UK

£180m To Be Spent Online Today In UK
It’s being predicted that today will be the biggest Internet-based shopping day of the year in the UK. The Interactive Media in Retail Group (IMRG) research points to a massive £180m being spent just on this day, more than double the £82 million average for 2006.
They see most of the e-shopping (as it used to be so sweetly called) being done in peoples lunch hours, between 1-2, when £14 million will be chucked over the line towards various online shops. This far out weighs the average of £4 million-per-hour being spent online in the 10-weeks run up to Christmas.
It’s not just those chomping the lunch sarnies that are clicking-until-they-drop, eDigitalResearch.com’s director, Chris Russell, chimes in with, “The evening Internet shopping peak is a recent phenomenon that has become possible with consumers’ acquisition of broadband at home. The evening peak – between 7 and 9pm – is now 80% as high as lunchtimes, when the highest sales are still recorded, between 1 and 2pm.”
Figures like this point to 38% of the sales taking place outside of traditional shopping hours, either before 9am or after 6pm. IMRG are really keen for you to notice this – differentiating them from ‘normal’ stores.
It’s not just today that is rather large in the sales department – the shopping joy/nightmare will be spread over the whole week. They estimate online sales worth £1.145 billion (!) will be made in the week 4-10 Dec, with the whole of December ringing up £3.55 billion.
IMRG
4 December, 2006
BT Text Aid Track With Tom Baker
It’s good to see people aren’t forgetting charity at this time of year. In the UK BT are doing their bit by offering a track for sale, whose proceeds will go to the homeless charity, Shelter.They’ve got two offerings.
The first, Text Aid, as BT are labelling it, uses the dulcet tones of actor Tom Baker (he of Dr Who fame) to read text messages that are sent from mobiles to land-lines. The service will run from today (1.Dec) until 8 January 2007.
BT will donate 2p for each text sent – they say this is the money they make after costs have been removed.
Given behaviour in previous years, Xmas and New Year are the busiest time of the year for people texting festive ditties to each other.
We await the many quotes from Dr Who fans, probably featuring references to K9 and Sarah Jane, to be delivered to our landline.
The other offering also uses the velvety voice of Tom Baker, but this time as part of an updated version of the Kinks track, “You’ve really got me.” Tom speaks the words while a disco’d version of the track bumps along in the background.
It might not be our normal listening habits, but it’s for charridy for goodness sakes. The track was made by Mark Murphy, 34, a self-employed IT consultant and Dr Who fanatic.
With his typical humour Tom Baker said: “I’m delighted to have been asked back by BT as the voice of text-to-landline. It’s rather like being Santa Claus, delivering all your festive greetings – I only wish I could hear what I’m saying!
It can be pre-ordered from today on 7Digital and will generally be avilable on services like eMusic and iTunes from 18 December. Cost? A mere 79p.
This time all money will go to Shelter. They’re hoping to raise £100,000 from the whole jolly affair.
As you’d expect Shelter are planning to use the money raised wisely as Adam Sampson, chief executive of Shelter explained, “The £100,000 donation will allow us to fund an awareness-raising campaign in primary and secondary schools during 2007 as well as supporting frontline services to help vulnerable children and young people cope with housing problems.”
Do some good over xmas and pop over to Text Aid or place your order for the track at the Indie store.
1 December, 2006
Interview With Barry Hitchens About Game On (Podcast)
I had a fascinating conversation with Barry Hitchens, the exhibition consultant of the excellent Game On exhibition, which is currently at the Science Museum, it’s eleventh venue in a world tour that started in the Barbican in 2002.
You can listen in to Barry’s vast knowledge of video games and hear about the trials and tribulations of touring the show around the world.
The show has changed over the years, and Barry gives a lowdown on what has worked and what hasn’t, while outlining the history of significant stages of video gaming.
If you like video games, you’re going to love this.
Interview with Barry Hitchens – Exhibition consultant Game On
30 November, 2006
Excitement Building For UK Wii Launch
Following the success of the launch of the Nintendo Wii in the US where 600,000 units were sold within the eight days – that’s nearly one per second, the buzz about the UK launch continues to heighten.
First came Amazon.co.uk selling out its pre-order allocation of Wii’s within seven minutes – although the number of actual units sold were never disclosed.
During our coverage of its early public unveiling at the Game On exhibition, we noted that the people were really rather excited about the Wii coming out. It looks like it’s going to do pretty well here.
News of a tie up between HMV shops and Nintendo will see the now-expected midnight launch at their Oxford Street flagship store of the gaming platform.
Starting at 11pm the great-unwashed (that’s you and me) will be able to play against some ‘celebrities’ called Ian Wright, Jodie Kidd, Pat Cash and Ricky Hatton (whoever they are).
Globally Nintendo is planning to ship 4 million console before the end of 2006, a record for them.
Surprisingly the shipping in Japan starts on 2 Dec (the home country normally gets the product first) with the Europe-wide launch following on the 8 Dec.
