Monthly Archives: August 2017

Person to Person is one long string of great scenes, but theres this beautifully horrendous moment that captures the farcical strain of comedy running through the new indie ensemble with a music tinge. It involves Michael Cera and Abbi Jacobson (of Broad City fame) sitting in a car, chanting SUCK! SUCK! SUCK! SUCK! SUCK! along with a fictional metal song called Suck on Greed. I like to bang my head a little in the morning before coming into work, metalhead investigative reporter Phil (Cera) tells trainee Claire (Jacobson), an introvert who prefers Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan. Claires face, as shes subjected to Phils morning metal routine, reads fear and crippling anxiety; certainly its not helped by the fact that shes assigned a murder case on her first day. Later, Phil attempts to get Claire out of her shell by inspiration-quoting a line from his own metal band (fear is the rape of the mind); you can tell its completely unhelpful.

This memorable dynamic captures just one part of Person to Person, the second feature from writer and director Dustin Guy Defa. The film loosely weaves its three main stories of random New Yorkers without striving for some forced connection. Its casta mix of indie veterans and newcomerskeeps the acting naturalistic, while the low-key, talky sense of humor (reminiscent of early Woody Allen or Richard Linklater) makes something as dark as a murder case come off as just another quirk of the Big Apple.

Even as Phil and Claire team up to track down their possible suspect, the victims widow (Michaela Watkins), cynicism isnt the occupying force of Person to Person. In fact, its quite the opposite. Person to Person is a warm movie: autumnal colors fill the screen while the textured 16mm film it was shot on gives its New York that nostalgic glow. This comes from the lens of cinematographer Ashley Connor, whose rsum includes Josephine Decker films and a long list of memorable music videos familiar to Pitchfork readers (Jenny Lewis Just One of the Guys, Mitskis Your Best American Girl, and Angel Olsens Shut Up Kiss Me, to name just a few).

When Connors lens isnt fixed upon Phil, Claire, the suspect, and the watchmaker who may hold the clues (Philip Baker Hall), it wanders over to Wendy and Melanie, two high school girls skipping school. Continuing to prove her acting chops, Rookie wunderkind Tavi Gevinson plays a sarcastic teen who spends her screen time grumbling to her best friend (Olivia Luccardi), who in turn invites her boyfriend along so they can make out. Ambushed with a double date, Gevinson is a delight to watch as she navigates that space between angst and curiosity.

But the films most touching vignette is of two roommates, Bene and Ray, the latter (George Sample III) fleeing from a much-deserved beating after uploading naked photos of his ex-girlfriend online. Portraying a music fanatic of the same first name, breakout star Bene Coopersmith is the far more lovable half of the duoif not the best part of Person to Person overall, then at least the films heart. Bene spends his day chasing down a rare Charlie Parker LP (The Bird Blows the Blues) and asking strangers if they think he can pull off his new floral shirt. During his scenes, the films soundtrackfull of obscure R&B and funk jams like Shirley Ann Lees Time, the Volumes Im Gonna Miss You, and Greenflows I Gotchacomes alive. As Bene goes after the record seller who ultimately scams him, the title of Person to Personabout the serendipitous, sometimes inconvenient connections strangers can make in the big cityreally comes into focus.

Despite appearances and interests, Bene isnt some hardened middle-aged man constantly griping about the good old days. In fact, its his unabashed earnestness that ends Person to Person on a touching note. After his record-chasing mishap, Bene delivers a speech far too sincere and real to knock down: Me, Ive got music in my heart. Ive got love for it, I seek it out. I find records, I collect them, I sell them to people who have that same love inside. Its a tender spot, its vulnerable. Its a spot that you think nobody is gonna take advantage of. Then you go around and you let that love be known. You share it, you share it with people and you trust that they wont violate you. Person to Person is the kind of movie that asks its viewers to open up that tender spot inside. Once you do, itll completely charm you.

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Person to Person Is an Indie Comedy for Music Nerds Like You - Pitchfork

When Zimpli Kids started its Gelli Baff and Slime Baff YouTube campaign back in October 2015, little did we know that the 50 million views gained in the first month would turn into 2.5 billion just 20 months later.

We all know that the exposure a company can receive from a social media campaign is huge.

The reach of the digital medium is expansive.

YouTube, for instance, has over 1.3bn users worldwide, with over five billion videos watched each day. It makes YouTube the perfect platform to reach a huge proportion of your market, and it can do so within hours.

