What’s better than one dry academic conference? If you said “two dry academic conferences,” do read on. iLeaps (also known as the Integrated Land Ecosystem-Atmosphere Processes Study) and GEWEX (the Global Energy and Water Cycle Experiment) will hold parallel conferences this week in Melbourne, hosting joint sessions and shared keynote talks, swapping research and ideas along the way. But while the acronyms may seem boring at face value, don’t get the wrong idea. Both iLeaps and GEWEX are doing important research that will help us understand climate change. It may not sound glamorous, but we’re glad somebody is doing it.
Manhattan's Fifth Avenue, renowned for its concentration of flagship storefronts and world famous luxury retailers like Tiffany's and Harry Winston, has a new most popular destination: The Apple Store. The 10,000-square-foot Mac Mecca at the corner of 59th Street and Fifth Avenue in Midtown is pulling in an estimated $350 million annually (the company does not release individual store numbers). Based on that figure, the store is pulling in $35,000 per square foot annually, equivalent to selling a brand new Mercedes-Benz C300 per square foot, Bloomberg points out. Those figures make Apple the highest grossing retailer on Fifth Avenue.
Driven by iPhone sales, the company's worldwide retail operation has defied the recession, with revenue inching up 2.5% to $3 billion in the first half of the year, even as U.S. retail sales have slipped 9.2 percent in the same period. As for Fifth Avenue, Apple's neighbors along the world-renowned shopping corridor have seen 8-10% declines in sales. Tiffany & Co. peaks at around $18,000 in revenue per square foot annually, and jeweler Harry Winston brings in just $12,000. Neither of those companies has fared very well through the recession: Tiffany's sales dipped 22% in the first quarter, and Harry Winston was even less dazzling, booking a 30% decline in revenue. Other non-luxury retailers on Fifth Ave., like Abercrombie & Fitch and Saks Fifth Avenue, saw 23% and 22% declines respectively.
Apple, meanwhile, still packs its Apple Store daily (and nightly), with lines pouring out of its iconic glass cube entrance and into the street when new products hit shelves (Apples newest version of its OSX operating system, Snow Leopard, arrives in stores Friday). Every product in the store is on display, encouraging shoppers to pick up and try the devices, giving them a feel for Apple's sleek design. The stores regularly overstaff their outlets so customers can get swift service; the Fifth Avenue store alone keeps 500 staffers on its payrolls. The iPhone has also played a key role in keeping stores full, as consumers have shown a willingness to cut back on just about every other discretionary category before their mobile tech.
That Apple has become Fifth Avenue's newest destination retail outlet comes on the heels of Microsoft's announcement that it is jumping into the retail game as well, with plans to launch stores in Scottsdale, Ariz., and Mission Viejo, Calif, by this fall. More stores will follow, some right next to Apple outlets, the company has said. Here's hoping the new Zune HD is everything the company is promising, as it appears unseating Apple in brick-and-mortar sales is going to be no small feat.
The theory, architecture, and applications of signal processing will be the primary focus of the 17th European Signal Processing Conference. While we don’t understand exactly what all that entails, we do know some of the brightest minds in European applied mathematics will be convening for four day in the heart of Glasgow, considering new and better applications for and understandings of the sights, sounds, and signals in our everyday lives, and that sounds pretty good to us.
The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions is very quietly holding its 75th international conference in Milan, tackling pressing issues in the field as well as celebrating the library’s role as the base for all human knowledge and the keeper of cultures old and new. Themed “Libraries create futures: building on cultural heritage,” the convention runs through the 27.
For computer viruses everywhere, today is something akin to the day Michael Phelps won his eighth gold medal. Two years ago today, the Storm botnet (sometimes called the Storm worm botnet) had a career day, sending a record 57 million emails in a 24-hour period. But malware beware; researchers at Sandia National Laboratories have developed a supercomputer that can run one million operating systems via 4,480 Intel microprocessors, creating a sample-size Internet inside of which they can safely monitor the behavior of botnets, making it easier to develop an antidote when one begins infecting the Web.
Remember that Beastie Boys Tibetan Freedom Concert you went to at Randall's Island in June, 1997? Neither do we, but there are plenty of people out there who do, and they have the stories, photos, and possibly a T-shirt to prove it. Web startup SuperGlued, which just launched in beta, is trying to bring those people together into a collective space where they can share photos, videos, stories, and bragging rights about the concerts they've been to. You weren't there in 2005 when Nine Inch Nails played Stubbs Barbecue in Austin? Sucker.
SuperGlued could be written off as another lame attempt at social networking, but it's different from the likes of Facebook or MySpace in that members actually have a shared experience off of which to build. From that experience, users can exchange points of view on a certain show, build and compare concert timelines, and swap tales of crowd surfing bravado or backstage shenanigans.
