Sony said it now expects a net profit of ¥40 billion ($400 million) for the past fiscal year versus a February estimate of ¥20 billion. It also raised its operating profit outlook to ¥230 billion from an earlier ¥130 billion, while lifting its sales estimate to ¥6.8 trillion from ¥6.6 trillion.

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There is but one remedy for the Glass wearer — a bucket of ice water in the face whenever you suspect he has taken you unawares

With the public beta launch of Google Glass, there has been a lot of discussion on why it will or won’t fail. The ultimate benchmark for success is high: After someone has tried Glass, can they imagine life without it?

It’s the wrong question.

Glass is Google’s unintentional public service announcement on the future of privacy. Our traditional bogeyman for privacy was Big Brother and its physical manifestation — closed-circuit TV — but the reality today is closer to what I call Little Sister, and she is socially active, curious, sufficiently tech-savvy, growing up in the land of “free,” getting on with life and creating a digital exhaust that is there for the taking. The sustained conversation around Glass will be sufficient to lead to a societal shift in how we think about the ownership of data, and to extrapolate a bit, the kind of cities we want to live in. For me, the argument that Glass is somehow inherently nefarious misses a more interesting point: It is a physical and obvious manifestation of things that already exist and are widely deployed today, whose lack of physical, obvious presence has limited a mainstream critical discourse.

As a product that is both on-your-face and in-your-face, Glass is set to become a lightning rod for a wider discussion around what constitutes acceptable behavior in public and private spaces. The Glass debate has already started, but these are early days; each new iteration of hardware and functionality will trigger fresh convulsions. In the short term, Glass will trigger anger, name-calling, ridicule and the occasional bucket of thrown water (whether it’s ice water, I don’t know). In the medium term, as societal interaction with the product broadens, signs will appear in public spaces guiding mis/use¹ and lawsuits will fly, while over the longer term, legislation will create boundaries that reflect some form of im/balance between individual, corporate and societal wants, needs and concerns.

So Shoot Me

Of all of the companies and organisations that could bring Glass to market, I’m pleased that Google is the one making a significant investment: A company with a recent record of genuine innovation that stretches/defines social and behavioral norms² with a strong revenue stream and deep enough pockets to have a fighting chance of medium to long-term success. It also helps that the project is considered of strategic importance, and has key executive sponsorship. Less obvious, but no less relevant in this equation, is that the company has a lot to lose, is no longer the media darling, has fucked up enough times in public to know it can do so again (and again), has been humbled by more nimble competitors, has experienced talent drain and understands the impact of this on its culture and its bottom line. Of course, Google can financially afford to fail again: Experimentation and failure is a critical part of its DNA, but while privacy-snafu fines are low, the internal and external cultural costs of Glass failing are high.

All technology challenges the status quo, and if a technology is noticed by consumers/users/constituents at all, it presents for some an opportunity and for others a threat. The perceived and actual threat from Glass comes not from crimes against taste. (Many have commented on the perceived inelegance of the design.) Google’s design team appears to have done a sterling job, if you assume that particular design direction and constraints. Our sense of what is tasteful succeeds or fails as part of a far broader narrative, which they, too, are exploring. Yes, you can find a hundred and one designs of “wearable computing” from the past decade that look similar, but very few are packing the same experience into the same form factor. However, as a connected, sensing object, it is capable of recording and transmitting photos, video and sound directly through content analysis or indirectly through proximate connected devices, other data such as location, temperature, trajectory and so on. In other words, in a worst/best case scenario it could record and measure “everything,” and associate that data to a person. How will this play out?

I want you to try a little experiment. Find somewhere where you can sit and observe people interact with one another. Pick somewhere just out of the throng — the edge of a cafe looking in, a park bench, a doorway close to a market. It’s easier if you choose somewhere you don’t know so well, you’ll have less to unlearn.

Give yourself 30 minutes to view and reflect upon the scene in front of you: Who visits that space, and why; the differences in ritual greetings, and indeed whether or not a person is greeted; how people project who they are; things that signify status and social hierarchy; where objects are placed; the level of interaction with those objects when not in use. What can you see being documented online or off? What can you imagine being documented? Pay particular attention to things that fit your definition of “technology” and reflect upon the things in front of you that once fit this definition but no longer do (my list of were-once-technologies includes the pencil, the wristwatch and the smartphone).

If you’re close enough to other people, you’ll overhear conversations plus bits of conversations that the speakers will allow you to hear, raised, projected, sotto voce and in whispers, combined with body language all serving to emphasize what is said, and the intent of what is communicated. How much of that conversation is directed at the “listener” and how much of it is directed at others in proximity, including you? This rich social choreography is playing out hundreds of billions of times a day across our planet, and is as subtle and delicate as anything appearing in a BBC2 nature documentary.

