Gaby Darbyshire, Gawker Media’s longtime chief operating officer, is leaving the company.

Or maybe she has already left. Ask different people at Nick Denton’s blog network about Darbyshire’s departure date and you’ll get different results. Some think she left last summer; others say last fall, and others insist that she’s still doing a few last things for Denton.

Details! The gist: Darbyshire, a Brit who kept all of Denton’s trains running and his employees out of (severe) legal trouble for the last decade-plus, is going to do something new.

Here’s her official take on the matter, delivered via email: “I had a great run with Nick at Gawker, but I want to do some other projects. Given that the company has matured into a well-oiled machine, it was the right time for me to move on, and change is a good thing for everyone.”

To get a sense of how important Darbyshire was to Denton, consult this excellent 2010 New York Observer profile, written by John Koblin, who now works for Denton at his Deadspin sports site.

Key paragraph:

Virtually all editors who have worked with the site agree that she’s very good at her very busy job, which is not just limited to being the head counsel. She is a sort of everywoman at Gawker, wearing hats that include overseeing law, finance, business development, the 401(k) deals, HR issues, maternity leave policy (which, as a testament to Gawker growing bigger and bigger, now needs to be drafted) — almost anything that is money-related and doesn’t deal with editorial or advertising.

Beyond her crucial role as Gawker’s chief grownup, Darbyshire was also notable for her long tenure. Gawker Media employees come and go all the time — last month, for instance, Gizmodo editor Joe Brown left for Wired; in January, Ray Wert left, just a half year after Denton put him in charge of “content creation” for advertisers – but Darbyshire has been with Denton forever.

Back in May, Denton shuffled his staff around and announced that he was putting Darbyshire in charge of international expansion efforts. Here’s the relevant part of that memo, for Gawker Media completists:

Our international efforts warrant greater attention — and that means a shift in responsibilities for Gaby Darbyshire and a cascade of job moves affecting Scott and others.

Currently, licensing provides some 8% of revenues — but a significantly greater portion of after-tax earnings. That’s pretty normal for a US-centric content company at our stage of development.

But software companies such as search engines can easily make 50% of their revenue overseas. As our language-independent discussion technology platform becomes more important, so will the international business.

As some of you know, we are expanding beyond our existing partnerships in Europe, Japan, Brazil and Australia. Our embryonic relationships in the Middle East, China and India will require much more cultivation — and the bulk of Gaby’s focus.

BlackBerry may be losing favor with some U.S. government agencies, but the company is drumming up new business abroad.

Germany’s Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) this week approved a deal under which the country’s government will purchase 5,000 BlackBerry Z10s for employee use. The devices are all to be outfitted with Secusmart technology, which will bring to them additional security measures like data encryption and secure voice and text messaging.

The deal is a nice win for BlackBerry, which over the past few years has lost its footing in the enterprise market it long dominated. Now, with its new BlackBerry 10 operating system and devices like the Z10, the company is doing all it can to retain those bread-and-butter enterprise customers. This contract with the German government is an encouraging sign that some of those efforts are paying off.

But it’s a tough battle. As I’ve written here before, BlackBerry’s fight for the enterprise space is beginning to look a lot like the one already lost in the consumer space.

With the consumerization of IT in full swing, and more companies offering “Bring Your Own Device” plans to their employees, BlackBerry is losing its grip on enterprise. By losing the smartphone battle in the consumer market, the company has put its position in the enterprise market at risk. Now it must struggle for relevance in a broader market in which the lines between consumer and enterprise are blurring. And that’s a tough place to be for a company that has only recently fielded a competitive smartphone OS.

Read the full story at Gizmodo.

Read the full story at Mashable.

Everpix is an online photo storage system that’s trying very hard to be the Flickr that everybody wants. Its latest crack is at this is an “Explore” feature which uses image analysis to sort all of the photos in your collection into content categories like, “animals”, “city”, and “nature”. It works decently, and it’ll only get smarter over time.

First a little background: Everpix has been around for a few years but nobody knows about it yet even though it’s a very good online locker for photos. Rather than bombard you with disjointed features like Flickr or your traditional local storage programs (iPhoto, Aperture), it opts for simplicity.

After adding your Flickr, Instagram, Facebook, etc accounts, Everpix imports your photos to its servers. It then churns them using proprietary image analysis to make browsing your collection easier—showing you the most important or compelling image from each batch. So if you took 10 photos on Saturday night, Everpix will show you the representative shot. (You can upload your photos as well, by the way.)

The idea is that you don’t need to go through and do this all yourself. But more than the sorting, what’s different is Everpix’s speedy interface. Browsing my personal collection of thousands of photos taken over the last eight years is so fast and easy that it makes Flickr just feel dumb. Imagine scrolling through Facebook’s photo albums except it’s every photo you’ve ever taken, and Facebook doesn’t own it.

