Boo!

Spent a really enjoyable couple of hours with the people at audioBoo in the run up to Christmas, discussing their product, their plans for the future and having a think about how media organisations could use the technology.

audioBoo is fabulously simple application for the iPhone and Android (other platforms coming soon) that allows users to record and publish snippets of high quality audio to the web. 'Boos' can be tagged with appropriate topics, pictures can be added - and the phone's GPS can be automatically applied to geo-locate the snippet.

Your 'boos' are published on audioboo.fm, where you can then Tweet them in the direction of your followers (this can also be done automatically from your phone) or post them to Facebook.

But you can also do a couple of other very clever things; iTunes integration means that you can turn your stream of 'boos' into a regular podcast that anyone with an iTunes account can subscribe to - without the fuss of  specialist podcast maker and the fiddly manipulation normally required. Plus - you can also easily 'map' your content by dropping the automatically produced RSS feed link into Google Maps like this: Ian's audioBoo

Very smart. Very simple. Very organised. A properly thought out offering. Lots of potential.

If you fancy signing up, you can get an audioBoo account here and give it a whirl for free - and you can find out a bit more about how audioBoo by simply clicking here

Getting excited about making things

It's been a long time in the making, but I'm delighted to be able to announce the partnership between Press Association and Vizimo to create a new range of video on demand (VOD) and linear TV discovery services for digital platforms.

We're hard at work on design and development at the moment; Simon Steward's (@ssteward) team at Vizimo are working their magic with the wires and valves on the back-end, and award-winning digital agency Feed Communications  - led by Matt Lynch (@mrindustrialist) - are making sure the functionality is delivered through sound user experience and good design. They've also produced a brand identity that encapsulates the vision perfectly.

We'll be releasing details of the products very soon, but if you want to read the press release, you could simply click here...

FT Product Management chief to head up AOP Committee

Great news that the Association of Online Publishers (AOP) has appointed the #FT's Mary Beth Christie as Chair of the body's Product Development Committee.

According to a release on the AOP website , the committee has been tasked to ensure digital publishers maximise value from their investments in technology and it's remit will cover a broad range of subjects - from the diversification of revenues to emerging technologies. It will also seek to promote intuitive product selection and best practice in product development.

Find out more on the AOP Website

Berlin: 20 years after the wall fell

It's astonishing that 20 years have passed since the Berlin Wall fell (or was essentially pushed over, as some commentators have rightly pointed out).

On a recent visit to Berlin I was even more astonished that such a divisive construction ever saw the light of day - and the ham-fisted way in which an administrative line, there to allow the rebuilding of a ravaged city, became an impenetrable barrier between friends and families for such a lengthy period of time.






Berlin has responded well in the aftermath, though. Fantastic new architecture has sprung up with the influx of funds into the former East and there is a feeling of vibrancy across the city - all alongside poignant reminders of the wall which are excellently explained to visitors via a series of street illustrations at key points on the course of the former wall.

The wall itself is dicreetly identified by a strip of cobbles encircling the city.

If you haven't been - go.

The Internet turns 40 (no, really)

It always ceases to amaze me that at the business end of 2009, nearly ten years after the narrow escape from the millennium bug, people frequently continue to refer to the Internet as this just-landed-from-space, unrecognisable, new thing that we should dare to consider a fabulous and exciting business opportunity (once we've let it bed down a bit, naturally).

When I tell those same people that I've spent my entire career (11 years and counting) delivering content online, it normally produces a tremendously baffled look - so I can't imagine how they'd feel if they found out that the Internet's genesis can be traced back a whopping 40 years to the development of Arpnet in 1969

Welcome to the future... It really is already here.

Is it impossible to innovate in large organisations?

Perhaps not, but Orange's engagement with Nesta (the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts) - an independent body with a mission to make the UK more innovative - on their Orange Service Call + Reward (#OSCR) initiative marks a very visible acceptance that small companies have a lot to offer in the digital media space.

In brief, OSCR provides an opportunity for "innovators" to put forward ideas, developments or products that may ultimately be implemented by Orange in the future - but with a bit more of a twist.

Uniquely, a pot of £100,000 has been made available to help nurture up to 10 successful initial propositions for presentation to Orange. During this initial phase, applications are managed by appointed independent parties and money can be allocated to help originators Intellectual Property protection and patents - or to help refine and polish the proposition or product.

Orange gets no sight of the proposals until a formal submission date. Then it has a tight 90-day window to progress them, after which the originator is perfectly free to take the idea elsewhere.

It's an innovative, open approach to Product Development that seems to exploit the strengths of both camps; a company like Orange (and there are similar approaches being adopted by other large organisations) can bring their refined brand vision and the standing of an established, existing proposition to groups of people who are monitoring technological development closely - and are nimble enough to capitalise and create.

You can read about the specific mechanisms of the project on the OSCR website and there are videos and comments on NESTA's Connect blog

Can a bunch of bloggers change the world?

I hope so.