Of course, people and systems are already capturing (and channeling) content and data in this space in the form of photos, video, background noise on phone or video calls, who is connected to what, and what they are doing. It is likely that Google, Microsoft and Nokia’s Navteq (to name but three) have already systematically mapped this space and are serving up street views online. The difference with Glass is that it threatens surreptitious, unexpected or continuous recording from the perspective of the human-eye/ear view. At this point, it doesn’t matter whether it can support sustained recording for long periods or not; what matters is that the form factor supports this, that it could at some point, and that we all know Google is in the business of selling ads against insight drawn from large volume of data. Continuous, indiscriminate recording in this space is the dragnet fishing of data collection — it’s a destructive technology, a conversation- and privacy-killer.³

Back to our experiment. Take in the scene in front of you. Who owns this space, both legally and figuratively? Who has the rights to do what? By what authority? Who enforces that authority? How do these rights differ for regulars or a first-time visitor? What are the ways people signal the beginning or the end of an activity? And how does that signalling make something more or less acceptable? The obvious clue to activities people have deemed socially unacceptable are often found on hand-scribbled “do not” signs, as in “staff will refuse to serve customers who are on their mobile phone,” or “do not ask for credit.” The more sustained the infringement, the more official-looking the sign.

Today, we falsely assume that our conversations and our images are not by default recorded by other people in proximity.⁴ Not having a persistent record allows us to present a nuanced identity to different people, or groups of people; it provides the space to experiment with what we could be. The risk that what we say will be broadcast, or narrowcasted, to people we don’t know, or may bubble up at some point in the future in the hands of someone serving up ads, fundamentally changes what we want to talk about. The challenge for Glass is that the costs of ownership fall on people in proximity of the wearer, and that its benefits have yet to be proven.

Social Interaction

A number of years ago, while I was working at Nokia, I was asked to explore use cases using an appearance model (a non-working prototype) of a form factor similar to Glass, but clunkier and definitely less refined.⁵ In the first phase of this make-it-up-as-you-go-along-and-see-what-works study, we hired students in Tokyo to act out various scenarios, including content browsing, viewing and game-play using gestures and voice commands, in a range of contexts: At home, on a commuter train, on a long-distance train, in a hotel lobby, in a park, a cafe, and while walking along. The research team then noted interaction issues with the glasses, carefully observing social reactions from people in proximity before finally interviewing the actors/actresses for their own experience.⁶

Fans of Milgram’s New York subway experiment will be happy to note that our actors and actresses felt extremely self-conscious about wearing nonstandard glasses, and awkward about acting out the scenarios, particularly in contexts where there were others in close proximity. A number of the things we learned from this study surprised us:

• Most of what we “see” at any time is out of focus in the periphery where as long as the things going on in peripheral vision don’t trigger a threat response will probably pass the glance test. It will be interesting to see whether Glass is perceived as a threatening object and thus may force others in proximity of a wearer to maintain a hyperawareness of the wearer and their own actions — whereas today they are currently able to relax. This would be, in effect, like a blanket tax on the collective attention of society.⁷
• Spoken interaction is awkward for almost everyone in confined spaces on systems with less than 100 percent accuracy. An interface built around short responses to contextually understood events will be the dominant form of interaction.
• Gesture interaction is just as awkward in close spaces, and in many instances will restrict regular use and/or in a vocabulary of “quiet gestures.” To get a sense of how this plays out, the next time you are on the subway and have people sitting on either side, raise your hands in front of your face or look down and move your hands in your field of vision. Even simple gestures require upper-arm/shoulder movements, which, when you are sitting shoulder to shoulder, impact fellow passengers. A Glass wearer who wants to maintain the social cohesion in that context (and not all will be that self-aware or considerate) can mitigate this by pausing interactions for the moment when they are appropriate, or more likely by avoiding interactions in that context.
• In contexts where social interaction is required — sitting with friends around a table in a cafe, say — Glass will create a situation where people are not sure whether they or the contents of the display are engaging the wearer.
• In-ear or close-to-ear (inductive) audio changes the wearer’s enjoyment of food and drink — a problem for an otherwise prime use case: Watching movies at home, where snacks and beverages might naturally be consumed.
• Humans tend to fall asleep in contexts where they are seated, safe, and there is minimal physical movement — providing opportunities to design for disengagement.
• Humans have a vested interest in tracking changing emotional states of the people around them. This will introduce “Are you lookin’ at me?” moments where others in proximity assume that a smile, tear or frown is triggered by their own presence, and will spur people to send inappropriate content to their Glass-wearing peers, with a weary inevitability that will include this but is far less likely to include this (or is it the other way around?). In some contexts, these moments will lead to confrontation. Read the footnote in this article in the Atlantic, by Ta-Nehisi Coates, and imagine introducing erratic behavior into the equation. Amplify to billions of social interactions a day.

What starts out as a fairly broad set of use cases rapidly starts to narrow.

