Monday’s NGT News Roundup

June 18th, 2007 by NGT

Focus of Video Games Shifts to Lure More Casual Players [New York Times]
A roundup of new unconventional games trying to get the attention of non-gamers. A vocab-building game, a beauty care guide game, and a game that comes with a pedometer that rewards exercise with game time.

Teens & Young Adults Want Targeted Ads [MocoNews]
Teens are sophisticated and savvy when it comes to mobile, and they don’t mind ads being sent to their phone–as long as they’re relevant and targeted. Release

Glam Reigns over iVillage as the No. 1 Network for Women [Mashable]
Glam Media has usurped iVillage to become the number one online site for women. Related: Glam signed an ad/search deal with Google earlier this month.

Teens Schizophrenic About Their Brands [BrandWeek]
A new study shows that teens have “a love-hate relationship with brands.” 46% of teens said they have brands that they “stick to,” but 52% felt “brands are created by marketers just to get more money.” One in four teens will leave a brand when it gets too popular, and the teens that are most intent on getting brand-name stuff are most likely to drop brands like they’re hot.

Going Wifi: Internet Radio Races to Break Free of the PC [WSJ]
While Internet radio listenership is rising (to 29 million a week, up from 20 million three years ago), the industry has yet to make it portable. Now, start-ups and giants are jockeying for position…
- SanDisk Sansa Connect digital music player taps into Wifi when in range, otherwise draws from its library of songs.
- Pandora is working with Sprint to make the service available on phones and in cars, in addition to creating its own player that will rely on Wifi and possibly WiMax.
- Slacker is making a hand-held (due by summer’s end) as well as pushing to have its technology built into car dashboard that will use both Wifi and satellite technology.

Google Labs: A Look Under the Hood [Mashable]
A review of some cool experiments Google is trying out–from time-plotted and mapped search results to a music trends tracker to a Ride Finder LBS.

YouTube Remixer: Edit Videos Online at YouTube [TechCrunch]
YouTube is letting content creators edit their videos from within YouTube (like Photobucket’s Remix tool). So if you can rip vids from the site, you can add subtitles to your favorites.

Ning Rolls Out Facebook App Builder: Embed Your Social Network In a Social Network [TechCrunch]
It’s like Russian Dolls… Ning, which allows you to create your own social network, has a new feature that lets users create their own branded Facebook application. In other Facebook news, they’re getting IM, so you don’t have to look like a loser when you reply to a wall post within 30 seconds. AirWaves to Launch IM for Facebook Users [Mashable]

Embedded Joost Will Change the Market [TechCrunch]
The hotly-watched Joost is talking to hardware vendors about embedding the TV over Internet service into set-top boxes, eliminating the computer from the equation. This could open it up to whole new market.