Archive for: Analysis
As males are usually the ones playing video games (or so it’s assumed), it makes sense that guys would make up the majority of the gaming industry. The number of women employed in the field is paltry in comparison. However, the Entertainment Software Association conducted research in 2011 showing the number of females in the industry is on the rise, and women now make up 42 percent of all gamers. Females over the age of 18 are one of the quickest growing gamer demographics. Although video game studies aren’t so prevalent a field yet that there are any PhD options online, dedicated game development education is also growing and seeing an influx of female students. Despite this swelling of the ranks, women still have a hard time finding their way into the professional field of video games. Not only do they remain in the minority, they’re also paid less than their male counterparts.
Females are rarely treated with the same respect as males in the gaming industry, both in online and real-life interactions. Women working in the world of gaming aren’t taken as seriously as men. What continues to makes things even worse is the prevalent portrayal of females in video games: many are dressed in provocative clothing to accentuate extra-large busts, like the archetypal Lara Croft. Tammy Yap, a video game programmer for six years, says she asked one of her male colleagues (she was the only female) why women were always dressed like Vegas show girls. After all, this might offend some women and drive them away from gaming. The reply she received was: “What difference does it make? Women don’t play games.” Her colleague’s retort serves as a good example of the general attitude of most men when it comes to women gamers.
Unfortunately, female gamers aren’t getting their opinions attended to in the video game world. With so few women working in the industry, the video game market is close to being entirely ruled by men. Without having a female representative making her voice heard in the industry, female gamers won’t find as many games that they’re interested in on the market. Famous video game producer Denise Fulton thinks if more women played video games, then more women would start landing jobs in the industry. The consensus is that they would if more games were available that were more appealing to female players.
Playing video games is still branded as a boyish hobby. Women looking to enter the gaming industry already have it tough, but the rate at which they are finding jobs may stagnate if fellow female gamers aren’t willing to step up. Thankfully, this path has already begun being forged by prominent gaming women such as Morgan Webb and Denise Fulton, and indeed the evidence suggests the number of girls playing games is rising. Perceptions are already changing, and it may be only a matter of time before women’s presence in the game industry better reflects their growing numbers among players.
Here is a great infographic that runs through the various platforms and smartphone applications within those platforms.
The graphic is created by XCube Labs.
I quickly wanted to drop an article about the recent funding of Gigaom. Gigaom is a technology blog network that has managed to grab an additional $6 million in funding, which brings their total to $15 million.
Gigaom will use the new funding to push out their Gigaom Pro analysis service.
“We have demonstrated that paid content (not paywalls) can work, as long as you can provide value to your community,” Malik writes. ” Just as we never positioned GigaOM to compete with traditional media outlets, I believe we are charting our own course with our GigaOM Pro research service. “And it is working. It is working so well that we really need to put more gas in the engine to grow it even faster.”
Its great to see that blog networks are still thriving!
There are thousands of blogs that have been effected by Google’s recent Panda update. After viewing the 3,300 comments on this article via the Google Help Forum it seems as though they dont caremuch about feedback on their results.
I wanted to write a quick article here on Crenk to show how Google’s Panda update has hurt our site. I’m hoping that someone from Google actually reads this article and notices that there is still a big issue here!
Yesterday one of our authors wrote an amazing how to article titled: How to Download and Burn Hulu Movie to DVD.
The article is completely original, it’s over 400 words in length and provides a detailed step by step guide. This article is the epitome of original content!
I wanted to see where this article was actually ranking within Google for the keywords: burn hulu movie to dvd.
I would have thought that the original Crenk article would have been in the top 50 at least. However, after searching the top 100 article we didn’t appear. Bad times!
Then, I discovered that 4 websites scraping our content are ranking within the top 100, one even ranks just outside the top 10. How is this providing good search results?
It would be great if someone from Google could please take a look and let us know why this is happening!
Just 20 years ago nobody had even heard of the internet, and now, we can’t live without it. The internet has become an extension of our own personalities; a platform in which we can communicate to anyone, anywhere in the world. We can express feelings, emotions, become knowledgeable, complete degrees, partake in tabooed subjects, connect with long lost friends, and even buy our shopping all in the comfort of our own home.
The internet has completely changed the way the modern human lives, works and communicates – but what if we turned it off?
Like the fabled imaginings of sci-fi movies, are we entering a new generation of technology that could potentially cause chaos with the way we live? Will Terminator like prophecies come true? Will the machines take over? Come-on, we need an answer! What type of capabilities will we have at our disposal in 20 years?