Tooling Up

I’ve got a confession to make. Frog, the design and innovation consultancy where I work, has recorded thousands of conversations around the world, videotaped many more, tailed people around town and nosed around people’s homes — opening cupboards and drawers, asking personal questions where there were none. All with their permission, and all in the name of research. There are a few things we’ve learned that relate to the broader discussion of what is collected by whom, how and why, and how it is used; you’ll see why these are relevant in a moment.

Any idiot can collect data. The real issue is how to collect data in such a way that meets both moral and legal obligations and still delivers some form of value.

• Ownership. People are naturally suspicious of what they don’t know. The simple act of giving them control over the process or the objects/technologies we carry defuses initial suspicion. A few simple field-research techniques can rapidly build trust. These include handing someone you’ve just met on the street a $5,000 camera and then ignoring them to concentrate on a conversation with their friends. This shows we trust them. And then they trust us.
• Clear On/Off States. Most people have (at least initial) concerns about being recorded. There are numerous effective ways that we in Frog’s design research team emphasize the transition between on and off: From how a camera or other recording device is held when not in use. It is useful to think of a camera as a gun: Understand the impact that bringing it out can have on any given context; only take it out if you’re prepared to use it and be careful where you point it.
• Reciprocity. Today it is easy to maintain a persistent connection between the researcher and the participant — often in the form of a social media account or email address. You’ve asked something of them, and they have the right and now have a channel through which to ask something of you.
• Full circle: We give participants the opportunity to review, delete or own any of the data collected on them by the research team. This is normally carried out at the end of the session, after any reward is handed over (so they are not pressured into letting us keep data) and before any data consent form is signed (so they better understand the implications of what they are signing). A team that knows the data will be reviewed by the participant changes what they collect in the first place; it becomes self-policing. More than any training, this simple principle helps keep teams honest and operating within social norms.

A few simple steps lower the more obviously anti-social aspects of Glass. The evolution of body language that helps communicate Glass’s current state, e.g. pushed above the head to show that it is not in use; a literacy around the spoken commands that communicate the current task that the user is engaged in “take panorama” or “grindr lookup”; and showing whether the camera and other recording mechanisms are in use or disabled.

Glass has four design principles for developers that focus on the Glass wearer’s user experience: “design for Glass,” “don’t get in the way,” “keep it timely,” and “avoid the unexpected.”⁸ As challenging as it is to find a compelling use-case (beyond porn), these principles are aimed at the wrong people — Glass wearers, rather than those in proximity.

Two complementary principles will go some way toward accommodating the concerns of people in proximity and lower social barriers to adoption:

• Proximate Transparency: Allow anyone in proximity to access the same feed that the wearer is recording or seeing and view it through a device of their choosing. Make it easy to identify the Glasses themselves and to trace them back to the wearer. This simple act can help demystify the technology, create a broader sense of ownership of its inclusion in any given space. The reality is that very few people would be interested in jacking in and the act of having an open stream will change the behavior of what is watched. For many this won’t be enough of a step; it is after all an opt-out measure for people who have the technological know how and literacy to — forcing people in proximity to do something for dubious gain.
• Remote Control: allow identifiable people in proximity to control Glass’s recording functionality and have access to the output of what was recorded. Allowing others to demonstrably benefit from the utility of Glass will make it part of the social landscape.

Pedestal or a Pauper’s Grave?

One could argue that the form taken by Glass offers up a lazy futurist’s vision of what might be — take the trajectory of one product (displays becoming smaller/cheaper/more efficient over time) and integrate it with another (eyeglasses), sprinkle in connectivity and real-time access to content and big-data-analytics. Our expectations of what it could be are raised in part because this join-the-dots vision of the future fits neatly into Western un/popular young-male culture, from “The Terminator” through to Halo. Glass has a certain inevitability about it, like the weight of expectation on of child born to a great composer or, if you will, to a middle-aged suicide. As any visitor to Yodobashi camera over the past decade will tell you, the hardware technologies that make Glass hardly feel novel (and for recent competitors, see Sony, Golden-i, or this Telepathy device prototype) but neither do they need to be, because this is all about how they are brought together into a holistic experience.

