TriplePoint PR

Have you heard of Bloom Energy lately? Perhaps you’ve just heard of them within the last week or so? For a company that has been around for the better part of a decade, Bloom Energy has gained quite the momentum only recently and in a very short period of time. So what’s all the fuss about? Bloom Energy recently announced to the world that it has created an efficient, clean, and renewable energy source. To be more specific, they have taken fuel cell technology and improved upon it to allow for an energy source that can, eventually, sustain itself while powering houses to buildings to Silicon Valley campuses. And the best part: these Bloom Energy Boxes are portable. Imagine, being able to power remote villages incapable of harnessing traditional means of power with this “magic box” of sorts? With the world focusing on becoming greener, it’s an exciting time to say the least.

I haven’t got any emails in my Outlook inbox. I have about 10 files in My Documents. My iTunes is a lonely, desolate place, used sparingly to upload music to my iPhone. I haven’t owned a boxed PC game in years, and I certainly don’t own any notepaper.

This is thanks to being introduced to the Cloud – a term on a very superficial level that refers to things being kept on external servers and streamed via the internet. Its concept and execution are much more complex, and as a result better explained by Cloud Expert James Urquhart at his blog The Wisdom of Clouds (hosted by CNET).

Basically, it means that I am not effectively shackled to one computer.

To protect the innocent, names have been changed. In this publication, a once-faithful iPhone lover will be referred to with a fictional Twitter name: @madluv4iPhn.

A recent tweet:

@madluv4iPhn Dear iPhone – I’ve met someone new named the Nexus One. I’m strangely attracted to her and need a few days to figure this all out.

I initiated a conversation with @madluv4iPhn to understand his reasons for leaving his iPhone.  The first reason he provided is that the Nexus One serves as a much better telephone than the iPhone. Inconsistent coverage has been a general gripe of the iPhone user population. The Nexus One provides more consistent service with improved sound quality and fewer dropped calls.  To be fair, iPhone’s AT&T service is greatly responsible for the frustrating inconsistency of their calls. Interestingly enough, T Mobile has served the Nexus One very well so far, despite its general criticism for inconsistent coverage.

Earlier this week, New York City’s Jacob K. Javits Center played host to a convergence of two trade shows, as both the 107th American International Toy Fair and Engage! Expo welcomed a diverse group of exhibitors and speakers.  For certain attendees, the pairing of Toy Fair with the Engage! Expo, a conference that focused primarily on virtual goods, might have at first seemed somewhat out-of-place.  Beyond the giant stuffed animals, puzzle games, and highly popular robotic hamsters that populated much of Toy Fair, Engage! showcased  leading entrepreneurs in the new digital retail phenomenon – the virtual goods industry.

As reported by Inside Network and covered here on TriplePointPR.com, this year, the virtual goods industry is projected to drive $1.6 billion in revenue in the U.S. alone.  While the ability to purchase virtual goods has existed in online communities for quite some time now, the phenomenon that is social gaming hasushered in a brand new audience for microtransaction purchases – the general consumer.

While traditional retailers and toymakers struggle to survive the stormy and rather unpredictable economic recession, the virtual goods industry is booming.  Selling non-physical items, the providers of virtual goods have seen just as much (and presumably more) success than long time brands and veterans of the physical toy industry present at the Javits Center this week.  The reason for such success is simple – the provider of the virtual good, which can be looked upon as a modern toy manufacturer, is smarter and armed with more consumer information than the producer of the antiquated physical retail toy.

At this week’s American International Toy Fair, the Mattel Corporation announced Barbie’s latest career as a computer engineer. Decked out in a binary-print tshirt, leggings and sensible(ish) shoes, Barbie sports a Bluetooth headset and carries a pink laptop (with “Barbie” written in ASCII on the screen, cleverly enough). The Barbie® I Can Be…™ Computer Engineer Doll was created by Mattel to inspire a new generation of girls to become part of this growing profession. Let’s hope Barbie can use her computer engineering skills to inspire more girls to become part of the video game profession, a subset of the computer industry that currently has women comprising only 5% of its ranks.

Social Gold, the premier virtual economy platform, has recently shared some intriguing facts on users’ spending behavior within social games. Social Gold offers users a seamless in-game payments experience so players can purchase virtual goods without disrupting gameplay. New stats that were recently  posted on Social Gold’s blog show that their virtual economy platform increases conversion and drives repeat purchases.

So strangely compelling...

In terms of wide-sweeping brand recognition, Popcap is to casual gaming what Nintendo is to gaming in general.  Your Grandma knows about Nintendo, but your Mom might know a PopCap game or two.  Founded a decade ago, the company does a spectacular job of keeping their games in the public eye and maintaining a friendly, unassuming aesthetic.  It’s as if making boatloads of money is the pleasant side-effect of cranking out highly addictive puzzlers, and to be clear, casual games are doing big business.  Most of their games are available on multiple platforms, with free versions hosted at PopCap.com.  Because the games are both robust and replayable, it’s no surprise that their perennial favorite Bejeweled 2 hasn’t left the Top 10 Highest Grossing list on the App Store since that category was unveiled six months ago .

