Constant Change Media Group

ConstantChangeMedia.com will be down Jan 18th, in protest to SOPA and PIPA

CCMG — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 05:14:35 +0000

January 18th, 2012, will be the largest internet protest in history. Thousands of sites across the internet, including some of the biggest in the world, will be blacking out and directing people to contact Congress to kill the web censorship bill, SOPA and PIPA. We want to get you involved.

In just 7 days, the Senate will vote on forever altering the free and open internet by instituting a new regime of extra-judicial, corporate-led website takedowns. This is a fundamental fight about who has power in society — the people with the means to communicate freely or the governments and corporations that feel threatened.

The clock is ticking, and we’re still 35 senators short of the number we need to kill the bill.

If you’re on Facebook or Twitter, please use these links to spread the word about the protest:

NAB SHOW 2011 – ATTENDANCE UP AGAIN

CCMG — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 05:48:14 +0000

LAS VEGAS — As we prepare to bring you our reports and insights from the NAB Show in Las Vegas, we figured it would be best to begin with some context and explanation for the unnanointed:

The National Association of Broadcasters is the premier advocacy association for America’s broadcasters. NAB advances radio and television interests in legislative, regulatory and public affairs. Through advocacy, education and innovation, NAB enables broadcasters to best serve their communities, strengthen their businesses and seize new opportunities in the digital age.

The NAB Show, held annually in Las Vegas, is the world’s largest electronic media show covering filmed entertainment and the development, management and delivery of content across all mediums. With nearly 90,000 attendees from 151 countries and more than 1,500 exhibitors, the NAB Show is the ultimate marketplace for digital media and entertainment. From creation to consumption, across multiple platforms and countless nationalities, the NAB Show is home to the solutions that transcend traditional broadcasting and embrace content delivery to new screens in new ways.

The National Association of Broadcasters today released its attendance figures for the 2011 NAB Show, and amazingly, its already impressive annual average numbers are even greater.

“Content professionals from across the globe flock to the NAB Show every year, and this year was no exception,” said NAB Executive Vice President Dennis Wharton. “We’re thrilled to host the largest media and entertainment convention annually, and delighted that the NAB Show remains the premiere event for the industry.”

Wit keynotes from James Cameron, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, director Kevin Smith and many powerful and dynamic entertainment and tech industry leaders the shows numbers were up again, cementing a successive trend for increased attendance numbers, that this year were as follows:

TOTAL REGISTERED ATTENDEES: 92,708
INTERNATIONAL ATTENDEES: 25,691
COUNTRIES REPRESENTED: 151
NEWS MEDIA ATTENDEES: 1,314

By contrast, the 2010 NAB Show final attendance was 88,044.

(International and news media attendance figures are included in the overall registration number. The figures are based on pre-show and onsite registration.)

Stay tuned to this special column for exclusive photos, interviews, news and insights from the biggest tech event of the year, a conference that literally shapes the world in years to come.

For even more news an views follow us on Twitter:

@ConstantChange
@Keramcast
@7Dlabs
@AimeeLChadwick

Best of 2010 in Independent Music, Video Games

CCMG — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 01:47:15 +0000

Here are some best of lists from 2010 from several of the sites run by Constant Change Media Group – thanks to all the writers, editors and researchers for their excellent work.

TOP 10 BEST INDIE GAMES OF 2010 – INDIE GAME REVIEWER’S FAVORITE GAME PICKS OF THE YEAR

This, was difficult. Selecting ten games from the plethora of independent comers in a watershed year for the indie gaming community was made even more difficult because of our desire to showcase those creative and adventurous minds that are helping to break molds and old patterns and often we have to separate the developer from the game and base our decision on the game itself – its playability, narrative, ease of use, originality, execution and not the potential of its creators.

Top 20 Best Xbox 360 Live Indie Games of 2010

It was an interesting year for the XBOX Live Indie (formerly known as community and XNA respectively) game platform: first Microsoft made the grave mistake of hiding the XBOX Indies inside some esoteric marketplace tab away from the central gaming area. Then the came the backlash. Then the indie devs organized and stormed the gates with the Indie Games Winter Uprising which stated as it’s MO that it would fight against crappy massage apps clones and mediocrity. All told, the foibles and shenanigans galvanized the commitment and momentum of the little guys who deserve better.

So we send out proper respects to all the independent game developers out there who are making it happen – and we believe you are a force to be reckoned with – heck that’s why this site exists! It’s a little home for you. It’s a lighthouse, attempting to illuminate the dark quarters of the valley. Which makes choosing 20 of the best even harder.

