Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Hunting With Friends Podcast Episode 8 – LIVE AND IN CONCERT! – Video

30-05-2012 18:28 Follow me on twitter for faster updates on streams!:

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Hunting With Friends Podcast Episode 8 - LIVE AND IN CONCERT! - Video

Let's Play: Saints Row The Third Co-op Part 6 – Bootleggin' – Video

31-05-2012 07:03 Bootleggin' Dukes of Hazzard style!

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Let's Play: Saints Row The Third Co-op Part 6 - Bootleggin' - Video

"Social Media Butterflies" Will Dot the Digital Landscape During the London 2012 Olympic Games

NEW YORK, May 31, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --This summer, as the London 2012 Olympic Games unfold, we'll witness the flight of the "Social Media Butterflies," digitally savvy moms who crave connection and conversation around major events. Expect these women to be one of the most active and engaging consumer segments as their use of social media often outpaces other demographic and user groups including the hyper connected members of Gen Y and Gen Z. This is among the key findings from the 2012 Taylor Consumer Engagement Survey: Social Media and the Olympic Games.

To view the multimedia assets associated with this release, please click http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/social-media-butterflies-will-dot-the-digital-landscape-during-the-london-2012-olympic-games-151406765.html

Taylor, the leader in sports and lifestyle public relations, is the only agency that has been on the ground supporting consumer brands at every Olympic Games since 1984. Given how social media and digital technologies impact the consumer experience with global properties like the Olympics, Taylor designed and commissioned this survey of more than 1,000 U.S. consumers to fully understand how they will be viewing, sharing, and interacting with the London 2012 Games. The survey provides learning and insight across several important consumer targets, including: Avid Olympic Fans, Moms aged 25-54, Affluent Americans with HHI 100k+, Youth aged 13-23, and mobile device users (mobile phone, Smartphone, and Tablet). Fielded by MarketProbe International, a global research company, the survey was supplemented with trends research, analysis and insights from Taylor's Brand Counsel Group.

London 2012 promises to be the first true "social media games" where fans (and the brands that want to appeal to them) have the opportunity to connect across time zones via 24 hours of content and coverage in real time across multiple platforms.

"Multiple screens mean multiple viewpoints when watching events like the Olympic Games. Everyone in the household moms, dads, kids, family and friends will have their own platforms to share their unique perspective. This creates a more personalized experience for fans," said Jackson Jeyanayagam, Senior Vice President, Digital Strategy, Taylor.

Taylor's survey reveals just how much computers and mobile devices will be pivotal platforms for the London Games. Of the total survey sample, 20% state if they could choose just one device to watch the Olympic Games it would be something other than TV.

To brand marketers, this is especially enticing as social media engagement around major sports and entertainment properties like the Super Bowl and the Grammy Awards has been intensifying exponentially. When considering the uniqueness of the Olympic Games, which are played out over 17 full days and feature thousands of athletes competing across 26 sports, the implications and opportunities for brands to connect with consumers via various touch-points throughout the day are unparalleled. In fact, Taylor's survey shows from the early morning through lunchtime, more than half of Moms say they will be using social media sites to post original content and comments.

"Moms are the consummate social media butterflies in that they use and rely on these types of digital platforms for information, inspiration, and inclusion," said Katina Scott, Vice President, Brand Planning Director, Taylor. "While many moms are not traditional sports fans, they have a strong affinity toward the Olympics. When looking for a trusted source of information on the Games, more than half of Moms say that social media is the most important source of information about the Olympics."

Other insights and emerging trends of the survey include:

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"Social Media Butterflies" Will Dot the Digital Landscape During the London 2012 Olympic Games

The Internet: A Series Of 'Tubes' (And Then Some)

Increasingly, Internet users are working "in the cloud" creating and sending data that isn't stored on local hard drives. It's easy to imagine our emails and photos swirling around in cyberspace without a physical home but that's not really how it works. Those files are still stored somewhere, but you can only find them if you know where to look.

