The Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity on Tuesday awarded its first Grand Prix in the innovation category, which was just introduced this year. The category was created to honor pioneering forms of technology that have made ideas possible, and the top prize was awarded to Cinder, a software developed by Cheil-owned digital agency The Barbarian Group. 

What it is: “Cinder” is an open-source platform for creative coding. It’s free to use, and so is the recipe that makes it. Created for “hardcore developers,” it runs on Mac OS X, the iOS and Windows, and was originally created to serve the VFX industry. It is a “toolbox” that lets you program graphics, audio, video, networking, image processing and computation geometry.

The jury:  The jury was chaired by David Droga, founder and chairman of Droga5. He said that the group of jurors, who represented a broad cross-section of the industry, understood “what’s at stake when you introduce a new category, especially when it’s something as broad as the innovation Lions.” Mr. Droga also added that the category had created a “new format of judging.” It required shortlisted entrants to make an in-person presentation in front of a live audience, which included the jury, earlier this week. That made the process more genuine, said jury member Emad Tahtouh, director-creative technology at 37Degrees. “After judging based on case studies before, and making quite a few of them myself, it’s so easy to hide something in a case study,” he said.

Why it won: Mr. Droga said that what made Cinder worthy of earning the first Grand Prix for innovation was that it was something that “was not only gaining momentum, but has contributed to maybe 20 to 30 entries here at the Festival.” The guiding principle for the jury was to find something greater than a campaign idea, that was something that wasn’t just “limited to what it is today, but could move other things and competitors forward.”

Total number of Lions awarded: There are no Gold, Silver or Bronze Lions in this category. Instead, three other pieces of work won Innovation Lions. They were: “Two Screens Are Better Than One,” a new type of phone by YOTA Moscow that was a smartphone on one side, and an e-reader on the other; Thunderclap, by De-De New York, described as a “social media amplifier”; and MasterCard Display Card by the Getin Noble Bank in Warsaw that combines a card with a screen. In all, there were 25 finalists hailing from 15 countries. The U.S. and the U.K. led the pack, each with four shortlisted projects, while Japan and Brazil followed with three each.  Poland followed with two shortlisted projects. 

What they didn’t like: Entries that felt like they could be for any category and ones that weren’t fully developed. Mr. Droga said that in

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Yum brands’ Pizza Hut has launched a review for its creative account.

The business has been with Interpublic’s Martin Agency since 2009, when the shop succeeded longtime incumbent, Omnicom’s BBDO. Martin said that it was defending the account but referred all other questions to Pizza Hut.

“Pizza Hut is continually looking at fresh ways to enhance its marketing efforts and strengthen relationships and points of engagement with pizza lovers. As a result, we are conducting an advertising agency review,” said the marketer, noting, “We are thankful for the commitment The Martin Agency has made to our business over the past 3 1/2 years and have invited them to participate in the review process.”

Pizza Hut declined to disclose participating agencies and whether a search consultant was involved.

Pizza Hut’s media agency, Publicis Groupe’s Optimedia, is unaffected by the search.

Among parent company Yum Brands‘ chains, Taco Bell and KFC, Pizza Hut is the third-largest measured media spender, according to Kantar Media. In 2012, Pizza Hut spent about $240 million on U.S. measured media, while KFC spent about $263.5 million and Taco Bell spent about $280 million.

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The annual Small Agency Conference and Awards Show, to be held in Portland, Oregon, is just over one month away. So it’s the perfect time for a preview of the event program, which will feature a mix of the inspirational and practical, in addition to a special keynote from Wieden  Kennedycofounder, Dan Wieden.

We kick off the day with the NHL Exec VP-Marketing Brian Jennings, who will talk about the league’s latest marketing efforts and the challenge to reinvigorate a passionate but less-than-pleased fan base after a lockout that shortened the most recent season by almost fifty percent.

How do you infuse creative energy into the banking category, one consumers typically find almost as frustrating as air travel? By reinventing it, of course. Lani Hayward, exec VP-creative strategies at Portland’s own Umpqua Bank, will talk about the company’s creative mission and a philosophy that takes inspiration for its branches from the likes of coffee shops and museums.

