Mar 04
Mar 04
Big Sean – Blessings ft Drake & Kanye West
Posted in: UncategorizedLe rappeur Big Sean a récemment sorti son dernier opus Dark Sky Paradise. Figurant parmi les nombreux featurings, le morceau « Blessings » avec Drake et Kanye West vient d’être mis en images par le réalisateur Darren Craig, partenaire du studio créatif The Uprising Creative. Un clip en noir et blanc minimaliste.
Mar 04
Adorable Ermine in Snowy Landscape
Posted in: UncategorizedL’hermine est un animal qui revêt un manteau de fourrure blanc en hiver et se camoufle donc très bien dans la neige. Les photographes présentées ci-dessous ont néanmoins réussi à trouver et capter l’attention de cette attendrissante créature en nous offrant de très beaux clichés, réalisés au Parc national Gran Paradiso en Italie.
Max Waugh.
Etienne Francey.
Viktor Vlaskin.
Hans Erik Overland.
Mark Summers.
J.A. Siderius.
Etienne Francey.
Masatsugu Ohashi.
Kellen Witschen.
Amy Gerber.
Stefano Unterthiner.
Fabien Greban.
L. Mikonranta.
Etienne Francey.
Mar 04
Drones can "weave structures in space in just a few minutes"
Posted in: UncategorizedDezeen and MINI Frontiers: in the second part of our video interview with Ammar Mirjan, the architect explains how he is using drones attached to cable dispensers to quickly build lightweight architectural structures.
Drones can be a valuable new tool in construction, Mirjan claims, “widening the spectrum of what is possible” in architecture.
“We can fly [drones] through and around existing objects, which a person couldn’t do or a crane couldn’t do,” he explains.
Mirjan is part of Gramazio Kohler Research, the ETH Zürich-based research division of Swiss architecture firm Gramazio Kohler Architects. His team’s latest experiments with using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) consist of programming drones to “weave” simple tensile structures in the air.
“We are actually attaching cable dispensers onto the machines and they are weaving structures in space,” he explains. “In just a few minutes you can weave a structure and connect it to existing elements.”
Mirjan and his team’s work, which is being conducted in collaboration with ETH Zürich’s Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control, has so far been confined to a laboratory environment. However, he believes it will soon be possible to start building structures with drones in the public realm.
“We are currently working in the lab, but I think something that would be interesting to do in the near future is to build a structure outside,” he says. “For example, to build a temporary structure over a canyon or a river.”
Gramazio Kohler Research’s current work using drones to build tensile structures follows on from an earlier project by Gramazio Kohler Architects and Raffaello D’Andrea, in which UAVs were used to build a tower out of 1,500 polystyrene bricks. Mirjan discusses this project in the first part of our video interview.
“We are pretty much at the beginning of this research,” Mirjan says. “We’re still trying to figure out what construction methods make sense [for the use of drones].”
While drones are unlikely to replace traditional techniques in most cases, Mirjan believes that their unique capabilities will lead to them being used for specific applications in construction.
“They are an interesting tool in design exploration,” he says. “I don’t see [drones] necessarily as something that competes with existing methods; it’s more [about] widening the spectrum of what is possible.”
This movie was filmed in London at the Craft Council‘s Make:Shift conference, where Mirjan was a keynote speaker.
The music in the movie is a track called Trash Digital by UK producer 800xL. Additional footage is courtesy of Gramazio Kohler Research and Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control, ETH Zürich.
Still photographs used in the story are by Gramazio Kohler Research, unless otherwise stated.
Dezeen and MINI Frontiers is an ongoing collaboration with MINI exploring how design and technology are coming together to shape the future.
The post Drones can “weave structures in
space in just a few minutes” appeared first on Dezeen.
Mar 04
Jean Nouvel takes legal action to distance himself from "unfinished" Philharmonie de Paris
Posted in: UncategorizedNews: French architect Jean Nouvel has applied for a court order to disassociate himself from the Paris concert hall, which he says is “non-compliant” with his original design.
Having boycotted the opening of the Philharmonie de Paris earlier this year, the Ateliers Jean Nouvel founder has now petitioned to have his name and image removed from all references to the £280 million building, which is located in the French capital’s Parc de La Vilette.
According to reports, his lawyers told a Paris court that he is not seeking compensation, but wants a court mandate ordering that “modifying work” be carried out on 26 parts of the building that he says are “non-compliant” with the original design.
