Soda - Keeping Curious

I’ve been meaning to post a fair few articles for ages now on a few subjects, but the studio has been very busy and I just haven’t had time. I thought I would author them outside of the office and post them when I got in, but you all know how that story goes.

Anyway, apologies aside, I just read a rather brief article posted by the BBC that sums up all of my concerns in one shot.

Tech rant: Technical ignorance

I suggest everyone reads it and takes away the notion that while people may disagree about the civil liberties issues, you cannot escape the fact that the government clearly gets the technical facts incorrect (or explained to them by the marketing drones at the company trying to sell the technology).

There is lots of room for expansion on the subject which I may do here when I get the time.

It’s all a far cry from Michael J Fox and the hover boards of Back to the Future.

Children of Men is set 20 years in the future, but as many of the reviews I’ve read say, it’s more a stark portrayal of what’s happening under our noses, right now. I like the way that the film resists the temptation of becoming too futuristic, instead, it merges a run-down, decaying portrait of London with glimpses of current technology.
Technology such as animated adverts, which of course, are already in use, but in Children of Men, they’re being used on the side of buses.
The thing that really stands out, is that whilst technology has moved on in the film, it’s been accompanied by the breakdown of society, reflected by the fact that Britain is effectively a police state. The harrowing images of bombs exploding, refugee camps, run down buildings etc make the glossy, fast moving adverts look pretty meaningless and incongruous in a world where humanity is literally facing extinction (women are now infertile and the film opens with the death of the world’s youngest person - 18 year old ‘Baby Diego’.)

I guess it’s nothing new of course, George Orwell and HG Wells have both made a similar point, but it’s always good when a film makes you stop and think, and reminds us that technology, no matter how futuristic, means nothing without humanity, and could just as easily be the world’s undoing, or the world’s saviour.

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

Whilst there’s an increasing number of companies queuing up to try their hand at email marketing for the first time, at the other (sharp) end of the digital communications revolution BT Movio will offer the consumer BBC One, ITV1 and E4 live on your mobile phone. As a digital marketer you could literally spend the whole of your day just reading-up on all this stuff if only to ensure you remain on top of your game. Take this morning for instance; I’ve scanned through my daily dose of news and technology headlines from the BBC, read an article entitled ‘Search’s disappearing act’ in Marketing Week, checked out ‘My Feeds’ on Bloglines, read this month’s IAB click-thru email and then thought about writing this blog. Now this isn’t a plea to get sympathy but just recognition that knowledge is king. Needless to say, I’m now going to spend the next week delving into the technologies and implications of the BT Movio service and what could be good about that for our clients.

This morning the business ideas blog Springwise reports on a British company UBC Media who have just announced a new download service that allows users to download songs as they listen to them on digital radio via their mobile phone handset. They state that the service will be fully available by December 2006 and is expected to generate around £95 million by 2012.

With the downloads being so much more expensive (£1.25) than legal online downloads, and the fact that it is so easy to transfer songs from your PC to your mobile phone, the main draw of this service is that people can get the song they want while they are on the go. We will have to see if it takes off.

More news from Google, this time on the delivery of focussed TV content. Google are suggesting that it would be possible to set up a system where ambient sound emitted from a TV can be sampled to determine what a user is viewing in complete privacy and with little effort from the user.

Google intend to implement this by using the information to then deliver focussed content on the user’s web browser. For example, if the user was watching the world cup, Google propose that this could be detected and a football highlights and fixtures page automatically displayed on the users web browser.

The great thing about this is that the user doesn’t even have to know what channel or program they are watching in order to find information. Potentially this also means that the system can keep up with the user as they channel surf, displaying relevant information for which ever program they are viewing.

I think this is just amazing and I can’t wait to try it out. Presumably all you will need is a microphone and I can only imagine the hours I will waste finding out what pages Google thinks are relevant to whatever content pops into my head.