Well.

This blog might be a bit hard to keep updated regularly (which you may have noticed) this coming month. This due to a LOT of deadlines approaching FAST. Trying to evade them is to no avail, as I've realized.

Be getting back, but infrequently, as I said.

Be well! Hope the Credit Crunch don't hit you too hard.

Power up Ideas, captain!

Ah, almost forgot to mention this one - the annual Content 360 competition, to be held at this years MIPTV festival in Cannes on the 30.3 - 3.4. This year the people holding the competition - the BBC, the KCC, MSN, NFB, Ogilvy and OpenAd.net are looking for ideas on some interesting topics.

The BBC are looking for ideas like "TV Entertainment over Broadband" and "Factual content via your mobile" whereas MSN wants "Original Comedy for Multiple Platform" and the KCC wants an "Interactive Educational format for Cross Media", amongst others.

Deadline is 19th of January for the BBC categories (that's next Monday! Get going!) and for the others 2nd February...

Best of luck!

The future of Interactive Television??

...or, rather, one POSSIBLE future for iTV.

This year it looks like it's all about forgetting tv to PC:s and laptops, or digital interactive set-top-boxes. No, what you want to do now is connect your 42" flat screen full HD television directly to the Internet. By then offering a host of widgets you're on your way to real real interactive television.

But, of course, this would be just too easy. So instead we have as many solutions as there are tv-manufacturers - "Sony announced support for widgets in its latest Bravia displays, referring to them as Bravia Internet Widgets. Samsung refers to its version as the Internet@TV Content Service. Vizio calls it Connected HDTV."

Good for them. Can't you all just gather around ONE solution and then us contentmakers could do great content for THAT solution, not a hundred different versions of the content for hundreds of different technical solutions.

Still, it sounds kinda neat. I don't have the time to delve into it atm, but it sounds like something that could have potential. We'll see.

Long Tail Fail Alert!

I've been an advocate of the Long Tail-theory - you know, Chris Andersons theory that if you have a near unlimited amount of virtual shelf space, you can offer all sorts of niched content, and the amount of niched content sold will exceed the amount of the most popular items sold. I.e., you can make money out of obscure stuff, as long as you have enough of it. This, to me, sounded entirely plausible.

Now, though, recent studies from the UK show that this just might not be the case. InformITV reports that the studies, conducted by the MCPS-PRS Alliance, showed that of all music sold in the UK, 0.4% of the songs made up 80% of the revenues. That's totally contradictionary to the long tail theory... On the other hand, might music be a species apart in this, seeing as people download, LastFM-listens etc, to the music they like? I don't know.. but read up on the report here, and be prepared to ditch the Long Tail from your next marketing-powerpoint, ok? :)

Have a good 2009!

..unlike the Palestine people of Ghaza, that is. Now, I do not have anything against Israel, and definitely no prejudices against anyone of Jewish heritage. But goddamit, that lunacy HAS TO STOP.

Now a whole world is clamoring for Hamas to stop firing rockets at Israel, injuring two people at the last instant - while Israel is carpetbombing the Ghaza strip killing hundreds... anyone else see a slight discrepancy here? Or is it just because the Palesine people are "terrorists"?

Dear me, someone talk some sense into these people. Here's hoping... and hope no more children have to die. Foolish hope, I know.

Happy 2009 everyone.