All posts in Industry News

Apple announces 3rd Quarter revenue and earnings

by Chris M on July 19, 2011 in Industry News, Internet with No comments

Apple today announced financial results for its fiscal 2011 third quarter ended June 25, 2011. The Company posted record quarterly revenue of $28.57 billion and record quarterly net profit of $7.31 billion, or $7.79 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $15.70 billion and net quarterly profit of $3.25 billion, or $3.51 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 41.7 percent compared to 39.1 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 62 percent of the quarter’s revenue.

The Company sold 20.34 million iPhones in the quarter, representing 142 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 9.25 million iPads during the quarter, a 183 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. The Company sold 3.95 million Macs during the quarter, a 14 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 7.54 million iPods, a 20 percent unit decline from the year-ago quarter.

“We’re thrilled to deliver our best quarter ever, with revenue up 82 percent and profits up 125 percent,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “Right now, we’re very focused and excited about bringing iOS 5 and iCloud to our users this fall.”

“We are extremely pleased with our performance which drove quarterly cash flow from operations of $11.1 billion, an increase of 131 percent year-over-year,” said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO. “Looking ahead to the fourth fiscal quarter of 2011, we expect revenue of about $25 billion and we expect diluted earnings per share of about $5.50.”

Apple will provide live streaming of its Q3 2011 financial results conference call beginning at 2:00 p.m. PDT / 11:00 p.m. SAST on July 19, 2011 at www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/earningsq311. This webcast will also be available for replay for approximately two weeks thereafter.

Kinect and iPad go Augmented Reality

by Chris M on July 18, 2011 in Industry News with No comments

It’s incredible to watch where technology is going, Augmented Reality was a buzz word for a while, one that people who wanted to appear cool would sling around, without really understanding what it’s all about. As the months have gone by, it’s moved away from being such a buzz word and has become more of a reality, but still needs a lot of refinement.

I came across this video over the weekend and have only had a chance to blog it now, so it’s probably flown around and a lot of you would have seen it, but for those you haven’t, here’s how you go about creating 3D augmented reality with an Xbox Kinect.

Pretty slick:

What do you think, something that could go mainstream?

BUGBOX Spawns ANT ARMY: The Animatics Division

by Chris M on July 6, 2011 in Industry News with No comments

Today sees the launch of Ant Army – formerly Nite Cap Animatics – the new storyboarding and pre-production division of Bugbox Animation. A dedicated team of artists and animators has been deployed to this growing side of the business. Ant Army is now better resourced to address the hefty storyboarding and pre-production needs of the TV advertising industry. The studio is focussed on producing storyboards, animatics and photomatics to bring ideas to life, inspire the client and ensure that the proposed TV commercial researches well.

“For ad agencies trying to pitch an idea to client, outsourcing their animatic needs to us will ensure they do justice to their creative concept, and save significant cost later on in the production process,” says Tim Argall, director at Ant Army.

At its simplest, an animatic is a series of still images developed from the initial storyboard, edited together and displayed in sequence, often with a preliminary voice and soundtrack. The creation of animatics allows the agency to experiment with changes in the storyline relatively early on in the process and find ways to evoke a stronger audience reaction. These research tools assist the creative team to iron out any issues with the story, camera positioning, shot-list and timing that may exist ahead of time, reducing shoot time and wasted shots. Often multiple storyboards and soundtracks are edited and reviewed until the director, the client and the research audience are all convinced with the execution.

Introducing Google Engage for South African Web Professionals

by Chris M on July 5, 2011 in Industry News with 3 Comments

Google is excited to announce the launch of Google Engage, a new partner programme to support South African web professionals who provide services to SMBs.

Advertising agencies, webmasters, search engine marketers or anyone else who provides web services to South African small and medium businesses can now apply to join the programme and receive support from Google. Engage members will receive free access to educational resources, online training material and promotional vouchers to help customers get started with online advertising.

“At Google, we’re committed to the success of South Africa’s digital economy and we believe that assisting small businesses in getting online and thriving is fundamental to that success,” says Luke Mckend, Country Manager of Google South Africa. “There are many small companies in South Africa that would benefit from greater visibility on the Internet, and we recognise that many of them call on freelancers and agencies to create and manage their online presence. Engage is Google’s way of reaching out to these agencies locally and providing them with the training and support they need to attract more small business clients and become more valuable to their existing ones.”

Google Engage South Africa will officially launch on 19 July 2011 in Johannesburg, where 500 people from all over South Africa will participate in a one-day seminar. Attendees will range from web designers and SEO (search engine optimisation) experts, to small business owners and consultants aiming to invest in offering digital marketing services to their clients.

To join Google Engage, visit www.google.co.za/adwords/engage.

Vodacom’s Twitter apology for outage was win

by Chris M on June 30, 2011 in Industry News, Mobile with No comments

Today was a bit chaotic with the Vodacom networks being completely dead. Thousands of tweets flew out as one by one people noticed that their mobile phones had no service – The general thought that was because today was the final day for ensuring that your simcard is RICA’d, people assumed it was because of that, Vodacom denies this though. I saw some funny tweets about Vodacom expecting us to all RICA, but they didn’t ;)

Anyway, post of this post was to outline an awesome tweet that Vodacom sent out apologizing for the outage, take a look:

Continue reading →

MySpace acquired

by Chris M on June 29, 2011 in Business, Industry News with No comments

Specific Media, a digital media company, today announced it has acquired Myspace from News Corporation. As part of the agreement, News Corporation will take a minority equity stake in Specific Media. Additional terms of the agreement are confidential and will not be disclosed.