Related story: Jean Nouvel boycotts opening of his Paris concert hall
These include parapets, foyers, facades, the promenade and acoustic elements within the 2,400-seat auditorium.
The court hearing is due to take place on 16 April, and Nouvel has requested that his name be removed from all associations with the building in the meantime.
The architect, whose famous works in Paris include the Musée du Quai Branly and the Fondation Cartier, launched an attack on the project in January, when he refused to attend the opening on the grounds that the concert hall needed much more work.
“The building is not finished,” said Nouvel in a statement sent to Dezeen. “There were no acoustic tests of the concert hall. The schedule did not allow the architectural and technical requirements to be respected. This despite all the warnings which I have been giving since 2013.”
The project had already been mired in controversy after spiralling costs and delays had caused the price to almost double, from an initial figure of €200 million (£145 million) up to an estimated €387 million (£280 million). Nouvel claimed he’d been used as a scapegoat for these cost overruns, and defended himself and his firm against suggestions that they were in any way responsible.
He later made allegations in French newspaper Le Monde against the legality of the proceedings, claiming he had been “secretly – contractually –sidelined, with the threat of being chucked off the job”. He also stated that the Philharmonie had “shot itself in the foot” with respect to funding.
“The architect, who is supposed to audit and sign off on expenses, has been sidelined. Public money has thereby been spent on a daily basis in secret without any auditing external,” he said.
“The contempt shown over the past two years for architecture, for the profession of the architect, and for me as the architect of the most important French cultural program of the early 21st century prohibits me from being there on opening night and thereby expressing my approval of, and satisfaction with, an architectural structure that wavers between fakery and sabotage.”
The architect won a competition to design the concert hall in 2007, with a design that featured a sloping 52-metre-high metal roof that visitors would be able to walk on.
A 2012 report into the project commissioned by the French Senate described it as a “cultural risky bet”, but it was spared the axe in 2013 after the French culture ministry decided that building work was too far advanced to be halted, despite culling several other major cultural projects.
The official opening of the Philharmonie de Paris took place on 14 January and was attended by French president François Hollande and Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo.
Both the Philharmonie and Ateliers Jean Nouvel declined a request for further comment.
The post Jean Nouvel takes legal action to distance himself
from “unfinished” Philharmonie de Paris appeared first on Dezeen.
Mar 04
"We understand how to bring design products to market" says PCH founder
Posted in: Uncategorized
Interview: PCH is the $1 billion manufacturing company you’ve never heard of. With its acquisition of Fab.com, that could be about to change. Dezeen spoke to founder and CEO Liam Casey about his plans to do for design what Zara did for fashion.
“In the fashion business, I always look at companies like Zara that do fast fashion and bring products through on really short, fast turns,” said Casey, 48, speaking exclusively with Dezeen following yesterday’s acquisition. “I think there’s great opportunity there, when you look at our ability to bring product from concept to consumer and in a very lean supply chain.”
Related story: Fab acquired by PCH to create “the Netflix of design”
Based in Ireland, PCH is a kind of one-stop-shop for designers, established brands and tech startups, taking care of the entire product supply chain. The vast company already shifts over 10 million components every day, making chairs for Philippe Starck and headphones for Beats by Dr Dre as well as technology products for household-name brands including Apple.
The company has always operated behind the scenes – until now. With its purchase of struggling design retailer Fab.com, PCH has its own shop window and plans to use its manufacturing expertise to bring exclusive, high-quality products directly to consumers.
PCH will also use the platform to offer the products it already makes for tech startups to Fab’s huge customer database. “We’re sure now that there’s a value add here for our startups,” he said. “It’s good for our business to have this direct channel.”
“It’s not going to be a discounting site, that’s for sure,” Casey added. “It’s going to have premium products, with a huge focus on customer service. The ultimate goal for us is about creating the Netflix for the kind of products that we move.”
Here’s an edited transcript of our interview with Casey:
Dan Howarth: Tell me about your background.
Liam Casey: I spent 10 years running a fashion business back in Ireland, many years ago, where we ran our own private label, bought product, bought raw materials from fabric mills, brought it to contract manufacturers and converted it into product, then sold it on the high street – places like Dublin’s Grafton Street.