The retail price of €249/£179 with Wii Sports game including Tennis, Bowling, Boxing, Golf and Baseball included in the box.
Included with every Wii console is one wireless Wii Remote, a Nunchuk, Wii Sports game, Stereo AV Cable and the sensor bar for Wii’s unique control system.
We can’t wait.
30 November, 2006
BT Vision To Launch (Finally)
As we’ve covered extensively, BT has been working on BT Vision for yonks now, perhaps struggling with some of the technical issues with the Microsoft system that they’re running.
Launching on Monday, BT Vision, BT’s new combined television and Internet service, will let customers view Freeview channels and catch up with TV shows over the past week with no monthly subscription fees.
We’ll be at the launch cover it live, so tune in on Monday.
BT will also offer “on-demand” content (films, music, TV programmes etc) for viewing on home TVs, downloadable over a broadband connection.
With BT and BSkyB enjoying joint rights to show Premiership matches, BT will provide paid access on a per-game and “season ticket” subscription basis.
Other one-off and subscription Pay TV content will be available via “add-ons,” with the service using BT Vision’s set-top, a programmable Sky+ style PVR unit capable of storing up to 80 hours of TV and set to retail for less than £100.
Viewers will be able to pause and rewind live TV and enjoy access to around 30 Freeview channels.
BT’s new TV service echoes moves made by France Telecom and Telecom Italia in Europe, and should help the UK broadband giants fend off competition from rivals such as TalkTalk who are reeling in punters with their ‘free’ broadband service.
It’s also a smart piece of a manoeuvring to counter Sky, who recently launched their own residential broadband service, as well as cable network NTL who are mustard keen to start delivering content over phone lines.
BT is set to start rolling out the service early next year, although it’s going to be a bit of a half-cocked launch with only Channel Four currently signed up for the seven-day “catch-up” service (behind the scenes, BT’s legal team are busy battling with BBC and ITV producers to negotiate a path through the minefield of rights.)
BT Vision’s Download Store will also include music content, with deals already struck with Sony BMG, MTV, Video Performance Ltd and BTPodshow.
BT Vision
29 November, 2006
Play PS3 and Wii Now At The Science Museum (Podcast)
The organisers of Game On, clearly have amazing contacts with the games industry having been running the exhibition for the last four years around 11 venues around the world. It’s contacts like this that has led to them getting hold of Sony’s PS3 and Nintendo before it’s launched in the UK – four months in the case of the PS3.
The Science Museum is currently the only place in the UK where Joe Public can play the PS3. There’s a couple of places around where the PS3 can be seen, but like the venue off Brick Lane, they’re invite only.
Even if you could get to see the PS3, not other venue has the PS3 right next to the Wii, so you can compare them.
So what are they like?
The PS3 is playing Motor Storm and it looks stunning, with amazing photo realism. The action is intense and it’s very clear that this is a major leap forward in gaming. The controller can be set in a mode where its physical movements control the action of the onscreen action. Being used to playing the PS controller without this, it take a little while to get used to the sensitivity on the movements needed to control it.
The Wii clearly has the movement sensors built-in (it’s the big selling point of the whole console). Playing with them is near-instantly understandable – feeling natural to wave your arms around to control a tennis racket or box the hell out of your opponent. The graphics are far simpler, delivered in the normal Nintendo cartoon style.
It is of note that the PS3 has a significant number of venting holes in its casing and a large fan under nearth to cool it – it draws 350w. The Wii doesn’t have any venting.
Who’s going to win?
If sales are going to reflect the public interest here at the Science Museum today, Sony need to look out, because the Interest in the Wii far outweighed that in the PS3. This could be down to the affordable price of the Wii, or indeed that the public actually have a chance of own it this side of xmas.
Speaking to the punters here, the feeling was that the Wii would give far more of a gaming experience, not just the gloss that the PS3 gives.
It’s no exaggeration to say that some people were literally running into the exhibition hall, shouting, “is it here, is it here?” as the made their way to the Wii. I had thought it would have been the other way around, with the PS3 being the big draw.
The rest of the exhibition is well worth the visit alone – charting the history of video games from the start, and put together with a lot of intelligence. With the Wii and PS3 added to it, you can expect large queues at the weekend.
We had a chat to the event organiser, Gaetan Lee to get an overview of how he got the hold of the Wii and PS3 before their UK release and the background to the Game On exhibition.
Click below to play the interview …
[audio:https://digital-lifestyles.info/media/audio/Wii-PS3-game-on.mp3]
Game On – Science Museum
29 November, 2006
Get Ready To Play PS3 And Wii At The Science Museum
The Nintendo Wii and Sony’s Playstation3 (PS3) will be available for play at the Game On exhibition at the Science Museum from Wednesday. Expect queues.
Don’t bother flying to the USA and queueing for three days to be the first to get your PS3, or splashing out £1,000 to buy one from eBay, that may, or may not actually turn up. If you live in the UK, it couldn’t be simpler – just get yourself down there when the doors open at 11am to get your hands on the first publicly available PS3 in the UK and the attention-attracting Wii.
