Commentary – Page 91

License Fees

http://www.bbc.co.uk/info/licencefee/ The BBC is paid for directly through each household TV licence. This allows it to run a wide range of popular public services for everyone, free of adverts and independent of advertisers, shareholders or political interests. The BBC provides 8 interactive TV channels, 10 radio networks, more than 50 local TV and radio services, … Continue reading “License Fees”

http://www.bbc.co.uk/info/licencefee/

The BBC is paid for directly through each household TV licence. This allows it to run a wide range of popular public services for everyone, free of adverts and independent of advertisers, shareholders or political interests.

The BBC provides 8 interactive TV channels, 10 radio networks, more than 50 local TV and radio services, the BBC’s website, and the on-demand TV and radio service, BBC iPlayer.

I resent paying the license fee because, to be honest, I don’t watch linear broadcast television. I multi-task my time near the television so that my attention is elsewhere during ad-breaks, I time-shift my media and frankly I’m not interested in Eastenders, Strictly Come Dancing or any of the other prime-time programming.

So. I’ve been paying the license fee all these years – and there’s currently a project to digitise all of the BBC’s analogue content – shouldn’t this material be available to me? It’s being funded by me, why can’t I watch it when I want?

They need to open the walled garden…

SineWaveSpeech

Fascinating page about perceptual pop-out when applied to images and sound. I have no idea how this will help me in the future but sine-wave sound seems to me to be an excellent way of trivially encoding something. This means you can have a low bar to entry but at the same time keep the … Continue reading “SineWaveSpeech”

Fascinating page about perceptual pop-out when applied to images and sound.

I have no idea how this will help me in the future but sine-wave sound seems to me to be an excellent way of trivially encoding something. This means you can have a low bar to entry but at the same time keep the trivial onlooker bewildered.

Here’s some more.

Damien’s iPhone Survey

Damien Mulley, one of the most popular and prolific bloggers on the island of Ireland recently posted a survey about the iPhone for Irish users. Here’s the results. And some select slices… Irish iPhone users are highly loyal super-consumers who are immensely happy with their phone and 72% would recommend it to their friends. The … Continue reading “Damien’s iPhone Survey”

Damien Mulley, one of the most popular and prolific bloggers on the island of Ireland recently posted a survey about the iPhone for Irish users. Here’s the results.

And some select slices…

Irish iPhone users are highly loyal super-consumers who are immensely happy with their phone and 72% would recommend it to their friends. The vast majority have said their next phone will also be an iPhone despite battery life being an issue for 56% of users.

Just after the launch of the iPhone (but before the device became available) many mobile operators (and executives from Palm, RIM, Microsoft) scoffed at the possibility that Apple could waltz in and create something from nothing but it seems they have succeeded.

The iPhone may have its detractors (and it certainly has a list of faults) but it creates customer loyalty probably in excess of that of the Mac. I’ve certainly found myself able to leave the Mac at home and ‘survive’ just on iPhone for an entire day (yes, it leaves a backlog of things that I need to do but that’s not the essential stuff).

The iPhone proves that consumers will pay for music, applications and games on a phone and the amount Irish iPhone users are spending shows that future revenue streams for phone manufacturers and telcos will come in after the initial purchase of a device.

Apple have outdone themselves and, to be honest, shocked the mobile world by producing a success. Apple have more than 10 000 apps on the App Store currently and have reported over 300 million downloads (in less than six months). The size of the Apple App Store market is estimated to be worth $1 billion (which will allow Apple to pocket $300 million).

The ability to impulse-buy applications and music makes the App Store an instant hit. Issues remain on the policies from Apple regarding applications permitted on the store (which seems more and more arbitrary as time goes on) and on the different rules for different people on which APIs are permitted to be used.

I was recently told by InterTradeIreland that there may be a niche in the market for iPhone applications but they were concerns about whether there was a market in the niche. I think this information helps put those concerns to bed.

How many applications downloaded:
Average 26
300+ for some
Minimum 3

While it’s easy to fill up on Free applications, it’s also possible to spend hundreds of dollars easily when you consider how cheap a lot of applications are. With more than 16 million iPhones out there, a good hit will guarantee revenue and there are folk in the UK and Ireland making thousands per month from their App Store sales. Not something they may be able to retire on, but still considerable and also a market that didn’t exist six months ago.

