Monday, October 14, 2013

Sony puts micro ads on Wimbledon player, ushers in an era of 4K marketing

Sony serves up world-first campaign at Wimbledon

The British public will need to take a closer look at Anne Keothavong during this year's Wimbledon Championship - as the tennis star is sporting micro-sized advertisements.

Sony has launched an unusual campaign to place microtising, the word being a hybrid of microscopic and advertising, on Keothavong in a bid to highlight how every detail matters at this year's Wimbledon.

For the first time ever, parts of The Championships will be shot and recorded in 4k Ultra HD –a cutting edge technology that provides footage with four times greater resolution than that of standard HD – meaning even the smallest detail will stand out. Sony's two flagship 4k models – the 55X9 BRAVIA and 65X9 BRAVIA – launch in-store today.

Anne Keothavong will be sporting the microscopic adverts on her fingernails, hem of her skirt, shoelaces and sporting equipment.

The tennis star, currently ranked as number five within the UK, sees the funny side of the campaign: "This is a real laugh, I've got a lot of friends and family paying attention to the smallest detail – I've had it on my shoe laces, my index finger and the hem of my skirt, but there are a few hidden places no one has noticed yet."

Paul Gyles, Marketing Head of Sony Televisions commented: "With more footage being generated in 4k people are going to see every single detail and get much closer to the action. We thought we'd push it to the limit by running a microtising campaign – proving that Sony televisions can pick up on the smallest details."

"4k Ultra HD is a fairly new technology, and with two new television models available in-store from today it is going to become more commonplace. Marketing campaigns such as this could become a regular occurrence as the market penetration for 4k continues to increase."

Sony has two of its highly popular 4k cameras capturing the action at Wimbledon – the F55 35mm 4k camera and an NEX-FS700.

The microtising campaign will run for the duration of Anne Keothavong's involvement at Wimbledon, with the potential of it being replicated at future sporting events to be filmed in 4k.

Mick Desmond, Commercial Director of the All England Lawn Tennis Club said: "The Championships may be the oldest tennis tournament in the world, but that doesn't mean we're behind the times as proven by the cutting edge 4k Ultra HD partnership we're running in conjunction with Sony this year. We're very proud to be the first tennis tournament – and indeed one of the first major sporting events globally – to embrace this new technology."

The new 55X9 4k Ultra HD BRAVIA and 65X9 4k Ultra HD BRAVIA featuring 4k X-Reality PRO, Magnetic Fluid speakers and Triluminos display are available in-store today. Find out more at local Sony Centres or sony.co.uk


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Coach Taps Reed Krakoff’s Successor, Ending Marc Jacobs Rumors

Two months after Reed Krakoff announced that he was leaving Coach to focus on his eponymous brand, his successor has been announced: It's Stuart Vevers, former creative director of Loewe, a Spanish-based fashion house owned by LVMH, WWD reports. The appointment follows some rather far-fetched speculations about who might take the spot, including Mulberry's newly jobless Emma Hill, Chloé’s Clare Waight Keller, Derek Lam, Phillip Lim, Kate Spade's Deborah Lloyd, and even Marc Jacobs. Hey, these names made Coach look good! It's surprising the brand didn't let the rumors percolate for longer.

Krakoff's contract with Coach will expire in June 2014, but he's previously said he may exit earlier if his successor is ready. Vevers's exact start date hasn't been decided yet, per WWD, but the brand probably wants him in soon. Remember, they're also in the midst of transitioning another major executive role: Longtime CEO Lew Frankfort will retire in January, when the company's current president, Victor Luis, will take over his job (Frankfort will stay on as Coach's executive chairman). They've got plenty of time to iron things out, sure, but these are very large moving parts to coordinate.

So, who is this Stuart Vevers? He's helmed Loewe for five years and was previously the creative director of Mulberry from 2005 to 2008 (so there's at least some Emma Hill connection). Earlier in his career, he cut his teeth at Louis Vuitton, Givenchy, Bottega Veneta, and Calvin Klein — all brands with thriving accessories lines, as well as notable ready-to-wear collections. Loewe (pronounced lo-way-vay, not like the home-improvement store) is famous in Europe and Asia for their very expensive Amazona bags, but it's not widely known in the U.S. because they only broke into the New York market three years ago. Perhaps Vevers's appointment signals a shift to a more Europe- and Asia-friendly sensibility at Coach. 


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Zoom Shot: See How Johnny Depp Wears Bronzer

Johnny Depp appeared on the red carpet of The Lone Ranger premiere over the weekend wearing his signature tinted glasses, a dapper pinstripe suit and ... a faceful of man makeup. Event photographers rarely Photoshop their images, so it's safe to say that Depp's matte mug is not technologically prettified but powdered up and bronzed-out. He's even sporting dots of pigmented powder, à la Lynn Yaeger on his cheeks, in perfect little circles. There's a chance his makeup artist forgot to blend those out for a more subtle, contoured effect. More realistically, it's probably just age and sun spots (he is 50, after all). Which in that case, wear sunscreen everyone! 