When Zimpli Kids started its Gelli Baff and Slime Baff YouTube campaign back in October 2015, little did we know that the 50 million views gained in the first month would turn into 2.5 billion just 20 months later.

This June alone has brought in 200 million new views from independent reviewers worldwide.

In fact, social marketing has played a major role in getting Zimpli Kids to the fantastic position we are in today particularly on YouTube.

Every day companies come face-to-face with more evidence of the change in how marketing should be done; moving away from the more traditional methods such as radio, TV and print and putting more focus into digital marketing, such as YouTube, social media and online promotions.

Social media is now far more than just updating your followers on what youre up to, or uploading a new video. Its an interactive marketing tool. It gives you insight on what is happening in real time whats trending on Twitter? Whats the next big thing on YouTube? This allows companies to take advantage of the trends to tailor their marketing approach.

The exposure that Zimpli Kids has received from our YouTube campaign is mind blowing, with 2.5bn views from independent reviewers worldwide, and there is no sign of it slowing down. YouTube has allowed us to build brand awareness worldwide, with YouTubers from the UK, US, Australia, Europe and Asia sharing products on their channels, creating demand for our products throughout the world.

The exciting thing is, YouTube and social media marketing is evolving all the time and more exciting developments are surely on the horizon.

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Catching the Tube: How Zimpli Kids rose to fame through social media - Toy News

Facebook subsidiary Instagram has courted Snapchat fans with its own Stories feature.

Photo illustration by Natalie Matthews-Ramo. Photos by Rohappy/Thinkstock and Thinkstock.

Facebook was supposed to be washed up by now. Four years ago, reports of a decline in usage by teens spurred a wave of predictions that it was headed the way of Myspace. Teens fickle taste was presumed to imply that no social network could keep its throne for very long.

Yet here we are in 2017, and Facebooks grip on social media is stronger than ever. The company reported last week that Facebook itself is used by an astonishing 2 billion people each month. Thats close to twice as many active users as it had in 2013, when the doomsaying began.

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Perhaps more importantly for the companys long-term future, two of its subsidiariesInstagram and WhatsAppare still growing at impressive rates in their own right. And much of that growth is coming from the same young demographic that was once seen as a threat to Facebooks dominance. A recent study named Instagram the most popular app among U.S. teens age 1317.

At the same time, the types of upstart rivals that once seemed destined to overtake Facebook are floundering. Twitter went public in 2013, a few months after the Facebook isnt cool anymore narrative took hold. But its growth since then has essentially flatlined. As recently as nine months ago, industry watchers were touting Snapchat and its new augmented-reality Spectacles as a potential usurper of Facebooks crown. Then Snap went public, and the hype balloon popped almost immediately. Now Twitter and Snap are the ones enduring gloomy warnings about their future obsolescence.

How did Facebook do it? How has it managed not only to stay on top of an industry that was thought to be inherently topsy-turvy, but to continually widen its lead? The answer is a simple yet devastatingly effective strategy aimed at neutralizing upstarts before its too late: If you cant beat them, buy them. And if you cant buy them, copy them.

Facebook embarked on this strategy even before most industry watchers thought it was in any danger. In 2012, it acquired Instagram, the minimalistic photo-sharing app popular mainly with young people, for what seemed at the time to be an astronomical price: $1 billion. This despite Instagram having just a handful of employees, zero revenue, and no obvious path to profitability. The startup had been valued at an estimated $500 million just a few weeks earlier.

The move prompted a flurry of rage-quits from Instagram users who had viewed the service as a refuge from the increasingly corporate, adult-dominated social network. Some commentators praised it as farsighted; others criticized it as reckless. I did some of each, arguing that the move made sense on its own terms but signaled a broader strategy that might prove unsustainable. I concluded:

Facebooks strategy, it turned out, was more nuanced than I gave it credit for. The supply of potentially revolutionary startups may indeed be endlessYik Yak, Ello, Meerkat, and Peach are just a few of those that have gained attention as would-be Facebook killers over the years, only to flop soon after. Yet the company has proved to be as selective in its choice of targets as it is aggressive in pursuing them.

If you cant beat them, buy them. And if you cant buy them, copy them.

In some cases, it has simply ignored would-be rivals, confident in the power of its network to fend off a challenge from a direct competitor. This is especially true in the case of the anti-Facebookssocial networks whose core features mimic Facebooks own, such as Google Plus, Diaspora, Ello, Peach, and the many reincarnations of Myspace.

