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Digital Britain Summit – Equipping Britain for a digital future

Valerie | 17 Apr 2009, 08:58

Leading thinkers in the Digital Economy are gathering at The Digital Britain Summit today at the British Library to debate how best to equip Britain for a digital future.

The event will give stakeholders an opportunity to listen and debate the interim report’s recommendations and ensure all views are considered before the final report is published in the summer.

Speakers including telecoms CEOs Ian Livingstone, Neil Berkett and Ronan Dunne, technophile Stephen Fry, Universal Music’s Lucian Grainge, Johannes B. Larcher from Hulu, Hirouki Hishinuma from the Japanese Government and Will Hutton, Chief Executive of the Work Foundation, will join 250 industry leaders to address how to secure Britain’s place at the forefront of the global digital economy.

Culture Secretary Andy Burnham, Business Secretary Peter Mandelson, Sly Bailey (Chief Executive, Trinity Mirror) and John Fingleton (Chief Executive, Office of Fair Trading) will deliver keynote speeches.

Key issues to be discussed today in the four panel sessions include:

• Preparing for tomorrow’s digital networks today: looking at infrastructure issues that will determine the UK’s readiness to fully exploit the dramatic shift to digital technology

• The New Digital Arms Race: different approaches around the globe to achieving a successful digital economy

• Joining the dots between creativity and digital content: matching technical innovation with the development of business models that enable content creators to flourish on these new platforms

• Equipping our society for the digital future: ensuring that the benefits and advantages of the digital economy are available to all

You can watch the Digital Britain event live and follow the debate via the Digital Britain summit live blog and submit comments as well as questions for the speakers and panel at the Digital Britain Forum website.

You can also follow proceedings via the Digital Britain twitter feed or tweet questions to @digitalbritain.

iPhone Apps – the next big creative platform?

Valerie | 16 Apr 2009, 09:12

As Apple gears up for celebrations of the one billionth download from its iTunes App Store, a bigger cause for celebration perhaps is the success story behind a business model that has changed the way we work and play.

Despite only launching last July, Apple’s iPhone App Store has shaken up the mobile software industry and has become one of the fastest growing and most popular technological innovations with thousands of free and paid-for apps now available.

Reporting on the iPhone apps gold rush, The Guardian observed:

“More than 25,000 (apps) have been created - often by individuals working from home - and they have been downloaded more than 800 million times from the online iPhone App Store. From Coldplay to Manchester United, institutions of every shape and size are scrambling to get a piece of the action.”

From apps that help locate your nearest coffee shop to games such as Tap Tap Revenge that allow users to tap their fingers in time to music using the iPhone touch screens, new apps are being developed each day that can do almost anything. Most importantly however, the open-source developer model means they can be created by anybody – sparking a frenzy among entrepreneurs, investors, marketers, artists, and even hobbyist programmers hoping to hit the smartphone jackpot.

Dave Rowan of Wired observes:

“What’s exciting about the App Store is that it’s so democratic. If you’ve got an idea and know something about [computer] coding you could have a shot at making large amounts of money. You can make £200 a week with a moderately successful application. It’s a good way to top up your income.”

iPhone’s rivals have been quick to capitalise on this booming market with their own offerings. Last October, Google opened the Android Market, and Microsoft, Nokia, Palm, and Research in Motion, BlackBerry’s maker, have already opened app stores this year or plan to do so. The iPhone app effect has also cross fertilised a number of additional creative industries, most notably games and music – with apps coming from both individuals as well as established brands.

As The Age notes, Apple takes a 30 per cent share of the revenue earned by paid apps, but hosts free apps at no cost. For now, this mobile renaissance has provided a business model that works on many levels, providing advertising potential for brands and creative license and commercial opportunities for individuals.