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Gigabit Squared outlines Seattle fiber prices: 1Gbps for $80 per month

Gigabit Squared Unveils Residential Pricing for Local Ultra-High-Speed Fiber Network Service in Seattle

Early neighborhoods announced: University West Campus District, First Hill, Capitol Hill and Central Area

SEATTLE, June 24, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Gigabit Squared today unveiled residential pricing for the ultra-high-speed fiber-to-the-home broadband network it plans to launch locally in 2014. The Gigabit Squared fiber network will initially be made available to neighborhoods located within the West Campus District, First Hill, Capitol Hill and Central Area of Seattle as part of a program called Gigabit Seattle.

"We are excited about the limitless possibilities our network can bring to the residents located in these areas and are confident that the affordability and high speed performance of our fiber network will be well received," said Mark Ansboury, president of Gigabit Squared. He added, "We will be providing our customers with significantly greater speed and accessibility than what's out there today for about the same price...a true value. This will be backed by a level of customer service that will surpass anything anyone has ever experienced before."

Gigabit Squared's fiber broadband services will be 50 to 1,000 times faster than typical cable modem or DSL Internet access services. Unlike most Internet access services, Gigabit Squared's offerings will be symmetrical (equal upstream and downstream data rates) to enable interactive services that require two-way sharing of video, audio, images, and other large files in real time.

"We're one step closer to bringing gigabit speed broadband to Seattle," said Mayor Mike McGinn. "We are leveraging our new public-private partnership with the University of Washington and Gigabit Squared to help Seattle compete in the global economy. I'm excited to see how our residents and businesses can innovate with this new infrastructure."

Gigabit Squared's simplified fiber network pricing plans for Seattle will be structured as follows:

1) Installation Charge: Installation charges will be waived for customers signing a one-year contract for 100 Mbps service or greater. Otherwise, a $350 installation fee is required.

2) Service Plan Options:

Plan A:
5 Mbps download/1 Mbps upload: No charge for 60 months
5/1 Mbps services are transferrable to new renters or owners
After 60 months renters or owners can convert to a 10 Mbps download/10 Mbps upload service plan for only $10 per month

Plan B:
100 Mbps download/100 Mbps upload for $45 per month
No installation charge with one- year contract

Plan C:
1000 download/1000 upload Mbps for $80 per month
No installation charge with one-year contract

Since the launch of the Gigabit Seattle website in December, thousands of Seattle residents have already expressed an interest in the service. Ansboury commented, "We will be announcing a simple sign-up process next month that will make it easy for people to sign up for the service that best meets their individual needs. This will help us prioritize the neighborhood rollout schedule. We can't wait to make this available to as many residents as possible and look forward to our initial program's success so we can quickly expand into other areas of Seattle."


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Fantasy or Fun? The Rise of ‘Ideal Boyfriends’ on Tumblr

Elizabeth Pride, a 23-year-old social worker in Philadelphia, was feeling homesick for her native Maine. While Facebook chatting with a friend one night last winter, she started joking about being single, and things took a decidedly Northeast turn: "I said my ideal man would look like an LL Bean Model. I kept making jokes like, 'I want to build a fire with this man.'"

Pride uploaded a hunky photo of an LL Bean model in wicked good flannel to Tumblr, added a caption — "'We don't have to paint the barn door today,' said Daniel. 'Let's go sailing instead.'" — and a viral website was born. The Tumblr, Your LL Bean Boyfriend, remains just as popular today by imagining a world where the broad-shouldered, strong-jawed, capital-M man is as sensitive as he is outdoorsy, bringing you extra marshmallows for your hot chocolate and cooking you breakfast in bed with organic eggs.

Ideal Boyfriend websites, as you might call them, are a form of romantic storytelling that has sprung up in the new decade. Consider them an offshoot of the female-dominated world of fan fiction, distilled into the meme of one dreamy but tender man — Ryan Gosling — and his made-up catchphrase, "Hey Girl." The sites are a fun way for grown-ups to update and critique the squealing tween sexuality of ripping out a One Direction centerfold from Tiger Beat. And while the Ideal Boyfriend genre has ping-ponged around the web in various forms — Bangable Dudes in History, or the Elliott Gould–chic of Nerd Boyfriend — it has found its perfect goofy-yet-adoring form on the image-heavy, text-lite world of Tumblr, purchased by Yahoo last month for a billion dollars.

On that network, Ideal Boyfriend websites have multiplied, including Bangable Dudes in Pro Cycling, Hotties From History, and Your Urban Outfitters Boyfriend. What makes a site like this last beyond a three-month stint is a particular combination of good-looking men and a narrative both romance-novel-worthy and strange: Along with Your LL Bean Boyfriend, the best out there include Bon Iver Erotica — an epic tale of living an authentic farmsteading life with the sensitive indie rocker, using his promo shots as source material — and My Daugerrotype Boyfriend, where ye olde photos of nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century poets and gentlemen lead to ye olde lustful feelings.

