I don’t even know how to describe IMwatching.net except that it’s imaginative and awesomely creepy. The concept in a nutshell – it’s a way of keeping track of when someone was online in IM and when they were not and what their status messages were. One for stalkers, obsessive compulsives and those who think their husbands lie to them, I guess…
I have no opinion about this whatsoever. Here are just four links in a row, presented in a reverse-chronological (most recent first) fashion with no attempt whatsoever to make a point, which nonetheless are prefaced with a proviso that any position you may infer that I have is entirely mine and not that of my employer. And I don’t have one anyway:
That’s your lot. Move along. Nothing to see here.
Brief summary for people with too little time: slap an ADSL modem and wifi hub into every landline phone and allow them to network automatically with each other and you suddenly have a simple way to bathe an entire home in net-enabled connectivity without needing a computer. A more detailed investigation of this concept (with pictures) follows:
So I’ve been thinking a lot about ubiquitous home networks recently, and the ways in which various appliances might start hooking up to the internet and through the internet to other people – social hardware if you will – and the problem keeps coming back to how you introduce the network into the home in the first place. There needs to be a way of wrapping all the core parts of a home in a network without it being something that requires complex set-up and specialised hardware. It also seems to me that the key to true ubiquity is to detach the networking completely from a its current reliance on a computer. Your home network of the future should not require a perpetually-on computer in a cupboard. Your gran should be able to have the benefits of internet enabled appliances without having to figure out the configuration of modems and puzzle their way through a complex OS-based interface.
And if – as I assume – we’re talking about wrapping the home in a wireless network, then it also seems to me that we should be looking for a way to do all this without introducing lots more widgets and boxes and cables around the place. Ideally – we would also try and avoid having little appliances stuck into random power supplies around the house (unless of course we can take them in a different direction and use them as control nodes as well as bridges cf. Airport Express – but more on that kind of paradigm another time). Essentially, we need a model in which home, net-enabled networks are treated more like a utility than a technology – more like water or electricity provision than …
Okay – so now we’ve got the criteria in place, how should we go about making this wifi-enabled network space? Probably the place to start is at the bridge between the appliance (including potentially a computer) and the network. Since these appliance could be in pretty much every room, then the first thing we’re going to need is a series of wifi points littered around the premises. These ideally would cover the entire home, but if they couldn’t cover it completely they’d have to be in key areas like kitchens, studies, sitting rooms, bedrooms and the like. They would not be as useful initially in storage areas, hallways, lavatories, bathrooms or on stairs – although clearly it would be an advantage if the bled into those areas. These points need to be powered in some way and they’d presumably need to connect with one another as wifi bridges. One of these appliances has to be able to connect to the internet. More than likely they’ll do this via the telecommunications grid through a phone socket. And then there will have to be some kind of interface for setting up the connection and protecting it with some kind of password, encrypted and connectable to by some kind of industry standard protocol. This interface would not need to do anything else, but conceivably could do…
So here’s my contention. Given that it would seem to be a good thing to split the provision of wireless network access from computers, and given that we’ll still need an interface and given that we need a point in all the core rooms of a home and given that we need to connect this network to the telephone network in some way – isn’t the telephone itself the ideal appliance to be the heart of the home network? Unlike the television or the radio or the stereo, any place in a home where people are likely to spend a lot of time is likely to have a telephone point in or near it. They have small interfaces on them already – a numeric keypad for one and often a small LCD screen for recording input, and they’re already connected physically to the telephone network.
