Turing test: fail

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Dear Mr Thompson. In regards to your recent contact with Carphone Warehouse Sales Team we value your feedback. Please answer the following few Qs at no cost

"OK", I thought.

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Apple Exploring Original Programming Move, Could Compete with Netflix | Variety →

This seems like a weird idea to me. Why would Apple care about "original content"?

The network of competitors/partners in the TV & film industry are pretty confusing at the moment. I guess the logic here is that Apple currently has its Apple TV hardware product, but wants to be pushing the Movies & TV aspect of the iTunes Store harder. So - exclusive content would help it to compete to be the first port of call for people wanting to download video stuff.

But video stuff covers a lot — for example;

  • TV stuff that is free-to-air
  • TV stuff that is part of a paid-for TV subscription package (ie. Sky or Virgin in the UK.)
  • TV stuff that is part of a paid-for on-demand package (eg. Netflix, Amazon Prime.)
  • Free online video (eg. YouTube)
  • Must-watch films (ie. the stuff that, if it isn't available on subscription services like Netflix, people will pay to rent/buy from somewhere like iTunes.)

Right now, Apple's TV platform (ie. "Apple TV" + "iTunes Store") sits very much in that bottom point — I don't think anyone is discovering films or TV shows they had never heard of in iTunes.

But - you can still use your Apple TV to access other content. Netflix has long been available on pretty much any device that supports it, and has been on Apple TV for as long as I can remember. HBO Now launched exclusively on Apple devices - sitting in the "paid TV" category.

I guess the thing is that Apple TV/iTunes Store are two things. One is a hardware platform - a box that puts video stuff on your telly. The other is a distribution platform - a place to go to get content.

If Apple want to focus on the iTunes Store, then they should be looking at exclusive content — a reason to go to Apple first for video. And that would make the Apple TV a better product.

But if they want to focus on the Apple TV, then they should be looking at partnerships — making sure that Amazon customers, Netflix subscribers, YouTube fans, Blu-Ray buyers with their download codes etc. all get their stuff on their TVs with as little hassle as possible.

Traditionally, Apple's approach has been about making better software to sell their hardware. Developing exclusive content for the Apple TV feels like a different direction.

I guess we will see next week when they (probably) unveil the new Apple TV.

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Those headed for the top add print to their digital reading - FT.com →

Interesting piece around the screen vs paper reading experience.

Back in the 1960s/70s, Eric McLuhan (son of Marshall McLuhan) created the "Fordham experiment", which involved showing two groups of people the same piece of film, one group as a film-like projection from behind the audience, and the other as a TV-like projection from behind the screen. The outcome is that the two groups showed clear differences in the way they percieve the film (there is a story about one of the groups in one screening launghing so much that someone from the second group went around to check if they were actually watching the same thing.)

I've seen plenty of anecdotal evidence (and experienced it myself) of reading the same document on a screen countless times, only to find that when I print it out I notice a typo or other mistage straight away. It feels like there is a clear difference between print and screen reading — but I can't put my finger on exactly how it is different, or if there is a particular type of reading that a screen is better for — or if there are any techniques that might compensate for the screen/print difference (eg. if I read from an iPad that isn't connected to the internet and has "do not disturb" enabled, would it change my frame of mind while reading in a way that would change the way I process the text?)

Something about this final line resonated with me as well.

But every now and then I meet a 20-something digital native who reads print newspapers, too. I immediately assume they have a great future.

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Privacy vs. User Experience — dcurt.is →

Dustin says;

In a recent public letter about privacy, Tim Cook incorrectly characterized Google’s intentions when collecting user information:

Our business model is very straightforward: We sell great products. We don’t build a profile based on your email content or web browsing habits to sell to advertisers. We don’t “monetize” the information you store on your iPhone or in iCloud. And we don’t read your email or your messages to get information to market to you. Our software and services are designed to make our devices better. Plain and simple.

Cook is being disingenuous, because he knows that the same information Google uses to target advertising is also used to make its products, like Google Maps, so great. I find it very odd that Cook implies the only use for such data is to “monetize” through advertising. iPhone and iCloud could be made much better if the computer systems could analyze the data people are storing in them. This is obvious.

