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The disaster of movies and adverts

September 17, 2012 By Dan Thornton

Last night I happened to scroll through the TV guide and spotted Swordfish was on, so settled down to watch the hacking exploits of Hugh Jackman.

It was being shown on commercial Channel 5, which as a commercial channel airs advertising frequently throughout the film. And within the first 25 minutes, the adverts had annoyed me so much with their disruption I’d switched on my Xbox, fired up Lovefilm, found Swordfish and watched it on there instead.

Solving TV advertising:

The problem with watching any commercial television channel is the disruption of the advertising. Occasionally there’s an advert interesting enough to merit watching the first couple of times you see it, but inevitably it’s all shown repeatedly until you lose interest in the products and switch off completely.

And while there may be some benefits to reinforcing the incessant brand messages in my subconscious, it’s not like I don’t already have enough cars, foods or gadgets bookmarked and saved as potential future purchases.

But what options exist for a commercial broadcaster? The BBC is funded by TV license payments, so can show films without adverts, as can any service behind a pay-wall.

Well, my suggestion, which I’ve proposed to various print and radio companies with different levels of success is simple:

Stop showing adverts in the middle of programmes. Show them at the end. The risk of people using that time to get a drink or go to the toilet still exists even when you disrupt millions of pounds invested in an entertaining show or film.
Invest more human effort and technology to show hyper-relevant advertising, and take a cut of the affiliate revenue as well.

So what does that actually mean? Take Swordfish as an example – at the end of the film, when people have hopefully enjoyed the film and it may have sparked one or more ideas in their heads, you display items based on the key themes, e.g:

Want to know the real stories of hacking? Check out books by Kevin Mitnick, the real world’s most famous hacker on Amazon. Amazon Link
Want to drive the same TVR as John Travolta? Get a Tuscan from as little as £11,500. Autotrader link.
Want to be an elite hacker? You’ll need a top spec PC. Check out these beauties from Alienware. Alienware link.

For the broadcast transmission, it’d mean having some stock adverts which could be easily changed in line with programming which makes it worthwhile, but there are ways to automate much of this, and also expand on it for digital distribution.

And suddenly as a single male whose entire broadcast TV output on commercial channels consists of the Big Bang Theory and Ice Road Truckers (Everyone has their guilty pleasures), I’ll find myself actually going through the order process to find out how much an Alienware PC would actually cost me, or looking at what it might take to actually pass the HGV test and be licensed to drive a lorry, rather than seeing adverts for ladies clothing or new cars that I’ll never be interested in.

It’d mean changes to the advertising industry, and the booking software and procedures, but suddenly you can start laser-targeting instead of carpet bombing. Because increasingly the collateral damage of advertising will be pushing more people to the ever-increasing and ever simpler alternatives.

The transformation of media technology

September 1, 2012 By Dan Thornton

I’m not that old – despite what my young son might say. But remembering a time before broadband internet was commonplace, when records came on vinyl and videotapes were rented from a local corner shop, I’m occasionally amazed.

In the last 24 hours;

I streamed a movie from the 90’s via Lovefilm on the Xbox 360.
I listened to songs from the 80’s on Spotify
I read a classic book from the ’60s on my Kindle which I’d bought on the Amazon site during lunch at a client’s office, and had already been downloaded automatically before I cam home.

And people wonder why media businesses are in confusion? It all seems as natural as breathing now, but,

Lovefilm – launched in 2003, Xbox streaming 2011. (VHS lasted from around 1976 to around 2008)
Spotify – launched in 2006 (Vinyl records became popular in the 1920s)
Amazon Kindle – launched in 2007. (Paperback books hit around 1935)

All three of the prior technologies are still widely available – paperbacks still sell in large volumes, vinyl is still produced, and although it’s 4 years since the last dedicated video player/recorder was made, the functionality still exists in tandem with DVD combo machines.

Yet for me they’ve been comprehensively replaced by tech released in the last 6 years.

And we’ve still got the internet of things, and 3D printing, about to break with the disruptive level of the launch of the internet.

Breathtakingly incredible…

Catching up on essential tech reading: Hackers and The Art of Intrusion

July 23, 2012 By Dan Thornton

Electronic books still have an oddly high price in certain niches, despite the fact storing long tail data products doesn’t actually cost very much. As a result I recently went on a bit of a secondhand book buying spree on Amazon. Taking a bit of a break from constant social media updates and obsessive RSS reading means I’ve had time to catch up on various books which really should be essential for anyone in the technology space.

Hackers by Stephen Levy:

It’s hard to believe that I hadn’t got around to reading Hackers – it’s a legendary book charting the history of computing and the pioneers involved. First published in 1984, and re-released in 2010 as a 25th Anniversary Edition, it really falls into three parts. The first looks at the origins of computing, and hacking at MIT. The second features the Homebrew computing club, which spawned Apple and many other companies, followed by the final section which focuses on the exploits of early videogame company Sierra Online.

What unites the book is the ‘hacker ethic’ which it really defined in print for the first time. Whether it’s The Tech Model Railway Club at MIT who first started sneaking into the huge but primitive mainframe computers in the 1960s, the hardware hackers creating home computers, or the developers who became superstars due to their success in the videogame industry, the common thread follows the rise of the hands-on hacking imperative, and the way it was first threatened and then subsumed by business interests. It’s interesting that the book ends with the lone figure of Richard Stallman, the ‘last true hacker’ and founder of the Free Software Foundation, as the rise of Free Software / Open Source has fueled a resurgence in open software and hacking which has again led to hardware innovation in 3D Printing, Drone aircraft and more.