Speaking of coffee, “Skip” Colombo, of Portland favorite Stumptown Coffee Roasters, will give us a look inside the complex world of the coffee business, from the buying to the roasting to the selling, the recent rise of the artisanal shops, and how players like Stumptown can compete with deep-pocketed chains like Starbucks. Skip will be joined by two of Stumptown’s coffee buyers, who will orchestrate a special coffee tasting for Small Agency Conference attendees following the presentation.

Mondelez International’s Debra Giampoli will provide insight into the company’s agency search process, discussing some of her more memorable experiences over the years, along with the ‘do’s and don’ts’ that she looks for when searching for agency partners.

Ad Age’s Ken Wheaton will continue last year’s favorite discussion on “My Worst Day in Advertising,” while Rupal Parekh and industry vets Jamie Barrett, Matthew Bull, Roger Camp and Gerry Graf talk about the movie from big agencies to smaller shops.

Don’t wait, get your tickets now.

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What’s important about a app, besides a fact that it’s nearing during a time when many have created off “people finders” as passé, is that a company’s owner and CEO is Michael Chasen, a former co-founder and CEO of Blackboard, who stepped down from his position during a association in late 2012, following its $1.64 billion exit to Providence Equity Partners in mid-2011.

Blackboard might not be a many beloved learning-management system, yet it did settle itself as a personality in a space, that new edtech startups currently wish to disrupt. And now, Chasen believes he can pull SocialRadar to a tip of a “people discovery” store as well.

“One of a engaging things about Blackboard is that even yet we were an craving program company, we unequivocally deliberate ourselves to be closer to a consumer,” Chasen explains. “I spent all my time on college campuses traffic with students and expertise to assistance put courses online.” While there, he beheld several engaging trends. Though usually 56 percent of U.S. users have online profiles, on college campuses, it’s roughly 95 percent. Smartphone invasion is around 60 percent in a U.S., yet on college campuses, it’s over 90 percent, he says.

Not usually are a students some-more expected to lift these devices, they also use them in opposite ways. “They’re plainly regulating their smartphones as plcae beacons and pity their plcae with other people, as good as pity their amicable information,” he says.

But Chasen suspicion it was bizarre that nonetheless this is now a default function (at slightest within a sole demographic), there isn’t a elementary approach to only travel into a room, launch an app and find out who’s there and how you’re connected to them.

Of course, that’s not wholly true.

A series of startups including Highlight, Banjo, Sonar, and some-more have pounded a location-based, people find space with propensity over a past integrate of years, with a transformation unequivocally coming to a conduct during a annual SXSW eventuality in Austin in 2012. Since then, however, many of a apps have struggled to find mainstream adoption. Some, like Glancee and Glassmap have sold. Others, like Kismet, have changed into new product categories. Intro pivoted.

Chasen insists that SocialRadar is opposite from that lot, though.

“I get that those applications use both plcae and pity of information,” he says. One of his favorites in a organisation is Highlight, that he explains runs in a credentials and, when you’re nearby someone it thinks you’re meddlesome in, it will give we an alert.

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I wrote about a association final month when Facebook’s Paul Adams assimilated it as a new conduct of product design. At a time, Adams told me that Intercom’s work matches his possess faith that businesses’ interactions with business have to turn some-more personal and relationship-based.

CEO Eoghan McCabe offering a identical prophesy this week. “Loyalty is magic,” he argued, recalling that a personal use he perceived during a friend’s sequence of coffee shops meant that he’d travel past competing shops and entice friends to this one.

“It became kind of transparent to me that on a web, we don’t unequivocally have those relationships,” he said, aside from “a few small outliers like Zappos who have invested heavily in good service.”

In sequence to capacitate those kinds of relationships, McCabe pronounced Intercom has a integrate of pivotal features. For one thing, he pronounced that businesses customarily have to “stitch together” products to run an online assistance desk, email marketing, patron attribute management, and selling automation. That’s a injured approach, since they’re all perplexing to accomplish a same extended idea — “to yield simple, tellurian service.” So Intercom brings all of that functionality together in one place.

Plus, McCabe pronounced that by adding only a few lines of JavaScript to their site, businesses get a healthy proceed to correlate with their customers, not only by promulgation them selling emails (which mostly come in during untimely times and are ignored), though also during a impulse of biggest aptitude — “when they’re inside your product.”