It’s in your XNA

Though no-one could ever accuse me of being a Microsoft-fan, I tend to be hot-and-cold with them. There are some things that they did which were simply breathtaking for their time – Word 5.1 for example. And their new BizSpark program. And pretty much some of the XNA stuff I saw over the last few … Continue reading “It’s in your XNA”

And their new BizSpark program.

And pretty much some of the XNA stuff I saw over the last few days.

Well done Redmond. Respect.

Approval

Yesterday I pointed out Marta Kagan’s excellent slides on “What the f**k is Social Media” and some of the messages we should take home from these slides were on slide 28. Which is essentially why I get incredibly frustrated with the approvals processes needed to communicate with anyone, anywhere outside of my own office. In … Continue reading “Approval”

Yesterday I pointed out Marta Kagan’s excellent slides on “What the f**k is Social Media” and some of the messages we should take home from these slides were on slide 28.

Which is essentially why I get incredibly frustrated with the approvals processes needed to communicate with anyone, anywhere outside of my own office. In the areas I control (or have my own authority), I might do or say thing that I hope will polarise people (see Slide 66 of Marta’s slide pack). Polarising people is good – indifference is bad.

But over the last week I’ve had to wait a week for Press Releases to be authorised. And had to have an invite to an evening event (that I’m funding) okayed by two different companies because they offered to speak at it. It’s times like this that my frustration begins to grow – why can’t people just get with the program?

Get on the fucking clue train.

N97 – competitive?

The N97 is Nokia’s latest “Yes, it will kill the iPhone” contender. After the really poor showing of the N96 in games performance (they decided, during the same year that the iPhone would come out with graphics hardware beating most handheld consoles, to leave out the graphics hardware accelerator in the N96), the N97 has a little bit of an expectation to beat. The phone itself has a neat pop-up screen that really reminds me of the old Psions and runs S60 (bleagh!) and you can tell the interface was derived from the latest system software for the N800 series of their Internet Tablets. The biggest issues I can see are going to be the chiclet keyboard and the choppiness of the UI and video playback in this demo video.

That, and the fact they show the phone doing everything except actually making a telephone call.

From a hardware point of view, it’s inoffensive. From a software point of view, they need to stop scrimping on CPUs and graphics hardware as it just looks slow, clunky and choppy.

Back to the drawing board, guys, you can do better.

Lots happening in these parts

Apart from the awful weather and dreadful drivers (yes, it’s 0 degrees outside with ice on the ground and you still feel it’s necessary to swerve into my stopping distance space at the last minute? Fie on you!), there’s a lot going on in Northern Ireland. For example, Today is the second day in the … Continue reading “Lots happening in these parts”

Apart from the awful weather and dreadful drivers (yes, it’s 0 degrees outside with ice on the ground and you still feel it’s necessary to swerve into my stopping distance space at the last minute? Fie on you!), there’s a lot going on in Northern Ireland.

For example, Today is the second day in the international MScape Festival which has attracted delegates from over 20 countries to Belfast. In the next week or so there’s two OpenCoffeeClub meetings, one Digital Circle event and a ‘collaboration’ event down at the Science Park (details for all of these can be found at http://digitalcircle.org )

I’ve still not managed to get down to the Christmas market in Belfast just outside the City Hall – doubly jarring because last year I remember downing oodles of garlic mushrooms, satays and crepes within minutes of each other and in great company too.

I love the cold weather as well. Not so keen on the rain, but I don’t mind the ice coating the car or the sight of the snow on Cave Hill and Black Mountain as I drive into work. I’m not madly keen on the dark mornings and dark evenings but I have memories of heavy snows up at Four Winds last year, a day off work due to being completely snowed in and walking a small troupe of family across the heavy snows to see other family which made it all seem like an Amundsen-Scott expedition.

This morning, however, we heard news of a death in the family and it looks like we’ll be battening down the hatches for the next week as a result.

Bitterballs – unintentional repost

Deep fried breadcrumbed balls of potato and meat stew. With mustard. Yummy. (And this is pretty much a sign there’s something badly wrong with my iPhoneSlide account! – this was originally posted in October when I was in Amsterdam) Related posts: Finally, the BBQ The first handshake… iPad Adventures in TwitterLand Bitterballs

Deep fried breadcrumbed balls of potato and meat stew. With mustard. Yummy.

