New Songza iPad app curates music to suit your mood

 Need an energizing playlist of songs for your morning workout or perhaps one that will improve your focus at the office later in the day? A new iPad app streams music tailored to your current situation and mood.

Songza, a Internet radio service since 2007, launched its iPad app earlier this month following success with iPhone and web apps. It aims to help people find the perfect playlist for what they're doing at the moment - whether it's unwinding after a hectic week, reading the morning newspaper or hosting a cocktail party.

"We're trying to make the world's greatest collection of amazing playlists and long-form listening experiences", said Elias Roman, co-founder of Songza, a web radio company based out of Long Island City, New York.

The app's core feature is its "concierge service" that suggests situations or activities in which a user might be involved based on several factors such as day of the week, time of day, the device being used and previous behavior that the app learns over time.

For example, if it's a Saturday morning, Songza might suggest music for cooking breakfast or songs to help the user fall asleep again. If it's a weekday evening, the app might suggest music for working out or commuting home from work.

"We change the situations, filters and playlists based on things we start to learn about you," said co-founder Peter Asbill.

Upon selecting a situation, the app screens for genre, decade and mood, and for each filter, it provides three different playlists, created and curated by a team of critics, journalists, DJs, musicians and ethnomusicologists.

"The idea is (to) get people to just three playlists really quickly that they're going to love and are going to be perfect for whatever situation they're in and whatever type of music they love," explained Asbill.

The app, which aims to please many different types of users, includes more than 100,000 playlists, encompassing 18 million songs.

Despite competition from music streaming services such as Pandora, Spotify and iHeartRadio, Roman said Songza has seen its user base grow 50 percent monthly since they introduced the music concierge feature to their iPhone and web apps in March.

Asbill attributes the success to their focus on designing for mobile devices first. Within five days of its June launch, the iPad app was downloaded more than 700,000 times.

Last week, analyst Richard Greenfield of BTIG Research, providers of institutional brokerage and fund services, warned that investors in Internet music company Pandora Media Inc should be wary in the face of Songza's rapid growth.

"In many ways Songza's simplicity and focus on mobile life, reminds us of what drove Instagram's success, as consumer web activity shifts far faster than expected from computers to mobile devices," Greenfield said in his report.

Greenfield, however, said that one of Pandora's greatest strengths is its first mover advantage - that is, it was the first to build a brand in Internet radio and is also the first to enter the car.

The Songza app is free and available for all iOS devices and on the web in the United States only. The app is available for Android devices but does not yet include the music concierge feature.

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Facebook consultant argues that website's ads work

Marketing on Facebook influences consumer behavior and leads to increased purchases for the brands that leverage the social-networking site, consulting company comScore said in a report released Tuesday.

"The Power of Like 2: How Social Media Works," looks at paid advertising on Facebook as well as earned media exposure-- meaning mentions of the brand made by Facebook users in status updates and the like. It is based on the experiences of large brands such as Best Buy, Starbucks and Target.

The report follows up on a July 2011 paper, "The Power of Like: How Brands Reach and Influence Fans Through Social Media Marketing."

It swipes back at recent research questioning the effectiveness of Facebook messages. A Reuters/Ipsos poll published last week showed four out of five Facebook users haven't bought a product or service as a result of advertising or comments on Facebook.

Most brand exposures on Facebook occur through users' news feeds, comScore said, rather than visits to dedicated brand pages on Facebook.

Fans - consumers who click a button that they like a certain brand or product - tend to outspend others for that particular brand, comScore said, citing examples such as Amazon, Best Buy, and Target. Purchase data comes via information from loyalty clubs, credit card companies, and third-party collectors, with the permission of the study participant.

In the case of Target, Facebook and comScore studied two groups. One group, made up of fans of Target and their friends, saw "earned" messages about Target - updates about Target that run in news feeds and the like.

The second group was made up of Facebook users who weren't fans of Target and saw no messages. Both groups had identical purchase behavior at Target prior to the study.

After the four-week study, the fans who saw the messages were 19 percent more likely to buy goods at Target than the group that didn't see the messages, and their friends were 27 percent more likely. A comScore spokesman said he didn't know how much messaging the groups were exposed to.

To measure the impact of paid advertising, ComScore conducted a similar study involving a national retailer. It looked at groups of Facebook users who were exposed to a paid online Facebook campaign about that brand, and a test group that was not. Again, the two groups had identical purchase behavior before the study.

By the fourth week of the study, the group that saw the messages was 16 percent more likely to buy goods at the retailer than the group that did not see the messages.

Separately, Facebook said it had conducted research on about 60 campaigns to measure their return on investment, or how many dollars in sales were generated by every dollar spent on Facebook advertising.

About 70 percent of campaigns showed a return of three times or more on the money spent for the advertising, a spokeswoman said. About half of campaigns showed a return of five times or better.

Evaluating the effectiveness of advertising has proved challenging for Madison Avenue, no matter the media, brands have long said. They find it hard to gauge how many people saw a particular ad, and connecting the message with purchases is even more difficult.

Facebook is a comScore client. Along with many other large brands, it hires comScore to measure advertising effectiveness.