So here’s what I’m thinking – and forgive the slightly ugly 80s styling of the phone itself. I tried to do something beautiful and isometric but it came out looking really nasty. So we make do with gradient fills and basic Illustrator shapes…
So the ADSL modem and wifi antenna/bridge/hub are both included within the device. This means that in terms of buying a wifi network for your house, all you have to do is purchase the phone and plug it into a phone socket. By sticking an Ethernet port into the base of the phone you could immediately use it to connect to printers or any non-wifi enabled networkable device. If you bought a second phone, however, it would operate like a wifi bridge (there’s already considerable precedent for hubs also acting as bridges – with the Airport Extreme being the most recent example), extending the network around the home. If ADSL modems did not reduce significantly in cost, then perhaps you could remove that from the additional phone units, creating master and slave phones, each of which could be strung together to extend the network still further. If ADSL modems came down in price, however, it might be useful to build them into all the devices – allowing each phone unit to negotiate with the other phones as to when it should become the dominant provider of access to the internet (ie. if the connection broke down or if it became clear that one phone could provide more throughput because of the local quality of the line or intra-phone connectivity). Either way, you’d expect the network to self-organise purely by bringing a new phone home and plugging it into a socket. The blue-lines in the following image would be self-organising connections between phones based upon proximity and strength of signal:
So now we have a wifi network in the home, where all you’d need to do to extend the network is purchase a phone and plug it in. And we have a number of devices capable of connecting to the web. Except we’ve left out questions of user names / passwords / encryptions and the like. Since we’re talking of this service as a utility, then the most obvious way of handling it would seem to me to be to get your ADSL along with your telephony from the same operator. Since the operators already know the telephone number that the phone is plugged into (and will know this whenever you use a phone on that network) it seems most obvious to consider that telephone number to be your user name for connectivity and the name of the local network. This would mean that when the phone was initially connected it could attempt to connect immediately to the operator. At this stage the operator (or the phone) could generate a numeric key with which to access the network. All you’d have to do is plug the phone in and then ring up your operator. Since they already have security provisions in place to help identify a caller, they could easily determine that a user was legitimate and give out an initial code which said user could then use to login to the network.
In practice this would mean the entire process to set up the network was to plug in the phone, ring an activation number and get your code, hang up and type in the number. Any other phones you wanted to connect would just require you to plug them into the mains and type in the activation number. And then to login from any device all you’d have to do is connect to the network which was called your home phone number (Network Name: 020 7286 ####) using (again) the activation number. Piece of cake!
The process would have other possibilities too. By using a numeric key rather than an alphanumeric key you immediately open up the number of devices that can be easily set up to use the network. Numeric keypads are far more common than full text input devices and faster to use. It would take no time at all to connect your mobile phone, television, DVD player, Tivo, Radio, CD player, tape deck and computer to such a network. But that’s just the beginning. Radio Alarm clocks have keypads, Microwave ovens have key pads. In fact the only electrical things that I can see around me in my flat that don’t immediately present some kind of numeric interface are my lights, iPod, digital camera, kettle, X-box, toaster and oven – and four of those have an interface that would allow you to choose numerals in different ways.
So that’s the concept in a nutshell. I can see some problems with it with regard to the separation of telecommunications services and the necessary connections that you might need to make between hardware and service providers that might make the whole thing unfeasible. I’m also more than aware that there have been explorations about ways of connecting telephones and connectivity elsewhere – some of which no doubt overlaps, encompasses or surpasses my thoughts – and no doubt I’ve made a few errors through the piece as well, but nonetheless I thought it was an interesting enough idea to push out into the real world and to receive feedback around. And that’s what I’m after now – please feel free to leave any thoughts, fixes, suggestions or extensions below or write a post and trackback to this one, so any interested parties can follow the discussion (if there is any) more easily…
The images were replaced on 5 August 2026 for clarity. The originals are available here, here and here.
Random consumer-action week on plasticbag.org continues today with a shout-out to my colleague Matt Webb, who has been having considerable trouble with his no-longer quite so new Powerbook 12″. More specifically he’s having considerable trouble with Apple’s replacement and repair policies. He received the machine on Apil 30th, it went wrong on the 12th of May and he’s been trying to get it fixed pretty much ever since. That’s a full two months of effort during which he’s gone through Apple’s diagnostic tests, not had his computer picked up, had the machine kept by Apple for 28 days and then had it returned to him with precisely the same problem he started off with.