It might sound like little more than a trip down memory lane for overzealous groupies and roadies looking for their next gigs. But for all the fond "remember whens," the site has some social features that really do allow bands and fans to develop a sense of community, and not in the "thanks for adding me" on MySpace sort of way. YouTube and Flickr integration make it easy for the site to aggregate photos from a show that would usually be scattered all over the Web, and a link to Facebook lets users export media published on SuperGlue to their Wall as well.
But it's the upcoming shows, not the past ones, that hold the most potential for SuperGlued. There are 45,000 shows already listed on the site and 2,000 new ones are added weekly, so whether they are going to see Paul McCartney in a packed stadium or their favorite indie folk trio at the local juke joint, users can connect with each other over shows they will commonly be attending, creating social communities among fans within real world geographic communities. An upcoming iPhone app will further foster real time, real world community, as fans will be able to interact via text and pictures from their handhelds while a concert is unfolding.
Noticeably, the site lacks a built in music player where curious fans can get a glimpse into a bands musical stylings, but many band pages are littered with YouTube videos of live performances. What the site does have is a model that isn't 100% ad supported, which could spell longevity for SuperGlued even if it doesn't gain as much traction with fans as it might like. Affiliate sales of mp3s and concert tickets could score it a chunk of revenue, as will the soon-to-be-rocking SuperGlued Marketplace that will help users buy and sell merchandise unique to specific shows. So even if you don't remember that Beastie Boys show in '97, you can still score a sweaty T-shirt that says you were there.
Everyone’s seen a World War II flick wherein, having touched upon the lowest depths of human misery and the darkest corners in mankind’s soul, you’re so depressed you can hardly enjoy that the good guys won. This is not that movie. Leave it to director Quentin Tarantino to upend the moral compass, as he asks the audience to cheer the violent exploits of a group of Jewish-American soldiers as they hunt and exterminate Nazis in occupied France. Shot on a rumored $70 million budget, the film packs some big name talent—Brad Pitt’s Lt. Aldo Raine leads the basterds, Mike Myers plays a British general, Sam Jackson narrates—but we’re more interested in seeing The Office’s B.J. Novak in a far more serious role as Inglourious Basterd “The Little Man.”
This morning, San Francisco mayor (and 2010 gubernatorial candidate) Gavin Newsom announced the launch of DataSF.org, a Web site that will serve as a hub for the mountains of data streaming out of San Francisco's government agencies. "The new Web site will provide a clearinghouse of structured, raw and machine-readable government data to the public in an easily downloadable format," Newsom wrote in a post on TechCrunch. "Machine-readable" is the operative word; that means program-mashable datasets, and that means apps.
While it's good to see San Francisco, with its Silicon Valley ties and hundreds of tech companies, innovating its way toward better governance, the city is not the first to do so. At least six other cities and agencies around the country are embracing technology, especially mobile technology, to move toward more transparent, more responsive administration. Along with San Francisco, below are five more cities that are changing the way citizens and cities interact, one mobile app at a time:
1. In June, mayor Michael Bloomberg initiated the Big Apps contest in New York City, a competition heaping cash rewards on developers that create apps utilizing the data coming out of NYC's various offices and agencies. Working through the ".nyc" domain--a city data hub much like DataSF.org--Bloomberg has encouraged developers to create apps that do everything from providing subway maintenance updates to archiving the detailed report cards NYC's health department keeps for all city restaurants.
2. Portland's TriMet opened its data to app developers way back in 2005. Since that day, some 30-plus apps have been developed. Some do simple tasks like adapt bus schedules read easier on the iPhone. But others are more complex, tracking your bus as you wait, and texting you the time you will actually arrive at your destination. One app even sets off your phone's alarm a few minutes before you reach your stop in case you want to catch a quick nap while bussing across town.
3. Boston's Citizen Connect takes advantage of all the tech smartphones have to offer. Replacing the city's oft-ignored complaint hotline, the app allows users to use smartphone cameras to snap photos of offending incidents--fallen tree limbs, unfilled potholes, garbage strewn alleys--and then use the phone's GPS function to geo-tag the photo so city authorities can find and fix the problem. Complaints can quickly be forwarded to city workers on the move, speeding response times and making city agencies more efficient. When no one is placed on hold, everybody wins.
4. Stuck in Texas Longhorns game day traffic on southbound I-35? There's an app for that. The City of Austin and the Texas Department of Transportation feed incident and traffic camera data to the aptly named Austin Traffic app, keeping iPhone users in the loop (or off of Loop 1) when they're on the road. It's a natural solution for a high-tech city that's low on highway lanes.