The main problem is that if you want to add more metadata to your collection, you can’t, really. The new Explore feature, which sorts photos for you is supposed to help with this. Unfortunately, the contextual analysis isn’t all the way there yet. It finds people and nature well (above), but, uh, the inside guts of my old QSC Series One power amplifier isn’t “animals”. I mean, it’s an animal, but you know, not my pet rabbit:

In short, Everpix is fast, but all of the rich tagging and sorting experiences you’re used to on other services aren’t there. Yes, with more data and development, Everpix will get smarter. But more than that what you’re getting is the satisfaction of browsing your collection quickly online. The full-featured service with unlimited storage costs $50 per year or $5 per month, which is pretty reasonable considering what a service like Dropbox costs. There’s a scaled back free version that lets you see a year of photos from free.

At first glance it’s easy to dismiss this memo board alarm clock as being just another piece of technocrappery from Brando. But how often do you wake in the middle of the night with a brilliant idea you don’t want to forget?

When you’re half asleep the last thing you want to do is fumble with your smartphone or battle its keyboard’s autocorrect. You need an easier way to denote your inspiration, brilliant invention, or snappy comeback—and what could be simpler than a bedside memo board? It’s just $19 and not only does it glow, making it impossible to miss what you’ve written when you’re finally awake, but Brando has also crammed a four port USB hub in there as well. That’s like having your cake, and eating it, and having a place to plug in your smartphone. Brilliant.

[Brando via The Red Ferret Journal]

The game starts at a cemetery. Players must use what ever they have on them, or things they come across on their adventure, to get find Reed’s brother before he is murdered.

To move, tap the screen where you want to walk. You can run by double-tapping. To get a closer look at an object, tap on it and select from the options that appear. For example, if you tap on the statue, you’ll see a magnifying glass, a hand, and an inventory icon. You can either examine the statue closer, try to manipulate something on the statue with your bare hands (or pick something up if that is an option) or try to use something in your inventory with it.

In each section of the game, players must figure out what to do next. Once you figure out how to get into the mausoleum, you’ll have to figure out how to free the killer’s victim. Some mysteries can only be solved when you’ve discovered the answer to another puzzle first.

To see all of the things you can interact with, touch and hold the screen. Things like statues, lever, and so on, will have a label next to it. To activate Erica’s intuition, touch the glowing globe in the bottom corner of the screen. Anything that she can see premonitions from will be glowing.

The game is very suspenseful. Even the soundtrack lends itself to the eeriness and urgency that Erica faces when searching for her brother. The story is interesting and involving. There is a lot of cussing and violence, you won’t want your little ones playing this game, but it is great for the grownups.

What I liked: The puzzles are challenging, but not too difficult to figure out. The plot of the story is riveting. The sound track is creepy and makes you want to hurry up and save the day.

What I didn’t like: The game loads slowly and I was unable to access my saved game at all. I had to start over from the beginning. Hopefully, this issue will be fixed in an update because it makes me not want to play at all if it means having to start over each time.

To Buy or not to Buy: Fans of deep adventure mystery games will enjoy this epic journey. It is rated for 17 or older so don’t let your kids play it. I’d also try a sample save before you get too far. If you end up not being able to save your game, it will be frustrating for you later. You can try the game for free with the sample version, too.

• Name: Cognition: Episode 1
• Version Reviewed: 1
• Category: Games
• Developer: Phoenix Online Studios
• Price: $3.99
• Score:

]]> http://newiphonegadget.wordpress.com/2013/06/15/cognition-is-both-a-blessing-and-a-curse-for-erica-reed-ipad-app-review/feed/ 0 newiphonegadget Cognition 1 Cognition 4 Cognition 3 Cognition 2 Cognition 6 Cognition 5 http://newiphonegadget.wordpress.com/2013/06/15/ipad-clearly-still-top-choice-with-consumers-almost-50-of-prospective-tablet-buyers-want-an-ipad/ http://newiphonegadget.wordpress.com/2013/06/15/ipad-clearly-still-top-choice-with-consumers-almost-50-of-prospective-tablet-buyers-want-an-ipad/#comments Sat, 15 Jun 2013 15:06:53 +0000 newiphonegadget http://newiphonegadget.wordpress.com/?p=1601 ]]>

In Apple’s first quarter revenue call, the company reported that it had sold a whopping 23 million iPads during the holiday season, thanks to the release of the iPad mini in October.

Both the iPad mini and the fourth generation iPad have proven to be incredibly popular, and according to a new report from the Yankee Group, the iPad is still the number one tablet that prospective buyers are interested in purchasing.

