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Monday 31 March 2008

Report: what consumers want from comms technology






The Ofcom Consumer Panel's recent research report "Switched on: an exploration of Britain's tech savvy consumers" (PDF) (see also their 27 March 2008 news release), conducted for the Panel by Sparkler, is a good summary of what consumers want from communications technologies like mobile phones or the Internet, and indeed its conclusions could be applied to any technology.

It's an interesting read - very clearly written, and the conclusions are I think pretty obvious to consumers, but it's helpful to have official research confirming consumers' views in order to inform the Panel's thinking and contribute to the Convergence Think Tank or CTT.

The CTT was set up by the UK government departments for culture and business in December 2007 in order to examine convergence and its possible impacts, challenges and opportunities on the communications industries etc as well as its impact on future government policy and regulation.

"Convergence" has been defined by the CTT as "the merging of the individual communications industries (IT, broadcasting, telecommunications etc) into single converged market" - there's also a longer government page on "What is Convergence?". (Incidentally, the papers for the CTT's seminars are available online, and worth reading for those interested in this area.)

In the case of the Panel report, they considered communications technologies as internet, TV, radio, mobile phones and gaming - and had an excellent definition of convergence on page 54 as 3 separate definitions:
  1. The existence of many functionalities in one device.
  2. All functionalities in one device being of the highest quality or ‘best in class’, with the device having no primary purpose.
  3. The ability to link separate devices together, best understood as ‘integration’.
The research looked at convergence both in the home and in the pocket i.e. mobile.

The Panel report shows that "most consumers will take up technology because it meets a need, not just because it is clever or new. Consumers will not give up their normal social and cultural patterns at the press of a button – communications technologies have to work with the grain of everyday life. Those technologies which do this and meet consumer needs will tend to be well received."

"There are a few notes of caution however, particularly in relation to privacy and the use of personal electronic data by others. Other consumer concerns are: the difficulty of navigating a path through the increasingly complex communications market; and a feeling of powerlessness in the face of the changes that these new technologies bring."

Or as the news release put it: "UK consumers are savvy and switched on users of new technology, but they fear intrusion into their privacy and don’t trust that their personal data will be protected... Without exception, consumers said that privacy should be heavily protected. Among other things, they said they felt under siege from spam on the phone and the web and they expressed particular concerns about dodgy dates, paedophiles and unscrupulous internet vendors."

I'm not sure about the statement that "providing consumers with an easily understandable and publicly available set of guidelines on how to guard their privacy could help address this issue." There are so many aspects to protecting privacy and security online or on mobile phones. There are already sites like Get Safe Online. More guidance would be good, but I don't think "Consumers should be better educated" is a substitute for regulating the industry e.g. so that proper technical measures to ensure security and privacy will be put into place and conversely stopping technological intrusions into privacy such as Phorm.

While the main focus was on concerns regarding users' privacy and security, the report also reveals a lot about other aspects of consumers' views on and use of technology, splitting consumers into different, sometimes overlapping, types:
  • Content Generators
  • Domestic Tech Goddesses
  • Facebook Community Leaders
  • On Demanders
  • Retired Browsers
  • Tech Blokes
  • Tech Hobbyists
  • Teen Boys
  • Teen Girls.
Although they spoke to only 10 four-person groups across Britain, it seems that the results from a small group can be as valuable and as accurate as from a huge sample (see e.g. this interesting talk from BarCampLondon last year on DIY User Research).

Not surprisingly, important areas where improvements are needed included:

"Clarity of language - currently many consumers are confused by technical jargon which obscures the benefits of a service or device and discourages them from using that product. If consumers are to understand the benefits of new technologies these have to be explained in simple terms, including what they mean to their lives.

Of particular importance in a world where integration of devices will become more prevalent will be explaining how devices can ‘speak’ to each other."

As regulars know, jargon is an area I feel quite passionately needs to be addressed.

"Do not allow consumers to be locked-in - free choice depends upon a consumers’ ability to change operators, providers and devices with ease. Consumers often mentioned the ‘hassle’ of changing suppliers of services as a major barrier to switching. In this complex technological market, providing people with the tools that enable them to choose the most appropriate communications devices and services will be essential.

Ensuring compatibility and interoperability is also key. Consumers should not be compelled to remain with one manufacturer because that is the only way devices can be integrated. This also holds true for peripherals such as chargers and memory cards...