Although the events of the book took place in the 1960-1980s, not only are those ignorant of history doomed to repeat it, but the motivations and concerns of the people involved in each section are as relevant today as they were at the time. How can you motivate hackers and those who work on projects for the joy of them rather than pay? Or what role should intellectual property and copyright actually play when business and technology innovation come together?

It’s eminently readable, even for people who don’t care about machines like the PDP-6 or TX-0 at MIT in the AI lab being run by some of the ex-TMRC. Despite the acronyms and some detailed explanation of the processes involved in various groundbreaking programs, there are plenty of anecdotes such as AI robots escaping their lab, or the habits of passionate anti-smoking hackers to persuade fellow diners in restaurants to extinguish their cigarettes.

I’m pretty certain this is one book which will be staying at the front of the bookshelf for dipping back into.

The Art of Intrusion: Kevin D Mitnick and William L.Simon

Infamous hacker (using the negative cyber-criminal interpretation of the term) turned security consultant Kevin Mitnick has written various books on the subject of business intrusion with co-author Bill Simon, and whilst Ghost in the Wires covers his own story as America’s most wanted computer criminal, The Art of Intrusion is interesting as it tells the stories of various successful exploits in accessing sensitive business data.

Benefiting from his hacking reputation, various people felt safe in admitting the mechanics of both computer intrusions and those using social engineering – although names of individuals and companies are often changed for obvious reasons. Mitnick apparently judged the voracity of the exploits and is pretty open about how trustworthy he considers each tale.

Despite the idea of glamorous computer crime capers, The Art of Intrusion is a much more technical book, going into a fair amount of detail into how each hack was accomplished (Without giving away exactly how to imitate each exploit). It also features Mitnick’s consultancy as he advises companies on how to avoid falling prey to the same problems at the end of each chapter.

Even if you’re not particularly interested in the technical aspects, particularly as the book is six years old at the time of writing, there are plenty of important lessons about the mentality of those who might be targeting your online business, as well as decent advice for all staff to avoid physical intruders using persuasion and social engineering to gain access. Particularly detailed are the exploits of the legal hackers – those performing penetration tests to analysis weakness for a business, including getting into the secure areas of a casino in Las Vegas, for example!

Get involved in Open Source eCommerce

July 10, 2012 By Dan Thornton

If you fancy getting involved in Open Source eCommerce, then you might well be interested in the fact that Jigoshop (a client of mine) has opened up beta testing for new versions before they are officially released.

The beta test is being administered via an email list, which will include all the details on what’s included in releases, how to post feedback etc, and you can sign up at:

http://jigoshop.com/beta.

So if you like WordPress, eCommerce, Open Source, Finding Bugs, Helping People and more, then do sign up. You don’t need to be a PHP developer expert, but you’ll need to be able to run a WordPress (and Jigshop) install…

Data, Sharing and Over-Sharing

July 2, 2012 By Dan Thornton

Data is one of the biggest trends at the moment – it’s interesting to see the amount of coverage given to the recently announced integration between Nike’s Fuelband and the Path social network, for example.

What’s interesting to me about this is that the Nike Fuelband is essentially a very cool fitness tracking bracelet, which continues the Nike+ tracking and sharing trend. If you’ve tracked your run etc 5 or more times, it’s extremely likely to now be a habit you’ll continue, and the more social you are, the more likely you’ll keep it going to pass that early barrier.

That’s one side to it, the other struck me as I was distracted by the stats on my Last.fm profile.

Will social networks be defined by how much is shared?

Obviously there have already been attempts to create new social networks around the selling point of user privacy, and so far none have really achieved the kind of meteoric success of the big social sites.

What I’m thinking about is something slightly different in the way the networks are perceived and gain users, and it struck me as I posted on Facebook about how I don’t automatically feed every Spotify track into Facebook, but they’re all available as scrobbled by Last.fm (In 5 years I’ve scrobbled 14,524 songs to Last.fm which if you took an average of 4 minutes per track would be 58096 minutes, 968.26 hours, or 40 days worth).

What I’m thinking of is something like the following split:

Least shared data: Twitter. No requirement for real names, or details. Big asynchronous groups.
Average: Facebook. Suggests using real data (although you can get around it). Slightly smaller groups and closer to ‘real’ friends.
Most shared data: Path. Integrate and share absolutely everything with a smaller, closer group of friends.

Will data sharing and data services start to shape our attraction to certain networks in an equal fashion to who we know is actually using them? Does the social aspect of sharing fitness data with other people in training equal the social aspect of connecting with my family whose interests on Facebook may rarely intersect with my own?

If we take Facebook as the standard sharing benchmark due to the massive user numbers, there’s definitely a skew towards much more sharing than ever before (Obviously some will have a locked down FB profile with a fair bit of effort required). Will we see a world of people addicted to data sharing looking to go beyond what FB can offer, or a greater number of people looking for more privacy and less automatic sharing?

These aren’t absolutes, and there will always be people heading in both directions, but I’m intrigued to see on which side the see-saw starts leaning.

Do you think many people will continue to silo the data in the most appropriate communities (e.g music on last.fm, books on Goodreads, fitness on a running forum etc), or will they look for one central data hub social network to rule them all?