Among the 506 potential tablet buyers surveyed, 47 percent of them plan on buying an Apple iPad. The next closest competitors were Amazon and Samsung, with 7 percent of those interviewed planning to buy one of Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablets, and 6 percent planning to buy a Samsung tablet like the Galaxy Note.

Many other tablets, from manufacturers like HP, Dell, Sony, BlackBerry, Acer, Google, Microsoft, and Motorola, barely registered, with few people preferring those tablets over the three major players. Only 1 percent of those surveyed expressed an interest in one of Microsoft’s new Surface tablets.

Apple’s dominance in this survey is unsurprising because the Cupertino-based company has led the pack in tablet marketshare since the iPad was originally introduced in 2010. With the ultra thin iPad mini and the svelte but robust fourth generation iPad, competitors don’t stand much of a chance.

Still, in recent months, Samsung has been heavily advertising its Galaxy Note line of tablets, which are similar in size to Apple’s popular iPad mini. Yankee Group believes that Samsung is in the best position to compete with Apple on tablet sales, due to the success of Samsung’s smartphones. Samsung is planning to continue to make a push into the tablet market, shipping 40 million units in 2013 and focusing heavily on advertising.

Samsung recently revealed its new 8-inch Galaxy Note tablet at the Mobile World Congress in Spain, which will be a sold as an iPad mini competitor across the globe. Thus far, the Galaxy Note has not managed to provide serious competition for the iPad, so it will be interesting to see how much of an impact a heavy advertising campaign will have on future tablet sales.

]]> http://newiphonegadget.wordpress.com/2013/06/15/ipad-clearly-still-top-choice-with-consumers-almost-50-of-prospective-tablet-buyers-want-an-ipad/feed/ 0 newiphonegadget tabletpurchases http://newiphonegadget.wordpress.com/2013/06/14/youtubes-show-me-the-money-problem/ http://newiphonegadget.wordpress.com/2013/06/14/youtubes-show-me-the-money-problem/#comments Fri, 14 Jun 2013 15:09:35 +0000 newiphonegadget http://newiphonegadget.wordpress.com/?p=1598 ]]>

The big picture for YouTube looks good. The world’s biggest video site keeps getting bigger, generating more video views and more ad dollars.

Things are fuzzier for some of YouTube’s biggest programming partners. Their views are also increasing. But the ad revenue YouTube generates for their stuff isn’t keeping pace.

In the near term, that’s pushing many big YouTube networks and partners to look hard for new sources of revenue. The bigger question is whether YouTube will be able to generate enough ad money for content makers to support the “premium” programming it has been trying to attract so it can compete with traditional TV.

“It’s hard, given YouTube’s low [revenue-sharing] numbers and lack of marketing infrastructure to make the unit economics for premium programming work,” says Steve Raymond, who runs Big Frame, a YouTube network/programmer that says it has generated 3.2 billion views.

The dollars programmers earn from YouTube’s ad-selling efforts range widely. But many big publishers say that after YouTube takes its 45 percent cut of the ads it sells, they frequently end up keeping about $2.50 for every 1,000 views their clips generate — that is, if their video generates a million views, they get $2,500. Other publishers say their split can be as high as $10 per 1,000.

Those rates were supposed to improve in the last year, in part because of YouTube’s splashy effort to create advertising-friendly “channels” by advancing programmers like Big Frame millions of dollars to make exclusive shows for the site. Last May, it hosted a glitzy “Brandcast” event in New York, where it brought out stars like Jay-Z to sell marketers on the idea that YouTube should command TV-like dollars.

Instead, according to people in and outside of YouTube, last year the site ended up with a glut of inventory, which put even more pressure on ad rates.

Last fall, YouTube invited top programmers for a sneak peek at YouTube Space, a glitzy new production studio it built in Los Angeles; at the event, many of them took the occasion to gripe about the site. “Every single person in the entertainment group complained to [YouTube content executive] Alex Carloss: ‘We’re not making enough money,’” said an attendee.

Late last year, Machinima, a videogame-focused network that generates billions of YouTube views a month, reworked contracts for many of the video contributors it represents, and let others go completely. The problem, according to people familiar with the programmer, was that it had guaranteed video makers a pay-per-view rate that was higher than the payouts it was getting from YouTube.

Now Machinima, like other big YouTube programmers, is looking to augment its YouTube ad dollars by selling some of its shows via subscriptions, according to people familiar with its plans. Maker Studios, another big “multichannel network,” is looking to boost revenue via alternate streams like iTunes soundtrack sales, among other strategies.

Many big programmers are also concentrating on selling their own “integrations” with advertisers, where stars talk about or use marketers’ products, since they don’t have to split those deals with YouTube.

Some, like Vice Media, try to find backers like Intel to pay for their videos before they ever make it to YouTube. “It’s a difficult space to get to scale and to monetize it at the same time,” said Vice Media CEO Shane Smith, whose advertising/production company has plans to run 12 channels for YouTube this year; it recently announced that it has one million subscribers on the site. Relying on YouTube-generated advertising is “not going to be our monetization strategy,” Smith said.

Others are working to direct traffic from YouTube to their own sites. Last year, Freddy Wong, whose amateur special-effects clips have won him millions of fans on YouTube, launched RocketJump, a portal he and his backers created to capture more money from his movies.

Video makers who control their own sites say they are often able to generate much bigger payouts than YouTube provides, and frequently cite CPMs, or ad rates, of $20 per thousand views.

That’s partly because they can offer advertisers bells and whistles that aren’t available on YouTube, like website “skins” featuring advertisers’ logos. But YouTube critics say standalone sites can also outperform YouTube because Google doesn’t have its own YouTube sales force; instead, the site is pitched by all of Google’s sellers, alongside other products, like search ads.

“They don’t have dedicated, 100 percent focused, 100 percent trained people on these sales teams who live and breathe video. It’s that simple,” said a video industry executive. “There isn’t a single person within YouTube that thinks this is the right way to sell video.”

YouTube programmers also complain that Google’s sellers aren’t directed to sell individual shows and networks, but instead focus on broad “audience” buys.

That’s good for Google’s top line, but not for individual shows. It’s also a turnoff for some advertisers, said Mark Pavia, who oversees digital at media shop Starcom USA, which handles more than $10 billion in annual ad spending. ”They tried a model that just wouldn’t work for advertisers,” said Pavia.

Google executives say they don’t have any plans to overhaul their YouTube sales approach. But they do predict that things will get better.

Up until last fall, for instance, YouTube made almost no money from videos watched on mobile phones, which now account for 25 percent of the site’s views. After reclaiming YouTube’s app from Apple and overhauling its Android app, some of those views now generate ad dollars. International traffic, which also represents many of YouTube’s views but often generates tiny ad dollars or none at all, will take longer to improve.

Here’s a statement from YouTube content head Robert Kyncl, who has pushed the site’s “funded channel” strategy:

“A key part of growing the platform is opening up inventory, which enables more partners to succeed by monetizing their content. This can lead CPMs to fluctuate in the short-term, but it’s good for the partner ecosystem long-term. We’re seeing this happen as overall partner viewership, revenue and subscriptions are on the rise.”

Some investors are betting that YouTube will get it right, and that programmers will end up building assets that are as valuable as today’s cable channels. In December, Time Warner led a $36 million funding round for Maker Studios. Last week, Bertelsmann invested in StyleHaul, another multichannel network aimed at fashion-conscious women.

YouTube will make another push for ad dollars in May, when it repeats its marketing event in Manhattan. Starcom’s Pavia is hopeful the site will adjust its pitch this time. “We have very large advertisers who believe in online video,” he said. “[YouTube has] the ability to solve this if they want to.”

Over the weekend, the shipping window for Apple’s new 21.5-inch and 27-inch iMacs narrowed to one to three days from two to three weeks. A dramatic improvement for machines that have been in tight supply since they debuted, but one that’s limited geographically. For, while iMac availability is improving in the U.S., overseas it’s another matter entirely.

Outside the U.S., iMac shipping windows remain at a week or more. In France and the U.K., they’re five to seven business days for the 21.5-inch models and one to two weeks for the 27-inch models. In Germany, the window is two weeks for both models. And in Japan, the 21.5-inch models ship in two to three weeks, and the 27-inch models in three to four weeks. So, overseas, iMac availability clearly remains somewhat constrained.

Why the intercontinental disparity in shipping windows? Simple: Apple has amassed enough North American inventory to meet expected demand. But this is true only of the iMac’s four standard models. The addition of any customization, even if it’s simply swapping in a trackpad for a mouse, pushes the device’s ship time back out to two to three weeks. Outside the U.S., the story is the same as it has been to date. IMac supplies still aren’t at the level Apple wants. As CEO Tim Cook noted on the company’s last earnings call, “We left the quarter with significant constraints on the iMac. … We are confident that we are going to significantly increase the supply. But the demand here is very strong, and we are not certain that we will achieve a supply-demand balance during the quarter.”

That remains the case today, as these varied shipping windows demonstrate. Which is not to say that Apple isn’t making headway. It is. As I noted here recently, Mac sales rose 31 percent year over year for the month of January, according to NPD, and the reason was likely improved iMac availability. But again, that was in the U.S. To reach supply-demand equilibrium overseas, Apple has to ramp up iMac production even more.