(And this is pretty much a sign there’s something badly wrong with my iPhoneSlide account! – this was originally posted in October when I was in Amsterdam)

So why develop for the iPhone

Nick commented on my earlier post claiming that the cost of a development machine (a Mac) is simply too much to sway him to develop for the iPhone. This mentality ignores the principle that good apps on the iPhone MAKE money. CONNECTED DATA writes about why they develop for the iPhone: When the pitcher releases … Continue reading “So why develop for the iPhone”

CONNECTED DATA writes about why they develop for the iPhone:

When the pitcher releases the ball a batter has to decide where they will swing. If they wait too long the ball will be in the catcherâ€™s mitt before they decide. The same logic is why we are developing for the iPhone.
…
In learning about development for the Blackberry platforms, we have to create a build for each phone and each network. As a developer, I just canâ€™t afford it. Most of my customers right now have Blackberries. I think that in the next year or two they will have an iPhone.

Thing is, this problem already exists for Symbian devices and it will become an issue for Android devices as well. (It’s less of an issue for Windows Mobile because the UI is so generic ,and meaning that in the negative sense, that it doesn’t matter. It would be on a refrigerator and still be crap!)

David Pogue’s recent and damning review of the new BlackBerry Storm has the internet all a-twitter about the shortcomings of the device.

He writes:

“A light touch highlights the key but doesnâ€™t type anything. Only by clicking fully do you produce a typed letter. Itâ€™s way, way too much work, like using a manual typewriter.”
“Remember: To convert seconds into BlackBerry time, multiply by seven.”
“Freezes, abrupt reboots, nonresponsive controls, cosmetic glitches. Way too much ‘unexpected behavior.â€

Why do developers prefer the iPhone?

Developers arenâ€™t a tricky breed. They like to code cool applications and get paid for it. The benefit of coding for the iPhone/iPod Touch is that the specs are the same and arenâ€™t likely to change anytime soon. Coding across platforms takes more time, energy and money, and if the payoff isnâ€™t there, then developers arenâ€™t likely to adjust their code for the varying screensizes and hardware/software features specific to a particular phone.

Mark my words – it’s simple to develop for Android now that there’s a single hardware specification (in the form of the T-Mobile G1). It’ll be entirely different when there’s five competing hardware manufacturers.

Moving on…

ooh, that’s soooo web three point zero of you….

I was forwarded this link by @surfsofa:”Chief executives still don’t get the web“. A recent Heidrick & Struggles poll found that 56pc of senior business people had never logged onto Facebook. Clearly there’s a generation gap issue, as most CEOs are in their 40s or older. CEOs who got burnt in the financial fallout of … Continue reading “ooh, that’s soooo web three point zero of you….”

I was forwarded this link by @surfsofa:”Chief executives still don’t get the web“.

A recent Heidrick & Struggles poll found that 56pc of senior business people had never logged onto Facebook. Clearly there’s a generation gap issue, as most CEOs are in their 40s or older. CEOs who got burnt in the financial fallout of the dotcom bubble in 2001, or over-invested in preparing for the damp squib that the Y2K computer bug turned out to be, typically have deep reservations about investments in technology

This isn’t surprising, really. If you’ve been burned or lost a lot of money you’re going to be sceptical and it’s going to take a while before you can seriously consider that sector again. It’s also not surprising that the older generation has not logged into FaceBook (or even LinkedIn) because they may need convinced of the value. I’ve seen the value of LinkedIn this week with replies from some major media companies that would have been almost impossible to find elsewhere. Likewise with Facebook – it tells you not only what a person presents but also a lot more qualities about someone, for example, whether you’re more or less likely to get on and, frankly, whether they spend a lot of time fighting werewolves and zombies online.

We’ve heard of the effects of Facebook in hiring: make sure your profile says the truth about you, you never know who is looking.

Visionary business leaders hope that Wave Three will include businesses waking up to and fully embracing the true potential of the internet. Narayana Murthy, CEO of Indian IT services group Infosys, states: “Web 2.0 has been focused on social communities, on individual relationships; things not focused on the office. I would like Web 3.0 to be about more interaction between customers and vendors and competitors, on making life better for the customer.

*deep sigh*

I’m sorry, Narayana, Web 2.0 is already about interaction between customers and vendors and competitors, it’s already about conversations, it’s already about improving the experience of individuals online. When someone trots out “Web 2.0”, I think that they may be telling me something about some new social / interactive / conversational / user-generated internet phenomenon. Web 2.0 is simply a way of saying “Not Web 1.0”, “Not static pages”, “Not one way communication”.

In contrast, when someone trots out “Web 3.0”, I think they’re an idiot.