I don't think the point here is that the "only use" for this data is to monetize through advertising. There are lots of things that Google can do with the data, which can make its consumer products (like Maps, Google Now, Search, Gmail etc. etc.) better.

But is Google doing it because it wants to better consumer products — products which are free to the consumer, and therefore cost Google money? Or is it doing it because it makes its advertising products better — the products that it does sell, and which fundamentally drives its business forwards?

I think Google's software and services are designed to make its advertising better — whether that is directly (eg. using your Maps usage to figure out where you are and what adverts would be geographically relevant) or indirectly (eg. improving the data in Google Maps so that you use it more often/instead of a competing service and allowing Google to collect that information from you directly).

[EDIT - 9/1/2015, fixed link to point to the correct page.]

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Data is not Analytics

Maybe its just a corollory of Muphry's Law, but its weird that an article explaining how "digital" and "data" are different would include this gem;

Data - or analytics - is an approach to decision-making. Analytics can be applied to the use of any medium, not just digital, or to all campaign operations across the board.

Confusing the stuff that you analyse with the process of analysis — in an article that sets out to clarify what "data" means — seems like a bizarre thing to do to me.

In other words, once seen as output, data is now also considered input. Sounds like polling, right? Indeed, it arguably includes polling.

"Arguably", yes. But I think I would argue not…

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The Big Reverse of the Web | Dries Buytaert →

An interesting point of view on the reversing of the web - from somewhere you go to find stuff (pull) to somewhere that finds stuff for you (push.)

I seem to be seeing a lot of stuff at the moment about the rise of "agents" — now that we are permanently connected to the internet through mobile phones (with the expectation that wearables will be the next shift in increasing connectivity and convenience), the job of "making the internet better" is less about the hardware to get your TCP/IP connection, a browser to render your HTML and a screen to display it on, and more about the tasks that you want to use the internet for.

I keep coming back to Douglas Adams' idea of the electronic monk — in an age of video tape, he talked about the VCR as a device to watch TV for you. Well, Facebooks job is effectively to read your friends' updates and conversations, and then to let you know about what it thinks are the best ones. Sure it used to be about collecting them all together in one place, but the Timeline changed a long time ago from showing you everything to showing you a selection. So the next logical step is from waiting for you to visit and view the timeline to letting you know when something you are going to find interesting has happened. You might already have this set up with alerts to tell you when you've been sent a message, tagged in a photo etc.

I think the view Dries puts forward here — that "the web" will disappear into the background — is an extreme one (in the same way that even though we have digital TV recorders that can series link programmes we want to watch, the idea of the channel isn't going away any time soon), but that there is something important in the central concept of the "push web" that is going to be increasingly important to understand.

Especially if you work in advertising.

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Your time is probably not as valuable as you think.

Millennial Media have published a research study that claims that the average UK consumer believes that their time is worth £7.20 per minute to advertisers.

What a strange concept. Minimum wage in the UK is £6.50 per hour for those over 21 — but the average consumer believes that their time is more than 60x as valuable? In truth, the value of your time when sold by a TV advertiser is a factor of a thousand off that £7.20 per minute.

It seems pretty clear to me that there is a huge discrepancy in the "value" judgements around advertising. This might not be an issue right now — in the same way that what cattle think of the quality of their meat doesn't really affect the business of a butcher — but regulations around users' data is under scrutiny, and there is an ongoing frothy debate around ad-blocking technology in the industry at the moment (precipitated by the introduction of ad blocking on the next version of iOS.)

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The final Discworld novel is out tomorrow...

My reading habits are all over the place at the moment - I'm not good at setting aside the time to read, especially for books that are too bulky to read on the train. But the final Discworld book is going to be pretty special - I suspect that when it comes to introducing the Discworld books to my son (Not counting "Where's my cow?"), I guess that the Tiffany Aching books are probably going to be where I start.

(Note - this is an affiliate link, meaning that if you use it to order this book from Amazon, then I get a small referrer bonus.)

(Edit - This is a lovely interview with Rhianna Pratchett, published shortly after Terry's death.)

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The Naked People In Your iPod — Medium →

One of my obsessions is how new technology changes people - the way they behave, the way they think, and the way they define themselves in relation to other people, society, the world etc.

