audience
Latest
Facebook accused of knowingly inflating its ad audience
Facebook's senior executives knew that it was overestimating the number of users its advertisers could reach, according to an amended lawsuit.
Fox set a streaming record during the World Cup on Monday
Fox Sports has done a lot of work to deliver live streaming coverage of the World Cup in Russia, but it seems to be paying off. The network announced that the Brazil-Mexico match was its top authenticated streaming event ever with 1.4 million unique visitors, and that Monday was its best all-time streaming day with 2 million viewers. That trumps its previous all-time high of 1.8 million unique visitors set just a week ago on June 27th.
Watch this: Kanye West 'Yeezus' tour film compiled from crowd footage
While we wait for the official Yeezus tour documentary to arrive, one Kanye fan decided he could wait no longer and made his own. Compiling audience footage from a smattering of tour stops over the course of several months, John Colandra chronicles the hip-hop artist's globe trotting spectacle. A mix of crowd-shot and professional video clips make for a nearly two and a half hour film, offering a solid look at the event that, in true Kanye fashion, featured a mixture of sets, costumes, lighting and more. West himself broke the news of a theater-bound tour film back in February, but nothing more than a trailer has been released thus far. To be fair, he has been a bit busy. [Photo credit: Stefan Gosatti/Getty Images]
Audience's software lets PCs process your voice without special chips
Previously, Audience's sound processing tricks have required a dedicated chip, limiting where you would see it; you're more likely to get clever noise cancelling in your phone than in a PC. That's changing shortly thanks to S1.0, the company's first software-only approach to voice processing. The code primarily gives x86-based PCs better-than-usual noise reduction; people shouldn't hear echoes or typing sounds while you're in the middle of a chat. Audience's technology also brings 360-degree voice boosting, so you can hold conference calls without making everyone huddle around the computer. There aren't any confirmed customers for S1.0 just yet, but the company vows that "major PC OEMs" are testing it as you read this.
Audience's new motion sensing chip lets your phone track longer, more detailed runs
Not been seduced by the quantified self movement yet? Well if it's ever going to happen, it'll be thanks to companies like Audience. More specifically, thanks to products like its new MQ100 motion processor. What does it do? Well the MQ100 allows for always-on motion tracking, similar to how its existing VoiceQ product enables mobile devices to "listen" for your voice commands, even when in standby. As the new sensor relieves the host device's main processor of these motion-sensing duties, it opens the door for constant activity tracking, without the battery drain -- similar to how Apple implemented its M7 motion sensor in the iPhone 5s. The MQ100 has an accelerometer, gyroscope, magnetic and other "environmental" sensors at its disposal, which makes it ideal for fitness tracking, indoor mapping, and a whole host of other sensory, movement-related applications. The MQ100 will also be bundled into a more complete sensor package that uses all of Audience's mobile technology (it's eS700 range for those that need to know) which could mean a chip that listens for your commands, tracks movement all day, reduces wind noise in calls and more. Yup, your phone is about to get to know you and your walking/talking habits a whole lot better. Especially once it starts finding its way to the manufacturers' labs in the next few months.
Audience's new voice processors offer always-on listening without sacrificing battery life
We'll admit, the touchless controls on the Moto X have spoiled us. It's far too enjoyable to jolt the smartphone out of a deep slumber by speaking a keyword-based trigger phrase (for the X, it's "OK Google Now") and commanding it to do our bidding. And while Motorola managed to integrate this feature into its flagship smartphone without taking a huge hit on battery life, there's always room for improvement. Audience, a manufacturer of digital voice and audio processors that are commonly found in a large number of smartphones, is introducing its next-gen chip with VoiceQ, an always-listening feature the company claims is even more efficient and powerful than Moto's X8 chipset. VoiceQ, much like its Moto X rival, will be continually ready and waiting for your trigger phrase (it's "OK Audience" by default) and verbal commands. Your mileage may vary here, since it'll be up to each handset maker to program those phrases and commands to their own satisfaction. The difference between the two devices, Audience tells us, is that VoiceQ not only uses a lot less power (less than 1.5mA) as it listens for you, it also doesn't require you to pause between the trigger and the commands; you won't find yourself speaking the same command twice just to ensure the phone heard the whole thing. VoiceQ isn't the only enhancement to the next-gen chips, known as the eS700 series. It also comes with noise suppression for windy conditions, a type of speech-restoration tech that filters out extremely noisy situations and 48kHz voice processing. In other words, if touchless controls aren't really your thing yet, at least your smartphone will be much clearer on the other end for whoever you call. Device manufacturers are already testing samples of Audience's new chips, and company reps tell us that we can expect to see it show up in the second half of this year.
