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Microsoft’s ads can be thoroughly confusing sometimes. Often enough, the ad has nothing to do with the product itself. This can lead to some really terrible ads. It can also lead to utter brilliance – as is the case with three recent ads for Windows 8.

Neowin reports that the official Windows 8 channel on YouTube recently uploaded three new ads as part of a new Windows 8 Training Camp campaign. The title would suggest that Microsoft is finally taking the hint that it needs to show consumers how to use Windows 8, but that’s not the case. Instead, we get a series of bizarre ads featuring watermelon carving, butt ping-pong and high-speed makeup challenges.

It seems that Microsoft thinks these ads are too bizzarre itself as the company yanked them from its YouTube channel shortly after posting them. The above videos were grabbed before the originals were taken offline, and we can only salute Sharkaat84 for making sure everybody gets to enjoy what may be the most entertaining Windows 8 ads yet.

While Box seems to be among the leaders in the race to become the Dropbox of the enterprise, it wants to be easy for individuals to use, as to get their companies to sign up as paying customers. In order to make that happen, Box is acquiring Crocodoc, which lets developers convert PDFs, Word documents and other files into HTML5 for clear display in web browsers. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

“We have to build a consumer-grade experience,” Aaron Levie, Box’s co-founder and CEO, said at a Thursday meeting at its San Francisco office. The deal will be Box’s second acquisition; it acquired Increo in 2009, a company representative said.

Crocodoc already takes care of this type of document conversion for files on several sites, including the recruiting function on LinkedIn and document sharing on Yammer. Once a document is there, users can see the details of fancy typefaces and add comments on desktops and mobile devices, without Flash or plugins required. Other document functions, like editing, are not yet available.

“We want to bite off different pieces of that puzzle,” said Ryan Damico, Crocodoc’s co-founder and CEO. “In the end game, we want to cover all of them.”

Yammer document previewing via Crocodoc technology

Box will swap out its existing previewing mechanisms with the Crocodoc technology in the next few months. Also coming are new versions of previewing, such a carousel with pages passing by, a sliding option, a scrolling option and perhaps a page-flipping option, Damico said. Box will also enable developers to keep using the Crocodoc API to upload documents, spin them around into HTML5 and then do things with HTML5-enabled content to embed in their own websites.

“This is what Instagram is to Facebook,” Levie said. “Photos are important to them; documents are deeply important to us, and they’re deeply important to business use cases.”

While it’s been four years since the previous Box acquisition, Box does want to keep building out its product lineup. “We intend on being very acquisitive,” Levie told me. Box has raised $312 million to date, including contributions from Andreessen Horowitz, Draper Fisher Jurvetson and NEA. Crocodoc has raised more than $1 million, with investors at SV Angel and 500 Startups.

As Box makes itself into more of a platform than simply a venue for document storage and sharing — last month I wrote about its health care applications and compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act — it also needs to make sure documents show up clearly. It does seem like a no-brainer, which is why it seems like this acquisition should have come earlier.

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Using religious imagery is nothing new for music artists. Stars as different as Madonna and Kanye West have come under fire from religious Americans for the use of crosses and other religious symbols in music videos.

Now, David Bowie has found a way to thrust his name back into pop music using the tried-and-true tactic of annoying Christians.

The 66-year-old actor and pop star this week released his first album in almost 10 years and debuted a music video for the title track, “The Next Day.” The video stars Gary Oldman as a mobster/priest and Marion Cotillard as a floozy who experiences stigmata.

The big-name actors and their characters aren’t the only thing Christians, and especially Catholics, might take offense to in the video. At points in the video barely-clothed women, self-flagellation, a cardinal who hands out money, and Joan of Arc are all depicted. Bowie himself is, of course, dressed as a depiction of the Christian messiah, Jesus Christ.

The video has received an age filter on YouTube, after being briefly pulled due to violating YouTube’s contend guidelines.

After many nightlies and a couple of stable monthly builds, the team of developers behind CyanogenMod, one of the most popular custom green droid distributions, announced the first release candidate for CyanogenMod 10.1. The latest stable build is based on Android 4.2 and arrives just under six months after Google rolled out the second Jelly Bean iteration.

