Television

Channel 4’s Camelot

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[camelot001] BBC NEWS RELEASE - NEW CAMELOT TV SHOW BOOSTS CAMELOT CASTLE POPULARITY......We’re quite enjoying Camelot, otherwise known as home to the campest Arthur ever, as well as the butchest Merlin. Whilst the pacing has felt somewhat off over the first two episodes, the production values are very high, the filming is slick and creative, and it feels like a different, engaging take on the tale. OK, so it’s not as funny as Merlin and it doesn’t star my friend Jimbo*, but the various conflicts they’ve begun to lay out look to be great fun.

Starz, the American network that’s co-producing the show, is also co-responsible for the new series of Torchwood. Which is rather exciting, and bodes well for the quality of production there. Arvind tells me that the co-writer on the new Torchwood is the same guy that stewarded Joss and Buffy to greatness, so that bodes well for the quality of writing…

One point to note in passing though; between this and Game of Thrones, there seems to be a new genre of televised fantasy developing that relies rather heavily on random nudity. I wonder if that’s American cable TV ratings-pandering, or ‘gritty dramatic realism.’ Either way, it’s a little overdone in Camelot (why did she have to be naked to talk to that wolf?).

Ah – just noted – Camelot’s been canned, too. Damnit.

 

* Our little joke. Jimbo looks a little like Colin Morgan, star of Merlin.

Technology, Television

4OD review

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For all that video is the future of the web, few UK private sector companies seem to be managing it as well as the BBC. That’s certainly the case with 4OD, which, despite an early start, is noticeably less robust than iPlayer.

Now, as it happens, the E4/C4 programmes we watch are generally DVR-ed, so we have had little need to lean on it to date. However, until Damian told me about it, we entirely missed the newest retelling of the Arthurian legend, Camelot, currently airing on Channel 4. So we had to catch up on the first few episodes.

Generally speaking, the overall experience is significantly less slick than iPlayer for a number of reasons.

  1. On the same Internet connection (which is admittedly mediocre), caching takes place with intermittent irregularity. By which I mean, for no apparent reason, at random intervals, the video will stop whilst (presumably) the player catches up with content from the server. This very rarely happens with iPlayer for us, unless we’re watching something in high-definition.
  2. The picture quality is visibly crappier than iPlayer. Pixellation and artefacts are noticeable and distracting.
  3. No HD. Which is rubbish, really, given that the Beeb has it for all its tier 1 programming.
  4. It has an extremely shaky ad-insertion platform. First of all, 4OD has about three advertisers (Lynx, BT Vision and… 4OD during Camelot). Adverts for Camelot, available on 4OD (which is what we were watching), two versions of a BT Vision advert (sponsors of drama on C4) and an increasingly aggravating ‘premature perspiration’ advert from Lynx dry must have played a dozen times. Secondly, the ads force-play if you try to ‘resume play’ on a programme, which is just irritating (especially as you’ll have just seen them as they pre-roll before the show starts). Third, when watching episode two of Camelot, it skipped 20 minutes of vital exposition, having had someone presumably mistag what should happen after the second ad break.

On point 4) the mediocrity of the platform will likely keep sensible advertisers away. After all, if you know that your ad is going to end up annoying people through the frequency of play, why would you want that? Admittedly it does help with unprompted ad recall, but my affection for those brands is significantly diminished….

So, this is yet another reason I’m grateful for the BBC…

Current affairs

Does @UKVolkswagen deserve the Greenpeace Death-Star treatment?

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vwgreenpeace

Scot points me at this very, very polished anti-VW campaign, a car maker whose eco-credentials we’ve been evaluating for a little while whist looking for a replacement for the ageing Skoda (aka Horse).

The essence of the Greenpeace upset is that:

  • VW is lobbying against lower carbon caps for its cars
  • VW doesn’t sell many eco-cars (6% of sales, apparently)
  • VW sells its eco-cars at a premium

Now, my initial reaction is what it was designed to be – shocking, we can’t get one of those. But the more I think about it, the more unreasonable that position seems to be.

VW has been selling its Bluemotion cars for a few years. Its brands pretty much all (with the exception of the high end sports car brands it owns) have Bluemotion variants. It markets those cars and their eco-credentials heavily. Despite the Greenpeace criticism on cost, the Golf we’ve been looking at costs less than £800 more than its non-Bluemotion equivalent (around a 4% premium). The question has to be asked; why are only 6% of the cars VW sells in these product lines?

