Weekly Highlights: World Cup Ratings, Automated Journalism And More

After a month of major announcements, the first week of July came and went without any Earth-shattering developments. This can be partially attributed to the holiday, but it may also be a byproduct of the numerous conferences that were held in June. Now that those are over, there aren't many products left for companies to announce this summer. There were still some interesting developments this week, such as the record-breaking streaming video ratings for the 2014 FIFA World Cup. In other news, Sony SNE and Microsoft MSFT allocated millions of dollars to their video game divisions in 2013 -- and could spend even more this year. Speaking of ad budgets, Nintendo NTDOY spent millions promoting Mario Kart 8. Elsewhere, the Associated Press has found another way to automate content production. And Google GOOG might target emerging markets outside of India. Disclosure: At the time of this writing, Louis Bedigian had no position in the equities mentioned in this report.