Skip to content

Posts tagged ‘microsoft’

18
Jun
seesaw

SeeSaw gets premium comedy shows

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of SeeSaw. All opinions are 100% mine. I would not take a sponsorship opportunity unless I genuinely believe in the product and have written about it before without sponsorship.

Where can you find South Park, Only Fools and Horses, The IT Crowd, The Thick of It, Summer Heights High, Man To Man, Lab Rats and many more great comedies all in one place? Read moreRead more

12
Feb

Chocolate, the internet and the BBC engage

I get sent a lot of press releases and I ignore almost all of them. Especially the ones that send me a top ten list and talk of a new groundbreaking methodology behind their results.

But I couldn’t pass by on one that gave a list of brands in an order that isn’t what you’d normally expect to see.

This particular list by Hall & Partners puts Cadbury and Google at the top and measures brands British people most engage with.

In the top five of this lis are a confectionary company, three new edia companies and the BBC.

Google takes the number one slot as the brand British people most engage with and personally I can see that – it’s a lot of people’s homepage, it is almost everybody’s search engine and it’s apps are becoming more prevelant in the mass user base.

Then there’s Cadbury – most people love chocolate.

Amazon takes the third slot in this research and the BBC is in fourth with Facebook taking up the fifth – I thought Facebook may be higher than Amazon as Facebook sucks you in but I guess not.

The rest of the list includes more common consumer brands like Marks & Spencer, Sony and Dove.

But one surprise is Microsoft – I thought they would be a LOT higher, especially as they’re the most used OS by a long way but I guess the ‘average’ user doesn’t notice the OS.

Is it that MS Windows has become so much part of the furniture that people don’t realise who it’s by? Or is the fact that Microsoft is in the top ten and NOT Apple a sign that Windows does hit the mark in terms of user recognition but the iPod doesn’t?

Or is this just yet another silly survey?

Photo credit: by ell brown on Flickr (Creative Commons)

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
9
Feb

Thinking about the Apple iPad with ‘man maths’

I’m not going to write a review of the Apple iPad, that would be completely pointless as the most I’ve seen of it is a couple of hands on videos and a few photos.

However, based on that and the spec that’s been released I’ve decided I REALLY want one.

But first let me explain how I came to that conclusion, how I made use of the logic behind ‘Man Maths’ as James May would call it to work out it was good value for money.

First lets take a look at where I think this device sits in the gadget spectrum.

Spectrum: phone

On one side of this spectrum you have the mobile phone – the standard candy bar style of mobile phone – the Nokia, Sony Ericsson etc…

Next to that we have the smartphone – at the moment a whole range of companies have operating systems in this space: Microsoft, Apple, Blackberry, Google (Android)…

But the dominant three (excluding Windows because Windows Mobile is just crap to use) are Apple for the iPhone, Google for Android and Blackberry for … well the Blackberry.

The first is a device that allows you to make phone calls with the internet and simple applications as a sideline – the second group reverses that.

But they are both shades of the same part of our spectrum and so one of these two devices is needed for the ultimate geek kit bag – my device of choice is an Android phone.

The iPod also fits within this area.

I’m going to jump around a bit here by telling you I don’t intend to explain the third part as everyone knows what it is – that’s the full laptop. Instead lets skip back to the middling zone.

Spectrum: Ultra-portable

So lets move on to the second part of the spectrum – again there are two sides to the this part as well – the netbook and the tablet.

The Netbook, described by Steve Jobs as, and I understand I’m paraphrasing a little “not very good at anything”, is the mainstay of the ultra-portal laptop.

I have one and I use it all the time – it’s really light so I can take it away with me without having an extra load on trips to deal with and I’ve got the Samsung NC10 which is powerful enough for everything I need.

However, it’s still a pain in the rear having to pull it out of the bag, open up the screen, turn it on, wait for Windows to load, wait for it to connect and then get started.

Then you’ve got the problems faced with having a smaller screen, the resolution on this isn’t bad but it is still a pain – especially for real estate hungry apps like WordPress and Wave.

So we move on to the tablet – this isn’t really a new idea, Steve Jobs didn’t just pull the concept of a tablet out of thin air – the tablet concept has been around for a while now and in theory it’s a better approach to mobile computing than a small laptop.

