September 2012

Filmmaking free of the ruling Communist Party is discouraged in China. The Film Bureau, part of the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, vets scripts, grants production licenses, controls studios and equipment and coordinates releases. Making a film without approval risks harassment, warnings and, in extreme cases, blacklisting, a caution to others not to work with offenders. Independent film took off in the late 1990s in China with the importing of inexpensive, compact digital technology, freeing filmmakers to experiment in private without bulky film cameras drawing unwanted attention. Today, high-definition digital cameras cost even less and are smaller, bolstering eager users’ ability to tell stories their own way. This independent spirit comes at a time when mainstream films are booming in China. In 2011, ticket sales jumped 30 percent to hit $2.1 billion and are expected to surpass Japanese sales by January, making China Hollywood’s largest export box office.

According to a poll from the Leading Education by Advancing Digital (LEAD) Commission, teachers and parents say schools should be doing more to improve access to technology in education, with access to the Internet high on the list. The vast majority of parents and teachers said they would rather spend money on Internet-connected digital devices than the same amount on text books.

• More than half of teachers (61%) and about the same percentage of parents (63%) polled said they thought that the country was "behind the curve" when it came to public school use of technology. Other findings include:
• 82 percent of teachers and 71 percent of parents believe a greater use of technology would be helpful in connecting learning inside and outside of the classroom
• 89 percent of teachers and 76 percent of parents would choose to spend $200 per student for an Internet-connected device over $200 per student for new science textbooks
• 82 percent of teachers believe that they are not receiving the necessary training to use technology to its fullest potential in the classroom
• 95 percent of teachers and 90 percent of parents believe that home access to high-speed Internet gives students a big or moderate advantage when it comes to classroom performance.

The study was released in advance of a symposium at Stanford that will discuss the study findings and include Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski, Education Secretary Arne Duncan and others talking about current barriers to and opportunities of high-tech classrooms.

The online ad industry often touts its ability to eliminate the sort of waste that is common in traditional media through its ability to provide superior targeting. But in practice, the industry's targeting capabilities often leave a lot to desired. To help improve the medium's precision, two key third-party research firms are teaming up.

DoubleVerify has announced that it will combine its ad viewability data with audience data from the analytics firm Kantar Media Compete in an effort to help advertisers find out if the audiences they’re targeting are the ones actually seeing their ads. Specifically, the partners’ new Ad VRF tool cross-references impressions tracked by DoubleVerify with the audience profiles Kantar Media Compete compiles via its panel of 2 million U.S. users. After DoubleVerify fires its pixels to record viewability data, that data is also captured by Kantar Media Compete, which then sifts through its own database to match users—combining its audience data with DoubleVerify's viewability data.

Opportunity is knocking for telehealth to become a common method of practicing medicine in the US. One-on-one Web-based video chats and other electronic consultation between doctors and patients isn’t new — it’s been used throughout the U.S. in varying degrees for a few years now. But health-care reform, a ballooning and aging population and a shortage of available family physicians may be a perfect storm that could blow the doors open for telehealth to go mainstream. As states’ health insurance exchanges — online marketplaces where citizens can compare and purchase insurance plans — begin to debut in advance of the 2014 deadline set forth by the Affordable Care Act (ACA), access to health-care providers should expand for many Americans. Obtaining insurance coverage soon may be easier, but the gap between the number of incoming patients and available primary care doctors is widening.