Devices should not be restricted to services. In the case of iTunes, consumers should not be forced to choose between losing content that they have already purchased and own, or sticking with the same device in order to preserve this content."

"It’s easier to regulate markets than people... Since the [universal human] needs will not change, the market should meet these needs rather than try and work against human nature. For example, the current impasse over illegal downloading of music can be seen as a result of a delay in recognising that it is difficult to stop people doing things that are simple, cost-effective and do not disrupt their lives."

"Ultimately, people will continue to adopt technologies that are simple, cost-effective, and easy to use". And "Ultimately, placing people’s needs at the core of technological development remains the surest way to achieve a technologically advanced and satisfied society." Absolutely right, I say!

A BBC News blog post on mobile internet kids a few weeks ago indicated that the school children of today, tomorrow's buyers, will be even more demanding: "When I asked a group of them what they wanted from a phone they had plenty of demands: “Multimedia, the internet, Bluetooth, MP3s.” What about simple phone calls? “Boring!!” they chorused." But I think it is still the companies that deliver simple, cost-effective, easy to use multimedia, internet, Bluetooth etc - in the pocket, please! - which will be the winners.

Saturday 29 March 2008

"Strictly youth dancing - ministers join 'Strictly' stars and Royal Ballet to boost youth dance", pah






When I saw the above Dept of Culture press release headline (it was issued a while back, I'm slow!), first my mind boggled, then I got angry.

The initial image which that line conjured up in my mind's eye was of British ministers desperately trying to be hip, awkwardly trying their hand, or rather shuffling feet, at joining the "yoofs" in dance - and it wasn't a pretty picture. Even if mildly amusing.

Then, I got annoyed. Talk about making Dumb Britain worse. Why aren't they putting as much money into "supporting" young people into the sciences? Oh no, kids in the UK need to be helped into dance. I'm as much of an arts fan as the next person, e.g. I love music and the vocal arts, but more money ought to be going into what's much, much harder to do: firing children's imagination about science, stimulating their intellectual curiosity about the world. I'm not even going to start about the educational system in the UK generally. Oh wait, I have.

The 19th century was the century of the British Empire, the 20th of the American. The economic powerhouses of the 21st century will be from the Asia-Pacific / India - and no one should be at all surprised. Decline and fall, indeed.

Friday 28 March 2008

Free sound samples: OLPC, Freesound






Music & sound clips donated for the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project are available for everyone to download, use and re-mix etc, from the sound samples page of the OLPC wiki (via the Creative Commons blog). (On the OLPC itself see this OLPC video.)

There are over 6,500 samples (over 8.5GB) available currently, including sound effects, background sounds or "soundscapes" whether from nature or cities like rain, trains, wolf whistles etc, loops, grooves, drum sounds, voices and all manner of musical instruments - even animal noises like frogs (& humans imitating animal sounds)!

The audio files are made available under a CC-BY licence - which means you can use them freely as long as you credit the author/creator in whatever way they say they want to be credited (e.g. "drum loop by X"). Each sample is 16-bit, WAV, Mono, normalized to -3dB, and provided at 3 sample rates - 44.1K, 22.5K and 16K. (You can convert WAV to MP3 using free open source software like Audacity.)

Another source of free audio clips I like is Freesound, which calls itself "a collaborative database of Creative Commons licensed sounds" - again it's sound effects and sound samples rather than songs. Their samples are available under a different type of CC licence, the Creative Commons Sampling Plus License (must credit the creator, non-commercial re-use, basically). I used a Freesound sample for the (real) Formula One racing car sound at the end of my BarCampLondon3 Segway video that plays as Jason zooms off on the Segway!

Earliest voice recording causes Radio 4 giggles







After a studio colleague said in her earpiece that the earliest known voice recording (from 1860, of someone singing "Clair de la Lune") sounded like "a bee buzzing in a bottle", BBC Radio 4 newsreader Charlotte Green completely lost it and collapsed into a fit of giggles live on the Today programme. Absolutely hilarious, I love "corpsing" stuff! Her hysterics were so popular with listeners that the BBC reported it officially on their news site and even the Times picked it up.

