I almost heart BBC iPlayer - pt 2

And here's a piece that sheds more light on the challenges of managing the growth in popularity of BBC iPlayer:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7336940.stm

I almost heart BBC iPlayer

Ha, ha! Despite knowing lots of ‘stuff’ I still fell for the BBC's flying penguins April Fools' yesterday morning. Great spoof. And of course both real and virtual worlds were buzzing about it.

The penguins spoof actually marks the launch of the second phase of the BBC’s multi-dimensional marketing campaign for iPlayer. I’ve been using iPlayer since the turn of the year and it has the potential to be truly wonderful. Evidently I’m not on my own with 11m programmes streamed/downloaded and 2.2m users in January alone. It’s a great demonstration of ‘technology’ at its best. It is so simple to use. No downloading, complicated instructions or waiting. Truly click and go. The programmes run in almost DVD like quality, even in full screen, no jerkiness or atmosphere destroying stop-go like a YouTube or indeed many videos available online.

Well that’s history now; my romance has temporarily ended. Perhaps it was a fluke but the first bunch of programmes I watched streamed beautifully, but no more. Last week’s The Apprentice ran perfectly for the first 50 minutes and then the last – and of course most critical – section ran in almost 10 second bursts for the next 20 minutes. Gavin and Stacey ran at a stutter almost from the start. I could go on. I even went to FAQs, which is more than your average user is prepared to do, but they danced around the issue.

I don’t want to wait 20 minutes plus to download. I’m typically time poor and on demand is where it is at.

It had all started so well.

iPlayer has the potential to create a truly market transforming moment. Please don’t let the technology gremlins rob us of that. And if what I sense is true – that the systems/technology behind this are creaking under the pressure of increased demand – is now the right time to be driving up the user numbers? Let’s not forget that once consumers have tried something and it’s no good, they mostly never return….

Football, PR and the tricky issue of immigration

Al Bangura, footballer, fiancé, father, and hero to this particular blogger, has been spared deportation to his native Sierra Leone. Arriving as a sex-slave at the age of fifteen, he escaped and built a life and career from literally nothing. Spotted playing football is Cassiobury park, one of Hertfordshire’s largest open spaces, he was signed up by the glorious Watford FC who he has since gone on to captain and play for 65 times.

On Monday 14th January, Al Bangura won his appeal against an Asylum and Immigration authority decision to revoke Al’s right to work in the UK which would have resulted in deportation. Watford Chairman Graham Simpson said “We always knew we had a strong case and despite our setbacks we knew we had to fight for what we believed to be right for this young man. Al will now continue to contribute to our society, which I know he feels a debt of gratitude towards.”

The case would not have been brought to the attention of the public without the media coverage that followed the original decision to deport one of Watford’s youngest stars. A host of articles in major nationals The Times, Guardian and Telegraph has provided awareness for the young man’s plight, that many ordinary genuine asylum seekers to not receive.

The positive PR generated by Watford Football Club was ably assisted by representatives of the Football League and other clubs; most notably Plymouth Argyle who, following recent tension rich encounters which did supporter relations more harm than good, showed their support at half time during the December meeting of the Championship sides at Watford’s Vicarage Road.

The media’s eagerness to write about the issue in a time when immigration and asylum are prevalent in the news is a positive step in the right direction where reporting such stories are concerned.

In today’s Independent there is a similar story of Damilola Ajagbonna. A ‘remarkable’ immigrant, his contributions to British society have been honoured by the Church of England and his academic record has won him places at Cambridge and Sheffield universities. He now faces deportation to his native Nigeria after the Court of Appeal dismissed his final appeal. The 19 year old came to the UK with is mother 8 years ago and has been appointed as an adviser on youth issues to Unicef by the United Nations. Despite all of his achievements, Damilola now faces a return to Nigeria, away from the life he has created for himself in this country.

The Asylum and Immigration Tribunal would not comment on individual cases and it would seem that without the same media PR coverage afforded to Al Bangura, Damilola’s almost identical story has come to a very different conclusion.

Child's play?

I was interested to see an article in the Daily Mail today reporting that technology industry experts at the Consumer Electronics Show are claiming that under-sevens ‘shouldn’t play computer games’. Why? Apparently it can shorten their attention span, harm their ability to learn and it is also seen as an isolating experience.

