MindGeek : Small companies with big responsibilities

No.1 vendor of porn industry :

MindGeek is one of the biggest companies whose main purposes are advertising,online marketing and main stream pornography.As very few people knew that all of the top websites and their contents of pornography are maintained and supplied by MindGeek. MingGeek have their main office in Luxembourg city with other offices in Dublin, Hamburg, London, Los Angeles, Miami, Montreal, and Nicosia.Other with main stream pornography they made two of their website named videobash.com which is based on comedy videos and other is celebs.com based on celebrities.

As many people will be confused by listening this name of the company because recently this company is formed by the union of many small companies like YouPorn.com,WebCams.com,Interhub,Twistys Cash Affiliate Program, GayTube, SexTube and TrannyTube etc. This business of pornography was started by Fabian Thylmann.In the late 1990s, German-born Fabian Thylmann created NATS (Next-Generation Affiliate Tracking Software), which was used for marketing pornography across different websites. In 2006, Thylmann sold his shares in the company that controlled NATS and used the proceeds to purchase the Privat Amateure website.

Fabian Thylmann

Between 2006 and 2010, Thylmann bought three more web sites; MyDirtyHobby, Webcams and Xtube. The domain name manwin.com was first registered in August 2007.As manwin.com was one of the milestones as well as turning point of porn industry.

Coming of Brazzers and Mofos in 2003 :

In 2003, Ouissam Youssef , Stephane Manos , Matt Keezer , Youssef’s brother, and another friend they knew from Concordia, started out by creating TGP(Thunbnail Gallery Post) websites. They went on to start the Jugg Cash affiliate network and the Brazzers website, and the Brazzers enterprise then created many other pay sites, including Mofos. Mansef Productions Inc. was originally incorporated in Canada in 2004,“Mansef” was the holding company for Brazzers. Matt Keezer started PornHub at the beginning of 2007 within a company that Brazzers were partners in called Interhub. The Brazzers group added Tube8 and ExtremeTube to the properties they owned near the end of 2007.

In March 2010 Fabian Thylmann bought many assets of  Mansef and Interhub and changed the name of the company to Manwin. In same period he bought WebCams.com. Adult blogger/journalist Mike South came with a story that Manwin had a loan financed by Colbeck Capital and they had got approx 168 million dollars from Fortress Investment Group for financing.In the same year of 2013 October, news came that Fabian Thylmann sold the company to the higher administration of Manwin. Later the name was changed from Manwin to MindGeek.

Retirement of Thylmann with Google in action :

Without Fabian Thylmann this was not the end of the legacy but this industry grew very well in few years.They own their own studios with their own production houses. MindGeek owns the pornographic movie studios Babes.com,Brazzers, Digital Playground, Reality Kings, Twistys,and Men.com,they manage the websites of Wicked Pictures, and Really Useful Ltd., and they established 3DXSTAR in partnership with Funky Monkey Productions. Mindgeek also manage Playboy’s online and television operations (although they no longer manage Playboy.com,see history section above). In January 2014, a Mindgeek official stated that they were developing an Android app for Google’s Chromecast digital media player, along with an app for Panasonic smart TVs, that would enable streaming of Playboy.tv content. The plan to release a Chromecast app was shown to be unfeasible in February 2014 when Google originally revealed their terms of service for Chromecast app developers, which stated that “We don’t allow content that contains nudity, graphic sex acts, or sexually explicit material.”

Dominance in Market (Pornhub Network) :

As MindGeek is one of the dominant industry in porn because of Pornhub Network. MindGeek bought many of the small companies which are not maintained by the administration of MindGeek but works under the hood. Pornhub Network operates many small companies which include GayTube, Peeperz, PornIQ (launched by Pornhub), PornMD, Pornhub, RedTube, Thumbzilla, Tube8, XTube, and YouPorn. According to the Alexa Rank Pornhub was one of the top 100 websites in the world.

So let’s see what we get to know more about this adult industry with MindGeek.

 

 

 

 

 

Cheeka : Internet Celebrity for 14 years and still going strong

Cheeka is a pug who appeared in the “You & I” advertising campaign of Hutchinson Essar’s and Vodafone’s cellular service in India, along with the child actor Jayaram. The dog follows the boy in unlikely locations, prompting the tagline, “Wherever you go, our network follows“. The duo first appeared on TV, billboards, newspapers and bus shelters in 2003 and became instant celebrities all over India. The campaign was created by Mahesh V and Rajeev Rao, Senior Creative Directors at Ogilvy & Mather, Mumbai. The dog hails from the United Kingdom and is owned by Vishal and Lisa Bandekar of Goa.

The television ad for Hutch was the first to be shot, a 60-second sequence in lush green Goa. The role of the boy was played by Jayaram, an eight-year-old who had already starred in four other ads. Cheeka was suggested for the role by an assistant at Nirvana Films, the makers of the ad. The campaign became a hit, and was soon followed by a print version for newspapers. Cheeka earned ₹ 150,000 for the campaign,and still appears in vodafone ads, representing the network.

