Gaming is BIG Business and gets BIGGER

Entertainment Software Association has released a new report about video game usage in the U.S.

The report discusses a variety of items including purchase intent, demographic data, online gaming activity, and which games are most popular.

Some of the highlights from the report include:

• The average game player is 35 years old
• 40% of game players are women, 60% are men
• 26% of gamers are over 50
• Halo 3 is the most popular video game over the past year; World of Warcraft is the most popular computer game
• 47% of online gaming is in one of these categories: Puzzle/Board/Game Show/Trivia/Card
• 41% of Americans have purchased or plan to purchase one or more games in 2008.

(via ESA)

3D Printing a website away with Shapeways

Shapeways

• A spinoff of Dutch electronics giant Philips Electronics, has figured out a way for artists and ordinary consumers to print 3-D models of their creations for a mere $50 to $150.
• The tool allows budding artists, product designers and amateurs to use their own familiar tools to create 3-D models of their designs.
  
• Then they can order 3-D physical models of the designs.
  
• The company will deliver the molded plastic models in 10 days or less.
• It accepts formats such as STL, Collada and X3D.
  
• The designs can be “white, strong and flexible,” “cream robust,” “white detail” and “transparent detail.”

Questions :

• How do they work/judge the pricing ?
• How do I master using software which is associated with STL, Collada, X3D (Where do i get the software for this)?

I love this idea and think its very very cool but I still have to verify the designing aspect cause that could be a bottleneck to otherwise this extremely VIRAL concept (Can anyone send me an invite :D)

Check out the awesome video here

Mobile content sales in Japan cross $100Bn and counting

Martyn Williams has an interesting look at the Japanese mobile content market.

His notes for the calendar year 2007:

• More than $100 billion was spent on mobile content (the total was actually $107.5 billion)

• Sales includes items such as ring tones, Web site subscriptions and e-commerce purchases.

• E-commerce made up about 65% of the total amount spent (transactions include: movie and event ticket sales, travel reservations, air and rail ticket sales, stock trading and online auctions).

• The biggest percentage gain came from "high-fidelity music" which increased 42% thanks to more mobile devices handling better quality sound.
  

• Mobile gaming jumped 13% as well.

• E-book market expanded 220 %

(via Yahoo! News)
(Image Credits here and here)

Mixturtle: Deezer or Better ?

MixTurtle

• A new music search engine that will source for music from other networks so that you can stream them for free
• All you have to do is type in the artist you want and a long list of music you can stream will appear.
• To play back music, you click the artist/track label. Click again to pause. A slim submenu emerges directly below the chosen song, which displays the buffer bar, the number of sources discovered to hold said track, and an option to browse other sources.
• You can even create your own playlists, save them and listen to them at a later date.

Gone are the days when you had to tediously look for music online or stream music from MySpace–the Mixturtle makes it so easy!

Google Gets Richer: $1.10 for Each New Dollar Spent on Search, 77% of All Search Spending

• Google accounted for 77.4% of US search engine ad spend in the second quarter (increase of 2 percentage points over 2Q07)

• Yahoo lost 2% points of search engine share in the same period (accounting for 17.8% of total spend)
• Microsoft Live Search’s share remained stable at 4.8% of search engine spending

Efficient Frontier found :

For every new dollar spent on search ads in Q2 2008 (compared with Q2 2007)

• Google received $1.10
• Yahoo lost $0.09
  
• Microsoft Live Search lost $0.01

Other highlights:

• Cost-per-click (CPC) rates increased 13.8% for Google in Q2 compared with the year-earlier period, whereas average CPCs on Microsoft Live Search increased at the slower rate of 5.6% and Yahoo CPCs declined 7.3%.

• Return on investment (ROI) improved on all three search engines, with ROI leader Microsoft Live Search improving 25% from 2Q07; ROI on Yahoo Search increased 13%, and Google’s ROI increased 3%.

• Advertisers * Automotive increased search advertising spending 24% in Q2 versus 2Q07 * Retailers increased search spending a cautious 1% * Financial services advertisers, hit hard by the mortgage crisis, decreased search engine spending 7% * Travel advertisers decreased spend 17% as consumers pulled back on leisure spending.

• Google’s growth is positive, with the search giant capturing 75% or more of search engine spending in Q2 in the global markets(with the exception of Japan and China).

(via Efficient Frontier)

BCG on China’s Digital Generation

Boston Consulting Group (BCG) released a report on China’s digital generation, which has some finding on China’s Internet and users.

According to the report

• Online chatting is a very important Internet service in China
o 89% of Chinese Internet users using IM, versus 63% usage of email, while in US, 91% of them use email, only 39% use online chatting.
o BCG thinks that it is because Chinese users regard IM as a more advanced service, if they can communicate with contacts in IM, why bother to use email.

• E-commerce is still in its early stage in China.
o Only 28% of Chinese go shopping online, compared with 71% in the US.
o The lack of trust on Internet merchants is the biggest problem for e-commerce business in China. Concerns on product quality guarantee, the reliability of sellers and concerns on their personal financial information.

• The report found that Internet users in China are more social, because higher percentage of them are using BBS/forum and blogs than in US.

• Online gaming is very popular in China, with 85% of Chinese Internet users playing online games and 43% of China’s game players playing games on mobile phones.

Covalent Solar offers another window into concentrating solar technology

Covalent Solar, a startup being spun out by a team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has yet another idea for concentrating solar photovoltaics: Layered glass with organic dyes that let some wavelengths of light through, and trap others, channeling the light to solar cells at the perimeter of the “panel”.

The concentrators, which would look a bit like windows, could be used as cheaper alternatives to rooftop solar panel installations. And unlike other concentrating panels, they would not require cooling, because the solar cells used can be specially made to capture light of the wavelength being sent to them.

Oddly enough, a number of reports appearing today (for example, in the Associated Press) suggested that Covalent’s concentrators would be of use in actual windows, but cofounder John Mapel made no mention of that possibility when we talked last week. That’s no great surprise — it would be difficult to get high-intensity light into vertically-positioned windows, much less windows placed on the wrong side of a building.

In the northern hemisphere, that often means any side besides the southern wall — also a good criticism against Xtreme Energetics, which recently received a ton of attention from press for its supposed utility in architecture (our own coverage focuses on the technology). A final problem is that once Covalent’s concentrators were installed as windows, they would modify the light entering the building, turning it odd colors and diminishing its strength. Call it a replacement for stained glass, perhaps.

Those problems notwithstanding, windows or skylights (which have their own problems) are a potential use in the future, if Covalent’s technology proves cheap enough. How far away that point is, Mapel isn’t certain. The main costs for the concentrators come from the glass itself, which is dirt cheap at $5 to $10 per square meter, and the more costly dyes, which are about $50 per kilogram and are applied by a thermal evaporation technique. The end product may cost $100 to $400 per square meter, not including the solar cells around the edge.

At the moment, though, Covalent is still in its research stage, and most of its data is uncertain. The company will be showing off to potential investors at Copenmind, a cleantech event taking place this year in Denmark, and it is considering a venture round. Mapel says that will either be for $1-2 million, or a great deal more than that, if certain research goals are met.

A report on Covalent’s technology will also be published in tomorrow’s edition of the journal Science.

(via VentureBeat)