That all sounds appealing, though are businesses unequivocally going to turn some-more personal and reduction spammy only since they have improved tools?

“The thing is, no business inherently wants to be spammy,” McCabe said. “It’s shit for business. Even assholes know it’s a reticent thing to do.”

The problem, he said, is that there’s “so many attrition in a routine that we can’t means to be really targeted and personal.” Eliminate that attrition and businesses can do a improved pursuit during this stuff. That’s also because McCabe pronounced many of a new appropriation will go towards improving a product, while also employing some-more people to enhance Intercom’s possess use team.

The Series A comes from The Social+Capital Partnership, a organisation founded by former Facebook clamp boss Chamath Palihapitiya, with appearance from Freestyle Capital and David Sacks, owner and CEO of Yammer. Intercom formerly lifted $1 million from Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, 500 Startups, and others.

• INTERCOM
• SOCIAL + CAPITAL PARTNERSHIP

Intercom is a patron attribute government and messaging apparatus for web businesses.

→ Learn more

→ Learn more

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Today, however, anyone can pointer adult for a Vdio TV and pierce subscription use (which is still usually accessible in a U.S. and U.K.), even if they don’t use Rdio.

The video streaming use was creatively partial of Rdio founder’s Janus Friis’s vision, Rdio and Vdio (now outgoing) CEO Drew Larner explained to TechCrunch progressing this year. But it had taken some time for a association to secure a calm deals that would concede it to contest in a rival video streaming marketplace some-more effectively – an area that is dominated by a likes of Netflix, Hulu, and now Amazon, among others.

Vdio includes calm from  Fox, Warner Brothers, Paramount, MGM, Sony, CBS, ABC, Disney and more, with a concentration on charity new releases that users can possibly lease or purchase, in further to other classics. After purchasing a content, users can afterwards tide a film or uncover on a web or a messenger iPad application, that also supports AirPlay for streaming to Apple TV.

In addition, a use integrates with Facebook, permitting users to sign-up with their Facebook credentials, as good as see that of their Facebook and Twitter friends are regulating a use and what they’re watching. (Netflix has also recently total Facebook formation for a identical purpose).

With today’s open launch, users can lease or squeeze videos immediately after sign-up, though a association has pronounced that it skeleton to offer a subscription indication in a future.

Vdio will eventually enhance to a dual dozen or so markets where Rdio operates, with a subsequent one designed being Canada.

Though a app itself is well-designed and easy adequate to use, a doubt now is how many subscription-based services can one endure profitable for? Already Netflix and Amazon are battling for users by targeting families, while Hulu is distinguished deals and building adult an strange calm collection of a own. Assuming we wanted to tide calm from all three, we would start saying monthly bills which, when combined, start impending a cost of wire TV. Most aren’t prepared to cut a cord entirely, that means a marketplace for streaming video currently is still a oppulance of sorts. That might change in time, though a plea for startups like Vdio is to tarry until that’s a case.

We’ve reached out to a association for an refurbish on a stream distance of a catalog, and more, and will refurbish with sum when they respond. 

• RDIO

Rdio is a ground-breaking digital song use that is reinventing a approach people discover, listen to, and share music. With on-demand entrance to over 12 million songs, Rdio connects people with song and creates it easy to search

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My colleague Tim Nudd recently wondered if Apple, at a crucial time of transition in the company’s history, had lost its voice in the new “Our Signature” manifesto commercial. The company speaks clearly and with great confidence, however, in “Making a Difference One App at a Time,” a 10-minute film by TBWAMedia Arts Lab that focuses on how third-party iOS apps can profoundly change people’s lives.

Now, I initially assumed that such aspirational advertising, especially in a long-form outing, would veer into mawkish, tear-jerk territory. I was mistaken. The muted, documentary-style approach strikes the perfect tone, and “Making a Difference” says a whole lot without ever getting overly sentimental or offering pie-in-the-sky promises about making the world a better place.

“Making a Difference” both tells us why Apple’s products are great and shows us that they are, introducing viewers to a range of people who use or develop vastly different apps that run on iPhones and iPads. We meet a nurse in who uses the technology to make diagnoses in remote, rural areas of Kenya; an Olympic medal-winning amputee rower who programs her prosthetic legs; a Native American woman striving to keep the Cherokee language alive, and, most poignantly, a non-verbal youngster who finds his virtual voice and now talks to his family and friends via iPad every day.