The PS3 is scheduled for launch in March in the UK, while it’s emerging that only around 150,000 were shipped at the recent US launch. The Wii’s UK launch is much closer – 8th December, having had its US launch already.
The two new boys will be alongside the current exhibition, which cover the history of video games, starting back in the early 1960’s.
We went to the first Game On exhibition when it was at the Barbican in 2002 and were highly impressed with it. Not just the number of games and platforms covered, but the sheer depth of the knowledge on show.
We’ve spoken to the organisers and hear that quite a few of the exhibits have changed from the early days, including items that have been picked up over the years as the show has travelled over the world.
When you get bored of all the new stuff, by way of a stark contrast, you’ll be able to play the world’s first computer game, Spacewar!, from 1962 as well.
To book tickets or find out further details contact 0870 906 3890 or take a look at the site. The exhibition ends Feb.07. Ticket prices Adults £8.50; Children and concessions £6.50
Science Museum Game On Exhibition
The Original Game On Exhibition
28 November, 2006
UK Online Video Viewing Bites Into TV Viewing
Video sharing Websites like YouTube are starting to impact on TV viewing figures, with more people switching off and logging on.
A new survey by the BBC found that 43% of Brits who watch video on their PCs or mobiles at least once a week now spend less time on the sofa watching TV as a result.
Although online mobile viewing continues to rise – three quarters of users say they watch more online than a year ago – it’s got a long way to go before it matches the reach of TV, with only 9 per cent of the population regularly watching Net videos.
A further 13% of those questioned said they watched online occasionally, with another 10 per cent saying they expected to start in the coming year.
Not surprisingly, online and mobile video is the biggest hit with the young ‘uns, with 28 per cent of those aged 16-24 saying they watched more than once each week, while around one in ten of 25-44 year olds were Net video regulars.
However, citizens of advancing years weren’t too keen on this new fangled online video thing, with just 4 per cent of over-45s watching online.
The majority of the population still prefers to watch the old fashioned gogglebox, with two-thirds of the population shunning online TV and saying that had no intention of starting in the next 12 months.
It’s a bit of a different story in the US, where hit TV shows regularly appear on networks’ websites and through services like iTunes, although the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 will all be offering most of their shows on demand over the Internet in the next few months.
BBC report
27 November, 2006
SMS Doctors Appointment Reminder Live In Ealing
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.
Many of the missed appointments are due to genuine mistakes where the person due at the hospital suddenly remembers that where they were supposed to be.
If this has happened to you, you’re part of the 15% that do it too.
Those afflicted with this, will be able to breath a sign of relief thanks to the combined power of Orange, iPLATO with their Patient Care Messaging, and Ealing Primary Care Trust, well, at least if they live in Ealing they will be.
Orange being involved with the project points to the means of delivery. SMS reminders will be sent to patients mobile phones automatically, thanks to the integration with the patient administration systems, already used by GPs throughout the borough.
To take part in the free trial patients register their mobile phone numbers at their surgeries.
Orange is involved through the partnership they’ve had with iPlato since 2003. They’ll be sending out the ton of SMS’s that the system will be spitting out – think of the deal like them having sold the health authority a _huge_ bundle of SMS’s. Although Orange is heading the deal, messages are sent to all networks – be a bit daft otherwise wouldn’t it?
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.
Set at the right level of frequency, this kind of reminder is currently helpful, but any Doctor’s service that starts to abuse this by sending too many messages can be sure to get their patients unsubscribing from their service.
Mulling this over we thought that while it is a great first step, isn’t it a bit amazing that this hasn’t been done before?
Far smaller organisation have been using this idea for quite a while. Sal, my wife receives SMS reminders from her hairdresser (Jaqs of Newport – BTW can we have her hair cuts cheaper if I plug your shop?) the day before her appointments.
This marks the largest deployment of integrated text messaging in British primary care to date.
The saving for the NHS with success in this area will be considerable. Imperial College estimate that between £240 million and £380 million could be saved with country wide use of SMS reminders.
23 November, 2006
UK Freeview HD London Trial A Success
Following the trial in London, HD TV over Freeview has been judged as a success after the six months that it’s been running.
The major broadcasters BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Five made joint announcements to tell all the good news.
Not surprisingly 98% of the 450 people who took part think that the over-the-air HD service should be available now. Those people can whistle all they want because the bandwidth just isn’t available. Once digital switch over occurs, there might be a chance, if any of it’s left after the spectrum auction.
Other results of interest include 90% of the trialists felt that the public broadcasters should be responsible for HD development.
It’s clear that once people get their hands on HD, the desire becomes strong, illustrated by their wish to see at least 7 channels, or ideally 10.
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.”
Five percent of those who took part in the trial didn’t think that the HD experience matched up to their expectations. Many others who have HD screens have said the same as some broadcasters compress the images they’re sending out, to ensure they get as many channels into their bandwidth as possible.
22 November, 2006