Whatever...

Increased traffic to ruin viewing of England game?

By Jacqui Depares

With the World Cup in full swing, it seems only fitting to dedicate a few words to it on this blog.

Now, I confess, during a normal football season, you are hardly likely to find me glued to the TV screen watching a match.  The World Cup, however, is a completely different matter.  The other teams I can take or leave... but when England is on, I am there... (if of course sitting on an armchair in Balham counts as being ‘there’).

Now that was all well and good for the match last Saturday and dare I say it, the match tomorrow. But come Wednesday 23^rd, what will the supporters confined to the average working day do to watch the match at the rather inconvenient time of 3pm?

Well, some of us, like my Account Director Claire, have booked a strategic half day off.  Now that's dedication. For the less die-hard supporters out there, we're all going to be relying on the BBC website to do its bit and stream coverage live from South Africa in pristine quality. So, no missed goals, no unfortunately timed Toyota adverts, just the beautiful game streamed down to our humble PCs.  Should be simple enough, right?

Well, think again. According to internet service provider, Star, we’re going to see a 50% surge in internet traffic on Wednesday 23^rd June, so brace yourselves for some serious buffering people.  Blue Coat has also issued a similar warning, coupled with some depressing survey findings.  Apparently, 54% of IT managers believe that employees should be banned from watching games over fears of network congestion.  All I can say is, and I think I speak for all our office when I say this, thank goodness Mike King is not one of these people. 

So, I guess the proof will be in the pudding (or something a little more football related). Meat, pie, sausage rolls and all that, come on BBC.co.uk, please let us see a goal!

Choosing the best World Cup planner

By Ben Roberts

The World Cup is finally here and all of us wish we were in South Africa to support our team.  Sadly, this isn't going to happen.

But we can keep on top of all the goings on, and we think that Marca – the Spanish daily sports paper – wins the prize for making the best World Cup planner, with this clever page.

PS In the office sweepstake I got Slovenia and France... not bitter at all.

 

Will it just work?

Interesting video from OEM InvenSense looking at MEMS gyroscope technology, as is featured in the upcoming iPhone4.

Although the technology enables cool functions, there’s the potential for it to be pretty annoying if it doesn’t work properly, is glitchy or can’t be disabled.  Will we begin to hear even more about testing and quality issues as a result of these developments?

“Les apéros Facebook”, a French cultural exception?

By Alexandra Radius

In France, a new debate is raging among local authorities on whether to allow “les apéros Facebook”. The concept is simple: flash mobs for drinking.

These events are becoming more and more successful, with real competition brewing between cities. The Paris ‘apéritif’, for example, was given “the record for the biggest apéritif in France" and now the growing popularity of the phenomenon has the authorities worried. Last month the death of a young person unleashed a lot of hostility against these gatherings. The Minister of the Interior, Brice Hortefeux decided that to authorise these giant “apéritifs” a number of conditions (size and nature of the event, exact location etc) would have to be met. Easy in theory, but difficult to implement.

I’m wondering why there is so much fear - as the concept is not new. Large numbers of people have always gathered together in France to eat, drink and be merry on New Year’s, Bastille Day, and for “La Fête de la Musique”  and these events have never been cancelled, even when there have been incidents. Although the Internet changes the way people come together, and pushes up the number of participants - the problem is not Facebook, but the increasingly excessive alcohol consumption among young people. The solution is perhaps to concentrate on advertising against binge drinking, rather than pointing the finger at Facebook and other social networking sites. But then burying our heads in the sand is a French speciality.

Time for change – let’s make do and mend

By Dana Hashem

The time has come for me to renew my mobile phone contract.  Yes, once again, I find myself bombarded with renewal offers from my current provider, while competing operators fight hard to steal me away with promises of better packages and wondrous handsets capable of anything from full-blown GPS to intelligent voice recognition (heck, why would I want to talk to my friends when I can talk to my phone?).

Apparently, I’m supposed to take this opportunity to replace my old handset.  There is just one snag with this - I like the phone I have now.  It works.  It’s familiar.  There’s absolutely no reason that I should replace it.  In fact, I’d go as far as to say that if it broke, I’d probably feel more inclined to get it repaired than buy a new one.  The problem is I can’t shake the feeling that this attitude is socially unacceptable – I’m supposed to yearn for the latest upgrade, and everyone around me thinks nothing of casting their old phone aside regardless of whether it still works or not.

This in itself may seem like an insignificant conundrum, but just think about it – when it comes to IT equipment, this throwaway culture manifests itself everywhere.  Consumers and businesses alike turf out perfectly serviceable kit all the time, and manufacturers certainly know how to press all the right buttons to keep us hungry for more.  The environmental consequences of this are enormous, and somehow government initiatives like the WEEE directive just don’t seem to be hitting the mark.  To me, the solution to this problem is simple; we need to make things last longer instead of discarding them at the first sign of malfunction.

As the new government prepares to tighten the nation’s belt – not to mention clamp down on the UK’s carbon footprint – it should also be encouraging a more thrifty mentality towards the disposal of IT equipment.  Perhaps making IT repair more affordable would be a good place to start?

Accessorising the iPad

If you’re one of the lucky ones getting an iPad this Friday, you’re probably considering how to best accessorise your purchase.  This video from Swiss Miss is a great place to start!

 

New vs old media...

Here’s an interesting report from the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. 
 
It’s a (US based) in-depth look at how different stories/issues prove popular not just between new and old media, but between the individual channels of blogs, Twitter and YouTube – suggesting that digital campaigns will really benefit from a highly tailored individual approach for the separate platforms.
 

The 140 most influential people with 140 characters

The Information Architects team has produced this impressive map of the top 140 Twitter influencers.  How many of them do you follow and how much influence do you think they really have? 

A recent survey of technology marketeers found that there is still major disagreement on the value of using Twitter.

 

I’m sorry, your card has been declined

By Flora Haslam

Having just got back from a few weeks in Mexico, I’ve faced the all too common frustration of having my credit/debit cards repeatedly blocked.  My bank now asks customers to advise when they’re travelling overseas, providing the dates and countries they’re visiting.  While this is far from convenient I was happy to oblige on the basis that my bank was doing all it could to prevent fraud and I’d have no problems buying stuff and withdrawing cash.  Sadly, this didn’t happen!  Despite registering both a VISA and Mastercard, both were blocked for certain transactions – even when using a Chip and PIN device.

Banks obviously can’t afford to lose any more money in the current climate – fraud costs the UK cards industry £440m a year despite overseas fraud apparently falling 47% in the last year, but I can’t help but think there has to be a better (and cheaper) way than automatically blocking cards.

There’s clearly a market for technology to address this – in the interests of full disclosure we’ve done some work for one such firm that is addressing the problem by checking whether a customer’s mobile phone is in the same place as the card making the transaction.  Unfortunately few card issuers seem to be deploying such tools.  If one could offer me a more user-friendly, secure service today, I’d certainly be interested in switching!

How has your privacy changed on Facebook?

Lots in the news at the moment regarding Facebook’s privacy policies.  This blog entry shows you how the default settings have progressed overtime.  Give the diagram a click...