“The 10.1 branch is quickly approaching the point where a ‘final’ build is due”, says the team of developers responsible for the project. “This will be one of (if not the last) milestone releases before a 10.1.0 is pushed out. These builds will appear as they complete the build process”.

The CyanogenMod 10.1 Release Candidate 1 is available for a significant number of devices including Google’s Galaxy Nexus (international, Verizon and Sprint versions), Nexus 4, Nexus 7 and Nexus 10, the US variants of the Samsung Galaxy S III, the Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 and Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 among others.

The builds come with the usual CyanogenMod customization tweaks including the Trebuchet launcher, improved quick settings tiles, support for more camera settings as well as other enhancements atop of Google’s Android 4.2 Jelly Bean.

Montréal-based MethylGene Inc., a publicly-traded, venture-backed biopharmaceuticals company, has proposed reincorporating in the state of Delaware under a new parent organization called Mirati Therapeutics Inc. As part of the arrangement, Mirati will apply to list shares on NASDAQ. The plan, to be voted on by shareholders in June, seeks to increase Methylgene’s financing options and profile in the United States. The company’s investors include several Canadian and U.S. venture capital firms, including Baker Brothers, BDC Venture Capital, Fonds de solidarité des travailleurs du Québec (FTQ), GeneChem, OriMed Advisors, ProQuest Investments, Tang Capital and Tavistock Life Sciences.

PRESS RELEASE

METHYLGENE ANNOUNCES PLAN TO REINCORPORATE IN THE UNITED STATES AS MIRATI THERAPEUTICS, INC. AND LIST ON THE NASDAQ

Montreal, Canada, May 9, 2013 – MethylGene Inc. (“MethylGene”)(TSX:MYG) today announced that its Board of Directors (the “Board”), after careful analysis, consideration and advice from its legal, tax and accounting advisors, has unanimously approved a proposal to change MethylGene’s jurisdiction of incorporation from the federal jurisdiction of Canada to the State of Delaware in the United States of America by way of a court-approved plan of arrangement (the “Arrangement”).

Under the Arrangement, MethylGene will create a holding corporation, Mirati Therapeutics, Inc. (“Mirati”), incorporated in the State of Delaware, and Mirati will become the ultimate parent corporation of MethylGene and its subsidiaries. Concurrently with the Arrangement, Mirati is making an application to list its shares of common stock (“Mirati Shares”) on the NASDAQ Capital Market (“NASDAQ”), which we anticipate will result in the Mirati Shares being listed on both NASDAQ and the Toronto Stock Exchange (“TSX”) for a period of time. In connection with the NASDAQ listing, we will file with the Securities and Exchange Commission in the United States a registration statement on Form 10 for the purpose of registering the Mirati Shares under Section 12(g) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended.

The Arrangement is subject to the approval of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice (the “Court”) and satisfaction or waiver of the conditions to closing set out in the arrangement agreement between the Corporation and Mirati dated May 8, 2013 (the “Arrangement Agreement”). In order to proceed and in addition to approval by the Court, a special resolution approving the Arrangement (the “Arrangement Resolution”) must be approved at the Meeting (as defined herein) by two-thirds of the votes cast by the shareholders of MethylGene (“Shareholders”), present in person or represented by proxy.

The annual and special meeting of Shareholders (the “Meeting”) to approve, among other things, the Arrangement Resolution, will be held on June 25, 2013 at 10:00 a.m. Toronto time (EDT), in the Grand Boardroom of the offices of Stikeman Elliott LLP at 1155 René-Lévesque Blvd. West, 40th Floor, Montréal, Québec. Shareholders of record as of the close of business May 16, 2013, will be entitled to receive notice of and vote at the Meeting.

The Board and management of MethylGene believe that the proposed Arrangement is in the best interests of MethylGene and, accordingly, recommend that Shareholders vote FOR the Arrangement Resolution. The Board determined that the Arrangement is in the best interests of MethylGene primarily due to the belief and rationale that the Arrangement should:

•improve Mirati’s ability to attract financing in the larger U.S. capital markets from a greater number of U.S. investors with investment interest in the biopharmaceutical industry, which has been where the majority of our investors in recent financings have come from;

•enhance the marketability of our capital stock by raising our profile in the United States, which is where over 90% of our Shareholders reside;

•ultimately improve the trading liquidity of the Mirati Shares compared to the current trading of the common shares of MethylGene (the “Common Shares”) on the TSX, through the combination of the additional listing on the NASDAQ, potentially lower Shareholder transaction costs and increased interest from institutional investors;

•eliminate potentially adverse “passive foreign investment company” tax issues for certain Shareholders who are U.S. citizens or resident in the United States; and

•provide greater opportunity to attract and retain key personnel.