Top downloads

Top 10 free apps (2008)

1 iPint
Drink a virtual pint

2 Facebook
Social networking site

3 Google Earth
Satellite images of planet

4 Lightsaber Unleashed
You are Luke Skywalker

5 Labyrinth Lite Edition
Guide a steel ball game

6 Remote
Turns phone into TV control

7 Tap Tap Revenge
Dance with your fingers

8 Touch Hockey
Arcade game

9 Flashlight
Screen becomes a torch

10 Shazam
Names songs being played

Top 10 paid-for apps (2008)

1 Koi Pond
Makes tropical fish portable

2 Crash Bandicoot
Racing game. Tilt to steer

3 Super Monkey Ball
Primate adventure game

4 Moto Chaser
Two-wheeled racing

5 PocketGuitar
No strings attached

6 Texas Hold’em
Poker game

7 allRadio
Global radio receiver

8 Cro-Mag Rally
Cavemen kart racing

Pixar’s latest leaves Wall Street on edge

Valerie | 14 Apr 2009, 15:24

Pixar – the Disney owed CGI Animation Company behind feature films such as Toy Story has come under fire from US investors and toy retailers for its latest offering, Up, for not being commercial enough.

The film, due to be the first animated feature ever to open the Cannes film festival this year follows a 78-year-old widower who ties thousands of balloons to his house and sets sail for South America accompanied by a stowaway boy scout. 

As The New York Times explains, the film contains long stretches without dialogue whilst some scenes are in black and white – prompting some commentators to raise concerns about the limited ability to generate licensing revenue.  One Wall Street analyst has downgraded Disney shares, citing a poor outlook for Up as a reason, observing that “we doubt younger boys will be that excited by the main character”.

Pixar’s previous two films, Wall-E and Ratatouille, have been the studio’s two worst performers, delivering sales of $224 million and $216 million respectively, according to Box Office Mojo, a tracking service, highlighting the perceived reduction in merchandising possibilities. Retailers point towards the fact that each of Pixar’s films is getting less toy friendly, from actual toys in Toy Story to Finding Nemo’s fish, from cars and trucks in Cars, to the rodents of Ratatouille, and most recently, Wall-E’s beat-up robot. On this occasion, Disney stores will offer only limited merchandise to promote Up.

Defending his right to create films of creative merit, the co-director of Up, Peter Docter, recently told journalists that the film’s commercial prospects never crossed his mind. “We make these films for ourselves,” he said. “We’re kind of selfish that way.”

The Guardian echoes this point, drawing attention to Disney chief executive, Robert A Iger’s motivations:

“If a great film gives birth to a franchise, we are the first company to leverage such success. A check-the-boxes approach to creativity is more likely to result in blandness and failure.”

Whilst creative and commercial merit are not necessarily mutually exclusive as previous Pixar films have shown, it reflects the growing interdependence of the film industry on a number of other spin off creative sectors such as the toy, music and video game industries. Cars for example was far from a smash hit at the box office but was hugely successful commercially - Thinkway Toys, whose range of products related to Pixar’s 2006 film Cars helped the film to reach a merchandise sales record of $5bn.

Whether Up will follow in the footsteps of its Oscar winning predecessors is unclear but Pixar’s films have to date made over $2.5 billion in box office receipts whilst maintaining their artistic merit.  As the New York Times states: “hasn’t Pixar earned the benefit of the doubt?”

Associated Press to clampdown on online copyright abuse

Valerie | 09 Apr 2009, 09:27

Global news agency Associated Press (AP) has announced plans to protect news content from misappropriation online, causing concern amongst news distributors of potential legal action.

AP Chairman Dean Singleton said the news cooperative would work with portals and other partners who properly license content – and would pursue legal and legislative actions against those who don‘t. Speaking to PaidContent, Singleton explained the rationale behind the move:

“I think our industry has been very timid about protecting our content, probably because we’ve done so well in the past few years that we didn’t recognise that misappropriation is as serious an issue as it is. As we’re now relooking at business models, it’s become clear that we must protect the rights of our content”.

The news has drawn widespread criticism particularly from the “good guys” such as PaidContent, who use the new service in their own reports and link to stores on member or client sites usually with attribution and minimal quoting.  Putting the question of “what about us?” to Singleton, the response was “I’ll leave that to the rules of engagement that we’ll be developing” in coming weeks. TechCrunch has also raised vehement concerns, but moved one step further and banned links to all of AP’s stories on its site.

Tellingly, as this blog shows, the controversy appears to be over the decision by AP to effectively “appoint themselves judge and jury over what is legal (with partners such as Google acting to execute whatever action is deemed appropriate)”, raising the issue of the fact that news and journalism having wider political, cultural and social value. By seeing a link as illegal, you are effectively curtailing conversation around - and awareness of - key issues it argues.