However, every time I’ve looked into this in the past the implementation has been universally shit – a laptop without a keyboard attached – not great for quick, on the move web browsing, reading, writing and viewing.

Before I get on to the iPad – there’s a side market to this, a more recent development in the eBook reader – basically a tablet computer designed for reading large amounts of text relatively easily and in comfort.

The current gold standard, albeit pig ugly, is the Kindle from Amazon – using eInk to make reading more comfortable – it has an always on internet connection so you can buy books on the move without having to be in a WiFi zone.

Man Maths

Now we have the iPad. Some say a giant iPod Touch, some say a heavily locked down and crippled device that is useless for anyone but the most basic users.

Personally, I say it does what I need, it is better than the other options and at $499 for the most basic options – pretty good value for money.

And here is how I justify that claim using the technique pioneered by James May from Top Gear but perfected over many a generation of manhood – Man Maths.

An Amazon Kindle (I can live without eInk as I happily read books on my LCD screen anyway) costs around £311
A new Samsung NC140 costs  around £300
An iPod Nano costs around £120

The iPad can do the same things all of the above can do and is just one device that will turn on quickly and be easy to use.

So, at over £700 for the three separately - even if Apple sell the iPad $ to £ with the basic 3G model costing £630 it’s still cheaper than the three items.

See – man maths in action.

Although I REALLY WANT ONE there are two reasons why I’ll wait until version two or three with two probably out for Christmas and three out by next Easter.

No multi-tasking

Having the ability to listen to music from Spotify (there WILL be an app) in the background while working ona document or even writing a blog post is essential – the iPad currently doesn’t allow that.

However, this is something I expect they’ll introduce eventually under a hail of Apple fanfare as some miraculous and revolutionary new feature.

No camera

My first thought when Steve Jobs started talking about this device was ‘fantastic tool for video conferencing’ but a lack of multi-tasking (writing notes while talking with someone in another office) and a lack of camera makes that impossible.

Also – what’s the microphone like on the device? In fact does it have a microphone?

The camera is obviously held back so they can release version two or even three with an ‘added extra’ and given the track record of doing something OTT – it will probably have at least two camera on front and back.

So in summary – will I get an iPad? More than likely but will I get it as soon as it is released? No. I’ll wait until they’ve had a couple of versions out.

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
29
Jan

See how SeeSaw could soon be seen in CI

SeeSaw is the name of the online video service that was born out of the ashes of the fallen Project Kangaroo – purchased from the consortium of broadcast partners by the telecommunications infrastructure company Arqiva.

Arqiva was born out of a history in broadcast infrastructure running transmission faciltities as Crown Castle. Now they’ve moved into online transmission with the launch of SeeSaw, a service that will allow you to watch a raft of old and new television shows online.

The shows are displayed through a flash player, streamed and at the moment support by either advertising or pay per play.

SeeSaw wasn’t the first of its kind to launch in this space, beaten by offerings from both Google (YouTube) and Microsoft (MSN Video Player).

The YouTube offering has content deals with a number of content providers, most notable are Five and Channel 4 and for MSN their content deals are with BBC Worldwide and Channel 4.

SeeSaw has content deals in place with the BBC, Channel 4 and Demand Five as well as hints at a much wider range of content in the future.

Not to mention my favourite of all the online video services, BlinkBox, which has a huge range of content from the BBC, Channel 4 and American networks to view for free, pay per view or to keep forever for a fee.

And then there’s iTunes – a download you can put on your iPod, iPad (more on this in my next post) or iPhone and watch when you like.

This all sounds amazing, something I could easily spend hours using, catching up on shows I already own on DVD but can never be bothered to open – or shows I would like to watch but don’t want to spend money on the DVD.

Six different video players

But it isn’t that simple for me – because I live in the Channel Islands.

I’m not complaining about the fact that I live in the Channel Islands – I love it, I chose to live here and wouldn’t want to live anywhere else – but the perculiar political situation means some things work …. differently.

One of those things is content rights.

Yes we have the BBC in the Channel Islands, we have Channel 4, Sky and pretty much everything people in the mainland UK have – our television and radio is more or less the same.

However, when it comes to the internet things get a little bit more complicated.

For the iPlayer, 4OD (on the Channel 4 website) and Demand Five things are fine – we can access and watch shows on all of those services as if we were in the mainland.

But when those shows move across to YouTube, MSN or SeeSaw – things are a little different.