 

The campaign was ranked the Top Print Ad of 2003 and among the Top 10 TV Campaigns of 2003 in India by Business Today.The ad campaign was followed by a rise in the popularity of pugs in India, and the sale of pugs more than doubled within months, with prices shooting up from about Rs. 10,000 to Rs. 20,000-60,000. A few other ads also appeared in the following months, inspired by the idea of a dog following a boy. In addition, Cheeka remains the wallpaper most often downloaded by Hutch customers onto their phone screens as of 2005 and now Vodafone is going on the same track for their recent campaign of their 4G networks.

A Memorable Ad of Vodafone-Hutch

PressPlay TV bonding with Railways in India

PressPlay TV offers video services like movies, songs, news through its wifi spot overs it application on Android devices. The airwaves used for wifi are free and company uses it to create its own local wifi hotspot

Video streaming application PressPlayTV has started offering free video service in some trains and is in talks to expand service in about 30 trains soon. “PressPlay TV has tied up with Northwestern Railways to offer free VoD service Delhi-Bikaner and Delhi–Udaipur bound Delhi Bikaner Intercity and Chetak Express respectively.

The company is in talks with Northwestern Railways to offer this service on 30 more trains in the next quarter. The service is absolutely free,” PressPlay TV co-founder and COO George Abraham said in a statement.

PressPlay TV offers video services like movies, songs, news through its wifi spot overs it application on Android devices. The airwaves used for wifi are free and company uses it to create its own local wifi hotspot.

The PressPlay TV app automatically downloads when phone is connected to the wifi and users can start streaming movies & videos for free without using their mobile data, the statement said.

10 biggest losers of this week

The past few weeks have not brought the rosiest of earnings seasons in Tech Land.

In fact, while it’s often difficult to draw sweeping conclusions from a single quarter, the parade of financial earnings seems to point toward a long year ahead for public technology companies. (Note to unicorns eyeing the IPO market: Be afraid. Be very afraid.) The tech-heavy NASDAQ is down almost 15 percent from the start of the year.

In several specific cases, the earnings reports delivered brutal verdicts on the state of many one-time darlings. Here’s a rundown of the biggest losers (from an abundance of candidates) followed by a handful of winners (required a lot more hunting):

1. GoPro (GPRO): With layoffs announced earlier in January and grim reports of holiday sales, expectations were low. But the real numbers were still devastating: Revenue plunged 31 percent! Stock in the company is down from $64.74 last August to $10.17 yesterday. With a market cap of $1.4 billion but a great brand, don’t be surprised if suitors start sniffing around.

2. Twitter (TWTR): No surprise here, given the company’s turmoil over the past year. But reporting ZERO user growth isn’t the kind of start recycled CEO Jack Dorsey probably wanted. With the stock in the dumps, he can’t expect too much patience from either Wall Street or Twitter’s restless and outspoken users.

3. Yahoo (YHOO): Again, bad news is no shocker, as this company has been limping along for an eternity, and CEO Marissa Mayer has thus far failed to spark a turnaround. She can claim a small victory by having gained one last chance to fix Yahoo. But she will spend a lot of time this year firing people and selling off parts of the company. And with the board acknowledging it could be open to a sale, Mayer will be working with a guillotine hanging over her head.

4. Apple (AAPL): It feels a bit odd to put the largest company in the world in the “loser” category. But Apple did lose its title (briefly) as the world’s most valuable company. And with flat iPhone sales and projections of a decline in the current quarter, the company is facing one of its most challenging years in some time, at least in the eyes of Wall Street. Since April 2015, Apple’s stock has fallen from $132.65 to $93.70 yesterday. Long-time investors will have their faith tested.

5. Pandora (P): The earnings weren’t terrible. The music-streaming service reported decent revenue growth, with $1.16 billion for 2015, up from $921 million the year before. But that growth came amid reports that the company had begun searching for a buyer. That growth rate and the mounting costs just aren’t giving investors confidence that Pandora can keep slugging it out against Apple Music and Spotify.

6. Activision Blizzard (ATVI): The gaming giant reported a dip in revenue and profits for the normally robust holiday quarter. Wall Street no likey. Its stock got hammered by 16 percent after the results were released.

7. Ubisoft (UBI.PA): The French gaming company also reported a dip in revenue as its flagship franchise, “Assasin’s Creed,” is showing its age.

8. Amazon (AMZN): My boss might argue that this belongs in the win column. But investors beg to differ. Rather than focus on Amazon’s big profit, they fretted about holiday sales that came in under expectations and growing expenses. Since the end of December, the stock has fallen from $689.07 to $503.82.

9. Zynga (ZNGA): Zynga may have beaten Q4 financial estimates and announced 10 games for 2016, but investors were not impressed. They were worried about weak guidance and a declining user base. Its barely visible stock price is still managing to take a hit.

10. LinkedIn (LNKD): LinkedIn reported weak guidance for the coming year andinvestors lost their minds. The stock fell by more than 40 percent in one day. And since hitting $255.54 in early November, it’s down to $103.47 yesterday. Winning back investor trust in the coming year will be a challenge.