5. Like Portland's TriMet, Chicago Transit Authority has taken advantage of mobile app technology to make commutes a bit less stressful. Unlike Portland, Chicago's apps can be the difference between walking right to your bus, or spending long, long minutes exposed to Chicago's merciless winter temperatures. The CTA's Bus Tracker Web site has long let windy citizens use GPS to track buses' precise locations (given Chicago's unpredictable weather, buses are rarely right on schedule). Since opening the platform to third-party developers, two apps have been developed that beam buses' precise locations right to freezing Chicagoans' iPhones, allowing them to huddle indoors until the very last minute.
So what's next for civic apps? As more cities centralize and release their data in machine-readable formats, the sky is potentially the limit as hungry developers devour it, mash it up, and make it useful. One promising sign: President Obama's Chief Information Officer, Vivek Kundra, has followed through with his promise to get data.gov up and running, creating a repository of federal government data that developers can access and build apps around. The more cities and towns that follow this model, the more informed and engaged citizens will be, and the more hyperlocal apps can become. The cities above have proven that if the data is there, the apps will follow; what those apps might look like is anyone's guess.
Did we miss a good civic app? Is there an app you would like to see? Add it to the comments below.
Television advertising may be some of the most expensive marketing a brand can engage in, but consumer goods brands could do just as well pouring their ad dollars into the Web. A comScore study has found that online advertising is at least as effective as television advertising when it comes to selling consumer package goods. In fact, it's slightly better.
ComScore compared the online behavior of its panelists with their purchases at the checkout lines of supermarkets. Compared with a control set that wasn't exposed to the online campaigns, the 200,000-consumer study found that online ads for consumer package goods lifted retail sales by 9% on average, while television campaigns only boosted retail by 8%.
In a press release, comScore's executive chairman chalked online marketing's success at elevating consumer goods to its increased targeting ability, particularly in hitting the right demographic segment. That seems reasonable enough; the study showed that 80% of the online campaigns catalyzed significant statistical boosts in their brands' sales figures, so the right ads must have been finding the right consumers most of the time.
But the significant questions is this: Why are media buyers paying so much for television ad space? More importantly, why are the gatekeepers of online media selling a superior advertising tool for peanuts? Television advertising still has the ability to reach out and touch vast audiences in a short period of time, but with the advent of DVR and the rise of Internet TV, the tube isn't the advertising behemoth it used to be. The Web, on the other hand, is gaining an increased share of consumers' time every day.
Meanwhile, television upfronts--negotiations in which networks try to sell the majority of their ad space for the year--were dismal for 2009; the five largest networks reported a 22% decline in year-over-year revenue. Part of that can be attributed to the economic downturn, but nothing makes businesses take note of where they are wasting money quite like a stalling economy. These numbers are clearly heartening for those that have been saying all along that Web advertising, with its niche targeting, the piles of data it generates, and its potential for interactivity, is undervalued. For television, the research certainly doesn't spell the beginning of the end, but it does dish a harsh dose of reality: At least in some segments, television is losing ground, and the chances of regaining it are slim.
Redbox scored at least a partial victory in its battle with
a triumvirate of Hollywood studios yesterday as a federal court ruled the
company can proceed with an antitrust lawsuit filed last October
against GE's Universal Studios. Though the Delaware judge threw out Redbox's additional claims of
copyright misuse and tortious interference, he ruled Redbox can
proceed with litigation claiming Universal is engaged in anti-competitive
practices by denying the movie rental company--and by extension consumers--with
newly released DVDs.
Universal, along with 20th Century Fox and Warner
Bros., is refusing to offer new releases via Redbox's $1-per-film rental
kiosks, claiming the $1 rentals undervalue the product and hurt DVD sales (the
lawsuits are separate; Redbox filed against Fox early last week, and no suit
has yet been filed against Warner Bros, who sided with Universal and Fox just
last Friday). All three companies have demanded varying grace periods, ranging from 28 to 45 days, for new releases to sell on store shelves before shipping the films to Redbox.
The studios' claims that Redbox is undermining DVD sales are not completely unfounded. While studio revenue from DVD sales is expected to decline
by $850 million this year, Redbox recently announced it will plant
another 2,000 kiosks in Kroger supermarkets this year, adding to the nearly
18,000 already in service. Redbox allows customers to pre-select a DVD they
would like to rent online, then pick it up for only a buck at the nearest
kiosk. That low-cost convenience has driven Redbox's success, but several Hollywood studios
feel that its come at their expense.
Others see Redbox's explosive growth and ease of use as a
way to get titles out in front of more fans faster. Lions Gate
Entertainment recently closed a five-year agreement with Redbox to offer its
entire library through its kiosks. Sony signed on with Redbox months ago.
This morning, San Francisco mayor (and 2010 gubernatorial candidate) 
3. Boston's 
