A categorical imperative to tweet
The FT’s Gideon Rachman writes in his column:
One of my very last tweets was: “This is possibly the most moronic form of journalism I have ever done.” Since then, I have fallen largely silent.But now I am having to rethink my disdain. Read more
Strong start for Wii Sports Resort
Nintendo’s flagship summer title, Wii Sports Resort, has got off to a strong start since its launch in Japan last Thursday June 25th.
According to figures from publisher Enterbrain in its Famitsu magazine, Wii Sports Resort sold 353,827 copies in its first four days on sale. That makes it the third most successful launch in the history of the Wii in Japan. Read more
techfile 30.6.09
Social game groups scrap over virtual spoils
We wrote about the boom in social gaming applications on Facebook back in April. Then in May, as the two-year anniversary of Facebook’s platform rolled around, we looked at how social games were by far its most popular category of applications. Now, there are signs that social games are growing up:
Social gaming, where social networks become venues for virtual pets and fantasy mob wars, is becoming a real world battleground for industry players trying to cash in on the phenomenon. The console industry is exploring social gaming, traditional video game companies are losing top executives to the sector and there is infighting among the new wave of developers as they seek to copy each other’s successes. Read more
Disney museum renders animation innovation
Pixar, Dreamworks and LucasArts are major data crunchers in the Bay Area, with their studios using vast ranks of servers to render the latest animations and special effects. But there will soon be an opportunity here to reflect on animation technology before the computer dominated.
The new Walt Disney Family Museum, in San Francisco’s Presidio national parkland, will not open until October, but, in a media preview tour this week, we were introduced to innovations such as the 13-feet-high Multiplane Camera and the optical printer. Read more
Control – Halt – Delete
Joseph Menn, Richard Waters and Kathrin Hille report on Chinese internet censorship:
“This week, an open letter appeared on Chinese blogs and online bulletin boards. “Hello, internet censorship institutions of the Chinese government,” it said. “We are the anonymous netizens. We hereby decide that from July 1 2009, we will start a full-scale global attack on all censorship systems you control.”” Read more
Spike Lee: With user-generated content, who needs ad agencies?
A boy lies on his back on a boardroom table in a high-rise office block in Toyko. He pulls out his Nokia, takes a photo of the setting sun – upside down – and sends it to his girlfriend in New York, where dawn is breaking. “Now I know we share the same horizon,” says the voiceover. “My sunset is your sunrise.”
It’s a brilliant Nokia ad – the sort of simple, well-executed idea that agencies charge six-figure sums for. Only this one wasn’t made by an ad agency – it was made by Hiroki Ono, a 23-year-old film student from Yokohama, Japan, who’d never made an ad before. The film, “Feel the globe”, took just two days to make. Read more
Obama’s campaign chief tells marketers: “Keep it old school.”
It’s renowned as the most digitally savvy election campaign yet. The story of how Barack Obama used social media to build grassroots support has become the stuff of social-media legend.
But when David Plouffe, Obama’s campaign manager, took to the stage at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival today, the surprising message for marketers was to keep it “old school”: email and TV are still critically important. Read more
The price we pay for using Vista
Microsoft has announced what consumers will be paying for Windows 7 when the new operating system is launched in October, which may seem a bit rich to those who feel they have been paying for a long time for choosing to use the current Windows Vista.
Vista has been a clunker of an OS from Microsoft, so bad its 8-year-old predecessor Windows XP is a joy to use in comparison and remains the safe OS of choice for the corporate world. Read more
| About this blog | Blog guide |
Richard Waters has headed the FT's San Francisco bureau since 2002 and covers Google and Microsoft, among other things. A former New York bureau chief for the FT, he is intrigued by Silicon Valley's unique financial and business culture, and is looking forward to covering his second Tech Bust.
Chris Nuttall has been online and messing around with computers for more than 20 years and since 2004 has reported from the FT's San Francisco bureau on semiconductors, video games, consumer electronics and all things interwebby.
Maija Palmer has been writing about technology for the FT since 1999 and is fascinated by cybercrime, privacy and all the other issues of the information society. Based in London, she covers European tech companies and hopes that they won't all get acquired by American rivals.
Robin Kwong is the FT's technology, media and telecoms page editor in London. Formerly he was the Taipei correspondent and wrote about the companies that manufacture the vast majority of the world's computers and gadgets. He is interested in the intricacies of the technology supply chain and how China is increasingly changing the tech landscape.
Tim Bradshaw is the FT's digital media correspondent, and has just moved from London to join our team in San Francisco. He has covered start-ups such as Twitter and Spotify, as well as the online ambitions of more established media companies, such as the BBC iPlayer. He also covers the advertising, marketing and video-game industries. Tim has been writing about technology, business and finance since 2003.
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