I got out of that business and came to California to set up this current company, PCH. It started as a sourcing company, working mostly with tech companies, helping them source products – mostly components for the PC industry. Then it got into working with the bigger tech companies, helping them put products together from end to end. They would come up with the design, then we would take it from design all the way through to delivery.
Dan Howarth: What does PCH do?
Liam Casey: Today, we have about 3,000 people, mostly where we get involved with product development, engineering, logistics and supply chain around taking a product from an idea and shipping it all the way to the end consumer.
We also work with a lot of startups that are very focused on the hardware world. We’re always looking for ways to help them along every step of the process. So from when they have an idea for a product, how to work with an industrial design firm to help them design it. It’s not just the product, it’s also their business – to help them bring that all the way from an idea to a product that’s ready for retail, then how to actually get it to a consumer.
A big part of what we do is that we developed the whole out-of-box experience – to ensure that when you get the product, it’s a great experience. Whether that’s at a retail store or whether it’s delivered to your home.
We’re very focused on that. In the e-commerce world, there are a couple of moments of truth. One is when you go online and discover or find something, and you click “buy now”. The other very big moment of truth is when you get the product and you take it out of the box. That unboxing experience is hugely important. We have our own fulfilment centre, where we ship the products directly to the consumers.
The majority of our business has been with large tech companies. We’re involved with the Beats supply chain from end-to-end, prior to the Apple acquisition. We also work with Apple.
Dan Howarth: How does the process work?
Liam Casey: We would make a consumer electronic product for a brand. We have also made chairs for Philippe Starck, through one of his editors. We understand that the common denominator across that is design, brand, and consumer experience. That’s what we look for when we engage with companies.
If a big-box retailer came to us and they just wanted us to white-label a product and put their brand on it we wouldn’t be interested, because all we’re doing there is adding cost. We engage in areas where we can add value and create value.
In our startup business, we work with entrepreneurs. We also work with industrial designers, and we think that design is so important with any of the companies we work with. If you focus on design, there’s a huge value out there.
One of the things we hate, we think inventory is evil. We try and ensure that there’s no inventory in a channel. Part of our sustainability programme is about making sure that there are less products, not more products.
We’ve got complete visibility along the supply chain, from the raw materials, all the way to the finished goods and delivery to the consumer. And we’ve been doing this for 19 years, so we understand it pretty well.
Dan Howarth: How did you come to acquire Fab?
Liam Casey: Last year, Renee Wong – who was the general manager of Fab at the time – came to our event in San Francisco. She was really excited by the products and the fact that we could manage the entire supply chain, help the companies navigate through what they needed to make the products ready for retail. She was really interested, and I had a conversation with her when we talked about what was important in that experience and having unique content.
That’s what’s really important for me, people want to know the story about the product. If you’ve got the design part, if you engage with great industrial designers and great products, it’s often a challenge to bring through that experience all the way through to the delivery. That’s what we focus on, and that’s where I think we’re quite different to a lot of companies. We actually understand how to bring these products to market.
Dan Howarth: What are the first things you’re going to do with Fab?
Liam Casey: This story has been rumoured for quite some time, and during that process we did a lot of searching internally about if we really wanted to do this and is it the right thing to do. We’re sure now that there’s a value add here for our startups. It’s good for our business to have this direct channel.
The ultimate goal for us is about creating the Netflix for the kind of products that we move. We have our own unique content that you can’t get anywhere else and we generate those products. You will be able to get other products on the store as well, which we will continue. There’s a lot of products there that we will continue.
It’s not going to be a discounting site, that’s for sure. It’s going to have premium products, with a huge focus on customer service. Customer service is not free deliveries, that doesn’t add value. If you’ve got great product that’s exclusive, that’s really well designed using great materials and the designers have a platform to talk about the product and why the product should exist, that’s going to get attention and interest.
Dan Howarth: How will you make Fab different from other e-commerce sites?
Liam Casey: The big thing for us is our ability to interact with industrial designers and to understand what they’re trying to achieve, and then to able to execute on it. We move about 10 million components a day. Our revenue last year was over $1 billion (£650.1 million), at retail it’s probably about $10 billion (£6.5 billion). So we have a large amount of experience.
Our experience will come to bear here – how we make products and the story around the products, the materials used and where they come from. We can really get into that whole back story and tell it.
Dan Howarth: Fab has had quite a turbulent past. Will you be able to get past that and keep consumers’ interest?
Liam Casey: If it becomes a true platform for designers to engage with a community, I think it’s possible.
