Business

Changes to business digitisation brings

UK Government Jumps On YouTube
The UK Government have put two of their videos up on YouTube – for all the world to enjoy.
Senior executives at the UK Cabinet Office have posted their first two short films – ‘Transformational Government‘ and ‘Sharing the leadership challenge‘, a slightly longer clip concerning Whitehall plans to save money by consolidating service departments and the leadership challenges this poses for managers.
I know, I know … given that description, you all want to shoot over to the see them without a delay, but stay with a little while longer.
Ian Dunmore, Director of Public Sector Forums broke the news saying: “This looks like the first time a government anywhere has used YouTube in this way. It’s a ground-breaking move and one other governments might well follow.” We have to admire the him keeping his head by adding, “However we don’t expect the videos to surge to the top of the popularity chart just yet.”
The Death of YouTube?
Is this the death knell for YouTube? How could a service be any less cool than to have the government using it? The truth is, of course, that YouTube welcomes all no matter how stiff the video provider.
YouTube is becoming a cross-section of society, globally. This is borne out by Peter, the self-declared geriatric1927, the 78 year old widower, living alone in the county in the middle of England. His twelve videos documenting events of his life have been watch over half a million times in the last two weeks.
For a long time Governements have been looking around for way to get their ‘messages’ out to the public without the bothersome annoyance of journalists asking difficult questions. They may see YouTube as the fix for this.
What they may not have taken account of is the video replies or text comments that people can leave in response.
UK Gov on YouTube
18 August, 2006
Extreme Sports Channel Added to Sky Mobile TV
UK satellite operator, Sky is building on their video offerings on the Sky Mobile service, by adding the Extreme Sports Channel.
Sky and Vodafone have been offering video content on their 3G network since October last year.
The latest addition will offer made-for-mobile content including a series covering the best and worst slams and profiles on the ultimate extreme sports legends as well as existing content such as the acclaimed Tips & Tricks series.
Sports has been popular content on Sky Mobile TV, so as Stephen Nuttall, Director of Business Development at Sky says, “we’re giving customers even more of what they enjoy.”
We suspect that Sky is adding the extreme sports to attract a different sort of subscriber to the service, which they’re not increasing the price of, leaving it at £5/month for unlimited access.
All of this content is currently only available to Vodafone 3G subscribers, but it is expected that other networks are in discussions with Sky and it’s expected that they may offer it on their networks.
Sky Mobile TV
17 August, 2006
Gadgets Allowed Back On UK Flights
Gadget fans dreading the prospect of long Transatlantic flights without the comforting flicker of LCD screens or the in-ear thump of iPods will be pleased by a relaxing of the restrictions brought about by last week’s ‘critical’ terrorist security alert.
From 4.30am this morning, the Department for Transport (DfT) will allow Heathrow passengers to carry one item of cabin baggage on to planes, and this can include your lovely electronic gadgets – on the proviso that it is kept in clear plastic bags.
In a statement, the DfT said the new arrangements will apply to “all passengers starting their journey at a UK airport and to those transferring from international flights at a UK airport”.
The maximum dimensions for cabin baggage have been substantially reduced which may tempt hardcore travellers into investing into an ultra portable laptop rather than risk lumping their precious laptops into unpressurised cargo compartments.
Long distance lotharios who like to splash it all over with Brut 33 before arriving at their destination will be disheartened to learn that the carrying of all liquids remains forbidden.
Here’s a full breakdown of the new rules:
Cabin baggage must not exceed a maximum length of 45cm, width of 35cm and depth of 16cm (17.7″ × 13.7″ × 6.2″ approximately), including wheels, handles and side pockets. This is smaller than the previous limits on hand luggage.
Other bags, such as handbags, may be carried within it.
All items carried by passengers will be X-ray screened.
No liquids of any type are permitted through the airport security search point, with two exceptions: Prescription medicines in liquid form essential for the flight (such as diabetic kit), as long as it is verified as authentic. Baby milk and liquid baby food (the contents of each bottle or jar must be tasted by the accompanying passenger).
Liquids not allowed include gels, pastes, lotions, liquid/solid mixtures and the contents of pressurised containers, for example toothpaste, hair gel, drinks, soups, syrups, perfume, deodorant, shaving foam and aerosols. No cosmetics, toiletries or sharp objects.