I recently got a beta invite to SeeSaw – very exciting, couldn’t wait and first impression were good – it’s usable, easy to navigate and seems to have a reasonable selection of content for a beta service.

But when I went to click play I got the same message I’ve become used to from Hulu, MSN and YouTube shows – they allow follow the ‘sorry this content isn’t available in your location’ structure.

My intitial reaction to this message, something I’ve not had confirmed despite several e-mails, is that it’s down to the fact that they’re using a GeoIP list that doesn’t include Channel Island IP addresses.

However, a little bit of research and an actual response from one of the companies involved (SeeSaw) suggests that in fact it is a rights issue.

This isn’t the first time I’ve come across ‘rights’ being used as a reason why a service isn’t available in the Channel Islands.

iTunes isn’t officially available here and an Apple spokesperson told me late last year that it was because they haven’t got rights agreements in place for the streaming of samples for the Channel Islands.

The e-mail from SeeSaw explained that: “Unfortunately, SeeSaw is not currently available in the Channel Islands (or the Isle of Man) as we don’t yet have the rights to show programmes there.”

However all is not lost as the next paragraph in that e-mail explained that they were in negotations with rights holders.

“The good news is that we are currently in negotiations to make our service available to you, so hopefully you’ll soon be able to watch your favourite programmes on SeeSaw.”

What I don’t understand is how I can easily watch the full range of 4OD shows on the Channel 4 website – with 4OD actively going out of their way to fix an issue that blocked access to CI users last year – but I can’t watch it on YouTube, MSN or SeeSaw.

Fortunately I work for a large UK corporation so my computer at work is behind a proxy that IS in the UK – so I got to try SeeSaw out, even if I didn’t have enough time to watch a full show.

My second impressions are that, although it is completely lacking in ANY social or sharing functionality it does have some nice features.

It is EXCEPTIONALLY easy to use and has a couple of nice touches like a fade to back on the background on the player page when focus moves away.

It has a lot of information on the programme you’re watching, the advertising isn’t OTT and it is very easy to find previous and future episodes of the same series.

So for a beta service with a limited user base and no external access (where sharing and social stuff wouldn’t be that useful anyway) I’d say it is pretty impressive.

As long as they work towards introducing social and sharing for launch in March I’d say this is a real contender for the television site of choice crown – especially as they’ve launched so far ahead of a UK release of Hulu.

But if they want to compete with Hulu when it launches - the social, sharing and ratings content will become increasingly important.

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
6
Jul

Tagged with the UK

There are a lot of differences between Bing (Microsoft) and Google maps – I won’t list them all here but lets say Bing has a bit of catching up to do.

But there is one particular difference that annoys me, the others just mildly irritate – they put (U.K.) after Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man.

OK so you’re probably thinking – but I thought they were in the UK – well if you’re thinking that you’d be wrong.

Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man are British Crown Dependencies – not part of the UK, not part of Great Britain, but autonomous juristictions that pass legislation through the Crown.

So seeing (U.K.) under Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man on the Bing Maps was a bit of a red rag and bull scenario.

Normally I would have just let it go though – it didn’t bother me THAT much, or at least not enough to stir me into action.

But, as you probably already know I’m working on an interactive map of my own for the BBC and as the BBC uses Bing Maps, and as my interactive map had Jersey as a focus – I needed to find a solution.

So I did a search for more details on Bing Maps and found a blog post by Chris Pendleton, the Virtual Earth Technical Evangelist for Microsoft Corporation.

He was raving about the number of interactive maps on the BBC using Bing – and they are fairly impressive.

So I left a comment saying:

I’m working on an interactive map for BBC Jersey that should go live in August looking at the islands beaches.

My only concern is that they label Jersey and Guernsey as UK and I KNOW I’ll get complaints about that from islanders as Jersey isn’t in the UK.

I can’t say I REALLY expected a response but to his credit I DID get this in reply – not a solution but at least an explanation.

Ryan – good eye. Guernsey is not part of the UK, but it is controlled by it, since Guernsey is a dependency of the UK and not an independent nation state. We currently label dependencies with a parenthetical “controlling power” suffix, so that is why you see the “(UK)” after the name.

It seems this may cause confusion. In our data model, that island is not part of the UK, but I can see how that subtle distinction might be lost given the way it is labeled. We’ll have have to investigate how to make this more clear, but at least you’ll have an answer for your customers if/when they ask.

