simondelliott

The webby awards are in and … Britian beat the rest of europe !

Whooooooo! I know that we are technically joined but its sometimes good to have a little inter European rivalry, and Im sure that our main and buddies wont mind. For those of you who dont know the webbies are the Oscars of the future without the smug acceptance speeches, or fits of crocodile tears.

Any hooo Ive just checked out the winners of the 2009 webbies http://www.webbyawards.com and in almost every category one or two British companies have been nominated. Ov course this is dominated by the wonderful BBC and the guardian, both of which are excellent, but a few smaller UK companies have crept in.

Some of the really great winners who deserve recommendation are lister here

• http://www.keithtyson.com A magical experience in trendy black
• http://animoto.com awsome fun … quite a good laugh and .. a cool idea from the amazon cloud
• http://kids.tate.org.uk/ This is just great, a good place to play around with with your kids on a rainy day

Ov course I have to say bad luck to Dave for missing out on a award with spelling Bee … I was routing for you man !

Technology predictions to 2030

Ive been gazing into my crystal ball, thinking about the future and trying to make some sense of whats happening in the techno world. The long and short of it is that I have come up with some technology and social predictions.
They are based on market analysis, trend extrapolation and good old fashioned intuition.

Some of these predictions are contraversial (deliberatly so), but times are changing and things happen fast.

• 2010 Microsoft give up on vista
• 2010 Ubuntu is home standard
• 2011 IT becomes all about mobile
• 2011 silverlight dies
• 2011 3d standardization
• 2011 Windows applications disappear
• 2012 Hacking event causes world turmoil
• 2012 Cloud replaces servers
• 2012 Diverse office computers is standard
• 2012 International security database
• 2012 Designers take over from developers
• 2012 Email becomes obsolete
• 2012 flexible screens on packaging
• 2012 low cost genetic sequencer
• 2012 MRI scanning in doctors surgery
• 2012 News papers will die out
• 2013 Online democratic systems
• 2013 AI services emerge
• 2013 removable media becomes obsolete
• 2013 Systems Integration de-skilled
• 2013 Television replaced by online
• 2013 Google not top search provider
• 2014 Media overtake computing companies
• 2014 VB script dies
• 2014 all software is either service or open source
• 2014 Virtual worlds used by business
• 2014 Apple becomes biggest content provider
• 2015 brain pace makers become common place
• 2015 Employees use their own computers
• 2015 flexible screens become standard
• 2015 getting lost is impossible
• 2015 Google is top enterprise software provider
• 2015 governments stop buying servers
• 2015 handheld genetic sequencer
• 2016 Human lands on mars
• 2016 implants into humans become common place
• 2016 IT services becomes about data meaning
• 2016 It will be possible to index video
• 2016 Linux becomes is standard OS
• 2017 Full scale cyber war
• 2017 opensource hardware
• 2017 programming is obsolete skill
• 2017 Relational databases are obsolete
• 2018 business delegated to AI services
• 2018 Imagination more valuable than skill
• 2018 The office becomes history
• 2018 Call center becomes the past
• 2019 Automomous robotic toys
• 2019 Printers disappear
• 2019 Mobile phone becomes history
• 2019 weather news mega important
• 2019 Semantic web services
• 2019 Opensource car
• 2020 Talking computers
• 2020 HUD is fashion item
• 2020 Petrol Engine abolished
• 2020 Tabacco smoking illegal
• 2020 riding a bicycle becomes the norm
• 2020 Office blocks repurposed
• 2021 Ubiquitious internet
• 2021 Intelligence in almost all devices
• 2022 global state controlled media
• 2022 the depression is over
• 2023 Paper outlawed
• 2023 All knowledge electronic
• 2023 Autonomous vehicles
• 2024 natural language programming
• 2024 English replaces all lanuages
• 2025 world covered by CCTV
• 2026 querty keyboard dies
• 2027 most work from home
• 2027 Writing not taught
• 2028 Astro Holidays

Whats important for a Media buisiness in 2009

In the past 3 years the cost of storage and distribution of media content has nose dived. This change has overturned the traditional approach to media marketing based on the pareto principle where 80% of your sales is from 20% of your catalogue; and has replaced it with the long tail approach.

Content owners that fail to recognize this are in big BIG trouble.

The back catalog is no longer an expensive burden requiring highly trained film archivists and specialists. It is instead a rich mine, full of hidden gems, and precious artifacts. But as the market becomes saturated the window of opportunity for the exploitation of this catalog … is closing, content owners need to digitize, index and sell their content while the price is still high.

The diversity of content is ever increasing. Lectures, animations, talks and TV programs are being distributed on nearly every conceivable subject can be consumed ondemand and online. Subsequently new amateur and semi professional content brands are appearing, often with massive following. Media aggregation based companies are keen to own and exploit these new brands.

Is is a safe prediction that the daily news papers will be dropping their print versions soon, and as this is this is as a reaction to social change rather than a driver it is also very unlikely that we will be seeing a repeat of the Wapping dispute.