The Board chose the State of Delaware because Delaware has a modern and flexible corporate code, well-developed corporate law and a court system with considerable expertise in dealing with corporate issues. In connection with the Arrangement, we intend to locate our corporate headquarters in the San Diego, California area, a major biotechnology center.

Upon completion of the Arrangement, it is anticipated that each Shareholder will receive one Mirati Share for every 50 Common Shares held, which will have the effect of a 1 for 50 reverse split of our Common Shares. Subject to adjustment for fractional shares and dissent rights, the Arrangement should have no material effect on the relative ownership and voting interests of Shareholders. In addition, all outstanding options and common share purchase warrants of MethylGene will become exercisable for Mirati Shares and their terms will be proportionately adjusted to reflect the 1 for 50 effective reverse split.

A management proxy circular (the “Circular”) in connection with the solicitation of proxies for the Meeting is expected to be mailed to Shareholders on approximately May 24, 2013, and will contain further details with respect to the Arrangement and proposed NASDAQ listing. The foregoing description of the Arrangement does not purport to be complete and is qualified in its entirety by reference to the Circular and the copy of the Arrangement Agreement, which will be available at www.sedar.com. MethylGene cautions Shareholders and others considering trading in securities of MethylGene that the Arrangement is subject to certain material conditions, some of which are beyond MethylGene’s control, including TSX, Shareholder and Court approval, and there can be no assurance that the Arrangement and the transactions contemplated therein, or any other transaction, will be completed. The transaction is expected to be completed in early July 2013.

About MethylGeneMethylGene is a publicly-traded biopharmaceutical company engaged in the development and commercialization of novel therapeutics for the treatment of cancer. Our compounds result from internal chemistry efforts targeting the active sites of enzymes that are key drivers of tumor growth. Our clinical development programs are focussed on treating patients with tumor types that are selected for high levels of expression of these targets in order to most effectively address unmet needs in oncology. Our lead program in clinical development is MGCD265, a multi-targeted small molecule kinase inhibitor for treatment of oncology patients with solid tumors. We are also evaluating development opportunities for pipeline programs mocetinostat, a selective HDAC inhibitor and MGCD516, a kinase inhibitor with a distinct target profile.

Notice to Investors
This news release is for informational purposes only and is not an offer to buy or the solicitation of an offer to sell any securities.

Investor Relations Contacts
Mark J. Gergen
Executive Vice President & COO
MethylGene Inc.

Tel.: 858 546-2902
[email protected]
www.methylgene.com
Michael Wood
Managing Director
LifeSci Advisors

Phone: 646 597-6983
[email protected]
www.lifesciadvisors.com

Tracey Rowlands, Ph.D.
Manager, Business and Corporate Development
MethylGene Inc.

Tel.: 514-337-3333 ext. 512
[email protected]
www.methylgene.com

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

The post MethylGene to Reincorporate in US, List on NASDAQ appeared first on peHUB.

LiquidSpace said it raised $1.3 million as a follow-on to a $6 million Series B round completed earlier this year. The funding comes from two new strategic investors, Steelcase and CBRE Group, Inc. In January the company raised $6 million in a deal led by The GPT Group and joined by Shasta Ventures, Floodgate Fund and Greylock Capital. Total funding is now $12.385 million.

PRESS RELEASE

LiquidSpace Secures Additional $1.3 Million In Series B Funding

SAN FRANCISCO, May 9, 2013 /PRNewswire/ – LiquidSpace, the web and mobile platform that helps everyone find on-demand office and meeting space, today announced it has raised a follow-on of $1.3 million to the $6 million Series B funding raised earlier this year. The funding comes from two new strategic investors – Steelcase and CBRE Group, Inc., global leaders in workplace strategy and commercial real estate.

