DISQUS

Is this story something to do with the village bike? (Ouch)

Done. 5 stars. Good Luck.

Yeah, agree with leafar, the top image is just 'fuzzy'...for me there's too much going on.

Was that new picture taken of you on the morning after the night before?!?!

I wish GrandCentral would be launched in the UK, it looks like a fantastic service.

Crazy not to start J Cole, but it's good that one of the big four doesn't win all the trophies this season. Think the best team won.

Congratulations on the buy.at deal Nic, you've taken what was already a great business to a whole new level.

Nic, glad to see you dipping your toe into the affiliate world. Is it possible you can get a static banner as that rotating one is a little distracting when reading your lengthy posts.

I've been experimenting with affiliate marketing using a hosted wordpress blog (wordpress.com) and have had some interesting results, particularly in terms of being able to rank highly on Google's natural search results.

Weenie, I take on board your points, but in terms of making long-term progress it will be difficult. The style of negotations which take place when trying to acquire players is often fast-moving, requiring very quick decisions. The MyFootball crowd won't be able to make those decisions.

The club I support, Port Vale, are now run by a supporters group and they have found it very difficult to work with what is acceptable practice within the football industry. They have been accused of wearing rose-tinted spectacles and being naive as they have tried to apply modern business practices to what is still essentially an industry run by cowboys.

Nic, these guys did a great job seeding interest in this idea through football forums and the wider media. From a footballing perspective it will never work, they simply won't be able to make decisions quick enough.

As you say it is a great example of mass collaboration though.

Nic, long-time no comments from me but hope to visit more often again.

Just been catching up on some of your recent posts, great stuff, really thought provoking.

With regards to mobile apps, I'd say 5% are useful on a daily basis and 95% aren't useful at all and are nothing more than 'toys' really for early-adopters. I use the Gmail app which is very slick but Twitter, do you know anybody who isn't a 'geek' who uses it or has even heard of it?

For me all of these apps are great for amusign myself and my fellow geeks but as far as mass market goes then I still think we are many. many years away from significant usage of the mobile web, nevermind apps on a mobile.

I've been a viewer of http://cycling.tv since its inception. A great idea, it's taken a while for industry advertisers to come on board.

From this month we will be getting 1200kbs+ live streaming of cycling races.

There is a subscription model, £24.99 per year. It's a bargain.

Nic,

How can you go away when EMI announce they will be offering DRM-free music from May. Maybe people will respond to this comment.

What I don't get about the EMI announcement is that people will have to pay a premium (99p for DRM-free as opposed to 79p for DRM tracks) for DRM-free tracks. Talk about trying to confuse the consumer. It such a half-a**** effort in my opinion. What do others think?

Nic,
I knew you'd come round eventually. I use Gmail, Google Docs/Spreadsheets and Google Calendar on a daily basis now, in fact I can't remember the last time I used any of the Office Applications (I'm on a Mac but have Office for Mac 2004). I've integrated all of my corporate mail into Gmail and also integrated Google Calender into iCal on 2 different macs.

It was very, very simple - and there is the key, Google make it simple to do, Micorosoft make it difficult to understand what is even on offer.

Nic, the only problem I see is how much bandwidth the likes of Joost is consuming, there really is only so much data you can shove through a local exchange. I still think we'll have tv as we know it now, with time schedules, etc, at least for the next 30 years.

...and then we have the whole net neutrality debate.

From previous posts you may already know my point of view. All this talk of mobile internet is futile until the operators sort out the transparency of data charges. I was saying this 3 years ago and we really haven't moved on at all have we. Still I have no idea what the data charges are on my mobile.

I think the real opportunities for mobile will truly come when we can connect to wifi networks and have an integrated pricing plan with our home connections.

Until then I don't think the majority of people feel the need for many services being offered.

Ivan - I manged to install Shozu, I agree it's a pain to install and having to go back and forth to the Flickr site makes it not very convenient.

BitTorrent, what are they doing, essentially a piece of technology and nothing more and they try to make money out of it! Money out of a customer base who actively go searching for content using their technology for the simple reason that it is free. Work that one out...

Just got an invite to Joost, looks OK, passed me by in about 5 minutes. You can create whatever distribution system you want but if the content is rubbish I couldn't care less how it reaches me and neither do most non-geeks.

Can't really argue with what you have written. I agree it seems like a big fuss about nothing doesn't it.

Would seem silly if BBC didn't take the ad money for the international site.

All this talk of mobile advertising - who on earth is reading the content? I don't know of one single person who looks at content on mobiles and I know a lot of people who have mobiles. Tell a lie, my brother checks the football scores maybe 3 or 4 times a season if we are not at the match and he isn't near to a TV/Computer/Radio.

Until the networks sort out transparent costs for users then I feel advertisers will be completely wasting their time. There are a lot of mobile as agencies out there but do they actually have a good client roster?

I still think there is more which can be done on the web with affiliate marketing before spending too much time on mobile.

Nic,

Steve Jobs statement can be found on the Apple website, it's pretty interesting...

http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughtsonmusic/

The one thing that is pretty evident in many of the online communities I take part in is the increasing emergence of 'keyboard warriors'. They tend to dominate discussion and will abuse people who do not agree with them.

Is this a bad thing? In some ways yes, respect is a necessary thing to have both online and offline but I think we rarely get to see people's true personalities in these online communities. Is this another reason for more offline interaction within these online communites?

The internet is defnitely moving to the centre of the social fabric. I often use iChat video to talk to my 6 year old nephew, he can work a Mac better than me. I was sitting quietly thinking about this recently, he doesn't know any different than this, me and him chatting on the net is just what people do to him, how families who are not located near to each other communicate with each other, it's all so normal to him.

A great post, really. My comment is mainly regarding your idea of how the internet is changing communities.

It's funny as I have recently moved into a new community, which is built in an area of regeneration. The people within this new comunity do not communicate with each other, at all, to the point where heads go down as soon as eye contact is about to be made when leaving the car park.

One thing has finally started to bring people together....the internet. A very simple online forum was set-up by one resident to talk about issues of property maintenence mainly. This has spawned into a place where people are organising social meet-ups, buying/selling unwanted goods and general community banter amongst residents, most of whom have still not met each other face-face. Within 3 weeks the site has over 60 members, which is a high-proportion of total residents. It's not quite a social network in the myspace sense, but not far from it.

The lastest FastCompany magazine dropped through my letterbox recently and I found a pretty relevant article to this discussion last night. There is a good article about a company called Musictoday who are providing many of the services I outlined above for artists, ticketing, merchandise, fanclubs, etc.

It sounds like it works well.

http://www.fastcompany.com/subscr/112/open_feat...

Good article but I can't stand the major record companies talking about what is fair for the artists when they have been ripping off both the artist and consumer for many, many years.

Do you think the majors are more scared by consumers not purchasing music or more scared of artists walking away from the record companies completely and doing their own writing, production, publishing, merchandising, etc.

I think a better question is, 'What value can a major record company give to an artist?'

Sure there are some valid points but the number of these is diminshing all the time as technology is enabling artists to have more and more control.

Thoughts?

Seems like trouble has been brewing for a while at Spiralforg - http://business.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,90... - anybody know who the backers are?