Audience eS515 Smart Sound Processor brings three-mic support and selective audio capture to phones
Even if you haven't heard of Audience, there's a very good chance you (or a close friend or family member) have used a product with one of its audio processing chips installed. The company, which prides itself in its noise-cancelling prowess, is taking to CES to launch its latest high-end processor, dubbed the eS515. This particular chip offers a new high-performance, low-power codec subsystem and integrates a handful of impressive features along with it. First on the laundry list of improvements is support for up to three mics on a singular device; while we've seen the three-mic setup on a limited scale in the past (Qualcomm has done it on its development phones), Audience's implementation may be the first to arrive on commercially available phones. Since it's currently sampling to manufacturers, we may not have to wait terribly long. In addition to the three-mic support, the eS515 also throws in a few other handy tools, such as de-reverb, which is meant to significantly reduce the voice echo users normally experience on speakerphones and in large rooms; a selective audio capture feature called Audio Zoom, which lets you switch back and forth between a bi-directional recording mode and single-direction narrator mode; new hardware-accelerated speech recognition algorithms that's geared to interpret your voice more accurately; and dual-mic noise suppression when taking video. It all sounds pretty tempting, and we're eager to see how well Audience holds up on its claims -- we're still waiting to hear which upcoming devices will have the chip installed, but our guess is that it'll show up on a handful of premium smartphones in the coming year. We've got the press release below for your dissection.
Audience Inc says Apple unlikely to use its audio tech in iPhones
Audience is a US-based company that makes voice and audio processors for mobile products. In the past, Apple used Audience's audio technology in the iPhone, but that may change with the next iPhone model, says a report in Reuters. Audience's CEO Peter Santos told Reuters in an email interview that, "Events of the last week in the normal course of business led us to believe that our technology is not likely to be enabled in Apple's next generation mobile phone." This admission sent Audience's stock tumbling down 60 percent as more than one-third of Audience's total revenue comes from licensing agreements with Apple. The company will still get royalties on older phone models, but that revenue will slowly dry up as Apple phases out the iPhone 4 and 4S. Audience didn't say why Apple is no longer using its processors, but the company did hint that Apple is now using its own team to develop audio technology for the iPhone.
Audience noise-cancelling said not to feature in next iPhone
There was a time when Audience's contribution to the iPhone's call clarity was not only praised, but actively hunted down. But now it looks like the party is over -- at least according to the chip maker itself. Citing events "in the normal course of business" the firm believes that its technology won't be making it into Apple's next handset -- unsurprisingly a big blow for its shareholders. While it remains unconfirmed, Audience suggested in a conference call that Apple has built its own audio team. Something that is possible already creating a hubbub with other industry players. Though all things going well, we'll only have to wait a week until the new iPhone hits the surgeon's bench anyway.
Noise Free Wireless alleges Apple is tone deaf over sound reduction patent, files lawsuit to match
Apple faces litigation claiming that it's using patented technology all the time, often from small patent holding companies with dollar signs in their eyes. Noise Free Wireless has just filed a patent lawsuit against Apple whose allegations are considerably, well, louder. The firm maintains that it had been pitching its patented noise cancellation to Apple in periodic meetings between 2007 and 2010, only to watch as 1 Infinite Loop used Audience's technology for the iPhone 4 instead -- and supposedly handed some of Noise Free's work to a competitor. An Apple patent filed the same year borrows some of that work, Noise Free insists, in addition to the iPhone in question. Neither side is talking about the details to outlets like Macworld, although we'd be cautious about accepting either company's position at face value. However much Apple may protest its innocence regardless of circumstances, Noise Free certainly has a vested interest in retribution after losing out on such a big contract.
