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LoveFilm digital streaming surpasses DVD rentals

LoveFilm, the Amazon-owned movie rentals firm, has today announced that demand for its digital streaming service has surpassed physical DVD rentals for the first time.

The company said that its subscribers streamed more content to connected devices in February than requested rentals of DVDs, Blu-rays and video games.

Demand for digital streaming over physical copies has led LoveFilm to state that it is now a "predominantly streaming business", raising question marks over the future of the DVD operation.

LoveFilm, which launched a streaming-only service called LoveFilm Instant last year, said that the number of films and TV episodes streamed online through internet-connected devices is now exceeding demand for physical copies by 20%.

Digital streaming demand in February was up a staggering 400% year-on-year, although the rental of physical products also increased by 25% year-on-year.

Jim Buckle, the new managing director of LoveFilm following the resignation of chief executive Simon Calver, said that the growth in demand for digital is expected to continue.

"The first quarter of 2012 has shown us two things: that LoveFilm members are watching more films and TV series both on the internet and on DVD than ever before and; in less than three years, streaming through LoveFilm Instant has become more popular than renting DVDs," he said.

"Our members crave instant on-demand access. With more world-class digital content being added to LoveFilm Instant and a growing number of internet-connected devices delivering it to members' living rooms we expect this trend to continue.

"At the same time, many of our members continue to enjoy the combination of LoveFilm Instant and LoveFilm By Post in one, great value for money, subscription, with both services growing rapidly."

LoveFilm now has more than 2m subscribers across Europe, accessing a range of movies such as The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, Source Code and soon the acclaimed Tinker Tailor Solider Spy.

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LoveFilm digital streaming surpasses DVD rentals

Global hunt for digital ad talent

'I believe the apetite for importing experienced digital marketing talent will continue for at least the next 12 months as key talent proves hard to find in Australia' says Mike Page, managing director of MitchelLake. Photo: Rob Homer

AUSTRALIAN companies with the largest budgets are headhunting senior marketing people from overseas in growing numbers.

Digital marketing and digital commerce marketing roles are evolving far faster in Europe and the US, prompting Australian companies to pay big money to import talent.

According to Mike Page, managing director of MitchelLake, salaries of $400,000 and more are being paid to overseas marketing executives with skills lacking in the local market.

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He said while marketing had become an increasingly popular discipline in Australia, thanks to shows like ABC's The Gruen Transfer, there was a lag in senior talent coming through.

The executive search and specialist recruitment firm placed 76 senior marketers from various parts of the globe into key Australian roles over the past year, with salaries as high as $300,000 to $400,000.

A further 61 junior and mid-level specialists also arrived on Australian shores to fill roles paying up to $140,000. These figures include Australians returning after being in key marketing roles overseas, Mr Page said.

MitchelLake is searching for 20 senior marketers across the globe. It counts the country's largest banking, finance and telecommunications companies among its clients.

''I believe the appetite for importing experienced digital marketing talent will continue for at least the next 12 months as key talent proves difficult to find in Australia,'' Mr Page said.

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Global hunt for digital ad talent

Renesas Electronics Packs RX Punch into a Smaller Package to Support Cost-Sensitive Industrial and Consumer Applications

SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

Renesas Electronics America, a leading provider of advanced semiconductor solutions, today announced the availability of 12 new microcontrollers (MCUs) in the high-performance RX631 Group. The new devices bring the outstanding 1.65 Dhrystone MIPS (DMips) performance and advanced connectivity features of the RX631 MCUs in smaller 64- and 48-pin packages with smaller flash memory footprints of 256KB, 384KB and 512KB to serve cost and space constrained applications.

Pin-to-pin and software compatible with others in the RX631 MCU Group, the new devices provide true single-chip solutions for demanding industrial applications such as building and factory automation, medical monitoring and therapy equipment, security and fire alarm systems, climate control, home appliances, communication gateways and point-of-sale devices. Moreover, thanks to the lower pin count and memory footprint, the new MCUs are also now suited to address consumer application like in gaming, PC peripherals, fitness and consumer medical application.

We are seeing increased demand for solutions that will enable people to interact with their electronics devices more efficiently and conveniently whether at home or at work, said Ritesh Tyagi, senior director, MCU Products, Renesas Electronics America. By combining the high performance 165 DMIPS at 100 MHz operation of RX with built-in anti temper feature and USB connectivity in a small, inexpensive package, we can enable RX631 MCUs for a whole new range of consumer and industrial applications.

The 32-bit RX central processing unit uses an enhanced Harvard architecture with separate instruction and operand busses going to both Flash and SRAM enabling simultaneous instruction fetch and memory writes which boosts performance and is ideal for bandwidth intensive applications such as digital signal processing. Instructions are fed into the CPU from 100MHz Flash and are processed by a 5-stage execution pipeline enabling single clock operations. The CPU also integrates a single precision 32-bit floating point unit, which performs complex non-linear math in fewer clock cycles, reduces code and data size, and simplifies code development. The multiply accumulate unit enables efficient digital signal processing. The RX register set consists of nine control registers, sixteen 32-bit general purpose registers, and a 48-bit accumulator register. There is a memory protection unit. The interrupt control unit enables ultra fast 5-cycle interrupt latency.