As companies increasingly reevaluate their workplace strategies, demand for LiquidSpace’s enterprise solutions continues to grow. LiquidSpace is helping large enterprises turn underused real estate into a collaborative asset with a simple internal reservation solution, while simultaneously allowing their employees to tap into the most diverse network of on-demand publicly available work and meeting spaces. LiquidSpace enterprise customers are then using the rich data set generated to make smarter workplace decisions based on real utilization data.

“We are thrilled to have the support of Steelcase, the global leader in the office furniture industry and CBRE, the world’s largest commercial real estate services and investment firm (in terms of 2012 revenue), as we work with Fortune 500 companies to provide a clean, simple solution for evolving their real estate portfolio and workplace strategy,” said Mark Gilbreath, founder and CEO of LiquidSpace. “We look forward to leveraging their insights and experience to advance a demand-driven model that reduces costs for companies and provides employees with more choices and reliable workspace options.”

CBRE is the world’s largest commercial real estate services and investment firm, serving real estate owners, investors and occupiers through more than 300 offices worldwide.

Steelcase is the global leader in the office furnishings, products and services industry. For over 100 years, Steelcase has been bringing human insight to business by studying how people work, wherever they work.
“Many of our biggest customers are undertaking a real estate transformation and our investment in LiquidSpace reflects how critically important alternate space is to enable this change,” said Sara Armbruster, VP Corporate Strategy and WorkSpace Futures at Steelcase. “We look forward to sharing our insights into workplace evolution with the LiquidSpace team as it continues to evolve its platform.”

In January 2013, LiquidSpace raised $6 million in Series B funding led by The GPT Group (ASX:GPT), a top real estate trust (REIT) with participation from existing investors Shasta Ventures, Floodgate Fund and Greylock Capital. Prior to the Series B, LiquidSpace raised $1.3 million in a seed round led by Reid Hoffman of the Greylock Discovery Fund and Mike Maples of FloodGate, followed in May 2011, by a $3.785 million Series A round led by Shasta Ventures. The company’s total funding to date is $12.385 million.

LiquidSpace has facilitated over 200,000 reservations across its network of over 2,000 private and public workspaces in 250 cities nationwide. The company is rapidly fueling expansion of its service through initiatives with corporate partners to serve the needs of mobile business workers. LiquidSpace will continue to drive innovation for both professionals and enterprises through its growing marketplace and enterprise services.

About LiquidSpace

Founded in 2010 and based in San Francisco, LiquidSpace is a real-time marketplace that enables anyone to find and book a space to work or meet by the hour or day. LiquidSpace serves two sets of customers: modern professionals who use the platform to book office or meeting space instantly and companies who use LiquidSpace to manage their workforce’s workspace needs both internally and externally. Whether a coworking venue, business center, hotel lobby, library or private office, LiquidSpace helps business people find, book, and share over 2,000 great workspaces and meeting rooms in over 250 cities across the US. For more information, visit:http://www.LiquidSpace.com

The post LiquidSpace Raises $1.3M From Steelcase, CBRE Group appeared first on peHUB.

Political news site Politico will begin testing a metered paywall this week, the company announced Thursday — but readers in the site’s core region, Washington, D.C., won’t feel the pain. Instead, Politico is testing the paywall in Iowa, North Dakota, Vermont, Mississippi, New Mexico and Wyoming, as well as internationally. Coincidentally, the company has also started experimenting with sponsored content on its homepage.

In a memo to staff that was also posted on Politico’s website, the site’s editors explain, “We chose smaller states, spread across the country, so our experiment captures any regional trends and also limits any potential loss of traffic to the site. This will last at least six months, so we have a large enough sample to appraise the results.” They’ll experiment with different price points and with the number of stories that a reader can access for free before the meter kicks in. (I’ve asked Politico about the range of prices and will update the post when I hear back.)

The memo also explains why Washington, D.C. is exempt from a paywall:

“Unlike other media companies, we often sell out our ad inventory in the Washington, D.C., market because demand for our ad space is so high. This means it’s highly unlikely we would ever institute a metered system in the D.C. area. The economics wouldn’t work because every company that has put a subscription system in place has seen some decrease in traffic, as you might expect. We want and need that traffic in D.C. because the desire of advertisers to reach our elite audience here is exceptionally strong. For you non-business folks, that is a very good problem to face.”

The editors acknowledge that it’s unclear whether “the metered system, while dominant today, is the best model for subscriptions in the long run.” But they say it’s “increasingly clear that readers are more willing than we once thought to pay for content they value and enjoy.”

