Soda - Keeping Curious

Fired-up as I am by the brilliance of NNT’s Randomness and Black Swan books, the time has come for me (better late than never)to start applying the same rigorous approach to my own thinking. What NNT demonstrates is outstanding ‘Though Leadership’ on his chosen subject, and to such a demonstrable degree that you’re awed into believing that you’re in the presence of a Thought Leader Jedi. I too want to be a Thought Leader Jedi.

So, as of now, I’ve signed-up to my own higher thought training programme and a regime that excludes TV (with the few exceptions being ‘Damages’, ‘The Sapranos’ and the last two matches of the Six Nations) non-essential reading and those general non-intellectual pursuits that come under the generic title of relaxation. So, no more Mr. Laidback-shoot-the-breeze middlebrow, it’s Mr. Skeptical Empiricist from now on, done the Burrows-way.

To get into the swing I’ve bought Hume’s ‘Treastise on Human Nature’, lined-up Karl Popper’s magnus opus ‘Open Society’ and have even dug out my old copy of Marcus Aurelius’ ‘Meditations’. What have alll these esteemed philosophers have to do with advising clients on where the internet is going, you may well (and quite rightly) ask? Well they all had the same ambition as me, namely to get at the very truth which lies at the very heart of things. The internet not only lies at the very heart of my own professional interests, it’s emerging as the complex system lying at the centre of our own complex and emerging ‘new’ lives. I use the word ‘new’ because it’s my belief that the lives we’re starting to live now are showing sign of being fundamentally different from how lives were lived previously. The degree of complexity we now have to cope with is unprecedented, with the early indications appearing to show that we’re not managing at all well.

Seeing as both the computer and the internet are taboo-breaking examples of a Black Swan event - they lay outside the realm of regular expectations because nothing in the past could convincingly point to their possibilities - the study of their cultural, emotional and societal impact has to be one of the great ‘philosophical’ pursuits of the Age. As a marketer I’d say that was one-hell of a BHAG (Big hairy-arsed goal).

Many apologies for my lack of updates in the last couple of months, we have been rushed off our feet working on a big project, which has now been launched.

The project is a new IPTV site Friction.TV and is a joint venture between a small group of investors and The Together Agency. We developed the online technology and have been playing a role in the launch and content of the site.

The basic premise behind Friction.TV is a “global platform for user generated news and debate”. It is a place where you can share your thoughts with the world, be challenged and perhaps create some friction around a specific issue. It is intended to provide an alternative to the sanitised views of the conventional mass media as it delivers true user generated opinions in an unedited, uninhibited and necessarily challenging way.

Basically, users record a short 30 second to 3 minute long video on an issue that is important to them. The issue can be global or local, personal or of worldwide significance. Other visitors to the site can then debate the issue via text or video responses. Kind of like an online Speaker’s Corner!

To date we have had some exciting submissions, from the general public, from organisations such as The Countryside Alliance, The League Against Cruel Sports, FOREST, ASH and b-eat and from public figures such as Boris Johnson, Tommy Sheridan and Nick Griffin of the BNP.

Friction.TV promises that content will not be edited in any way (as long as it remains within the law!). We have received a lot of positive feedback from organisations and people that are often either ignored or censored by traditional media.

A feature we have found to be particularly successful is highlighting a current issue on the homepage to encourage debate around this issue. For example, during National Post Office Week we had a customised banner which led people to debate the closure of regional Post Offices. We are now looking forward to running a campaign giving a voice to both sides of the debate on London Congestion Charges.

Soda readers are encouraged to take a look at the Friction.TV site, comment, debate and let me know what you think!

As an update to my entry “Broadband Penetration in the United Kingdom” some facts and figures have been published with regards to broadband usage in Wales and it seems that Wales is slightly above the UK average.

News Wales reports that 43% of welsh households is now signed up for a broadband service, 26% of which have speeds faster than 1mbit. The report goes on to give details on a few different counties. Interestingly Cardiff is no longer top dog, taking second place behind Newport where 51% of households have broadband.

Last July BT announced that Cardiff would be the starting point for its 21CN rollout, where deployment began last month. It expects the new network to save costs over its traditional network as well as offer more high-tech services in the future.

Seems like my last post couldn’t have been closer to the mark. Carphone Warehouse has just announced that it has aquired AOL UK for a cool £370 million in cash.

AOL UK has been up for sale for some time now. Time Warner, AOL’s parent company, has been looking at splitting up the AOL monolith for some time now, and after selling off part of its european operations back in September, all eyes were on AOL UK.

Aquiring AOL UK’s 2 million subscribers makes CPW the third largest broadband provider in the UK behind NTL and BT.

Interestingly, CPW intends on maintaining the AOL brand as part of the agreement, part of which includes the content platform that AOL has utilised to differ itself from its competitors. However, as yet, no mention has been made to current content ties with AOL’s parent company.