No. I’ve had people not call me back, an official complaint ignored, kept in the dark about time estimates, my machine sitting in a repair center for a month and not even picked up for 2 weeks. I’m not going through that again.
Customer services open at 9am Monday morning. I’ve talked with them before, they obey The System. They can’t do anything. In fact there’s no-one who can. If I don’t do what The System says, there’s nothing they can do. Enough. I’ve dealt with a broken product, tried to be a good Apple user and done what they asked. Enough. I’ve been writing down the time and length of phone calls to Apple, and what they’ve said, for the last month and a half. I’ve got the names of the people who haven’t called me back.
Enough with official channels.
I want a new computer, one that works, and I want it not in a month, but now, as it should have been to begin with. I want an apology. If it were possible, I’d want the days I’ve spent on this back, because the time this has cost me, on the phone to Apple, doing tests, moving things around,is now worth more than the machine itself.
Both Matt and I are tremendous fans of Apple computers, Apple UI and the innovation that comes out of Cupertino. But this has been happening now for months. Just from watching it happen, I’ve found myself turning from a rabid Mac evangelist to someone who wouldn’t want to risk inflicting this kind of insane process on anyone. My mother has been thinking of getting a new laptop – and I’ve been trying to move them to a Mac. But I can’t put them through this kind of thing? Do the right thing, Apple! Bloody sort yourselves out!
I linked to this the other day in the linklog, but it occurred to me that maybe I should do a kottke and pull out my contribution to Phil’s What Webloggers are reading post and stick it up here just in case anyone’s interested:
I’m currently reading Dave Eggers’ You Shall Know Our Velocity, which I was slightly dreading but now would highly recommend. After that I was hoping to muster the enthusiasm to have another stab at the last half of Larry Lessig’s The Future of Ideas. The arguments aren’t new to me, but I thought I should probably go back and read the man himself. I really need to start reading more fiction again. For a start, I need to catch up with my Neal Stephenson — I’ve not read The Confusion or Quicksilver yet. But I’ll probably end up trawling through the various social software related bits of social science that I’ve been meaning to read for ages (Schelling, Goffman, Olson, Hall) and bunking off occasionally to grab a bit of Kim Philby’s My Silent War. I’ve become a bit obsessed with the whole Cambridge Spy thing since starting work at Broadcasting House.
So Ben and Mena and Loic have been in London for meetings and a few of us managed to get together and hang out with them for a bit. We’ve got Ben drinking warm flavoursome beer, Mena puffing away on cigarettes in pubs and Loic’s been trying to run over small children with his push trolley. We even got to roam around Television Centre with them a bit today – Mena making a particularly fetching weather presenter.
Loic took some pictures too:
Much-loved weblogger, ex-colleague, dim-sum consuming, ultra-tall super-geek Phil Gyford got a well-deserved high-five today from the Guardian today in the online supplement (Man of the Moment). Much deserved, old chap! You are the r0X0r!
“It hadn’t really bothered me until it launched and everyone kept telling me what a big commitment it was,” he says. At the O’Reilly Emerging Technologies Conference last year, Clay Shirky, the respected web expert, said that he realised weblogs had a future because of Gyford’s 10-year commitment to the Pepys site. He seems taken aback that others might look to him as a shining example as what is good about the internet, but his admirers are legion. “Phil’s one of the few people in this industry who produces much more than he promises; the complete opposite of the loud new media bullshitter,” says one friend. “He not only has the savvy to understand and build complex projects … but the motivation to see them through and keep them going for years.”
