Interesting Stuff 2009-02-07
Firstly, the sad news that Katherine Everett (right) one of the pioneers of the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s adventures in "new media", . She was 51.
The ´óÏó´«Ã½'s director of Vision :
Katharine was also a pioneer on the broadcasting side of the industry. More than 10 years ago, Katharine led the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s groundbreaking approach to digital television, modern channel planning and new services, and integrated interactivity in the heart of our shows."
She will be greatly missed and much remembered."
Project Kangaroo -- a venture that would have made content from the ´óÏó´«Ã½, ITV and Channel 4 available on one on-demand service -- by the . You can .
Media Guardian's Mark Sweney .
The decision hasn't been popular with advertisers. Matt Simpson, chairman of the IPA Digital Media Group, :
Kangaroo was held by a lot of agencies as a potential catalyst for spending and investment into digital."
The Times' business editor David Wighton :
It's hard to contemplate being cruel to a Kangaroo - but the Competition Commission has ruthlessly hunted down Project Kangaroo, a website that had promised to give viewers the best of British television in one place, for free."
Our long-running discussions about the Points of View message board has led to . Jemima Kiss delightfully describes the debate as a "brouhaha". Our own Nick Reynolds says there's no "conspiracy" to shut the boards, but rather:
We're trying to be very open about it. We're thinking aloud..."
Jemima throws her thoughts into the ring with:
I can recognise the concerns from users, especially if they have built up a community of fellow regulars on a format that works for them. But I can't help feeling that longer term, messageboards have too little structure to easily invite newer users, are complex to browse and don't have the topicality of chronologically organised blogs. Aren't they just a legacy format, headed the same way as betamax? It's not that blogs are the perfect answer, but that answer is probably a combination of many things far more open and distributable than messageboards.
And the Points of View communitity have reacted and commented.
As a final thought, Blogcetera asks the questoin "":
Sport has been one the most promoted services particular football, but it does tend to turn into a video version of that old standby the "Spot the Ball" competition."
His argument reminded me of a by (´óÏó´«Ã½ employee) Jon Jacob:
What hit home more than anything else was the way I was watching it. In recent months I've done battle with a man who reckoned that people are incapable of concentrating on small videos for any longer than 3 minutes. Any more than the magic three minutes and they'll lose interest and go some place else. Nonsense, I responded to him in an email. If the subject material is good people will watch."
Dave Lee is co-editor, ´óÏó´«Ã½ Internet blog, ´óÏó´«Ã½ Online, ´óÏó´«Ã½ Future Media & Technology.
Comment number 1.
At 8th Feb 2009, Ed Lyons wrote:I download iPlayer content and convert DVD content to watch on my iPhone to and from work on my 50 minute train journey. It's ideal really, and I wish the ´óÏó´«Ã½ would officially support downloading the content.
Unless you have aggressive buffering though, downloading over the air is not going to be terribly suitable for me (and other people on long train or underground journeys). I loose phone signal for maybe 5% of the journey, often for minutes at a time, so pre-downloading makes more sense than streaming to mobiles.
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Comment number 2.
At 9th Feb 2009, The Phazer wrote:I too would love downloads to the iPhone, but unless Apple pulls it's head out of it's backside and starts licencing Fairplay to third parties like the ´óÏó´«Ã½, it ain't going to happen.
It's a shame that the Competition Commission don't spend more time looking at anti-competitive behaviour like that, instead of their cack handed handling of the Kangaroo judgement (which was right, but for completely the wrong reasons).
Phazer
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