Study: Entertainment Devices

Age, Gender Determine 'Go-To' Devices:

"In the 18- to 34-year-old demographic in particular, TV’s edge is slipping. Just 30% of that group said they expected TV to be their primary source of news and entertainment this year, with 28% saying it will instead be their laptop computer, and another 17% citing their smartphone."

Source: emarketer.com

Tech: Kids build working BSG Viper flight simulator

Five high school kids have spent the past year working on a life-sized Battlestar Galactica Viper flight simulator, and it is now operational.
 
The Viper, which is basically a fully functional cockpit mounted so it can spin a full 360 degrees in "flight," was built with everything from scrapped airplane parts to an old race car seat.
The kids even made all the control mechanisms and designed the simulation software themselves.
The final version is on display at Maker Faire 2012 festival in California this week. The project was funded via Kickstarter and raised a whopping $11,578.

Infographic: Sitcoms Into Social Phenomena

How You’re Turning Sitcoms Into Social Phenomena 

Study: Top 5 Sites Visited While Watching TV

In Nielsen’s U.S. Digital Consumer Report, we were given a glimpse of the extent consumers are connected while watching TV. The world’s greatest attention magnet now meets the world’s coolest digital water cooler.What’s clear is that connected consumers are also seasoned multi-taskers. When asked what they’re doing on their devices while watching TV, the top 3 activities included:

1. Checked email - 57%
2. Surfed the Web - 44%
3. Visited a social network - 44%

The study hinted that there's still hope for advertisers, though.  19% of smartphone and tablet owners searched for product information while 16% looked up coupons or deals.

Featured Site: Aereo

Aereo is a web-based platform for watching broadcast television. Each Aereo member is assigned their own antenna and DVR (the devices are located out of sight at centralized data centers.) The member can then stream television broadcasts to most web-enabled devices. The service will launch on March 14 exclusively in the New York City area. Aereo was founded by Chet Kanojia and is based in Long Island, New York.

News: Jon Stewart Crushes Fox News

Jon Stewart Crushes Fox News In The 2011 Ratings:

According to Comedy Central, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart averaged 2.3 million viewers per episode in 2011. Unlike Fox News, “The Daily Show” was up in total viewers (+7%) and all key demos: adults 18-49 (+6%); men 18-34 (+2%); men 18-24 (+4%).” The Daily Show was also the top cable late night talk show in terms of total viewers, and was generally dominant. While Fox News was losing 14% in the demo in 2011, Jon Stewart was gaining 6%.

Jon Stewart has become Fox News’ #1 media nemesis. To put Stewart’s ratings into a head to head context, The O’Reilly Factor tends to hover around the 3 million viewers range. Hannity is at around 2+ million, and On The Record with Greta Van Susteren varies between 1.1 million and 1.5 million as an average. This means that The Daily Show is more popular than both Hannity and On The Record, and trails O’Reilly by about 700,000 viewers.

The reason why Fox News feels so threatened by Jon Stewart is because his program is more popular than anything not named Bill O’Reilly on the network. Not only is Stewart popular, but he is popular with the coveted young demographics that Fox News struggles with. The average Fox News viewer is 65 years old. For years, the Fox News model of success has been powered by viewers literally aging in to watching Fox.

However, Jon Stewart has thrown a wrench in the Fox News cycle of life by educating his millions of younger viewers about Fox News. Stewart spends segments debunking the propaganda, exposing facts, and uncovering the edited video that is the bread and butter of America’s top cable news network.

Every night Stewart is teaching Americans how to not watch Fox News. The Daily Show host has become the media critic with the biggest platform and loudest voice in our country, and most often that voice is targeting Fox News for their brand of “journalism.”

Via: Politicus USA

Daily Links: July 26, 2011

Terra Nova Posters

16+ Nerdy TV Shows You Can Stream on Netflix

Cyanide, Uranium, and Ammonium Nitrate: When Kids Really Had Fun With Science. I guessed we learned too much, because now you can’t even buy decent cold medicine without drawing suspicion that you’re up to something.


How to Detect Counterfeit Money

Life Before Air Conditioning: How in the world did people deal with the heat of August without air conditioning? Lots of ways, both time-tested and experimental.

Lollipops pacify drunken troublemakers: The city of Victoria in British Columbia is trialling a new technique for dealing with boozed-up partygoers getting lairy in public.

The SWAT team that protects NASA.

To cool you off, read about the 10 Coldest Places on Earth Where People Actually Live.

Zombie proof your doors IF AN invading zombie army is staggering towards your front door, don't worry: a fingerprint-activated door lock could save your bacon. That's because one group of researchers has worked out how a biometric scanner can keep the undead at bay.