There are of course alternative visions of this connected future that are far more discrete, taking connected, sensing things and embedding them in the world around us to inform, guide, direct, cajole, tax, enrich us and the things around us. It’s an area worthy of an essay in its own right, but for now, here are a few pointers to people, places and things that have helped inform my sense of this space: Dan Hill at City of Sound; the MIT Senseable City Lab; Design Interactions at the Royal College of Art; Tisch ITP; BERG, Nicholas Nova and Julian Bleecker at the Near Future Laboratory help stretch our understanding of what could be; Curious Rituals in conjuction with students at the Arts Center College of Design in particular is a lovely piece of work; living for more than a decade in Tokyo, Shanghai and frequent trips to the cities that define this century’s urban experience — the Seoul/Nairobi/Mumbai/Rio/Chongqings of this world; products like Nike+, FitBit, Moves (to take one narrow category) through to less well known but arguably more impactful services that for me are at the very center of the internet of things — services like Kilimo Salama and Sarvajal;⁹ through to business units/activities in large corporations such as Cisco, IBM, Disney, and Ericsson with more of a how to make money/make a difference at scale.¹⁰

That Moment in Time

I started this essay by paraphrasing a quote — here is the original in full: “There is but one remedy for the amateur photographer. Put a brick through his camera whenever you suspect he has taken you unawares.” It could be written about Glass today, but is in fact taken from an 1885 edition of “Amateur Photographer”¹¹ magazine, seven years after the introduction of dry plates, a technology that supported more surreptitious photography. (The essay by Bill Jay is worth reading in full.)

The same essay contains another quote from “Amateur Photographer,” twenty five years later, when cameras were becoming smaller, less noticeable: “Our moral character dwindles as our instruments get smaller.” In due course, the technologies to deliver Glass’s emerging functionality will truly disappear from view — this is a window of opportunity for discussion, debate and a reflection.

I’m thankful to Google for putting so much effort into Glass at this moment in time.

That passion? Channel it.

That anger? Channel it.

Jan Chipchase is Executive Creative Director of Global Insights at Frog, a design and innovation consultancy. He has not tried Google Glass, and has no idea whether he has been recorded through one. His first book, “Hidden in Plain Sight,” available from HarperCollins on April 16, explores issues around technology adoption, use and abuse.

¹ This sign did the rounds but is closer to advertising for a pleasantly seedy bar than a warning sign. The suspicion can be real, but the true test comes from reactions to a wider deployment.
² Eric Schmidt’s quote, “Google policy is to get right up to the creepy line and not cross it,” is an interesting reflection of company culture. It’s refreshing to have a CEO that is this frank about the business they are in and the way they operate, and it’s an interesting assumption that the best way to institutionalize an understanding of creepy is to measure it and place it on a line.
³ If you want to extrapolate the argument around wholesale recording through Glass, it’s actually highly inefficient, particularly once much of that space and context is known. There are other, emerging technologies with far more processing power and unlimited power supply that are in a better position to continuously record.
⁴ There are many examples of what we say and do being recorded: From the obvious conversations in an interrogation room through to corporations tracking employee emails and IM chats, all the way to state agencies. When conducting research in Iran and making a call to the U.S., I assume it is being recorded by both Iranian and U.S. agencies. The only question is who else is listening and what is their motivation, today and at some point in the future.
⁵ I’ve not done a full write up of the research, but it was shared publicly a few years back.
⁶ After the Tokyo study, my then colleague Raphael Grignani ran a comparable study in New York City, with broadly analogous findings.
⁷ The physical toll of having to maintain a state of hyper-awareness is touched on here and here, and while these are extreme examples it is an interesting topic to further explore.
⁸ As Bruce Sterling pointed out, take each of those design principles and flip them to understand the actual experience.
⁹ We are running a study around water consumption and Sarvajal and will be sharing more on the project in due course.
¹⁰ Full disclosure: This list includes both personal and Frog clients.
¹¹ “The Amateur Photographer,” 18 September 1885, p. 871.

The microblogging service plans to launch its new standalone music application on Friday, according to sources familiar with the matter.

(Update:: Of note — another source claims that the app will indeed launch this weekend at Coachella, though not necessarily on Friday.)
(Update 2: It’s out! But unless you’re one of a very select group of famous Twitter users, you’re going to have to wait a week to use it.)

The app suggests artists and tracks to users based on a number of personalized signals, including the Twitter accounts a user follows on the microblogging service. Users will be able to listen to clips of music from inside the app, using third-party services like iTunes and SoundCloud; they will also be able to watch music videos provided by Vevo, the music video service owned by Universal Music and Sony.

Earlier today, Twitter acknowledged that it had acquired music recommendation service We Are Hunted last year and put its staff to work building the new app.

Timing of the launch couldn’t be more appropriate. It’s the weekend that kicks off Coachella, the huge music festival presented every year in the middle of the California desert, attracting some of the music industry’s top talent.

Twitter did not respond to a request for comment.

People today watch online gaming videos for two main reasons: To learn the tricks that will help them get better at a game, and to see what a game is like before they buy it.

Those insights have historically come from a few thousand broadcasters — hobbyists who were willing to invest in extra hardware and software to record and comment on their gameplay.

But now, the game-video networks that have previously been middlemen between hobbyist and viewer are trying to embed themselves directly inside games. If they succeed, then the number of people making videos is poised to explode, and a third reason to watch will emerge: To see and talk about the games you and your friends play.