Just think of how far we’ve come, with regards to technology, in just two decades. We’ve vastly improved the motorcar to become cleaner, faster, safer and more intelligent. We’ve seen dial-up internet speeds become broadband, and now we’re entering the age of fibre-optic internet speed. We’ve seen the iPod, the introduction of the mobile phone as an entity, the birth of the Euro Fighter Typhoon; it’s been an intense and scarily quick change in the power of the technology we use every day. So, if all of a sudden, someone turned our beloved internet off, would we be too bothered? Well, simply put, yes!
On a daily basis we take for granted that we rely on the internet for so much instant information and answers to everyday questions. So much so that modern generations are seemingly unaware of the fact that such information also lies in print form in a public library.
It’s speculative to say that the younger generations would dislike any turn off the most, as the older generations who grew up with no internet could just go back to the old way of social networking – which, for the young ones reading, is meeting up, in person, and talking to each other in a verbal shared dialogue.
Social networking might be one thing, but there is a darker and more important concept to the internet – no, not pornography – but political conceptions. With the recent Wikileaks scandal causing untold embarrassment and shame upon our most famous and powerful political figures, could the world leaders decide on shutting the web down? The decision would be a brave one, but it is a way of controlling the masses, reducing political bias and blocking the bloggers.
We now think of the internet as we think of our car, home and electric – essential. It has become a fabric of life, our escape to another world and a way of keeping in touch with old friends – and looking at their photos to see if they’ve gone uglier. Just imagine all of that being taken away from you. You wake up tomorrow morning and you look at your iPhone to see what people are up to on Facebook but all you get is “no mobile internet service”. In a panic, you turn on your PC to find that either your modem is completely broken or someone has done the unthinkable and turned off the World Wide Web.
There would be worldwide riots, protest and unrest – similar to that in the middle-east at the moment. We would probably see many deaths, recessions in the majority of the western world and a drop off in industrial manufacturing. Many people would lose their jobs, homes and lives. It would be an absolute economic disaster.
However, as Bill Gates says: “It’s not that hard to shut the internet down if you have military power where you can tell people that’s what’s going to happen”…“Whenever you do something extraordinary like that you’re sort of showing people you’re afraid of the truth getting out, so it’s a very difficult tactic, but it can certainly be shut off.”
And if you think that actually turning the internet off would be difficult, think again…
All the government would have to do is ask the providers like Virgin, BT and Sky to turn them off and stop providing the service – that’s it! Just like that, every modem in the country would cease working. We would be without iTunes, Facebook, YouTube, pornography and Justin Beiber [– thank god].
Could you cope? Without trying it, we’ll never know, but one thing is sure, if that day ever presented itself, there would be a majority dislike to the decision, and it would be inevitable that heavy rioting and action would be taken by the public.
Think of the public as a collective and singular three-year old child who has just had its favourite toy taken from it – there would be hell to pay!
Guest post by: Amy Greenacre writes on behalf of Broadbandchoices.co.uk, for comprehensive and impartial advice on broadband phone and tv.
Every company needs customer relationship management (CRM) – a focus on finding new customers and retaining old ones, and enhancing the experience of both. In 2011 we will see an even greater focus on customer relationship management than ever before as technology brings us in closer contact with our customers. Customer service is no longer confined to the help desk or the phone line; countless customers and potential customers come in contact with our business online every day. Even automated processes need to include a focus on CRM these days.
Many companies that try to implement changes in their CRM procedures find themselves unsuccessful. They end up following leads which lead nowhere or losing money on their new procedures instead of making more money. What are some of the pitfalls that can account for poor CRM results?
The number one reason that CRM plans fail is that the company forgets to keep its focus on its goals. It is easy to get caught up with strategies to enhance your business and actually forget about your bottom line. Is what you’re doing actually leading to higher profits? Or are you spending so much money attempting to re-design your customer service that you’re actually making your business less profitable? Are you focusing too hard on increasing your numbers – new impressions, visitor length on your websites, etc. – and not enough on the number which counts most, your profits?
What you do with your CRM needs to save you money and it needs to make you money.
The second biggest reason for CRM failure is not giving your employees time and means to adjust to the changes in how you’re doing business. Your plan is only as good as its implementation and even the best plan can fall short of its goal if your employees don’t have a clear understanding of how to carry it out. Spend some time on training and your results will improve.
What are some areas you can focus on to improve your CRM?