Shares of Facebook closed at $27 Monday, down slightly from Friday's close of $27.10, and 29 percent below their offering price of $38 on May 18.

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Insight: Intel's plans for virtual TV come into focus

            

Intel is counting on facial-recognition technology for targeted ads and a team of veteran entertainment dealmakers to win over reluctant media partners for its new virtual television service.

But so far it's proving a challenge to get the service off the ground, thanks to an unwillingness on the part of major media content providers to let Intel unbundle and license specific networks and shows at a discount to what cable and satellite partners pay.

Intel, the world's largest chipmaker, has kept its strategy to launch a slimmed down cable TV service under wraps as the tech giant risks getting into a completely new line of business.

According to five sources who have been negotiating with Intel for months, the company is emphasizing a set-top box employing Intel technology that can distinguish who is watching, potentially allowing Intel to target advertising.

The set-top box pitched by Intel doesn't identify specific people, but it could provide general data about viewers' gender or whether they're adults or children to help target advertising, two sources said.

Intel's plans put it in the middle of Silicon Valley's battle for the living room. Heavyweights such as Apple, Amazon and Google believe the $100 billion U.S. cable television ecosystem - dominated by major distributors such as Comcast and DirecTV Group and program makers like Walt Disney Co and Time Warner Inc. - is ripe for disruption for reasons ranging from shifting viewer habits to ever-increasing programming costs.

While none of these companies have so far been able to make major inroads, Intel thinks it can build a better set-top box and over-the-top subscription service to deliver TV content to consumers, even though the initiative catapults it into virgin market territory. A successful TV service showcasing Intel technology could be a big step toward making its chips prevalent in more living room devices.

"If they can create a virtual network and it incorporates proprietary Intel technology, they could certainly bring something different to the subscription TV model." said JMP analyst Alex Gauna.

Intel's offering aims to exploit one of the TV industry's major issues: the reliability, or lack thereof, of Nielsen ratings data on audiences. Nielsen has long been the dominant provider of TV ratings, but the accuracy of its data has come under attack by some network programmers, who argue that its polling system of 50,000 homes is antiquated for the digital age.

For its part, Intel claims that the new interactive features in its set-top box would add greater value to TV advertising and help offset reduced revenue from licensing fees for network owners.

"They've told us the technology is going to be so much more interactive with ads that you can make more money. But it's just a little unproven," said one executive who has been involved in the talks.

An Intel representative declined to comment for this story.

Chip features making it easier for Hollywood studios to protect content streamed to computers, as well as tools for detecting faces and analyzing audiences, are examples of current proprietary technology that Intel would like to see widely adopted.

BEYOND PCs

While Intel's processors power 80 percent of the world's PCs, its chips have not achieved a significant presence in smartphones, tablets and other interconnected devices. Intel executives say they are eager to make sure its semiconductors play major roles in new markets with big growth potential.

According to a company source, ensuring that its chips become prevalent in home entertainment devices would be the driving reason behind any Internet TV service it launches.

Comcast, for instance, recently announced the gradual rollout of an Intel-based set-top box that customers can control with their smarpthones. Called "X1," the platform will rely on data centers packed with high-end servers -- which typically also use Intel chips.

Intel last year wound down a push to make chips specifically for "smart" TVs after Google TV, which it had backed, failed to make a major splash with consumers.

At the same time, it formed the Intel Media business group with a mandate of promoting digital content on Intel-based platforms.

According to sources, Intel is proposing to media companies a service could include both a bundle of TV channels similar to a normal cable package and an on-demand component.

ENLISTING HEAVYWEIGHTS

Intel is intent on launching its video service before the end of the year, sources said. Original plans called for it to be launched by November, said one of the sources, but that deadline likely will not be met.

The biggest problem Intel faces is its inability to reach deals with major content providers, which are reluctant to license their networks and TV shows at rates that could undercut their larger established cable and satellite partners.

Intel wants to keep its costs down by licensing smaller packages of TV networks instead of replicating the basic cable TV bundle of more than 100 channels. But network owners won't agree to smaller bundles without being paid a premium for the channels they choose to license.

"Why would I want you to take subscribers away from another distributor at a lower price?," asked the same media executive who spoke with Reuters on condition of anonymity.

To change that mindset, Intel has assembled a team of television industry veterans well-schooled in negotiating distribution deals. Leading the group as head of Intel Media is Erik Huggers, who worked on media at Microsoft before going to the BBC. Huggers enlisted as an adviser Garth Ancier, who most recently served as president for BBC Worldwide America and before that worked at NBC, FOX, and Disney.

In addition to Huggers and Ancier, sources said, two other names prominent in TV circles have emerged as consultants for Intel: entertainment lawyer Ken Ziffren and former MTV executive Nicole Browning.

Browning, who previously negotiated on the other side of the table for MTV, has been handling some of the talks with partners, sources said.

Ziffren built his reputation representing Hollywood talent - he was instrumental in negotiating the deal that returned the "Tonight Show" to Jay Leno. Lesser known is his firm's work negotiating deals for DirecTV's video-on-demand service and carriage agreements for pay-TV network Starz.

