Without giving away the tragic end to the third season finale of popular PBS Masterpiece Classics television series “Downton Abbey,” it might be a good idea to take a big dose of Dame Maggie Smith as the Dowager Countess to feel better.
Here’s a compilation of some of her most withering asides from the first season — take 10 and see me in the morning — and also an interview of Smith that aired last night on “60 Minutes”:
Originally presented without comment, this mysterious short film by Takahiro Suzuki poses many difficult questions while providing precious few details—who are these people, what are they agog over, and does anyone else smell smoke? Your guess is as good as any.
During a wide-ranging interview at D: Dive Into Media, Rose talked about how Facebook views media, and how media should view Facebook.
“Facebook is primarily two core pillars — identity and sharing,” Rose said, adding that both pillars are part of Facebook’s media pitch.
“From an identity perspective, so much of who we are and how we identify ourselves comes from what we read and what we watch,” Rose continued. “So our identity platform can’t be complete without media being part of it. Similarly, the sharing piece can’t be complete without status updates about news stories, music friends are listening to, updates about movies people are seeing.”
The high-level principle driving this is the idea of finding the perfect balance between great user experience and delivering audience to platform partners.
“At its core, what we’re really striving to do is find the perfect equilibrium from a great user experience and a strong platform that developers and partners will continue to invest in,” Rose said. “… We need to keep the news feed interesting, and one of the ways we do that is through media.”
At the same time, however, Rose said Facebook must “honor” content, and presumably appetite for audience and buzz that’s ever-present behind it.
“We think it’s our job to honor content,” Rose said. “Media content deserves to be honored and respected in the news feed. For example, we recently increased the size of images from media partners. That’s more engaging for users, and for partners it’s great, because click-throughs and engagement increased.”
Media content also deserves to be consumed, says Rose. And here, too, Facebook plays a big role, and hopes to play an even bigger one in the future.
“How did you hear about ‘Downton Abbey’?” Rose asked. “I discovered it on Facebook. I kept seeing it pop up in my news feed. The simple fact is most of us find the TV shows we enjoy by listening to suggestions from our friends. That’s the primary discovery mechanism for content right now. Imagine a future, though, in which you turn on the TV and see a feed of all the shows your friends watch. We think that’s a very compelling idea. Content discovery always has been and always will be social.”
Additional Notes From the Session
[ See post to watch video ]
Kleiner Perkins’ partner Chi-Hua Chien was in the hot seat for this week’s Ask A VC series.
Chien, who has helped led investments in Spotify, Klout, Path, Twitter, and Zaarly, among others; discussed his thoughts on mobile-first, and how startups should approach iOS and Android vs. mobile web. We also chatted about e-commerce and what’s next for online retail, as well as some of his favorite faith-based tech initiatives.
Check out the video above for more.
All too often, tech startup founders feel like they have to move their headquarters to an industry hub such as the San Francisco Bay Area in order to really be successful. But while it’s good to be in touch with the hustle and bustle of Silicon Valley or New York City, there can also be big benefits to building your startup outside of these typical tech epicenters. A great example of this is SoundCloud, the popular audio distribution platform that has scaled up quite nicely while maintaining its home base in Berlin, Germany.
SoundCloud was recognized at the 6th annual Crunchies last week as the “best international startup” of the year, so we pulled aside co-founder and CEO Alex Ljung after he came offstage for a brief talk about how the company has grown. Watch the video embedded above to hear about how SoundCloud kept its international roots even after raising funds from Silicon Valley and New York City investors, what his advice is to other international founders looking to grow, what his favorite things on SoundCloud are right now, and more.
We also talked to Ljung before the show started, when SoundCloud was just a Crunchie nominee and not yet a winner — and that was a pretty enlightening conversation too. Watch that in the video embedded below to hear about the perks of building a company in Berlin, what SoundCloud’s official language is, and what’s up next for the company.
If youi have been waiting for the new Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition to arrive on Android devices, you are going to be disappointed to hear that, creative director on the team Trent Oster has tweeted announcing that the release has been delayed.
The delay has been caused by an issue with the Baldur’s Gate game handling and ship panel APK files, and no word has been given as to when the game will be launched on Android.
The closed alpha development stage for the Dirty Bomb game currently under development by Splash Damage, has this week started. But don’t worry if you haven’t already applied for a place on the testing squad as places are still available if you are quick.
For an idead of what you can expect from the new Dirty Bombs game watch the gameplay video trailer after the jump.
Polish developers Teyon Games have this week announced that their new game Heavy Fire: Shattered Spear will be launching on January 29th for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC.
The new Heavy Fire: Shattered Spear provides an on-rails shooting experience, catapulting players straight into rapid-fire action, and has been updated with a new graphics engine. Watch the trailer after the jump to see it in action.
Blizzard has released a new trailer for the upcoming StarCraft II expansion Heart of the Swarm which reveals the games opening cinematic sequence.
The new StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm expansion will bring with it additional units, 20 new missions, together with multiplayer changes from Wings of Liberty, as well as a continuing the campaign focusing on the Zerg race. Watch the video after the jump to see it in action.
YouTuber “tony stew” has posted a video entitled, “Official iPhone 5 Promo Video September 12 2012.”
We’ve embedded it below.
The video claims certain design characteristics (unibody construction, glass cutouts, etc.), device measurements (4.6 ounces, 7.6 mm, etc.), specs (A6 processor, 1GB RAM, etc.) and often does so in Apple-esque ways note how the width animates down to 7.6mm – it seems like something Apple would produce). In other places, however, the video doesn’t seem as kosher (The text “Antenna at top and bottom with glass cutout RF windows,” for one example, seems too wordy and clunky for Apple to have produced).
What do you think?
MacDailyNews Take: One glaring issue, among others, that we have with it is the music, it just doesn’t seem like a piece that Apple would use.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews readers too numerous to mention individually for the heads up.]
The author of the Survival Guide series presents: iPad 2 Survival Guide Video Series. In this video, I show you how to get started with your new iPad when you just take it out of the box. Topics covered include: – Locations of the buttons and jacks – Tips on navigating the screens – Setting up Wi-Fi – Setting up an email account – Setting up an Apple ID – Purchasing applications from the App Store Toly K is the creator of the best-selling Survival Guide series. The iPad Survival Guide was downloaded by over 200000 readers. His user-friendly Survival Guides for iPhone, Android phones, and tablet computers have received high praise from many reviewers. Please leave all questions and comments below. Purchase the iPad 2 Survival Guide in iBooks by searching “iPad 2″. Click one of the following links to purchase a Survival Guide on Amazon: iPad 2 Survival Guide www.amazon.com All other Survival Guides on Amazon: www.amazon.com All Survival Guides on Barnes and Noble: www.barnesandnoble.com
Andy Hertzfeld, computer scientist and member of the original Apple Macintosh development team during the 1980s, has posted a video of snippets from interviews with members of the original Macintosh team, recorded in October 1983 for projected TV commercials that were never created or aired.
“It never aired because Apple deemed it too self-congratulatory, although it was used in some promotional materials sent to dealers,” Hertzfeld wrote on his Google+ page.
The Chiat Day video features Burrell Smith, Andy Hertzfeld, George Crow, Bill Atkinson and Mike Murray.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews readers too numerous to mention individually for the heads up.]
