by Erik Sass
@eriksass1,
11 hours ago
Geico earned the #10 spot on the leaderboard yesterday (9/17), thanks to a YouTube video posted on Friday (9/15), featuring Jonathan Brooks and actress/musician Junko Goda performing in an opera house.
Tracking 3.8M views between Friday and Sunday (9/17), the video ranks as the #1 video shared by the insurance giant within the last 30 days.
Blin.gy, the app that let users insert themselves into their favorite music videos, is shutting down. In a Medium post, co-founder and chief executive officer David Hyman wrote that the startup, which launched as Chosen three years ago and raised at least $10 million, decided to close up shop after a potential acquisition fell through.
Chosen started out as a talent competition app that eventually focused mostly on music. Though it had a marketing partnership with Ellen DeGeneres, who promoted the app on her show and also took an equity stake, Chosen struggled to compete with Musical.ly. Earlier this year, Chosen pivoted and renamed itself Blin.gy after figuring out how to create greenscreen effects without the need for a full studio, making it possible for smartphone users to insert themselves in front of live video backgrounds.
What set Blin.gy’s features apart from other background effects, like those in Apple’s Photo Booths, was that Blin.gy worked with non-stabilized, moving cameras. As TechCrunch’s earlier coverage explainedm “The team’s patent-pending algorithm (they wrote a white paper going into more detail) essentially combines old-school chroma keying with new technologies, like object class detection, edge detection, color manipulation and other computer vision technologies. In short, they dynamically prioritize and combine these different techniques depending on the environment in which the video is being recorded.”
The app, which Hyman, the former CEO of Beats Music, says acquired just over one million downloads, partnered with Musical.ly and raised additional funding from the startup’s existing investors, but struggled to get other venture capital firms on board. In the end, the startup decided to put itself up for sale. Hyman says Blin.gy reached the final stages of talks with an acquirer, but that deal failed to come to fruition.
Titled “My mobile AR startup died so yours doesn’t have to,” Hyman’s blog post contains lots of insight for other companies and is well worth a read.” TechCrunch has contacted the Blin.gy team to ask what they plan to do next.
CLOSE
Hurricane Irma will hurt boat captains in the Florida Keys for months to come.
USA TODAY
The IRS has extended filing deadlines for taxpayers including businesses located in areas hit hard by hurricanes Harvey and Irma.
The tax relief is available in federally declared disaster areas in Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Taxpayers who got extensions of the April filing deadline for their 2016 income tax returns now have until Jan. 31 to file their returns; they had been due Oct. 16. Taxpayers required to make estimated tax payments on Sept. 15 and Jan. 16 now have until Jan. 31 to make those payments.
And companies’ quarterly payroll and excise tax returns due Oct. 31 may also now be delayed until Jan. 31.
The IRS will not assess late filing or payment penalties on these taxpayers.
Tax relief is also available to workers covered by 401(k) and similar employer-sponsored retirement plans in these disaster areas. Employers are allowed to relax and streamline rules and procedures for staffers to take out loans against their retirement accounts or make hardship withdrawals. The withdrawals must be made by Jan. 31.
More information about the hurricane-related tax relief is available on the IRS website, www.irs.gov .
CLOSE
Florida officials reported on Thursday that 22% of homes and businesses were still without power. About 65% did not have power just after Irma. Florida’s largest utility hopes to restore service for all of its east coast customers by Sunday. (Sept. 15)
AP
Small business owners are more pessimistic about the economy and less likely to hire than they were at the end of last year, according to a survey released by the National Small Business Association.
Forty-five percent of the 1,134 owners surveyed in July and August expect the economy to expand in the next 12 months, down from 54% in a survey taken in December. The number of owners expecting the economy to remain the same was 45%, up from 34%. Ten percent expect a recession, down from 12%.
That dip in optimism was reflected in owners’ expectations for growth opportunities for their companies. Eight percent said they foresee opportunities in the next three months, down from 11% in December. Fourteen percent see opportunities in the next three to 6 months, versus 18%. There was little change among those forecasting growth opportunities in the next six months to a year — 30% versus 31%.
Hiring plans also showed the caution. Thirty-seven percent said they expect to increase their payroll in the next 12 months, compared to 43 percent at the end of 2016.