“Myspace is a recognized leader that has pioneered the social media space. The company has transformed the ways in which audiences discover, consume and engage with content online,” said Tim Vanderhook, Specific Media CEO. “There are many synergies between our companies as we are both focused on enhancing digital media experiences by fueling connections with relevance and interest. We look forward to combining our platforms to drive the next generation of digital innovation.”

Specific Media is an innovative global interactive media company that enables advertisers to connect with consumers in meaningful, impactful and relevant ways. Founded in 1999 by brothers Tim, Chris and Russell Vanderhook, Specific Media is currently headquartered in Irvine, CA and operates offices around the world.

Mike Jones sent out the following email to all MySpace staff:

From: Mike Jones
Sent: Wednesday, June 29, 2011 11:26 AM
To: Myspace All
Subject: IMPORTANT COMPANY NEWS
Importance: High

Myspacers,

Today, we are announcing that Myspace will be acquired by Specific Media, one of the world’s leading online media and advertising platforms. Over the next few days you will be hearing from the team at Specific, including their CEO, Tim Vanderhook, regarding their exciting plans for Myspace and how it fits in with the overall vision of their company.

In conjunction with the deal, we are conducting a series of restructuring initiatives, including a significant reduction in our workforce. I will assist Specific with the transition over the next two months before departing my role as Myspace CEO.

I wanted to take a minute to thank you all for the incredible experience it has been to lead this company and to work closely with all of you over the past several years. While I regret we won’t be working together at Myspace any longer, I am very proud of the work we have done here and believe we have performed with excellence – even under extremely difficult circumstances.

My time here at Myspace represents the most engaging and challenging time of my professional career. I have found our team to be comprised of the best people I have come across in our industry.

You can read the press release below. Once again, thank you for all of your hard work and dedication.

Thanks,

-M

More here.

Facebook hired Playstation 3 Hacker – Geohot

by Chris M on June 29, 2011 in Guru's, Industry News with No comments

Remember George Hotz (Aka Geohot), yeh, the dude who hacked Sony’s Playstation 3! Well, finally Sony have taken the hint and are now trying to recruit a senior security analyst.

In other INTERESTING news, Facebook has actually hired George Hotz. Interestingly enough, this news was broken in the last 24 hours, yet Facebook state that George has been working for them since May already as a software engineer. So, it sounds like Facebook snapped him up immediately once Sony settled with him.

Remember this:

As I love the hacking scene, I have to say, kudo’s to George, although what he did was wrong (arguable), he ended up working at an amazing place (his words), and you can’t help but think, “If you can’t beat them, offer then a job!” That was said by Dylan Raynes and it’s so darn true.

I wonder what next, Google to hire Lulzsec members? ;)

Nationalization will destroy South Africa

by Chris M on June 22, 2011 in Industry News with 10 Comments

I studied some economics and politics at the University of Cape Town when I was there and I passed all my courses, but when it comes to relating these topics to real life happenings, I’m not the best person for sharing advice or knowledge.

What I do know is that things in South Africa are not fantastic, and there’s nothing more that I hate than a negative blog post and that’s not my aim of this post, I like to think of it more as awareness than anything else, and I think that awareness is hugely important.

People tend to assume things or just go with what the media says, rather than digging deeper. I’m not going to dig deeper, but instead I wanted to share a video I came across online, which shares some really interesting points with all of us and it’s highly relevant to all of us.

Take a watch:

Find the Best Competitions Online at WinStuff.co.za

by Reviewer on June 13, 2011 in Industry News, Mobile with 4 Comments

When it comes to competitions, we all love to stand a chance of winning. Leading South African competitions website WinStuff.co.za is making it easy to win this month in their Apple iPhone 4 competition, with many other great prizes up for grabs in a wide variety of competitions.

As the quickest way to enter competitions in South Africa, this site makes entering competitions fun and easy – all you need to do to start entering and winning is to head to WinStuff.co.za, check out the selection of competitions and hit ‘Enter’. Categories include gadgets, getaways, home products, cash, vouchers, cars and even fashion items to name a few.

How Does it Work?

If you’re new to the world of online competitions, you may be wondering how the site works. WinStuff scours the South African web to find all the current competitions and brings them all together in one place and to enter, you simply need to click the ‘Enter’ button to go directly to the site running the competition. Some competitions require registration while others you can enter right away. WinStuff also offers premium listings for companies and brands who wish to create more exposure for their current competitions so if you want to get your competition noticed, WinStuff is the place to go.

How to enter the Apple iPhone 4 competition

If you own a website or blog you can stand a chance of winning an Apple iPhone 4 just by linking back to WinStuff.co.za. For more details on how you can enter, click here to go the iPhone 4 competition on WinStuff and get your entries in.

Disclaimer: This post is sponsored by WinStuff.co.za, but does not influence the manner in which this article is written nor does it influence the opinion of the writer.

WWDC is tomorrow!

by Chris M on June 5, 2011 in Industry News, Internet with No comments

I’m super amped to hear what Apple announce tomorrow at the World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC)! From what I can tell, there are a few topics that we’re all waiting for: iOS5, Mac OS Lion and iCloud. Maybe we’ll even hear more about the Apple iPhone 5!

iOS5 is said to have deep Twitter integration, notifications overhaul, widgets, voice integration and an introduction to iOS OTA.

iCould is new and exciting, I wrote about that here if you’re interested.

OSX Lion is the new Mac operating system that we’ve all been waiting for. I’ve been using a Mac for about 6 months now I think and I’ve been ever grateful to those who convinced me to move away from Windows, my journey has been a pleasure and I can only imagine what Lion will hold for us!

The iPhone 5 has been rumored all over the Internet for the last few months and we might actually, finally, get a look at it! Some reports mentioned that it would be named iPhone 4S and not actually the iPhone 5, but we’ll know soon enough.

It’s going to be an awesome day tomorrow – geek heaven!

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