CP

So I took that response and spoke to people that work around creating the maps for the BBC and was able to get a fault ticket raised with Microsoft over the issue.

An e-mail came back hours later saying that they agree with my analysis – that it shouldn’t have UK at all – and will contact the third parties responsible for the maps and data to see if it can be changed in the next update cycle.

So in the next few months Bing maps should no longer say (U.K.).

And they even found a solution for third party uses of Bing maps – so the BBC uses – that involves replacing the tiles in question and scrubbing out (U.K.).

Wonderful!

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
22
Jun

Beach Guide: Introduction

Anyone that works for, has ever visited, or knows somebody that works for the BBC will have heard of Ariel, the corporations in house magazine that goes out to everyone that works for Aunty.

Well if you pick up this weeks edition you should see yours truly standing on a beach looking all rediculous holding on to a microphone pretending to interview somebody for a photo shoot.

Basically I’ve started work on an interactive guide to all the beaches of Jersey. There is something like 40 beaches in Jersey with more nooks, crannies, bobs and ends surrounding those main beaches.

There are tourist beaches full of sand, others with stones, more with cockles and muscles alive alive… ok I went off track a little there – it is late and I’ve been standing in the sun all day.

Basically, getting to the point – I’ll be walking around the island over the next few months going from beach to beach taking photos, interviewing people (that use the beach, that live/work near the beach, that know the history, geology and nature of the beach) and writing down facts/figures and reviews of the beach.

Then sometime in August I’ll be pulling it all together along with other people’s thoughts on each of the beaches, their photos and possibly even their videos.

St Aubin's Bay - West ParkYou’ll be shown a map (unfortunately a Microsoft map that, for some reason I haven’t worked out shows Jersey/Guernsey as being in the UK) that you can drill down into and see each of the things I’ve listed above as an pin – click the pin to see more.

While I go around the island I intend to keep notes, record my thoughts (I’ll be making a radio series about the beaches as well – audio on BBC Local sites has to have been broadcast on radio first), and will be using this section of my blog to post my thoughts as I walk around the island.

The first leg saw me walk from St Helier to St Brelade‘s Bay – basically along the entire St Aubin‘s Bay, up the road and round to St Brelade’s Bay – here is the route – unlike the BBC I can use Google Maps so will.
View Larger Map

You’ll be able to see the photos on Flickr in full so you can see my progress visually as well as reading it here on the blog. Next time I’ll make sure I take my laptop with me to blog en route.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
29
Dec

A media year

Just under a year ago (three days under a year ago in fact) I wrote a blog post with the title ‘My Media Tips for 2008‘. As we’re now approaching the end of 2008 I thought it might be worth looking back.

So lets work our way through the original post, pointing out what I got wrong, what I got right and what I wouldn’t right now even on the bleakest of motivation days.

My Media Tips for 2008

Paragraphs from the original blog post are in quote boxes and my comments are directly below them. I’ll try to post a few tips for 2009 while I’m at it.

I think 2008 is going to be the Time-Shift year. I know people have been time-shifting for ages but this is the year it will get a LOT easier.

Well I hit that one pretty squarly on the nose – although to be honest even a monkey living in a remote part of the remotest island on the earth could probably have predicted that.

The BBC iPlayer has launched as a streaming service – complete with heavy promotion and people seem to be finding it fairly easy to use – ITV will probably heavily advertise ITV.com now as well and I’m hoping Channel 4 will drop the application and offer streamed shows through their website.

Well the iPlayer went from stregnth to stregnth, improved streaming quality and became the gold standard in on demand video – it also became properly mainstream.

ITV did indeed increase publicity of itv.com but not to a massive extent until the end of the year when they rebranded it ITV Player – expect a lot more from ITV in 2009 (god I sound like Mystic Meg).

Oh and Channel 4 dropped the 4OD application (OK they didn’t really drop it but it did become less important) and did introduce streaming video on demand through the website.

More of this in 2009 and hopefully a move to flash or at least silverlight streaming from Channel 4 and ITV – moving away from Windows Media. You never know – if the BBC Air Desktop App works out we may see ITV and Channel 4 versions of that.

iPlayer will also be launching through Cable and IPTV companies this year – BT and Virgin will be offering iPlayer shows over the air which will bring it to the attention of even more people.

