AUTHORS

Disruptomatic
Angela Natividad
Angela Natividad is a freelance copywriter, journalist and strategist based in Paris. She co-founded AdVerveBlog.com, a blog and podcast about ads and design, and writes MarketingProfs' “Get to the Point!: Social Media” newsletters. She likes people and animals, but not as much as books.
Tweet her @luckthelady.
James Martin
James Martin is the community manager of music & TV tradeshows midem & MIPTV/MIPCOM. He edits their respective industry news & trends blogs (blog.midem.com & mipblog.com) and also covers video games and technology for French cultural weekly A Nous Paris
Tweet him at @jamesmart_in
Stuart Dredge
Stuart Dredge is a freelance journalist based in the UK. He writes about digital music for Music Ally, and about apps and mobile for The Guardian, The Sunday Times and The Appside, as well as his own Apps Playground site.
Tweet him @stuartdredge

Xbox SmartGlass: Seamless 2screen TV, gaming & films. FTW!

OK, so the above is a promo rather than a video demo. But it rather snappily sums up why SmartGlass was the second sexiest thing at E3, after Watch Dogs. 

Why? Well, M$oft - clearly more and more inspired as it gets older - has been keeping an eye on 2screen TV. You know, when you have extra content and conversations around a TV show on your smartphone or tablet, whilst watching. So it’s decided to go one step further, with extra, apparently ultra-rich content for your device - Apple and Android included - whilst playing music, games or movies.

With music, it’s a multimedia voice-controlled player (if you have Kinect); with games, a screen to show maps and extra commands (Wii U’s ouchscreen-equipped controller was clearly a major influence too); and with films and TV, your tablet shows biogs & backstories; as well as pausing content on your TV and watching the rest on the go. 

WHICH MEANS YOU CAN WATCH GAME OF THRONES AND SEE THE CHARACTERS MOVING ABOUT ON A MAP OF WESTEROS! AND SEE WHICH ONE HAS A CLAIM TO THE THRONE AND WHY! AND DO YOUR ‘HOMEWORK’ IN THE CAR!

Frankly? We can’t wait…

Scared, Netflix? Amazon Prime is on Xbox 360

The dominant console in US homes already has Netflix. Now, it has Amazon Prime too. This means 17,000 films and TV series, including Downton Abbey, Mad Men and Mission Impossible 4 (Amazon calls it MI:3 in the press release ha ha!), all available through your M$oft console, with fancy Kinect menu scrolling if you like. One feature we like: WhisperSync. Like with Kindle books, you can stop a film on one device and pick up from the same point on another (eg. Kindle Fire or your laptop PC).

The cost: $80 (€65) a year, plus an Xbox Live membership ($50, but you’ve probably got that already if you’ve got an Xbox). Netflix’s streaming offer starts at $8/month, so, as our US homies would say, “do the math.”

Is this the end of Netflix’s dominance, or just the start of Amazon’s streaming adventure? We gather the Kindle Fire, the first device to feature Prime streaming, isn’t doing so well: so we’ll opt for the latter for now. Especially given the above so-keen-it’s-nearly-desperate video. Still, a space to be watched, if ever there was one.

Source: Engadget