Facebook tends to pay much closer attention when a startup attracts large numbers of youngsters by offering a social experience substantially different from its own. Instagram may have only had 30 million users in 2012, but they werent just usersthey were addicts. They loved the simplicity of uploading and sharing photos on their phone, a functionality that Facebook itself had failed to master. (It was around that time that the company realized that it would be doomed if it couldnt make the leap from users desktops to their smartphones; Facebooks subsequent shift to mobile is one of the great business success stories of the era.)

In recent years, a select handful of other social media platforms have worried Facebook enough to prompt it to significant action. They include YouTube, Vine, Periscope, WhatsApp, and Snapchat. Each one brought a fresh element to online communication that was lacking from Facebook at the time: original video, looping videos, personal streaming video, group messaging, self-destructing messages, curated personal stories. The ones Facebook couldnt buyGoogles YouTube, Twitters Vine and Periscopeit blatantly copied instead, either within Facebook or one of its subsidiary apps, such as Instagram or Messenger. WhatsApp, with its loyal network of 430 million users around the world, might have seemed too big to buy. But Facebook wasnt satisfied with its efforts to copy it via Messenger, so it went ahead and paid an enormous premium$19 billionto acquire it anyway. Three years later, WhatsApp has more than doubled in size, and it has helped to make Facebook the leader in messaginga popular and still-growing category among teens.

Of all the would-be Facebook rivals, none more perfectly embodies everything that keeps Mark Zuckerberg up at night than Snapchat. Its users are overwhelmingly young; its growth has been meteoric; it is cool and insouciant and confusing to adults in a way Facebook may have once been, but certainly never will be again. On top of that, it has proved wildly innovative, pioneering a series of products that have changed how people interact.

In Snapchats case, Facebook tried first to buy it for $3 billionagain, far more than most observers thought it was worth. But Snapchats Evan Spiegel wouldnt sell, much the same way Zuckerberg repeatedly declined seemingly generous overtures from the likes of Yahoo and Microsoft on his way to surpassing them both. So Facebook resorted to Plan B, relentlessly copying Snapchats successful features. Here, too, it failed repeatedlyremember Poke? Or Slingshot? But it never stopped trying.

For all its efforts, the main Facebook app has yet to successfully copy a major Snapchat feature. Something about either the teams approach, the Facebook brand, or the structure of its network (in which kids are inextricably linked to their parents and other authority figures) has made it helpless to recapture the interest of Snapchats young users. This was exactly the sort of scenario those doomsayers had in mind back in 2013. Its hard to say exactly how much share of teens attention Facebook has lost over the past five years, since the company doesnt break out usage metrics by age group. But in a 2016 Business Insider survey on teens favorite apps, the big blue one didnt even make the list.

Heres the twist: Core Facebook hasnt been able to fend off Snapchat, but its subsidiaries have. In the space of nine months, Facebook copied Snapchats Stories feature on no less than four of its platforms: Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Facebook. The first twoInstagram Stories and WhatsApp Statushave already eclipsed Snapchats original in active users. This is not just a case of Facebooks oldsters discovering the form anew: Reports suggest that Instagram Stories in particular are directly siphoning both users and stars from Snapchat. And now Snap is the one facing pressure from investors to show that it can survive the onslaught from Facebook.

In retrospect, the Facebook doomsayers underestimated both the company and the severity of its coolness problem.

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Which apps are pursuing the all-important 56-year-old white guy demographic? More...

Historically, big mergers and acquisitions in the technology sector have often been disastrous (think HP/Compaq, AOL/Time Warner, and pretty much any startup Yahoo ever acquired). Facebook managed to buck this trend by seeking not synergies or cost savings, but young and fast-growing user bases. And it was willing to strategically overpay to get the ones it targeted. Meanwhile, it proved adept at mimicking the best features of those apps it wasnt able to acquire.

At the same time, it turned out being hip wasnt actually the key to dominating social media. In a recent survey of millennials, Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp all ranked relatively low in coolness compared with other tech brands, including Snapchat. But Zuckerberg has always cared less about being cool than about being massive, and he has discovered that the latter doesnt necessarily depend on the former.