Meet the Middlemen

The big dogs in the ring right now are Twitch and YouTube. Twitch, formerly known as TwitchTV, focuses on live-broadcast gameplay and gaming-related shows, and boasts that it grew from 28 million unique viewers in February to 34 million uniques in March.

The much bigger YouTube (maybe you’ve heard of it) is hardly a gaming-only site. But its gaming content, most of it on-demand rather than live, notably includes countless “let’s play” videos, which run viewers through the whole experience of a game — except, of course, for controlling it.

Both Twitch and YouTube are now rolling out tools that let game developers embed recording and streaming functionality directly into their games. And they’re not alone.

At its PlayStation 4 announcement in February, Sony said its new controllers would have a built-in “share” button to let players edit, upload and share the last few minutes of their gameplay via social media. The company also plans to offer live gamecasting to Ustream, which competes in live video with Twitch’s parent company Justin.tv.

“It’s blurring the lines between traditional media and new media,” Ustream CEO Brad Hunstable said. “Gaming has been a key part of our growth.”

On the mobile side, Finnish startup Everyplay gives players of connected games the ability to post a recording of their latest gaming session via Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and email. And wouldn’t you know it, Everyplay is also working on live broadcasting functionality for iOS and Android.

“As mobile games get more complex … we’ll see very fast growth for live broadcasting, starting probably toward the end of 2013,” Everyplay CEO Jussi Laakkonen predicted.

We’ll Do It Live!

Twitch marketing VP Matthew DiPietro argued that, even though Twitch now supports on-demand videos across its site and apps, the company is still centered on live game broadcasts above all else.

“Videogames as content are engaging because you’re seeing them happen in real time,” DiPietro said. “You don’t watch football after the fact … I mean, you do, but it’s usually cut up and produced highlights. The core of [our] engagement is because we have all of the live content.”

That’s an exaggeration, since sites like YouTube and Ustream are also doing it live. But even YouTube spokesperson Matt McLernon acknowledged that, for Google, “it’s still early days for live [video].”

“We want people to see YouTube as a home for all kinds of video,” McLernon added.

The two most common types of live in-game videos today, speedruns and e-sports, cater to the enthusiast rather than the general viewer. Speedruns capture a talented player’s attempt to play a game — often, a linear platformer like Super Mario Bros. — from start to finish, in as little time as possible.

E-sports, meanwhile, are usually more formal tournaments for the best players of hardcore multiplayer games like Starcraft 2 and League of Legends.

CC BY-SA Kevin Chang

To him, live is everything. “It is wrestling that is real,” Graham said.

But he acknowledged that e-sports broadcasters can do more to make games more accessible to outsiders, possibly by focusing on the human stories of the people who play, Olympics-style.

But this is the crux of the challenge for gamecasting: Right now, the most compelling use case for the technology is for a substantial but decidedly not-mainstream audience of hardcore gamers and uber-geeks.

This is why giving developers the tools to make broadcasting and sharing game clips totally simple is so important to the video guys. Removing the hurdles to gamecasting for players means more diversity, more videos and more ad revenue.

Something for Your Trouble

Naturally, Twitch, YouTube and Everyplay will all tout the ease with which developers can integrate and run with their video-making tools. But why should those developers even bother with video in the first place?

The carrot on the end of the stick is the hope that players making videos about games will spread the reach of those games to new audiences. With so many games to choose from, on so many platforms, converting a new player — for free, no less — when he or she is in non-gaming mode elsewhere online, is the holy grail.

“Users don’t have a discovery problem, but developers have a discoverability problem,” Laakkonen said. He said that 12 percent to 20 percent of the people who watch a mobile game video through Everyplay then go on to download that game via an included link.

And letting your fans do the advertising for you is seen as a proven formula, thanks to a little game called Minecraft. The megahit sandbox game thrived in part because screenshots and videos made and shared by happy players proliferated throughout gaming communities when the game was still relatively young.

Minecraft developer and publisher Mojang is fully supportive of that sort of sharing, said business developer Daniel Kaplan. Minecraft “let’s play” videos have been such a crucial part of the game’s rise that, for its April Fools’ Day prank, Mojang let a few dozen popular YouTubers in on the joke early, asking them to make fake playthroughs of awful “improvements” to the game.

Mirroring the popularity of “let’s play” videos, all four of these approaches to gamecasting either already make it possible for players to add commentary to their videos, or plan to do so. So, someone looking to become the next djWHEAT can talk about their strategy, or flesh out that human story about why and how they play.

It seems likely, though, that the end result of this push into video will be one familiar to those who remember the early days of blogging: A few breakout stars who will join the old hobbyists in attracting a mass audience, plus a much larger ensemble of video makers who will reach only a few people in their own circles.