If you look at some of the companies that our designers have worked with in the past, people like Brett Lovelady at Astro in San Francisco, Robert Brunner at Ammunition, Scott Wilson at Minimal in Chicago. These are great designers that we have worked with on various projects, and they’re fantastic at articulating the story behind the product and engaging with the community as well.
Dan Howarth: Are you planning on creating permanent physical stores for Fab?
Liam Casey: Possibly. I think there’s great opportunity there, when you look at our ability to bring product from concept to consumer and in a very lean supply chain.
In the fashion business, I always look at companies like Zara that do fast fashion and bring products through on really short, fast turns – nobody’s done that with technology. When I spent 10 years in the fashion business, I could go to a fabric mill in Europe and buy 60 metres of fabric and bring it to a contract manufacturer. At the last minute I could change my decision about whether I wanted a suit, or a jacket, or a pair of trousers from that piece of fabric.
When I entered the technology world, what I saw first was that there were technology roadmaps and product roadmaps, and they were so long. The ability to innovate and create was so bad in that world.
In 2008 when there was the economic downturn, what we saw available was new products like Arduino – a board used for programming – and there was 3D printing. Today you have other products like Raspberry Pi and Android, and much bigger 3D-printing capabilities. Today, the fabrics for the technology world have changed, and that’s driving a huge amount of innovation and creativity. That’s what’s exciting for us, to be able to do that and bring products from an idea to a consumer, and do it in a short period of time, there’s quite a lot you can do.
The post “We understand how to bring design products
to market” says PCH founder appeared first on Dezeen.
Mar 04
The Real Smart City
Posted in: UncategorizedThe Smart City is a huge, vague and ubiquitous idea. The phrase—so insistent yet so slippery—suggests a way we can understand how cities work and how we might get them to work better. But deep down it raises serious questions of what we think cities are and what they could or should be. And the idea that it suggests—of the relationship between the physical and digital attributes of the city—is far too important to outsource to corporate providers.
Every age has its own idealized image of the city. From the ancient Athenian polis that invented the notion that we are citizens of a political and social framework, through the 19th-century vision of the city-as-body that gave us the “circulation” of traffic as if it were blood, to the 20th-century conception of the city as fabric of the welfare state, these ideas and metaphors have shaped, first, how we understand the city, and then helped make the city in that image.
The Smart City is our own era’s idealized image of the city. It imagines the city as an ecosystem of data, nature and culture. The image it suggests is of information gently collected as we cycle through a park, the soft whirr of a sensory device embedded in the fabric of the city tracking us. Smartness suggests the city itself gaining a kind of intelligence, an intelligence that is responsive and interactive with its citizens.
It’s the kind of benign techno-utopian fantasy that we’re well familiar with, sharing as it does so mush of the optimism of early Internet culture. Indeed, the Smart City is a post-digital phenomenon. It’s the city as framed by the digital—the physical fabric of the city plus all the flows, velocities, trajectories, systems and networks that pulse through it.
Early Internet culture promised to evolve new, brick-less, pixelated, virtual worlds that would liberate us from traditional hierarchies, power structures and societal definitions. But now digital culture is part of the physical world: Bricks and pixels are tightly interwoven.
Brickstarter used digital platforms to develop a suite of new participative municipal strategiesThe promise of the Smart City is of efficiencies, of data collection and number crunching, of algorithms performing dexterous maneuvers. It promises, too, to re-negotiate our individual relationship to the city, offering new forms of interaction with services that suggest a new kind of city-democracy. The examples of this are myriad: apps that allow citizens to “adopt” city property like trees and fire hydrants; dynamic touchscreen kiosks distributed throughout a metropolis; Brickstarter, developed by Sitra, the Finnish Innovation Fund, which used social media and digital platforms to develop a suite of new participative municipal strategies, legislative frameworks and political structures. All these alongside the out-and-out commercial apps like Uber and Airbnb that interface with traditional city services. In the immediate postwar period, if you were really smart and wanted to change the world, you’d apply to work for municipal planning departments. Now, the smartest urban-aware minds are more likely to be developing apps. It’s software and interfaces with the city—rather than the hardware of traditional urban planning—that’s now the frontier where it seems the city might be reimagined.