Yep, we are certain not all of you will agree with all of our choices, and even more certain that we missed some games that merited placement in this list. But we do our best and hope this helps lead more eyeballs your way. Microdevs, we salute you!

The 50 Best Albums of 2010 – MusicZeitgeist.com’s Favorite Spins

Alright 2010, thank you for helping ease out all the hand-clapping and xylophones. This year it was time to get down and dirty.

Special thanks to Truffle Jones, Tragic Josh and Daniel Waters for their invaluable input in compiling this list and covering the huge selection of excellent options for another very eclectic year in excellent recorded music.

Highlights and Buzzwords and Hot Products from NAB 2010 Oh My

CCMG — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 11:01:20 +0000

NAB 2010, the National Association of Broadcasters convention at the Las Vegas convention center has come and gone, seeing a sizeable increase in numbers with tech enthusiasts, content creators, television and radio broadcasters and manufacturers and retailers attending to the tune of 88,000, with over 1500 members of the news media also in attendance.

It would be impossible to give a comprehensive overview of all the new ideas, ambitions, technologies and concepts presented, but part of the magic in the world’s largest tech and media conference comes from interfacing with others who were there and hearing from them what discoveries they made.

HOT PRODUCTS FROM NAB 2010

Some of our own highlights included the many seminars, tutorials and breakdowns around the new Adobe CS5 Production Premium Suite that becomes available before summer 2010. From a complete 64-bit rewrite of Adobe Premiere, that showed RAW footage from a RED cam alongside Panasonic P2 footage and Quicktime H.264 files rom Canon’s DSLR playing from the same timeline (without transcoding) to the mind-boggling technologies introduced in the latest iteration of Adobe Photoshop (like smartfill, or dry brushes that show an animated three dimensional paint brush that animates as you paint) to the rotoscoping brush in After Effects – the new software promises to be a complete game-changer. Adobe has acknowledged some of it slightly disappointing attempts in earlier versions, but seem to really have nailed it this time around.

Harris showed a very interesting new vertical technology called Fanscape (working title?) that simplifies the generation of discounts, contests and call-to-action incentives that uses Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and other social media for on-fly conversion strategies while handling all of the behind-the-scenes logistics including point of sale management.

Canon unveiled its latest camcorders – the new XF305 series featuring 4:2:2 colorspace, 3 CMOS sensors, SMPTE generation and a lot more. The camera’s MSRP is presently $8K.

TVLogic's TDM-150W

TVLogic showed off what may be one of the first 3D OLED monitors. The TDM-150W is a 15″ 1366×768 15′ (16:9) OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode) with 3D Shutter Glass, a 100,000:1 Contrast Ratio, built-in waveform and vectorscopes and SDI/HDMI 10-bit support. Just, wow.

Litepanels – the runaway star of the mini LED lighting world, demonstrated an amazing hyrid LED that doubles as a flash strobe with a burst rate up to eight frames per second (8fps). In case this doesn’t amaze in text form, check out this demonstration video from the NAB show floor:

NAB 2010 BUZZWORDS

If you follow us on Twitter, you may have caught some tweets about this year’s buzzwords: last year they were 3D, DTV and social networking, and these were replaced, or updated in 2010 to “broader-casting” (a term trademarked by NAB to include the new broadband broadcasting revolution), “transmedia,” “metadata,” “broadband spectrum,” “mobile,” “colorspace,” “time-shifting” and “multi-platform.”

Add to which, we were treated to talks from Michael J. Fox, Raymond Kurzweil, Stan Lee and many other industry leaders and an amazing preview of Discovery Channel’s upcoming 4-hour series based on the ideas of Stephen Hawking -Into the Universe at the SONY 4K Digital Content Theater.

We will be discussing all of these buzzwords and expanding significantly on this year’s highlights at our very own podcast available on iTunes, or via the main site at http://keramcast.com in the coming weeks.

As usual, it was a breathtakingly huge show that proved very informative and fruitful – a sentiment echoed by anyone with whom we spoke. Kudos to all the event organizers and the NAB for pulling it off.

A Big Weekend In Entertainment. Maybe the Biggest in its History

CCMG — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 04:50:11 +0000

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 broke entertainment records with sales upward of $550 million within the first five days of its release. The subsequent weekend, Twilight: New Moon opened up at the box office with another record smashing cume estimated north of 100 million in its midnight screening alone. Together these two IPs grossed the highest 5 day in entertainment history that includes books, movies, music and video games. This won’t change the slump that has been felt in the industry since the WGA and threatened SAG strikes now almost two years ago, but it may wake up some sleepy-headed types who had been packing up their bags, and get them to think twice.