You can hear the extract of the voice recording and her giggling direct by clicking on the pic above (the converted MP3 was combined with a screenshot and saved to Blogger using this MP3/picture combo technique, as Blogger don't let you upload audio files to their servers, only photos and videos), or you can just click the arrow to play an MP3 version. (How to make MP3 files playable direct like that.)

The excerpt is of course on the BBC site, which if you're impatient you can listen to direct by clicking the links below (but only if you have Windows Media or RealPlayer - hey I'd prefer MP3 too, don't blame me, complain to the BBC and ask them to provide non-proprietary non-DRM protected MP3 or video files! If enough British licence payers ask it, you never know, we can but hope. Maybe we could request the ability to embed BBC audio or video clips easily in blogs/sites too, while we're at it...?):
I am hoping the BBC won't mind the video or converted MP3 of the clip as I believe it's fair use reportage, but if anyone at the BBC does has an issue with it please don't go over my head to Google or get me fired, just contact me (see sidebar) and I'd be more than happy delete the audio. (The screenshot has got to be fair use, surely!)

Monday 24 March 2008

Convert Word doc or Webpage to wiki







To convert a Microsoft Word .doc document or a Webpage to wiki markup format or wikitext (the special syntax or code used to format a page when editing a wiki), the conversion tools linked to on Wikipedia are the easiest way, though I've found that some tools are easier than others, and various links there are broken.

For me, the two ways which worked the best were:
  • Convert Word to HTML via Gmail, then convert the Webpage's HTML to wikitext with Emiliano Bruni's excellent HTML2Wiki Converter (where you paste the raw HTML code into the top box, and the wiki code appears in the bottom box which you can copy and paste into your wiki). Or (less good in its conversions, I found) -

  • Convert Word to wiki direct using a Word macro - Word2MediaWikiPlus worked OK, though nowhere near as well as the above, for a MediaWiki wiki and PBWiki wiki that I tried them on (and those are probably two of the more popular wiki software platforms around); the results needed quite a lot of tidying. This installs a new toolbar in Word, which I've outlined in red in the pic below.


I'm posting about both methods as it may depend on which wiki you're using, the syntax may be slightly different (it doesn't seem to be fully standardised yet) - so a converter which works for one type of wiki may not work so well for another, you need to figure out which one works for you and there are more tools on the Wikipedia tools page you can try.

Tips for beginners:
  • If installing Word2MediaWikiPlus, you may need to download it from another mirror ("Select another mirror?") if the first download or the direct link don't work. To install it after you've unpacked the download, open the Word2MediaWikiPlus_Installer.doc (click Enable macros if necessary to access it). Follow the instructions about changing the settings in Word's Tools, Macro, Security options before you try to click the "Install or update macro" button in that document and, although it's in their diagram it's not in their written instructions so I'm just adding this: be sure to tick "Trust access to Visual Basic Project" as well as "Trust all installed add-ins and templates", or it won't work.

  • To convert a Webpage you need to view its source (menu View, Source or Page Source to open it in Notepad etc), then copy just the bit between the <body> and </body> bits (but excluding those tags themselves) and convert that with HTML2Wiki.

Sunday 23 March 2008

Electronics manufacturers' green credentials






Here's the latest (7th version) Greenpeace "Guide to Greener Electronics" league table (full PDF scorecard report), which "ranks the 18 top manufacturers of personal computers, mobile phones, TV's and games consoles according to their policies on toxic chemicals and recycling."



As you can see, Toshiba and Samsung are leading the pack towards the green; the next group is Nokia, Sony, Lenovo and Dell, with the next being Sony Ericsson, LG Electronics, Apple, FSC and HP. Motorola are just about in the red, while companies like Acer, Sharp, Microsoft, Panasonic and Philips are in the definite red, and Nintendo is at the bottom. See the Greenpeace page for summaries of who they think has improved or got worse on the environmental / eco-friendly front, and why.

Via Heise Security.

Feedburner: new help group, Community Experts






Feed magicians Feedburner moved their users' help group from their old forums to Google Groups earlier this week: see the Feedburner Google Groups. (Newcomers to feeds may be interested to read my introduction to feeds for beginners especially if the terms below just seem like alphabet soup.)

That move was inevitable following their acquisition by Google a few months ago. What wasn't inevitable was that they've actually asked me, Improbulus, to be one of the Feedburner Community Experts on the group! And I've been delighted to accept, as I've been a huge fan of Feedburner ever since I were a mere baby blogger.