More: Irma aftermath: Florida Keys boat captains fear they won’t stay afloat if tourism sinks
More: When to use a public adjuster for hurricane insurance claims
More: Businesses far from the devastation can feel hurricanes’ impact
Video marketing
Business owners who want to use video in their digital marketing can learn how at an online seminar sponsored by SCORE, the organization that provides free counseling to small companies. The seminar will be held Thursday, Sept. 21 at 1 p.m. Eastern time. Learn more and register here.
Follow Joyce Rosenberg at www.twitter.com/JoyceMRosenberg. Her work can be found here.
Posted Sep. 18, 2017 at 3:05 p.m.
Published: 2017-09-18 15:05:46
Updated: 2017-09-18 15:05:46
Cultivate
Image 1 of 2 · Next Image…
Durham, N.C. — Have something you want to market digitally? Durham startup Cultivate says its technology will « change the marketing world. » How?
« A user enters what they want to market and Cultivate creates and executes a tailored marketing plan that continuously evaluates itself, » says CEO Joe Bell.
« The system scans a robust amount of data and makes qualitative recommendations to users. As data is accumulated, the system will be able to provide predictive intelligence. »
According to Bell, his firm’s technology « will change the marketing world. All other digital marketing software packages like Hootsuite or Hubspot only make it easier for humans to do the work by automating rote tasks. With Cultivate, you don’t need Hootsuite since the manual work is eliminated through automating the entire marketing process a marketing agency does in planning, creating and distributing marketing content. »
Watch a video overview of Cultivate at {{a href= »external_link-16957130″}}https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBRrPEg3WMI{{/a}}
Bell says Cultivate combines « our extensive marketing experience with today’s advances in technology has made something like this possible. The system evaluates a number of characteristics to show users what content performs best for their audience. It also supplies qualitative recommendations to users so they’ll know what content reaches and resonates best with their audience. The Cultivate system plugs into sales objective platforms so we can attribute sales directly to marketing and will eventually be able to make sales predictions. »
Cultivate will showcase its technology at CED Tech Venture on Sept. 19-20.
This profile is written, edited and published by WRAL TechWire in partnership with the CED.
The QA:
A user enters what they want to market and Cultivate creates and executes a tailored marketing plan that continuously evaluates itself. The system scans a robust amount of data and makes qualitative recommendations to users. As data is accumulated, the system will be able to provide predictive intelligence.
Digital marketing is a complex and time consuming endeavor. Today, people are randomly trying to do digital marketing. They don’t really have any insights or data to drive when or how they should market a product on social media channels. Cultivate can change this.
In a world with Cultivate, people tell our software what they want to market and when events related to that product are happening. Cultivate then figures out, based on the market you are trying to reach, the content you need to publish on which media channels to reach your audience. It asks you to provide that content while at the same time suggesting what that content should be.
Once you provide the content, Cultivate handles the rest. It publishes the right content on the right channels at the right time, continuously evaluating metrics to maximize the impact of the marketing campaign it created.
Cultivate will change the marketing world. All other digital marketing software packages like Hootsuite or Hubspot only make it easier for humans to do the work by automating rote tasks. With Cultivate, you don’t need Hootsuite since the manual work is eliminated through automating the entire marketing process a marketing agency does in planning, creating and distributing marketing content.
The Cultivate technology is the first of its kind in marketing. It will truly revolutionize how all marketing is done in the future. Combining our extensive marketing experience with today’s advances in technology has made something like this possible. The system evaluates a number of characteristics to show users what content performs best for their audience.
It also supplies qualitative recommendations to users so they’ll know what content reaches and resonates best with their audience. The Cultivate system plugs into sales objective platforms so we can attribute sales directly to marketing and will eventually be able to make sales predictions.
Angel investors.
WRAL TechWire any time: Twitter, Facebook
Copyright 2017 WRAL TechWire. All rights reserved.
UNITED NATIONS — President Donald Trump made his debut at the United Nations on Monday, using his first moments at the world body to urge the 193-nation organization to reduce bureaucracy and costs while more clearly defining its mission around the world.
But while Trump chastised the United Nations — an organization he sharply criticized as a candidate for president for its spiraling costs — he said the United States would “pledge to be partners in your work” in order to make the U.N. “a more effective force” for peace across the globe.
“In recent years, the United Nations has not reached its full potential due to bureaucracy and mismanagement,” said Trump, who rebuked the United Nations for a ballooning budget. “We are not seeing the results in line with this investment.”
The president pushed the U.N. to focus “more on people and less on bureaucracy” and to change “business as usual and not be beholden to ways of the past which were not working” while also suggesting that the United States was paying more than its fair share to keep the New York-based world body operational.
