The hype of podcasts has risen and slightly floundered now that video has such a strangle hold on the web but recently I have started to become an avid fan of a number of great podcasts which I have came across.

For sport, football and general blokey nonsense and banter it doesn’t come any better than Danny Baker’s Radio Five show from Saturday mornings and the legendary Football Ramble which has to be one of the best and most consistently entertaining pieces of entertainment ever. Coffee Break Spanish has been great at providing bite size commuter chunks of Spanish to help me try and get some basic Spanish under my belt, which the Veteran Gamers podcast provides an insight and mature observation on gaming that doesn’t concern itself with any of the fan boy idocy.

Despite having these though I want more and besides trial and error it is hit and miss at finding the gems amongst the rough so I put it to you, people of the internet, to recommend some further podcast joy to get me through the weekly commutes.

The impending end of the world is coming. How do we know this? Newcastle about to be relegated out of the Premiership, Swine flu is going to ravage the planet and twitter can’t keep ahold of it’s users.

Yep Twitter the latest shining light in the digital sphere is may be not going to save the world as users are abandoning the site after a month. Seems users get enticed after hearing about it but the novelty soon wears off and they don’t return.

It raises the question about how many social networks can one person feasibly be involved with, plus does anyone really want to know what I am up to on a micro by micro moment? Bloody doubt it, I don’t even want to know what I’m doing having the time.

Are we starting to reach digital saturation where the landscapes starts to settle slightly?

Since Google Street View launched last month it seems to have done nothing but cause trouble and controversy.  Depsite being a very cool piece of technology it has apparently, aided burgalars, caused divorces and, riots in small villages.

However, despite all this negative press a client has just proved that Street View can actually be a very useful media tool as he used it to brief me on a couple of specific outdoor sites that he was interested in! What clearer way then navigating that little orange man to the exact location and showing me pictures of the sites in question?!

Could this be a media first? Or indeed the beginning of the end of all of this Street View negativity?! Watch this space in Media Week!!?

It seams as if I can’t go a few hours without someone mentioning the Twitter revolution and predictably all of the trade press have devoted multiple page spreads to extolling the “next big thing” in social property. I’m calling it Twitterganda!

For those of you who have, somewhat miraculously and / or fortunately, not come across Twitter thus far, here’s a quick debrief;

Twitter is a free social networking and micro blogging service that allows users to send small (140 characters) text based updates (otherwise known as “tweets”- aaah how cute!) to their own profile page where they can then be viewed or delivered to any user who has opted-in to receive your various pearls of wisdom, location updates, or even more intriguingly, what you might have had for breakfast.

Probably, the most accurate way of viewing Twitter is a condensed Facebook “status updates” service, which is my point entirely. What does Twitter offer users on and above Facebook from a functionality standpoint. The short answer is…………nothing!! Conversely, (my attempt to offer a balanced argument) Twitter does give users access to “Tweets” from the various celebs and zed listers eager to jump on its short lived (fingers crossed) band wagon. Whilst donning my media hat, Twitter does offer scope for celeb / influencer brand or product advocacy and should be used by all brands as a source of chatter review – there I’ve said something positive!!
Honestly guys, have I missed something here?! Is there something genius to Twitter that I’ve somehow overlooked which is going to secure it’s place in Comscore rankings for more than 2 years tops? I know they reached the golden 1 mill user mark but surely this is a short term reaction of the public based on pure curiosity alone?!

Hey Guys, wanted to take a minute and bring to your attention the launch of a newly designed TV advert that played live yesterday evening. 

The advertiser is Nokia 7610, and the aim is to get people from watching the TV Ad to, switch to watching the complete drama online, Web 2.0. The Ad is set to run in 10 different languages, with a constant feed of content.  

The TV spot introduces three characters Anna, Jade and Luca, starting with intrigue about one of them having listened to another’s voicemail and sets the scene for how their lives might unfold.  Fans will be able to learn everything about the characters through their text messages, photos, videos and calls on somebodyelsesphone.com, as well as signing up to their Facebook pages to have a more personal conversation.
The micro-site is supported by mobile content, interactive partnerships, widgets, Facebook pages, banner ads and a number of events in association with partners including Parisian boutique Colette.

This to me has always been what TV adverts should have been doing, using all platforms available to them, engaging their viewers with an initial taster of what is yet to come and grabbing viewers initial interest. Running a story across platforms, all areas of the mediums, and making sure that the rest of the story is available in full form online, building the buzz and most powerful ‘word of mouth’ on the street or maybe in the office. That then spurs unified action. To watch, engage and then hopefully react. With the end result, creating a loyal fan base, mini episodes of watchable content, that everyone is talking about?

Take the old Nescafe, BT couple, Daz  (that really is giving true meaning to the word Soap Opera) … building up traffic across all platforms, and showing TV is still a very powerful medium, in getting user numbers online, and then once there using a consortium of viral tools to engage the user more.

Anyways let’s see how successful this advert format is with the public… To be continued….