Clearly, Greenpeace would like the answer to that question to cast responsibility on VW. But I think its our fault- the driving, car-buying public. Eco-efficient, no matter how well spun, sounds boring. If you were going to spend an extra £800 on a car, would you go for metallic paint and body coloured bumpers, or would you go for the eco-efficient version? Not enough of us would choose the latter. Similarly, if you were looking at a second hand car and had the option of different (second-hand) variants with better performance for a lower price – inevitable whilst the technology is new – how many people can afford to pay the extra there? This isn’t VW’s fault, this is a consequence of capitalism – whilst supply is low, costs will be at a premium. You remember what Emily has to say about market forces.

Regulation may need to play a part in addressing these issues, but I’m not sure the regulation is necessarily being applied in the right place. Forcing the manufacturers to lower carbon emissions caps before there is market demand will hurt the manufacturers. Forcing consumers to pay a premium to drive polluting cars – even more than the current tax band system does, perhaps – would be a more sensible approach, to my mind. It tackles the root of the problem – consumers that are largely indifferent to pollution – rather than penalising the organisations that actually are investing in R&D and manufacturing to reduce the CO2 output of their products.

Now I’m not suggesting for a moment that VW is blameless here, or that I have the insight or understanding of its lobbying activities and commercial business beyond the amazingly superficial. However, I can’t help but feel that Greenpeace has perhaps oversimplified here – picking on a more sympathetic target for its audience than its audience itself.

Gardening

More produce!!! Gardening update #24601

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Patch
Click through for veg product key!

Further to the first few cucumbers, we’ve now got tomatoes, strawberries and courgettes in a state of rapidly increasing readiness, and have put the last seeds into the plot – more carrots, some rocket and a pumpkin and a squash plant. Hopefully they’ll thrive as everything else seems to be doing at the moment.

The rhubarb will be ready for a crop in a few more weeks – it’s been growing very well in the rainy weather we’ve had – and we’ve started the process of getting stuff fertilised as we get deeper into the growing season. The lapland potatoes collapsed under their own weight, so Amanda has staked them and we’ll have to rebury them in some fresh compost in the hope of increasing the crop / and to give them a bit more support.

The weeding hasn’t been too onerous, but given our laxity in planting I’ve had the luxury of just raking over the spartan half of the veg patch. Now that we’ve got plants in all around, it’s going to be a hands and knees job. Still, there’s a lot of satisfaction – and veg – to be had!

Software, Technology

Pokki – Appstore for Windows

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pokkiOne of the things I’ve grown to prefer on the Macbook over my normal Windows experience is the Appstore; the process of keeping Windows up to date by manual means is unspeakably tedious, as anyone who’s had to click ‘yes’ to a dozen updates and manually hunt down another dozen will tell you.

It was with some delight that I saw that a new app was bringing a comparable (although FAR more limited) version of the experience to Windows. The apps appear in your start bar and pop up and down as you use them.

Unfortunately, despite the slick look of the app, the usability isn’t quite there. Keyboard shortcuts don’t work in Gmail, the mouse scrollwheel does random things like minimise the application instead of scrolling, the Facebook app often ends up non-responsive and… well, there are only 8 apps. However the principle is sound and I’m hoping that MS catch up to this when it rolls Windows 8 off the conveyor belt next year. Either that, or people get Pokki working properly… for now, it’s no Sparrow for Windows…

Does the name remind anyone else of Garfield’s stuffed toy friend?

Internet, Social media

Google nonplussed

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googleplusIt looks good and has some very slick features, but until it opens to the general public and we get a sense if anyone cares, it’s really difficult to tell if Google’s new social network, Google+, is going to be a useful digital platform for me. Right now, it feels a little Google Wave did – slick, pretty, but ultimately without use, and giving me one too many social networks to manage.

That said, the fundamentals are really solid – working around circles of contacts so that privacy controls should be easier to maintain (not that I’ve found those yet).

More to follow, inevitable. Thanks @qwghlm for the invite.