But he also complimented the steps the United Nations had taken in the early stages of the reform process and made no threats to withdraw his nation’s support. His measured tone stood in stark contrast to his last maiden appearance at a global body, when he stood at NATO’s new Brussels headquarters in May and scolded the member nations for not paying enough and refusing to explicitly back its mutual defense pact.
While running for office, Trump labeled the U.N. as weak and incompetent, and not a friend of either the United States or Israel. But he has softened his tone since taking office, telling ambassadors from U.N. Security Council member countries at a White House meeting this year that the U.N. has “tremendous potential.”
Trump more recently has praised a pair of unanimous council votes to tighten sanctions on North Korea over its continued nuclear weapon and ballistic missile tests.
Trump’s big moment comes Tuesday, when he delivers his first address to a session of the U.N. General Assembly. The annual gathering of world leaders will open amid serious concerns about Trump’s priorities, including his policy of “America First,” his support for the U.N. and a series of global crises. It will be the first time world leaders will be in the same room and able to take the measure of Trump.
The president on Monday praised U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who also spoke at the reform meeting and said he shared Trump’s vision for a less wasteful U.N. to “live up to its full potential.” The U.S. has asked member nations to sign a declaration on U.N. reforms, and more than 120 have done so. The president also kicked off his maiden speech at the world body by making a reference to the Trump-branded apartment tower across First Ave. from the U.N.
Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., said Trump’s criticisms were accurate at the time, but that it is now a “new day” at the U.N. An organization that “talked a lot but didn’t have a lot of action” has given way to a “United Nations that’s action-oriented,” she said, noting the Security Council votes on North Korea this month.
Guterres has proposed a massive package of changes, and Haley said the U.N. is “totally moving toward reform.”
Trump also planned to hold separate talks Monday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and French President Emmanuel Macron. U.S. national security adviser H.R. McMaster said the conversations would be wide-ranging, but that “Iran’s destabilizing behavior” would be a major focus of Trump’s discussions with both leaders.
Breakthroughs on a Middle East peace agreement are not expected. Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser on the issue, recently returned from a trip to the Middle East.
The United States is the largest contributor to the U.N. budget, reflecting its position as the world’s largest economy. It pays 25 percent of the U.N.’s regular operating budget and over 28 percent of the separate peacekeeping budget — a level of spending that Trump has complained is unfair.
The Trump administration is conducting a review of the U.N.’s 16 far-flung peacekeeping operations, which cost nearly $8 billion a year. Cutting their costs and making them more effective is a top priority for Haley.
___
Associated Press writer Edith M. Lederer contributed to this report.
___
Follow Superville on Twitter: http://twitter.com/dsupervilleap and Lemire at http://twitter.com/@JonLemire
Copyright 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Hurricane Maria is forecast to become a major hurricane — Category 3 or higher — before it hits the Leeward Islands.
National Hurricane Center
hide caption
toggle caption
National Hurricane Center
Hurricane Maria is forecast to become a major hurricane — Category 3 or higher — before it hits the Leeward Islands.
National Hurricane Center
Updated at 11:05 a.m. ET
Hurricane Maria, now a Category 3 storm, will hit the Leeward Islands on the edge of the Caribbean Sea on Monday night, forecasters say, threatening areas that are still coping with the devastation brought by Hurricane Irma two weeks ago. Predictions call for it to pass straight over Puerto Rico on Wednesday.
Maria is now classified as a major storm, and « additional rapid strengthening is forecast during the next 48 hours, » the National Hurricane Center says.
Maria’s maximum winds are currently at 120 mph, after rising from 90 mph earlier Monday; they could reach 140 mph within the next two days, the center said. The storm is heading west-northwest at around 10 mph.
A hurricane warning — meaning hurricane conditions are expected to strike — has been issued for the islands of Guadeloupe, Dominica, St. Kitts, Nevis, Montserrat, St. Lucia and Martinique, as well as the neighboring British and U.S. Virgin Islands.
The eye of Hurricane Maria is forecast to pass over the center of Puerto Rico on Wednesday.
National Hurricane Center
hide caption
toggle caption
National Hurricane Center
The eye of Hurricane Maria is forecast to pass over the center of Puerto Rico on Wednesday.
National Hurricane Center
A tropical storm warning is in effect for Antigua and Barbuda, Saba, St. Eustatius, St. Martin and Anguilla.