A new look and feel for Uber : Logo made the difference

Uber replaced the white and black “U” logo with a new design of an image CEO Travis Kalanick called the “atom and bit.” The company will use a unique color in each of the 68 countries it operates.

To know what Travis Kalanick wants to say about the new design : Read More .

World’s tallest freestanding clock tower to be built by Infosys in India

In what could be a first from a tech giant, Infosys is geared to build the world’s tallest freestanding clock tower. The tower would be built at its 345-acre global education centre located in Mysore, a site that is proudly claimed to be the world’s biggest corporate university.

The height of the tower would be 135 meters, making it taller than Big Ben (96 m) in London, Hoover Tower (87 m) in California and McGraw Tower (53 m) in Cornell.

The tower would be built in Gothic style so that it matches the classical look of the other buildings located in the campus. It will have 19 floors, a boardroom at the seventh level and will be erected from a 22×22 meter base.

As per the company estimates, it would cost about Rs 60 crore and 20 months.

Confirming the plans to ET, Murthy said the Mysore training centre was “incomplete without a clock tower”.

“A clock tower brings a sense of academic breathing to the campus, and I felt we too will need one. And Vishal (Sikka) felt it is a good idea,” he said.

The design of the tower has been designed by Hafeez Contractor, who is a Mumbai-based architect responsible for the design of Infosys Mysuru campus. The structural consultancy services are being provided by LERA, which is a New York-based firm of structural engineers, and the structure would be built by Bengaluru-based KEF Infra.

“We are trying to marry tradition with modern technology at this tower. The tower will have a large digital screen on all the four sides. We will also use it to run text messages on important occasions,” K P Nagaraj, Infosys resident architect, told ET.

PopKey or Riffsy : Who will dominate your messaging GIFS

Looking to this GIF’s ,it isn’t great.This type of gif’s can also be seen in the posts of facebook,twitter and many other social networking sites.As this type of gif’s are huge in demand and all credit goes to one company named PopKey.

PopKey deals with giving different genres of gif images according to the emotions.As this gif’s are seen in the chating section of facebook.  This company dealed with facebook for providing trending gifs. But soon popkey could be in problem because another company named Riffsy is holding the market by providing hashtag facility in gif images and also providing keyboard for choosing and uploading images threw keyboard in less timing.

So lets see who becomes the leader of gif images in future…Here are some statistics between the two rivals.

Ranking chart of PopKey

Ranking chart of Riffsy

 

 

Apple Acquires Flyby Media, Makers Of Tech That “Sees” The World Around You

Apple’s VR ambitions continue. According to a new report from the Financial Times, Apple has acquired an augmented reality startup called Flyby Media, which developed technology that allows mobile phones to “see” the world around them. The company, notably, had worked with Google in the past, as it was the first consumer-facing application to use the image-recognition capabilities found in Google’s “Project Tango.”

Read More…

Project Tango – New Face of Google

Project Tango is a Google technology platform that uses computer vision to enable mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, to detect their position relative to the world around them without using GPS or other external signals. This allows application developers to create user experiences that include indoor navigation, 3D mapping, measurement of physical spaces, recognition of known environments, augmented reality, and windows into virtual 3D worlds.

Project Tango was developed by a team led by computer scientist Johnny Lee, a core contributor to Microsoft’s Kinect.

Google has produced two devices to demonstrate the Project Tango technology: the Peanut phone (no longer available) and the Yellowstone 7-inch tablet. More than 3,000 of these devices had been sold as of June 2015,chiefly to researchers and software developers interested in building applications for the platform. In the summer of 2015, Qualcomm and Intel both announced that they are developing Project Tango reference devices as models for device manufacturers who use their mobile chipsets.

 

Scanning the Indore environment by camera 

The software with synchronization with camera works by integrating three types of functionality:

• Motion-tracking : using visual features of the environment, in combination with accelerometer and gyroscope data, to closely track the device’s movements in space
• Area learning : storing environment data in a map that can be re-used later, shared with other Project Tango devices, and enhanced with metadata such as notes, instructions, or points of interest
• Depth perception : detecting distances, sizes, and surfaces in the environment

Together, these generate data about the device in “six degrees of freedom” (3 axes of orientation plus 3 axes of motion) and detailed three-dimensional information about the environment.

Six degrees of movement

Applications on mobile devices use Project Tango’s C and Java APIs to access this data in real time. In addition, an API is also provided for integrating Project Tango with the Unity game engine; this enables the rapid conversion or creation of games that allow the user to interact and navigate in the game space by moving and rotating a Project Tango device in real space. These APIs are documented on the Google developer website.

Device : The Yellowstone tablet

• “Yellowstone” is a 7-inch tablet with full Project Tango functionality, released in June 2014, and sold as the Project Tango Tablet Development Kit. 
• It features a 2.3 GHz quad-core Nvidia Tegra K1 processor, 128GB flash memory, 1920×1200-pixel touchscreen, 4MP color camera, fisheye-lens (motion-tracking) camera, integrated depth sensing, and 4G LTE connectivity. 
• The device is sold through the official Project Tango website and the Google Play Store.

Phone by Google  – Project Tango