it this way”. We also do lots of experiments. So we try lots of things, many of which we expect to fail. At any given moment on Google.com, we have between five and 200 experiments going on, which are things being done slightly differently, most of which will have no effect and will vanish off the face of the earth, some of which might be sort of important and big and actually change the world[?]. That’s our goal. We like to try lots of different things and be very communicative about them.
MONEYWEB: Those “new hires” that you spoke about earlier, do they find it a culture shock?
DOUGLAS MERRILL: Some do. We obviously have a pretty diverse hiring pool. One of Google’s explicit hiring goals is to hire as much diversity as we can – different ethnic backgrounds, different cultural backgrounds – because we want to try and get people with different perspectives internally. When you have people with different perspectives, they will try different things, they will solve problems differently, they’ll argue, and so that all feeds into the innovation engine that drives us. So some of them may come from long careers with traditional companies, and it feels quite different to be at Google. Some might be fresh out of university.
MONEYWEB: Well, it will be interesting to find out Stafford Masie’s story, because he’s a guy from Eldorado Park now running Google in South Africa. It was interesting listening to you this morning, saying a lot of the guys, your peer group, were seeing the big cars in Eldo’s and saying, well, this is perhaps the way to go, to become a gangster – and the only difference was that your father sent you abroad to see a different side of life.
STAFFORD MASIE: Ja, absolutely, and I think if we bring it back to Google, in the context of Google and what Google is, I think Google is that epitome of the online story about, you know, if we can get more and more people to be exposed to more and more people’s opinions, I think your mindset changes. And the only difference between me and the folks back home where I grew up, and what they’re doing today and what I’m doing today, is the fact that I had the opportunity to be exposed. And I think that opportunity every citizen of this country and this continent should have, and I think the Google story plays very, very well into that.
MONEYWEB: Why has it taken Google so long to get really active in South Africa?
STAFFORD MASIE: You know, everyone, when they look at Google – Google is a very young company. If you take a look at where we are today, I think the way they grow is, I think it may be slow from the outside, but it is commitment. I think every time Google takes a step, it takes a deep step. It doesn’t necessarily just take steps. So they took some time hiring the right people in South Africa, and I think they’re very serious about the continent. When I came into the company, one of the things that was pleasing to me was the founder’s view of Africa, and how committed they are about Africa. And they really wanted people in the company that could articulate that and creatively ensure that the Google story in South Africa was an Africanised version of that story. And yes, it did take a while. I think people were anxious to have us. I don’t think we were slow in getting here. And I think the fact that we’re here now, we’ve got good intentions.
MONEYWEB: It’s an interesting point you bring up there about the Google founders being interested in Africa, but there isn’t a whole lot of bandwidth – not enough in South Africa itself, but further in the continent – so how are they going to play a role?
DOUGLAS MERRILL: I think it’s really important to notice that we are a service player and we’re not an infrastructure provider, but we’re obviously very interested not just in South Africa – although we’re speaking about South Africa now because we’re here – but we’re interested in the continent as a whole. So we actually have activities across the continent. We have the government of [indistinct] Rwanda, where we go [indistinct], we have an office in Kenya. Google.org, which is our foundation arm, has launched a series of projects around transparency and infrastructure utilisation across the continent. We were very excited about the recent announcement by Seacom and EASSy[?] around new cables coming down. We think the access to information, access to [indistinct] is the key to long-term social change. We believe that social change arises from sustainable economic change, and sustainable economic change arises from job creation. Job creation is driven by small and medium-size businesses able to try their ideas and try interesting, entrepreneurial things. There are great entrepreneurs in Africa and at the moment many of them are unable to reach the world. We are very excited to see the spread of mobile and wire bandwidth to enable those people to reach the world.
MONEYWEB: It’s so interesting this, many people will say, “Oh it’s a nice PR spin that you’re putting onto it” and even the credo of Google, “Don’t do evil” – Is it true, Stafford?
STAFFORD MASIE: I think it is, I think it absolutely is. If I had to look at how the company deals with its employees, how we deal with ourselves in the local marketplaces we’re around, the instruction that we get in terms of how we should behave in a Google way, we’re not about being aggressive and talking bad and being evil. We’re all about building great technologies and hoping people utilise them, and that’s how we win.
MONEYWEB: And I guess in South Africa – and you made a big thrust about this, this morning, as well – it’s all about mobile.
STAFFORD MASIE: I think it’s both. I think, you know, if you take a look at Africa, there’s a metro story around online and then there’s a rural story. I think the rural aspect of Africa, the mobile device, is an interesting device because most people have mobile phones. I mean, those mobile phones, the capability on them, they’re growing, they’re connected and it’s going to be interesting how that evolves. I think the metro play is where people have PCs and they have mobile phones. But ja, mobile is very, very important in Africa. One of the stats that I mentioned this morning, that I heard, was 78% of most people that have cellphones in Africa don’t have PCs, and above 85% of that 78% will never own a PC in their entire lives. So mobile is important, and extraordinarily important for Africa.
MONEYWEB: But what can Google, which is associated with a PC or a laptop, do for mobile phones? How are you going to be able to read the information that you’re given?
DOUGLASS MERRILL: It’s actually interesting. A large number of searches worldwide actually come from mobile devices today. Mobile is one of our fastest growing areas worldwide. Even in the United States, which has a relatively backward mobile infrastructure, we see a large portion of our queries coming across mobile channels. We have a variety of mobile search efforts worldwide, and a variety of different ways of serving information. Google is not the Internet; we’re the gateway to the Internet. So sometimes you can do a search on your mobile phone and get data back which isn’t ideally representable on mobile phones. But one of the really exciting trends in mobile is the increasing use of full-featured Internet browsers on the phone – and you see this in a variety of smart phones worldwide – which are (audio loss), etc. The hardest part about it, and the most exciting about searching on a mobile phone, is it isn’t the same as searching on a PC. On a PC you’re happy to sit there and type, no problem. On a mobile phone, keying in a word using, for example, [indistinct], is quite difficult, so you have an interesting UI challenge. What you might be able to do is pick up the phone and say, “What’s the address of CNBC Africa?” and get an answer back, and maybe even you get an answer back that includes directions – your interaction style with your mobile phone is quite different, and we’re actually trying many dozens of things worldwide in this space.
MONEYWEB: The other thing about the Internet is, it is the great disintermediator. Once you can perhaps get a transaction engine onto your mobile phone, wouldn’t that be unlocking a key to a whole new world?
DOUGLAS MERRILL: It could be. You know, the story of the Internet is a story of allowing people to quickly reach information and contribute to it, and we’ve seen disintermediation. We’ve also seen some re-intermediation, where you see different kinds of players helping people perform services or provide value-add services on top of search and interesting things like that. But fundamentally we believe all the world’s information should be universally accessible and useful. And oftentimes what you want to do is do a business transaction – I want to buy a ticket, I want to buy that book. Doing that quickly and easily is obviously a really key…
MONEYWEB: Douglas, I know you travel a lot around the world, but when you have a look at Africa as a continent, is there an opportunity here to leapfrog? The technology is so far behind.