But even that quartet of executives may not be enough to resolve an intractable problem, which is that content companies have little incentive to offer their channels to Intel at a discount and Intel is loathe to pay a premium.

"They'd love a better deal but they won't get one," said Needham & Co analyst Laura Martin of Intel. "The industry has always worked on volume discounts."

Underscoring the difficulty insurgent tech companies face in securing content, Microsoft in January indefinitely postponed plans for its own online TV subscription service after deciding that licensing costs were too high, according to people familiar with those discussions.

And therein lies that dilemma that Intel and other insurgent over-the-top providers must tackle before their big plans can be realized.

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> பில்லா 2வில் வாலாட்டும் சிம்பு.

பெ‌ரிய படங்கள் வெளியாகும் போது வரப்போகும் படத்தின் டீசரை வெளியிடுவது இந்திப்பட உலகில் சகஜம். இதனால் டீசர் உடனடியாக பிரபலமடையும். இந்த மாதம் பில்லா 2 வெளியாகிறது. இந்தப் படத்தின் இடைவேளையில் தனது வாலு படத்தின் டீசரை வெளியிட திட்டமிட்டுள்ளாராம் சிம்பு. வேட்டை மன்னன், போடா போடி என்று இரு படங்களில் சிம்பு நடித்து வருகிறார். இவற்றை ஓரமாக வைத்து ஒருநாள் மட்டும் வாலு படத்துக்கான டீசருக்கு நடித்துத் தந்தார். வாலு படப்பிடிப்புக்கு முழு வீச்சில் கிளம்புவார்கள் என்பதே தெ‌ரியாத நிலையில் டீசரை மட்டும் பிரமோட் செய்ய நினைக்கிறார். வேட்டை மன்னன், போடா போடி ரொம்பப் பழசாயிடப் போகுது பாஸ்.

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Google: Cyberspies Have Many Eyes, and Some Are Looking at Gmail

Google has warned some Gmail users about what it suspects are state-sponsored cyberattacks directed at their accounts. Affected users will see warning messages and will be encouraged to change their log-in info an update their computers. Google hasn't identified any specific country or government as responsible for the attacks.
Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) has begun informing certain individual users whom it believes may be the target of state-sponsored cyberattacks. Those users will see a pink ribbon at the top of their Google pages bearing a warning notice. However, the warning only means Google believes the account holder may be a target for phishing, malware or some other form of attack and doesn't necessarily mean the account has been hijacked. Google lists what users can do to protect themselves when they see the warning notice. What Google Is Saying Users should be careful about where they sign in to Google and should look for the URL "https://acounts.google.com/" in their browser bars because attackers often send links to fake sign-in pages to try to steal people's passwords, Google said. On spotting the warning ribbon, users can immediately create a unique password that has a good mix of capital and lower-case letters and punctuation marks and numbers; enable two-step verification for additional security; and update their browsers, operating systems, plugins and document editors, Google stated. Google said the warnings weren't triggered due to any internal systems being compromised or because of any particular attack. Further, the company's alerting only a subset of users whom it believes may be targets of state-sponsored attacks. However, it doesn't state who falls within that subset. Nor does it identify the potential targets by country of residence. Google claims its detailed analysis and victim reports strongly suggest the involvement of states or groups that are state-sponsored. Who's Doing What Where? "If this were a warning coming from a small unknown company, one could speculate with good reason that it's an attempt to get attention," Mike Reagan, vice president of LogRhythm, told TechNewsWorld. "But it doesn't do Google any good to be a fear-monger." It seems strange that a nation-state would bother to target members of the general public when attacks on specific targets would yield much richer rewards, but "it's the shotgun effect -- you spray your shot widely and you'll hit someone," Randy Abrams, an independent security consultant, told TechNewsWorld. "You don't want to focus where the targets can easily protect against attacks; you go where people are searching, you statistically know where they're searching on the Web, and you've got a pretty good chance of hitting them." Google did not respond to our request for further details. What About the China Card? As news of Google's warning spread, speculation that it was aimed at the Chinese authorities began making the rounds. There are perhaps grounds for making such an assumption. In June of 2011, Washington and Beijing locked horns over Google's assertion that hackers in China broke into the Gmail accounts of several hundred people, including senior government officials in the United States and political activists. The White House issued a denial that its email system had been hacked. However, security experts pointed out that just because the attacks were launched from servers in China, it didn't mean the hackers were backed by the Chinese government. "It could be any number of countries that would like a path to hitting our economy," LogRhythm's Reagan said. "As it's described, the attack has the potential to chip away at the stability and reliability of one of the leading providers of Internet services ... Ultimately, albeit indirectly, the U.S. takes a hit." Keeping an Eye Peeled Google said its duty is to be proactive in notifying users about attacks or potential attacks so they can protect themselves. "Nobody's going to hate Google for releasing the warnings," Abrams said. "It's a pretty easy win." Google is "evolving their information security infrastructure to detect sophisticated threats," LogRhythm's Reagan suggested. "They also recognize that it's not a matter of if they'll be breached but when, and they've readied themselves for this. Most people will give Google the benefit of the doubt and heed their warning."

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