NHS takes part in Twitter interview: NHS Salford’s Head of Communications discussed how the public sector is making use of new media. http://www.nma.co.uk/news/nhs-to-take-part-in-twitter-interview-on-reputation-online/3014745.article

Nintendo and Sony show competing 3D visions at convention: Nintendo reveals handheld 3D experience while Sony aims for the 3D TV market.  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/16/technology/16sony.html?src=me&ref=technology

Social networks and blogs now account for 1 in every 4.5 minutes online: A breakdown of the most visited online brand and social media usage internationally.  http://bit.ly/aGy26A

New app helps charities make more money online: The app lets people see their donation by dragging coins into a collection box.  http://mashable.com/2010/06/17/nadanu/

BBC iPlayer viewer numbers reach 95m in May: BBC saw a surge in people using iPlayer, mainly due to general election coverage.  http://www.nma.co.uk/7m-more-people-access-bbc-iplayer-via-computer/3014757.article

3D, fundraising, social networking, Twitter, video

More from the blogosphere…

More details of Acer’s tablet emerge. CEO says 7-inch iPad rival will be released in the fourth quarter of this year.  http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/27/acer-ceo-teases-7-inch-android-tablet-promises-it-for-q4-2010/

Red Letter Day’s launches online community. Gift experience company Red Letter Days is launching its first online community to support a national competition running for its 21st birthday.  http://www.nma.co.uk/news/red-letter-days-launches-online-community/3013956.article

Be Curious Tour 2010 offering digital media masterclasses to anyone on their route. Ewan McIntosh is offering classes to anyone he passes on his road trip of North America.  http://edu.blogs.com/edublogs/2010/05/becurioustour-us-tour-2010.html

Intercontinental Hotels launches iPhone app. To promote the app, they are offering bonuses for consumers who book rooms using the application.  http://news.carrentals.co.uk/intercontinental-hotels-launches-iphone-app-34211334.html

National Geographic Maps: Tools for adventure making big waves in schools. New e-learning page lets students learn to use maps to find their way, share information, look at patterns, and solve problems in the classroom.  http://ilearntechnology.com/?p=2467

blogs, iPhone, learning, tablet

More juicy titbits…

Amnesty uses social media to fund protest ad: Amnesty International to raise funds using social media platforms for a protest ad targeted at Shell. http://www.nma.co.uk/news/amnesty-uses-social-media-to-fund-protest-ad/3013243.article

Sibblingz launches multi-platform game: Social multi-device game released to the public.
http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/12/sibblingz-launches-multi-platform-social-game-engine-to-the-masses/

Hootcourse – Take your class conversation online: Classroom application uses social media to create a conversation channel for your courses.
http://hootcourse.com/

Channel 4 targets teens via games consoles: Channel 4 Education is to harness games consoles as a core channel to reach teenagers in the next phase of its multi-million-pound online education strategy.  http://www.nma.co.uk/news/channel-4-targets-teens-via-games-consoles/3013310.article

The 21st Century Classroom: An insight into modern teaching by Alfie Kohn.
http://www.openeducation.net/2010/05/03/the-21st-century-classroom-alfie-kohn/

blogs, Charities, cross-platform, Education, Gaming, social media

2009 has been a truly dark year for the public image of piracy.

And I’m not talking about Somalian pirates, but the issue of digital rights, specifically in entertainment. It’s estimated that piracy and illegal filesharing costs the television, music and film industries £500m a year in lost revenues.

The issue has of course been around since at least 2000 when Metallica took on Napster in one of the more bizarre judicial confrontations in media history.

But whereas that story and the more recent imprisonment of Pirate Bay’s founders were knee-jerk events that had us all wildly jabbering / twittering, I feel that we’re now in the midst of a more subtle undercurrent of significant change in the distribution of online music and television, sustained by almost daily reports of possible mergers and deals, new technologies and services, alleged crackdowns and constant shifts of responsibility for monitoring and controlling internet usage.

In 2000 the issue of digital rights was the almost exclusive concern of emancipated geeks interacting and sharing in a space seemingly designed both by and for them; apoplectic heavy metal fans; and a not insignificant number of terribly confused people sat awkwardly in between.

Jump to 2009, and the internet has become for many the first port of call when looking for entertainment. Mobile devices such as the iPhone plug directly into online music stores, and almost everyone has an iPod or other portable media device. Similarly, network improvements and the penetration of broadband has helped BBC’s iPlayer and its competitors to become almost as popular as “traditional” TV.

In other words, the developments in online media distribution have become mainstream concerns.

