From gaming execs and developers to casino owners and agency CEOs – all had gaming top of mind this week. Gaming industry professionals from around the world attended Global Gaming Expo (G2E) 2012 and one of the hottest topics was Internet gaming – the next frontier for casinos. Ad agency CEOs are in New York for the ninth annual Advertising Week. One of the four hottest topics discussed? You guessed it – gaming. They’ve probably discussed much more than the role of technology in gaming, but that’s the focus of my mashup this week.

What other game changers are taking place?

• Colocation playing a key role in free-to-play realm
• Are game developers tired of this console generation?
• PC gaming performance on Windows 8: A hard-data analysis
• Online video gaming needs go beyond streaming
• Gaming executives predict industry growth over the next 5 years

Considering your next move for your gaming IT Infrastructure? Chat with us! Our gaming customers include 4 of the top 5 fastest-growing companies.

This is the final segment of a five-part series on trends for content owners. Catch up on the rest of the trends here.

In November of last year, Adobe confirmed what the news analysts had been predicting for months: Adobe was discontinuing its development of mobile browser Flash in favor of HTML5.  It’s true — combined with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and JavaScript, HTML5 provides excellent design control (particularly gradient and masking flexibility) and can re-flow at multiple screen sizes. These features provide huge advantages for publishers given the explosive growth of the tablet and smart phone markets. HTML5 will also natively support audio, video and other elements currently supported by plug-ins like Flash, although not all video issues are yet resolved.

The lack of maturity of HTML5 means Flash will live on as a staple in many website and online application developers’ tool kits for some time. Creative tools for HTML5 like Adobe’s Edge aren’t fully mature and seamless cross-browser HTML5 support still requires lots of testing and debugging. As for Microsoft’s Silverlight, it should shortly disappear altogether except for very limited internal enterprise applications intended solely for Internet Explorer.

How are content owners responding?

In addition to enabling multi-device compatibility, the emergence of HTML5 as the go-to programming language for all devices will bring with it several advantages. First, without plug-in license fees, interactive and rich media content is becoming cheaper to produce. It is also improving the searchability of content because it resides natively in the browser. Media companies are responding by upgrading their HTML5 knowledge base — organic or otherwise. In January 2012, the Financial Times acquired London-based application development firm, Assanka, which built an HTML5 web application for the publisher. Game Closure, a small start-up developer of an HTML5 game authoring platform, reportedly turned down hefty acquisition offers from Zynga earlier this year.

While digital publishers are working to accelerate their development of HTML5 programming expertise and associated content deployment to take advantage of cost and revenue opportunities, they are keeping their toe in the Flash plug-in pool. At least in the near term, Flash continues to be a valuable programming tool to address complex design objectives. Infrastructure platforms such as private or custom cloud computing services are cost-effective options to test out new content deployments, HTML5 or otherwise. Global content delivery networks and route-optimized IP services continue to be critical technologies that ensure mobile content is delivered reliably to the end users no matter where they are in the world.

This is week four of a five-part series on trends for content owners. Catch up on the rest of the trends here.

Humans are creatures of habit. We are hard wired to build routines and establish schedules, even subconsciously. It’s nice to know that on Thursday night at 9:30 PM ET you can sit down, turn on your television and see the first run of Parks and Recreation. Deloitte echoed these tendencies by recently predicting that in 2012, 95% of television programs would be viewed within 24 hours of broadcast.

But anyone who has used a DVR can attest to the satisfaction of not only replaying that episode you missed but also avoiding irritating commercials. In several major TV markets, DVR penetration rates are already above 50%. Although not officially classified as such, tablets and smartphones are in many ways, just portable DVRs. These devices enhance content replay by adding a view-anywhere element (dubbed “place shifting”) to the mix.

Music streaming services like Rhapsody and Spotify recognized this value to consumers early on by rolling out mobile versions of their streaming applications. Consumers quickly signaled they were willing to pay for this convenience. Spotify’s introduction of its mobile product drove 2x conversion ratio from free to paying subscribers.

Online publishers face a similar trend. According to Pocket, the developer of the Read It Later I/OS app that allows users to tag content they wish to read later, mobile users defer reading content at much higher rates than PC users. Regardless of when the news was published within a particular day, iPhone and iPad users shifted reading times back to the most convenient times for them — during breakfast, the morning and afternoon commutes, and right before bed.

How are content owners responding?

Mobile is hastening the move away from traditional viewing schedules. This changing landscape is driving publishers and advertisers to carefully consider when and where the user interacts with content. To get a fuller picture of the media consumer, content owners are analyzing device and location-based information as well as more traditional demographic and time-based metrics. It follows that the emergence of mobile payment services like Square and Google Wallet present huge monetization possibilities for content owners that understand where their media are consumed.

From an IT Infrastructure perspective, digital publishers that want to enhance their audience targeting are looking for service providers that have a full range of capabilities. In addition to having public cloud, managed hosting and enterprise-class colocation to effectively manage and store large location-based and customer-specific media libraries, content owners are also looking for IT vendors to provide native content delivery network capabilities that include geo-fencing and deep analytics to round out their content targeting requirements.

Stay tuned for our last trend on the list next week: HMTL5 versus Flash. While you wait, check out how AudienceScience leverages IT Infrastructure to deliver online advertising solutions.