Category Archives: Arts and Culture

Facebook to Acquire Oculus VR for $2 Billion

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Transaction expected to close in Q2 of this year.

by Scott Lowe

Facebook has announced that it will acquire Oculus VR, makers of the Oculus Rift for $2 billion. Announced today, the social networking giant will acquire the Oculus VR for $400 million in cash and 23.1 million in Facebook shares.

“While the applications for virtual reality technology beyond gaming are in their nascent stages, several industries are already experimenting with the technology, and Facebook plans to extend Oculus’ existing advantage in gaming to new verticals, including communications, media and entertainment, education and other areas.” a Facebook press release read. “Given these broad potential applications, virtual reality technology is a strong candidate to emerge as the next social and communications platform.”


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CinemaCon: Theatre Ad Sales Rise 6.5% To $678M In 2013 Following 2-Year Slump

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By DAVID LIEBERMAN

This is the highest sales total that the Cinema Advertising Council has reported since it began keeping tabs in 2002 — and no doubt comes as a relief for the industry following a 1.2% downturn in 2012 and a 2.1% drop the year before. “This growth is a result of more new brands moving into cinema, the unique power of the movie theatre as a venue for creative, engaging advertising, and a movement by agencies to a more video-neutral approach that places cinema alongside TV and online platforms,” CAC President Katy Loria says.

“We are optimistic about this revenue momentum, and the direction the marketplace is headed with a strong start to 2014 as we enter upfront season.”

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Wearables are white-hot at CES 2014. So they’re doomed, right?

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A look back at past hot trends at the consumer electronics mega-event reveals an awful lot of mega-fails.

by Roger Cheng

LAS VEGAS — This year’s Consumer Electronics Show will see dozens upon dozens of wearable technology products vie to become this year’s breakout device.

And most — if not all — will be forgotten in the coming months.

That’s because when all the booths are taken down, the convention lights are dimmed, and the last of the tech executives board their flights, we all finally escape the reality-distortion field that is Las Vegas and CES.

A look back at past confabs shows that the hot item at CES is a leading indicator of failure for the rest of that year. Remember how 3D televisions were supposed to be all the rage? Or when ultrabooks were a thing? Not only does garnering hype at CES not guarantee success, it’s become almost an omen of ill fortune.

Read more: http://www.cnet.com/8301-35299_1-57616550/wearables-are-white-hot-at-ces-2014-so-theyre-doomed-right/#ixzz2pWV0q9L8

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Apple and Samsung Could Be Dethroned by Asus’ Radical New Device

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By Sam Mattera

When it comes to the U.S. smartphone market, it’s mostly a two-horse race. Cumulatively, Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL ) and Samsung (NASDAQOTH: SSNLF ) sell two out of every three smartphones, with smaller manufacturers such as HTC and Motorola fighting for what’s left.

But that could change next year, when Asus brings its PadFone to the United States. The device, powered by Google’s (NASDAQ: GOOG ) Android, is particularly revolutionary and has the potential to disrupt the mobile market.

Asus’ PadFone combines a tablet with a smartphone
The term “phablet” has arisen to define phones such as Samsung’s Galaxy Note III — too small to be a tablet, yet too large to be a smartphone: a hybrid of form factors. But Asus’ PadFone might be the ultimate phablet: Buyers get both a tablet and smartphone, but none of the trade-offs that traditional phablets entail.

Normally, the PadFone Infinity is a standard, 5-inch smartphone running Google’s Android. It has a high-end processor and 13-megapixel camera. In other words, it’s largely indistinguishable from many other Android smartphones. But it has one huge advantage over its competitors — a proprietary dock.

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Paul Walker’s “Fast and Furious 4″ car for sale at $1.4 million

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By Armando

Paul Walker’s “Fast and Furious 4″ Nissan GT-R for sale at $1.4 million

A few years ago Steve McQueen’s GT40 fetched for $11 million on a Pebble Beach Auction block, becoming the most expensive American car ever sold. Following the unexpected death of Paul Walker, the tradition of collecting celebrity vehicles is back in business.

Check out the car here: http://suchen.mobile.de

The car in the ad is allegedly the same one used by Paul Walker’s character in Fast and the Furious franchise, a Nissan Skyline GT-R of the R34 which appeared in the fourth film. Apparently, the car was seized by the US government a few months ago, along with many other cars, due to auto safety and emission rules non-compliance.

So how did it end up being in Germany?

A few months ago, a German car magazine posted a review of the car, wherein the owner also reveals its in his possession and has on sale for 300,00 euros (around $400k). Within the last few days, another ad for the car has come up, only this time with a new price: 1 million euros (approximately $1,373,000).

It is kind of creepy when someone cashes in on a former celebrity ownership. But in this day and age, we all know it won’t be the last.

