Uncertain Knowledge

We know less about the future than we’ve ever done. Because I just turned up on technology voices I though this argument needed a revisit this time for a technology audience.

New Media, Old Values

The internet mob builds a worldwide web of punishment. Judicial forms of humiliating offenders have long been banned but they are making a sinister return online, says John-Paul Flintoff

The internet mob builds a worldwide web of punishment – Sunday Times – Times Online

I was struck also by the report above. I've said before I think the motivation for content co-creation, user content and all the rest, at least for an older age group, is to seek a return to a more moral period in our history. So new technology, old values.

What the Sunday Times records here is going a bit far of course but it does underline the fact that we need to understand change across a wide range of activity and values, which also goes back to something I've written on earlier, the need for the old guard in the IT industry to open up to new values.

technorati tags:values, content

BBC Watch

The world's most powerful broadcaster was at it again last night, confusing the role of news reporter, priest, advocate and self-publicist. On its main evening news

The philosophy

For the launch of 2006 Broadcast Live, a few words about the impact of IPTV, podcasting and blogs.

The Vision Thing – Who Owns It?

The surprise element of the IPTV world is

More on Gates

The weekend papers were busy trying out new ideas. Like – does Bill Gates' departure mean crisis, the final unravelling, or hmmmm, let's think.

Closing the Gates

Thirty years of defining the nature of information technology, and latterly the future of gaming, and television, is tiring. Yes, I've decided enough is enough. I won't listen to Bill Gates any longer.

Wiki’s Progress

Economists now use the Big Mac as a guide to inflation and the cost of living across the world, assuming that the price of the Big Mac will always tend towards equilibrium. In the IT business Microsoft might equally be used as a point of comparison for the popularity of community tools. If Microsoft start using Wikis then their time has arrived, no?

The Blog Impact in US Politics

Well it's starting to show. People engaged in blogs have opinions quite different from voters who don't read blogs.

This is Why Old Media Is Dying

Anybody who thinks utopia is writing in the morning, taking a stroll through the world's afternoon before carousing in the evening, expenses paid, wake up. This is why distortions are hard to keep out of journalism. 

Manners

I’m trying to catch up with Tim Manners, an exponent of the idea that  all companies need to be thought leaders, that they need to participate in the content game and be good at it. In a creative economy what Manners says makes perfect sense. The future of content belongs to all of us, with honesty and intelligence at a premium. So a prerequisite for companies is to recognise they are in the content space and make sure they look smart. Tim’s insights are summarised here.

A Little Insight Courtesy of 3Vision

A list of VoD insights dropped into my e-mail box this morning courtesy of 3Vision. The Bath, England-based company consults on content issues in cable, IP TV, mobile and other advanced media environments.

The list strikes me as a primer for companies in the triple pay business. Yet the game is heading towards quad-play. Systems that allow “buddy” interaction, for example allowing people in different houses to co-watch a programme, sharing notes, showing rewinds, and being virtual.

Mediangle is not here to criticise. Nothing wrong with being on top of the  world we live in rather than the one we will be occupying. Here’s insight number ten.

10 – Focus on Consumer Benefit
To maximise the effectiveness of VOD as a customer acquisition tool you will need to make VOD central to your overall TV proposition, focussing on the benefits to the consumer rather than the technology.

Well-focused advertising is thought of as content

That's according to Josh Goldman, CEO of IP TV aggregator Akimbo. Josh agreed to speak with Mediangle and gave some forthright opinions on where advertising is going.

"The world of forcing people to watch an advert – that is going away." 

Josh was also explaining his decision to do with a download model for IP TV. Akimbo currently has 11,000 hours of pogramming on offer and is about to launch with AT&T's Homezone, opening Akimbo content out to tens of millions of viewers. 

"Most on-demand systems have only hundreds, at most a small number of thousands of hours of video because when you stream you have to have a very different kind of server, and a very expensive server" says Josh. "We're talking hundreds of thousands of dollars because the viewer is watching on your server, fast forwarding on your server, and rewinding on your server. Downloading overcomes this. And now we see devices with memory in the home, our business is based on that, storage in the home."

What's proving popular in Akimbo's electic content mix? "Foreign language content (Chinese, Indian, French, German, Korean); independent films, music videos now that MTV doesn't do so much music video, lifestyle programming. Gay and lesbian lifestyles not necessarily adult content. Lifestyle and political. Fawlty Towers was one of our biggest for weeks."

Can the small guy make money showing their content on Akimbo? It's like blogging suggests Josh. Good content well presented is making money for people and there are a few making a living from it on Akimbo. As Akimbo goes to the tens of millions of households life for the long tail of content providers is looking up. On adverts here's the last word.

"There are people who don't get it," says Josh,  "and who just hang on to the 30 second ad, asking us what's the most popular video." For those who do get it Akimbo has the demographics and profiling technology to make ads relevant enough that they appear like content.

Advertisers take over the Advertorial – and in some style.

In the past advertisers paid for advertorial, ads backed by pallid, unconvincing editorial. IP TV changes that. Brand managers can now go editorially creative in their own right.

Two recent examples: Landrover TV and Nike’s Joga TV. These are exciting developments.

Using the Narrowstep platform LandRover TV’s Go Beyond site celebrates achievements in adventure sports. Not confined to motors it also does travel (Great Palaces), Lifestyle (interiors), even cocktails.

Maven’s Joga TV is less ambitous in breadth but it couples the Nike ad series, Joga Bonito fronted by soccer legend Eric Cantona, to compelling visuals on soccer artistry starring the likes of Ronaldhino and Ronaldo. Maven’s fame claim of course is that it pioneered High Definition images over the Net which gives it a strong claim on the attention of brand advertisers. Joga TV also allows viewers from all around the world to upload soccer tricks’ videos and it’s supported by Joga.com, a soccer playing portal created by Nike and Google.

“Maven’s technology allows Nike to directly reach its audiences with an interactive experience that genuinely demonstrates the future of Internet TV, and enables them to accurately target and measure their campaigns. True Internet TV channels are redefining how online content is distributed, experienced and monetized,”  say the Mavenizers.

NIKE is following in the sneakersteps of trail blazers like Mountain Dew, Bud and others. Landrover though is consolidating a deeper principle, that adverts-as-entertainment, and niche  customer websites are one thing but brand managers may also be capable, willing and ready to manager whole TV channels.

Watching these initiatives evolve it becomes clear why terrestrial TV companies are desperately looking for product placement ideas. Is time running out for regular TV?