I spend a lot of time reading about and thinking about the impact of the internet on people, business, and society. I've manged to turn it into my profession. Nevertheless, I feel utterly unprepared for the day when I'm inevitably going to have to have a conversation with my children about porn. By the time my son's hormones and neurons have developed in a way that he is going to be interested in and aroused by naked people, he is probably going to have a screen in his pocket at all times that will show him pictures (nd videos) of anything he wants to see pictures and videos of, at his request.

The thing that really bothers me is the idea that he isn't going to see what he wants to see. He is going to see what other people want to see — when he visits whatever website he ends up at, he is going to be presented with the kind of things that most people are searching for. Or rather, that most searches are for. In other words, the kind of things that are most popular with people who spend most time on those websites.

While that might be a great way to run a pornographic website, that means that my children's first exposure to sexual imagery is going to be driven by an algorithm designed to serve a very different audience. Which is something I find a bit disturbing.

At some point, I'm going to have conversations similar to those that this linked Medium post is discussing. Hopefully by then, I will have figured out how to prepare for them.

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Streaming music's misaligned incentives

I had assumed that the way your streaming music subscription turned into royalty payments would be something along the lines of;

Your subscription / Your streams = Payment per stream.

Turns out, it isn't. Apparently its more like;

Everyone's subscriptions / Everyone's streams = Payment per stream.

In other words, suppose you and I both use the same service, and pay £10 per month for it. This month, you only listen to one song — lets say, "Shake It Off", by Taylor Swift. And you only listen to it once. Meanwhile, I listen to another song - "Killing In The Name Of", by Rage Against The Machine. Except, I listen to it every day (So, 31 times in the month of August.)

To keep things simple, lets say nobody else subscribes to this service, and it passes all of the payments directly to the artists. It feels like Swift and RATM should get a tenner each. But in actual fact, Taylor Swift would get 63p, and Rage Against The Machine would get £19.38.

I think its pretty likely that a subscription streaming model is going to be the future of the music industry. And therefore, the commercially successful artists are going to be tailoring the music they produce to fit with this model.

This is an opportunity for the industry to truly reshape itself, and align the financial incentives with the qualities of the art that will drive the industry forwards. But I don't really feel like this model is the best way to go about it.

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Tufte CSS →

There is something about the idea of a two-column page layout that I really love, leaving a space for "footnotes" (which is a concept that doesn't really make sense in an endlessly scolling page, but possibly more useful in a hyperlinked medium).

Next time I'm building a design for a website, I'm probably going to use this as a starting point. (Which is probably going to be the long-overdue rebuild of MyElectronicBrain.com - which used a few of these principles in its first iteration.)

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Innominate

About twice a year, a clock ticks over; the calendar comes to an end and the new year begins, and my birthday marks a new year of my life. As my birthday is in August, both of these tend to coincide with a bit of time off work, and inevitably lead to some self-reflection.

This summer's holidays were marked by a lack of internet; a week in Suffolk where mobile signal was virtually non-existent — the company of friends and family meant that while I did spend a little bit of time with my laptop, it was only really while I was sitting in the dark quietly waiting for my kids to go to sleep before I could happily start an evening in adult company. And the Green Man festival where I was surprised to discover that while "GPRS" on my first 3 smartphones meant "mobile internet signal", in a post-3G world now actually means "no mobile internet signal." Seriously - no emails, no Facebook, no weather forecasts (no Maps until about 15 minutes after we had left the festival site, hoping we were driving in vaguely the right direction.)

Anyway, a couple of thoughts that collided in my head;

  • I don't like the way that the ability to share status updates, photos, check-ins and so on thanks to Facebook seems to have turned into an obligation.
  • I've been playing with my own websites since before "social networks" were even a thing, with the idea that I share my stuff the way I want to share it.
  • Connecting these two makes me think I should be paying more attention to SomeRandomNerd.net and less attention to Facebook.

So — not for the first time — I'm making some kind of pledge/commitment/goal of writing for my website more often. But because this is something kind of new, I'm putting it in a new section of the site called "scribbles", to let it find its own shape. (I find it useful to have a notepad to scribble things into, separate from notepads that I write things in that I want to keep/refer back to etc.)

So, no tagging, no categories, no goals. (I've got a feeling that the Title field is going to turn out to be an unnecessary distraction. But figuring out how to get rid of it might be even more so...) Just a virtual scribble pad. Lets see where it goes.

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