While we’re here, a few prime examples of all these types of videos:

Let’s Play:

Everyplay:

Speedrun:

Watch live video from Siglemic on TwitchTV

E-Sports:

Watch live video from mlgsc2 on www.twitch.tv

Lynton had run the movie studio for some time; last year, Sony bumped him up by adding music to his responsibilities. Sony won’t disclose the length of Lynton’s contract, but a statement from Sony CEO Kazuo Hirai indicates that it’s a multiyear term.

Hirai’s press release quote also telegraphs that Sony isn’t in any hurry to dump the businesses Lynton is running: “I look forward to working closely with Michael in ensuring that music and pictures remain integral parts of our global strategy.”

Lynton’s appearance at our D: Dive Into Media conference in February was one of my personal favorites; we had a wide-ranging conversation about everything from home video to Netflix to Facebook. You can see the whole thing here, or watch a highlight reel below:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130409/sony-re-ups-movie-music-boss-michael-lynton/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130403/how-to-buy-netflixs-house-of-cards-on-amazon/ http://allthingsd.com/20130403/how-to-buy-netflixs-house-of-cards-on-amazon/#comments Wed, 03 Apr 2013 21:12:47 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=308985 Perhaps you’ve heard that Netflix is showing “House of Cards,” a new TV series starring Kevin Spacey.

But maybe you don’t have an $8-a-month Netflix subscription, or don’t want to try the service’s free one-month trial. Or maybe you just don’t like streaming video.

Here’s your answer: You can buy the series, on DVD, this summer. From Amazon, Netflix’s most serious video rival.

This isn’t a cost-effective solution — the series’ first 13 episodes will cost $44.96 on standard DVD, and $52.99 on Blu-ray – but presumably some of you will find value in a physical object. (For one thing, you can re-sell your discs.) UPDATE: We should also note that Netflix subscribers with DVD plans will also be able to get the series that way.

The bigger (but smallish) point here is that even though this is a series commissioned for and funded by Netflix, it still isn’t Netflix’s series.

Netflix’s money bought it an exclusive first “window” to stream the show. But Media Rights Capital, which actually produced the show, has the rights to sell it in other venues; Sony is handling distribution duties in the U.S. and abroad.

That is to say: While “House of Cards” is different in many ways from traditional TV, it’s also quite similar — you’ll see that kind of set-up up and down your TV guide.

And you’ll see it again with other Netflix original programming: The new season of “Arrested Development” that debuts next month, for instance, is owned by News Corp.’s Fox studio (News Corp. also owns this website).

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130403/how-to-buy-netflixs-house-of-cards-on-amazon/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130330/adria-richards-response-facebooks-new-ad-plan-and-finding-the-next-steve-jobs-the-allthingsd-week-in-review-32413-33013/ http://allthingsd.com/20130330/adria-richards-response-facebooks-new-ad-plan-and-finding-the-next-steve-jobs-the-allthingsd-week-in-review-32413-33013/#comments Sat, 30 Mar 2013 19:00:17 +0000 Eric Johnson http://allthingsd.com/?p=307983

Photo by Asa Mathat

For our readers who are not inclined to constantly hit the refresh button, here’s a quick look back the top 10 stories that drove AllThingsD this week:

1. Yahoo Paid $30 Million in Cash for 18 Months of Young Summly Entrepreneur’s Time
2. iTunes Not Exactly Break-Even Anymore
3. Fired SendGrid Developer Evangelist Adria Richards Speaks Out
4. Another Reason Google Reader Died: Increased Concern About Privacy and Compliance
5. A Smarter Calendar for iPhone
6. BlackBerry’s Million-Smartphone Mystery Partner: Brightstar
7. Facebook’s New Ad Plan Is the Web’s Old Plan
8. New Flipboard: News and Posts Handpicked and Shared
9. Sony’s High-End Xperia ZL Comes to U.S. at a Hefty $719
10. Q&A: Atari Founder Nolan Bushnell on Innovation, the “Next Steve Jobs” and Why Mobile Games Are “Over”

For more of the week in review, you should follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130330/adria-richards-response-facebooks-new-ad-plan-and-finding-the-next-steve-jobs-the-allthingsd-week-in-review-32413-33013/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130327/big-media-flexes-its-muscle-and-justin-timberlake-sells-a-lot-of-music/ http://allthingsd.com/20130327/big-media-flexes-its-muscle-and-justin-timberlake-sells-a-lot-of-music/#comments Wed, 27 Mar 2013 11:00:56 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=307041 From the Big Old Media Still Has Some Legs file: Justin Timberlake sold 968,000 copies of his new album in the last week.

That kind of first-week sales stat used to be no big deal for the music industry, back when people routinely bought music. In 2000, the year sales peaked, Justin Timberlake and the rest of ’N Sync sold more than two million copies of an album in a debut week, and people like Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys would put up similar numbers.