However, there remains a fundamental conflict between monetising these distribution services and a historic perception of the internet as user controlled, open-source, a community network without restriction. People don’t like paying for stuff online. Although digital platforms account for about 20 per cent of recorded music sales, 95% of all file downloads are estimated to be illegal. If we want to hear a song once, we might YouTube it or call it up on Last FM or Spotify – if we want it on our iPods, the stats say we are most likely to download it illegally.

Similar issues exist for television and film, where downloads and particularly streaming have been giving producers headaches. The most recent example would be the furore over online leaked scenes from X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which appeared several weeks before release.

(Why anyone would want to see this, for free or otherwise, is beyond me, but apparently it was an issue…) The problem is worsened by advertising – films and shows are heavily advertised on the web (i.e. globally) but release dates are staggered around the world and vary hugely. Inevitably fans are going to get impatient, and at present it’s just too easy to access content illegally.

However, things are changing. Responses to infringements are getting ever more serious and, as we have seen this year, it’s no longer empty rhetoric. The French are being typically Gallic about filesharing, just two weeks ago approving the “three strikes” bill.

The controversial bill proposes the creation of a new government agency, which translates rather grandly as “the High Authority of Diffusion of the Art Works and Protection of Rights on the Internet”, which could have the power to disconnect copyright offenders without legal recourse.

In the UK, creative industry groups such as the BPI, the Publisher’s Association and Equity and broadcasters Channel 4, BSkyB and Virgin Media, are all lobbying the government to force Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to police their users. Of course, this is the last thing the ISPs want to hear, and so they in turn are saying it’s the job of the content providers, leading to what John Woodward of the UK Film Council has reportedly described as a damaging “Mexican stand-off”.

To some extent this apparent impasse has already been breached by evolving the distribution channels and therefore providing more choice. Last year a raft of music subscription services, social networking partnerships like MySpace Music and new licensing channels emerged. Each day sees new reports of mergers, integration and innovation – so watch this space.

When it comes to TV, we’re also getting used to on demand programming. At the moment, broadcasters are giving us content for free, over the internet, and it’s brilliant. The BBC are the front-runners, though 4OD also provides a free catch up service on most of its programmes, (and recently, thankfully, opened its doors for Mac users). And if you’re the kind of person that enjoys pouring absinthe in your eyes, there’s the unforgivably awful ITV Player. But here, too, there are revenue-generating changes afoot. Both 4OD and ITV Player have “forced” adverts, and if the troubled broadband platform Project Kangaroo ever gets a buyer (Orange dropped out of talks just yesterday), on demand TV will almost certainly be delivered on a subscription basis.

The BBC are now behind Project Canvas, which plans to allow viewers to watch on demand services and other internet content via traditional TV – i.e. bring on demand away from the PC in the bedroom and back into the living room (although there must be more to it than that, as cable services such as Virgin Media are already offering on demand services including the iPlayer?)

These suspiciously named “projects” are controversial, in a way partly because of their ambition; the aim seems to be to partner with other broadcasters, channels and media companies to develop an apparently essential media platform, which is an inevitably fiddly business. BSkyB have already thrown an anti-competiveness strop over Kangaroo (which has all but killed it), and last week they accused the BBC Trust of “deficient” consultation over its more recent plans for Canvas.

There’s a more obvious complication for the BBC to grapple with: just where the licence fee fits into the various projects, (iPlayer / Kangaroo / Canvas) is, frankly, anyone’s business.

At this point, It wouldn’t be right to ignore what Bob Geldof thinks about digital TV, so here is what Bob Geldof thinks about digital TV:

“In the age of the internet, the notion of television itself is as archaic as the word wireless – even if that has been reinvented for the digital age.” (Bob Geldof)

To conclude a somewhat wayward post: it seems to me inevitable that our perception of the internet as a distribution channel is set to change over the next couple of years. There will always be infringers pushing their luck, and there will also always be a lot of good stuff available for free.

But we will, I think, also have to get used to the idea of paying money, or suffering adverts, to enjoy premium content on the internet.

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Are bank bonuses and MP expenses just sensationalist news fodder or genuinely a sign of our times? Do we live in a time without morals?

These and other questions will be debated at the UK’s first philosophy and music festival which takes place in Hay on Wye on 22nd-31st May (at the same time as the Hay Literary Festival). It is organised by our sister organisation, the Institute of Art and Ideas. OCC has designed the festival website.