Today, thousands of bloggers across the world will unite for Blog Action Day to post on one issue - climate change.

The goal is simple; to influence the thinking of world leaders at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP15 Copenhagen) in December so that a unilateral political agreement to lower carbon emissions worldwide can be agreed.

Given that the world is still talking about how to begin to tackle the problem in 2009, it’s bewildering that I wrote my first significant ‘work’ on climate change more than 20 years ago in 1988 – a secondary school project completed at the age of 13 which even then highlighted the threat to the ozone layer, the horror of deforestation in the Amazon and the need to explore cleaner fuels to power our cars and to generate electricity.

This is not a new issue. This is no longer a scientific debate about whether global warming does or doesn’t exist. The evidence is accepted as being clear and irrefutable. Climate change is happening - and it’s happening at an alarming rate.

Still cynical? Then take a look at the frightening images being catalogued by the Extreme Ice Survey’s remote cameras from the world’s retreating glaciers. The clip below – representing just two years of retreat between 2007 and 2009 – needs little explanation, justification or ratification.


AK-03 Columbia Cliff from Extreme Ice Survey on Vimeo

Perhaps more disturbingly, recent evidence collected by Polar explorer Pen Hadow, subsequently analysed by the Polar Ocean Physics Group at the University of Cambridge, supports what Professor Peter Wadhams calls a “consensus view” that Arctic will be ice-free in summer within about 20 years.

No, this is no longer a debate about the science, this is a political issue. Copenhagen should represent a vital opportunity to make unprecedented progress – and failure by the world’s leaders to take that opportunity must not be an option, according to incoming COP15 president, Connie Hedegaard on the COP15 website.

“If the whole world comes to Copenhagen and leaves without making the needed political agreement, then I think it’s a failure that is not just about climate.

“It’s the whole global democratic system not being able to deliver results in one of the defining challenges of our century. And that is and should not be a possibility. It’s not an option”

So, if you feel strongly. Pop a few wise words on a blog and submit it to the Blog Action Day site as soon as you can.

What does power look like?

I've been inspired to trawl through my extensive collection of photographs to see if I have something strong enough to submit to Wired UK's current photography competition.

The magazine is asking for entries inspired by the following words: power, disruptive and future.

For month one, the focus is power - a word which has a startling 32 definitions according to Dictionary.com and provides a challenge to relish in terms of photography.

I don't have a favoured entry yet, but I'm building a shortlist set on Flickr which includes the Plugged-In Space Invader below (found quite lost on a wall in Kensal Rise), some interesting shots of London landmark Battersea Power Station taken at a public presentation of proposed plans to revamp it, and some some more interesting displays of political power: The Berlin Wall and historic Apartheid-era signage from Cape Town's enlightening District Six Museum.

But, if a picture can paint a thousand words, there's no reason to delay the imminent full stop (you can always simply click here... to take a look for yourselves).

The future's bright... the future's iPhone

I've spent the past three months in protracted, unnecessary discussions with O2 after failing at the first hurdle (the O2 credit check) to get an iPhone 3GS on its release day earlier this year.

My first reaction when the credit check computer said no was to fly into a panic and assume the worst - that some horrid accidentally-underpaid electricity bill from my student days had resurfaced as a particularly virulent black mark against my sound credit history.

An online Experian credit check (who can resist Michael Buerk's smiling face on the welcome page of the site?), followed by some marathon-length phone calls revealed that the reality was somewhat different; my address simply isn't recognised by Equifax, O2's appointed agency.

Unfathomably, I live in a block of flats with 160 addresses and while some were listed, their list read like a winning lottery entry, with a completely random distribution of properties - one, seven, eight, 34, 56, 82, etc... Like the lottery, it seems I just missed out.

But with the news that Orange will be offering the iPhone in the UK before Christmas, coupled to the fact I'm a long-standing Orange customer, I'm hoping my days as an outcast are finally behind me.

Tablet wars

Feverish gossip about the fabled Apple Tablet has been keeping message boards busy for months, but will the surprise 'leak' of Microsoft's 'skunkworks' Courier project - and the release of a pretty slick promo video (see below from YouTube) - prompt Apple to get their product out for Christmas?



Come on Apple, show us what you've got up your sleeve.

Time to leave paywalls out in the cold?

For all the talk of erecting paywalls, implementing micropayments or bundling subscriptions for online news content, the one voice that seems to have been missing from the debate is that of the [potential] customer.

The publication of the Guardian's paidContent:UK/Harris Interactive poll, then, brings that muted voice starkly to the head of the debate. And guess what? It doesn’t look like users want to pay at all – in fact, it seems that only five percent of online news consumers would be prepared to pay even a miniscule sum to access news content online.

To those of us who’ve had significant experience of producing and delivering web content, this is wholly unsurprising - not because of a fundamental opposition to an Internet pay-model (it’s clearly worked for iTunes, the Apple App Store, and even FT.com), but because it represents such a fundamental U-turn from the status quo - and, more worryingly, pays little or no attention to user behaviour in what is an almost totally measurable medium.

For newspapers and magazines the payment model worked, and, to an extent still works, well. By paying a fee for a newspaper or magazine, customers feel a certain loyalty to the riches inside; they will undoubtedly read more than a single piece of content to ‘get their money’s worth’.

The exact breakdown of what they choose to read within that publication was never such an important issue though; the publisher had already earned its money when the publication left the shelf or landed on the doormat. Put simply, it didn’t matter if the half-page filler on P32 didn’t get read.

The web is different – and consumers have no such loyalty to a single publication or brand. Instead - guided by Google and increasingly by recommendations and shared links from friends across the social networks – users happily skip from site to site with a vigorous devotion to the content they seek –but not necessarily to the platform where that content is found (think BBC or ITV television programmes on YouTube).

Of course, consumers will still want to access content from sites they trust, but being free of any financial commitment they can still choose where they want to go at a particular time, for a particular need.

But – hold the front page - there is a positive in all this; the appetite for news doesn’t appear to be diminishing. People still want quality content, they just want to be able to access it in a different ways.

We need to find solutions to service that need, rather than trying to retro-impose the “come in and read all our content for a fee” rationale on an audience that behaves quite differently.

simply click here... goes mobile

Barely a week after launch, this blog has been dragged kicking and screaming into the technological mid-two thousands by the arrival of a shiny new piece of kit (a new BlackBerry to replace the late 90's version I'd been using until now) which offers the ability to take pictures, write and even post on the go.

It's a world of opportunity...

Finally... photos from Vietnam (on Flickr)

After three months of dithering, I’ve finally managed to publish my photographs of a simultaneously fascinating, inspiring and exhausting trip to Vietnam in May and June of this year.

Arriving in chaotic Saigon (or Ho Chi Minh City), we travelled into the heart of the Mekong Delta, before heading back through Saigon to Na Trang by train - then on to Danang, Hoi An, Hue, Hanoi and finally Halong Bay (with a final flamboyant flourish in Bangkok thrown in for good measure).

The New Museum of Contemporary Art, Bowery St, Manhattan/New York.

The New Museum of Contemporary Art, Bowery St, Manhattan/New York.
Originally uploaded by Ian LDN

I was inspired to look back at my photographs of New York by the 9/11 commemorations.

The positive intent behind this message - and the brilliant, innovative building (New York's New Museum of Contemporary Art) - seemed an appropriate way to acknowledge the day.

A week in Tweets: A self-referential post mortem

Although initially sceptical about Twitter - and I remain so with respects to the pointless bandwagoning-without-thought approach that a number of brands and organisations cynically adopt - I've grown to appreciate it as an invaluable professional tool for sharing snippets of information and being able to point friends, colleagues and contacts towards interesting stuff on the web.

I’ll never warm to the lexicon that’s inevitably developed - and will continue to develop - around the platform (Twitterverse, etc), but I do like the fact that that these little chirps don’t need to form a conversation. A little like SHOUTING at the TV when there’s nobody else in the house.

Have I (@ianjamesdavies) been able to impart any gems to my “followers” on Twitter this week, then? I started off in positive mood on Monday - looking ahead to an Association of Online Publishers event I was due to attend later in the week, before pointing people towards the first interactive MPU I’ve bothered clicking since McCain’s seminal “roast your own potatoes” ad in 2007.

Later that day I had my first Twitter exchange with C21 Media’s Jon Webdale (@webdaley) over the BBC’s improvements to its PS3 iPlayer product, then on Tuesday I alerted the world to Google’s Monopoly City Streets launch and I will forever try to claim responsibility for the traffic that swamped its servers on the following day.

On Wednesday, feeling positive after the AOP event, I sent out a little post-seminar update, but then took a slight diversion into celebrity, telling the Twobe (somebody, somewhere has surely put Twitter and Globe together to produce such a horrid term) that I was watching Philip Glenister and Keeley Hawes shooting a new series of Ashes to Ashes on the land surrounding Battersea Power Station.

Naturally, that little titbit was retweeted several times by total strangers and I’m still receiving replies - including this gem:

indierawk @ianjamesdavies seriously you saw keeley hawes and phillip glenister shooting A2A! I bet they looked the shiz!!

Ian

That dreaded first blog post...

Where on earth to start? I don't really have much on my mind - other than the pressure of delivering an astonishingly original, earth-shatteringly powerful foreword to this blog; a piece of content that can forever stand the test of time by effortlessly blending an ingrained understanding of the art, while demonstrating something fundamentally new, exciting and unseen.

If I haven't done so already, I'm about to fail.

Anyway, welcome to the blog - my little collection of kilobytes on the Internet where I'll hopefully be able to pass on little snippets of interestingness and share opinions (in addition to providing a slightly self-indulgent opportunity for catharsis).

Ian

PS - Are we still capping up the "I" in Internet, these days? Thoughts on a postcard...