Advanced Features

The new MCUs in the RX631 Group are equipped with one channel of USB 2.0 full-speed (Host, device and OTG) and one CAN channel. The products are offered with a rich set of communication, timer and analog peripherals including up to 12 A/D channels, a 10bit DAC and a real-time clock (RTC), which has a separate Vbat pin and built-in anti-tamper detection. In a 64-pin LQFP package, the RX631 provides a remarkable number of timers with the six-channel advanced MTU2, the six-channel TPU, the four-channel CMT, the four-channel TMR, dual watchdog timers, WDT and IWDT. It also features numerous serial communication channels, USB, CAN, six SCI, two SPI, and one I2C. Four channels of DMA and a Data Transfer Controller make it easy to handle transfers with peripherals and make sure that the CPU is used efficiently.

Many functional enhancements serve to reduce system cost and power consumption, and increase system capabilities, including a pin for connection to an alternate voltage source (coin cell or super cap) to automatically power the RTC and a tamper-detection system within the RTC to time stamp an intrusion event from three independent sources. The RX631 devices also feature several integrated elements including an on-chip temperature sensor, on-chip 50MHz oscillator to boot up a system at high speed, on-chip voltage reference for the analog to digital converters, and on-chip data flash with up to 100K erase cycles and fine write/erase granularity at just 2-byte write and 32-byte erase to eliminate the need for an external EEPROM device.

Development Tools and Ecosystem Support

Since the rollout of the RX MCU family in 2009, Renesas Electronics has been steadily introducing new devices, features, tools and partnerships to expand the capabilities of the MCUs. Renesas Electronics supports the RX600 MCUs with a comprehensive hardware/software tool set from the company and third parties. Renesas Electronics offers the popular High-Performance Embedded Workshop (HEW) integrated development environment (IDE), which includes the RX-optimizing C/C++ compiler with integrated support for the low-cost E1 JTAG on-chip debugging tool, as well as the comprehensive E20 high-speed trace on-chip debugging tool.

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Renesas Electronics Packs RX Punch into a Smaller Package to Support Cost-Sensitive Industrial and Consumer Applications

Insert Coin: Galileo, the remote control camera from the men behind the Gorillapod

FaceTime conversations always commence with "left a bit, no, up a bit, no no, that's too far..." as we balance our iOS handsets to find a flattering angle. Gorillapod designers Josh Guyot and JoeBen Bevirt want to put an end to it with Galileo, a 360 degree motorized remote-control base for your iPhone or iPod Touch. If your buddy moves out of frame, just swipe in their direction and it'll pan around to follow. Designed as a video conferencing tool, it would also be useful as a baby monitor, remote camera or for clever photography projects. You'll also find a universal 1/4" tripod mount screw, rechargeable lithium polymer battery and it'll double as a dock when not in use. The project has currently reached $10,093 of its $100,000 goal, with the pre-order price of one of the units pegged at $85. If you'd care to see it in action, we'd suggest taking a trip downtown past the break.

[Thanks, Max]

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Insert Coin: Galileo, the remote control camera from the men behind the Gorillapod

Visitor Spending Approaches £100 Million

by Anna Hemy

The Isle of Man Governments Department of Economic Development is delighted with the results of the annual Isle of Man Passenger Survey, which has been published by Treasurys Economic Affairs Division. The survey reveals that the total expenditure by visitors to the Isle of Man is now estimated at around 98 million, an increase of 8.7% on the figure of 90.5 million in 2010. While both the Commonwealth Youth Games in September and the TT Mountain Course Centenary in May led to increased visitor numbers, it is encouraging to note that more generally visitor numbers were up in the first nine months of the year. The survey also found that an estimated total of 299,778 visitors travelled to the Isle of Man during 2011, an increase of 11,990 (4.2%) on the comparable figure for 2010. Air arrivals increased in the second, third and fourth quarters and overall showed a growth of 4.2%, whilst sea arrivals also increased in the first half of the year compared to 2010. Last years success was underpinned by a number of initiatives including special events, pro-active destination marketing, private sector accommodation investment and development of transport links. Leisure visitors increased from 102,954 to 104,692; however, the most satisfying results were those for visiting friends and relatives which increased from 109,320 in 2010 to 118,679 in 2011. Geoff Corkish MBE, MHK, Political Member for the Department of Economic Development with responsibility for Tourism, said: The Department of Economic Development is forging effective working relationships with the industry and I congratulate the sector on its performance in 2011. The newly launched Visitor Economy Strategy will set out the direction for 2012 and we look forward to building on visitor numbers in future years. Colin Kniveton, Chief Executive of the Department of Economic Development added: I am pleased with these figures which provide recognition of the hard work that has been undertaken in difficult circumstances during the last couple of years. We have built a firm base upon which to move forward in all areas of the visitor economy and I am confident that we will see further increases in visitor numbers in the future. Copies of the Passenger Survey 2011 can be downloaded from the website: http://www.gov.im/treasury/economic

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we look forward to building on visitor numbers in future years."

Geoff Corkish MBE, MHK, Political Member for the Department of Economic Development

If you'd like to send any information or news releases to us then please feel free to do so and we would be more than happy to consider sharing your news with the Isle of Man!

Send your Isle of Man news to:webmaster@manx.net

Manx Telecom Ltd 2012

Manx Telecom Ltd, Isle of Man Business Park, Cooil Road, Braddan, Isle of Man IM99 1HX Registered in the Isle of Man Reg no.5629V Vat Reg no GB 003-2919-12

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Visitor Spending Approaches £100 Million