An Air Force Reserve Unit Hurricane Hunter aircraft flew on a route in and around Maria this morning to investigate the storm’s development, the hurricane center said.
Unlike Irma, which took a relatively flat westward angle as it raked Barbuda, St. Martin, Cuba and other islands and stormed toward the Florida Keys, Maria is expected to take a sharper northwest tack, passing east of the Turks and Caicos as it heads toward the Bahamas.
Maria puts many of those same areas at risk — including the Virgin Islands, parts of which were hit by Irma’s eye wall before that storm veered north. Maria’s different approach also means that Puerto Rico and other islands that suffered only glancing blows from Irma could now be directly confronted with hurricane conditions.
On Monday morning, Puerto Rico’s emergency officials were meeting to plan their response to Maria.
« The government is prepared, » Gov. Ricardo Rosselló said via Facebook, « and we ask of the citizenship preparation, attention, and action. »
On the Saffir-Simpson wind scale, a major hurricane designates Category 3 storms and higher — hurricanes with sustained winds of at least 111 mph.
Maria now fits that description, and is expected to remain a major hurricane through the weekend.
Satellite imagery from NOAA shows Hurricane Jose, along the U.S. East Coast, and Hurricane Maria, in the Atlantic Ocean near the Leeward Islands. Trailing Maria is Tropical Depression Lee.
CIRA/CSU and NOAA/NESDIS/RAMMB
hide caption
toggle caption
CIRA/CSU and NOAA/NESDIS/RAMMB
Satellite imagery from NOAA shows Hurricane Jose, along the U.S. East Coast, and Hurricane Maria, in the Atlantic Ocean near the Leeward Islands. Trailing Maria is Tropical Depression Lee.
CIRA/CSU and NOAA/NESDIS/RAMMB
Maria doesn’t have the historic size and strength of Irma, and its hurricane-force winds extend outward up to 15 miles — far short of the 70 miles such winds extended from Irma’s center. But the hurricane’s storm surge and heavy rains could post grave threats, from triggering mudslides to frustrating relief and recovery efforts in places where thousands of buildings were heavily damaged by Irma.
Maria « is expected to produce total rain accumulations of 6 to 12 inches, » the hurricane center says, « with isolated maximum amounts of 20 inches across the central and southern Leeward Islands, including Puerto Rico and the U.S. and British Virgin Islands, through Wednesday night. »
Here are the conditions the National Hurricane Center warns could be brought by a Category 3 storm:
« Well-built framed homes may incur major damage or removal of roof decking and gable ends. Many trees will be snapped or uprooted, blocking numerous roads. Electricity and water will be unavailable for several days to weeks after the storm passes. »
Hurricane Jose, which buzzed the Leeward Islands as it moved north and west in Irma’s wake last week, has now weakened, with maximum sustained winds of 85 mph. Jose is currently about 280 miles east-southeast of Cape Hatteras, N.C., and it’s expected to remain off the East Coast.
With Jose moving north at 9 mph, a tropical storm watch is in effect for areas from Fenwick Island to Sandy Hook; Delaware Bay South; East Rockaway Inlet to Plymouth; Block Island; Martha’s Vineyard; and Nantucket.
Hackers have successfully breached CCleaner’s security to inject malware into the app and distribute it to millions of users. Security researchers at Cisco Talos discovered that download servers used by Avast (the company that owns CCleaner) were compromised to distribute malware inside CCleaner. “For a period of time, the legitimate signed version of CCleaner 5.33 being distributed by Avast also contained a multi-stage malware payload that rode on top of the installation of CCleaner,” says the Talos team.
CCleaner has been downloaded more than 2 billion times according to Avast, making it a popular target for hackers. Dubbed “crap cleaner,” it’s designed to wipe out cookies and offer some web privacy protections. 2.27 million users have been affected by the attack, and Avast Piriform believes it was able to prevent the breach harming customers. “Piriform believes that these users are safe now as its investigation indicates it was able to disarm the threat before it was able to do any harm,” says an Avast spokesperson.
This is an unusual attack as software similar to CCleaner is trusted by consumers and meant to remove “crapware” from a system. “By exploiting the trust relationship between software vendors and the users of their software, attackers can benefit from users’ inherent trust in the files and web servers used to distribute updates,” says Talos. The malware itself appears to have been designed to use infected PCs as part of a botnet.
Earlier this year, Ukrainian company MeDoc was breached and its update servers used to distribute the Petya ransomware. Hackers appear to be targeting these types of distribution points to more easily spread malware, instead of the traditional way of attacking individual machines themselves. It’s a trend that many security researches will be monitoring closely, to catch the latest innovative ways that hackers are breaching multiple systems.