In addition to advertising revenue and the paywall, Politico has a revenue stream coming from its professional product, Politico Pro. Over 1,000 organizations are now subscribing to Pro, the company announced in March, with a yearly subscription starting in the thousands of dollars.

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The battery life on the BlackBerry Z10 isn’t great. For a power user, you’re lucky if you can get through the afternoon. There’s a BlackBerry Z10 Charger Bundle that you can use for last minute charges or battery swaps, but it’s not ideal as you have to carry around the accessory in your pocket, leaving it prone to being lost. PowerSkin for the BlackBerry Z10 is a really cool solution that builds the battery into the case, and even comes with NFC.

The PowerSkin for the Z10 has been a life saver over the past few weeks. Since the Z10 now lasts an entire day, I have never worried about the battery life and the device always lasts until night time when it gets charged and ready to go by morning.

The only downside to the PowerSkin case is the sheer size. It’s expected that if you’re going to pack a battery into a case, you’re going to get a pretty large accessory. Check out this comparison of an iPod and the Z10 in a PowerSkin:

The upside to this beast of a case is that it’s actually very durable. I’ve dropped my Z10 several times with the PowerSkin on and it just bounces around due to the soft rubber shell. The PowerSkin is really the best of both worlds in that sense.

Finally, a major selling point to the PowerSkin for the BlackBerry Z10 is the fact that it comes with NFC. This means that if you want to “tap to pay” or share your BBM contacts, you don’t have to worry about the signal being interrupted by the case.

Head over to Power-Skin.com for purchase information and more.

Charlie Ergen, the mercurial chairman of satellite TV provider Dish Network, said Thursday that he would prefer to work with incumbent televisions players to continue a dual-stream revenue model rather than striking up a new partnership with upstart mobile-TV company Aereo.

The comments came during a Thursday call on Ergen and other Dish executives took questions about the company’s latest earnings results, which fell short of analysts’ expectations.

While most of the call was dedicated to Dish’s high stakes bid for Sprint, which would give it the chance to offer mobile-broadband-TV packages, analysts also asked Ergen about his company’s ongoing spat with broadcasters. In recent months, Dish has incensed the networks by selling “the Hopper,” a popular product to skip commercials, and touched off rumors that it might buy Aereo, which allows viewers to watch TV on their phones for $8 a month.

On today’s call, however, Ergen sounded more conciliatory.

“We admire what [Aereo is] doing. We indirectly get a benefit as it puts downward pressure on retransmission consent fees.. But all things being equal, we’d prefer to work with the broadcasters,” he said. The broadcasters are equipped to do something themselves. We’re more likely to work with existing partners.”

The rhetoric is part of a complicated dance between pay TV providers, including Dish, and content owners over the spiraling cost of programming; in this struggle, services like the Hopper and Aereo have become a source of leverage for Dish.

On the call, Ergen repeated his call for smaller cable “bundles” and more a la carte offerings.

“At the end of the day, if the bundle price gets too high, [consumers] will find other ways to do it — they’ll use small antennas, they’ll steal programming.”

Ergen added that he believes the traditional dual stream model for TV, consisting of subscription and advertising revenue, will continue thanks to new mobile opportunities. In particular, he said that mobile viewing opened the prospect of valuable local-based ad targeting that will result in tailored ads being delivered to the living room, tablets and smartphones.

He added that some “forward looking broadcasters” were already on board in exploring new bundle opportunities with Dish.

“I’ve never met a programmer or broadcaster that was against making more money.”

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Netflix may owe its love of big data to CEO Reed Hastings’ 2005 winter vacation: Businessweek took a detailed look at Netflix’s history and the strategic tech decisions the company has made over the past few years this week. One of the previously-unreported tidbits was related to the Netflix Prize, which the company used to encourage researchers to develop a better recommendation algorithm a few years ago. Turns out that was a direct response to the way Hastings spent his holidays eight years ago.

Apparently, Hastings disagreed with his engineers about the best way to serve up recommendations. He believed that Netflix could just recommend new DVDs based on the star rating people gave movies. As in: Want to watch a new movie? Then check out these titles that others with similar interests have rated highly. His staff disagreed, and wanted to look at a whole range of other indicators, including the things people searched for on Netflix’s website.