With the overall theme: ‘Crunch. Values and Belief in a new era’ the Philosophy Sessions examine where we are and where we might go from here.  The festival brings together a celebrated cast of speakers including philosophers Simon Blackburn, Susan Neiman, AC Grayling, sociologists Steve Fuller, Zygmunt Bauman, and political theorists Will Hutton, Phillip Blond, Geoff Mulgan.  Evenings are host to musical sets from performers including Michael Nyman, Baka Beyond, Stephen Fretwell and many more; as well as daily comedy sketches come from the likes of Ed Aczel and Robin Ince. For more information or to book tickets visit www.howthelightgetsin.org.

You can become a fan of the festival on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/pages/hay-on-wye/How-the-light-gets-in-festival-at-hay-2009/ and for those who tweet, you can follow us on Twitter on http://twitter.com/howthelightgets.

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On the internet, keeping up with the times is paramount. The web is practically synonymous with the cutting edge and it wouldn’t do to be caught out lagging. But the problem for those trying to navigate its evolution is that novelty and potential brush shoulders with the shallowness of fashion. When Facebook first grew in popularity in the UK it seemed little more than a sleeve on which superficial teenagers could wear their popularity. But now the site reveals a surprisingly subversive depth, a place for championing causes little and large and organising events both political and playful.

Charities soon pricked their ears up to this, attempting to galvanise supporters in this online hiding place of “youth”. It is not hard to find groups for every major charity, and a few (notably Save the Children and the NSPCC) have even invested in developing their own web applications for activism and fundraising. The NSPCC’s application allows users to sign up to specific fundraising events and to group together to raise the money required. The active connection that these embody is much more inspiring than simply signing up as one member among hundreds in a generic facebook group.

Following its meteoric rise, Facebook overtook Myspace in the Alexa rankings this summer. This had much to do with the Myspace’s failure to sufficiently embrace the use of internal applications on its pages, to synthesise itself adequately with the rest of Web 2.0 technology.

But the embrace of the social network is not without reservations for the charitable sector. At Online, we already commented on Number 10’s fear of the network. Networks are simply antithetical to the privileged centre that dominates in any hierarchical organisation. This is not simply jealous directors clinging on tooth and nail to the control of their brand. What is at stake for the NGO sector is the responsibility a charity feels toward those who give their money and time. If an unofficial group organised by supporters of a charity raises funds by appealing to causes to which the official charity does not actually give, donors have every right to feel duped.

The internet is not simply one channel that charities must be cautious of. It can reach into the heart of how they do business. Kiva is a site where donors can lend capital to people in poor countries who would otherwise find it hard to get a reasonable loan. Many donors feel uneasy about giving to large charities because they use some fraction of donated money to support full time staff. While Kiva does sustain its own bureaucratic framework, it challenges the traditional charity model by producing the feeling of an unmediated social relationship with the recipient.

While social networks usurp central control, and Kiva usurps bureaucratic middle-men, ARGs (Alternate Reality Games) may prove far more successful for activist awareness-raising than traditional pamphleteering methods. Indeed, next to the rise of ARGs, social networking sites seem a little dated in their contemporary online potential.

While some charities are still scrambling to optimise their facebook presence, after months of waiting, Cancer Research UK has finally launched its very own ARG, Operation: Sleeper Cell. Several big names in the ARG business are involved but the main authorship was the outcome of a competition open to all. This follows the success of World Without Oil in proving the ARG a powerful medium for activism. The new Superstruct game looks to fill a similar function in coming months, part of an emerging genre of “ethical” ARGs.

The authors of Akoha, another new project, dub their brainchild “the world’s first social reality game”, seemingly a combination of chain letter logic, social networking and competitive altruism. Whether or not this is a cure to the modern malaise of isolated individualism, these creative collective web-based projects are revealing themselves as powerful means for opening people’s minds (not just their wallets).

It is a tenet of ARGs that it is not necessary to restrict oneself to computer-based media for playing. Phones, live events, television and music are often crucial. Growing portability of web technology, prompted by the iPhone and the scramble of its exasperated competitors, is producing a massively expanded field of possibilities for activism. Being confined to the desk is no longer necessary for using social networks, and the ARG medium is pioneering the furthering of this extension, exploring the consequences of if one had to leave the desk to play.

In ethical ARGs we see an appropriation of the social network for the use of a controlling centre. The puppetmasters who control an ARG are in a position of sophisticated dialogue with the most cutting edge of web technologies, and manipulate these new media toward engaging ends. There is always some degree of interactivity in an ARG, but the story is always held together by the organisers. Akoha is made up of people free to choose their missions, but ultimately all the missions are written by the company.

Here lies massive potential for charities looking to distribute a message, promote their brand, but all the while remaining in control of their own messages. Competing with the big players in social networking is hardly an option, but with the delineation of these new puppetry technologies, piggy-backing certainly is.

Charities, marketing, web_2.0