DOUGLAS MERRILL: I think all that sort of incremental growth strategy which in technology would be, you know, laying wire, or doing lots of things which actually don’t make a lot of sense for an environment which has wealthy high urban concentration, but then a large percentage of rural. You are going to build a technology infrastructure in that world which is a pretty [indistinct] power creation, which is pretty mobile in nature, and which is pretty peer to peer, and you’re going to try to get people to talk to each other and then use that to hop back to Europe or back to data in America, you know. But that’s a wholly different technology infrastructure than, for example, we built in the United States. So I actually think you’re going to see fascinating technology be developed here, and perhaps in a year, two years, five years, ten years, we’ll be talking about how Africa is in the lead in some interesting ways because they wouldn’t have been hamstrung by that which we learnt before.
MONEYWEB: Douglas Merrill is the chief information officer at Google in the United States, and we’re also talking with Stafford Masie who is the South African manager. We’ll be back in just a moment, stay with us.
Welcome back. We are talking with the Google guys. Well, our “guys”, anyway. Stafford Masie is the South African manager. With him in the studio is Dr Douglas Merrill, who is the chief information officer at Google. Stafford, you said in the presentation this morning that the time has come for South Africa, that you could not have been launching Google into the South African market at a more appropriate time. How so?
STAFFORD MASIE: I think on many fronts. I think we’ve seen a big change in terms of what technology actually means to GDP. I think government understands that the margins are extremely important. I think we’ve got terminology like the digital divide that’s been spoken about in parliament, and http://loss we have great examples worldwide about people that have been connected and have utilised technology and have great success. I think of people like Mark Shuttleworth. You know, there was a South African flying our flag in zero gravity – and what was the basis of that success? Well, he had computing power and he was online and built something extraordinarily well.
MONEYWEB: And he sold in February 2000 at the top of the Nasdaq.
STAFFORD MASIE: Correct. So we want to see more of that, and I think it is very topical today. And I think that the skills pool in Africa – we have so many people walking around with awesome ideas, with great ideas, and I think if we can simply connect those human beings and have them have the capability to express themselves to the entire world, you know, I don’t see why we can’t have a Skype in South Africa. [Overtalking] I don’t see why Facebook couldn’t have started here. I don’t see why Google couldn’t have started here.
MONEYWEB: We don’t have the bandwidth.
STAFFORD MASIE: Today – and I think that’s changing. I think Google’s role in the country is to personify that and say, here are case studies, here are examples of people that have gone online, that have leveraged the opportunity, and they are making a living of being online in South Africa. And I think if we proliferated that across the country, we could have mass upliftment. I think the transformation story, I think about where we http://loss technology plays a very big role in that part.
MONEYWEB: You going to change the advertising model, to many degrees. Again in Davos last month they were talking a lot about changing analogue dollars into digital pennies. In other words, for the advertiser it is a whole lot cheaper to reach your new market, and Google has brought a lot of this on. But isn’t there a downside to that?
STAFFORD MASIE: I don’t think so. I think we have seen innovation in the advertising space. I don’t think we’ve per se changed it. I think the way people are doing research, they are going online, they are spending more time online finding out where they want to go in the world. They are spending more time on “should I purchase this vehicle?” They are spending more time online creating content about different things. So advertisers – we provide them a platform that is very targeted in terms of spend. We’ve got great metrics for showing you where every single rand of your spend went, and we’re here in South Africa to prompt advertisers to spend more online. And I think the value propositions we are trying to display – I don’t think it’s a big change, I think it’s a supplementary aspect of the portfolio of advertising. I think you’ve still got digital, you’ve still got print, you’ve still got television…
MONEYWEB: Where does all Google’s advertising worldwide come from, then? Surely from the existing advertising cake?
DOUGLAS MERRILL: It’s actually quite complicated to answer that questions. Right before I came here I was speaking to one of the world’s largest advertising agencies, and one of the things that they have told us is actually that they are better able to get advertising into the pipeline because using http://loss just online. We also provide radio advertisements, television advertisements, print – we have several different. As Stafford mentioned, you can measure your efficacy. One of the great problems of advertising historically has been that you don’t actually know what happens as a result of that ad. In all of our technologies you know what happens as a result of doing ads. It changes advertising from an undirected cost, to a cost of sale. At that moment you know not just that I have just spent some money, but I spent some money to get that amount of revenue, which is a completely different way of thinking about advertising.
MONEYWEB: Absolutely, and far less wastage, as well. Again at Davos they were talking about 80% of advertising being wasted at the moment, whereas in the Google way, of course, 0%.
STAFFORD MASIE: And here in South Africa on the ground we have seen that. As we engage with clients, they may be spending X per quarter online. Once we demonstrate and educate and show them what Google’s capabilities are to empower their businesses online and to do more, we see that spend trend differ completely. But we see it as supplementing, we don’t see it as, “OK, we are going to take from this and give it to this”. We are actually seeing advertising budgets increasing because the portfolio extends, and we’ve got great capabilities in our portfolio.
MONEYWEB: Maybe we can address this in a different way. What has happened in this and other parts of the world? Google is in 60 countries now, where you have entered the marketplace in the same way as you are with Stafford here in South Africa?
DOUGLAS MERRILL: I think it’s very important to notice, if you think about Google’s business model, most of our advertising is online. Not all of it, most of it is. And that online advertising is what’s called pay-per-click, and the advertiser doesn’t [?indistinct] pay me something to display his or her ad. The advertiser pays Google if, and only if, a reader, a searcher, a user finds it useful enough to click on it. So that means that it’s a lead, a valid lead. It not simply, in other words, you are paying me for nothing. And furthermore it means that the advertiser is only getting really interesting, useful qualified leads. So instead of Google stepping in and taking money out and simply sucking money like some giant vacuum cleaner from the local market, we only win to the extent that money flows in to these local businesses, these local advertisers. So what we find is that our reaching in to new markets increases our advertising share, increases the return on investment advertising; it can change it from pure advertising to a cost of sales, and tends to help grow economic development. Our perspective, again, is that sustainable social change comes from economic change. So for us to be able to bring money into the environment creates the opportunity for sustainable social change.
MONEYWEB: More efficient allocation of capital.
DOUGLAS MERRILL: More efficient allocation of capital.
MONEYWEB: But it does change the cake. If I am a business and it’s cost me $100 to get a lead through a traditional source, an analogue source, and it’s going to cost me one $1 to get a lead through a Google source, well, it’s not going to take me too long to work out that that $100 should be better spent over here. What is your natural percentage of the market, though? Or what would Google, or maybe, say, online advertising’s natural share of the market be?
DOUGLAS MERRILL: It’s hard to argue with that natural share. I mean, the market hasn’t existed long enough. There are three major online advertising players…http://loss last year out of a global advertising market, a market of more than three trillion. There’s clearly quite a bit of non-online spend still in the world. Advertising agencies in the United States have asserted that we are many times, sort of [indistinct] more effective than the next best form. But advertising that is online, click-to-pay advertising versus offline, largely it’s the wastage issue you brought up already. It’s hard to argue that $16bn out of $3 trillion is the right level. I don’t have a crystal ball, I can’t see the future, but one can only imagine that advertisers are rational beings and the natural rate will flow based on that return on investment.