AP’s actions come as Google CEO Eric Schmidt told attendees at the Newspaper Association of America’s annual conference in San Diego that the majority of newspapers should be online. It also follows an overhaul of AP’s rates and new content options for member newspapers in the face of extraordinary financial hardship for newspapers, which could see more news content providers review their pay/ advertising business models as the global recession deepens.

“Geography of buzz” – mapping the urban influence of culture

Valerie | 08 Apr 2009, 15:52

Research about cultural industries has generally argued that the arts economy helps to make cities more dynamic places, as the industry both supports and is supported by other advanced service sectors in the city. It has also focused on concepts such as “creative class” and the importance of this to civic development proposed by urban theorists such as Richard Florida.

However, new research presented at the annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers sheds new light on the importance of the social settings where cultural innovations actually take place.

The New York Times reports on a joint study carried out by the University of Southern California and the Spatial Information Design Lab at Columbia University in New York to analyse the unique spatial and social dynamics that are created by the arts and entertainment industries in New York City and Los Angeles.

The researchers mined thousands of photographs from Getty Images, which, because they were for sale, were “a good proxy for ‘buzz-worthy’ social contexts”.  By geo-referencing, coding, and performing statistical analysis on 6,000 events and 300,000 across the two cities, the research found that cultural industry events tend to cluster spatially.

The “buzziest areas” in New York were found to be the mainstream venues around the Lincoln and Rockefeller Centres, and down Broadway from Times Square into SoHo whilst in Los Angeles, these were in Beverly Hills and Hollywood, along the Sunset Strip. Not, in other words, the obvious cool neighbourhoods such as Williamsburg, Brooklyn or trendy Silver Lake or Echo Park in Los Angeles.

The findings, the New York Times argues, whilst not surprising in highlighting that certain “hot spots” in the city exist, illustrates the “continued dominance of the mainstream news media as a cultural gatekeeper, and the never-ending cycle of buzz in the creative world”. One of the authors of the study (Elizabeth Currid) explains:

“There’s an economy of scale. The media goes to places where they know they can take pictures that sell. And the people in these fields show up because the media is there”.

The research, this blog argues, has interesting implications for media studies and urban planning: digital technologies have not been entirely successful in de-centering cultural practices. Whether their research can be used to manufacture interest and “buzz” or help city planners harness social convergence to create artist-friendly neighborhoods remains to be seen but investigating them in this way allows for a better understanding of why clustering occurs in certain locations. Ms Currid concluded:

“We had social scientists, economists, geographers all talk about it being so important. It matters in the fashion industry, it matters in high tech. The places that produce these cultural innovations matter”.

Washington D.C.’s creative industry generates $5 billion annually

Valerie | 07 Apr 2009, 07:11

Research from Washington D.C.’s Office of Planning and D.C. Economic Partnership shows that D.C.’s creative industries generate more than $5bn worth of income each year.

According to an article published in the Washington Business journal, D.C.’s creative sector - from East End chefs to graphic designers – currently employs 75,000 in direct jobs, making up more than 10 percent of the city’s employment pool.

Harriet Tregoning, Director of the Office of Planning said:

“The economic significance of the creative sector is clear – creative enterprises play a key role in contributing to the District’s economic vibrancy through tourism, income generation, and business incubation. Now, more than ever, we have an opportunity to harness the extensive talent in the city in a way that will position the District as a global leader in creative industries”.

The findings of the assessment were announced at the Creative Economy Forum, held at the Harman Center for the Arts. Forum participants, which included more than 200 leaders of key cultural institutions and enterprises, discussed ways that arts education, workforce development, and networking could strengthen the District’s creative economy.  The forum and assessment form part of the Creative DC Action Agenda, an initiative to boost D.C.’s creative economy.

The forum highlights the growing contribution made by the global creative industries to the world’s economy.  A study from the Department for Culture Media and Sport, (DCMS) shows that the UK’s creative sector was valued at £5.7bn in 2006. Over the past decade, it has grown at twice the rate of the economy as a whole, and currently employs two million people in creative jobs.  The UK’s creative industries contribute £60 billion a year – 7.3 per cent to the British economy and are well placed for further growth as demand for creative content continues to grow.