Mediaboss Marketing

Weve all been there. Youre watching TV late at night and you start to nod off. Despite your valiant struggle to stay awake, your eyes close, and next thing you know, youve missed the end ofThe Blacklist again. Well, not anymore. With the help of Virgin Media, two teenagers created a wearable called KipstR that knows when youre falling asleep and starts to record your favorite show when you inevitably succumb.

Two students from the Manchester Creative Studio named Ryan Oliver and Jonathan Kingsley, teamed up with Virgin Medias Switched on Futures initiative, to make their dream a reality. The pair helped develop a 3D printed wristband that sports a pulse-oximeter that can tell is youre asleep. Once it sees youre asleep or dozing off, the KipstR turns into a TiVo remote that can pause or record a show. It can also resume play as soon as it sees youre awake again, if you were just resting your eyes for a moment.

Related:These smart specs can tell when youre not paying attention

KipstR is still in prototype status, but according to the Daily Mail, it features a spark core chip, pulse-oximeter, push button, sleep mode indicator, and a small LiPo battery. The KipstRs pulse-oximeter tracks your blood flow to determine your levels of alertness. When your blood flow slows to sleeping speeds, the spark core chip in the KipstR is triggered and tells your TiVo box to pause or record the show youre watching. Conversely, when you wake up, your blood flow speeds up, and KipstR sends a message to your TiVO to resume play.

The KipstR band was 3D printed with an Objet Connex 3D Printer a Polyjet resin, which is supposedly stronger than your average 3D printing material. It looks like any other small, wrist-bound wearable, and although it appears to be slightly bulky, its not much bigger than your average smartwatch. Youd also only have to wear it while youre at home watching TV, so looks arent exactly paramount.

Building KipstR with Virgin Media was a brilliant challenge for us but weve learnt so much and are really pleased with the end result, Ryan said in a writeup posted by Virgin Media. And to top it off I now know what to get my dad for Christmas as he is always nodding off in front of the TV!

Of course, KipstR only works for customers who have Virgin Medias TiVo boxes installed, so cord-cutters and non-TiVo customers are out of luck for now. However, seeing as the pulse-oximeter technology KipstR uses is readily available, its entirely possible that copy-cats could pop up assuming the trial period is successful. The wearable isnt available for sale yet, but you can sign up for a trial on Virgin Medias website.

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This wearable will pause or record your favorite show when you inevitably doze off

Googles data centre. What effect will data collection and privacy have in 2015? Photograph: KeystoneUSA-ZUMA / Rex Features

2014 saw a rapid increase in public awareness of digital privacy and identity. As a result, private organisations and policymakers everywhere are clambering to get-to-grips with the topic, as consumers take action (pdf). With this in mind, what can we expect from digital media and advertising in 2015?

Much is made of these two companies in the fight for brand cash, but lest we forget there is an ocean of difference between the two. Despite this chasm and increased scrutiny on Google and Facebook in the EU you wont see either cool their jets, particularly when it comes to mobile, which has a combined share of 75% of brand spend.

Data management platforms (DMPs) which collect, integrate, manage and activate data for marketers will struggle under Googles expanding directive prohibiting third parties from firing tracking pixels within the Google Display Network (GDN). This filtering process between those who can and cant understand consumer interactions with Google advertising can be seen as a tightening of controls on data collection, but it also means the marketers perspective of consumer activity will be further defined through Googles lens, leading to more money and power for Google.

This polarisation will only exacerbate with Facebooks development of Atlas, increasing the propagation of the Facebook identity into publishing environments, enabling them to garner more behavourial data . Never one to give without receiving, Facebooks audience platform will take a small cut from everything the publishers do along with their data, while allowing them to compete in the world of cross device. This will only superficially increase options for marketers seeking device agnostic solutions.

At the heart of both Google and Facebooks strategy is their ability to link interactions throughout the consumer journey to a single user profile and ID (known as Omniview capabilities a term well be hearing much more of). Their reliance on personally identifiable information (PII) to create a single consumer view becomes increasingly evident, and as advertisers and agencies open their minds to more privacy-friendly identification possibilities, the conversation around identification will take another dimension: how much do we need to know and how much are we allowed to know to promote a product?

The changing data protection laws in the EU, which aim to drive consumer choice and control to the forefront, help frame the discussion:

Respect opt-outs: Consumers must be able to decide who collects their data and have the ability to withdraw from such services. The upcoming rollout of AdChoices to mobile is a significant step. The move was described to us by Nick Stringer, Internet Advertising Bureaus UK director of regulatory affairs as, extending the principles of transparency and control to the mobile environment, and providing a consistent consumer experience across the devices they use.

Deliver anonymity: As our personal lives and digital identities further converge, consumers are increasingly aware of being tracked. According to Ipsos MORIs Global Trends Survey, 59% of British adults are happy for brands to hold information on them as long as its anonymised and cant be linked back.

Put data owners in control: Google and Facebook are starting to ring fence the industry, but they are not the audience owner in every scenario and it is up to media owners to take control, for the sake of their future.

Continued here:
How will data change the media and advertising landscape in 2015?

WEBCAST: Running of the Bull
Also, the acquittal of George Zimmerman is sparking protests throughout the nation. *More: http://WNN.

By: world news

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WEBCAST: Running of the Bull - Video

7 Facebook Irritations
Facebook is great if you like stalking your friends and finding out gossip so you can tell all your mates about it in the pub later. But here are the 7 most irritating things about the social...

By: Statosphere

Originally posted here:
7 Facebook Irritations - Video

Is anonymous social networking a flash-in-the-pan trend? A winner-take-all category? Which of the anonymous social networking apps around today are still thriving, and which are practically dead?

These questions come to mind today as one of the leading companiesin the anonymous social category, Secret, revamped its application, borrowing ideas from popular apps like Yik Yak and Snapchat and others in order to introduce new features like location-based posts and disappearing private messages.

Secrets pivot is representative of the apps inability to maintain growth amid an overall decline inanonymous social networking applications, with the exceptions of Yik Yak, Whisper and, more recently, newcomer After School.

For a bit of background before diving in: Oneof the biggertrends amongconsumer applications in 2014 was the rise of anonymous social networking or apps that allowedusers to post publicly to networks without using their real names. Users on these apps sharesecrets, gossip andotherrandom thoughts.

They are different from private messaging apps because their content is visible to anyone who logs in, or anyone in a given geographical region. That is, theyre one-to-many sharing apps, not one-to-one mobile messengers.

Investorsand the media alike debated about the ethics of these sorts of apps, as they often allow for cyberbullying and shaming of public figures andin some cases, even seemed toencourage that activity.

Nevertheless, anonymous social seemed to be carving out a new category for itself this year.

It almost made sense that this sort of activity would emerge in apost-Snowden society where users realized thatsocial networking on more public, real-name networks like Facebook had been tracked by their own government.

Perhaps anonymous social would encourage the same sort of human connection that Facebook once offered, without the drawback of disclosing your true identity along the way?

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Few Winners In Anonymous Social Networking, And Secrets Not One Of Them