MONEYWEB: And in South Africa it’s very small at the moment, so you have a lot of upside?
STAFFORD MASIE: Yes, I think there is a lot of upside, absolutely, and I do think that online from an international inventory perspective is extraordinarily important to South Africa. We’ve got a large export market and we’ve got a large travel and tourism market. Those markets want to get to people outside of South Africa, and online presents a different opportunity. Some have leveraged the opportunity, but not truly and not to the full extent that they could. And we want to teach folks, hey, you know what, you can get to everyone. If you want to know, as a bed-and-breakfast, that the Germans are going to travel more or less this time, we’ve got that insight. Or if you want to know when the UK markets is probably going to want to do a safari, we can give you some insight into that. So I don’t see it as eroding. I see it as supplementing, and we are seeing it appending. So more and more people are putting more money into advertising, and they are doing it online because we have this international focus here.
MONEYWEB: The point that I did bring up with Douglas a bit earlier, about transaction – in South Africa, with exchange control it’s a huge blockage here. You can’t go onto Apple iTunes for instance. PayPal, invented by a South African, can’t even be used in this country. Is that not going to put a little blockage in the way that you are looking for more transaction-based revenue?
STAFFORD MASIE: I don’t think so. I think we have had some limitations. Absolutely. But things will change. As more and more people come online, there are different methods to transact. I think you have mentioned a couple. We have seen some innovative ways that people are transacting locally, and it’s not just about international people transacting into South Africa, but it’s also inter-sub-Saharan connectivity and people trading from…
MONEYWEB: But take that German who wants to book at a bed-and-breakfast in South Africa – how is he going to do it right now?
STAFFORD MASIE: Well, we’ve got lots of relationships. You can do it through some our [indistinct] relationships…
MONEYWEB: But he can do it directly – there’s no problem with that. But a South African who wants to book in the United States might have a difficulty because of exchange control.
DOUGLAS MERRILL: There are many countries in the world which have pretty rigid exchange-control models, and South Africa is obviously one of them, but there are some others. And there are a variety of business models that have emerged to address that problem worldwide. To your earlier point, international currency flow is a pretty clean, natural market, and there will be ways to transact across exchange-control barriers.
MONEYWEB: Well, it’s been fascinating looking at the intimacy of it. Douglas, I can’t let you go, though, without picking up on the Google IPO. You are the man behind the thought process and one would wonder – it was so successful, why haven’t you used the algorisms that you brought in for Google for maybe other IPOs?
DOUGLAS MERRILL: There were a group of us who recorded the idea, and I was, you know, fortunate enough to be one of those people. The actual core idea was from Sergey [Brin], who recognised our advertising market. Our advertisers bid to get an ad. They don’t say, you know I will pay $5 – it’s not a preset price list. They bid, and then the person who bids the most, in conjunction http://loss position. And his perspective was, why shouldn’t we do exactly the same thing for our national listing. So, we figured out the mathematics of an auction that would make sense. We built a set of systems to do it, and we [indistinct] ourselves as pretty successful. We got a good price for our company. We got a lot of individuals into the market who might not have been otherwise. We didn’t have super large blocks going in the traditional way allocations are done. But we didn’t view our success http://loss public only through an auction. Our success was we weren’t people that talk about the allocations of IPOs, and who gets initial grants. And we feel our conversation started and still goes to this day. We actually feel we were quite successful.
MONEYWEB: Is there an application a little bit further – you have exchanges, stock exchanges, foreign exchanges – that you can take that technology and perhaps implement it there as well in time to come?
DOUGLAS MERRILL: Who knows what we will do in the future, but obviously you do see pretty rich auction behaviours in exchange futures. You do see pretty rich auction behaviours in certain kinds of exchange-traded funds. The computational hedge fund model is effectively a back-end auction. And you see the same technology, whether it be us or others. The legend of…
MONEYWEB: Are you looking at it, though?
DOUGLAS MERRILL: Look, we look at lots of things. I have not idea what we are looking at. You know, I learn something new every day. But there are lots of brilliant people http://loss the notion of applying mathematics and computers science to problems that were traditionally solved, perhaps, by a group of people in a closed room smoking cigars. The more that you can render that explosive and make it mathematical and fair, there’s a social good…
MONEYWEB: I heard Bill Gates say three years ago that he regarded Google as the Number 1 competitor, which was a surprise to many people at the time. Now it’s quite clear that there is no question that Microsoft is very worried about you. Is it the same in the Google place. Do you worry as well about big Microsoft?
DOUGLAS MERRILL: I can’t tell you what a compliment it is for a Bill Gates to talk about this little company of ours as the Number 1 competitor. He’s an amazingly brilliant man. He and his team of engineers have been around, you know, they have been a profitable company for over 20 years. They make more than a billion dollars in profit every month http://loss for them to compliment us by saying we’re the Number 1 competitor – what a compliment! We are core believers that you don’t drag your business [indistinct]. We focus on our users – and what our users want us to do, we try to do, because our users are always one click away from leaving us. We figure as long as we do what our users want and we do it well, and we keep our social [indistinct] off, we keep not going evil, we will be successful.
MONEYWEB: Dr Douglas Merrill, who is the chief information officer at Google in the United States – and we also spoke to Stafford Masie. Hope you enjoyed that. That’s all from Power Lunch, which is brought to you in association with Moneyweb.
Google is expanding its presence in Africa, in what locals are suggesting is part of a move by Google to “realign” its growth strategy part in response to Microsoft’s takeover offer for Yahoo.
Google is currently advertising or has employed staff in Ghana, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Nigeria and Senegal, and is expanding its Africa head office in Kenya.
AllAfrica reports that Google’s Nairobi (Kenya) office is searching for five senior executives for its African operations, “laying the foundation for a looming market share battle on the continent.”
Online connectivity in Africa is below 5% of the population, which isn’t completely surprising given large parts of the content still lack basics such as water, food and electricity. However the more stable African nations have started to boom, and Africa remains the final frontier for internet growth. Africa offers strong growth opportunities into the future when eventually much of the growth in Asia and South America will start to slow.
[Africa] is the only remaining unindustrialized continent, and it’s jumping straight into the information era, the largest population to do so without industrialization. Any company that has vision will “realign” itself.
Hash – Google started making these moves long before there was any talk of a MS/Yahoo deal. They’ve been slowly ramping up in East/West Africa for the last year and South Africa for 2 years. If you’re thinking that Google is moving faster into Africa just for what your concept of the internet is, you’re wrong there too. It’s about mobile phones and the long tail of the African market. There are more than 200 million mobile phones in Africa that few companies are paying any attention to. It’s Africa’s PC. Yes, there is a market within urban areas for traditional web-based Google products, but this isn’t the main market in Africa. Your comment that, “Africa remains the final frontier for internet growth” is true though. People are going to make millions of dollars there very soon, and the rest of the world will be surprised because they didn’t see it coming.


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Those who’ve purchased the new OLED version of the Nintendo Switch may have noticed that it already comes with an attached screen protector. If you’re considering peeling it off and using a third-party protective film instead, you might want to hold back and hear what Nintendo has to say about that first.
According to a statement provided to IGN, the Japanese video game giant is advising users to not take it off due to safety concerns. The screen protector – known officially by Nintendo as the “anti-scattering adhesive film” is used to protect users from glass, especially in cases where the screen breaks from a fall or other potential mishaps. On top of that, the company added that the OLED Switch’s existing screen protector also helps in preventing scratches.
It’s also worth noting that the screen protector is exclusive to the OLED version. Unlike the glass displays featured on the newly released model, both the original and Lite variants come with plastic screens instead. While the latter may still crack when damaged, they won’t shatter into tiny sharp shards that could potentially cause harm to the user.
It appears that the only consequences users will face by peeling off the film is the loss of a first-party made screen protection. Well, at least it isn’t as punishing as a certain incident way back when.
Nevertheless, it is best to follow Nintendo’s advice and just leave it be. Plus, the fact that the new OLED Switch already comes with a screen protector should spare you the trouble of purchasing a third-party one, especially considering the existing film’s protective capabilities.

domain: news


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Every day, it seems a new streaming service pops up, attempting to differentiate itself from the many others fighting for our attention. As these offerings become nearly identical, competing mainly on price and content, investors will more likely benefit from this megatrend through companies that bring together all these services -- with Roku (ROKU -3.31%) leading the way.
Many consumers now watch TV through a connected television, or CTV, platform. Any TV that has access to the internet and can stream content -- whether through an external box or built-in software -- is connected, and Roku's devices and platform let users do exactly that.
Roku doesn't care which streaming service users subscribe to or companies advertise on; its platform carries all those services, so it benefits no matter what since Roku earns revenue by taking part in a share of subscriptions and ads on its platform. This means it's profiting from popular subscription-based services like Netflix (NFLX -0.95%) and Disney's (DIS -2.68%) Disney+, while also taking a cut of ad revenue on top-tier ad-supported channels like fuboTV (FUBO -2.69%), Hulu, and its own Roku Channel.
Key catalysts for Roku
As every network or studio rolls out its own service -- most recently including NBCUniversal's Peacock and CBS's Paramount+ -- consumers are starting to feel "subscription fatigue" They can't or don't want to pay more and more for these ever-proliferating services. This makes bets on individual streaming services increasingly risky, but also sets the stage for ongoing rapid adoption of subscription-free, ad-supported streaming-TV solutions, an important area from which Roku's platform benefits. Because it serves up all streaming services, Roku can leverage its vast first-party data on consumer viewing habits to help brands advertise more effectively across any of those services.
Furthermore, the shift to streaming was only exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, as more households cut the cord. In fact, eMarketer, a digital marketing and media company, believes traditional TV households declined by 7.5% in 2020 as many moved to streaming services, a trend that is likely to persist. As the leading streaming platform in the U.S., Roku saw a flock of new customers move to its platform during this unique time.
Dominance in streaming
As the "decade of streaming" commences, Roku commands a strong lead, as evidenced by its platform growth. From 2017 through 2019, platform revenue (revenue generated primarily from viewers watching streaming services on Roku) has grown from $225 million to $740 million, a compounded annual growth rate of more than 81%.
Platform revenue at the end of the full year 2020 may well grow at a similar rate. In a recent press release, Roku announced more than 51.2 million active accounts, an increase of 14 million in 2020 alone. Another interview with the CFO mentioned that streaming hours on the platform grew to 17 billion in the fourth quarter of 2020. While Roku hasn't officially released its earnings for the most recent fiscal year, these signs point to strong performance.
Thanks to the large amounts spent on ad buying in television and the reach connected television has, many companies like Procter & Gamble (PG -0.33%) and Cadillac are shifting spend from traditional TV to CTV platforms. As Cadillac Associate Director Marcie Perez states, CTV allows brands to be "very flexible and nimble" when purchasing ad inventory. Companies are more likely than ever to move more ad spend to CTV as traditional TV declines.
Roku already reaches about 1 in 3 households in the U.S., so it may appear that it has little room to grow. But its international markets remain nearly untapped, and the company management has mentioned its U.S. strategy is already proving effective in international markets. Its international strategy is currently taking place with its recent deal with Philco, an early pioneer in TV manufacturing, to launch a Roku TV lineup in Brazil, where Philco has a popular brand. This highlights that Roku still has ample room to grow as CTV takes over living rooms globally.
Still worth buying?
As restrictions cast upon us from the pandemic are lifted, many analysts expect TV viewership to decline. But even if hours watched shrink slightly, CTV is going nowhere. Cord-cutting was already taking place pre-pandemic; COVID simply sped it up. This trend is likely to continue, and Roku is positioned perfectly to take advantage of it. Regardless of what streaming services prove successful, Roku gains from all of them.
When compared to its March price-to-sales ratio of 8.93 times trailing revenue, its current valuation of roughly 33 times trailing revenue may appear high. However it is reasonable to expect Roku to be worth multiples more in the long run as the streaming wars play out.


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REDMOND, Wash.—Microsoft is reportedly partnering with Nasdaq on blockchain, in which its Azure blockchain services will integrate with Nasdaq’s Financial Framework.
Nasdaq’s Financial Framework offers software for traders, exchanges and clearinghouses to interact with each other. The partnership is aimed at creating a blockchain system to help technologies work together for Nasdaq customers, Pymnts.com said.
“In one example, the technology will more easily match buyers and sellers to manage delivery, payment and settlements. Nasdaq Financial Framework will provide customers with the ability to use blockchain via one interface. The companies hope that will ease and accelerate blockchain use, and enable customers to choose the option that works best for them,” Pymnts.com said.


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Just last week F1 2014 became available for pre-order on Steam for $50. Today the game showed up at GMG, where their 20% off coupon can cut the price down to $40. F1 2014 gets the green light October 17th. Pre-ordering also gets you a free copy of F1 Race Stars and an F1 Race Stars DLC pack.
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In less that two weeks kids will be back in school, which means you don't have much more time to finish all that shopping that has to be done.
Luckily for you Thursday at midnight starts the state's tax free weekend, that could save you hundreds.
Some things to keep in mind are, make sure you know exactly what's included in the tax free weekend and know store hours.
Also,compare prices at different stores and be sure to use coupons and know which stores have extra discounts.
"We are getting a free hair cut from JC Penny taking advantage of it before school starts,"
For parents like Casey Paul, this time of years means getting down to business and making sure her son Braydon is ready for his first day of school.
"We'll probably do some shopping while were out," said Paul.
Not a huge fan of the long lines tax free weekend draws in, Casey agrees passing up a good deal is hard to do.
"Tax free weekend here in Texas is phenomenon families look forward to it every year. It's great incentive to them and it helps save money and I know that as a parent of four kids putting them all through school here in Temple, it does help," said Temple Mall General Manager Trish Lee.
Lee, said tax free weekend gives consumers more of an incentive to spend a little more, which doesn't only help families out but also our economy.
"Because they can use those additional dollars for the backpacks, for those tennis shoes for those pair of jeans or that extra shirt that those kids need," said Lee.
This tax free weekend means no tax on most clothes, shoes, and items like backpacks and school supplies under 100 dollars.
Many stores are giving extra deals and having extended hours.
"We plan ahead, we have our staffing in place, we have the merchandise in place, and now it's up to the customer to come in and get whatever they're looking for," said JC Penny Store Leader Cynthy Graves.
If your out shopping this weekend you can expect to save about eight dollars for every 100 dollars you spend.
"We try to get a lot of it done early because it gets so busy and he doesn't enjoy it so we try to get most of our shopping done before tax free weekend," said Paul.


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While the official launch date of Apple’s new iPad is March 16th, lucky folks at Vietnamese website Tinhte.vn have managed to get their hands on one of the new Retina iPads and have posted an unboxing video. The video doesn’t reveal anything we don’t already know but you can always enjoy watching the first ever unboxing of Apple’s latest creation. The video also shows the LTE toggle in the settings.app.
There are additional photos available here. For video, check it out after the break:
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Posted under: iPad News