Some of the most forward-thinking leaders within the entertainment industry attended the Future of Media conference today at the Stanford Graduate School of Business to discuss the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead in the media industry. The discussion panels covered topics including the future of interactive entertainment, television and film, social media and news, music, and entrepreneurship within the media landscape. It seems that while the future is uncertain, business leaders and innovators within the space see a shift toward more interactive entertainment as the long-standing distinctions between creators of content and distributors of information are expected to break down.

Yesterday, google announced a plan to build its own ultra high-speed broadband network with speeds more than 100 times faster than what we have now.

This is great news!

But not for us, right now anyway. This network is just a test that will be rolled out slowly to at least 50,000 and up to 500,000 homes in select communities. The test is not a toe in the water of the ISP cesspool, but “rather an effort to push the industry into offering faster internet access at a lower cost.” That sounds like a noble deed to me, so thank you google.

Imagine what we could do with internet speeds up to 100 times faster than what we have now.

Facebook is staggeringly huge. They have over 400 million active users, half of whom log in on any given day, over 500k active applications, and can rattle off plenty of other impressive totals for those who’d like to listen. As an open platform, they have provided companies like Zynga and PlayFish with millions of dollars in revenue, and provided many other developers with a shot at financial success. Despite these achievements, and despite an estimated company valuation that extends into the billions, monetization remains the one aspect of Facebook’s business that hasn’t matched their growth. With this week’s sure-to-be-critiqued changes, that last piece of the puzzle may be ready to fall into place. But first, a bit of background…

Mainstream Gamers

Gone are the days when gamers consisted only of nerdy guys in their mother’s basements. Social games on Facebook and MySpace have expanded the video games market, and these “social gamers” now consist of women, older people, and people who don’t even identify themselves as traditional gamers. Playdom seems to have tapped into yet another market with their Sorority Life game: sorority girls and their wannabes. Whether you are, or have always wanted to be, in a sorority, Sorority Life lets you live out your dreams via a very stylish avatar. But just how realistic is this game? As a former sorority gal, I’ll take a look at the game’s features and how they translate to real life.

Video games challenge players to solve problems, overcome obstacles and, in many cases, learn. While some argue that games can be extremely effective education tools, researchers have just started to scratch the surface of what actually happens in our brain when we play games.

Cerebral Cortex, a research journal for papers about the study of the cerebral cortex, published a recent report by the University of Pittsburgh’s Kirk Erikson, Assistant Professor of Psychology, about certain regions of the brain that seem to facilitate advanced understanding of interactive media. In other words, Erikson discovered four distinct areas of the brain that might actually make us better at playing video games.

Brewnanza (in case you missed the first or second posts) is an end-of-week office gathering intended to expand our collective knowledge and appreciation for craft beer – a market we’re eagerly looking to offer our services to. In fact, since the last post, we’ve added a page detailing the services we’d like to offer to craft brewers!

We’ve also just kicked off a casual blog over at Brewnanza.com, reporting on industry news we find interesting, and detailing our various beer adventures.

San Francisco Beer Week starts today (not to mention the fact that February is 21st Amendment and Magnolia‘s 8th annual Strong Beer Month), and we’ll be at the SF Brewer’s Guild‘s opening gala event tonight to partake in the delicious wares and meet some of the best brewers in the business.

This time, we report on our San Francisco crew’s thoughts on the Hefeweizen and Brown Ale styles.

Inside Network recently released a report that the virtual goods market is expected to drive $1.6 billion in revenue in the U.S. in 2010. The market is driven in large part by virtual items sold in social games, which account for $835 million of the total sales projected. While publishers such as Zynga, Playfish, Playdom and Serious Business are hard at work creating the content and engagement mechanisms to drive sales, payments solutions such as Social Gold (online), Zong (mobile), Open Network Entertainment, Inc. (prepaid cards) and the newly launched Kwedit (cash) are striving to help customers purchase those virtual goods seamlessly.

Financial Times technology reporter Joseph Menn has written a captivating account of “The Hunt for the New Crime Lords that are Bringing Down the Internet” in Fatal System Error (Public Affairs, 2010).  ”Cybercrime” is something that for now rings as more terrifying to the imagination than it has yet to be in practice.  With some minimal consideration of what programs one installs or what emails one answers and making sure your anti-virus software is up to date, it’s pretty unlikely an individual is going to be a victim of it.  Identity theft, one of the more frequent and noxious strains possible from Cybercrime, still largely originates from stealing unshredded documents in the trash or (physical) mailbox.  When it does happen electronically, such as the four-million strong theft at Hannaford Supermarkets, only 1800 false charges were subsequently made on the stolen credit cards.