Disney Narrows Its Movie Focus, Building on Known Characters

As the business model that propelled Hollywood for more than a decade fades to black, Walt Disney Co. is retooling how its movie studio makes and markets films.

The Disney studio, which is to unveil its production slate this spring, is backing away from one-off comedies like “When in Rome” and “Confessions of a Shopaholic,” according to people familiar with the studio’s new gameplan.

In their place, Disney plans to focus on films that are essentially brands—like a planned Muppets movie—that can be exploited across its network of theme parks, videogames and commercial products. The recent success with “Alice in Wonderland” has given a new team of executives who run the studio confidence in their approach.  Wall Street Journal

Smartphones will shake up paid content debate

Media companies longing to bring a paid-for culture to the Internet might just get what they want if they pay more attention to the smartphone revolution that is changing the way people access the Web.

Huge numbers now use mobile phones instead of desktop computers to get online — a development that has spawned whole new business models in China, the world’s biggest Internet market.

Paying to read content on the Web, an outlandish idea as recently as a year ago, is slowly but surely establishing itself as the next business model in the Western media mainstream, spearheaded by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp

Sony unveils Move, its PS3 motion controller

A small device that looks like a microphone–but with something on top of it that looks like a ping pong ball with an LED inside–Move is Sony’s bid to gain control over the motion controller wars that are currently led by Nintendo, with its Wii controller, and which many think will be dominated by Microsoft and its Project Natal controller system.

To Sony, releasing the Move is an obvious move for the PlayStation, given it believes it started the motion controller era with its Eye Toy. Sony held its press conference during the Game Developers Conference here.

Now the cows are on Twitter

If your Twitter friends aren’t interesting, you can now follow a dozen lactating bovines and read their teat tweets after they’ve been milked by a robot.

“As far as we know they’re the only cows tweeting,” said Marcel O’Gorman who is behind the University of Waterloo’s critical media lab project.

The tweeting cows are poking fun at the popular Twitter network and are meant to push people to think about where their food comes from and the high-tech nature of farming, he said.

How to Choose the Right Apple iPad for You

Ever since the configurations and their prices were announced in January, Bits readers have e-mailed me asking for input on which iPad to buy: 3G or Wi-Fi only? The answer to that question could make a big financial difference, since the 3G versions cost $130 more upfront and an extra $15 to $30 a month, depending on your 3G usage.

So how do you make a smart decision? This Q&A might help:

NY Times

Theatres start Imax and Digital Upgrades after the Oscars

Now that the Oscars are over, Hollywood’s less glamorous — but still important — partners in the movie theater business are stepping into the spotlight prior to the industry’s annual ShoWest convention next week.

Exhibitors on Wednesday heard the announcement that they’ve desperately wanted for more than two years: The three biggest chains — AMC Entertainment, Cinemark, and Regal Entertainment —  have a $660 million funding deal to accelerate the rollout of digital projectors to 14,000 screens in North America. USA Today

Trend is toward specialty content and away from social networks

The current trend is users 35 and older are spending more time on social-networking sites, while the younger are more mobile based. So the average age of Facebook users is increasing, with users 55 and above growing the most rapidly, but the inverse is true for Twitter, where the most rapid growth in the 2 (!) to 11 year old segment. But the mobile social-networking scene is also more fragmented than the computer-based one, and there’s a new raft of mobile-based services that are growing rapidly, such as social-networking site Gowalla and dating site Flirtomatic.

Women Who Drink Gain Less Weight

Dieters are often advised to stop drinking alcohol to avoid the extra calories lurking in a glass of wine or a favorite cocktail. But new research suggests that women who regularly consume moderate amounts of alcohol are less likely to gain weight than nondrinkers and are at lower risk for obesity.

The findings, reported this week in the Archives of Internal Medicine, are based on a study of 19,220 United States women aged 39 or older who, at the start of the study, fell into the “normal weight” category based on their body mass index. Researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston tracked the women’s drinking habits over 13 years. About 60 percent of the women were light or regular drinkers, while about 40 percent reported drinking no alcohol.

Disney restyles ‘Rapunzel’ to appeal to boys

With ‘The Princess and the Frog’ coming up short at the box office, the studio retools its next animated feature to lose the girly taint. Now it’s called ‘Tangled,’ with a swashbuckling male lead.

After the less-than-fairy-tale results for its most recent animated release, “The Princess and the Frog,” executives at the Burbank studio believe they know why the acclaimed movie came up short at the box office.

Brace yourself: Boys didn’t want to see a movie with “princess” in the title.

Playboy teams up with Video Game Maker 2K