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In the business world, there is always the chance that your startup will succeed or fail.
2022 has been a tough year for startups. Many popular startups that had been successful in recent years suddenly found themselves struggling to survive. Some have failed completely.
The reasons for these failures vary from company to company. In some cases, it was simply due to mismanagement or bad decisions. We also had bad luck and bad market conditions. But whatever the cause, the result was the same. Dozens of once-promising startups have closed their doors for good. Here are his five notable missteps for 2022 and beyond.
The collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX is one of the most high-profile failures in the cryptocurrency industry. Launched by Sam Bankman-Fried in his early 2019, the startup is one of his most ambitious projects in the space. It offered a variety of trading products, including derivatives, options, volatility products and leveraged tokens, but quickly faced accusations of fraud and mismanagement.
On Nov. 2, 2022, the exchange rose to prominence when cryptocurrency news outlet CoinDesk published a controversial article revealing key information about the balance sheet of Bankman-Fried trading firm Alameda Research. appeared. According to the article, Alameda’s assets totaled US$14.6 billion, including his US$3.66 billion worth of unlocked FTTs (FTX exchange tokens) and US$2.16 billion worth of his FTT collateral. included. About a third of Alameda’s portfolio is made up of his FTT, which has surprised people in the crypto industry. Several questions about Bankman-Fried’s company’s undisclosed leverage and financial status have caused an uproar in the cryptocurrency industry.
On November 6th, Sam Bankman-Fried and Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison disproved the rumors. However, on the same day, Changpeng Zhao (commonly known as CZ), CEO of rival exchange Binance, which had invested in FTX, Declared On social media, his intention to sell Binance’s FTT holding led to a sharp drop in FTT’s price. Following this, customers panicked and started withdrawing funds from FTX, leading to a liquidity crisis on the cryptocurrency exchange.
On November 11, FTX, along with approximately 130 other affiliates, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection as part of the proceedings. On the same day, the company announced the resignation of his CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried, and his former Enron attorney, John J. Ray III, to replace him.
Bankman-Fried has admitted to being too “overconfident” and “careless” when the cryptocurrency exchange expanded into a $32 billion behemoth. The fall of FTX is a instructive story for other startups in the space. It highlights the risks inherent in this new industry and the importance of good management and governance.
Reali, a California-based real estate tech startup, has announced that it will close in August 2022 and lay off most of its employees. The move stems from difficult economic and real estate conditions and an unfavorable funding environment.
The real estate industry has been hit hard by the recent slowdown in the housing sector after home buying surged due to inflation and higher mortgage rates. Lack of demand is having a direct impact on startups in this space as they are unable to sustain their business.
Founded in 2015, Reali was known for offering “Buy Before Sale” and “Cash Offer” programs to homeowners. The startup has raised US$290 million in debt and equity funding since its inception.
Company co-founder and chairman of the board Amit Haller said in a news release announcing the closure: His six years spent developing the California prop technology market helped Reali improve and transform the industry. It did not say whether the laid-off employees would receive severance pay.
Reali’s closure is a reminder that even the most promising startups can fail. Despite raising US$100 million in 2021, the startup failed to turn a profit and was forced to close.
The closure of ShopX, which was once worth over $100 million, has been making headlines recently. A Bangalore-based e-commerce startup ceased operations and filed for bankruptcy and bankruptcy in August 2022. The regulatory filing also details that ShopX has taken out a loan from Singapore-based investor Fung Investment and is unable to meet its payment obligations (interest on the loan). We are currently short of funds.
Founded by Amit Sharma and Apoorva Jois in 2015, ShopX started as an online business-to-business commerce company. It then became an e-commerce enablement business model provider in 2021.
Fast, a US-based startup that offers online checkout products, has announced that it will officially shut down in April 2022. The startup reported small growth and heavy cash outflows in 2021, leaving fewer funding options and an uncertain future. The startup announced its impending shutdown via a tweet.
Founded by Domm Holland, Allison Barr Allen, and Joshua Abulafia, Fast entered the increasingly crowded one-click checkout startup scene in 2019 (i.e., one-click checkout functionality is already available on Amazon and Shopify). was available). The most convenient checkout process on the market. Fast users can make payments with participating retailers by creating a payment profile with one touch. Over the years, Fast has become a popular checkout option for many online retailers. However, the startup struggled to survive and was eventually shut down.
It’s always disheartening to see promising startups fail, but it’s important to remember that not all companies can succeed. The startups on this list have all come to an end for different reasons, but each one serves as a reminder that even the best-intentioned businesses can fail at times.
Header image provided by Pexels


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- Hackers exploit router flaws in unusual pharming attack
- Twitter adds more reporting tools to curb abuse and improve safety
- Is fragmentation killing Android in the enterprise?
- New Forescout CEO wants to make partners an offer they can't refuse
- Some Bitdefender products break HTTPS certificate revocation
Bloomberg - News, Features, and Slideshows
HP is in talks to purchase Aruba Networks, with an eye toward acquiring that company's wireless networking infrastructure technology, according to a report published by Bloomberg News.
Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he's OK with losing money on Internet.org, that the company could pick up another 1 billion users by 2020 and he would consider working with Google to extend Internet connectivity around the world.
Once the store of do-it-yourself electronics innovators, Radio Shack is reportedly in talks with Sprint to whom it would sell half of its retail locations and then close the rest.
Corporations and venture capitalists loved renewable energy last year, and will continue to embrace it this year.
A federal judge Wednesday ruled that a two-hour video deposition recorded by former Apple CEO Steve Jobs will not be released to the press and public.
Microsoft's board of directors wants to wrap up its search for a new CEO before the end of the year, according to Bloomberg, citing anonymous sources close to the action.
The rumored reorganization of Microsoft, which could be unveiled as soon as tomorrow, will go unnoticed by customers in the near-term, analysts said.
The cloud storage service is an intuitive collaboration tool and has IT-friendly features. However, it's in a crowded, competitive market that includes Microsoft.
Apple's record-setting $17 billion bond offer this week stood in stark contrast to the company's darkest days, when in 1996 its millions in notes were rated as junk because investors wondered if the company would survive a thrashing by Microsoft
BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins' prediction that tablets would decline in popularity provoked debate on what will happen over the next five to 10 years to smartphones, tablets and laptops -- even wearable computers -- and what devices users might eventually prefer.
- Oppy appointed marketing chief at CUB
- Drink manufacturer Diageo pilots 'smart bottle' for Johnnie Walker Blue Label
- How Suncorp and Helloworld are driving into digital with data
- Start-up Leia to demo Star Wars-inspired hologram display technology next week
- How CBA, Australia Post and Optus are wowing their customers


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A new iPhone app has been launched that allows users to transform text messages into video mashups.
Swaat – short for “Say Whaat?” – combines clips from people in fancy dress, zombies, movie characters and celebrity impersonators to create unique videos that can be posted on social media or sent as messages.
Users can type any message, quote, phrase or meme into the free-to-download app and it is instantly brought to life as a short video. If they need some inspiration, they can press the ´Message Ideas´ button to access suggestions from the Swaat database.
Swaat is the brainchild of London-based digital entrepreneur, Matt Scott, who came up with the concept in late 2014.
Once the video mashup is created, users can remix the clip to get different characters in their video, and then share it via Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram or save it to the camera roll. Soon, users will also be able to upload their own clips to the app, with one condition – they must be in fancy dress or in character for the clips to be approved for inclusion in the Swaat library.
The site and app – currently available for iOS – works by converting users´ phrases into video compilations from Swaat´s 15,000 word database, which is growing by the day. An Android version is expected to launch in the next few weeks.


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On the East Coast, yardings dropped by around 10,000 head for the week ending 5th November 2021. 42,629 head went to the saleyards last week, 18% lower than the week prior and 5% lower than this time last year. Slaughter levels remain subdued and well below recent historical averages (figure 3). 94,266 head of cattle were slaughtered last week, 3% lower than the week prior and 8% lower than this time last year.
The Eastern states Young Cattle Indicator (EYCI) slipped back just 0.01% on last week, to finish this week at 1067.49¢/kg cwt. The EYCI has averaged 1067¢ for the past four weeks now, which is 30% higher than this time last year.
The top four key EYCI contributor markets all lifted on last week, except Wagga Wagga, which was the largest contributor, at 19%, to the EYCI 7-day rolling average. Dubbo, Roma Store & Dalby were all stronger, with Roma Store average prices coming in at 1137¢/kg cwt, a 6% jump up on last week. 7 day rolling averages at Dalby and Dubbo are sitting at 1078¢/kg cwt & 1112¢/kg cwt respectively.
The National Indicators were mixed this week, with the Restocker Yearling Steers leading the charge upward with a new record, up 20¢ on this time last week, at 667¢/kg lwt. The Medium Steers & Medium Cow Indicators also lifted on last week, up 12¢ & 10¢, to finish this week at 489 & 372¢/kg lwt respectively.
Vealer & Processor Yearling Steers recorded the biggest falls week on week. The Vealer Steer Indicator dropped 12.5¢ (<2%) to 648¢/kg lwt, still 183¢ stronger than the same time last year & 5% higher than this time last month. The Processor Yearling Steer Indicator dropped by about the same amount to finish this week at 540¢/kg lwt, still up 112.5¢ on this time last year.
90CL frozen cow prices are still historically very strong, up another 1¢(<1%) on last week to close at 815¢/kg swt. US Steiner reports meat inflation continues to outstrip broader food inflation in the US, with beef prices surging higher than any other proteins there. They also note the imported beef market is ‘somewhat disjointed’, amid tight supply from Australia and supply chain disruptions, making trade ‘especially difficult’.
The week ahead….
The dump of rain across much of the country (despite disrupting harvests and causing flooding in some parts), will continue to fuel the restocker cattle market fire, maintaining pressure on supply and prices.
The BOM recently updated their ENSO outlook this week, predicting a 70% chance of La Niña forming in the coming months. This will no doubt give cattle producers even more confidence to purchase new stock and breed up, further consolidating the tight supply situation.


