Mobile Monday this month was on the subject of Mobile Broadcast TV. This is, for the most part, the reception of broadcast ‘linear’ television on mobile devices. For example, Nokia’s recent N96 can receive DVB-H mobile television. Which sounds fantastic until you realise that there are multiple competing standards for mobile television and a receiver that works great in one country but not at all in another. And in many countries, there’s no service at all. It reminds me of the bad old days when the web only worked on one sort of computer or perhaps as a continuation of region encoding – there needs to be consolidation of open standards. Mobile TV is in the dark ages and is heading further into the cave. It needs a kick up the arse. Frankly, if they can’t agree then I’m all for the replacement with streamed non-linear video.
Yesterday I attended the launch of the MATRIX Report. Arlene Foster, MLA and Minister for the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment was accepted the report at the launch:
“If planning for stability and growth is important at times of economic success it is vital at times of economic slowdown. Right now we need forward thinking and innovative future planning which this MATRIX report represents.”
Exactly right – the instinct, and the behaviour shown by the masses of stock dealers out there, is to batten down the hatches, to pull money out of the market. But where are you going to put it? Banks? You need to do something with it – my vote is to innovate out of a downturn.
Today I met with Errol Maxwell of Propertypal. Errol and I have never met though we’ve crossed paths a few times over the years (which is pretty typical for Northern Ireland). Propertypal is a very intriguing competitor for the big property web sites with a bevy of features designed to take the ‘effort’ out of maintaining estate agent properties. Why now when the property market is performing poorly? Easy – estate agents will have to work hard for every sale and a tool like Propertypal will take a lot of the effort and administration out of it. Propertypal will be profiled on the Digital Circle web site in the next couple of weeks.