Well iPlayer DID launch on Virgin and it seems to work pretty well (although I haven’t really tried it), it also launched on the iPhone, the Wii, PS3 and a selection of mobile devices (although if you have the Skyfire browser you can use it on almost any Windows Mobile device).

iPlayer will also be launched on BT soon and I predict that at some point in 2009 we’ll see the iPlayer on Apple TV (or equivalent) devices and on specially designed Freesat boxes.

We’re probably going to find out more about Kangaroo – the commercial version of iPlayer, ITV.com and 4OD combined. And I’ll carry on using SKY+ to avoid adverts.

It has been an interesting year for Project Kangaroo – a new chief who left for Microsoft, an anti-competive review, a whole host of complaints, a very limited beta launch and new start date in sight.

Oh and I’ve had to hand over control of Sky+ to my wife who regularly fills it with soaps, reality TV and other wonderful examples of programming excellence.

I now almost exclusively watch television through my computer – either live (using Zattoo, Livestation or the broadcasters own websites) or on demand.

But this will probably also be a year of more creative forms of advertising – as more people time-shift the pressure will be put on OfCom to allow commercial broadcasters to advertise in other ways – such as in vision adverts, product placements and fewer adverts shown more frequently during a show.

OfCom seem to be moving in this direction ualthoughgh we didn’t really see the launch of this in 2008 – I expect that won’t really start to come into force until 2010.

Although, after recent codes of conduct have been agreed on – we may well see paid for product placement introduced in selected shows in 2009.

I also think we’ll see podcasts grow in popularity, especially video podcasts with the increasing popularity of the iPod Nano (video).

Podcasts did grow in popularity but not nearly to the extent I expected them to – although an interesting trend of ‘talent’ producing their own shows did take off in 2008.

The BBC Trust will probably allow the BBC to publish video podcasts which will probably take the form of cut-down versions of TV shows they own the full rights to (Top Gear, Newsnight etc).

This will then prompt the commercial to up their game and start offering more video podcasts of their shows – maybe with embedded adverts to cover costs and make money.

Well I go this one wrong – I’m not even sure the BBC put video podcasts to the trust in 2008 – but it probably will come 2009 – either that or a deal with be struck with Apple to allow downloads of DRMd BBC video shows to the iPod (maybe with the licencing of Fairplay) that could be pulled in like a podcast thanks to RSS feeds.

However video podcasts DID become more popular in 2008 with the introducing of the iTunes Video Podcast section, an increasing number of original indie video podcast production companies (Rev3, ChannelFlip) and more commercial companies getting on board (Sky News, HBO).

I also think we’ll see a lot of fuss made over home grown children’s television in 2008 – money will be made available to the commercial operators to produce children’s television here in the UK and to develop British ideas.

There was a lot of fuss made over Childrens television, of regional news and of public service content as a whole – including a lot of talk about how to fund it.

As yet no real decision has been made but I expect something will happen on this in 2009 (whether it is actual money available or the promise of money at a set point in the future).

The money will either come from free spectrum or services for the commercial operators, a portion of the license fee, tax money or some other magical pot – but it will come.

There will also be talk, off the back of Australia planning to filter ‘unsavoury’ websites at ISP level, of the UK doing the same thing and of regulation of the internet as major UK broadcasters use it more.

There was a lot of talk but it never really made the mainstream forums – but that doesn’t mean it won’t next year – however I think it will be at European level as I don’t think there is stomach or desire for internet regulation in the UK.

Oh and a couple of quickies for 2009 – I think digital radio will be a big story, I think digital switchover will be a big story and also the decline of the newspaper industry.

What are your 2009 tips?

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
10
Feb

End of the walled garden

With the possibility of Microsoft buying Yahoo (or not if you read Techcrunch) and the merged brands that would come out of it – I started to wonder whether there’s room for the big brand, do everything site anymore.

Read moreRead more

3
Feb

Micro-hoo!

Well the news rocking the tech world at the moment is clearly the possible Microsoft bid for Yahoo and the first thing that jumped out at me was – oh god leave Flickr alone.

But it doesn’t seem to be just Microsoft hovering around Yahoo – according to Techcrunch – Murdoch’s NewsCorp may also bid for the internet giant.
Read moreRead more