Internet

New online retail experiences

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NAPlive

Against a backdrop of failing high street retailers, the growth agenda, and lots of clients involved in every aspect of the shopping supply chain, I’ve been thinking a little about how brands are making the transition to a more compelling online experience. After all, people still need stuff, so how are retailers drawing us in?

One of my agency’s clients has been doing some funky stuff to socialise its online shopping experience. NET-A-PORTER (admittedly not somewhere I shop) has launched NET-A-PORTER Live – a live, interactive Google Maps mash up showing what people are buying from the NAP store and allowing you to click through, share or buy things as they appear. It’s pretty cool, although I’d guess that it’s too early to tell if its working as a source for shopping inspiration and up-sell opportunities. NAP continues to invest in dev staff to create and evolve these experiences, which is one of the reasons they’re working with us to tell this story.

I also read/watched with interest as Pizza Express launched a partnership with PayPal to do online payments for in store eating using an iPhone. Now this looks slick-ish, but there are a few obvious questions; is paying by credit card really that fiddly (I think not), and does it really add anything to the experience that consumers really need? If NFC was involved, or QR codes automated part of the process I might think it was a better idea but as it stands, it feels like an expensive novelty.

On the other hand, Addison Lee expects to make 20m in iPhone cab bookings this year. Now that’s an app that fundamentally shifts the experience for the better, and so I’m totally unsurprised

Noticed anything else cool around?

Social media

Top social media tools #smday

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As today is apparently "social media day" and as I’ve done this meme before, I thought I’d give a quick update on my most indispensable social media resources, with a little bit on how, why and where I use them. Note: not all of them are social media platforms, necessarily, but they all help me connect or interact with the social web in some sense or the other.

My blogging toolkit

Evernote is my ultimate offline note-taker. The fact it syncs back into the web and maintains consistency across my many devices (3x personal PCs, 1x work PC, 1x personal Mac, iPhone & iPad) makes it persistently and pervasively useful. Most of my blog posts are drafted in Evernote on the train commute into the office.

Google Reader – is my RSS compendium. I share stories on here (which syndicate out to Twitter and Buzz) and read hundreds of stories a day without spending hundreds of hours a day browsing through multiple websites.

Flickr – for sharing and sourcing images. Enough said – love its embed capabilities.

Windows Live Writer – for editing, polishing and publishing the blog posts. One of the last vital bits of Microsoftware I use.

WordPress – what you see here. Love it – equipped especially with Jetpack, and backed up by Google Analytics, it lets me share, disqus, and keep tabs on what people are reading. Also use it for a number of clients.

I’m still in two minds about Tumblr.

My research tools

Quora is a remarkable resource for finding out expert insights into products, people or brands. There’s a fantastic amount of valuable content on there and its appeared remarkably quickly. I owe a h/t to Tim for pointing me at this earlier this year.

Google Realtime (alongside Google News, Trends, Blogsearch and beyond) are awesome for figuring what’s going on in the world and testing the validity of a perceived trend, finding out what people are talking about etc.

Oh, and Wikipedia, of course.

My comms and productivity portfolio

Google Docs – is my productivity and collaboration powerhouse. I love Apps too.

Chrome – my browsing masterpiece, complete with Tweetdeck (tying together Facebook, Buzz and Twitter)

Skype – the iPhone app is beautifully deployed, although the desktop app has become bloated

Dropbox – ultimate tool for sharing large files, collaborating on projects

Twitter – I struggle to find as much time as I did to keep up with people but dip in every now and then and use it to let people know when I’ve written about them elsewhere

Facebook – for all that people hate it, I do think its boss, and one of the most powerful tools for me to keep in touch with people. Emily’s life is catalogued in pictures on there, and I rely on its ‘closed’ nature to maintain a certain level of privacy (aware of the irony here).  I’m v. curious about Google+ though.

My health check

RunKeeper and DailyBurn are my apps of choice on this front, providing fitness monitoring and tracking and diet monitoring and tracking respectively. Now if only they talked to each other…

Mobile+

Camera+ fits into this thanks to its awesome sharing features. I use mobile apps for Evernote, Tweetdeck, WordPress, Skype and a few others, but this is the stand-out social app.

Right, phew, more than I thought. What do you use that I’m missing? What do I use that you think is rubbish?

Armand David's personal weblog: dadhood, technology, running, media, food, stuff and nonsense.