The Graf report – the independent review of BBC Online – has just been published. Despite the fact that I’m basically on holiday today, I am now going to start reading it in earnest. I’ll probably knock out a summary of the key points later in the day, but in the meantime I’m going to keep the most pertinent quotes below. Be warned – this is likely to be a very long post, and only really of use if you want to get a quick sense of the material suggestions in the Graf report:
Ultimately, if BBC Online is to continue to operate in content areas that go beyond traditional programme support, the Board of Governors or whoever regulates this service will have to exercise some fine judgements. They must do so, and be seen to do so in a rigorous, open and fair minded way. (Page Six)
When asked how much they individually valued the BBC internet site, 18% of the sample said ‘very much’ or ‘quite a lot’. This grew to 36% of 16-34 year old internet users. Also, when respondents in our audience research were made aware of the amount of their licence fee invested in Online (approximately 3%), most respondents, including light and nonusers of BBC Online, felt that this sum was fairly insignificant. They considered that the opportunity presented by BBC Online, to access BBC resources in more depth and at their convenience, represented value for money. This was a similar finding to public responses at a Board of Governors Seminar in early 2003. (Page Six / Seven)
The remit and the strategic objectives, which guide BBC Online, should be more clearly defined around public purposes and/or programme-related content and should be clearly communicated to the public and the online marketplace. I recommend that:
- The BBC considers aligning online services to the framework for online public purposes and strategic priorities, as outlined in chapters 8 and 9
- BBC Online must actively seek to engage and communicate its purposes and strategic objectives to its audiences and the wider market
- BBC Online continues to act as a home and guide to the internet for those who require it; it must however develop a more consistent and transparent approach to linking to all relevant sources (commercial and public) and ensure that its search tool prioritises user experience over BBC content
- The remit and strategic objectives should be directly underpinned by a financial and performance measurement system, which clearly links the BBC’s remit and strategic objectives, through BBC-wide new media objectives down to divisional priorities. This improved clarity should work to encourage focus and further efficiencies
BBC Online should be clearly distinctive from commercial offerings. The quality of a particular service, however high, does not constitute distinctiveness per se. At times, it seems that BBCwide Online goals are not effectively transmitted to actual delivery – for example, goals of distinctiveness can lose out to the day-to-day realities of competitiveness and, in some cases, there seems little real difference between BBC Online and its commercial rivals, apart from advertising content. [particularly highlighted: What’s On / Linking Policies and Homepage design]
Given that search is becoming such a fundamental part of how the internet is used, it is worth keeping a publicly funded, UK competitor in the market place. The size of the BBC site means that it needs an internal search engine in any event; a condition of also providing a worldwide web search facility should, however, be that it is reorganised to provide a truly independent capability, i.e. not one that favours BBC sites. (Page Ten)
In future, therefore:
- BBC Online should prioritise news, current affairs, information of value to the citizen, and education. Within these areas, it should prioritise innovative, rich, interactive content
- I believe that it is legitimate for BBC Online to provide online Sport content. As a public service provider the BBC should, however, prioritise sports news, programme support, the major listed events, and the provision of material on minority sports, with an emphasis on encouraging participation. It should not be competing for other online rights, unless linked to broadcast ones
- The BBC has a role as a home on the internet for those who wish to have a safe guide and introduction to the web. To fulfil this role properly, however, the BBC needs to rethink a number of areas within BBC Online, including the purpose and layout of its home page, its site navigation, its links policy, and its search engine
I, therefore, recommend that: The BBC sets a target of, at least, 25% for online content (excluding news) supplied by external and/or independent suppliers by the end of the current charter (Page Twelve)
The technical delivery of BBC Online is of a high standard. For example, BBC Radio Player, which enables users to access their favourite radio programmes or missed interviews within a two-week window has boosted radio listener numbers, and it has been met with broad consumer approval. If additional costs can be managed, the BBC might encourage more users to access rich, audio/visual content by the use of alternative streaming products, such as Windows Player and associated codec, or an open source alternative. (Page Twelve)
