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I recently was one of 10 runner ups to Sony’s internal contest for the kick-off of the new Make.Believe branding campaign.  Sony’s CEO Sir Howard Stringer’s email below…

TO: Sony Employees

FROM: Howard Stringer

DATE: November 12, 2009

Dear colleagues,

Thank you for the remarkable enthusiasm you have shown for the internal make.believe kick-off and employee contest across the U.S. and Canada.  As you may know, we received nearly 1,000 entries from every corner of the company and from employees at every level.  I am incredibly proud of all those who contributed, because your amazing personal experiences tell our Sony make.believe story best.

Last week, I announced our three Grand Prize contest winners. They are: Dave Chaimson from Sony Creative Software in Madison, Wisconsin; Erika Kato from Sony Computer Entertainment America in San Diego, California; and Lauren Rivera from Sony Pictures Television in New York. Each of them will have his or her story turned into a professionally directed make.believe videography to debut publicly at CES in January.  I know they’ll be terrific.  In addition, each Grand Prize winner will receive a trip for two to Las Vegas for their video debut, along with a grand Sony product prize package.

Today, it is my great pleasure to announce the 10 contest runners-up, whose stories are equally inspiring.  The winning stories of all of our winners and runners-up, which have been minimally edited, can be found below.  Each runner-up will receive the Sony product prize package. They are:

• Erwin Coumans, Simulation Team Lead, Sony Computer Entertainment America
• Wende Crowley, Senior Director, Film & TV Music, Sony ATV/Music Publishing
• Marc Mackin, Senior Artist, Sony Online Entertainment
• Jeff Merghart, Senior Artist Animator, Sony Online Entertainment
• Christopher Nelson, QA Supervisor, Sony Computer Entertainment America
• Tim Nilson, SVP Technology & Operations/Direct to Consumer, Sony Music Entertainment
• Brian Orr, Principal Software Engineer, Sony Media Software & Services, Sony Corporation of America
• Cecil Prado, Assistant Director, Sony Pictures Entertainment
• Adam Visnovec, Customer Information Center Representative, Sony of Canada Ltd.
• Ling Wong, Associate Software Engineer, Sony Electronics Inc.

Congratulations to all of you!

Thank you, again, for proving that the passion behind make.believe is inside all of us, and for helping us share it with consumers around the world.  

Sincerely,
Howard

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The new AC/DC rarities collectors edition box set AC/DC Backtracks is sold direct to consumer via Sony Music’s M2 commerce platform.  The store is fully localized in 6 languages and fulfills the product to 43 countries via quick UPS delivery.

A friend just told me about the new Skype iPhone app that launched recently.  I just took it for a spin and it works great.  No video yet as the iPhone is still not equipped with the hardware/software to capture video, but audio calling works great and provides the usual mute, pause, and speaker buttons available during regular phone calls on the iPhone.  A great feature is the fact that the app pulls in all your Skype contacts and provides you an integrated address book including search and user thumbnail pictures.  The call quality is good — in my test I was not able to tell a difference to regular cell calls.  The app also shows if your contacts are logged in and available on Skype.  The biggest drawback of the application is the fact that it does not show you as being online unless the app runs.  I am not sure if the 3.0 version of the iPhone OS solves this issues, but currently, apps can’t run in the background.  So you can only receive Skype calls on your iPhone if you actively and purposefully run the app.  Not good.  Anyone know of a workaround?

Generally, this is a development that was inevitable and finally makes wifi calling on a data equipped cellphone a breeze to set up and use.  In the world of the not too distant future in which free public wifi will be everywhere, apps like this have the potential to change mobile calling forever.

Imagine free, global calls (skype to skype) from your cell phone: from any country to any country — something that mobile carriers still charge you as much as $8 a minute for (depending on country, distance, plan, and so on).

Wifi based video calls from your cell is the next step which is still a novelty today — I don’t think I’ve ever seen any of my tech savvy friends do a video chat on their european, video call equipped 3G (or faster) mobile phones via cell or wifi data channels.  Somehow it always seems that something is not quite working — either the connectivity is not there, or the network settings are not set up, or the plan not enabled, or the person being called is not equipped properly… whatever.

Earlier tonight I had a skype video call in my office on my mac with my colleage Mike.  I was at my office desk and he was on the bus on his way home — with his 3G data modem providing the bandwidth to his MacBook.  It worked great.  Now, replace the MacBooks with iPhones, add video, and use public wifi or wimax instead of expensive 3G connectivity, and the world of mobile communication just met the equivalent of what the CD ripper and MP3 format did to the music industry.

Can you see me now?

Technologic - Daft Punk

YouTube Box on Facebook has recently been moving up the charts within the Facebook app directory. The app is now the 2nd most actively used app in the Music category right behind iLike with over 650,000 unique users per month. In the Video category, YouTube Box moved all the way to the 5th most actively used app spot.

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