-
Latest Discussions
Site Tag Cloud
Powered by Vanilla 1.1.5a.
Installed add-ons.
1 to 5 of 5
-
-
Screen Talk - Shared Vision or Private View
- bytelecomtails on6th April, 2009 inOpinions
-
Remember the days when the whole family gathered around the living room television, which was the only screen in the house, and everyone watched the same programme, which was on one of the four or so available channels. You don’t? Well you are not as old as I am obviously – but you will have seen the Royle family so you’ll get the image.
The point is though, that up until fairly recently, TV viewing was more often than not a shared experience. Then along came the multi-channel explosion, multiple tv households, downloads, and the BBC iPlayer.
TV is often now a personal experience, watched on separate tvs, computer screens, or in the case of my son – an iPod Touch. Must-see TV events still happen, and still get discussed around the water-cooler the next day, but they are often watched on individual screens and often “time-shifted”.
I took this thought with me to the IPTV Forum in London last month and toured the exhibition which was smaller than I expected but nevertheless featuring a number of interesting companies.
And here’s the thing, IPTV - and other internet delivered television - could actually see the re-birth of shared experience viewing, but this time, there’s not a sofa in sight.
Talking to Opera software, and looking at their IPTV delivered programming guide and set up, I saw the Internet equivalent of an instant water cooler. The company were demonstrating an IPTV web browser which allowed tv to be streamed...
-
-
-
Fritter Ye Not
- bytelecomtails on10th March, 2009 inOpinions
-
Twitter is certainly managing to stay in the media spotlight and its usage and awareness is growing all the time.
And, of course, as use grows, so does abuse. So following on from Astroturfing, which is the creation of fake grass roots support, we now have the practice of "frittering" - creating a fraudulent Twitter account.
Writing in this week's PR Week, Richard Stokoe, head of news at the Local Government Association explained how a Twitter account had been created in the name of that organisation's CEO. The account carried the CEO's picture, was being regularly updated with snippets of news, and had attracted some 500 followers. Except it is not being written by the CEO, any of his staff, or indeed any of the comms team of the organisation. Which creates something of a problem.
At the time of writing, Twitter had not responded by taking down the site and the anonymous poster was still busy creating followers and building a false profile of the organisation.
Reputationally, this has serious implications. Twitter always presented the opportunity for this sort of thing, and probably needs to work on its verification system, but this development should be raising red flags within the organisation and requires urgent action.
In its early days Twitter attracted a number of people pretending to be celebrities - sometimes openly and usually with the objective of merely having some fun.
Jonathan Ross, a well-known and genuine user of Twitter, set himself up as the No 1 Twitter detective. He checked...
-
-
-
Android Vs the Elephants in the Room
- bytelecomtails on11th February, 2009 inOpinions
-
So next week, a large chunk of the mobile world's top executives, innovators, analysts, media, PRs and assorted hangers-on, will gather themselves in Barcelona and contemplate the future.
The handset companies will be huddled in a corner bemoaning falling sales and kicking over the still warm bodies of the fallen giants.
But as I've written here before - and was indeed confirmed today by Industry body the GSM Association - there's four billion mobile handsets out there and the challenge facing the industry now is about getting people to do more with them.
So in Barcelona next week we can expect to see a plethora of mobile app stores being opened or refreshed by the likes of Nokia, Samsung, and Microsoft.
And while Apple won't actually be exhibiting or speaking at the Show, they will be all over it as thousands of the delegates pull out their iPhones and show off the latest app they have downloaded. And it is Apple that really helped define and create the mobile app market.
But here's the thing. While the mobile world largely operates to a single standard in terms of the transmission of the voice and data itself - GSM and all its evolutionary variants- for the devices, it's a very different story.
Established Mobile O/S platforms include Symbian, Nokia Series 60, Microsoft Mobile, and more recently, Apple. But look, what's that coming over the hill: it's Google Android.
Of course, this multitude of platforms means that for application developers the potential market...
-
-
-
And the Winner Is...
- bytelecomtails on23rd January, 2009 inOpinions
-
It's been results season in technology land and many of the big guns have been involved in damage limitation statements as sales, profits, dividends and share prices fall. Except, it would seem Apple.
Take a look at how's Apple's numbers compared to, say, Nokia. The contrast could not be greater.
After the announcements - Apple shares went up seven per cent; Nokia's went down nine. Apple's overall revenue went past $10bn in a quarter for the first time. Nokia sales were down by 19 per cent. Apple's net income was up to $1.61bn in the quarter compared to $1.58 in the previous period. Nokia profits meanwhile were down by a staggering 69 per cent.
Sales of Mac computers up 9 per cent; sales of iPods up 3 per cent; sales of iPhones up to 4.3million units in the quarter. For Nokia, smartphone volumes down, and market share down three percentage points.
Ouch, ouch, ouch. Surely only one clear winner.
By the way - did I mention that Nokia's handset sales for the quarter touched 113 million units and its mobile phone market share remains at 37 per cent. Apple's iPhone sales in the same period were, to repeat, 4.3 million units.
The global mobile phone market will soon pass 4 billion units. Nokia is shipping almost half a billion units a year. And while there is plenty of evidence to show that handset sales are slowing down - especially in developed markets where the...
-
-
-
Twittering Breaking News
- bytelecomtails on16th January, 2009 inOpinions
-
So already in the last couple of days, major news stories have broken first for many people via Twitter.
When a senior BBC reporter such as Rory Cellan Jones says he’s getting breaking news stories such as the Steve Jobs stand-down and New York’s new seaplane service from Twitter before they reach him via traditional media, then we can see that things are changing.
I followed a twitpic link and saw this stunning pic of the plane in the Hudson taken by Janis Krums – and read the comments popping up virtually in real time. I felt a real connection to the news as a result.
I showed the photo to my wife who unsurprisingly said – “that’s a hoax” - but a quick flick to CNN (whose coverage was once again so very slick) quickly proved the point.
Of course, on a story such as this, verification is not an issue. But as Nick Davies warned in FlatEarthNews the number of reporters on mainstream news organisations is falling all the time, and the time devoted to proper research and second and even third sourcing news stories is diminishing.
So I guess, if we agree with Nick and the element of “buyer beware” on mainstream news has risen, then on Twitter it has to be off the scale.
But Twitter opens up so called citizen journalism more than any other development we have seen and anyone can be a 140-word reporter or can link to a blog.
What’s more the 140...
-
1 to 5 of 5