Update, 8:30AM ET: Article updated with Avast statement.
Photo by Jens Schlueter/Getty Images
The video gaming industry has transitioned from a group of backyard innovators to an industry of multi-billion dollar companies, hiring psychologists, neuroscientists and marketing experts to turn customers into addicts. The latest trend is the creation of “whales,” people so addicted to games that they spend their entire life savings to keep playing.
But the video gaming industry, today one of the fastest growing industries in the US, has more humble origins.
In the 1980s and 1990s, the early video gaming industry was dominated by backyard hobbyists. Sierra Entertainment – creators of the famous King’s Quest series – was founded by a husband and wife team. Gabe Newell, founder of Valve Software, was already rich from his days at Microsoft when he launched his hobby project Half-Life.
Collectively, the hobbyist companies of the early industry produced some of the most innovative genres of video game history – the adventure game, the real-time strategy, the city-builder, the role-playing game – all through experimentation and garage-style company development.
But in the last ten years something changed.
The rise of casual gaming on mobile platforms has allowed a massive expansion of the industry, creating giant companies like King, Halfbrick, Zynga and Kabam.
Much larger than their predecessors, modern video gaming companies have adopted a more traditional company structure, hiring public relations and marketing departments and even neuroscientists to sell as many games as possible.
Today, big companies monopolise the industry with long-running sequels of old, successful titles: Assassin’s Creed, Call of Duty and Halo, to name a few. Of the ten highest selling video games in 2017 so far, eight are sequels.
With high development budgets in top companies (some games costing upward of US$250 million to produce), sequels are seen as a go to formula for success, based on name recognition alone.
Video games in the 1990s were generally “premium,” meaning that you paid once to gain access to the game for life, in the same way you would buy a pair of shoes and own them forever.
Today, video game companies have moved to a more profitable model known as “Free to Play”. Research shows these Free to Play (FTP) games rely on the fact that a majority of players will play for free, while a few key players will become addicted to the game and spend a vast fortune for bonus content.
The goal of an FTP game is to get as many players as possible addicted, so that they keep buying in-game content. In-game content can include things like “visual enhancements,” digital trophies and “virtual goods”.
Video game companies today use the same techniques as casinos to ensure customers become addicted to their games.
Commonly, they use fake currency. By using poker chips, cards or “gems,” companies can create a disassociation effect in the buyer, who does not realise how much real money they are spending. In a recent study, it was shown that people tend to spend more money when using debit cards than with cash due to this same “disassociation” effect.
FTP games have adapted another technique from casinos called “progress gates”. The typical slot machine charges you to keep playing as soon as you lose – this is known as a “hard progress gate”. In contrast to this, a “soft progress gate” prevents a player from playing for a period of time (say an hour), which can be bypassed by paying to keep playing immediately.
Modern games use both hard and soft gates to charge the gamer for a product that they ostensibly already own.
Modern video game companies also use shops and in-game ATMs to entice players to keep spending without having time to cool off outside of the game. Casinos use the same technique by placing ATMs and shops in-house. Gambling researcher Mark Griffiths suggests that this technique is used “to entice those who are gambling not to stop or go home”.
By using the same techniques as casinos, the modern video gaming industry has gone down a dark and morally dubious path.
New ethical questions exist about the effect of addictive gaming and whether or not it is fair or ethical to keep charging addicts for a product they already own.
Joshua Krook is a Doctoral Candidate in Law at the University of Adelaide.
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
Site highlights each day to your inbox.
Follow Business Insider Australia on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram.
A catalogue ad for the Tommy Hilfiger Game Boy Colour via 8-Bit Central
In 2017 most video game consoles look pretty similar: black boxes of varying size aimed at being as discrete as possible. The brands who manufacture and distribute them also have more clout and prestige of their own. So it’s weird to think that in the late 90s Nintendo thought it was important to use Tommy Hilfiger to promote the Game Boy Colour.
Continuer la lecture de Looking Back At Some Of The Weirder Limited Edition Consoles
Join the SARAH SEBASTIAN team as Junior Graphic Designer and play a pivotal role in the company’s branded content across all channels.
This is an amazing opportunity to work with a successful, global brand with a beautiful brand aesthetic and handcrafted product.
Job Role:
Technical Skills Required:
Personal Skills Required:
