Wow … things are really starting to gel across the Murdoch media businesses, as James Murdoch starts showing his hand. Perhaps this is the first real example of seeing James’ talent on with what we’ve been told was his passion – that for convergence.
First is a typical Sky masterstroke – naming their services with a fantastically concise moniker.
They’re re-branding the previously-named-to-appeal-to-techies service, Sky by Broadband, swapping it for the far more concise Sky Anytime.
The message – don’t worry that it’s broadband, that’s not important. What is important is that you … yes, you can pay to see content when ever you want to. In fact, you can do it – Anytime.
It’s genius. A typical application of what Murdoch publications do – speak to people in a language that they understand.
The simplicity of the service cleverly removes the need for talented sales people at retail, you know the type of store I mean … “Well Sir, it’s like Sky … but it’s available at Anytime.” Genius.
A number of Sky One shows will be available over the service. Sounds great, until you imagine that 93% of the those using Sky By Broadband already own a Sky+ box – having the ability to see the shows when they want to anyway.
The second example – Sky One putting out its content on another strongly-branded service. Luckily it’s in the family – MySpace.
Two episodes of the watched-by-the-obsessed running series Lost were available until Sunday via MySpace UK for UK viewers only. Fans of Lost reacted angrily when Sky out bid Channel 4 for the current series. I suspect that Sky Inc, will see it as a way of perhaps signing up more subscribers.
They’re on the move
Here’s the reality – Sky is starting to work it. They’re small steps so far, but at least they’re actually doing what other people are talking about doing – moving media between platforms.
Here’s the worrying part for all people who hope to be able to compete in this Digital-Lifestyle. They’ve stolen the march on the rest of the market, they own their own IP delivery channel.
The pricing of PSone games to be played on the Sony PSP have been announced.
It was initially envisaged that Sony would give access to the Playstation Store through the PSP using its WiFi connection. We can see one advantage of not doing this – people wanting to use the service will need to buy a PS3!
We spent a fair bit of time watching online advertising, as the income for Digital-Lifestyles comes in solely from it.
We see that Engadget are offering a charity auction for Save Dafur.
Ever self-aware, Engadget also point out they understand the irony of raising money for a Dafur charity, by playing a video game called Gears of War. Their defence is that their readers chose the charity and that they’d already decided what the event was going to be. As some step towards balancing this, Engadget have named the event Gears of Peace.
For a long time Health Authorities have been having kittens about the amount of people who miss their hospital appointments – and quite rightly, it’s a tremendous waste of resources, that are already stretched.
It’s not just appointments that can be handled, Orange tell us that, “Among many benefits, text messaging prompts a better response to health promotion campaigns such as invitations to receive flu jabs or attend asthma clinics.” The word promotion could be worrying if abused.
UK uber-regulator, Ofcom has finally got itself sorted out and is to allow the use of low-powered FM transmitters in the UK from 8 December.
Following the trial in London, HD TV over Freeview has been judged as a success after the six months that it’s been running.
Simon Fell, Director of Technology, ITV Consumer was upbeat, “We have conclusively demonstrated that HD services can run effectively alongside standard Freeview broadcasts. All major technical hurdles are behind us, and collectively we can focus on potentially providing services for the forecasted sales of 10 million flat screen TVs by 2010.”
The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) movement got a boost this week when their first production model arrived at their offices.
For us, the biggest surprise is the sheer smallness of it – when you see it sitting on top another ‘normal’ laptop it will be clear.
We’ve been avid followers of the OLPC or $100 laptop as it used to be called since the