The reason this article particularly jumped out at me was because I was at my friend’s house the other day and I noticed that things were particularly tense between she and her partner. With his back turned and armed with a large mug of coffee, she mouthed to me that most of the problems in their relationship at present stem from his hardcore gaming addiction. And addiction it does seem to be – he told me later that he plays eight hours a day at the weekend and then four hours a night when he gets home from work. The sad thing is – and the point of my writing – is that they have two young kids who are just two and three.

The two year old seems blissfully unaware of her father’s habit (although it is no doubt an acceptable part of her limited understanding of what is ‘normal’) but the three year old has already started gaming. Admittedly, he’s not yet playing Grand Theft Auto, Manhunt or Devil May Cry but he’s definitely picked up the desire to sit in front of the computer for as long as he possibly can and hit the keys in a quick and non-stylish manner. Without wanting to upset my friend, this habit at the age of three did somewhat alarm me. However, I later witnessed him interacting with his parents and taking part in some more ‘educational’ games and was actually impressed with his hand-eye coordination, ability to pick up new tasks and dexterity. Now, I’d be the first to admit that I’m no child psychologist, but it occurred to me that his development and apparent grasp of things that other three year olds may not necessarily have achieved at this stage, could be due to his early gaming habits.

And I don’t believe I’m the only person to have been hit by this thought. In the second half of last year, casual games developer, Popcap released a survey claiming that 92% of people felt that casual games were a good way of bonding with children and 70% felt that casual games were of educational benefit. I guess the main question that remains unanswered is how young is too young? Personally, I think I’d be somewhat disturbed if I had a three year old who constantly wanted to play games on the PC. Yet, my recent visit to my friend’s house leaves me slightly more open minded about this now and – taking lifestyle out of the equation – I could still be convinced that small amounts of game playing can, in fact, be a good thing, whatever your age.

RSS Fed Schooling

Happy New Year! I hope it was a time filled with merriment and gifts of gadgets, games and gizmos for you all.

Cyberspace is often touted as the domain of the young, social networks and chat rooms providing a space for interaction and replacing the telephone as the main conduit of contact between friends. What would happen if all of a sudden, as if by magic, the Internet turned from trusted ally, to wary guardian peering over the shoulder of teens aspiring to keep elements of their lives private from parents. In most cases, this is of course a positive thing. The benefits of preventing access to certain websites with parental locks helps to keep everyone happy at home.

Web-savvy parents may soon be able to keep track on an entirely different aspect of their child’s life with daily updates on their school progress via our beloved interweb. The attendance, behaviour and grades of each pupil could be online by 2012, allowing parents to monitor their child’s progress just like a daily news feed from CNN.

Schools are being encouraged to abandon the traditional parents evening format by indulging in conference calls, sending text updates and uploading more data than a large bandwidth could cope with, to give ‘real time’ updates on how much progress is being made at school.

Does this spell the end for “What did you do at school today dear?”

What sort of response could little Timmy give after a hard day’s tuck shopping to “I see that you’ve spent 45.7% of your time learning about English with a 23.34% increase in your overall specific learning targets whilst only attaining a median grade of 67.5% across your seven core subjects which are, in effect supposed to taking up an upper third quarter percentile of your time?”

“Eh what?”

There are of course security issues surrounding the developments – what personal information would the schools need, how much of it would be publishable and potentially within hacker’s reach. The main concern as a recent former student is that a lot of what goes on in the classroom is a private affair – teacher / pupil interaction is vital, and it is crucial that the teacher treats each student as an individual, living, breathing human, as opposed to a source of statistics that needs to maximise its output capacity in a mechanical way.

There is a danger that mums and dads could find themselves besieged by so much information that even they do not know what it means.

The true test of success will be how schools select what information is made available and how this helps pupils learn and grow, then we could have a really useful tool in aiding learning and development in schools.

Power to the older people!

I’ve got to admit that I’ve fallen into the trap that a large percentage of our population would probably hate me for. When people mention ‘older people’, ‘silver surfers’, ‘baby boomers’ and the ‘grey market’, I think of my grandparents, retirement, cautiousness, whiteness and all that is, well, dare I say it, slow. But what we all sometimes fail to recognize is that this booming market is in fact representative of our parents’ generation (if you’re like me and in your 20s) and actually has a lot more influence and consumer power than we perhaps give them credit for.