All this week the BBC is publishing a series of articles regarding computer security, starting with “Tracking down hi-tech crime“. The first article attempts to educate the reader with regards to the dangers of unprotected Internet access and it’s a worthy read. There are some ommissions that make the article seem a little biased against Microsoft Windows, failing to mention that Internet borne attacks do not discriminate between operating systems, but otherwise their advice is sound.

I’ve seen similar reports before. Mark Russinovich, a well known developer, posted a blog entry at the start of the year examining a similar issue and even provided a video of the process.

Hopefully bringing more attention to the issue will mean more people take better precautions with their system security, leading to less background radiation, much of which is nefarious.

Yesterday, Point-topic.com published their statistics on broadband take-up across the United Kingdom. They project that by 2008, on average, 64% of britain will be a broadband subscriber. ADSLGuide has some commentary here.

If Point Topic’s projections are correct, in 2008 we’ll be seeing over 18 million subscribers in the UK. There’s no mention of dial-up subscribers, but this would almost certainly mean a large drop in dial-up users.

Interestingly, there are warnings that by 2008 saturation may become a key factor. With the introduction of cut-rate broadband from both Sky and The Carphone Warehouse this is likely to be something worth keeping an eye on as services and content, rather than cost, become the all important customer retention method; something Sky are in a much better position to take advantage of than most other ISPs.

Of course, these content over price projections aren’t new. During the Time Warner/AOL merger many suggested that AOL would leverage Time Warner’s back catalogue of content to increase their market share, something that we still to this day have not seen happen.

In part two of my article on SEO and Usability I mentioned the A9 toolbar and their SiteInfo specification; specifically, questioning why it appeared that Amazon were not making more use of their technology.

Reports hit the mainstream media this week that probably go a long way to explain why. Amazon have overhauled their service after receiving lackluster usage. Reports seem to indicate that the majority of the overhaul is simply removing the functionality that made them different from everyone else, and simply rebadging other engines search results. Hardly spectacular.

A great shame really. I don’t believe there was need for most features, but SiteInfo is certainly just as useful now as it was when I originally blogged about it. Certainly more so than Microsummaries, which I didn’t even feel like making mention of at the time.

I guess that if anything, the introduction of these technologies is very much trial and error. RSS hit the sweet spot, but that certainly took time to build momentum. In the meantime, we obviously just have to keep on the look out for that next big thing.

Consultancy agency Accenture have published results from a global survey of 10,000 consumers. The survey has revealed that nearly 40% of internet users now download videos online. Additionally, 54% of young internet users express a desire to create and share their own content on the web.

In terms of comparison with TV, most users say they still prefer viewing content on their television sets rather than their PCs. According to Accenture partner Dave Brown, “UK consumers are most interested in applications that allow them to download and watch films, TV shows and other video content on their TV.” The survey found that 54% of people would like to download and watch videos on TV, compared with 30% via the internet.

On this note, Jeff Jarvis at BuzzMachine highlights new technology from Apple (iTV) that allows a PC to link to a television set via wifi. He also mentions TiVo, which provides a similar service. Both of these technologies basically mean that it will be possible to view online content on a tv set…essentially putting everyone in the role of TV channel programmer.

Source: BuzzMachine

Revver, a service that allows users to make money from video sharing, has just gone out of beta and into it’s first version. Users upload videos in the same way as with YouTube, an unobtrusive advert is then placed onto the end of the video, this is known as “Revverizing”. Whenever anyone clicks on the advert the user is paid. Revver allows free hosting and comes with a suite of tools to allow users to distribute the videos across the net. The revenue is split 50/50 between the user and Revver.

The Guardian site has published an article by the author John Naughton about the top 15 websites that have changed the world in the last 15 years of the internet.

1. eBay.com
2. wikipedia.com
3. napster.com
4. youtube.com
5. blogger.com
6. friendsreunited.com
7. drudgereport.com
8. myspace.com
9. amazon.com
10. slashdot.org
11. salon.com
12. craigslist.org
13. google.com
14. yahoo.com
15. easyjet.com

Personally, at the moment I am pretty interested in Google’s personalised homepage. I can search content to add to the page and then organise it the way I want. My favourite aspect is that I can add all of the blogs that I read and instantly see when they are updated via my homepage. I can also see up to date weather and news information and my GMail account. I only started using the page recently so I am sure I will find many more uses for it in the future. If you can see the orange RSS button anywhere on a blog page, try clicking and you too can easily add your favourite blogs to your Google homepage!

One question though, in the personalised homepage address www.google.com/ig, what does the ig stand for?!

EDIT: Reading through the comments on this article has highlighted one glaring omission form the top 15 list. Hotmail. In the earlier days of the internet, HoTMaiL (as it was sometimes written at the time) brought email to the masses, allowing those without the opportunity to use Outlook to access email in any location. Since a large part of the internet is about communication I am surprised Hotmail was missed out.