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Coinbase World’s (COIN) web site was down Wednesday amid a convertible-note pricing and a pointy drop in Bitcoin and different cryptocurrencies.
Shares of the largest cryptocurrency change within the U.S. finally examine have been falling 6% to $225.
“We’re seeing some points on Coinbase and Coinbase Professional and we’re conscious some options is probably not functioning utterly regular,” the corporate stated in an electronic mail. “We’re presently investigating these points and can present updates as quickly as potential.”
The information got here after Coinbase announced the pricing of $1.25 billion of convertible senior notes.
Meantime, Twitter customers weighed in on the Coinbase scenario. #cryptotrading is trending on the Twitter website.
“Coinbase goes down in the course of the largest crypto sale ever,” one Twitter person stated Wednesday morning.
“I noticed that,” one other responder. “They aren’t the one one.”
“I am making an attempt to offer you more cash,” one other tweeted. “Let me purchase!”
“Similar right here in NY,” one other tweet stated. “F–king ridiculous.”
Bitcoin fell following a warning from the People’s Bank of China over using digital currencies on the earth’s second-largest financial system.
The PBOC stated that China-based monetary and cost establishments aren’t allowed to cost merchandise in any digital forex and are banned from any digital token issuance.
China has banned crypto exchanges and preliminary coin choices however has not barred people from holding cryptocurrencies, Reuters reported.
In a submit on the PBOC’s official WeChat account, the central financial institution stated digital currencies shouldn’t be utilized in both monetary markets or the true financial system as cash, provided that they aren’t “actual currencies”.
The PBOC has been creating its personal state-backed digital forex system, generally known as DCEP or Digital Forex Digital Fee, for a lot of months. Officers purpose to make use of it to switch paper and cash on the earth’s second-largest financial system.


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Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook’s moms and dad business Meta, stated the business is needs to test electronic memorabilia on picture and movie sharing system Instagram recently, signaling a move toward including nonfungible tokens, or NFTs.
In a job interview with influence Theory’s Tom Bilyeu published to Twitter on Monday, Zuckerberg stated the relocate to test electronic memorabilia on Instagram had been the initial step toward enabling designers and enthusiasts to show NFTs on various other applications under Meta’s control: WhatsApp, Twitter Messenger and Twitter. In accordance with the CEO, Meta had been about to “bring comparable functionality to Twitter shortly” and dealing on “augmented truth NFTs” for Instagram also.
The move would apparently enable Instagram people to show NFTs as profile pages as Twitter initially launched in September 2021 that its people could do and, moving aside iOS help for NFT hexagonal avatars in January. Reddit stated after Twitter’s NFT rollout it was testing the tokens since profile images on its system, while material registration solution application OnlyFans — which numerous used to market person content — has actually supplied NFT profile images since December 2021.
Datareportal stated that Instagram had around 1.5 billion people globally at the time of January 2022, around half Facebook’s 2.9 billion. Numerous prominent people inside crypto room have records aided by the picture and movie sharing system, which some hackers took benefit of. Cointelegraph reported in April that bad stars breached annoyed Ape Yacht Club’s Instagram web page and provided backlinks to a fake airdrop aided by the project’s above 600,000 supporters.
Related: 5 methods nonfungible tokens will change community
Since rebranding from Twitter to Meta in October 2021, the social networking business has actually established numerous projects directed at cryptocurrency and metaverse people. Although Diem Association turn off its electronic money task Diem — previously Libra — in February, Meta additionally unsealed the doorways for a brick and mortar metaverse-themed store inside bay area Peninsula on Monday.


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Imagination offers devboard for Meta core
Product News 9/30/2011 4 comments
Multimedia processor core licensor Imagination Technologies has announced the introduction to the market place of Minimorph, a development system for the company's Meta processor core.
MeeGo gone: Intel drops OS in favor of Tizen
News & Analysis 9/28/2011 21 comments
Chip giant Intel has decided to drop its MeeGo mobile operating system in favor of the Tizen project announced by two Linux-oriented non-profit groups, the LiMo Foundation and the Linux Foundation.
Linux groups launch Tizen to fight Android
News & Analysis 9/28/2011 28 comments
Two Linux oriented non-profit groups, The LiMo Foundation and The Linux Foundation which include a number of high profile supporters, have announced an open-source project called Tizen, intended to develop a mobile device software platform based on the Linux operating system.
Wind River helps Leadcore run Android on ARM
News & Analysis 9/27/2011 6 comments
Embedded and mobile software company Wind River Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of chip giant Intel Corp., has teamed up with China's Leadcore Technology Co. Ltd. to develop an ARM-based system-on-chip platform for Android smartphones.
Kontron adopts ARM across the board
News & Analysis 9/8/2011 7 comments
Kontron AG, a leading supplier of board-level subsystems, has said it plans to introduce a broad range of boards, single-board computers, tablets and industrial PC units based on the ARM architecture.
The future of cloud computing - Part 1: Recent history
Design How-To 9/5/2011 5 comments
Part 1 of an excerpt from the book "Digital Forensics for Network, Internet, and Cloud Computing" reviews the recent history of cloud computing, including virtualization, what drives the cloud, private vs. public cloud computing, and the likely dominant players.


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Study: BlackBerry failures top iPhone's
- Jeff Bounds
Research in Motion’s ubiquitous BlackBerry smart phone had more than twice the rate of malfunctions in the first year of ownership compared with Apple Inc.’s iPhone.
That is according to a study by SquareTrade Inc., a San Francisco-based online retailer of extended warranties for electronics and appliances, of 15,000 phones produced by Cupertino-based Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL), Research in Motion (NASDAQ: RIMM) and Palm Inc. (NASDAQ: PALM).
The study examined failure rates in iPhones, BlackBerrys and Treos covered by SquareTrade “care plans.” It found the iPhone had a failure rate of 5.6 percent in its first year of ownership, compared with 11.9 percent for BlackBerrys and 16.2 percent for the Treo.
SquareTrade is an independent third party and has no affiliation with any of the handset manufacturers cited in the study.
It looked at malfunction rates over one year -- when the manufacturer’s warranty was in effect -- and two years-- the length of most carrier contracts.
However, the iPhone was only 15 months old when the study was done earlier this year. So SquareTrade used two data models to project failure rates for the device over two years. Both forecasts had the iPhone’s malfunction rate lower than that of BlackBerrys and Treos.
One model projected an 11.3 percent failure rate for the device, the other 9.2 percent. BlackBerrys and Treos, which have both been on the market for several years, have two-year failure rates of 14.3 percent and 21 percent, respectively.
Requests for comment from Research in Motion and Palm were not successful. In an e-mail, an Apple spokeswoman said the iPhone “ranked highest in overall customer satisfaction” in a study by J.D. Power and Associates.
For all three devices, the biggest problem category was touch pads, screens and key pads. “From an iPhone perspective, touchscreens were the biggest source of problems,” said Vince Tseng, SquareTrade’s vice president of marketing. The device’s touch pad accounted for a third of all problems reported with the iPhone, he added.
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At this year’s annual conference, Independent Retail Europe members discussed the digital progress as well as the transformation of the European retail sector and their impact on groups of independent retailers with Claire Bury from DG CONNECT and Alejandro Mondragón from GfK.Read more
Dublin - Independent Retail Europe’s annual conference was co-hosted this year with Irish member association RGDATA (Retail Grocery Dairy & Allied Trades Association). This year’s conference focussed on access to EU funding for the sector.
Independent Retail Europe’s annual conference was a great success this year. Co-hosted with Spanish member association ANCECO, groups of independent retailers and associations representing independent retailers from across Europe met in Barcelona to network, share experiences and discuss the future direction of the sector.Read more
In order to encourage micro and small enterprises to join the Supply Chain Initiative (SCI), the Governance Group has decided to further simplify the procedure for their registration.Read more
The Supply Chain Initiative (SCI) today announced that the number of companies signed up to its voluntary register has surpassed 1,000 registrations of national operating companies.Read more
Brussels - Together with MEP Dennis de Jong, Independent Retail Europe hosted a very successful lunch event on 26 May. Independent Retail Europe members, EU and national policy makers and selected stakeholders came together for an open exchange on ways of boosting independent retail competitiveness.Read more


