Apple announces new 7.9-inch iPad mini, available Nov. 2
Today Apple unveiled details of its new iPad mini, at 7.9 inches, small enough to hold in one hand. It’s an incredibly 7.2-millimeter thin, weighs half as much as any iPad and battery life reaches 10 hours. The tablet will cost $329 minimum.
At the California Theatre in sunny San Jose, Apple revealed the specs of its new iPad mini tablet, available for pre-order Oct. 26.
What can you do with the iPad mini? Hold it in one hand first of all, said Philip W. Schiller, the senior vice president of worldwide marketing at Apple. As thin as a pencil, the iPad mini is similar to the Nexus 7 in terms of size and look. It weighs .68 pounds and boasts 10 hour of battery life.The new tablet features the A5 chip, HD-quality FaceTime camera, a 5-megapixel backside camera, and 802.11N WiFi.
The Wi-Fi version will cost $329 (16GB).Wi-Fi versions of the iPad mini will ship first on Nov. 2 to select countries, and the cellular+Wi-Fi version will be available worldwide two weeks later.
Also, the company announced that the iPad would enjoy an update. The new full-sized iPad will now come with a Lightning port. A6X and expanded LTE will be added to the iPad as well. Schiller said the A6X doubles the performance compared to the previous generation, and it’s priced at $499 for the 16GB version.
Apple wasn’t done. The company revealed details of the new 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display, with “pixels so small that at normal viewing distance, your eye can’t tell the difference,” Schiller said.
The press release states: “At 227 pixels per inch, the Retina display’s pixel density is so high the human eye is unable to distinguish individual pixels at a normal viewing distance, so images look sharp and text looks like it does on the printed page.
It boasts a 75 percent of reduced reflection than the previous MacBook Pro. It offers seven hours of battery life, Schiller said. It’s available today and the 2.5 GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor version with 128GB of flash storage is priced at $1,699, he added.Then CEO Tim Cook discussed the new iMac, both the 21.5-incher and the 27-inch version. Featuring an incredible 5 mm thin screen, the computer is 80 percent lighter than its predecessor. It boasts a FaceTime HD Camera, dual microphones, over 300 nits of brightness and a new drive called Fusion Drive (128GB) that automatically places your most popular apps in the faster Flash drive.
The 21-inch iMac, at 2.7GHz processing power, is available in November and will cost $1,299. The 27-inch version, at 2.9GHz, will hit shelves in December and will set you back $1,799.
This article originally appeared in Digital Journal [Link]
Squeeze platform measures your content’s virality on social media
When we tweet or post links on Facebook, it’s hard to tell if anyone is clicking on them. Sure, a retweet and a “like” can give us a clue to the link’s popularity, but many people can click on a tweet, say, and never retweet it. How can we find out if our social media efforts are effective?
Along comes Squeeze to give us a peek into that world. Developed by Toronto-based Sequentia Environics, the newly launched Squeeze measures how many people clicked on links on various social media channels, such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+. Sequentia believes the new product will make it simpler for marketers or journalists to see what actions are successful, and which need some tweaking.
“We’re shocked to learn how large enterprises on Fortune 50 list were using Excel to measure social sentiment monitoring,” says Jennifer Evans, Founder and Chief Strategist at Sequentia. “Their work didn’t tell them anything about how their content generated leads.”
Evans and her team came up with Squeeze in order to give marketers and execs a much-needed hand in learning how their social media time was being spent. Were people clicking more on infographics in Twitter, or on questions posed as tweets? Did Facebook encourage more engagement than Google+? What day delivered the best results? Squeeze wants to deliver those results, in real-time.
We tested out Squeeze for several weeks and we found the platform to be simple and powerful. We learned quickly how Facebook links seem to attract more visitors than tweets, and a dashboard nicely lays out graphics on where traffic came from. We also liked the feature showing us the best time to deploy content, from the day of week to the time of day we’d most likely see high engagement.
A channel comparison chart told us what social media outlet saw the most virality, something we often came back to when considering where to post links.
“Squeeze lets you see great analytics and how everything fits together,” Evans says. She adds many other social media channels can be integrated into Squeeze, such as an image on Pinterest (as long as it has a dedicated URL) or a YouTube video, if a link is placed in the clip description space.
Sequentia isn’t the only player in this space. bit.ly is well known for analyzing your links, but its free service is limited: it will only connect to Facebook and Twitter, and you can’t customize what channels to measure. Also, the Enterprise version of bit.ly costs minimum $995 a month, while Squeeze’s upcoming paid features will be priced at $500/month, for the top Enterprise version. For a scaled-back version at $50/month, users can get unlimited form integration (for those doing newsletters), unlimited content assets, and one year of data retention.
As social media and marketing continue to intersect, tools like Squeeze will become more prevalent for content creators hoping for deeper analytics. It’s not enough to see mentions on Twitter; to truly gauge your online performance, you need apps delivering timely info to determine if you need to send out that link to the masses.
Pew report: 23% of Americans read print newspapers, number continues to decline
The number of Americans who say they read print newspapers continues to plummet, according to a new poll from Pew Research Center. Just 23 percent of Americans said they read a newspaper yesterday, while a year ago the figure was 41 percent.
Many news lovers prefer an outlet’s website to its offline format. Pew writes “55 percent of regular New York Times readers say they read the paper mostly on a computer or mobile device, as do 48 percent of regular USA Today and 44% of Wall Street Journal readers.”
Social media plays a role in discovering news, it was reported. Around 19% of the public says they saw news or news headlines on social networking sites yesterday, up from 9% two years ago.
When looking at Americans who say they regularly read a daily newspaper, 38 percent said they do, although this percentage also has declined, from 54 percent in 2004.