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Delivery drones are coming: Jeff Bezos promises half-hour shipping with Amazon Prime Air

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By David Pierce

Jeff Bezos is nothing if not a showman. Amazon’s CEO loves a good reveal, and took the opportunity afforded by a 60 Minutes segment to show off his company’s latest creation: drones that can deliver packages up to five pounds, to your house in less than half an hour. They’re technically octocopters, as part of a program called “Amazon Prime Air.” A drone sits at the end of a conveyer belt, waiting to pick up a package — Bezos says 86 percent of Amazon’s packages are under five pounds — and can carry them up to ten miles from the fulfillment center. As soon as Amazon can work out the regulations and figure out how to prevent your packages from being dropped on your head from above, Bezos promised, there will be a fleet of shipping drones taking the sky.

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How video games are transforming the film industry

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Posted by Steve Boxer

At one time it was the game industry that wanted to emulate films. But now the movie industry is adopting the technology of video games

Amid the debate about television stealing the film industry’s thunder, another entertainment form has crept up unnoticed, further threatening Hollywood’s creative hegemony: video games. With a new, much more powerful generation of games consoles poised to arrive – Microsoft’s Xbox One goes on sale on Friday, with Sony’s PlayStation 4 due a week later – the games companies reckon they finally have the ammunition to shake off the perception that their digital epics are inferior to movies.

I’m in a place that could not reinforce that impression more emphatically: the historic Ealing studios, where classics such as The Lavender Hill Mob and The Ladykillers were filmed. But I’m here to experience the process of making a video game called Ryse: Son of Rome, an epic tale charting the Roman conquest of Britain, which will be a launch title for the Xbox One. And the studio is nowadays home to The Imaginarium, an outfit co-founded by Andy Serkis, who – as Gollum in The Lord of the Rings – is perhaps the world’s leading exponent of performance-capture, in which every nuance of an actor’s performance (specifically movement, voice and facial expressions) is recorded and mapped on to a video game character.

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Sony PlayStation 4 review: Welcome to the next generation

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By Sean Hollister, Ross Miller, and David Pierce

Seven years is a technological eternity. Yet the PlayStation 3 has sold well for that long, ever since DJ Fatman Scoop and Ludacris hosted its blowout launch event in New York City in 2006. At launch, the PlayStation 3 was big, heavy, and expensive — it took nearly two revisions and almost a dozen SKUs of PS3 to get Sony to 2013. The console now starts under $200, the controller rumbles, Blu-ray is the dominant physical disc format, backwards compatibility is a moot point, and there’s a large back catalog of titles both physical and digital. PlayStation Move exists now.

But even as the current generation continues to adapt and evolve, Sony has decided it’s time to start anew. Time to do something fresh, to create the console that will sate gamers for seven more years. Sony’s new PlayStation 4 reflects the company’s guess about the future of video games, and displays the many lessons Sony’s learned over the life of the PS3. It’s built a different kind of console for a different sort of purpose as it looks to 2014 and 2021 to see what we’ll want to buy.

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Snapchat’s Teen Appeal Is Also Its Achilles Heel

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By Robert Hof

You can argue until you’re blue in the face whether or not Snapchat is worth the $3 billion Facebook FB +4.52% apparently offered to buy it. But there’s little argument over why Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was willing to pay that much for the disappearing-photo-sharing service: It’s attracting the teens that Facebook is losing.

At least, that’s the conventional wisdom. But here’s the problem: If there’s anything more ephemeral than Snapchat snaps, it’s teen attention spans. Today, Snapchat looks unbeatable, at least for what still seems like a rather narrow slice of social activity. But there’s no reason to think that teens will stick with most any app or service for long–all the less so when it seems that there’s a new hot social networking app every month or so these days.

So I’m betting Zuckerberg is a little smarter than that. What he really wants more than just a surge of new teen blood–as he also showed with his $1 billion purchase of Instagram–is to make sure that Facebook owns the most popular and compelling kinds of social networking as they develop. Snapchat clearly appeals to those who want to exchange bits of themselves in a more ephemeral way than they do on Facebook.

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Blockbuster closing all its U.S. stores

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The video-rental company, now owned by Dish Network, is closing its last 300 stores by early January.

By Nick Turner

Blockbuster, the video-rental company now owned by Dish Network, will close its remaining 300 U.S. stores, ending an era for a retail chain that was once a hallmark of shopping centers nationwide.

Blockbuster will shut the outlets by early January and discontinue its DVD-by-mail service by the middle of next month, Englewood, Colo.-based Dish said Wednesday in a statement. The company will keep the licensing rights to the Blockbuster brand and use it with Dish services. It also has a video-streaming product called Blockbuster On Demand.

While the chain had more than 20 stores in Jacksonville less than three years ago, it’s now down to two: one at Atlantic and Hodges boulevards and another on Old St. Augustine Road in Mandarin.

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