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iPhone 4 owners and other AT&T customers who’ve recently experienced a debilitating slowdown in data speeds have Alcatel-Lucent to blame, the carrier indicated in a July 7 statement.
According to AT&T, a software problem in some equipment made by Alcatel-Lucent is stunting the performance of devices on AT&T’s 3G HSUPA (High-Speed Uplink Packet Access) network.
“AT&T and Alcatel-Lucent jointly identified a software defect-triggered under certain conditions-that impacted uplink performance for Laptop Connect and smartphone customers using 3G HSUPA-capable wireless devices in markets with Alcatel-Lucent equipment,” AT&T said in a statement.
An AT&T spokesperson declined to comment on what those defect-triggering conditions are. The Alcatel-Lucent equipment, according to CNET, is being used in areas that include New York, Philadelphia, Washington, Salt Lake City and Seattle.
“This impacts less than 2 percent of our wireless customer base,” the statement continued. “While Alcatel-Lucent develops the appropriate software fix, we are providing normal 3G uplink speeds and consistent performance for affected customers with HSUPA-capable devices.”
In mid-2008, AT&T completed the deployment of HSUPA technology across its existing 3G network. It was said to result in an increase of uplink speeds from what was a high end of 800K bps to 1.2M bps. As for when AT&T customers can expect the situation to improve, AT&T spokesperson Jenny Bridges told eWEEK, “We don’t have a definitive time for a software fix at this point. We expect to know that soon.”
That the problem was on Alcatel-Lucent’s end likely came as an enormous relief to AT&T, which has suffered a number of barbs about its network as it struggles to keep up with the data needs of iPhone customers. (In late June, AT&T improved its coverage in New York, which has proven to be one of its toughest-to-support service areas.)
Following the debut of Apple’s iPhone 4, AT&T ducked another blow, when users complaining of sudden drops in service bars were told that Apple had been using the wrong formula for determining signal strength. Although Apple addressed the matter, saying its staff was as stunned as anyone to discover the problem, it didn’t prevent AT&T from being included in a lawsuit filed by iPhone 4 owners, accusing Apple and AT&T of knowingly selling defective devices.


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DEALER Solutions, a Cox Automotive company, has launched a new specialist advertising agency for dealers with the “specific goal” of reducing the cost-per-lead for car dealers.
Called Digipurple, the agency uses ITS proprietary automated data feed technology to drive online buyer traffic using Facebook and Google directly to individual vehicle detail pages listed on a dealer’s own website.
The company says that sending leads directly to dealers’ listings bypasses lead generation fees charged by third party websites such as Carsales.
The service is available to OEMs and franchised dealers of all sizes as well as independent used car dealers.
The system is based on the Dealer.com website business model operated by Cox Automotive in the United States.
The CEO of Dealer Solutions, Michael Sommerton told GoAutoNews Premium: “It is all about maximising views on dealers websites and maximising views of their specific inventory, reducing the cost per lead.
“Dealers spend a fortune on getting leads but we know through Cox US studies that 83 per cent of consumers visit dealer’s websites as part of their purchase journey.”
“That’s why a specialist automotive advertising agency, backed by specific inventory based data, is so critical to drive down dealer costs and improve online visits to their stock.”
Dealer Solutions says trials it has undertaken with dealers show that the cost per lead is significantly cheaper than a lead from a service like Carsales.
In a one month trial with Prestige Honda in Perth, Digipurple, on an outlay of about $1500, generated 5740 website sessions, an average time on site of 2:07 minutes, 57 phone calls, 88 brochure requests and 148 form leads directly to the dealer website.
In another trial at Westside Auto Wholesale, also in Perth, with a budget of $1300, Digipurple ran Facebook dynamic ads which generated 15,826 additional visitors (up 31 per cent), 24,037 additional vehicle detail page views (up 39 per cent) at a cost per click of six cents and cost per vehicle details page of eight cents.
Both case studies were with Facebook.
Mr Sommerton said that the new agency was being led by experts from the US parent company “who understand how to run a successful advertising agency and understand the skills required for inventory-based online advertising campaigns”.
“Digipurple’s main goal is to emulate the success of Dealer.com in the US,” he said.
“We have hired experts from Dealer.com. We have not exactly replicated Dealer.com systems but we have replicated the concept on top of our platform which highlights individual dealer’s stock to drive traffic to a particular vehicle.
“That is the success of Dealer.com and that is what we aim to emulate here in Australia.”
Mr Sommerton said the Digipurple concept was very specific.
“If you are interested in a particular year, model, colour and type of a Mazda CX-5, for example, using our data technology we are able to use what we call long tail search descriptors on each particular piece of inventory and we are able to target a campaign directly around particular items of inventory.
“So we are getting as many eyeballs as possible on that particular piece of inventory that people are actually interested in looking at.
“There are many companies out there with generic descriptions which are virtually meaningless. The power of our system is that when they really describe what the car they want is all about we can drive the details of the car to those who are interested those particular features.
“It goes straight to the details page which, on Dealer Solutions website have clear call to actions and, now, the ability to place a deposit,” he said.
“What we are trying to do is to reduce the cost of leads for dealers and the way we want to position Digipurple is that we want to spend dealers’ money incredibly effectively.
“Anyone can take your money as a digital agency and spend it and claim the normal managed fee but we want to work with the dealers to maximise their return or even work with the agency the dealer currently uses to make sure their campaigns are far more effective than they would otherwise would be.”
Mr Sommerton said that the vice-president of advertising at Dealer.com, Chris Smith, was relocating to Australia to lead Digipurple and a number of digital strategists based in the US were working with a new team set up in Australia to run Digipurple under Mr Smith’s leadership.
Mr Sommerton said Digipurple is advertising in its own right and was being run separately to Dealer Solutions.
“While it uses the Dealer Solutions corporate colour of purple and uses the Dealer Solutions data, we felt it was important enough to make it a separate venture and for Chris Smith to really drive the venture as a separate brand within this market,” he said.
“We have the view that this market is very fragmented and that there is really no one advertising agency (doing this). So we are really keen to fill that void and we feel there is a great opportunity to partner with the dealers to do that.
“We have been doing digital advertising under the Dealer Solutions umbrella for a long time but now we want to use a different name and image because what we are doing is unique and very different to Dealer Solutions products.
“So the existing advertising activities undertaken by Dealer Solutions over the years have been rolled into Digipurple.”
Mr Sommerton said Digipurple had already attracted “dozens” of dealers signing on.
“The interest is incredibly strong. The interest is there in the market, there is no doubt about that,” he said.
Digipurple range of services covers digital advertising, SEO, digital creative, content, reporting and managed social.
By John Mellor