Noise Free Wireless creating a lot of noise over alleged Apple infringement
When you're the big target, it seems like everyone is shooting at you. Apple is now being sued by a Silicon Valley company by the name of Noise Free Wireless over alleged infringement of a patent for mobile phone noise-reduction technology. Noise Free Wireless says that the company first showed off its patented technology to Apple at meetings in 2007 with a number of increasingly technical and confidential meetings following until 2010, when Noise Free found that Apple was going to use technology from Audience (a rival) in future products. However, in June of 2010, Apple filed an application for a patent covering noise suppression. Noise Free Wireless is alleging that Apple reverse-engineered their "proprietary and confidential object code, determined Noise Free's noise reduction software, and measured and duplicated the signal traces from the circuit board and microcontroller," and then supplied that information to Audience. The lawsuit was filed on July 3, 2012 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, with Noise Free asking for damages for the alleged infringement as well as an invalidation of Apple's patent.
Big Fish Games scores a hit with Fairway Solitaire
My meeting with Big Fish Games' Patrick Wylie was one of my last meetings at GDC, but it was also one of my most satisfying. It turns out I'm not alone in my esteem for the great Fairway Solitaire app this company has put together; "This game is growing our audience," Wylie told me. That's quite a big statement. Big Fish has been around for a while making PC titles designed for a very casual audience, usually hidden object games and other casual time management fare. It's been trying to break out in the iOS market for about the past year and a half. Before Fairway Solitaire, the company hadn't really had a hit on this level, and I'd argue it was because the company was playing around with its standard casual titles rather than digging in deep. It makes sense when you consider this game's rocky past. Back in 2008, Wylie says Big Fish Games had one of its biggest PC hits with a hidden object game, and one of the developers got the idea to do a solitaire game with a golf framing on it. However, the decision was that Big Fish should catch a wave with hidden object titles and ride that trend for all it was worth. Fairway Solitaire got put on the back burner, and Big Fish went on to build its reputation on casual gaming. Last year, as the company was trying to gain ground on iOS, Fairway Solitaire showed up in development again, and I actually saw a very early version of it at GDC 2011. But while the game was technically complete last October, Wylie and company decided to go back to the drawing board and spent five months "tuning a game that was already done, just trying to get the experience as exactly right as possible." All that work apparently paid off; Fairway Solitaire has huge conversion rates for Big Fish, and its players are among the most engaged players on the whole App Store. Wylie says he would have liked to see this success sooner, but he doesn't really regret all of the work done on the game before release. "I'm glad we actually did wait," he told me. Big Fish is very excited about the success of Fairway Solitaire, and just like its earlier hidden object games, Big Fish plans to take full advantage of that popularity. Up first on the iOS game, there's a spring update coming with a brand new pack of maps for players to play through. Big Fish has another Fairway Solitaire-based title planned, and we can expect a summer pack as well, with lots more content and features to come. "We're going to service this forever," says Wylie, or at least as long as the game's players are willing to play. "I don't know where it's going to stop," he says of Fairway's rising sales. Big Fish's next game will be called Lifequest, a freemium RPG title designed around performing real-life tasks like getting a job, working, or even eating out or buying a pet. Lifequest has been Big Fish's "best performing non-hidden object adventure game" on the PC and Mac according to Wylie, so he has big hopes for how it will do on Apple's touchscreen platforms. Another big title due soon is Plunder, a pirate-based puzzle game in which you guide a set of pirate ships through dangerous watery grids by propelling them forward in the right order and at the right time. Plunder's been under development on iOS for awhile, and it's not quite as complicated as Fairway Solitaire, which itself isn't all that hard. Big Fish isn't giving up on hidden object games; the company is also releasing the latest version of the popular Mystery Case Files series, called the 13th Skull. It's jam-packed with full motion video, letting players interact with live action characters as they explore a haunted house and have to find all sorts of items and solve simple adventure-style puzzles. These games tend to appeal to a very specific audience more than anyone else, but Big Fish hopes the production values make it stand out in an already very packed market. Big Fish is very excited about Fairway Solitaire, and we can expect to see much more of that game coming in the future. I've always been a proponent of more complicated games, even for casual players. While many developers on the App Store are racing for a lowest-common denominator style of super casual freemium gameplay, Fairway Solitaire shows that with a quality, compelling gaming experience, you can attract engaged gamers from all over.