But just like all of those early promises of the Internet—of the dissolution of traditional boundaries, the disruption of vested interests, the freedom of inventing new paradigms—we are right to remain suspicious. In part, precisely because of the failures of digital culture to deliver on those freedoms. Instead, the Internet has increasingly become the domain of gigantic corporations whose morality and sense of duty has often been called into question, on everything from issues of tax “efficiency” to privacy.
The Smart City comes to us through these corporate interests. It comes hand in hand with the privatization of public space and the privatization of public services that once were the responsibility of municipal government. It comes as a solution to the shrinking capabilities of municipal power and the decline of local governments’ own ability or willingness to administrate or provide services.
In the UK, the joke goes that whomever you vote into City Hall, you’ll get Serco—or one of the other outsourcing companies providing everything from public and private transport and traffic control to aviation, military weapons, detention centers, prisons and schools. Many of the things a city once did—or things we still thought it did—are now contracted out to the private sector. As Serco explains on its website: “With rising service expectations, finite resources and budget deficits … Serco helps governments and corporations across the world deliver better services for less.”
From a Cisco interactive graphic showing how smart-city technologies could be deployed in Songdo, South Korea
An IBM infographic from 2013—part of its Smarter Cities initiativeAs the conception of the municipal authorities are broken up and privatized, and their tax revenues reduced, a new raft of companies are positioning themselves to take on these roles. Companies such as Serco, Cisco and Siemens offer cities and their mayors a range of services, from infrastructure “solutions” to urban planning. The demand for these services is huge. But that is also because cities right now have nowhere else to go.
The Smart City is the gloss that’s applied to this fundamental shift in the nature of the city. It’s a way of describing these changes without having to acknowledge the failure of the late-20th-century model of the social-democratic city, and without having to declare the market-oriented ideology of the 21st-century city.
And that is the biggest danger of the Smart City. Of course, we’d all like our cities to be cleaner, smarter, greener—even more “livable,” if that is something one can still say without conjuring the image of bland city-ranking surveys. And, of course, new technology, big data and interactivity are ways of helping to rethink the city.
The Smart City is a way of describing these changes without having to acknowledge the failure of the late-20th-century model of the social-democratic city, and without having to declare the market-oriented ideology of the 21st-century city.
But the only way we can really achieve “smarter” cities is to stay smart to the fact that cities are political and social entities as much as they are technical problems to be solved. Really being smart would mean articulating a clearer idea of what contemporary cities actually are. For that we need to draw on the thousands of years of urban culture, on the history, theory and practice of the city itself. We need to draw on the expertise of the old roles of city-making—of architect, planner, developer, municipal authority and politician, roles that are increasingly eclipsed by the corporate logos of Smart City consultancies. Instead, they should be joined at the table by coders, software developers, data wranglers and a whole host of new roles that can weave the digital into the fabric of the city.
A real smarter city would be one that openly acknowledges the inherent politics of the city. One that has a fuller understanding of the texture and depth of what life can be. One that recognizes the sheer difficulty of the idea of the city and, most importantly, its fundamentally democratic nature.
We should beware the takeover of urban culture by management consultants and technology firms. The city is us: nothing less than the summation of our collective desires made real, the physical precipitation of the abstract ideas of society and culture, democracy precipitated into stone. The question we should ask in the face of the rising ubiquity of Smart City culture is: Who is the city for? And there isn’t an app for that.
For more on Jacob’s work, read his answers to our Core77 Questionnaire from last November.
This article is part of the Core77 Tech-tacular, an editorial series exploring the myriad ways that technologies are shaping the future of design.
Mar 04
Morning Media Newsfeed: NBC News Looks to Lack | ABC’s Zeleny Jumps to CNN
Posted in: UncategorizedClick here to receive Mediabistro’s Morning Media Newsfeed via email.
NBC News Shakeup: Andrew Lack in Talks to Return in Top Role (Variety)
Former NBC News president Andrew Lack is in negotiations to return to a top post at NBCUniversal’s news division in a management shakeup following the debacle that led to the suspension of Nightly News anchor Brian Williams and other recent missteps. TVNewser Current NBC News president Deborah Turness is reportedly safe. THR Sources say Lack — who ran NBC News in the 1990s before being promoted to the top job at NBC — would replace Pat Fili-Krushel as the top executive in charge of NBC’s news assets, including NBC News, MSNBC, CNBC and their digital assets. Fili-Krushel, a loyal lieutenant of NBCUni CEO Steve Burke, is expected to move to a different role in the company. Mashable The Williams debacle was seen by some as the final straw for NBC’s news division. Other previous controversies — most notably Ann Curry’s tearful exit and David Gregory’s bungled removal — had already led to questions about the division’s leadership. In addition, NBC News has also struggled to maintain ratings for its major programs, including Nightly News, Meet The Press and Today. MSNBC’s ratings have also suffered. NYT Lack was president of NBC News from 1993 until 2001. He later worked as chief executive of Sony Music Entertainment and chairman of Bloomberg Media Group. He left that post in September and most recently worked as chief executive of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, an independent federal agency that oversees international networks such as Voice of America and Radio Free Europe.