From the story:

“Hastings spent two weeks over his Christmas vacation pounding away on an Excel spreadsheet with millions of customer ratings to build an algorithm that could beat the prediction system designed by his engineers. He failed.”

Of course, that lesson – more data is better – has been a key part of Netflix’s streaming business. The company is tracking all kinds of usage behavior, including every time a subscriber pauses or skips a movie, the order in which titles are consumed and more.

Businessweek reporter Ashlee Vance goes on to say that Hastings’ failed holiday hackathon led to the creation of the Netflix Prize. This $1 million competition pitted teams of researchers against each other with the goal of improving the Netflix algorithm by at least 10 percent. The irony is that Netflix never actually used the winning algorithm, because it had shifted most of its efforts towards streaming by the time the contest finally concluded.

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In February, Ouya announced that the little Android console that could would be launching on June 5. That date has been pushed back by just a little, but those interested in the new console will still be able to get their hands on one in June.

Joystiq reports that the Ouya console has been delayed to June 25 in North America. The extra few weeks will allow the Ouya team to manufacture more units after seeing “greater than expected” demand from retail partners.

“We’ve had incredibly positive reactions from our retail partners, and so in order to meet their greater than expected demand, we decided to shift the launch date by a couple of weeks – three weeks – which will allow us to create more units and, basically, have more units on store shelves in June,” said Ouya CEO Julie Uhrman in a statement to Joystiq.

It’s not being reported as a cause of the delay, but the Ouya controller apparently had a small problem where the buttons would get stuck under the faceplate. The company is aware of the problem, and is enlarging holes on the faceplate by a few millimeters to ensure that there are no stuck buttons come launch.

Even with the delay, the Ouya is still set to launch next month. As such, excitement for the console has grown and one influential gaming investor has decided to join the Ouya team. Former EA executive and investor guru Bing Gordon has joined the Ouya board of directors. He will advise the company on its development and retail plans.

“OUYA’s open source platform creates a new world of opportunity for established and emerging independent game creators and gamers alike,” said Gordon. “There are some types of games that can only be experienced on a TV, and OUYA is squarely focused on bringing back the living room gaming experience. OUYA will allow game developers to unleash their most creative ideas and satisfy gamers craving a new kind of experience.”

Ouya will be available starting June 25 for the comparably low price of $99. It will be available through online retail and in-store at GameStop, Best Buy and Target.

Much like newspapers, conventional advertising agencies are becoming irrelevant. When one person with a wireless connection can be an agency, a media company, or even a manufacturer, traditional advertising organizations have to change their culture, processes, structure, talent policies, resources, and even their business and revenue models in order to embrace the power of open systems being fueled by digital connectivity. The old agency businesses may still have time to correct their course, but they must start now.

The radical democratization of business over the last decade created by open innovation, crowdsourcing, and co-creation is transforming how advertising organizations work. Victors and Spoils (V&S), where John is CEO, for example, wanted to land the Harley Davidson account after the motorcycle maker split with its long-time agency. But instead of going through the typical pitch process, the V&S team created a brief and posted it to its crowd of 7,200 creatives and strategists — made up of freelancers, moonlighters from other agencies, and brand and advertising enthusiasts all opting to work in a new open model. Six hundred ideas flooded in, John tweeted Harley CMO Mark-Hans Richer about what V&S was up to, and Richer tweeted back “go for it.” V&S ultimately presented 65 of the ideas to Richer and landed the account. Whit Hiller, a Vespa dealer in Lexington, Kentucky, came up with the theme of “No Cages” and it continues to be Harley’s brand anthem two years later.

As part of the crowdsourcing effort, V&S created Fan Machine, an app that turns a brand’s social media platform into a virtual creative department, making fans central to the advertising process. Harley helped V&S launch Fan Machine by enlisting its fans to develop a new campaign. The app is one part ideation engine, one part social media platform, and one part ad agency. Harley used Fan Machine to communicate the idea-submission process to fans, describe awards and deadlines, and push a brief live. Then, fans got busy submitting ideas, voting them up or down, and sharing their own entries with their friends. Meanwhile, V&S tracked the brief, moderated the entries, collected fan data, and reported it back to Harley. Two-hundred-twenty-two ideas and 8,193 votes later, a concept from Harold Chase, a Harley fan from Tukwila, Washington, rose to the top. Harley fans loved it, the client loved it, and V&S crafted and produced it. The resulting “Stereotypical Harley” campaign was conceived by and for Harley fans and launched via twitter.