Like Pride's Facebook chat jokes, Bon Iver Erotica was born out of similar desires for a man rugged enough to birth a foal and thoughtful enough to take you for a picnic on a mountaintop. Three writers in Boulder, Colorado — Anna Sawyer, Alice Warren-Gregory, and Alex Finkel (a man) — discussed the "mystical, romantic, brusque-yet-sensitive woodsy appeal," Sawyer says, of musician Justin Vernon, as embodied by a seventeen-minute-long video of him playing the piano and singing.

They weren't even fans of the music, but after they put the jokes on Tumblr, the site went viral in 24 hours. While a certain rugged style has crept into menswear recently, the real life of the men wearing Carhartt and Filson in cities often doesn’t match up to the workwear roots of those brands, or the guys who originally  wore them. In Pride and Sawyer's world, the hipster Americana costume of cool is rewritten into an indulgent, appealing fantasy where men still exude that industrial masculinity while also being handsome enough to make a throwback vest look good.

Other sites, like My Daugerrotype Boyfriend, the project of Lapham's Quarterly associate editor Michelle Legro, celebrate different types of semi-abandoned masculinity. It was a natural evolution from another Tumblr blog, Fuck Yeah History Crushes: "I saw a post on this criminal portrait from the Newcastle City Gaol circa 1871," Legro told the Cut. "Each portrait included the prisoner's crime and a few salient facts. The entire database read like a dating profile for a bunch of badasses who liked grifting, stealing boots, and sneaking into houses.” The idea being that these guys are tough, yet not as rough (and much more attractive) than men in contemporary mug shots.

Maybe the greatest metric of these sites' success are the spinoffs: Bon Iver has yielded Aurotica, "a site where a girl reads our posts aloud," Bon Iver Breakup Stories, and Bon Iver Sad Stories. LL Bean has been the catalyst for other crushed-out sites on catalogue models, and even Jezebel got into it, riffing on Your Carhartt Boyfriend. As of yet, no successful sites with women characters exist, even though Pride has worked infrequently and unsuccessfully on Your LL Bean Girlfriend.

With so many men on display, are these websites a long-overdue phenomenon? A guilty pleasure? A future novelty book? (Possibly; Pride and Sawyer mentioned book proposals, Legro has sold her own My Daugerrotype Boyfriend calendars.) Or a journey into a distinctly different female gaze? For Pride, the roots of LL Bean could be explained by women's studies: Instead of seeing female sexuality as shameful, she says her “underlying nefarious plan is to make people see that it's okay to look and explore the things they like." Sawyer, on the other hand, calls Bon Iver "idiotic art. At the end of the day, I'm doing it because it's hilarious." But the feedback is often more sincere than that: "Some of the women reading really want this," she adds. "We get these passionate e-mails saying this is my dream date." Of course, the longing (whether funny or not) doesn't always match up to the reality: When Vernon’s ex-girlfriend, musician Kathleen Edwards, first found Bon Iver Erotica, she responded on Twitter: "A girl can dream."

But that idea persists online, away from the reality of dating, where people don't even use the words boyfriend or girlfriend and connection can be mediated or ruined by screens. An Ideal Boyfriend won't stare at his iPhone while on a date; he'll pay attention to you and take you to the beach, where he'll make you a bonfire with wood that he chopped in the morning. Most important, an Ideal Boyfriend — or the very existence of his type — makes you laugh. If the Tumblr generation of young women is free to fan over the likes of Benedict Cumberbatch without being mocked, an Ideal Boyfriend website is one step beyond being a Cumberbitch, taking impossible love and layering a funny story on top.

In other words, these websites give women a safe space to laugh at their desires, where they can explore the idea of what they want in a partner in a socially-relevant way. What gives these sites their viral appeal is the air-quotes-like ironic humor at play, especially when compared to, say, losing your shit over Justin Bieber as a legitimate fan. In that way, these sites don’t speak to anything that women want in a partner. They critique the gap — for all of us — between fantasy and reality. Because, after all, it's just a joke. Right?


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Saints Row IV banned in Australia due to 'unjustified' evil

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Saints Row IV banned in Australia due to 'unjustified' evil

For every tearful accountant at Saints Row HQ, there must be a gleeful marketing person punching the air, playing mini golf and doing whatever else marketing people do when they're full of glee. Conflicted emotions aside, however, game publisher Deep Silver can now claim the notorious distinction of having its latest title, Saints Row IV, rejected outright by the Australian Classification Board (ACB). It's the first such refusal since the ACB implemented a new R18+ rating, which is meant to allow for adult themes within games but which evidently couldn't cope with Saints Row's peculiar depictions of sexual violence (which were "not justified by context") or its drug-themed reward system (which is "prohibited by the computer games guidelines"). According to The Guardian, this effectively means Saints Row IV is banned from sale in retail stores in Australia, but Joystiq has received word from Deep Silver saying it intends to create a "reworked" version of its open world game specifically for that country. Meanwhile, the regular version has been given PEGI 18 and ESRB M ratings elsewhere, and it looks to be on track for an August release date.

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