Android adoption is growing rapidly in Japan, with local handset manufacturers doing everything they can in order to meet the demands of customers in all segments of the population. One particularly attractive target group seems to be women, given how many Japanese companies say they design Android phones specifically for female users.
Here are three recent examples. → Read More
Walt Disney Studios and YouTube have struck deal which will bring hundreds of Disney movies to YouTube, starting today. The new partnership between the two companies includes movies from Disney, Disney-Pixar and DreamWorks Studios. The films, some of which have already arrived on YouTube, are available to rent starting at $1.99.
→ Read More
This one is just for the kids: Microsoft just announced that Disneyland – the whole thing – is coming to Kinect. You can walk through the park and then go on immersive rides including Alice In Wonderland and Peter Pan. They had four kids on stage who were flailing about madly inside little croquet balls on stage. Very funny stuff. A few more shots after the jump. → Read More
Panasonic Japan announced [JP] a special Lumix camera yesterday, the LUMIX DMC-FP7D (where the “D” stands for Disney). Unlike many other cute special edition cameras from Japan, the design on this model is rather subtle. → Read More
Disney has just acquired Togetherville, a social network for kids 10 years of age or younger, we’ve confirmed with the company. Terms of the acquisition are not being disclosed at the moment.
Togetherville, which exited beta last year, mimics the experience of adult social networking sites, i.e. Facebook but in an age-appropriate and parent-monitored environment. Togetherville promises a safer, more secure environment, where parents can moderate who their children are connecting with. Parents approve each of their child’s friends, and can also connect with other parents using Facebook’s social graph. → Read More
Remember that Disney-themed Android phone from Japan we blogged two weeks ago? At that time, Disney Japan didn’t release a lot of information, but now they did [JP], and they also showed the 3D device for the first time. → Read More
Disney may have pulled the plug on their cell phone business in the US in 2007, but in Japan (where the company’s characters have a huge fan base), its MVNO is apparently doing pretty well. And now it comes to light [JP] that next month, Disney enthusiasts living in that country will be able to lay their hands on a special Android phone. → Read More
Part of the TRON press event included an advance screening of TRON: Legacy. We’ve been under embargo not to review the movie, but someone broke the embargo, so we are no longer going to keep it secret.
If you do not like movie spoilers, do not click to read more and do not read on, because I’m going to tell you what I think about the movie and I’m going to include some information about it that you might not want to know. I’m not going to give away major plots, because I hate that, but I’m going to go into some of my thoughts on the movie. If you are curious about seeing TRON and don’t mind a tidbit of information, read on. → Read More
A little over a year ago Zynga sued rival game startup Playdom for, among other things, misappropriation of trade secrets, breach of contract, breach of the duty of loyalty, tortious interference with contracts, tortious interference with existing and prospective economic advantage and unfair competition. The defendants included four ex-Zynga, then Playdom employees as well.
It’s been a fairly dramatic year of legal maneuvers. The day Zynga filed the lawsuit a judge issued a temporary restraining order against Playdom that prohibited Playdom from using any Zynga data. In March a different judge issued a preliminary injunction against Playdom that prohibited them from releasing a specific game (whatever game that was has been kept confidential). And then in August the big slap down against a former Zynga employee who had been found to have acted inappropriately. → Read More
In about 3 hours I’m heading over to a press event to interview some of the major cast and crew for the upcoming Disney release of TRON: Legacy.
I was working on my list of questions to ask last night and realized that the TechCrunch community should really be asking them instead of me. Interviews take place from 12:30p – 4:30p (Pacific Time) and I’ll have my computer with me to look at the questions & comments here.