Since then, of course, music sales have fallen apart (though the decline may have stopped). Just as important, the idea of a media monoculture — where everyone watches or listens to or reads the same thing — has atomized, courtesy of Facebook and Twitter and 500 channels on TV and an infinite number on YouTube, etc.

So, at a minimum, the success of “20/20” reminds us that, on occasion, lots of people are still interested in the same thing.

Especially if that thing comes out on a big label — Sony’s RCA — and is supported by a promotional blitz that includes a David Fincher-directed video, a “Saturday Night Live” appearance, a week-long stint on “Jimmy Fallon”, a Target campaign, a Bud Light campaign, appearances at Super Bowl and South by Southwest events, etc., a huge push from radio, etc., etc.

Wait a minute, though. What about Alex Day, the YouTube star with no record label and no Big Media promotional support, who beat Justin Timberlake on iTunes?

That was the story James Altucher wrote up on TechCrunch last week. And it’s a pretty great one, in part because Day is a great interview and in part because Altucher is a great writer.

But it’s not exactly true.

There was indeed a point in time where Day ranked ahead of Timberlake on the iTunes U.K. album charts. But the thing about iTunes music charts is that they don’t tell you how many units anyone has sold in aggregate, or even over a week or a day. They just provide a snapshot of how different acts are performing, relative to each other, in something close to real time.

That is — at some point this month, Alex Day was moving more units than Justin Timberlake. For a couple hours. Or maybe even longer.

But not much longer. Timberlake’s album hit the top spot on the U.K. chart within a couple days of its release. I haven’t seen anyone spit out an iTunes sales number for either artist, but so far this year, he’s sold more albums in the U.K. than anyone else.

Which again, isn’t to diminish what Day has done. His unsigned-ness has now become part of his story/marketing, but there’s nothing wrong with maximizing your assets.

And lots of artists who do break on the Web end up signing with a big label anyway, so more power to Day for making it work on his own.

But sometimes it also helps to have a giant label and an even bigger marketing apparatus working on your behalf. Ask Justin Timberlake.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130327/big-media-flexes-its-muscle-and-justin-timberlake-sells-a-lot-of-music/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130327/a-quarter-of-patents-this-year-will-be-mobile-related/ http://allthingsd.com/20130327/a-quarter-of-patents-this-year-will-be-mobile-related/#comments Wed, 27 Mar 2013 10:00:41 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=307038 If you think the mobile patent wars are winding down, think again.

A new report shows that a quarter of U.S. patents issued this year are likely to be related to mobile technology. That’s up from just 5 percent of all patents in 2001, according to analyst Chetan Sharma.

In Europe, mobile is somewhat less of a focus, accounting for roughly 10 percent of all patents.

Samsung led all companies in terms of U.S. mobile patents granted last year, while IBM filed the most applications last year, followed by Microsoft and then Samsung. Apple broke into the Top 10 on the strength of a slew of computer-graphics patent filings.

Among cellular operators, AT&T was the patent leader, followed by Japan’s NTT DoCoMo, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon, Telecom Italia, Swisscom, SK Telecom, TeliaSonera and Orange.

Among device makers, Samsung led the pack, followed by Nokia, Sony, BlackBerry, LG, NEC, Motorola, Siemens, Fujitsu and Hewlett-Packard.

“Mobile will continue to be the growth engine of the knowledge economy and the companies who understand the value of the intellectual property will continue to protect and benefit from their investments for years to come,” Sharma said in the report.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130327/a-quarter-of-patents-this-year-will-be-mobile-related/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130325/a-look-ahead-at-gdc-its-mobile-vs-consoles-in-fight-for-game-developers-attention/ http://allthingsd.com/20130325/a-look-ahead-at-gdc-its-mobile-vs-consoles-in-fight-for-game-developers-attention/#comments Mon, 25 Mar 2013 15:00:32 +0000 Eric Johnson and Bonnie Cha http://allthingsd.com/?p=306203 If San Francisco appears to be even geekier than usual this week, there’s a reason: The annual Game Developers Conference is taking over the Moscone Center today through Friday.

AllThingsD will be there keeping an eye on two questions in particular: How is the business of mobile games changing, and how are the makers of consoles and other physical media responding to mobile’s ascendance?

This year’s conference also promises to at least touch on the growing relevance of women in the gaming community, and will also highlight the gap between small independent games studios and the larger legacy companies that are finding different degrees of success in staying relevant as their industry continues to expand and fracture.

If you only read one gaming statistic this week, let it be this one: In a pre-conference survey, GDC 2013’s organizers found that 58 percent of gaming professionals attending either last year’s conference or this one plan to release their next game on smartphones or tablets. That’s a tad greater than commitments to the Xbox 360, Microsoft’s next console, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Wii U and Wii combined, which together garnered “next game” pledges from 56.5 percent of developers.

Nevertheless, interest in gaming hardware is still strong, particularly for established consoles and for the Android-based consoles Ouya and GameStick, both of which bested the next Xbox and the PlayStation 4 when those same survey respondents were asked what platforms most excited or interested them.