To help their progress through search points, passengers are encouraged not to include items capable of containing liquids (e.g. bottles, flasks, tubes, cans, plastic containers etc.) in their cabin baggage.
All laptops and large electrical items (e.g. large hairdryer) must be removed from the bag and placed in a tray so that such items neither obscure nor are obscured by the bag.
Pushchairs and walking aids are permitted but must be x-ray screened. Wheelchairs are permitted but must be thoroughly searched.
Passengers boarding flights to the USA and items they are carrying, including those acquired after the central screening point, will be subjected to secondary search at the gate.
Any liquids discovered will be removed from the passenger.
More info: BAA
15 August, 2006
Tiscali Take Over HomeChoice
HomeChoice have agreed to be taken over ISP Tiscali in exchange for 11.5% of their new owner.
The tenacity of HomeChoice has always impressed us. They’ve been going for years and have just refused to give up. Getting started in the days when Video on Demand meant asking to rent a video from your local video rental shop, they’ve been through quite a number of investment rounds, some so severe that the investors ended up with nothing.
Never hitting big numbers, the writing has been on the wall for them, what with Sky getting into broadband, NTL re-enlivining themselves with Virgin mobile and BT Vision on the horizon.
HomeChoice has been settled on around 45,000 subscribers for quite a while now as they’ve been restricted to operating within London and some areas to its north. They just haven’t had the investment available to unbundle anymore exchanges beyond the 145 they have to spread their service. Their original expansion was hampered by the huge cost BT used to charge them for the Visionstream service they needed to run the service.
The last murmur about HomeChoice was that Sky was casting their eye in their direction, but we suspect that this was floated by the company itself to try and flush potential suitors out of the wood work.
As to why Tiscali has bought them …
It’s likely that Tiscali feels they need to move fast to avoid becoming sidelined by the other companies putting themselves forward as the Big Boys in the ISP/IPTV/Phone market.
By buying HomeChoice they’ll start with something they can build on, rather than having to start from scratch, giving them a time advantage. This is made very real by gaining 145 unbundled exchanges within London taking Tiscali to a total of 330 country-wide.
Homechoice has also spent quite a lot of effort in the last year building up their content relationships, creating niche programming.
As to the backend iron that HomeChoice is using to power the VOD – it may be that is getting a bit long in the tooth these days.
Don’t forget Tiscali don’t actually have to put their hands in their pockets either, just swap stock.
HomeChoice
Tiscali
14 August, 2006
Microsoft OneCare Hits US Anti-Virus Second Spot
The study of sales figures after the first month of Microsoft’s Windows Live OneCare will not make pleasant reading for the current PC security software companies.
Research from The NPD Group shows that Microsoft has grabbed the second spot for sales in US shops.
The natural dominance of Microsoft had always made companies such as McAfee and Symantec nervous and it appears to have been well founded. Their position has been assisted by pretty aggressive initial pricing, with its list price of $49.95 slashed to the bone at $19.95 at Amazon.com.
As NPD analyst Chris Swenson told News.com, “Microsoft’s penetration pricing strategy is clearly working and they are capturing significant unit share.”
NPD’s figures showed that the losses for the previously dominant security companies – Symantec cried the biggest tears with a 10.1% loss; McAfee said bye bye to 3.3% and Trend Micro 1.3%.
We think it’s pretty hilarious that Microsoft get to charge people who have bought their operating system up to $49.95 to secure against, among other things, virus attacks to their own operating system.
NPD
14 August, 2006
Viacom’s Big Shift to Digital: Summarised
Viacom have been making further moves to secure their future in digital media. Given all of the moves they’ve made this week, we thought it was worth summarising it.
The first recent deal was the one with Viacom doing a multi-part deal with Google. Viacom will provide Google with video clips and commercials for syndication through Google’s AdSense network, with income being split three ways, Viacom; Google; and the Web site owner. Videos from the Viacom group of companies will also sell their videos on Google Video for $1.99.
The day after this Viacom announced that they were going to buy Atom Entertainment (AtomShockwave as was, made up of Shockwave.com, AddictingGames.com, AtomFilms.com and AddictingClips.com). Viacom put $200m on the table for this one.
They’re be adding this to their other recent purchases, XFIRE, Y2M, GameTrailers.com, IFILM and Neopets, placing them all under MTV Networks.
Viacom are experts at delivering messages (TV, films and adverts to you and me) on television and films, and as we can see from the above deals, they’ve caught on that they really ought to be able to do this online too. To try and simplify this, they were looking for a way to smooth the transition of their content to the digital realm.
This brings us to the latest deal, between Viacom and Adobe, where Adobe’s Engagement Platform will be the preferred tool to digitise the content. The two will also ‘work together in developing new media applications,’ which sounds like an interesting idea, sadly no further detail was available.
The upshot of this is pretty bad news for Microsoft and Real as Viacom will be serving all of the online video adverts using Flash Video. Another nail in the coffin for a use of Microsoft’s Windows Media.
Viacom
Google
Atom Entertainment
Adobe
11 August, 2006
Cricket Mobisodes On The Ashes To Launch
The mobile division of TV production company Twofour and Player One Sports are working together to create a weekly short form TV show covering the Australian portion of the Ashes tour for portable devices.
The six minute shows will be formatted for mobile phones, iPods, or PSP’s. They’ll be chunked into one to two minute blocks, “for ease of use on different delivery mediums.”
Coming this Winter, sports presenter, Mark Durden-Smith (no we haven’t heard of him either, but when it comes to sport, that’s doesn’t mean anything) will be fronting the show where they plan to cover analysis of the action and try to give an understanding of life on tour in Australia.
It appears that they’re hoping to pull in the interest of posh types who like cricket, and more than likely don’t care how much it’s going to cost them to keep up to date. It may be of course turn out that these are the sort of people who don’t currently have the kit to play the content.
Twofour are clearly planning to flog the maximum amount of ‘media’ to lighten with heavy-wallets of their punters. Alongside the mobisode (and we suspect, cross-promoted during it), there will be a range of associated content including Freddie Flintoff’s Allround Cricket, a Web and mobile fantasy cricket game and a range of other downloadable content such as wallpapers, ring tones and video blog.
A rather over-excited Mr Philip Bourchier O’Ferrall, Director of Twofour Mobile gushed, “We are in the midst of a media revolution and I’m excited that Twofour is leading the way.”
Twofour mobile
4 August, 2006
PlusNet: 700Gb Of Mail Deleted: Sorry
UK ISP PlusNet has issued an official ‘sorry’ after having lost 700Gb of their subscribers email and not succeeding recovered it.
The problem was initially reported on Sunday 9 July where it was reported that their “network engineers are currently investigating an issue where customers are not seeing any email displayed in their mailboxes.” We suspect that caused a collective sharp intake of breath at their offices.
PlusNet tell us that the problem took place during an upgrade of the email server. The engineer upgrading the servers NAS (Network Attached Storage) made the mistake of thinking that the mirrored drive that he was working on was the backup drive – it was in fact the live drive. By repartitioning the drive, this was then mirrored to the backup drive. Argh!
When they realised the problem, they stopped it double quick. By then the 700Gb of email had been lost. Within 3 hours they’d shipped the NAS to the data recovery specialist.
We feel sorry for the engineer who did this … we really do. They must have had many, many nightmares about this since and probably shake when they get close to a systems keyboard.
PlusNet say that their analysis shows that half of the lost mail was marked as spam, 48% of the mail had already been read, with only 1-2% not having been looked at. 1-2% doesn’t sound too much, but when it’s 700Gb of data that’s been lost, that is still 7Gb – 14Gb of loss.
To put this in perspective, the flow of email for any ISP is considerable with PlusNet getting 1.5 million ’email writes’ a day. They estimate that 700Gb of email takes about 3 days to build up. With this flow of data backing up to tape simply isn’t practical.
PlusNet proudly say on their home page that they ‘”top uSwitch.com customer satisfaction survey with 92%,” perhaps this will have dropped slightly – they said their customers have been “disappointed” – but given how open they’ve been during the process, we suspect their customer will at least know they’re honest – important in our view.
At the end of last year PlusNet bought MetroNet to add to their other ISPs.
