by David | Aug 9, 2013 | Geekery
Game Informer has a report that Amazon are developing an Android-operated gaming console due to hit before the end of the year.
Using Amazon’s Android titles listing, a new controller and expected to hit before Black Friday (November 29).
The leak comes following Googles’ own rumour that the company are working on their own device.
More from Game Informer:
Unlike the Ouya, which has meager capital and influence, Amazon could make a serious run at the affordable home gaming sector. It already has a bevy of titles at its disposal and relationships with key developers responsible for some of the biggest titles on the Android platform.
It’s easy to write off Android consoles as novelties. That is, until an enormous player like Amazon enters the picture.
Amazon also moves a lot of televisions, and is a key player for those companies. Just ask home appliance retailers if they’ve heard the term “Amazon’s Showroom.” It wouldn’t surprise me to see Amazon cut a deal to have their Android gaming technology integrated with key television manufacturers’ products.
by David | Aug 9, 2013 | Books, Geekery
NASA are making their eBooks available, free. Everything you wanted to know about space… you can know read about online. Or, well, any where!
They’re not perfect - many of the books were digitized 8/9 years ago when formatting didn’t exist but it acts as a functioning library for anyone who cares to look.
What these works also show is how central the space program made and found itself during the 20th century. NASA could convene PIllsbury and the chefs on nuclear submarines to talk about food. Computing and solar energy were both pushed along by NASA’s interest. The Space Race was a proxy skirmish in the Cold War. And, of course, all sorts of ideas from the era leaked into the way NASA thought about things: freedom and America and gender and aesthetics and the future. - The Atlantic
Go on. Go read!!
by David | Aug 9, 2013 | Geekery, MOVIES
CBGB - come to watch Alan Rickman, stay for the music.
by David | Aug 8, 2013 | Geekery, Slider
What is your digital strategy? What does the future of books look like?
No one knows where they’re going, not really. Publishing is reacting to the same seismic shifts as other ents - music, gaming, TV. Stories aren’t changing, only how they are delivered, and that change hasn’t finished.
Predicting technologies isn’t our job, right? Well, no, but as the technology is transforming it is publishers’ role to experiment and take advantage of opportunities while they are available.
If you don’t have a digital strategy, don’t worry. No one does.
The fact that no one has a strategy means that the playing field is level. That won’t last long.
Already Amazon is trialling pilot shows – letting audiences decide which get made by voting via viewership – while buying up rights to broadcast older shows and movies. Penguin is hoping to earn on IP investments. Hachette and Walker Books are both driving forward with licensing, exploiting new L&M on books and shows – with Walker’s partnership with Aardman on distribution flourishing. Netflix have just signed on Dreamworks to create 300 hours of new animated television.
No matter how big/small the company, there are new start-ups and innovators, new thinkers and disruptive models appearing every week – take advantage of the dust in the air and run some new ideas.
Be creative, try something you would never have tried before. There thousands of potential, scalable ways to experiment – including partnerships with new start-ups, or simply offer some support or resources.
Watch Kickstarter, find a campaign you like, reach out and let them know you could support them. If there’s a service agency looking to launch a slate, row with them. A band that could make it, give them a voice. A short film, offer them hosting space on your server.
You get the idea. All of it is scalable to the size of the budget… but there are no limits.
Not really.
by David | Aug 7, 2013 | Books, Geekery
Public park benches in Amsterdam now come with red clips on the side for holding books, magazines, or newspapers - with public libraries and newspapers supplying good reads for willing readers:
