Business, Financial & Legal News - Page 115

Spotify has decided that they will implement specific advertising to peoples 'Discover Weekly' playlists. This advertising is aimed for sponsors to display their advising to the correct audience.

One of the biggest music streaming giants is no doubt the behemoth Spotify, and one of the greatest aspects of Spotify is the option to be able to discover music curated for you generated by Spotify's algorithm. This algorithm is called 'Discovery Weekly' and Spotify have decided that they would like to market that. The first sponsor of Discover Weekly will be Microsoft and Global Media representative, Erin Bevington said "Our work in AI is a central part of that mission to unlock human ingenuity. Our partnership with a technology innovator like Spotify offered a way for us to effectively share that message within a personalized entertainment experience powered by AI."

It should be noted that paid Spotify members will not have to worry about this new coming advertising, as paid members don't receive ads on Spotify anyway. With there being 87 million paid Spotify members out of the 200 million users, there is still a substantial amount of people that will have to deal with this specifically targeted advertising. Especially considering that in a memo regarding this announcement, users who decide to enjoy their Discover Weekly playlist stream more than double the content those who don't.

It was both 2017 and 2018 that were massive rides for the entire cryptocurrency market reaching both new highs and dangerous lows, creating ripples in other industries like the graphics card market where NVIDIA, AMD and soon Intel reside.

Well, NVIDIA in the midst of all of this has been slapped with a bunch of class action lawsuits over statements made over the last 18 months. When cryptocurrency pricing and the mining market was in a very strong position, NVIDIA had statements that the company were "masters at managing" the cryptocurrency market and that it was prepared for any instability in the market and that both gamers and investors alike, didn't need to be worried.

Yeah and then an oversupplied market, and juicin' second hand card market and no competition from AMD, NVIDIA stock then tumbled 50% recently and is still dropping. It hasn't been a good couple of months since the launch of the GeForce RTX series of graphics cards, and now some have lawyered up and hit NVIDIA with some class action lawsuits.

Ford has just t eased something that, well I quite frankly didn't think I'd see right now: a prototype noise-canceling dog kennel for dog owners who have pets that are scared of fireworks, and other loud noises.

The new prototype kennel is just one part of a series of "Interventions" the car maker is working on, where it's throwing the knowledge it has from its noise cancellation technology that it uses in its new Edge SUVs, into a dog kennel. Ford's technology in the car uses microphones to record engine and transmissions sounds, and then uses speakers to play the opposite frequencies, canceling out the noise.

Human and dog hearing is vastly different, as dogs can hear up to 400% further away, so Ford had to put some serious work into the prototype kennel in the hopes of helping dogs that are scared of fireworks (that are used far away). Dogs can hear at high frequencies of between 67Hz to 45,000Hz while our puny human ears only hear frequencies between 20Hz and 20,000Hz.

Nintendo have recently released their sales statistics for a five-day period running from Thanksgiving through until Cyber Monday. The Big N has hit new milestones by raking in a huge $250 million just within this time frame in product sales.

In a recent press release from Nintendo, the company details how they went over the course of Black Friday sales to Cyber Monday. According to the press release, the "Nintendo Switch set two new records from Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday: It became the best-selling Nintendo console in U.S. history for that five-day period, surpassing even Wii system sales." This strong demand in Nintendo products pushed the company to sell more than $250 million dollars worth of Nintendo products within the five-day period from Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday.

According to Nintendo's internal sales figures, the Nintendo Switch sales grew a massive 115% when compared to the same time last year. "Lifetime sales of Nintendo Switch, which is entering only its second holiday season, have reached more than 8.2 million units." The sales data also reveals that 1 million first party titles sold during the period of Nov 22-26, this includes digital downloads as well. Nintendo also mentions the beast title that they haven't released yet, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. Smash Ultimate is Nintendo's flagship title and will definitely be pushing the Switch unit sales even further than they already have gone. For more information, check out the official press release here.

Most of us have woken to the news, gotten home from school or work, or saw it in real-time through notifications that Stan Lee has died at the age of 95.

The Hollywood Reporter confirmed the news after Lee's daughter told TMZ, with Lee starting out in the business in 1939 and created or co-created some of the biggest names in the comic book, and now cinema world. We're talking about Spider-Man, the X-Men, Iron Man, Fantastic Four, the Incredible Hulk, Daredevil, Ant-Man, and many more.

Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige has said: "No one has had more of an impact on my career and everything we do at Marvel Studios than Stan Lee. Stan leaves an extraordinary legacy that will outlive us all. Our thoughts are with his daughter, his family and the millions of fans who have been forever touched by Stan's genius, charisma and heart".

Alibaba has just hosted its annual Global Shopping Festival, which last year sold $30.8 billion of products through 230 countries in just 24 hours, representing a huge 27% increase over the $25.3 billion in sales from the 2017 sales.

But now, Alibaba has a huge milestone for its 2018 annual Global Shopping Festival with a huge $1 billion sold in 85 seconds and $10 billion sold in the first hour. Considering how big the US market is and how popular Black Friday sales are, Black Friday 2017 saw $5 billion in online sales... a number that doesn't begin to come close to the first HOUR of Alibaba's annual sale this year.

Some of the biggest brands in the world are involved in Alibaba's annual Global Shopping Festival (AKA Singles Day), including Apple, Dyson, Nike, and many others.

A recent patent from Nintendo has revealed that the company has plans for making a Game Boy-like casing for touchscreen devices, most likely smart-phones.

From the images we can see that the current plans for the Game Boy casing are buttons placed on top of the devices touchscreen. These buttons will correspond to the screen below the buttons and input the desired key presses through a conductive sheet with nubs beneath the buttons. The nubs will act as if the user is pressing the screen with their finger thus giving seamless control for the user.

It should also be noted that Nintendo were very specific to say that this Game Boy casing is not just going to be used for smart-phones. According to the patent, the casing "may be attached to other electronic equipment such as a tablet terminal that does not have a telephone function." This means that Nintendo could have plans for bringing the Game Boy casing to tablets and maybe even the Nintendo Switch as well. The patent was official filed on March 16, 2018. As soon as there is further information regarding the case I will be sure to update you.

Sensor Tower has broken down the statistics regarding the recent release of Nintendo Switch Online, from the results we can see that Nintendo Switch Online has caused a 76% spike in downloads for the Nintendo Switch Online app, when compared to the previous week.

From the Sensor Tower results, the release of Nintendo Switch Online on September 18th caused the total figure of Nintendo Switch Online app users to be raised to about quarter of the total Nintendo Switch users. With there being around 20 million total Nintendo Switch users, this means that there are now currently 5 million Nintendo Switch Online app users, 33 and 30 percent of those 5 million users are from Japan and the United States. Platform wise, 60 percent was obtained from Google Play and the following 40 percent was sourced from the App Store.

Looking towards the weekly rise in downloads, the week before the launch of Nintendo Switch Online there was only 70,000 downloads of the app worldwide. After the release of Nintendo Switch Online there was a 123,000 new downloads, this means that there was a 76 percent increase when compared to the previous week. If you would like to view the full breakdown on the Sensor Tower website, visit it here.

Qualcomm is NOT happy right now, claiming that Apple has sold its wireless technology over the last few years so that it could unshackle itself from requiring any use of Qualcomm as a company. But the claims get worse: Apple has allegedly stolen Qualcomm IP and handed it to Intel to help super-power their seriously bad 4G/5G modem technology.

Given that Apple sells hundreds of millions of iPhones per year, the requirement of paying Qualcomm for any modem IP in every single iPhone, this move - if proven, would mean Apple doesn't want to pay anything to Qualcomm and will instead steal everything and hand it to their competition. Intel's entire modem business has been disappointing over the years, while Qualcomm makes leaps and bounds with its various IP, especially the upcoming 5G tech.

Apple has previously stated that Qualcomm was abusing its position as the market leader with smartphone modems, as they didn't like the large fees it had to pay the San Diego-based giant. Qualcomm made some of these claims in 2017 but wasn't as harsh as they are now, which it seems with more information on-hand. Qualcomm is now saying that Apple knowingly, and continually shared its modem secrets with Intel, which is a game changer.

SMITE developers Hi-Rez Studios have decided to create three brand new development teams to take care of each of the respective games, introducing Titan Forge Games, Heroic Leap Games and Evil Mojo Games.

Hi-Rez Studios has decided to split its development teams into three separate studios, each of the studios will control the development of each of Hi-Rez Studios' IP's. The first studio is called Titan Forge Games and will be taking control of the eSports success SMITE. The second is Evil Mojo Games and will be taking the helm of the 2018 hero shooter Paladins. The last is Heroic Leap Games and that team will operate Realm Royale, the new battle royale title on Steam.

Each of the first party studios will be overseen by Chris Larson who is now the general manager, his current goal is to establish each of the respective teams and make sure they "fulfil their maximum potential and stay hyper focused on serving their individual player communities," said Larson. According to the press release, Larson has said that "We view game operation as a marathon, not a sprint. Our games are built to provide near constant updates over many years. By giving each major game its own dedicated studio and identity, we empower them to control their own destiny and focus exclusively on their player communities, while still having access to our leading shared publishing services." For more information regarding Hi-Rez Studios, visit their official website here.