Stay tuned for more!

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130325/a-look-ahead-at-gdc-its-mobile-vs-consoles-in-fight-for-game-developers-attention/feed/ 9 http://allthingsd.com/20130325/sonys-high-end-xperia-zl-comes-to-u-s-but-at-a-hefty-719/ http://allthingsd.com/20130325/sonys-high-end-xperia-zl-comes-to-u-s-but-at-a-hefty-719/#comments Mon, 25 Mar 2013 09:46:04 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=306257 Sony’s latest smartphone is coming to the U.S. with both an eye-popping screen and an eye-popping price.

Once again, the Japanese phone maker has found little carrier support, and is instead selling its device unlocked. That means that the Xperia ZL will sell for a whopping $719 ($40 more for the LTE version).

For that price, you get a device with some pretty nice specs, including a five-inch screen, a 13-megapixel camera, 1.5GHz quad-core chip, etc. Other features include Near Field Communication (NFC) and a battery-improving Stamina mode that turns off power-draining applications when the screen is dark.

And, of course, you aren’t tied to a contract.

The phone is set to be available for presale Monday on Sony’s online store, and will be coming soon to “select online retailers,” Sony said.

Sony also plans for its Xperia Tablet Z to hit the U.S. in May. On the tablet side, however, the company has the benefit that most devices are sold without a subsidy.

Globally, Sony is hoping that the Z series will help revive the company’s mobile business.

Sony bought out its former joint venture partner, Ericsson, and has now reintegrated the mobile business with other parts of its electronics business, but it has yet to see a hoped-for boost in business.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130325/sonys-high-end-xperia-zl-comes-to-u-s-but-at-a-hefty-719/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130315/wii-u-sales-still-lousy/ http://allthingsd.com/20130315/wii-u-sales-still-lousy/#comments Fri, 15 Mar 2013 16:30:46 +0000 John Paczkowski http://allthingsd.com/?p=303988 Nintendo’s Wii U isn’t proving to be much of a successor to the 100-million-selling Wii. New metrics from NPD suggest that sales of the console continue to disappoint.

The market researcher said Friday that Wii U shipments rose over 40 percent month over month in February — encouraging news were it not for the poor shipment number from which they rose. Wii U shipments are believed to be as low as 57,000 units during January. In other words, Nintendo’s Wii U shipments for the month of February were somewhere in the mid-60,000s. For a console that debuted just a few months ago, that’s just plain lousy. Consider this: Microsoft shipped 302,000 Xbox consoles during the same period.

Suffice to say, Wii U is vastly underperforming expectations. So much so that you’ve got to wonder if Nintendo will meet its already lowered projections for the console. Back in January, the company slashed its sales forecast for the Wii U to four million consoles by the end of March from a prelaunch estimate of 5.5 million. If NPD’s latest numbers are a reasonable indication, even that number may be too high for the company to reach.

Ugly news for Nintendo. If the company’s brand-new Wii U can’t hold its own against Sony’s PlayStation 3 and Microsoft’s Xbox 360 — both of which are more than five years old — how will it fare against the forthcoming PlayStation 4 and Microsoft’s next-generation Xbox?

Time for a price cut? Maybe, but the company has previously ruled that out.

“With Wii U, we have taken a rather resolute stance in pricing it below its manufacturing cost, so we are not planning to perform a markdown,” Nintendo president Satoru Iwata said in January. “I would like to make this point absolutely clear. We are putting our lessons from Nintendo 3DS to good use, as I have already publicly stated. However, given that it has now become clear that we have not yet fully communicated the value of our product, we will try to do so before the software lineup is enhanced and at the same time work to enrich the software lineup which could make consumers understand the appeal of Wii U.”

Looks like Nintendo still has a lot of work to do communicating that value.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130315/wii-u-sales-still-lousy/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20130309/stringer-to-leave-as-sony-chairman/ http://allthingsd.com/20130309/stringer-to-leave-as-sony-chairman/#comments Sat, 09 Mar 2013 22:22:15 +0000 Daisuke Wakabayashi http://allthingsd.com/?p=301996 Howard Stringer, Sony Corp.’s former chief executive and current board chairman, plans to retire from the company in June, marking the end of a tumultuous tenure for the British-born executive at the helm of one of Japan’s most iconic companies.

In a speech to the Japan Society in New York, Mr. Stringer, who became Sony’s CEO in 2005 before stepping down last year and remained the company’s nonexecutive chairman, said he plans to retire from Sony at the end of his tenure to “move forward with new opportunities I’ve been presented with lately.”

The 71-year-old Mr. Stringer, a former head of CBS and an ex-journalist, didn’t specify what he planned to do aside from accepting board directorships in areas of interest to him in medicine and education.

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