ABC’s Jeff Zeleny Moving to CNN (Politico)
Jeff Zeleny, ABC News senior Washington correspondent, will join CNN’s Washington bureau and political unit as CNN senior Washington correspondent next Monday to cover the 2016 presidential race for both television and digital, according to industry sources. TVNewser Zeleny joined ABC News from The New York Times in March 2013. His journalism career began at the Des Moines Register, continuing at the Chicago Tribune. FishbowlDC Zeleny joins a growing list of ABC News staffers that have jumped ship to CNN, including Jake Tapper, Bill Weir, Jim Sciutto and John Berman, and executives Amy Entelis and Andrew Morse. Variety At the Times, Zeleny was the paper’s lead reporter during the 2012 presidential election and covered Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign to the White House. Zeleny also covered the first two years of the Obama administration as a White House correspondent, traveling across the country and the world. He also covered Congress for the paper. At ABC News, he reported extensively on the 2014 midterm elections and the Republican Party as it gained control of the U.S. Senate. He also reported from Ferguson, Mo., covering the protests in the wake of the Michael Brown shooting.
NBCU Plans Subscription Comedy Video Service (WSJ)
Comcast Corp.’s NBCUniversal is aiming to launch a comedy-focused subscription Web video service later this year, people familiar with the plans say, signaling the company’s growing interest in reaching young viewers online as its traditional cable-TV business stagnates. THR The over-the-top service, which is still in the early stages of development, will feature episodes of NBC shows including The Tonight Show and Saturday Night Live. The company is also said to be planning to invest in original programming and exclusive content for the service. Variety NBCU is mulling a price in the ballpark of $2.50 to $3.50 per month for the comedy SVOD service. NBCU’s subscription-streaming strategy is being run by Evan Shapiro, who joined the company in December as exec VP of digital enterprises. Shapiro, who previously headed Participant Media’s Pivot cable channel and was president of IFC and Sundance Channel, was hired to develop direct-to-consumer distribution models, according to NBCU. Deadline It’s unclear how the comedy service would affect NBC’s existing arrangements, including ones that put recent SNL episodes on Hulu and the show’s library on Yahoo!. Clips from Tonight often run on YouTube, but NBC does not share revenue with the Google-owned service. Execs are working on windowing plans to give consumers an incentive to subscribe to the Web service, but not cut others off completely.
Lisa Arbetter Named Editor of People StyleWatch (FishbowlNY)
Time Inc. has named Lisa Arbetter editor of People StyleWatch. This is a return to StyleWatch for Arbetter, as she previously served as its deputy editor when the magazine debuted in 2007. Arbetter comes to StyleWatch from InStyle, where she served as deputy editor since 2009. WWD Time Inc.’s editorial structure — that being one with an editorial director overseeing a smaller magazine — is somewhat new for the company. It allows for cost cutting measures and the sharing of resources across departments. Last month, Time Inc. moved former Entertainment Weekly editor-in-chief Matt Bean to the corporate offices to work on native content and projects in the new role of senior vice president of editorial innovation. Henry Goldblatt, a deputy editor at People, replaced Bean, and reports to People editor-in-chief Jess Cagle, who holds the dual-role of EW editorial director.
HBO Go Arrives on PlayStation 4, at Long Last (Mashable)
HBO Go is finally available for the PlayStation 4, Sony announced Tuesday. The app, which hit PS4 consoles the same day, allows HBO subscribers to access content from HBO’s current crop of content and its vast archives. The app comes four months after HBO launched on the Xbox One, and a full year after HBO Go launched on the PS3. Variety As with other HBO Go platforms, users must subscribe to the network via a pay-TV provider to get access on the PS4. Showtime Networks, meanwhile, announced that its online-video service — Showtime Anytime — is now available to Dish Network customers who subscribe to the premium cable service. Both premium cablers have announced plans to launch direct-to-consumer, over-the-top Internet versions of their services — which wouldn’t require a pay-TV account. But neither has divulged specifics, including pricing and availability.