I don’t know about you, but I have been waiting for a TRON sequel my whole life. When IMDB launched, there was a teaser that something called TRON 2.0 was coming out and was constantly in a state of production. → Read More
Christmas time, limited edition time. In Japan, Sony today announced [JP] the so-called “Walkman S Series Disney Character Christmas Box”, which contains the Walkman NW-S750 big S released earlier this year. Not too surprisingly, buyers get the player with a Christmas design (showing Mickey and Minnie Mouse) and a limited edition wallpaper. → Read More
Sony, Warner Brothers, and Disney are mulling over the prospect of offering $30 rentals of new movies before they come to DVD. This would presumably allow a family to watch a movie that they weren’t able to get in to see at the theaters, a sort of WWE-style main-event pay-per-view deal that will almost completely bypass the cable operators and will be available on any number of CE platforms. → Read More
Back in July, when writing about GetGlue’s partnership with HBO, I told CEO Alex Iskold that if they struck a deal to get Mad Men stickers from AMC, I’d be on board. Well, he went out and did just that. So here I am, loading up GetGlue.
And AMC is hardly the only new partner that GetGlue is announcing today. Disney, HGTV, Discovery, and, in what may be a first for news programming, MSNBC is on board as well. Each of these companies will now have special stickers that users can accumulate when they check-in watching any of their shows. → Read More
So you say you’re a Toy Story 3 fan? Well, TGDaily reports that there’s quite the deal coming from Disney when the movie is released on Blu-ray, the collector’s edition will contain not just Toy Story and Toy Story 3, it will also contain the video game tie-in for TS3. Of course, no idea if the game will be any good, but the at least you’ll get two movies out of the deal. Now the bad part, the collector’s edition will cost $15 over the standard edition PS3 game at $65. → Read More
Perhaps you’ve heard: social games maker Playdom was acquired by Disney a few days ago for a deal potentially worth north of $750 million. Playdom CEO John Pleasants took the stage today at our Social Currency CrunchUp in Palo Alto, to talk a bit about the deal and the future.
Pleasants says that he’s not exactly sure what his title at Disney will be yet, but he thinks he’ll be the General Manager of Playdom. He’s also not sure if Tapulous (another gaming company just acquired by Disney) will be under his department, but he doesn’t think so. And he made sure to clarify that the deal was for $563.2 million plus an earn-out of up to $200 million — so he’s not super super super rich, he’s just super super rich. → Read More
Disney and social gaming startup Playdom are in “very” late stage acquisition discussions, we’ve heard from, oh, about seven independent sources, including sources close to Playdom, over the last several days. Internally the two parties have referred to the deal as “Project Platinum” based on due diligence documents we’ve reviewed.
Some sources have said the deal is signed and in the closing process. Others say it hasn’t been signed yet and could still unravel.
Disney is already an investor in Playdom – last month we reported that Disney’s Steamboat Ventures participated in a new injection of $33 million into the company. Playdom has raised a total of $76 million, and the most recent valuation of the company was around $345 million. → Read More
It’s safe to say that Toy Story is still Pixar’s biggest, most beloved franchise. The third movie, which Biggs inexplicably reviewed the other day—should I review the new Roots album here?— took home some $109 million at the weekend. That’s Pixar’s biggest opening weekend ever. The other big, animated feature of the year, Shrek Forever After, only took home $71 million its first weekend. → Read More
Tokyo-based gadget maker Greenhouse announced [JP] three super-cute, Disney-themed digital photo frames today, the GH-DF35TV. Buyers can choose between three characters: Winnie The Pooh, Stitch or Little Green Man (one of those green, three-eyed aliens from Toy Story 1 and 2). → Read More
In September last year, Sony rolled out the S Series Walkman, portable audio and video players, which are supposed to compete with the iPod Nano. And today, Sony in Japan announced [JP] a branded version of those Walkmans, namely the “Disney Character S Series Walkman”. To be more exact, Sony introduced nine Disney-themed Walkmans, a special case and a Mickey Mouse stand. → Read More
Tron Legacy is nerds wet dream come true. The movie will hopefully invoke the same sort of futuristic imagination as the original. You’ve watched the trailer, right? Well, anyway, to gear up for the premiere, Disney has skin a couple of its monorails to look like the light cycles. Kind of meta future meets future moment, eh? → Read More