The BBC should continue to develop a ‘new relationship’ with users through more extensive engagement in community/user-generated content, which would further deploy the capacity of the medium to provide opportunities for interaction between users and producers. (Page Thirteen)
The present management structure of the BBC, however, can make it difficult for an outsider to engage constructively with the organisation. Its operational structure reflects the relationship of New Media to the BBC’s Television and Radio divisions, as well as to its central policy and strategy units. BBC Online’s resulting matrix management structure has encouraged ‘360’- commissioning, and more coherent internal budget and strategy setting processes. It can, however, also create a culture and organisation that, at best is confusing and, at worst, is a recipe for dodged responsibility when dealing with third parties. (Page Thirteen)
In practical terms, a precautionary approach means that, if there is a ‘close call’ between the public service benefits of a proposed BBC Online service and the costs of that service, the proposal should not be taken forward. If the governors take this approach, they will be wary of any proposals for new online services that are not accompanied by a reasoned judgement on market impact. (Page 14)
With respect to any positive market impact of BBC Online, although it is clear that BBC Online will have stimulated some internet take-up, the evidence that this has been (or will be) a significant impact is weak. (Page 15)
Page impressions are an industry standard (in the commercial sector), which describe, or at least give some indication of the pattern in consumer demand. The BBC News website’s page impressions have grown from 21.6 million page impressions per month in December 1998 to 187.6 million in December 2002. However, any assessment of the impact of BBC Online’s news and information services presents challenges, in so much as which metrics are capable of giving a fair and meaningful description. Whilst the only consistent year on year metrics for BBC Online are page impressions, they only provide a description of how many pages have been delivered to users rather than how many individual users (or ‘unique users’) the site has, or any sense of the ‘stickiness’ of the site in terms of time spent. (Page 19)
BBC Sport online has, as an example of the impact of these types of services, reported an increase in page impressions from 33.2m to 92.8m between December 2000 and December 2002, and it now reaches 17% of the UK internet universe. Factual evidence alone, however, cannot accurately illustrate this objective’s impact on audiences. The review’s audience research revealed users and non-users alike were surprised at the extent of information and features on topics that did not necessary align with BBC broadcast programming.
The BBC has also used a number of technological solutions to enable users to access programming relevant to their interests at any time, from across the networks. For example, the BBC’s Radio Player, which streams live and archived radio programming, has been a significant step in the BBC opening up its audio archives (now available within a seven day window). It should be noted that the provision of streaming services, such as the BBC Radio Player which provides live and archived material, is a relatively complex technical process and, as a consumer proposition, constitutes a new and innovative technology-based service. However, the BBC Radio Player primarily relies on users using a single streaming application, provided by Real. Such downloads can deter new or inexperienced internet users and, on the BBC site, users cannot in most instances choose to use an alternative steaming application such as Windows Media player, which is pre-installed on any computer with a Windows operating system.
The review’s audience research presented some reservations about the design and ease of navigation from the BBC Online home page. Users, other than the very inexperienced, tend to be goal orientated, seeking to find a specific service or information as quickly as possible, but members of the public found the BBC Online homepage too cluttered and that it did not adequately serve as a guide to the rest of BBC Online. They did however find that the navigation within specific genres such as News and Radio was generally effective, particularly when indexes were kept concise and sites used minimal graphics, which they felt could unnecessarily slow download times. (Page 25)
Applications developed by the BBC, such as DNA 26 have also enabled user-generated content to be more stimulating for the user and more efficiently managed. The current growth in web log usage also allows users to contribute richer content (e.g. to news stories) in the form of text, pictures, and audio and video clips.
MORI research, conducted for the BBC, found that 7% of UK users were encouraged to go online specifically by the BBC 30. However, more detailed research would need to be undertaken to establish whether the BBC had played a key role in developing skills or building confidence.
