Twitter TV Ratings, Samsung Round and The Canadian Government Winning

The world’s focus for the past week has been on the ongoing government shutdown (which is now entering its third week), and the fact that the U.S. government will reach their debt ceiling on October 17^th. Unless the Democrats and the Republicans can figure out how to get along, and agree to raise the debt ceiling, the U.S. will default on its debt. This has many economists stating that such a default will result in a severe crash of the U.S. economy, which will likely take the world economy with it.

Others are certain that the government will never let this occur, due to the severe impact it would have on the world as a whole. I read an interesting quote the other day, where the person (who lived in Europe), said that the U.S. is so powerful that the decisions it makes has such a large impact on them, that it is like Obama is their president too. In their opinion, this is unfair because they cannot vote for the U.S. president, and therefore have no say over who is in charge, even if their decisions affect them. I thought this was an interesting point of view. But it looks like people are finally starting to get nervous, with three of the  major stock markets (Dow Jones, Standard & Poor, Nasdaq) dropping this morning.

Now onto the tech world:

- Neilsen, the global measurement company that determines size and composition of TV audiences among other things, has announced a new measurement. Twitter TV ratings. Starting soon, they will measure not only the twitter “authors” but the twitter “audience” who are reading tweets about TV programs. Basically they've determined that the TV twitter audience for a show is 50 times the number of people who are generating tweets about it. This is certainly going to help companies increase their social media, but how exactly is this going to help advertisers? An offshoot of the Twitter TV ratings should perhaps include the number of people who tweeted about an ad, or during an ad, to give the advertisers an idea of how many people did, or didn't watch it.

- Samsung has announced a new phone, the Samsung Round. Available only in Korea (for now), it is a curved smartphone. Samsung has yet to indicate if the phone is easier to hold or carry, or if the rounding serves any purpose at all. But in a world where the smartphone market is now saturated, with identical looking rectangular phones, having something different is never bad. They’ve also built in some features to do with the curve, such as flipping songs by rocking the phone. It will be interesting to see how the phone does.

- Pokémon X and Y were released globally on Saturday, the first time Pokémon is released in all global regions at once. Some interesting changes include, a new Pokémon type (fairy), increased 3D immersion, customizable trainer looks, sky battles (only for flying Pokémon) and mega evolution, in which fully evolved Pokémon can evolve into mega form during a battle.

- Lastly, the Canadian Government has announced that it will require TV providers to unbundle channels, which means, consumers will be able to pick and choose the channels they want. Hallelujah! You have no idea how long I have been waiting for this. This is all part of the government’s fight against industries that are monopolized and consumer unfriendly. This makes me like the Canadian government just a little more.

And on that note, Happy Thanksgiving!