The music industry is the pensioner of the media world, its nicely tucked up in its woollen blanket watching the world go by from the bay windows of its retirement home, it occasionally gets out of its chair and shakes its rhythm stick at a metaphorical youngster, for example associating music purchase with another retail purchase, or threatening to sue illegal down loaders or even putting on a big stadium gig. Music exec’s have to face up to the fact they must change their delivery format. Last.fm is an example of where they are going.

Note that apples recent announcement that they are going to remove DRM is a massive leap forward (especially if yo like live music)

There have been many developments to enable media consumption on the cell phone. Nearly all of these initiatives are in failure mode, however the media distribution organizations and hardware manufactures are only increasing their efforts. There is a very high reward for the company that unlocks this potential market.

Just beware … in no other sector is Sturgeon’s revelation more relevant than media .

Is it the end of Internet Anonymity?

I have just been asked to comment on this article on the end of online anonymity on the read write web.

My thoughts are this …

Is on line anonymity dead? The read write web think that the ground breaking case of the US state vs Lori Drew implies that the behaviour of Impersonating (Imping) is now illegal. I think this raises a bigger question,  does human kind have a right to anonymity? and if so, is the behaviour of the judiciary, the bureaucracy and commercial organizations in exploiting new technology to find out even more about us infringing on that right?

The secret ballet is an essential balance in the mechanism of democracy, and as such there is at least one piece of anonymity that a judiciary must protect. However society must be protected. Some might say that anonymity is a privilege rather than a right and that it is the individuals responsibility to guard their own anonymity. If the individual chooses to engage in a criminal activity such as grooming then they relinquish their rights.

My fear is that state will be slow in its response to technical innovation, there is no point shutting the stable door once the horse has bolted.

shameless self promotion

so you’ve made your site and no ones reading it …
either
get a professional production team
or …

1 – GET OTHER PEOPLE TO LINK TO YOU
this is THE  most important thing
make sure that the words in or around the link are good

2 – CHANGE THE FRONT PAGE CONTENT EVERY DAY
Google must see your rate of change

3 – the server side technology does not matter, microsoft, java, php whatever
4 – use permalinks (ie www.foobar.com/sales/information is better than www.foobar.com/contents.aspx?page=7867576564)
5 – use well formed html
6 – register the site with google
7 – register it with every other site you can find, especially … facebook, myspace, linked, technorati, bebo, project path,
8 – get other people to write up your site, especially the popular bloggers (do you know Scot Mc Arther and Steve Nimmonds?)
9 – book mark it in delicious,
10 – book mark it in stunble upon
11 – put an article on you site and digg it
12 – get everyone you know to digg it
13 – add digg links, (stumble upon, facebook, you tube, … )
14 – keep the html simple, best way is using lynx or an audio reader (if it sounds like nonsence then your site is wrong)
15 – put a video on to you tube that links to your site
16 – get the BBC to write about your site
17 – lookup SEO on the web and follow instructions
18 – allow comments
19 – use google analyitics
20 – constantly monitor google analyitics, add it to you igoogle, rss reader, livelink page,
21 – be controversial with your content
22 – use alt text on content pictures
23 – get your site in the press

be patient

Media mEdia meDia medIa mediA

I recently attended the mediatech 100 event at the Russel hotel.

From what I gather the economic down turn is going to actually benefit the media businesses as evidence from the previous recessions indicate that reduced spending money, causes consumers to stay at home …. and spend more money on media consumption!

The VC’s and business angels are especially backing games, virtual worlds and mobile applications that have micro-transaction engines.

Olympic media consumption

The BBC iPlayer is currently serving 5,000,000 streams per day to just UK residents and the uptake is increasing 3 times faster expected.  

The Olympic marketing fact file for 2008 shows that the 2004 Athens Olympics had a “cumulative viewing” (analogous to number of streams) of 34.4 billion.

A rough estimate; less that than 1% of total 2008 Olympic media consumption was online.

It would not be outlandish to suggest that a significant proportion media consumption during the 2012 Olympics will be online. If its 10% or even 20% then there will need to be massive changes in the media delivery platforms.

This is a good opportunity for high tech companies and network vendors,

review of google chrome

Thoughts from my first 5 minuets of using google chrome

Ok so Ive checked it out on my windows box and I must say its very impressive. My corporate system is very secure, and chrome seems to have coped with the proxy very well. Here are my notes.

• design is very simple and plane, this really adds to the experience, i like the use of the 70′s style shape on the tabs, but the logo looks like a pokeball
• ubuntu – Disaster ! its not supported
• All the standard short cut keys work
• Hotmail – Works, just fine, even behind the proxy
• bbc and google; Hung at resolving proxy, but when off the proxy works great. – works just fine
• very responsive
• iPlayer works just fine

Overall I think its a pretty good browser, far better than the one that we made for OpenTV !
If the mighty google make a ubuntu version I may just switch.

My first post

This is my first post to this site. I was previously using http://simonelliott.blogspot.com