News, education, provision for minority communities, and developing users’ confidence and skills base in new technologies reveal themselves to be the service’s key priorities. (Page 31)
There would seem to be, at best, a lack of understanding of BBC Online’s core purposes by the wider market, and at worst, an unnecessary adverse impact on their investment priorities due to other providers loss of trust in BBC management’s intentions. Such lack of understanding and trust would not be surprising given that there is some evidence to suggest that even within the BBC, the online service’s limitations are not consistently well understood. Whilst pseudo mini ‘E-bay’ sites for the sale of junior football kit or downloadable mobile phone ‘Ring tones’ may be quickly withdrawn by central editorial policy, their very emergence would suggest that Online’s remit is so broad that it risks being at times mistaken for universal. (Page 31)
Reach is a key means to ensure that increasing numbers of licence fee payers can derive some value from the BBC’s online services. This strategic goal does, however, risk the BBC being perceived by commercial operators as an aggressive, and unfairly advantaged competitive force. Submitters to the review also argued that the BBC’s current inconsistent approach to linking, the prominence of BBC Online results in its search engine, and the low level of joint venture or externally commissioned projects have compounded this impression.
The review’s discussions with BBC staff made clear that, at a senior level, content divisions have an acute sense of their responsibility to make a ‘good’ judgement as to an appropriate balance between popular services and those that more obviously provide public service value. For example, whilst Sports feel they have a responsibility to provide up-to-date, impartial sports news, they also have an obligation to provide some entertainment and encourage participation in sports (for example, through Sports Academy). This strategy of case-by-case judgement has not, however, been actively articulated or discussed with the wider market, and the Board of Governors seek the public’s views on a particular service’s success in this regard on only an ad hoc basis. (Page 34)
BBC Online’s survey of users in early 2003 revealed that approximately 22% of users were from outside the UK 40. The BBC has developed geo-locators that can, with reasonable success (particularly for broadband content), re-direct overseas traffic to the BBC’s internationally facing site, which is funded by the World Service (and subsequently Grant-in-Aid rather than the licence fee). However, until such tools can guarantee 100% accuracy, and there is no risk of licence fee payers being blocked from reaching BBC content, more stringent measures have been deemed unworkable. Members of the public who took part in the review’s research were also not unduly concerned that non-licence fee payers were able to access the content and indeed, many felt proud that the UK had such a good advocate of the British nations on the internet. Some users were also appreciative of being able to access BBC content when abroad themselves, on holiday or on business. (Page 37)
Targets relating to ‘reach’ and consumption appear as priority targets throughout the period under review. The apparent prioritisation of reach as a target for BBC Online, particularly during the services rapid build has been interpreted by many competitors as evidence of the BBC’s fiercely competitive drive to gain audiences to the disadvantage of other commercial content providers. The BBC has argued that a reach target is essential to ensure public value is maximised. The BBC’s current reach target is based on users reached amongst the UK internet universe, rather than as a percentage of licence fee payers. (Page 38)
Submissions to the review made clear a sense of cynicism towards the Governors capacity to sufficiently challenge BBC management’s advice and strategic priorities for BBC Online. The dramatic growth in BBC Online’s budget, content genres and capabilities were cited as evidence of a service that been allowed to develop under a culture of ‘imperialism’, unfettered by careful consideration of the public value or market impact. (Page 39)
It is the nature and purpose of the BBC as a public-sector body (funded by the licence fee) to affect the mix of services consumed, and nature and conduct of other suppliers involved in the markets concerned. Thus, it might create economic changes or alleged ‘distortions’, or ‘crowd out’ private enterprise and investment. Such effects are inherent to public provision. (Page 41)
The KPMG report estimates that BBC Online may have reduced the total expenditure on UK online advertising by around ‘5 million per annum (out of an estimated total of the order of ‘200 million). However, while this figure has been the subject of significant dispute, its relationship to the public interest has not been established. We have not seen any reason why an online advertising market worth ‘X million per annum is any better or worse for the public interest than an online advertising market worth ‘Y million per annum. Some commercial operators have sought to demonstrate that BBC Online has an adverse market impact by showing that it diverts audiences and thereby revenues away from their own businesses. However, we found no reason why a consumer’s decision to use a BBC Online service rather than a commercial service should be considered in itself to be a factor operating against the public interest. (If BBC Online attracts audience in a way that has an adverse impact on competition this would be relevant to the assessment, as explained below.) (Page 43)
A common complaint about the BBC is that ‘the playing field is not level’. BBC Online has considerable competitive advantages derived from its access to licence fee revenues, and the cross-promotional and other resources that are connected to the BBC. If the BBC wants to provide certain online services it will almost certainly be able to do so, and does not need to receive any user revenues in order to justify its investment. However, genuine though they obviously are, and even though they might have adverse effects on competition as discussed below, these advantages do not preclude effective competition in the markets supplied by BBC Online. Effective competition does not need a level playing field. For instance, in the context of television the BBC competes against ITV1, Sky One and many others, and competition for audience appears generally effective despite the BBC’s funding advantages.