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Teenage Clicks - Slate Magazine

Capture your side of the story with Shonin Streamcam - The Wearable Security Camera

Toronto, Canada (PRWEB) August 01, 2017

Shonin Inc, the technology company that empowers people to easily and securely record public interactions, today announces the launch of its flagship product, the Shonin Streamcam. With hate crimes and street harassment on the rise, this new body-worn camera is designed to help anyone document a potentially harmful or uncomfortable interaction with video proof. Everything about the Shonin Streamcam from its iconic design to its ability to automatically upload to the cloud while recording was carefully crafted to help people reliably document their experiences when they need to the most. Starting today, anyone can back Shonin Streamcam on Kickstarter at:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/shonin/shonin

Were proud of what we have built, and look forward to making the Shonin Streamcam available for anyone who wants to feel safer as they go about their day, says Sameer Hasan, CEO & Founder, Shonin Inc. Much abuse and injustice still goes unaddressed, and in many cases perpetrators believe they can get away with it because its their word against ours, unless we have video proof. Shonin helps people secure video proof in situations where using their smartphones is not practical.

Born out of the desire to put an unbiased witness on your side, Shonin Streamcam is an easily wearable, rugged and waterproof camera. The Shonin Streamcam device is supported by feature-rich, intuitive software on mobile and in the cloud.

Record Directly to the Cloud in One Tap Through either a direct cellular connection with a SIM card, or while tethered to your smartphones wi-fi hotspot, Shonin Streamcam uploads video immediately to a secure cloud location or broadcasts to live video services like Facebook Live. All without even taking your phone out of your pocket.

Fully Featured Recording video with the Shonin Streamcam is made easy. Designed specifically with urgency and speed in mind, the device sports a large button on the front face of the device. A simple press of the button starts recording and streaming with no precision required. Shonin Streamcam captures your side of the story in crisp, wide-angle video. Video resolution is 1080p to local SD card and 720p when streaming or uploading to the cloud. Streamcam boasts IP67 waterproofing, and before launch, will undergo rigorous impact testing to ensure it can be worn worry-free in even the roughest scenarios.

Great Hardware Goes Best with Great Software The Shonin app lets you instantly view your videos as soon as they have finished recording. Capture video, view video, simple as that. The Shonin app allows you to easily make edits without losing the original raw footage, which is always securely stored until you choose to delete it. With a couple of taps, you can instantly share videos with your friends or on social media. The Shonin app also lets you customize just about everything about the video capture or device behavior, with settings that let you turn off the recording light, adjust the resolution, enable or disable cloud upload, and more. Once selected, settings take effect immediately.

Iconic Design Just like a home security camera, Shonin Streamcams colors, visibility and iconic design can act as a possible deterrent to aggressors.

Specifications

Video - 720p to cloud, up to 1080p to disk

Connectivity - Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and LTE cellular (in Cellular model) Supported bands FDD-LTE: B1/ B2 / B3 / B4/ B5/ B7/ B8/ B12 / B20 TDD-LTE: B38/ B40 /B41 3G WCDMA: B1 / B2 / B4 / B5 /B8

GPS enabled Works with most GSM carriers

Audio - Mic for audio capture, speaker for audio feedback

Waterproofing - IP67 Waterproof

Battery Life - Up to 2 hours of recording time, up to 4 hours with additional battery pack.

Dimensions - 56mm x 56mm x 13mm

StorageExpandable with Micro SD Card 8GB card included

Free Devices for Qualifying Organizations Shonin will offer a limited number of free, as well as heavily discounted, devices to qualifying non-profit organizations.

We want to help non-profits that are on the front lines, driving real societal change, said Sameer Hasan. The work these organizations do is inspiring, and we would love to see their members equipped with the right tools. By providing them with free devices and associated services, we can do our part to help make those necessary changes a reality.

Representatives from non-profit organizations are asked to get in touch with Shonin by emailing ngo(at)shonin(dot)io.

Shonin Streamcam will be available in multiple colors starting at $149 USD ($199 CAD) exclusively on Kickstarter, with worldwide shipping to backers starting in February 2018. Shonin Streamcam will retail starting at $199 USD ($249 CAD) once available to the general public target date March 2018.

About Shonin Shonin creates technology that enables citizens to securely collect, edit and share video proof. Formed in 2016, our mission is to achieve a safer, fairer and more just world through technology, starting with our first product, Shonin Streamcam, the cloud-connected wearable security camera.

Media Contact Sameer Hasan | Shonin Inc. | media(at)shonin(dot)io

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Shonin Streamcam, the Bodycam for Civilians, Launches on Kickstarter - PR Web (press release)