New reports indicate that both Apple and Google are trying hard to get exclusive games into their mobile stores. According to The Wall Street Journal, Apple and Google are rewarding outlets like Electronic Acts, Gameloft, and ZeptoLabs prominent placement atop their respective app stores for loyalty and exclusive content. The companies haven’t been offered direct financial incentives, but they essentially have been by extension; prominent placement in the app store is the equivalent of many more purchases and, by extension, financial success. The joint push by Apple and Google comes on the heels of increasing awareness of each others’ app store successes by trying to get exclusives and continuously being aware of what the other offers. In the end, both are pushing hard to break through as the clear leader in the mobile gaming space, and neither are winning just yet.
Tag: google
MLB.TV Comes To Chromecast
Chromecast continues to bolster its offerings; after recently adding stalwarts NBA to its ever-growing list of streamed options, it announced that, just in time for this baseball season, MLB.TV will be available on the streaming platform. Once users download the required updates they’ll be able to download MLB.TV on the device and stream from there. That said, users will have to buy a subscription to MLB, which doesn’t come cheap: $24.99 per month or $129.99 for the entire season (which includes At Bat radio subscription as well). As the streaming stick continues to fill out as expected, it is becoming a cheaper, more accessible version of the Roku – and ultimately, cable TV.
Starwood Releases Google Glass App
Google Glass already has a host of third-party apps, but Starwood is one of the first major brands to develop on the platform. Starwood’s app will let users search and book hotel rooms, view photos of the resorts and even get turn-by-turn directions to a location. Glass just closed their one-day public sale Tuesday, but with an estimated 10,000 Glass in use prior, Starwood can’t be reaching that large of an audience. They are likely making an investment in the future of Glass and getting some nice PR in the process.
Google Glass Patents Contact Lens Camera
Could Glass come to contacts? It’s looking that way, as a new patent from Google suggests they’re working on visual augmentation without glasses at all, suggesting that the Glass computer system could in fact be shrunk small enough to fit on the film of a contact lens. The device will allow users to capture video from the lens itself without obstructing their field of view. It could bring some muscle to the promise of medical help for patients who are unable to use Google Glass – for instance, it could recognize the faces of people that partially blind people can’t see. As well, Google has said it wants to help diabetes patients monitor their glucose levels by checking the moisture within their eyes. As technology tries to paint itself in a positive light, Google’s lens could be a big step towards proving that technology can help drastically improve the lives of those with serious medical ailments.
Advertisers Can Purchase Nielsen Ratings On YouTube
Google – and by extension YouTube – have been trying to get accurate Nielsen ratings for months, and are finally confident enough in the system to begin selling ratings next month. The Online Campaign Ratings product features pre-roll ads on the video platform, and will include guarantees to advertisers starting n month from today. By the end of the year, Google wants to have OCR directly integrated into the Doubleclick platform, so advertisers will be dealing directly with Nielsen ratings in their plans. If the deal is as set in stone as Google is portraying, it would mean deliverable metrics for advertisers looking to expand their online presence and digital campaigns in a fashion that is designed to guarantee results. As OCR and this type of technology develops, the more granular marketers can get about their strategies.
Rdio Comes to Chromecast
Rdio announced support for Google’s Chromecast media accessory, meaning that Rdio users can cast their music from their iPhone, iPad, Android phone, and Chrome, wirelessly. And with Rdio’s existing remote feature, users will also be able to control playback on the TV from wherever they are, as long as they’re logged into their Rdio account. As with other Chromecast-ready technologies, the icon for casting now appears in the Rdio app, enabling easy casting. It means that there is now well-defined music streaming for cord-cutters and other early adopters of the technology, taking Chromecast’s transition from a TV replacement to a living-room dominating media center to the next phase.
The Cloud Services Price War May Have Just Started
Google, looking to lure startups away from the ever-popular Amazon Web Services cloud, announced a cut in its cloud storage and access rates, effectively kicking off a price-undercutting war with Amazon that seems likely to leave other, third party cloud providers in its wake. On one level, competing with Google and Amazon on a price to features and scale ration seems impossible for companies without their financial clout. To startups, the new progressive pricing models and features mean that Rackspace and Amazon are now only on par with – or indeed less attractive than – Google’s service. As more and more business is done on the cloud, watching the price for access and services is integral to keeping pace with how digital business develops; don’t expect this to be the last time this story crops up in the media this year.
YouTube To Offer Advertisers Guarantees
In YouTube’s latest attempt to pull advertisers away from the TV, the Google-owned company will offer marketers some time guarantees; they’ve pledged to air ads across its channels until a certain number of target viewers see the ads. The company will also reserve ad space for companies that purchase time in advance for the best performing 5% of shows on its channels. One could view the move as a reaction to Yahoo’s move into the online-streaming community, as well as a reaction to CEO Marissa Mayer’s statement that Yahoo is very advertiser friendly. The new ad scheme will go into effect in the coming months, and is a big concession to advertisers for a medium that, at least in the past, was slightly averse to advertisers coming into its fold.
Rumr Brings Anonymous Chat To Mobile Phones
Anonymity and privacy are buzzwords of a new generation of chatters and messengers. Snapchat has risen to popularity in large part because the messages are never stored – it keeps the messages away from the prying eyes of anyone going through the phone. In the messaging world, Whisper and Secret have already established themselves as anonymous public forums, but Rumr is taking the concept one step further: anonymous group messaging. Funded in part by Google Ventures, users connect their phone numbers and emails to the system, and then pick a username. In order to start a chat, users agree to enter the chat with a listed number they know – the anonymous part is that users choose a color to represent themselves, not a username. Right now, the product is in testing, but it’s clear that personal privacy – and protecting one’s identity from others – is a key trend in the digital marketplace at the moment. It comes down to trust: as consumers become wary about how much data is being collected about them, they want to make sure their identities are only being revealed to the sources they want them to be. As the average consumer becomes increasingly digitally savvy, marketers will need to keep pace.
Google and Luxottica Partner On Glass
Even though Google Glass is still only available to a select few early adopters, Google is preparing to take a big step towards making the eyewear consumer-friendly with a new strategic partner: Luxottica. One of the biggest early criticisms of Glass has been its lack of form factor – that is to say, people thought the glasses themselves were ugly and not worth wearing. So Google attempted to solve the problem itself, with Titanium, an in-house, better designed pair of glasses that also featured Glass technology. But Google isn’t stopping there – according to Luxottica, Google will be working with two of its most popular brands, Ray Ban and Oakley, to design consumer-facing versions of Google Glass. If Google makes the eyewear fashionable and attractive to wear, it seems likely that more than 10% of smartphone owners would be interested in purchasing the technology.