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ST. JOHN’S, Antigua — Feel free to hit the road, Rubis! That’s the strong position being taken by outspoken Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Gaston Browne amid threats by the French-owned gas company to shut down its operations on the island.
Rubis has been at odds with the government since the Browne administration rejected a move by the company to increase its profit margins.
“If we have investors, so-called foreign investors, who are pursuing their own profit motives at the detriment of our people, then it is time for them to leave,” he said on the state-owned ABS television.
The Prime Minister said Rubis had made a proposal to increase its wholesale fuel margins in the past, but he refused to entertain the idea since it would affect consumers and other local businesses.
“We recognize at the heart of this issue is the fact they have been pushing my government to increase the margins, and clearly it will be unacceptable for us to allow them to increase the margins and then pass it on to consumers and increase petrol prices,” Browne said.
The company, however, is standing its ground. Chief executive officer of Rubis Caribbean Maurico Nicholls has argued that margins have been frozen in Antigua and Barbuda for the past 27 years and that it is hurting the company’s bottom line.
“A business cannot survive on margins that are frozen forever where the cost of doing business is rising every year,” he told the Antigua Observer.
Adamant that the wholesale margins had not kept pace with inflation rates or the current margins in neighboring Eastern Caribbean countries, Nicholls maintains the company’s demands are well justified.
“All we are asking the government and have been asking for years is that the margins are brought in line with the accumulated inflation with the 27-year period and in line with average wholesale margins in the rest of the Eastern Caribbean countries,” the CEO said.
The company has since issued letters to gas station owners indicating it would not be renewing their leases in the New Year.
One operator has filed a legal challenge against Rubis to renegotiate a contract.
Read more here


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Award-winning Swedish online gambling outfit Mr. Green has selected Evolution Gaming to provide its live dealer casino offering. Evolution’s Riga-based studio will provide Mr. Green with shared live roulette, blackjack and baccarat tables, plus a dedicated live blackjack table operating around the clock and localized live roulette in both Swedish- and English-languages with Mr. Green branding. Mr. Green’s chief product officer Markus Aurala says the deal offers “the online equivalent of ‘real’ three-dimensional Mr. Green casinos.”
UK online gambling operator 888.com has inked a deal between its 888games.com offering and online payment processors Skrill, whose customers can now play over 120 casino games for play-money or the real thing at a co-branded ‘888Games with Skrill’ page.
UK-based online gaming platform provider EveryMatrix has inked a deal to supply its GamMatrix gaming management and payment processing platform to Malta-licensed online casino GuruPlay.com. The deal will allow GuruPlay to utilize EveryMatrix’s new Casino Engine solution, which integrates over 700 games from multiple vendors onto a single wallet. GuruPlay managing director Henrik Piski said the deal would allow the site’s customers a “wider offering of gaming experiences and the addition of mobile games.”
Affiliate Republik, the affiliate arm of Tropezia Palace online casino, has announced the expansion of Tropezia’s offering with the game portfolios of developers BetOnSoft and Rival Gaming. The deal follows Tropezia’s integration of the portfolios of Leander Games and Sheriff Gaming in March. Affiliate Republik spokesperson Märit von Stedingk hailed the “landmark deal” as a boon for customers who will enjoy “a multitude of games from now four gaming providers.”
Australian bookmakers Betstar have selected Prolexic to provide protection and mitigation services for dealing with distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. Online betting companies are prime targets for DDoS attacks, which are often timed around marquee betting events, such as the recent Melbourne Cup horseracing meet. Betstar experienced collateral damage during a recent DDoS attack against a competitor, with whom Betstar shared infrastructure in a colocation data center. The attack came at the start of this year’s Spring Carnival and the experience was sufficiently unnerving for Betstar to put Prolexic on the case. Prolexic claims to have buttressed Betstar’s defenses within three days of inking the contract and Betstar IT manager Bryan Dunne says the site hasn’t been forced offline since.
Online gambling turnkey solution outfit Elray Gaming is branching out into the mobile gaming world with the launch of Elray Mobile. Elray CEO Brian Goodman said the plan was to ”develop and acquire operating mobile gambling technology companies” in order to “position itself as a player in the social gaming and mobile casino industry.” In 2011, Elray Gaming acquired Splitrock Ventures BVI, from which it obtained several online gaming domains. Elray’s parent outfit Elray Resources acquired Macau-based VIP room promoter Golden Match in 2012.


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But he also said MV would not go into electric bikes because there is no market for high-performing electric street bikes.
“People think the electric bike is for losers and the reality is it is not.
“But at the moment, its potential is in cities for short-range commuting from home to the office or for short trips.
“We don’t yet live in a world where you can live with an electric car. I would like to buy a Tesla, but only for driving from home to the office. I travel a lot by car and I can’t start my journey by doing a flight plan like in a plane.
“The charging infrastructure needs to improve first.”


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Metro: Last Light is heading to Linux, you all know this by now and we even spoke to the developers to get it confirmed (article here if you missed it), now the publisher has written an official statement in support of a Linux version of their AAA shooter!
This is awesome:
QuoteHowever, Deep Silver will seek to make the world of Metro more accessible to a broader audience - through a commitment to ever higher product quality; through greater strategic investment in the brand; and, in the immediate term, through the release of dedicated Mac and Linux versions of Metro: Last Light. This is just the first stage of a broader initiative to bring Metro to a wider audience, without compromising the product's strengths.
So you can be sure it is thanks to their publisher that 4A Games are able to do this, looks like Deep Silver may be getting more and more Linux friendly as time goes on!
They also confirmed via twitter it will be this year:
Besides a Mac version, a Linux version of Metro: Last Light is also in development and scheduled for release later this year.— Metro: Last Light (@MetroVideoGame) August 27, 2013


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CMON Limited has made several announcements of note, starting with the news that designer Eric M. Lang has been hired as Director of Game Design. Lang will both continue to design new titles for CMON Limited and lead the publisher's development team. To quote from the press release:Quote:CMON's Creative Director, David Preti, has worked with Eric on several projects and explains, "Having Eric as part of the team is huge. Not only is he a friend, but I have worked with him, side-by-side, on projects like Rising Sun, Blood Rage, and The Others and seen the craft and dedication he brings to his work. As CMON's Director of Game Design, I know he will help take the company and its library of games to a new level, and I can't wait for fans to see what's coming up."CMON Limited has also brought artist Adrian Smith (Blood Rage, The Others, Rising Sun) on staff as Lead Artist.
In addition to expanding their staff, CMON Limited has announced a new game series based on novels by George R. R. Martin. Which novels? Well, the press release doesn't say exactly, but the game series is titled A Song of Ice & Fire: Tabletop Miniatures Game, and it bears this description:Quote:A Song of Ice & Fire: Tabletop Miniatures Game lets players take control of their favorite Houses from the novels — represented by trays of high-quality, pre-assembled miniatures — and lead them into battle against their opponents. Players can recreate their favorite moments from the series or create their own stories. What if the Red Wedding never happened, and Robb Stark assaulted King's Landing? Now fans can find out!Pretty sneaky there not mentioning Ame-gay of Ones-thray.
Battles can range from large-scale wars with hundreds of miniatures to simple skirmishes between a few units without complicating the elegantly designed rules. The game features several unique systems, including alternating activations that keep the players engaged; a Rank System that changes a unit's capabilities as the battle rages on; a Tactics System that provides strategic powers fueled by a finite resource each round; and, most importantly, the iconic Heroes, such as Robb Stark and Jaime Lannister, that can change the course of war both on and off the battlefield.
CMON Limited plans to launch this series with the Stark vs Lannister Starter Set, which will hit Kickstarter in Q3 2017 ahead of a 2018 release date.
BoardGameGeek is at the 2017 GAMA Trade Show, and CMON Limited is scheduled to be on camera Wednesday, March 15 at 2:00 p.m. Las Vegas time (PDT, GMT -7) should you care to check out this title and others coming from the publisher.
To submit news, a designer diary, outrageous rumors, or other material, contact us at email@example.com.
CMON Limited Hires Eric M. Lang as Director of Game Design, Announces A Song of Ice & Fire: Tabletop Miniatures Game
15 Mar 2017
- [+] Dice rolls