Stephen Colvin Joins Robb Report (FishbowlNY)
Stephen Colvin, former CEO of Newsweek and The Daily Beast, is joining Robb Report as chief operating officer and president of its digital division, a new role at the company. Capital New York In his new role, which follows a 20-month tour at Lerer Ventures as the V.C. fund’s executive in residence, Colvin will largely focus on scaling the title’s digital business, which saw a 71-percent year-on-year increase in monthly visitors to robbreport.com during the first quarter of 2014, according to a company representative.
Broadcast Networks Skip Netanyahu Speech to Congress (TVNewser)
While cable news covered the speech Tuesday morning by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to a joint session of Congress, the broadcast networks stuck with their regular daytime programming, and shifted news coverage to websites or cable. THR Fox News, MSNBC, CNBC and CNN did broadcast the address, along with CSPAN. The major networks, along with multiple U.S. online news outlets, including The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, did livestream the speech on their websites.
NBC Nightly News Wins February Sweep in All Metrics, Despite Brian Williams Suspension (Deadline)
NBC Nightly News hung on to its frontrunner status for the February sweep ratings derby in all key metrics. This is news because, for virtually all of the sweep period, Nightly News anchor Brian Williams was embroiled in controversy and missing from the program. Variety Nightly News lured about 9.67 million viewers overall in the five days between Feb. 23 and Feb. 27, according to data from Nielsen, and about 2.463 million viewers between 25 and 54, the demographic most desired by advertisers in news programs. That’s more than ABC’s World News, which attracted around 9.47 million overall and about 2.37 million between 25 and 54 in the same time period.
Marc Graboff Takes Key Role at Discovery Communications (THR)
Longtime NBC executive Marc Graboff is heading to Discovery. The television veteran, who rounded out his tenure atop Core Media this past fall, will join Discovery Communications in April as president of global business and legal affairs, production management and studios. Variety Graboff marks the latest notable TV exec to join Discovery, following the appointment of Rich Ross as president of the flagship Discovery Channel in January. Graboff’s new role will have him overseeing the Discovery group’s worldwide business and legal affairs, in addition to running its growing studio operation and its investment in production group All3media.
Time Inc. Makes Publisher Changes (FishbowlNY)
Time Inc. has made some changes to its publishing team. Group publishers Charlie Kammerer and Greg Schumann are expanding their roles, while Ron King has been promoted to publisher of Southern Living.
Curt Schilling Twitter Trolls Stink Up The Garden State (FishbowlNY)
ESPN commentator Curt Schilling was all over the radio Tuesday morning. He continues to talk about the swift effects of his targeting of several Twitter users who went way over the line.
Sony Ex-Employees File Amended Class Action Suit Over Hacking Attack (Variety)
Nine former Sony employees have filed an amended class action lawsuit against Sony Pictures Entertainment, alleging that the studio failed to take adequate safeguards to protect personal information that was exposed in the hacking attack last year.
Machinima Hires Jamie Weissenborn as Chief Revenue Officer (Variety)
Machinima, a digital-media company focused on gamer and fanboy audiences, has hired Jamie Weissenborn, a former senior ad exec at Sony Pictures Television, in the newly created position of chief revenue officer.
Netflix Sets Australia, New Zealand Launch Date (THR)
Netflix will officially launch in Australia and New Zealand on March 24, the streaming giant announced Tuesday.
The New Republic Hires Eliot Pierce as Chief Product Officer (Poynter / MediaWire)
The New Republic announced the hiring of its first chief product officer Tuesday, the most recent step in an attempt to transform a century-old magazine into a digital media company.
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Mar 04
Business Insider Adds Three
Posted in: UncategorizedBusiness Insider has hired three reporters. Details are below.
- Leslie Larson joins BI as a politics reporter. Larson most recently worked for The New York Daily News. Prior to that she worked for MailOnline.
- Matt Weinberger has been named an enterprise technology reporter. He comes to the site from Computerworld. He’ll be based in BI’s San Francisco bureau.
- Jason Guerrasio joins as an entertainment reporter. Guerrasio most recently served as Filmmaker’s managing editor.
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