It’s easy to sit here and talk about the benefits of open source business (of which there are many), but what happens when it goes wrong or someone operates counter to the spirit? (more…)

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.

I, like millions of others, got a vPod for Christmas. I remember, not so very long ago, wondering who on earth would want to watch piccies or moving content on a square little bigger than a postage stamp. Then I got the vPod. Soon I was an evangelical convert. The image is clear and the viewing experience intimate. Unfortunately, there seems to be a dearth of content made specifically for them. I want heaps of engaging episodic stories please… and if I want them I can only imagine there will be many others like me wanting them too.

Two of our speakers are building very similar businesses around exactly this user need and will talk about them at 2.15 on Thursday. Richard is hoping to deliver audio books in episodes, Will is running a portal site called Clickwheel delivering much covetted content to comic book addicts. Comics are quick. They are easy to absorb on the go. Comics are easy. Easy to read and also easy to make. Easy, quick and addictive. He is delivering comic book as podcast – seems like an obvious way to distribute content !! So why aren’t more people doing it? It’s only a matter of time until more people catch on to this and develop ever more sophisticated models based around aggregation and content delivery.

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.

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.

Ok, just over a week to go to the b.tween conference. We would really like to get you start submitting comments, themes, questions or asking me (katz) on here, about the conference content. Each session will be very interactive; we will be blogging the event and using chat systems to enable all visitors and interested parties outside to take part.

Any contributions via this blog or diect to me would be welcome.

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?”

I was talking with someone about the impacts of web 2.0 and related trends on the marketing world and got to talking about radio and how sponsorship in that field should move. given that a huge ammount of brands now run their own radio stations (and successfully so - look at the radio channels on Sky). It seems that radio took hold of the idea of owning the channel and distribution in a way that brands haven’t yet on TV (I know theres the Audi channel). I was driven to think though that with the advent of social radio such as Last FM and mercora’s Radio 2.0 that this brief jump into taking control could actually be a dead end. How do brands begin to look at radio when it’s entirely driven by listeners exploiting a purely technical platform? Are we back to sticking banners on things? I am not saying radio is going away by the way… If music is distributed by the listeners for the listeners then what price a branded channel? Will brands have to start developing talent themeselves? Could Cillit Bang develop the loudest band in the world or might Microsft start developing bands who’s instrunments regularly crash during gigs?