Having vaguely heard about these things called RSS feeds, I learned from the Blogger Help that if I wanted RSS instead of Atom feeds I should try Feedburner. So I hied me over to Feedburner's site and found that there was a lot more to feeds than that, and that Feedburner did even more kinds of clever things with feeds than I'd originally thought possible.

What's more, I found that the Feedburner team were exactly my sort of people: the sort that any user would like to see running an Internet startup, or indeed any kind of customer-facing company; the sort I'd personally want to hang out with, in fact. They were - and are - smart, switched on, friendly, kind, helpful without being patronising (including producing numerous practical howtos and FAQs for the many aspects of their services), and remarkably timely in responding to issues and bug reports as well as users' requests for assistance in their forums. I mean, people from Feedburner who knew what was going on actually bothered to hang out in their user forums and patiently share their expertise! I found that kind of attitude all too rare, and pretty impressive. I also loved their fun, irreverent sense of dry humour - to me they struck just the right note, whereas, for instance, in contrast I just wanted to go hunt and kill the "Technorati monster" when blogosphere search engine Technorati were still putting out that annoying, ill-judged and decidedly unfunny error message.

So, I was very pleased for the Feedburner folk when they were bought by Google. I hope they got lots of dosh out of it, and indeed that their attitude and approach percolates through to the rest of Google for good measure. They're one of the few startups who in my book truly deserve their success rather than just being in the right place at the right time (not that I'm saying other startups don't deserve success). And I'd be saying that even if they hadn't invited me to be a Community Expert (or a "Feedburner Flame", as I like to think of it!).

You'll see me hanging out on the Feedburner help groups more now, trying to help out when I can - with my fellow Community Experts John Hood, Charles LePage, Mathaba and Franklin Tse.

But I won't be neglecting this blog. Things have been a bit slow on ACE the last few weeks for various personal reasons, but from now on I am going to be posting a lot more here too. In fact that's been a good incentive for me to finish my nearly-there post on Feedburner, which was meant to be part 3 of my intro to feeds. Watch out for it coming out soon!

Monday 10 March 2008

Over the Air event: for mobile / wireless developers, designers, hackers and entrepreneurs






Looks like signup is open for the Over the Air event on Friday & Saturday 4-5 April 2008 in London, organised by Mobile Monday London - it's free, sponsored by BBC Mobile (more on Over the Air, and schedule).

The Over the Air blog describes it thus: "Bringing together developers, designers, hackers and entrepreneurs to explorer the potential exciting future of wireless and mobile devices/applications... Over the Air is unlike any other event you have ever been to. Part conference, part un-conference, part open hackathon. The schedule has a place for everyone, hackers, developers, designers and entrepreneurs.... all aspects of mobile/wireless development and design. From development with SDKs available on Android, iPhone, Java, Compact dot Net, Symbian, etc. To designer insight into Mobile Flash, Social Systems, Mobile Widgets, Mobile SVG, Location, User Experiences, etc. We have almost everthing covered including Gaming, Network APIs, real-time communication, advertising, etc."

Looks like almost everything's going to be covered from Java and Symbian to the Apple iPhone SDK, Windows Mobile and Google/Open Handset Alliance's Android.

So I've registered, and yay I got a ticket!

Register now if you're interested.

Saturday 8 March 2008

Thursday 6 March 2008

Gmail: . dots + aliases & spam, been there done that…






Google's Gmail Blog have finally posted about the use of dots in Gmail addresses and appending a + symbol with other stuff for filtering and combating spam and evil marketing emails.

Been there, done that. I already posted (with my usual detailed but hopefully practical take, of course) on those productivity / trivia tips and tricks - as far back as 2005!

(Gmail is known as GoogleMail in the UK & Germany.)

Sunday 2 March 2008

Funny user instructions - Bluespoon manual







I recently got the tiny Bluespoon AX2 Bluetooth headset as seen on TV in the first series of Dr Who spin-off Torchwood (see my previous funny on that - Amazon were illustrating it with a pair of scissors!).

The Bluespoon AX and AX2 instruction manual/user guide includes the following gem on the last page:

· Do not try to eat/swallow headset or battery.

(Yes it is that small - just about. Sadly it's no longer silver, unlike in Torchwood. Full review to follow soon.)