Audience earSmart eS110 brings its voice processing and noise suppression to low cost feature phones
Remember Audience? Sure you do. The outfit was behind the iPhone 4's noise-canceling wizardry that would be later built directly into the 4S' A5 heart. Now, the company has announced its earSmart eS110 advanced voice processor for feature phones. Touting "the same voice quality" as those more expensive phones that we all covet, the single microphone tech will suppress unwanted noise like cars passing by or that loud guy next to you at a bar. The eS110 offers crisp calls for both handset and speakerphone uses thanks to processors designed around how humans filter the sounds that we hear. Entry-level smartphones are targets as well and the kit's 3.5 x 3.5mm stature should make for easy integration. Audience says that samples will be sent out to manufacturers in March and should show up in handsets by the end of the year. In search of a few more details? Hit the full PR below to find out more.
EA Legend analytics announced, will assist advertisers in EA games
EA has announced a new service called EA Legend, designed not for consumers but to provide marketers with information about how players are using and engaging with EA products and their related advertisers. For example, EA would be able to provide advertisers with information about their users on iOS apps, Facebook games, and even online and other console games where advertising takes place, and those advertisers and marketers would then be able to figure out when and where best to reach the audience they want. EA's Senior VP of Global Media Solutions Dave Madden says that the company has increased its reach by 30% in the past year, and that EA Legend will help advertisers break that audience down, and give them "actionable insights across all of our platforms and a complete view into how their campaigns are driving engagement with consumers." In other words, EA's got your eyeballs, and EA Legend will help advertisers buy them. EA is premiering the service at next week's Advertising Week conference in New York City.
iPhone 4 noise cancellation chip demoed with comparison video
Last summer, when the folks at iFixit first did a tear down of the iPhone 4, one of the interesting tidbits they revealed was that the iPhone 4 has two mics (which is more than most other cell phones), and that it has a white-labelled (manufacturers details removed upon request from Apple) noise cancellation chip in it. The idea being that ambient noise is identified by the second mic, and processed and cancelled out by the chip -- leaving the person listening to whoever is speaking into the iPhone 4 with much clearer audio. Furthermore, a few months ago, you may have noticed that iFixit -- along side the help of Chipworks -- revealed the unbranded chip to be a low power audio signal processor manufactured by Audience. The same noise cancellation chip found in the Google Nexus One phone. While that in itself may not be all that interesting, we thought you may be interested in the YouTube video iFixit sourced to demonstrate the power of the Audience chip. The video below is a recording of two separate voice mail messages called from the same noisy location, but on two different phones. One is from an unnamed, standard cell phone, the other is from the iPhone 4.
Curtain lifts, Audience exposed as iPhone 4's noise cancelling wizard
It's hard not to respect good detective work, so we have to give kudos to the good folks at Chipworks for putting a long-lived iPhone mystery to rest. The iPhone 4 has been applauded for its dual-mic noise cancellation, but nobody knew who actually built the voice processor responsible for this "magic and revolutionary" feature. Jobs and Co. white-labelled a certain chipset inside the iPhone 4 -- it asked the manufacturer to scrub all branding off -- so nobody could properly identify it. Was it made by Apple or a third party? Fast-forward nearly eleven months and it turns out the company responsible is none other than Audience, the same lovely folks behind the Nexus One's renowned noise reduction. We're unsure why this was kept under wraps for so long, but we can understand why Apple would want to remain quiet and keep this superb technology all to itself. A little sleuthing can go a long way, however, so follow the links below to learn how this mystery was unraveled.
Report: 40% of App Store game downloads are freemium
Xyologic is a company that analyzes mobile app sales and trends, and its latest report says that a full 40 percent of game downloads from Apple's App Store consist of freemium titles -- games that are free to download, but make money with ads or in-app purchases. Ngmoco made a big splash a while back by saying that freemium was the future of the App Store, and according to this report, that is turning out to be more and more true. Xylogoic says that there were 99.9 million downloads of free iPhone games last month, and 80.8 percent of all app downloads were of free apps. It's well known that free games have a wider audience than paid apps (just because the barrier to entry isn't there), and while some developers say that the free audience is always better, the question has always been how to monetize all of those users. In-app purchases seem to be working -- the number of free games with in-app purchases available on the App Store is rising every month, and of the top 150 free games on the store, Xyologic says that 94 of those (63 percent) are making use of in-app purchases. There are certainly still apps benefiting from other models, but there's no question that freemium is still growing as one way to put a successful app on the App Store.