In another crowdsourcing venture, V&S helped Smartwool create fan-based advertising through a social media app that invites the firm’s fans to upload images of themselves “Stripping to their Smartwool” to Facebook. The brand makes these fans into stars by using their images in Smartwool’s advertising. Taking the campaign further, V&S has turned Smartwool’s fans into field-testers who not only star in the advertising but also help the brand in its product innovation process. Typically, outdoor companies use professional athletes as field testers to help them not only test their products but also help innovate. Using real customers and fans makes more sense as they’re actually buying and using the products.

While open innovation platforms in advertising lend themselves to creative work, they’re also being tapped in the production phase of the business. MoFilm, Poptent, and Tongal, for example, focus on video production for television and web films. In every part of the industry, the open innovation model is changing the economics of advertising by switching significant fixed costs to variable costs and sourcing creative from more relevant and, many times, lower cost sources.

Each open innovation agency (and there are many) has its own revenue model, but common to all of them is the basic proposition of expanding the agency’s capabilities by tapping the wisdom of a global self-selected crowd of creatives, strategists, and fans. In his research on InnoCentive, the first global Internet-based platform designed to match problems with creative problem-solvers, Harvard Business School professor Karim Lakhani observed that the further a problem was from the solvers’ field of expertise, the more likely they were to solve it. Since few companies have the resources to hire the diverse disciplinary expertise found in open innovation networks, agencies will have to tap these networks if they hope to compete on creative output.

They’ll also need these networks in order to compete on cost: The open innovation model can shave time and expense off the old ad development cycle. V&S begins a client engagement by inviting its crowd to help define the brand’s problem — sometimes using the brand’s own community of fans. This “defining” is the same thing that traditional agencies do, but the process is virtual, larger scale, and often both faster and more likely to produce relevant insights. During the creative development process fans can provide feedback early in the process, during pre-production, saving a lot of time and money compared to the old cycle of campaign, test, refine, and so on. When one of ten ideas catches fire, then the V&S core group of professionals, who are also from the open innovation pool, work with the new input and insights to deliver the final product.

For ad agencies to survive the shift to open systems they must not think of it as an innovation but as a transformation. As we’re still in the experimentation phase, we need fearless clients, managers, and organizations. Agencies must rethink their business models and go from being place-based organizations that sell employees’ time to creating a new operating system that harnesses the creativity that’s all around them.

ITV has refreshed their Android app, but for now, only Samsung device users in the UK can enjoy. The UK television network announced that until August 31, their updated ITV Player app will be available exclusively to Samsung users “for an initial period while we endeavor to optimize and improve the experience before releasing to other device manufacturers.”

The updated app features landscape navigation support, improved playback, 3G/4G  streaming,  and support for older devices. Right now the app is dominated with 1-star reviews in the Play Store, so hopefully for ITV users this update is a big improvement.

The download link and press release can be found after the break.

Play Store Download Link

SAMSUNG ENTERS EXCLUSIVE PARTNERSHIP WITH ITV TO MAKE ITV PLAYER APP AVAILABLE ON DEVICES

Android app available exclusively to Samsung customers until 31 August 2013

9 May 2013, London, UK – Samsung Mobile today announced it has entered an exclusive fixed term partnership with ITV to offer the new ITV Player app on its Android devices. Available now and exclusive to Samsung customers until 31 August, the ITV Player app will provide access to the last thirty days of ITV’s catch-up content across ITV, ITV2, ITV3, ITV4 and CITV while you’re out and about, including all the network’s favourites from popular soaps such as Coronation Street to factual documentaries, dramas and films.

The new user interface dynamically scales to a range of screen sizes, has an improved playback experience with simpler video profiles, and is supported over 3G/4G as well as Gingerbread (2.3+), Honeycomb, Jelly Bean and Ice Cream Sandwich operating systems. Using the app it will be possible to browse recommended programmes, search for your favourite shows by TV channel or alphabetically on your mobile device, meaning you can enjoy ITV content On Demand and from any location*.