In business, I think we’re all guilty of stereotyping and dismissing the ‘over 50s’ at times. Marketers and PR’s often immediately think of younger generations when initially planning campaigns. The ‘older folk’ are past caring what brands they use and buy, right? Wrong! Well, according to the Office for National Statistics (www.statistics.gov.uk), the grey market accounts for 20 million UK consumers (34% of total population) and spends over £267 billion a year. Yet, according to the same statistics, less than 10% of marketing campaigns are directed at this mature market. We seem to be missing something here…

We have to train ourselves as a population as well as PR’s and marketers to see this generation as what they often are – technologically clever, independent, adventurous, confident and with a wide range of interests. The majority actually want to embrace change and are unafraid to spend their ‘grey pound’. A Future Lab (www.futurelab.org.uk) report out this year claims that 80% see growing older as an opportunity to ‘start again and try new experiences’.

And they’re not in any hurry to fade out into retirement mode either. Last week, the Financial Times (www.ft.com) confirmed that pensioners are outnumbering children in the UK for the first time ever this year. And they’re getting pretty internet savvy too. By the end of 2007, silver surfers – according to Hitwise (www.hitwise.com) – are going to become the dominant group on the net. Did you know that the over 50s account for 30% of the total time spent online and that a quarter of internet users are in this age group? Not surprisingly, Saga (www.saga.co.uk) has capitalized on this growing phenomenon and has just launched a social networking site, Saga Zone (www.saga.co.uk/sagazone), for the mature market. Who needs Facebook (www.facebook.com) and MySpace (www.myspace.com) when you have Saga Zone to attend online parties and swap gardening tips (for want of another preconceived stereotypical 'grey' pursuit)?

So, next time you start planning a campaign, don’t forget these ‘older folk’. Because, ultimately, the majority of decisions are made based on attitude and lifestyle - and it seems like they have both on their side. And don’t just think ‘grey’ when you’ve got certain stereotypical brands to push. According to Hitwise, search engines, shopping and porn are the three most popular things viewed online by this generation. What does this prove? Well, lots of things but most importantly that they’re just like the rest of us.

ba-con?

So hands up, how many of you woke up craving a bacon sarnie this morning?

Must'€™ve been a subliminal message from the news last night as nothing else seemed to quite hit the spot with my second cup of tea...

Always interesting to see the different papers version of events on subjects like this. Full marks (as usual) has to go to The Sun for the "Save Our Bacon"€ headline whereas The Mirror didn't even cover it... the others had a go but could barely muster a headline between them.

Funny The Mirror didn'€™t choose to cover it - although to be fair they were handed a golden opportunity with Heather MM wearing her "€œBoycott The Sun"€ top on TV yesterday€“ but even then The Sun still beat them hands down with its headline "Help! She needs somebody" (vs."€Heather'€™s Hate Tape" in The Mirror).

So back to bacon... As well as the front page The Sun gave over pages 4 and 5 and managed to get Wozza (Anthony Worrell Thompson) on board within minutes to dismiss the whole nonsense as "€œjust another scare" - shame the World Cancer Research Fund doesn'€™t agree and I'€™m pretty sure who would win on mastermind (http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article413632.ece). Shame they didn'€™t ask Keeley for her opinion on page 3 I'd've paid more attention.

Personally I hate any attempt like this to scare people - one day red meat, red wine and crisps (remember that?) are good for you - next day you'€™re being told it's better to weigh less than your recommended weight?? What the average man on the street must make of this I have no idea... seriously how are people meant to know what to do?

I guess that'€™s when you read the Daily Mail??? Haha... €œ"So What Is Safe To Eat"€ it screamed this morning, adding there is a growing backlash against the study from 21 international experts, with Britain's top cancer specialist (Professor Karol Sikora) calling the advice "€œtoo trite and too dogmatic"€ warning no one will pay attention.

Again,€“ what to do? To me this is where the BBC should be leading the debate as a public service broadcaster. Obviously they've got other things on their mind but to go to their news homepage (http://news.bbc.co.uk) and not see a single link is frankly weird and seriously lacking. Again who do you ask?

If I ring my mum, she'€™ll quote the Daily Mail to me, if I ring my brother he'€™ll quote The Sun to me, if I ask my girlfriend she'€™ll tell me I could do with losing a bit of weight anyway...

Which leaves The Daily Express (via Sky News), who, for me, said what I wanted to hear (because that'€™s what we all want really isn'€™t it?)... asking Barry Kay, general manager of The National Pig Association his thoughts, who simply said; "€œI am always wary of dubious science. The odd bacon sandwich will do you no harm"€ (http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30000-13554551,00.html).

I'll have mine on white with red sauce please Barry.

Bosh, problem solved!