EU finally cuts through licensing red tape for digital music

Hooray!

Though this is just one step, equalising content in different countries’ stores removes an inequality,so it’s a step in the right direction. And the legislation faces up to a simple reality – that if content can’t be bought locally & legally, there’s plenty of ways to acquire the same content, illegally, just a click away.

In time this’ll doubtless lead to universal pricing, in Europe, which is what it is. In the UK, it probably means paying less for music. Of course, there may be winners as well as losers – there’s no guarantee that the universal price will be the lowest price.

Boo!
The legislation appears not to have the support of artists – which can’t be right. And somehow *more* regulation always feels like it’ll result in *less* innovation, in spite of everybody’s best efforts.

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Important, non urgent

July 15, 2008

“The UK needs seven new gas and coal-fired stations, 12 new nuclear
stations and 40 wind farms, as well as 12 major gas storage plants,
according to the CBI.”

The Independent

Yikes! But even if the CBI’s apocalyptic vision were even half true, isn’t this the kind of issue that ‘traditionally’ gets kicked around for years in the UK, and later (much later) some fudge is issued. The Stonehenge bypass is a typical example – £37 million spent on “planning”, over a decade, and there’s still no plan.

I doubt that we’re capable of making these big decisions; there’s always too much history, too many vested interests, one newt species that can’t be moved (but later is) and the environment enriched for all

The likely outcome – around 2014 – Government pushes ‘micro generation’ schemes, hard, to compensate for generating capacity lost to the planning process. There’ll be a rush to photovoltaic panels & wind turbines, led by the Daily Mail (with a jingoistic wartime theme, and competitions to win a lifetime’s power capacity) and the BBC, with power makeover programmes, showing how to cut use and make your own power. Like this and this… but in the style of Changing Rooms.

And the consequence of *not* refining the planning process for the 21st century – our economic development will be hamstrung, by a lack of consistent power supply.

“A report from the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) states that
power outages and problems with power quality are costing the U.S.
economy over $119 billion per year. Called “The Cost of Power
Disturbances to Industrial and Digital Economy Companies,” the study
discusses the growing need for what it calls digital-quality
electricity, which means power that is “always perfect and always on.”” & that’s from 2001 !

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Data compulsion

July 11, 2008

BBC NEWS | Politics | Voters’ data ‘should not be sold’
Of course it shouldn’t.

If a business compelled customers – and non-customers – to register their details, and then sold on that information, they’d be strung up! But that’s what ‘government’ does with voters’ data. Yes, there’s an opt-out – which is widely used – but the practice of selling-on information undermines trust in government & the democratic process. Which is not a good thing – so it’s not a good trade.

It’s a practice left over from analogue marketing days, when profiling was in its infancy, and targeted marketing almost always created direct mail – where profiling, print, production and postage costs created commercial limits on the volume of direct mail. The first of those – profiling – has moved on dramatically, which allows data companies to do much much more, with less starting data, for a lot less money.

And customers’ relationships with companies has moved on too. Digital marketing centers more on rapid 2-way engagement – there’s less commercial need for electoral data, and the business case is weaker.

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Commuterfeed is a blindingly simple, useful service.

Using twitter, commuters can send & receive updates about their daily commute

As I write, it’s early days, and updates are patchy in the UK, but here’s hoping it’ll catch on as it has done in other urban areas

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eGov 2.0

February 26, 2008

pre budget debate

as it should be

& the transparency that eGov is heading for, courtesy of MySociety

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The web thrives on standards – but try putting toghther a virtual team video conference with freelancers, outside the confines of an organisation’s preferred software, and the mix of technical religions will almost certainly scupper things before they get started.

Maybe ooVoo is the answer – I’ll try it out on a Mac/Win, UK broadband & South african narrowband conference & see how we go….

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Around the milennium I used a 10.4 inch Sony Vaio laptop… and only stopped using it around 2005, when its inability to run anything more modern than Win 98se stopped it connecting to networks.  The Mac Air launch had me digging for reviews of my old Vaio – this one ending “After 6 months, there still isn’t anything to upgrade to. That’s
unheard of in the PC market.”

Come to think of it, after more than 6 years, and reading the mixed reviews of Mac Air at launch, there’s still precious little to compare. It’s (almost) tempting to find a late PII Vaio pcg505, & pimp it with Linux.

Almost.

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real, social marketing

January 22, 2008

When folk talk about ‘marketing to social networks’ , you can be pretty sure (from their language) if they’re about to spam a community.  The wrong way to go about it is to think like a broadcast, analogue advertiser, and think what message can be put infront of the greatest number of eyeballs.

Making that message interactive is a just-about-acceptable half way house to…

Properly engaging folk
By giving them soemthing they can contribute to
That lets folk/customers change the company & its product/service, in even the most miniscule way.

There’s a conversation going on at the mo’ ’bout ‘social objects ‘(Gapingvoid is a great entry point, as are Jyri Engestrom’s slides on slideshare (who coined the term). And here’s a cracking example….

Howies make clothes; they’re a responsible company, in every way. <declaration: today I’m mostly wearing Howies jeans /declration>  So when they open their first store you’d expect a brand/web/shop social object. It’s described on Russell Davies’ blog  – and involves a heath robinson contraption to print photos from Howies’ flickr group. Looks like a thing of beauty – as a marketing concept and in store (must make a point of visiting.)

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Royal YouTube

December 23, 2007

The House of Windsor now has a channel on YouTube: that’s very welcome… I’m sure it won’t be long before TheRoyalChannel is the most popular way of watching the annual Christmas Queen’s Speech…. and that they add a lot more content to show the Family at work.

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Seth nails it: there’s two ways to market online - burn permission with frequency (make money  now, rebuild your customer base later), or engage, and dig in for a longer haul, but with permission.

I’ve always been a fan of the latter – work the customer base, with their consent, to grow your network by engaging theirs. Rather than talking about ‘permission’ which has a kinda ‘yes/no, once & for all time’ feel to it, I think of this as ‘consent’ –  it has a softer feel to the relationship, & maybe there’s more of a 2 way sense to the relationship.

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