Thanks to the story tip from Urban75
PlusNet
3 August, 2006
Online Banking In The UK Leaves Customers Short-Changed
UK banks may be gleefully reporting big fat profits every quarter, but new research from eService provider Transversal claims that online customer service from Britain’s banks has sunk to an all time low.
Their study found that fifty per cent of the major banks surveyed were so rubbish that they were unable to answer a single one of ten basic customer questions asked via their websites (these questions were based on typical customer enquiries about credit card offers, borrowing and mortgages etc).
A minority of banks, however, achieved excellent results, revealing the growing gulf between the best and worst performing banks.
Taken as a whole, the sector registered a lamentable average of 2.5 out of ten, managing to answer just 25 per cent of common questions.
Although this looks like an utterly abysmal score, things have actually got worse over the past year, with only two banks scoring nul points in 2005, and the sector mustering up a mighty average of three questions answered.
Despite 56 per cent of Brits now using online banking, these results suggest that banks are more interested in increasing profits by closing down High Street stores than serving their customers, with further cost-cutting measures seeing call centres shunted offshore into unknown foreign lands, often increasing customers’ frustration.
No email contacts for customers
As if to wind up their customers further, sixty per cent of bank websites didn’t allow consumers to contact them via email, forcing them to ring up and face the horrors of ‘on hold’ phone music.
Of the forty per cent that bothered to provide an email address, there was clearly no rush to answer their customers’ questions, with the banks taking a leisurely average of 22 hours to respond.
The fastest response was a still-casual 8 hours – a whole working day – while the slowest was a massive 69 hours: enough time, the report noted, for the beleaguered customer to hop on a plane and travel to the offshore centre to ask the question personally.
The study also noted that only half of the major banks troubled themselves to provide a Frequently Asked Question (FAQ) page, and in many cases these were lurking in dark corners of the site, and not clearly marked for users.
A summary of the overall 2006 average banking results is as follows:
Average number of questions answered online: 2.5 out of 10 (2005 findings: 3)
Percentage of companies that responded to email correctly: 40% (2005 findings: 55%
Average email response time: 22 hours (2005 findings: 17 hours)
Percentage with customer FAQ pages: 50% (2005 findings: 60%)
Percentage with customer search: 60% (2005 findings: 40%)
Transversal
2 August, 2006
Sky Results: Long-Term Concerns?
BSkyB results for the last year were broadly in line with predictions, but seasoned watchers of all things financial, recognise tell-tale signs of a flattening of the growth curve. The company has managed its spend on programming well, but technology costs remain high, with significant outgoings on expensive High Definition equipment, that won’t bring instant revenue returns.
Sky, as the company brands itself in the UK, looks increasingly like a utility platform-come-broadband wars‘ that are unlikely to see any great financial gains for those taking part.
As Telcos have become drawn into offering entertainment packages to make their own offerings ‘sticky bundles’ – that their customers are loathe to detach themselves from – the entertainment companies are forced to provide competing phone and broadband packages, along with the capability of on-demand TV downloads. This won’t be cheap, as Sky has already found to date with its Easynet purchase, and may prove to be more expensive, if they decide to acquire the UK AOL subscribers from Time Warner.
Sky’s average revenue per subscriber (ARPU) has dropped by £4 and along side this they’re facing stiffer competition from Freeview, the UK Digital Terrestrial platform. Freeview now has a free-to-air movie channel (Film 4) and is due to add two further entertainment channels provided by the UK channel ‘Five’ this autumn. Cost-conscious multi-channel homes will continue to gravitate to this low frills platform.
Sky, like pay-TV services worldwide, has a high churn rate, although its managed to reduce this, it remains somewhere over 10% (that’s the percentage of subscribers over the past year who ended their subscriptions). Achieving this has been costly with increased promotional spend and marketing offers to keep current subscribers signed, which has in-turn hit the bottom line.
James Murdoch the CEO of BSkyB told the corporate world that “Our industry is changing faster than ever before and for Sky, 2006 has been an important and exciting year.”
With the NTL/Telewest /Virgin mobile merger and its re-brand starting to gather traction, it looks like Sky can look forward to even more excitement in 2007.
31 July, 2006