An interesting sidebar is the number of Americans who admit to regularly enjoying following the news. Currently, 43 percent say they enjoy following the news a lot, a decline compared with 45 percent two years ago and 52 percent in 2008, 2006 and 2004.
Digital Journal Inc. launches /newsrooms division for brands
The /newsrooms division is co-founded and led by marketing and social media veteran, Sabaa Quao who is joining Digital Journal Inc. as Chief Marketing Officer.
“Digital Journal has seen meteoric growth in 2012 and the launch of our /newsrooms division diversifies us as a modern digital media company and positions us to own a significant piece of the social enterprise technology and publishing spaces,” said Chris Hogg, CEO of Digital Journal Inc. “Digital Journal’s deep expertise in social, publishing and marketing combined with our technology and global network of content creators means we can deliver a scalable digital media solution that is unmatched. We will now leverage these proven tools and processes to serve marketers and brands.”
Digital Journal has earned worldwide attention and praise for its role as a digital media pioneer and leader. In June 2012 Digital Journal was proclaimed one of the Top 20 most promising companies in Canada by The C100, a non-profit, member-driven organization made up of top executives of companies such as Apple, Cisco, EA, eBay, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Oracle, and venture investors representing more than $8 billion in capital. The C100 supports Canadian technology entrepreneurship through mentorship, partnership and investment.
How /newsrooms work
Digital Journal’s /newsrooms division opens new opportunities for the tens of thousands of content creators from 200 countries who participate in the company’s global network. Digital Journal’s /newsrooms division can support social media campaigns and marketing services to enable brands to grow audiences at scale, engage brand influencers and meet the pressures of 24/7 interaction that marketers are feeling. If you were to create CNN or The New York Times but dedicated to social media coverage, content creation, and publishing for and around brands, that would be Digital Journal’s /newsrooms division.
/newsrooms are an extension of a brand’s existing marketing and advertising efforts and Digital Journal takes everything a brand is already doing and adapts it to a strategy that puts content, live events and social media engagement at the forefront. This strategy harnesses the audience-growing skill of journalists, with the brand expertise and commercial inclination of a skilled marketing team.
Digital Journal’s /newsrooms begin by making brands relevant on a personal level; a content strategy becomes central to that goal by identifying the themes and content categories related to the brand. Digital Journal then combines journalistic professionalism with strong lead-generating content marketing initiatives to grow the audience and customer base.
In addition to content, /newsrooms also apply a customized social media approach to help develop a brand’s audience and engage top influencers. Applications may include covering live events, curating assigned content on specific topics valuable to a brand, using social media to disseminate news, analyzing social media influence, managing the engaged audience, and running Command Centres to ensure the brand is always on — just like a media organization.
“Brands and companies have become publishers, with little choice but to address what it means to engage 24/7 with their audiences,” says Sabaa Quao, Digital Journal’s Chief Marketing Officer and head of /newsrooms. “At the same time, companies are guardedly watching to see if their core business will be dramatically altered, damaged, or destroyed. Now with /newsrooms, brands can scale up their interaction and collaboration with influencers who are engaging with their products, in real-time.”
Digital Journal can already attest to the power of /newsrooms, as the company is a product of its own success; starting out as a Toronto-based magazine, Digital Journal used the /newsrooms approach and technology to grow from a local magazine into a global digital media organization with tens of thousands of contributors in 200 countries, reaching millions of people every month.
For more information visit digitaljournalmedia.com
About Digital Journal Inc.
Digital Journal Inc. is a global digital media company that delivers technology, content and social media solutions to brands and media companies. Headquartered in Toronto, Digital Journal is widely recognized as a pioneer and leader in digital media and in 2012 Digital Journal was proclaimed one of the Top 20 most promising companies in Canada. Boasting a proprietary digital platform and a network of tens of thousands of professional content creators in 200 countries, Digital Journal provides an out-of-the-box solution that touches every corner of the digital media industry.
Megaupload’s Kim Dotcom teases new online music service Megabox
Internet mogul Kim Dotcom uploaded a YouTube video promising a new online music service called Megabox. It will reportedly allow artists to sell their own music and earn 90 percent of the revenue generated through those transactions.
In the video posted by the controversial founder of Megaupload, it seems both artists and music fans can create separate profiles. After artists create their profiles, they can share as much of their music as they’d like.
If the video teaser is to be trusted, Dotcom has lined up some impressive musicians to join the service, such as The Black Keys, Will.i.am and Rusko.While his previous project Megaupload (now shut down) also included videos to watch and share, the YouTube clip doesn’t show any videos being uploaded or shared on Megabox.
Dotcom is trying to make a comeback after his previous online giant Megaupload got him in hot water with the FBI and RIAA. He was charged earlier this year with various alleged crimes, including facilitating “massive worldwide online piracy” through his Megaupload cyberlocker.
Dotcom has also been accused of racketeering and money laundering amounting to “more than $500 million in damages and over $175 million in profit,” according to authorities.
But after a judge ruled the Megaupload founder’s home, known as the Dotcom Mansion, wassearched illegally, the case was suspended and now U.S. authorities are working to extradite the German to stand trial for what they have called the biggest case of its kind to date, USA Today writes.
Dotcom has only released scant details about Megabox, but he earlier said “Megabox would feature something called Megakey, a solution allowing artists to earn income even from those users who download music for free. Dotcom hasn’t disclosed any details of the service, but said the Megakey business model was tested with over a million users and it worked,” as this mediareport tells us.
TechCrunch’s Matt Burns is excited about Megabox’s potential: …it’s probably a safe bet that Dotcom and the rest of the Megaupload world are prepping Megabox to be the anti-RIAA and as pro-artist/fans as possible. And that’s awesome.”
This article originally appeared in Digital Journal [Link]