In Tubes, journalist Andrew Blum goes on a journey inside the Internet's physical infrastructure to uncover the buildings and compounds where our data is stored and transmitted. Along the way, he documents the spaces where the Internet first started and the people who've been working to make the web what it is today.

Blum tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross that the Internet can be thought of as three separate entities: data centers that store information, Internet exchange points where networks meet to exchange data with each other, and fiber-optic cables which connect all of the information traveling between cities and continents.

Blum calls these fiber-optic cables, many of which traverse the ocean bottom, the "most poetic places of the Internet."

"They're about the thickness of a garden hose and they're filled with handful of strands of fiber-optic cable," he says. "And light goes in one end of the ocean and out the other end of the ocean. And that light is accelerated along its journey by repeaters that look like bluefin tuna underwater."

The repeaters and the fiber-optic cables extend for thousands of miles below the ocean's surface, along the same routes where other telecommunication cables have been placed for decades. Blum, who watched one of the fiber-optic cables emerge from the sea in Lisbon, says the process hasn't changed much over the decades.

"I saw pictures from [a telegraph] museum in England where the pictures from 100 years earlier looked exactly the same," he says. "The Englishmen in their hats were watching the laborers digging in the wet trench, pulling the cables up. So the technology has changed but the culture hasn't changed and the points being connected haven't changed much."

Journalist Andrew Blum writes about architecture, design, technology, urbanism, art and travel. He lives in New York City.

Journalist Andrew Blum writes about architecture, design, technology, urbanism, art and travel. He lives in New York City.

In the States, many of the trans-Atlantic cables coming from Europe terminate in a Art Deco-style office building at 60 Hudson St. in New York City. More than 100 telecommunications companies have offices in the building, which contains more than 70 million feet of cable wire.

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The Internet: A Series Of 'Tubes' (And Then Some)

U.N.'s push to regulate the Internet

By Nina Easton, senior editor-at-large

FORTUNE -- The bureaucrats at the United Nations, prodded by developing countries and exemplars of democracy like Russia and China, have hit on an enticing new way to control global communication and commerce: They want to regulate the Internet.

It's one of those rare issues in this heated campaign season that is uniting the political left, right, and middle in Washington. Business leaders beyond Silicon Valley would be smart to sit up and take notice, too -- and fast. American opponents are being seriously outpaced by U.N. plans to tax and regulate that are already grinding forward in advance of a December treaty negotiation in Dubai.

"Having the U.N. or any international community regulate the Internet only means you're going to have the lowest common denominator of 193 countries," notes Richard Grenell, who served as spokesman and adviser to four U.S. ambassadors to the U.N. between 2001 and 2009.

That the U.N. too often acts as a repository of the world's lowest common denominator is a familiar complaint from American conservatives. Witness blocked attempts to take action against bad actors like Syria. Now those fears are being realized over the Internet, which has a nasty habit of spreading free speech -- and with it, discontent and revolt.

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The conduit is a little known U.N. agency called the International Telecommunication Union, which coordinates cross-border issues such asradio spectrum and satellite orbits. At the December 2012 World Conference on International Telecommunications in Dubai (bureaucratically titled the WCIT-12) the ITU will consider expanding its purview to the Internet. That may be six months away -- but ITU working groups are already laying the groundwork.

Behind the effort are efficient censor machines like China, and autocrats like Russian President Vladimir Putin, who last year declared his desire to establish "international control" of the Internet. These are "not exactly bastions of Internet freedom," as Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio put it during a hearing last month. "Any place that bans certain terms from search should not be a leader in an international Internet regulatory framework."

The House Communications and Technology subcommittee convenes its own hearing Thursday.

Also pushing for international controls are developing countries hungry not only for political control, but also for new sources of revenue. (Allowing foreign phone companies to collect fees on international traffic is one proposal under discussion.) Grenell, who saw the regulatory effort spring up from the beginning a decade ago, notes that developing countries at the U.N. "get excited about taking up global issues that will give them more control and influence over commerce, that require businesses to seek their input and approval."

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U.N.'s push to regulate the Internet