Do you know what a slingbox is? Its the next big thing...

The slingbox has come to my attention in the past week and in my opinion needs to be shared with a larger audience. This has to be the next big thing - watch your TV anywhere! A friend of mine has one of these and watches his TV with his laptop everywhere - he even watches his cousin's TV which is in the USA!

Slingbox is a compact and elegantly designed, state-of-the-art electronic device that connects to the back of your TV. It redirects the TV signal from your cable box, satellite receiver, or personal video recorder to a computer or laptop of choice, no matter your location - so long as you have a high-speed Internet connection.

In my humble opinion this device will transform the way people watch TV. Whether you want to watch your soaps in the shower room, or catch the big game during a conference call, or watch your local news from China, it now can be done. Plus you can buy the Slingbox in PC World and Dixons. Check out the website:

Famous at last....

The naked chasm jumpers blog is starting to get a reputation. The site has becoming highly rated by Google's search engine - if you type in naked chasm we now appear at the top of the list! This is a huge step forward when in the beginning (less than 3 weeks ago) the blog didnt even rank in the top twenty search pages.

Next step the world!!

The way of the future?

I found an interesting article on the BBC website which talks about Google and its ad revenues. It is expected that the Internet giants ad revenues for 2006 will surpass that of Channel 4, a TV channel in the traditional media sector. It is then expected that in 18 months it will surpass ITV's ad revenues. Is online advertising the way of the future?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6108678.stm

Breaking Mental models (sort of)

During our lecture last week with Ian Kendrick, he was talking about peoples mental models and how these are based on the experiences of people. As a bit of fun, I tried to find some examples of videos breaking mental models. By far the funniest is in the link below and is for all you wanna be boy (or girl) racers out there, although I don't think you will ever be able to do this in reality!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlCzCJEwZmY

Stirred, not shaken is best for Hollywood

Blogs can create a viral buzz about a new movie better than any marketing push, and Hollywood should wake up to their potential.

Along with the normal barrage of banners, 60 second trailers and the inevitable round of movie-star interviews, some film companies are using the internet to experiment with other marketing tools to involve the audience - blogs!

Despite the millions of pounds spend on film marketing, the success or failure of a film still relies on word of mouth. Film blogs can tap into a conversation long before a more traditional marketing campaign with the benefit of being cheaper. Some parts of the movie industry have realised this - for example, the forthcoming James Bond film, Casino Royale, has no viewer interaction, but most in the blog world see interactivity as key to its success. http://www.sonypictures.com/movies/casinoroyale/blog/

Do we really need another site with a few pretty pictures and crappy interviews with the actors who just talk about how lovely it was to work with so-and-so? No the movie audience wants interactivity and one on one with the team behind the film - bring on the film blogging and save your marketing budget.

Is your password in the top 10 most common passwords?

Life these days has become largely dependent on passwords - whether we're checking our emails, transferring funds or shopping online, passwords have their part to play. We're constantly bombarded with horror stories of security breaches, fraud, and phishing sites. Users are consistently told that a strong password is essential these days to protect private data. Why is it, then, that users on websites opt for the same, consistent, insecure passwords time after time? http://www.modernlifeisrubbish.co.uk/top-10-most-common-passwords.asp

Which one of you muppets is using 1234 as your password?

Some people have too much time available!

As if the U.N. does not have enough going on with conflict all over the world, especially in Iraq, Afganistan, Middle East and the Sudan, however they can find the time for an "Internet Conference". Furthermore, key issues include the English language having an unfair monopoly on the Internet - which is top billing.

Im all for improving the power of the Internet and making it as accessible to as many people as possible, but surely the U.N. is wrong organisation to make this happen? What do you think?

Check out this article for full details of the conference: http://news.com.com/At+U.N.+Internet+summit,+calls+for+change/2009-1028_3-6131408.html?tag=nefd.lede

It Sometimes pays to come Second

Wikipedia, the collaborative internet encyclopadia, is about to get some competition. On 17 October, Larry Sanger, who helped set up Wikipedia in 2001, announced the launch of a site called Citizendium. He claims it will unseat Wikipedia as the go-to destination for general information online.