In a way, these are small, intimate stories that gain considerable power (and a truly universal vibe) when woven together. Yet, the piece as a whole never feels forced or overblown. There’s a cool, almost detached aspect to “Making a Difference”—achieved with lingering steadycam shots, fluid editing and an elusive ambient soundtrack—that’s analogous to Jonathan Ive’s Apple product designs. His vision, at its best, is gorgeous yet restrained, evocative and efficient with all elements in harmony, and the same can be said for this film. It has great form but also function, with viewers learning quite a bit about iOS apps and feeling like we’re part of the conversation.

Intriguingly, all four stories are ultimately about enabling and facilitating various types of communications. The apps—and, by extension, the Apple products they run on—are convincingly cast as high-tech translators. Working together, humans and machines create a new language

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Many PS3 owners have run into trouble with the latest update.

(Credit:
Sony)

Sony has put the kibosh on a new update for the PS3 after that update created bootup problems for many users.

A host of
PS3 owners who installed update 4.45 on their consoles have been reporting the trouble on Sony’s PlayStation forum since Tuesday. The update, which was designed to let people turn trophy notifications on or off, essentially renders the console unusable. Users are complaining that the PS3 freezes at some point during the bootup process.

Ironically, Sony had touted the update as offering improved system stability, but it seems to have done the exact opposite.

In response, Sony has pulled the update as it investigates the issue.

“We’re aware of reports that the recent PS3 update (4.45) has caused,” Sony’s PlayStation Europe account tweeted on Wednesday. “We have temporarily taken 4.45 offline and are investigating.”

Several commenters on Sony’s forum say they can still boot into Safe Mode, which at least will allow users to update the console again once Sony rolls out a fix.

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Oracle addressed 40 security issues in Java and enabled online certificate revocation checking by default in its scheduled critical patch update for Java on Tuesday.

Thirty-four vulnerabilities patched in the newly released Java 7 Update 25 (Java 7u25) version affect only client deployments of Java. Another four affect both client and server deployments, one affects the Java installer and one the Javadoc tool that’s used to create HTML documentation files.

Many of the client-only vulnerabilities received the maximum score on the vulnerability severity scale used by Oracle. These flaws can be exploited by attackers to take control of computers by hosting malicious Java applets—Java Web applications—on remote servers and tricking users to load them in their browsers.

The large number of Web-based attacks that targeted Java users this year by exploiting vulnerabilities in the Java browser plug-in prompted concern about the security worthiness of the Java platform among home users and in enterprise environments, where Java is also frequently used on servers.

In order to clearly differentiate between the security risks to Java client and server deployments, Oracle started shipping a separate Server JRE (Java Runtime Environment) package in April that doesn’t include the browser plug-in.

The Javadoc issue could affect users who visit HTML pages generated with the tool that are hosted on Web servers.

“Some HTML pages that were created by any 1.5 or later versions of the Javadoc tool are vulnerable to frame injection,” said Eric Maurice, Oracle’s director of software assurance, in a blog post Tuesday. “If exploited, this vulnerability can result in granting a malicious attacker the ability to inject frames into a vulnerable web page, thus allowing the attacker to direct unsuspecting users to malicious web pages through their web browsers.”

Java 7u25 includes a patched version of the Javadoc tool that no longer generates vulnerable Web pages. In addition, Oracle released a separate tool called the Java API Documentation Updater Tool, that can be used to fix previously generated and vulnerable pages.

The new update also makes some other security-related changes, including enabling the certificate revocation checking feature by default.

As part of its efforts to fight Java exploits, Oracle changed Java’s default behavior earlier this year to prevent the execution of unsigned applets without user interaction, therefore encouraging developers to digitally sign their Java Web applications with valid certificates.

However, in order for this to work properly as a defense mechanism, Java needs to be able to check in real time if the certificates used to sign applets have been revoked by their issuing certificate authorities (CAs). Otherwise, an attacker could sign a malicious applet with a stolen certificate and there would be no way for Java to detect that, even if the CA later revoked the certificate for abuse.

While support for two methods of certificate revocation checking—by using certificate revocation lists (CRLs) and the Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP)—have existed in Java for a long time, the feature

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