The development of the BBC’s online activities may also affect competition in other types of markets, such as those for technology. For example, the BBC’s principal choice of Real Networks’ proprietary audio and video encoding and streaming technologies means that consumers wishing to access the BBC’s online multimedia content will generally need to download and install RealPlayer on their computer. This feature could be considered to increase competition in markets for encoding software (on the grounds that other online providers can rely on the existence of a significant UK user base with access to RealPlayer, as well as to Windows Media Player which is pre-installed on the majority of computers), or to damage such competition (on the grounds that other/new encoding technologies are shut out from the market and cannot match either Microsoft’s or Real’s ability to establish a significant installed user base).
However, any potential adverse effect on competition arising from a requirement for Internet users to install RealPlayer in order to access BBC Online content would only exist if there was no alternative way for users to access substitutable content, which is to say in connection with a relevant content market in which BBC Online was in a dominant position. In these circumstances, competition law would place a special obligation on the BBC to avoid such a lessening of competition (as it would amount to an abuse of a dominant position).
For example, the existence (and editorial strength) of The BBC News website may have deterred newspaper publishers from introducing subscription charges on their online news websites, and thereby precluded investment in enhanced or specialised services on these sites, such as better archive searching tools and/or personalised news delivery services that would produce a genuinely customised online newspaper. At the current stage of market development we observe a mixture of free, registration-only, pay-per-view and pay-subscription models for online news content, which suggests that managerial decisions over appropriate business models could be a close call. For this reason, the impact of BBC Online, with a deep and wide supply of free news content, seems capable of having affected such decisions, and therefore of having affected the business models currently applied. In this way, BBC Online might have prevented ‘focused’ competition in these value-added and/or specialist services, and instead forced all UK mainstream news providers to compete with the BBC and with each other in broader online news markets. This outcome can be contrasted with professional business and financial news, where BBC Online does not operate and commercial providers compete in supplying a range of high-value-added subscription services. (Page 54)
Whilst these examples indicate that, in theory, BBC Online may have lessened competition in a range of online content markets, commercial stakeholders did not provide robust evidence (such as business plans or strategy papers) that could support these hypotheses. It has been put to us that the impact of BBC Online is so large that many investment ideas never get off the drawing board. This factor could reconcile the lack of evidence with the hypothesis that BBC Online has a significant deterrent effect.
Whilst this review did not uncover incontrovertible evidence that BBC Online has lessened competition in online and related markets, the level of concern among commercial operators and the inherent plausibility of the mechanism can be taken as an indication of the probability of future impacts of this nature. These impacts may be caused both by BBC Online’s supply of online content markets and by its supply of wholesale content markets. (Page 57)
Increased broadband and 3G access speeds and new compression technologies are already allowing a faster transfer of data to PCs and mobile handsets and this trend will accelerate over the next five years. Average broadband connection speeds will increase rapidly, permitting the reliable delivery of high resolution streaming and the rapid downloading of near-broadcast quality video. Mobile handsets will also become viable mainstream devices for downloading and consuming content, as hardware (including processor, storage, and display features) and software develop ‘ although such services are unlikely to become widely available at ‘massmarket’ prices for several years. These developments will make the Internet a genuine potential ‘third broadcasting medium’ for BBC content and services. BBC Online already provides live and archived (from the previous week) access to all of the BBC’s radio services, which can be consumed via a narrowband (at a tolerable sound quality) or broadband connection. Over the next two to three years, it will also become perfectly possible for many Internet users to stream or download full-length BBC television programmes (as opposed to just video clips); within the next five years, the majority of mobile devices will be capable of receiving and storing live and archived BBC radio (e.g. the ‘Chart Show’) and limited television (e.g. news bulletins; comedy clips) services. (Page 60)
The growing popularity of audio and video services over the Internet makes them a central component of future online service offerings, from a consumer point of view; as such, these services will be an area of core strategic importance for the BBC (and its competitors) in the coming years. As a publicly funded content provider, the BBC must strive for the optimal balance between distinctiveness, on the one hand, and audience reach on the other ‘ as well as the ability to influence the overall market. The provision of an appropriate level of audio and video services will be an important element in achieving this balance, and in preserving the attractiveness and relevance of BBC Online in the future. (Page 61)
More to come… (Sorry about the length – I’m really just pulling out the stuff I think is immediately pertinent and I know there’s a fair amount of it). I might filter it down a little later, or embolden the stuff that I think’s particularly interesting.
Over the last two weeks I have bought 53 songs from the iTunes Music Store. I didn’t expect to buy any. I just get bored easily and then I’m there, mucking around, roaming around, desperately looking for some new exciting way to throw money away. And yes – it’s true that there’s a fairly limited selection of music on the store and that is a considerable problem (of the five hundred and fifty odd songs that my iTunes stash considers to be “Five Star”, only 135 are anywhere on the store that I can find (Music Store link: One Hundred Pounds of Plastic Perfection). But despite the limited selection, if you dig around it is more than possible to find some really good old classic stuff (The Slits: I Heard it Through the Grapevine) or stuff you’ve discovered from Audioscrobbler (Modest Mouse’s Float On) or really interesting cover versions (Ryan Adams’ Wonderwall or (for geeks) They Might be Giants’ Whe Does the Sun Shine). And then there’s all that stuff that you listened to when you were a teenager or a kid and realistically you can’t just go out and buy it because that would be really embarrassing, but you can just download it and – it’s not the same as buying it, OK. Which I think excuses some of the cheesier things that I’ve bought (cough – the shame). And then there’s the watching something on TV and just going, “Well I kind of like it, and it’s only 79p…” (Music from the OC How Good it Can Be). And the odds and sods of Classical Music that the store actually excels in providing… Like when I needed to listen to Strauss’ Blue Danube Waltz about million times at work a couple of weeks back.
Okay – I admit it. The iTunes UK Music Store UK may have opened up a few really good songs for me, but it’s also almost forced me to download about a million really cheesy bits of crap. You guys have to save me. Have you found any hidden gems?
You go away for two days and all hell breaks loose. But then again, who cares – it’s someone else’s hell, right? Completely randomly and spontaneously on Wednesday I decided that I’d go up and visit my family for a couple of days to try and get some mental perspective. Two days with my brother and beautiful views and use of a car and some decent food and totally quiet sleeping environments. Terrifyingly calming. See if you can guess the common feature of the following photos:
That’s right! They don’t have any bloody fucking people in them! Arriving back in London on a Saturday afternoon in Midsummer was like being stuck in a bloody battery farm after being free range. I’m finding it harder and harder to deal with all .. the .. bloody .. morons .. milling around London at two miles an hour, holding hands while walking about three feet apart from each other, glancing in each other’s eyes longingly and casually swinging their pastel shopping bags around while behind them fifty or sixty people are stuck at their pedestrian snail’s pace – each and everyone thinking so loud it must be practically audible, “What the fuck is wrong with you people?! And would there be a jury in the land who would convict me if I pulled out a sword right now and ran you all through?!”