As a committed Mozilla Firefox user, I was dubious about whether Google would be able to convert me to their beta-version of their open-source Browser, Chrome.

Launched on the 2nd September 2008, Google claims that Chrome “Gets out of your way and gets you where you want to go” with improved speed, security and responsiveness.
Personally, I’m also quite a Google fan (They keep Ben and Jerries in almost every room, a policy I thoroughly endorse) but there are a lot more people who are equally as interested.
According to Information Week, Chrome reached nearly 2 million downloads in the US in its first week alone.

However, are people likely to stick with Chrome or revert back to one of the other popular browsers such as Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, which dominates with more than two-thirds market share?
The 50MB size of Chrome means on my laptop over 100MB is now taken up with browsers (And my prefered use of memory is for the ridiculous amount of music I have stored on my ITunes)

I’m sticking with Firefox for the moment, but I’m pretty sure I’ll be a convert soon…

Amazing what you can do with plenty of time on your hands, a good computer and an idea for trying to show off your creative talents. One such chap is Kobayashi a young animation director living in London who decided to have some fun with Sony. Quite how they feel about this ‘unofficial’ video is anyone’s guess, but if nothing else it’s impressive what has been done on probably a budget of nothing more than blood, sweat and tears.

click on the link to take a look

http://www.koba-yashi.co.uk/

Podcasts have been becoming more and more talked about over the past few years, largely due to Ricky Gervais producing some podcasts in a hiatus between the office and Extras. In fact, podcasts have been around for longer than some may think, and on Easter Monday BBC Radio Five Live had a 1 hour show discussing anything and everything about podcasts, and surprise surprise it’s available as a podcast now!

It is an interesting listen starting off with the basics for the uninitiated, then moves into some of the areas of how podcasts will develop and probably most importantly, how do you make them a commercially viable form of media which works from a platform where people expect content free.

The thing is in the vast majority of cases you can’t. Ricky Gervais had to give his podcasts away to build an audience before charging, and the BBC who have had success with podcasts for years can’t charge. The crux of the matter is having enough content that people can’t get anywhere else and are willing to pay for.

Or there is the adfunded model, but advertisers will need to be demonstrated that a significant number of downloads are taking place to warrant costs of up to circ £5k per podcast. Not the cheapest eh?

Interestingly in the show Channel 4 offer their views as part of 4 Radio, as do the Guardian, who drop the interesting nugget that they will be offering advertisers the chance to do spot advertising in some of their podcasts at the end of the year

If you want to learn more about pod’s and all their glory click on the link http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/podcasts/pods/ and download For the Love of Pod from 24th March

PS My favourite podcasts at the moment are Fighting Talk (top notch sports banter from the BBC) & the now sadly defunct Baker & Kelly podcast (more comedy ramblings about football) which you will have to search high and low for on the internet but it’s well worth it.

According to figures cited by Nielsen Online the social networking site, Facebook, had its first drop in UK users in January. It fell by 5% to 8.5 million from a previous 8.9 million. This has sparked a debate that social networking is in decline, but others argue that one month of falling audiences doesn’t mean the decline of Facebook nor of social networking.

The decrease may have reflected a lower level of fascination with the site but, with 8.5million unique users still active and a growth of 712% from January 2007, Facebook remains the most popular social networking website in the UK.

Myspace also recorded a 5% decrease in January and Bebo suffered a 2% decrease. This may show that the leading social networks are less popular in the UK than they were a year ago, but I would like to see the profile of the people who have left the sites before passing judgement. Nielsen Online measures website traffic based on a panel of UK users at home and work. It does not cover the usage in schools, universities and internet cafes, so the younger internet users are very much under-reported.

And just last week Hitwise cited that Facebook’s market share of UK Internet visits went back to its Christmas peak during the Easter week. Obviously the Easter holidays may have played a role, so we’ll just have to see how the figures change over the next few months, but I think Facebook is here to stay for a while yet!

For those of you saving up to buy a swanky new Plasma of LCD screen you might want to hold off for a while……

Have been looking into OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode) technology recently and save for a few development issues, its potential application is very impressive. So much so that Sony have already stuck $203MM into its progression.

This video gives a good intro into what it’s all about;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoxaMAA1jjM

Now for the techie bit – it works by sandwiching self-luminating diodes made from natural chemicals in-between flexible plastic – very cool!!! Your current TV is a little on the fat side because it needs a backlight but stuff only needs a fraction of power to work (2-6 volts – Greenpeace will be onboard) and can be as size zero as just a few millimetres – think wallpapering your house with this stuff!

Like any display it can be interactive (Minority Report was spot on) and play audio-visual media. There have been a few prototypes mobiles where you actually rollout the touch screen display; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDuP8PtDJbE.

The only thing holding OLED screens back from your local Dixons is its 3-4 yr lifetime but I’m sure with a few extra mill that’ll get resolved!

TV prototypes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rMFZ4O_oLs