Venice, Calif.-headquartered commercial production house Cucoloris Films has entered into an alliance with DoRo, a longstanding music video company in Berlin. The deal gives DoRo—which also maintains Berlin-based clips shop Department M—a stateside foothold while Cucoloris gains the infrastructure to move into both domestic and international music video production. Department M’s head of production Nicola Wiseman and director Markus Engel are slated to join Cucoloris’ Venice operation this month…..Seven-year-old Boston-based broadcast design firm LoConte Goldman Design has closed as its partners, president/general manager Patrice Goldman and VP/senior creative director Maria LoConte, have decided to pursue their own ventures. Goldman has launched One80 Visual Communications, Boston, while LoConte has formed another Boston shop, LoConte.2….Asche & Spencer, a music/sound design house in Minneapolis and Venice, has hired Mark Gordon—a.k.a. "Señor Amor"—as its executive producer on the West Coast. He succeeds Hugh Barton who is expected to launch his own firm….Creative director/general manager Paul Agid, producer Evan Sanyour and sales rep Annie Cotton have parted ways with Blink.fx, New York, a subsidiary of New York-based MTI/The Image Group….
Apple and Google Face UK Investigation Into Mobile Browser Dominance
Apple and Google aren't giving consumers a genuine choice of mobile web browsers, a British watchdog said Friday in a report that recommends they face an investigation under new U.K. digital rules taking effect next year.
The Competition and Markets Authority took aim at Apple, saying the iPhone maker's tactics hold back innovation by stopping rivals from giving users new features like faster webpage loading. Apple does this by restricting progressive web apps, which don't need to be downloaded from an app store and aren't subject to app store commissions, the report said.
"This technology is not able to fully take off on iOS devices," the watchdog said in a provisional report on its investigation into mobile browsers that it opened after an initial study concluded that Apple and Google effectively have a chokehold on "mobile ecosystems."
The CMA's report also found that Apple and Google manipulate the choices given to mobile phone users to make their own browsers "the clearest or easiest option."
And it said that the a revenue-sharing deal between the two U.S. Big Tech companies "significantly reduces their financial incentives" to compete in mobile browsers on Apple's iOS operating system for iPhones.
Both companies said they will "engage constructively" with the CMA.
Apple said it disagreed with the findings and said it was concerned that the recommendations would undermine user privacy and security.
Google said the openness of its Android mobile operating system "has helped to expand choice, reduce prices and democratize access to smartphones and apps" and that it's "committed to open platforms that empower consumers."
It's the latest move by regulators on both sides of the Atlantic to crack down on the... Read More