Pitchfork gets a custom iPod touch page-topper ad
Apple has developed a custom ad for indie music review site Pitchfork. You can go over and see it right now in any WebKit-based browser (so Safari or Chrome) -- an iPod touch pops up in front of the menu bars, and everything gets swept away in the games being played. This ad is notable for a few reasons. First of all, Pitchfork, unlike some of Apple's other custom ad targets, is a completely online publication, so Apple is now targeting blog readers as well as traditional newspaper readers. Pitchfork is also known for a certain very indie (some might say hipster) audience, and clearly Apple thinks the iPod touch will "play" with that audience. And finally, 'tis the season -- the iPod touch is on fire lately, and Apple's spending the ad dollars to make sure it stays that way. Excellent ad, of course, just a little strange to see it on the top of a hip music review site. We'll keep eyes out for any other interesting Apple ads this holiday season. [via Macgasm]
Steam releases Mac stats, share drops to 5%
Steam has released its latest hardware survey results, and there's both good and bad news for us Mac gamers. The bad news first: Mac usage of the gaming service has apparently leveled off since the big debut a few months ago, and while the Mac share was originally around 8%, it appears the novelty has worn off a bit, and Mac usage has fallen down to about 5% of the total Steam audience. That's not too surprising (don't forget that the service kicked off with a free Portal game and a good amount of publicity), and it's important to remember that 5% of Steam's 25 million users is still a significant audience. It'll be interesting to see if Apple ever takes advantage of that -- we haven't heard a single official word from them yet about Steam coming to our platform, although the Snow Leopard Graphics Update was tuned to clear up issues that Valve reported. The good news, however, is that Valve has separated out Windows and Mac stats in the hardware survey, so even though there are a few less percentage points of people to look at, we have a lot of interesting information about those Mac users. As you can see in the graphic above, the majority of them are actually playing on a MacBook Pro -- iMacs are the next biggest model on the list, but represent 25% of Mac users as opposed to the MBP's 49%. Steam is also promising a list of most commonly installed Mac applications, but as of this writing, that information isn't posted quite yet. Unfortunately, while Steam is installed on a wide variety of Windows computers, I'll bet that it hasn't quite reached widespread adoption on the Mac side, so these stats will be specifically for Mac gamers rather than the Mac audience as a whole. But it's always interesting to see what stats come out of the Steam Hardware Survey, as a snapshot of just what our technology profile looks like. [via Joystiq]
Archetype nets 160,000 players in first week, promises updates and features soon
We posted about Archetype the other day -- it's an impressively solid multiplayer first-person shooter for the iPhone that brings some hardcore gameplay to Apple's touchscreen platform. And apparently there are a lot of hardcore players out there -- in just one week of release, Archetype has picked up 160,000 players. There have been over 320,000 matches played so far, with over 2 million player kills between them -- that's over 20,000 an hour. Publisher Villian says that it's obviously thrilled with the response, and that "future updates, offerings and new game features" are being worked on. This is interesting for a few reasons: first, most iPhone offerings tend towards the casual. Little pick-up-and-play games often seem to be the norm on the iPhone, as the vast majority of developers seem to be searching for one little interesting gameplay idea and running with it. But Archetype seems to hint that if the experience is done well enough, there's definitely a large audience of "hardcore" gamers on the iPhone. And it's worth mentioning that Archetype doesn't have a lite version and sells for $2.99. Before this game, the most high profile FPS on the store was probably Ngmoco's Eliminate, which went with a free-to-play model in the hopes of garnering a larger audience. But Archetype's success seems to show that (again, if the experience is good enough), there's room at higher price points for a solid player base. We'll have to see where Villian goes with this in the future -- we've heard from other developers that quick and free updates can really make an app grow even bigger, so if they can pull that off with Archetype, they'll really have an iOS juggernaut.