Ensure that your customers can reach you through multiple channels with ease. This can have an enormous impact on your bottom line. Focus on bringing your CRM procedures into full force in front office interactions. Remember that in the modern era, the front office no longer just refers to a physical space, but also your presence on the World Wide Web. Social networking is a particularly significant method of reaching customers; it’s a great place to find leads and also to keep in touch with your old customers. Again though, it’s important to iterate that following leads can be distracting and lead to a lack of focus – don’t give in to this temptation. If your lead-following tactics are generating a higher bottom line, stick with them. If they aren’t, it’s time to revise your plans. Retaining current customers should always remain a priority; it costs your company less and they are more likely to buy again than any single individual elsewhere is to purchase for the first time. Utilize the web to streamline customer experience by offering customers the ability to engage in eCommerce with you. The software you use, even though it’s automated, should be considered part of your CRM plan. It should simplify the customer’s experience and offer transparency. Online shops cost almost nothing to maintain and can bring in incredible revenue. Make it easy for customers to provide you with feedback; welcome their suggestions and questions and always respond in a timely manner to their requests.
CRM is a critical component of any business plan. Most CRM failures are due to poor focus. So long as you keep your goals in clear view and ensure that your customer service tactics are directly impacting your net profits, you will succeed in Customer Relationship Management in 2011.
After spending time at firms specializing in both traditional and interactive marketing, Spencer recently started his own company, Lumin Internet Marketing. Lumin provides an array of online marketing services including search engine optimization, social media marketing, and online public relations
Techcrunch has put together a great infographic about the rise and fall of Yahoo. What do you think about Yahoo and the current status of their company?
Dan Zarella is, as the blog says it, the social media scientist; and created a very interesting tool: “Most ReTweetable Words Finder” given a keyword, shows the most retweetable words.
The use is quite simple as well: enter a keyword and click analyze. The tool will return a list of words that were found to be related to that word and highly ReTweetable. It will also display the number of Tweets and ReTweets analyzed to generate the list. Here’s an example of “Microsoft” keyword:
We can find some words like “kinect”, “gaming”, “camera”, “ironruby” or even “fetish” (?).
The tool compares words found in ReTweets against non-ReTweet Tweets. Using the last 24hours, the tool analyzes up to 1500 Tweets and 1500 ReTweets per word.
If you are interested in retweeats, Dan created a report: “The Science of ReTweets”
As reported here on Crunch Gear, concepts for Electronic cars are popping up all over the place. Some look like the creations of a sci-fi fiction writer. But you know what? Some seem like viable forms of transportation.
The thing that annoys me about all this jazz concerning global warming and emissions is the fact that the politicians are addressing all the right problems bar one. The most important one at that.
The image. As of now, it’s not cool for an 18 year old to hop into a tiny lithium powered car to go to college. But I think if they spent more time creating a sense of image and maybe lowered the driving age for electronic vehicles (in European countries) to sixteen and slashed insurance costs because it’s not like they’re going to be speeding any time soon, then these things would take off as cheap, viable forms of transportation. Right now, they’re hippy mobiles and uncool.
Unfortunately for mother nature, we don’t live in a dictatorship and nobody is just going to go out and buy these things to solve what is an invisible and speculative problem. What we need is for three-wheeled electronic, two-seater cars to be cool. Much like the Volkswagen Beatle and camper van were popular back in the 50s and 60s.
Remember a few weeks ago, right around the time of CES, when everyone was yammering on about the Apple iPad. All the other prospective touch screen tablets which were ‘up and coming’ took a back seat. The HP Slate was given the cold shoulder and the MSI 10-inch tablet? Forget it.
Now however, the sobering release of the real Apple iPad (not the wishy-washy dreams of Apple fan boys) have us looking at the competition. And according to DigiTimes, MSI’s tablet will retail at a pricy $500. Ouch.
However, I do smell a level of success for this one. You see, the iPad has been bombarded with criticism for being an oversized iPod Touch. Everyone wanted a slim, touch screen computer but that just didn’t happen. MSI might fulfil the prophesy.
It’s got a desktop much like that of your standard PC and has numerous ports and external ports. It’s not as sleek looking as the overgrown iPod iPad but it does have an aura of practicality about it.
This is a tough one to call. And to be honest, it’s destiny (and perhaps even that of the HP slate) relies on how well publicity goes for the iPad over the next few weeks. If the launch goes well and people get over the iPod feel, then MSI might be in trouble. If things keep going as they are though, then the MSI tablet might just be the next big hit for portable touch screen computing!
