The last few hours I have been filling my head with the use of open standards and how media companies in particular are opening up to users.

The BBC - courtesy of the folks behind Backstage are opening up their archive. Futurelabin Bristol are promoting the use of open source in education. MintDigital are talking TV companies into opening up to Youtube and letting their users create content. Talking to Jem Stone from the BBC, Jo Morrison from Futurelab and Andy Bell from MintDigital, the common theme seems to be that the next generation in media and education will be driven by groups who are comfortable with letting the audience have access to more of the levers of communication.

This is a message which has a little way to go before it takes hold in industry, but some brands have made a start, particularly in their marketing communications - Guinness by blogging, Firefox by asking their customers to make commercials. Meanswhile LG are giving their new chocolate phone only to bloggers. It would be great to see some of the ideas from this conference rehearsed for the directors of brand marketing who are our customers at Market Sentinel and who are champing at the bit to take part in the conversations they are tracking with our software, but don’t know where to start.

More location based mobile immersive game examples can be found here

I think that there’s so much more yet to happen in this field now that smart systems that are actually smart are emerging.

I have signed up for the RFID tracking installation at b.tween and urge you to do it….

You should also read the AllPointsBlog for up to date location stuff.

Also found this article on the location based mobile game “Phone Tag” created by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon’s company.

One of the things that we are committed to doing is putting b.TWEEN at the intersection between commercial creativity and the experimental creativity happening on the blurred edges of commercial world. After all , most of the companies that this event is aimed at hail more from arts backgroud than a business one. As such, though all things business are doubtlessly crucial if small companies are to stay afloat in an increasingly competitive marketplace, it is creative inspiration that separates our products from those of our competitors. To get your creative juices flowing, we like to add plenty garnish to our bread and butter, and this year some of this inspiration will come to you in the form of a public facing interactive showcase

Two works will take pride of place in this showcase, the first two b.TWEEN commissions
The first of these is b.TWEEN 2 cultures, a collaboration between internationally renowned creative technologists Soda Creative and Chinese media artist Yang Lei. Provoked by fragments of text, b.TWEEN2cultures juxtaposes tagged culturally relevant images from Chinese and UK cultures that suggest shared meaning

You can contribute to the project by uploading images at Flickr.com. If you have photographs relating to Chinese culture then simply add the tag btweenchina, if you have photographs relating to UK culture then tag them with btweenuk. Continue to identify any of these images with additional tags that express their specific meaning to you. Tag your images at Flickr.com to join the conversation and explore the results at b.tween2cultures.net. Get uploading!

The second is by Someth;ng, a talented, emerging and ambitious creative technology collective based in the North of London. They develop innovative concepts that exploit the potential of interactive media; generating new experiences and engaging audiences in unique ways.

Their work, b.TWEEN Timelines is a world first interactive application and will equip each delegate with a smart RFID tag, allowing tracking of movements and interactions between delegates. It will invite ‘temporal bookmarking’ and providing data to create an online visualisation. It will allow delegates to locate other attendees with shared interests and provide a searchable archive of the two-day event. Something have been on a steep learning curve working with this pioneering technology, and have successfully managed to stretch their commission budget through attracting sponsors left right and centre. They will beta test the application at Cybersonica this weekend - can’t wait to see how the visual interface has panned out.
we’ll also be showing a SCAN commission by Igloo: Summerbranch- fab dance technology company that we have known and loved for some time - their work has continuted to push boundaries over the years

Last but definitely not least, two of the cybersonica commissions will feature at the event, Fijuu by Julian Oliver and Steven Pickles and Freq 2 by Squidsoup

Top Web sites in April 2006: Yahoo!, Microsoft.com, MSN, Google by ZDNet’s ZDNet Research — In April 2006 Yahoo!, Microsoft.com, MSN and Google received over 90 mln unique visitors. Yahoo! was the only one to break the 100 mln unique visitors barrier, according to Nielsen//NetRatings data.

Top Web sites in April 2006

Web site          Audience 000,  Time spent

Yahoo!                105,4443:10:02

Microsoft              95,7770:45:25

MSN                    92,7861:38:53

Google                92,1200:52:48

AOL                    70,4336:11:06

eBay                   53,4651:53:00

MapQuest            40,8010:10:53

MySpace              38,3592:06:46

Real.com              38,1830:47:48

Amazon               37,8540:19:37

Source: Nielsen//NetRatingsITFacts also published Web traffic findings for top sites in March 2006, top sites in February […]

As we are seeing (click here for nielen/netrating figures), social network sites continue their spectacular rise. Yet another aspect of community that is growing. Social Radio, shared and social video (Youtube etc.) and out and out social networking sites are all rocketing in size and reach. The nielsen figures show MySpace dominating as a service but when you look also at the retention figures the order lower down the list changes a little with Facebook scoring highly.

I like this because it confirms that standard behaviour is occuring online. We read so much about ‘new behaviours’ but the fact that smaller sites have great retention bodes well for up and coming and new ventures in this space and shows that a sustainable model based on satisfied cutomers is possible even if you dont attain MySpace scale - i.e. when you plan to launch something aim clearly at a market and serve that market well.   They will reward you with loyalty.

As we are seeing (click here for nielen/netrating figures), social network sites continue their spectacular rise. Yet another aspect of community that is growing. Social Radio, shared and social video (Youtube etc.) and out and out social networking sites are all rocketing in size and reach. The nielsen figures show MySpace dominating as a service but when you look also at the retention figures the order lower down the list changes a little with Facebook scoring highly.

I like this because it confirms that standard behaviour is occuring online. We read so much about ‘new behaviours’ but the fact that smaller sites have great retention bodes well for up and coming and new ventures in this space and shows that a sustainable model based on satisfied cutomers is possible even if you dont attain MySpace scale - i.e. when you plan to launch something aim clearly at a market and serve that market well. They will reward you with loyalty.

Just reading Tomi T Ahonen’s latest post about Mobile becoming accepted as the newest mass medium. I was interested in the way that he chose to make the presentation of them structured historically by date. This is something i have done regularly at presentations and confererences myself - in a different way but with the same result.

A couple of things fascinate me. One is the fact that most of these new mass media have appeared in the last 120 years or so - as the industrial revolution died down. The second thing is that the latest two, Internet and Mobile seem to mark the way forward into truly personal media (is there such thing as personal mass media?).

Looking at the historical side of things is interesting because the discovery of Movable Type printing was a huge factor enabling the enlightenment. Information accurately and quickly disseminated enabled learning to become a pursuit in itself. This expansion of learning was one factor in creating the explosion that was the industrial revolution which, let us not forget, changed everything down to the way we live.

Will this happen again? Will instant access, smart personalised content have a similarly profound and long term effect as did printing? Most of the mass media outlined have only existed within the last 100 years or so; there is clearly something profound happening. One wonders what explosion will be unlocked in society over the next 100 years.

Read this article by Kevin Kelly on the digitisation of print and the emerging online library of scanned texts. Worth a  read if a little evangelical in tone. He talks with great energy about the ultimate triumph of the digital text over print.

MTV has announced that it is to launch an audience-controlled channel brand that will focus entirely on broadcasting user-generated content across TV, the Internet and mobile phones…they claim that users will be able to control the length and nature of ads, the content delivered, setup playlists, show their own content AND mashup content provided by MTV and advertisers. Another great way for advertisers to screw up…remember Cillit Bang anyone?

Hope the channel does what it says and it isn’t just token changes. i also wonder if the audience really willl “want their MTV?”