Zynga closes UK office, closes games and axes 5% of staff | The Wall Blog

We have already seen stocks in social networking firms quickly decline this year and last night more of the bubble burst as social gaming firm Zynga announced, timed to coincide with the launch of the iPad Mini, that it was cutting 5% of its 3,200 workforce.

The cuts will include the closures of its operations in the UK and Japan although no word on how many are affected by these cuts.

Along with the job cuts Zynga plans to dispose of 13 older games and reduce its investment in the game The Ville.

via Zynga closes UK office, closes games and axes 5% of staff | The Wall Blog.

Apple Adds iPad Mini, its First Actually Mobile Tablet | Digital – Advertising Age

Up to now, advertisers have talked about how iPads are typically used in a lean-back setting; Apple ads even pictured users’ feet up. That, in turn, has informed the type of ads that marketers distribute to tablets: often magazine-style, whole-screen takeovers and ads that drive people to e-commerce experiences made for browsing.

At the other side of the spectrum are advertising strategies for mobile phones, which are focusing more and more on location data, with the belief that the person viewing the phone is on the move and looking for something to do or buy.

via Apple Adds iPad Mini, its First Actually Mobile Tablet | Digital – Advertising Age.

EC: Microsoft didn’t honour browser-choice commitment • The Register

From 2009, Microsoft has been legally obliged to show EU Windows users a “choice screen” so they can decide which browser they wish to install. Automatically tying Internet Explorer to the Windows operating system was a breach of antitrust legislation, the Eurocrats declared.

But the “choice screen” did not materialise in Windows 7 when it launched in February 2011 and from Feb 2011 until July 2012 millions of users were never shown the “choice screen”.

This meant that millions of people missed the chance to ditch IE for a better different browser. Microsoft has acknowledged that it did not offer a choice screen for those 17 months, though previously claimed that this was down to a technical error and that it didn’t notice the mistake until just under a year-and-a-half later.

via EC: Microsoft didn’t honour browser-choice commitment • The Register.

Cadbury Screme Eggs Are Amusingly Rotten in Halloween Spots | Adweek

Hardly surprising that Cadbury recently owned by US mega company Kraft and now owned by another US corporation Mondel?z is now creating Halloween products.
Cadbury has finally started recognizing Halloween with its Cadbury Screme Egg, and these three Canadian TV spots for it—by ad agency The Hive in Toronto—are as spooky as ads for candy eggs will allow. They do a good job of showing off the Screme Egg’s special Halloween wrapper and green-and-white yolk (which looks a bit more like snot than they probably intended).

 

via Cadbury Screme Eggs Are Amusingly Rotten in Halloween Spots | Adweek.

BBC News – Brazilian newspapers pull out of Google News

Newspapers accounting for 90% of the circulation in Brazil have abandoned Google News.

Brazil’s National Association of Newspapers says all 154 members had followed its recommendation to ban the search engine aggregator from using their content.

The papers say Google News refused to pay for content and was driving traffic away from their websites.

Google said previously that the service boosted traffic to news websites.

“Staying with Google News was not helping us grow our digital audiences, on the contrary,” said the association’s president, Carlos Fernando Lindenberg Neto.

via BBC News – Brazilian newspapers pull out of Google News.

Amazon wipes customer’s Kindle and deletes account with no explanation | Money | guardian.co.uk

An Amazon Kindle user has had her account wiped and all her paid-for books deleted by Amazon without warning or explanation.

The Norwegian woman, identified only as Linn on media commentator Martin Bekkelund’s blog, approached Amazon when she realised her Kindle had been wiped.

She was informed by a customer relations executive that her account had been closed, all open orders had been cancelled and all her content had been removed, but has been unable to find out why.

via Amazon wipes customer’s Kindle and deletes account with no explanation | Money | guardian.co.uk.

Teenagers warned: stuff you upload online may re-appear elsewhere online

Separately, young people have been warned they might lose control over images and videos once they are uploaded online.A study by the Internet Watch Foundation IWF found that 88 per cent of self-generated, sexually explicit online images and videos of young people are lifted from their original location and uploaded onto other websites.IWF analysts encountered more than 12,000 such images and videos spread over 68 websites. In many cases, parasitic pornographic websites are lifting photos and videos uploaded by teenagers onto social-networking sites. ®

via Four in ten Brits have had to change all their passwords to foil crooks • The Register.