In my opinion, I think he has a strong chance of acheving number one spot, as Larry can benefit from second mover advantage. Second movers in a market can avoid heavy investment in R and D by simply replicating the original mover. Citizendium will start life as a "progressive fork" of Wikipedia, opening up as an exact copy - saving five years of development time!

Furthermore, Citzendium is introducing developments such as site sponsorship and an editorial team of expert academics to improve accuracy. These improvements should help it avoid the problems of Wikipedia - as the site is continually critised for having mistakes in its content that go unchecked.

Look out Wikipedia the new boy is on the block and you are next goliath to fall. Do you agree? http://citizendium.org/

Get a job via Ebay

Unemployed newbie blogger Al Murray (see pic) got in touch with BBC Radio Five about his new scheme to get work: "I have started my own blog, al4hire.com", Al says, "Rather fed up with applying for jobs I am auctioning myself on ebay to work for anyone anywhere next week. I am writing about my experiences on my blog al4hire.com, I am currently half way towards the minimum wage at £102 for next week. If this is a success I plan to do this every week until I get a good job offer."Al says he won't do anything dangerous or illegal - but that still leaves plenty of scope for the bizarre, the embarassing or the just plain boring- so I think Al is a brave man.

Still it's not a bad plan for someone whose previous career was in online marketing. I suspect this will get quite a bit of press.

The Future Scenario

A question that everybody asks at some point in time is "What does the future hold?" Most people have a clearly defined route of where they want their lives to go, from careers to love life to money! How many times does this 'plan' actually play out the way we want it to?

We had a very interesting lecture last Thursday from Ian Kendrick on scenario thinking. He started the lecture with a very powerful story about an older lady and her plans for the next couple of weeks over the Christmas holidays. She was to enjoy Xmas with her family in her new home and see her grandchild for the time. Everything was in place, her family were on the way and the champagne was in ice. All of a sudden, the peace was shattered by a loud rumbling noise. The old lady went outside into her garden where she could make a shape out at the bottom of her garden. On closer inspection, she dicovered a young man strapped to a seat, dead. A loud explosion was heard a couple of miles away and the air was filled with debris. The woman lived near Lockerbie in 1988.

In those days, not many people could have envisaged such an event happening, but today, based on past experience, people would think such an event could happen. Businesses need to be able to cope with the future and as such need to plan for possible scenarios becoming reality or at least be aware that they may happen!

I found an interesting video on YouTube, which clearly shows one companies thoughts on what the future holds both for them and their customers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BkuynPMP7o

As I questioned previously in my blog entitled "Are Blogs the new Time Capsules?", could blogs become the new 'soft' version of the Time Capsule?

I invite you now to post your version of 'The Future' and lets see if it becomes reality!

The Singularity!

"The Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger), is sent back to the year 1984 to assassinate a young woman named Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton). The cyborg comes from the year 2029, following a nuclear war which has devastated the better part of civilization. Computer defense mechanisms have turned on their creators, starting another war, in an effort to eliminate the human race altogether."

The above extract was taken from The Terminator Home Page, an unofficial fan site of the famous movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. However, given our last lecture on Scenarios and looking to the future, could the 'story' above ever become reality?

Analysed closer, there is a distinct possibility that "Computer defense mechanisms [could] turn on their creators ... in an effort to eliminate the human race altogether."

In todays world, there are scientists working towards what they call the singularity! This is the point at which computers are of equal power to the human brain and humans and technology start to fuse together. It is believed that at the current rate of development, it will be 25 years from now that scientists will understand the human brain and how it works. By some scary coincidence, people believe that Humans version 2.0 will be created in 2029, the same year that the Terminator was sent from! Is this the first step to the destruction of humans by their own creations, computers?

Can you imagine controlling machines by your thoughts or machines speaking for you as you think? Don't believe it could happen? I suggest you check out the link below -

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctwo/programmes/?id=horizon (Current as of 29th October 2006)