BJK&E

Amazing what you can do with plenty of time on your hands, a good computer and an idea for trying to show off your creative talents. One such chap is Kobayashi a young animation director living in London who decided to have some fun with Sony. Quite how they feel about this ‘unofficial’ video is anyone’s guess, but if nothing else it’s impressive what has been done on probably a budget of nothing more than blood, sweat and tears.

click on the link to take a look

http://www.koba-yashi.co.uk/

Podcasts have been becoming more and more talked about over the past few years, largely due to Ricky Gervais producing some podcasts in a hiatus between the office and Extras. In fact, podcasts have been around for longer than some may think, and on Easter Monday BBC Radio Five Live had a 1 hour show discussing anything and everything about podcasts, and surprise surprise it’s available as a podcast now!

It is an interesting listen starting off with the basics for the uninitiated, then moves into some of the areas of how podcasts will develop and probably most importantly, how do you make them a commercially viable form of media which works from a platform where people expect content free.

The thing is in the vast majority of cases you can’t. Ricky Gervais had to give his podcasts away to build an audience before charging, and the BBC who have had success with podcasts for years can’t charge. The crux of the matter is having enough content that people can’t get anywhere else and are willing to pay for.

Or there is the adfunded model, but advertisers will need to be demonstrated that a significant number of downloads are taking place to warrant costs of up to circ £5k per podcast. Not the cheapest eh?

Interestingly in the show Channel 4 offer their views as part of 4 Radio, as do the Guardian, who drop the interesting nugget that they will be offering advertisers the chance to do spot advertising in some of their podcasts at the end of the year

If you want to learn more about pod’s and all their glory click on the link http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/podcasts/pods/ and download For the Love of Pod from 24th March

PS My favourite podcasts at the moment are Fighting Talk (top notch sports banter from the BBC) & the now sadly defunct Baker & Kelly podcast (more comedy ramblings about football) which you will have to search high and low for on the internet but it’s well worth it.

According to figures cited by Nielsen Online the social networking site, Facebook, had its first drop in UK users in January. It fell by 5% to 8.5 million from a previous 8.9 million. This has sparked a debate that social networking is in decline, but others argue that one month of falling audiences doesn’t mean the decline of Facebook nor of social networking.

The decrease may have reflected a lower level of fascination with the site but, with 8.5million unique users still active and a growth of 712% from January 2007, Facebook remains the most popular social networking website in the UK.

Myspace also recorded a 5% decrease in January and Bebo suffered a 2% decrease. This may show that the leading social networks are less popular in the UK than they were a year ago, but I would like to see the profile of the people who have left the sites before passing judgement. Nielsen Online measures website traffic based on a panel of UK users at home and work. It does not cover the usage in schools, universities and internet cafes, so the younger internet users are very much under-reported.

And just last week Hitwise cited that Facebook’s market share of UK Internet visits went back to its Christmas peak during the Easter week. Obviously the Easter holidays may have played a role, so we’ll just have to see how the figures change over the next few months, but I think Facebook is here to stay for a while yet!

For those of you saving up to buy a swanky new Plasma of LCD screen you might want to hold off for a while……

Have been looking into OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode) technology recently and save for a few development issues, its potential application is very impressive. So much so that Sony have already stuck $203MM into its progression.

This video gives a good intro into what it’s all about;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoxaMAA1jjM

Now for the techie bit - it works by sandwiching self-luminating diodes made from natural chemicals in-between flexible plastic – very cool!!! Your current TV is a little on the fat side because it needs a backlight but stuff only needs a fraction of power to work (2-6 volts – Greenpeace will be onboard) and can be as size zero as just a few millimetres – think wallpapering your house with this stuff!

Like any display it can be interactive (Minority Report was spot on) and play audio-visual media. There have been a few prototypes mobiles where you actually rollout the touch screen display; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDuP8PtDJbE.

The only thing holding OLED screens back from your local Dixons is its 3-4 yr lifetime but I’m sure with a few extra mill that’ll get resolved!

TV prototypes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rMFZ4O_oLs

You may have read, or certainly heard about James Surowiecki’s book ‘the wisdom of crowds - why the many are smarter than the few….’ There is a beguiling appeal to the simple, and almost intuitive notion that more people giving more information/opinion will lead to a more accurate out come. Wikipedia is built on such a notion. In fact, as JS himself points out there are a vast number of situations where this is not the case. Indeed three of the 5 main situations could almost be used to define a crowd - where the group is too homogenous, imitative and emotional.

This is not the place to debate the finer points of information theory, but James’ book, together with the rapid rise of virtual crowd building via social networks, should give us involved in marketing and communication pause for thought.

The digital landscape might offer consumers the near perfect information that would lead to optimum decision making, but I fear that we are asking too much. Human behaviour certainly in the instance of brand consumption is not to analyse minutely, but to buy on the basis of consistency, reflective of one’s values and to make them feel good. Hmmmm isn’t that ‘homogenous, imitative and emotional’ behaviour?

So does this mean the aims of brands and crowd wisdom are technically at odds but in reality aligned? Perhaps, but it unquestionably makes the job of brands harder. To me, the mantra for brands must be ‘Honesty, transparency, and people’. Honesty - Align your marketing to what you really do or you will get found out. Transparency - let people see what you are doing - if you don’t they will jump to conclusions. People - technology is actually making the importance of a brand’s people far more important they need to be good and they need to care, whether that’s in ideas for the brand, the salesman or the service centre handler.

Because the reality is it’s easier than ever for the slightest negative perception of the brand to incur the wrath of the crowd - just ask Northern Rock or the McCann’s…

Prior to coming over to London from America to start work as BJK&E’s new intern, I knew that British television was bad. There’s something in every American’s internal wiring that makes us wary of UK programming.Beside such universally adored icons as Monty Python or Ricky Gervais, I had not really ever been exposed to British television. I had developed a stereotype of British TV. I would picture either some variation of Benny Hill, where every scene would end with some rapscallion involved in a hyper-speed chase, or I would imagine an absolutely drab melodrama of some aristocrats with ‘holier than thou’ attitudes. So when I finally landed across the pond, I decided not to watch any British television,

Instead of no TV at all, I decided to go where everyone goes to solve their problems: the internet. Google finally proved useful and found a website called TV Links. Within five second of visiting the homepage, I had realized I found a gold mine Perusing through the site, I found their tagline to be a bit modest: “Better than a remote control”.

They have 6 categories of content including Shows, Cartoons, Documentaries, Anime, Movies and Music Videos. The selection of TV shows is quite impressive. I immediately went for Kung Fu, the classic, aptly titled series featuring David Carradine (he played Bill in Kill Bill). There are a large amount of British shows on there too, since the web address is actually www.tv-links.co.uk. I tried a couple out, such as Ruddy Hell! It’s Harry and Paul, but I guess I’ll never quite appreciate the subtleties of television over here.

Movies have quite the selection, including freshly bootlegged versions of films still in theatres. A classic one which I am quite partial to is called Reefer Madness. It was made in 1936 as a cautionary tale featuring a fictionalized and highly exaggerated take on the use of marijuana, following a trio of drug dealers who lead innocent teenagers to become addicted to “reefer” cigarettes by holding wild parties with jazz music. Those swingers and floozies have always been trouble.

The Music Video section provided a great selection of videos, concerts, and interviews of artists. As for all you English-folk out there, I know you’re dying to know if they have Phil Collins on there. Yes, sadly, they do.

As for the rest of the site, I’ll let you navigate with your own discretion. And next time you think you’re stuck watching Neighbours, think again.