Free to download now via Samsung Apps and Google Play and offering unlimited usage, ITV Player will be available on a range of Samsung Android tablet and smartphone devices, including the new Galaxy S4, the Galaxy Note 8.0 and the Galaxy Mega, whilst it has also been optimised for the Galaxy S III, Galaxy SII, Galaxy Note II, Note and Galaxy Note 10.1. The app is also available to view over 3G, 4G and WiFi networks.

James Micklethwait, Online Product Director, ITV said: “We are very excited to have launched the new ITV Player app on Samsung devices. The fragmentation of the Android ecosystem is well known therefore, as a commercial broadcaster, it makes sense for us to partner with the leading manufacturer of Android devices to further increase our technical knowledge of the operating system. We plan to launch the app onto other Android devices in the future.”

Simon Stanford, Vice President of IM Division, Samsung UK and Ireland said: “At Samsung, we are committed to providing our customers with the latest range of content and apps. People are increasingly watching programmes on their way to work, between meetings or on holiday, and this partnership means they can now catch up on their favourite ITV programmes on our devices wherever and whenever they choose.”

Come comment on this article: ITV Player updated, now exclusive for Samsung users through August 31st

Samsung released its new SideSync software that they say “connects the PC and mobile as one.” We couldn’t agree more, as this innovative application allows for a sort of dual-screen feature from your PC to your Galaxy phone. You can drag and drop files from your computer and place them right on your phone’s home screen, copy clipboard content from one device to the other, and even use a screen sharing mode which lets users view their Galaxy phone’s screen on their PC monitor to use it as a virtual phone. From this mode users can take full advantage of all of the functions of their phone, and can also resize the phone’s screen on the PC monitor.  All of this can be done while effortlessly navigating both devices using the PC mouse.

Check out Samsung’s walk-through video of SideSync after the break.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Come comment on this article: New Samsung video provides walk-through of SideSync features, allows for connection between PC and a Galaxy phone

Drug researcher Quintiles Transnational Holdings raised a more-than planned $947 million in its IPO, the latest listing from a private equity-backed company as record highs for U.S. stocks encourage more exits from investments, Reuters reported. Strong investor demand for the deal helped Quintiles, which is backed by Bain Capital LLC and TPG Capital LP, price 20 percent more shares than expected at the top end of the range and pushed up pricing a day early, according to people familiar with the deal. The Durham, North Carolina-based conductor of clinical trials is also the largest of eleven IPOs pricing this week, which could mark the highest weekly IPO volume since late 2007, according to market data firm Ipreo.

(Reuters) – Drug researcher Quintiles Transnational Holdings raised a more-than planned $947 million in its IPO, the latest listing from a private equity-backed company as record highs for U.S. stocks encourage more exits from investments.

Strong investor demand for the deal helped Quintiles, which is backed by Bain Capital LLC and TPG Capital LP, price 20 percent more shares than expected at the top end of the range and pushed up pricing a day early, according to people familiar with the deal.

Other public floats from private equity-backed companies this year have included Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd , SeaWorld Entertainment Inc, Pinnacle Foods Inc and Intelsat SA.

The Durham, North Carolina-based conductor of clinical trials is also the largest of eleven IPOs pricing this week, which could mark the highest weekly IPO volume since late 2007, according to market data firm Ipreo.

It priced 23.7 million shares at $40, compared with its plan to price 19.7 million shares at $36 to $40.

Other deals which have priced this week include residential mortgage company PennyMac Financial Services Inc and biotech company Receptos Inc.

Bain and TPG became the lead investors in Quintiles in January 2008 after One Equity Partners sold its stake in the company. Britain’s 3i Group Plc and Singapore’s Temasek Holdings are also investors in Quintiles.

Quintiles sold 13.1 million shares in the IPO. The company’s founder and executive chairman Dennis Gillings and the private equity firms sold the remaining 10.6 million shares.

It will use IPO proceeds to pay outstanding debt, to terminate a management agreement with its private equity sponsors and for general corporate purposes.

Quintiles generated adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization of $177.5 million on revenue of $4.9 billion in the year ended Dec. 31, 2012.

The company’s rivals include Covance Inc, ICON and Parexel International, according to Morningstar.

Morgan Stanley, Barclays and JPMorgan are the lead underwriters on the offering.

Quintiles will list its shares on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol Q.

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