Bradley Howard's Blog

2011 favourites

Dec 27, 2011 at 2:29pm

Last year I wrote about my 2010 favourites and it was one of my most viewed posts of the year. So I thought I’d repeat it for 2011 too - and there's a clear theme running through these favourites!

Favourite new gadget

One of the things I’ve really got involved with in 2011 has been cycling. It started in February when I was out of breath going up a local (yet very long and steep) hill, then got to June where a group of friends rode the BHF London to Brighton. I then started riding into work (13 miles, from North West London to the City).

Three rear wheels later, thanks to the Holloway Road, I decided to go for a new bike. My £27 eBay investment (see below) had had its day after almost 1,800 miles between May and December.

22447_271498797316_515682316_4936440_5970254_n

However my favourite gadget wasn’t the new bike, it was the base layer clothing. Base layers have been around for a few years and despite some literally freezing motorcycle journeys, I hadn’t used one until cycling this winter. They are fantastic and if you get cold easily, try wearing them under your clothes. There you go, a favourite gadget that doesn’t run out of batteries!

Favourite book

Without a doubt, it was Lance Armstrong’s autobiography. It’s a very easy read that is very emotional about someone’s battle with cancer, from denial through to winning the Tour de France afterwards. Thoroughly recommended.

In second place was Alan Sugar’s autobiography which was several times longer than Armstrong’s, but just as enjoyable.

Favourite iPhone app

I’ve started using Barclays Boris bikes to travel around the City if the meeting is only one or two tube stops from the office. So the BarclaysBikes app is really handy, showing how many bikes and spaces are at a specific location. The AR (Augmented Reality) view is genuinely useful to find the nearest bike.

A close second is the updated LinkedIn app. The previous version never seemed to work without wifi. The latest app is excellent for looking up contacts after a meeting or even in the middle of a meeting when we’re discussing a mutual ex-colleague.

For outside work, the Geocaching app is excellent. It shows the three nearest geocaches and makes a spare hour disappear quicker than you can say “Where on earth would someone have hidden it around here?”

Favourite award

Without a doubt, I was extremely proud of the team to receive to a Sitecore Site of the Year award this year for our work with Cadbury.

tags:

LinkedIn, London to Brighton bike ride, application review, awards, bicycles, book review, iPhone, mobile, motorcycles,

0 Comments

Review of my 2011 predictions

Dec 22, 2011 at 10:51am

Back in January I made 12 predictions for digital media for 2011. I did the same for 2010 - i.e. I made the predictions and then analysed them in December, and faired well. How did I do this year?

1. Rapid demise of Flash

Bang on here. We're witnessing HTML5 rapidly overtaking Flash, mainly because users want to view sites on their iOS devices, which don't support Flash. Flash for mobiles has been dropped in favour of Adobe Air - the problem with Air (an irony in the product name) is that it's too heavy for downloading over mobile: Adobe Air apps are very large. HTML5 is both very powerful and not linked to a specific vendor, which is exactly the type of technology web developers embrace quickly.

Prediction rating: 10/10

2. Local local local

The use of Google on mobile devices is increasingly rapidly, and one of Google's most powerful functions is to provide local results on mobile devices. Facebook Check In and FourSquare will continue competing in the future, providing more relevant functionality which is only good for end consumers.

Prediction rating: 10/10

3. LinkedIn to IPO

Yes, LinkedIn IPO'd in the summer at a market capitalisation of around $6bn. At the end of the first day of trading, shares were selling at over $94. They are now worth just under $65. The actual variance has been from $55 to $122. Personally I think the future is very bright for LinkedIn, as long as it sticks to it's core, professional-only values and steers cleer of Facebook.

Prediction rating: 10/10

4. More "paywalls" will increase the expectations of having to pay for content

I predicted that we'd see at least six mainstream publications start charging for online content. What was very difficult to predict was that this was going to be made possible via the iPad. The iPad has been the saviour of global newspapers by offering a simple charging model for content owners. Many newspaper websites are still free, but most apps charge for content. The main point is that user now expect to pay for content, but it took the shift to a new platform to illustrate this.

Prediction rating: 8/10

5. Financial Services move into social networks

Banks have had other things to worry about this year, and whilst many are dipping their toes into the water with Twitter and Facebook, I'm not aware of any doing it particularly well. Searching for the popular high street banks on Facebook returns a rather fragmented list. I expect this to change in the near future.

Prediction rating: 2/10

6. Facebook to follow Compuserve even more

Try and name a brand that isn't on Facebook. In January I said that we should expect a Skype messaging style interface and in July, we got Skype inside Facebook. I predicted we'd have a billion users by the end of the year, although this is unlikely to come true because in September, Facebook announced they'd broken through 800 million users - still an amazing feat.

Prediction rating: 8/10

7. A clear leader will emerge in Interactive TV

Interactive TV is now firmly called Smart TV, and no, a clear leader hasn't emerged yet. The remotes all look different, and operating systems are different, and with the latest XBox release, Microsoft is putting up a decent fight to use your games console as the Interactive device.

Prediction rating: 0/10

8. Rapid rise in CPC

I said that CPC rates would rise, and noted the cost of some terms. Here they are:

keyword	Cost in December 2011	Cost in December 2012
ebook	£0.55	£0.74
sandwich	£1.00	£1.05
drink	£1.00	N/A
laptop	£1.25	£1.31
paper	£0.75	£0.76

I estimated costs would increase at least 50% over the next year however they have mostly gone up a much smaller amount, with the exception of the highly competitive ebook market.

Prediction rating: 2/10

9. A $50 A5 eReader

I was $10 out - Walmart are selling an eReader for under $60. Bearing in mind there was nothing available for less than $120 at the start of the year, this demonstrates how mainstream eReaders have become.

Prediction rating: 6/10

10. App stores will decentralise, leading to confused customers (again)

The term app store has become abused. Now everyone has an app store whereas a year ago their product had an 'add-on'. If you go into a car showroom I'd half expect the optional extras to be available from an app-store! Fortunately the market hasn't become decentralised as predicted - to the benefit of end users.

Prediction rating: 0/10

11. The economy will continue to splutter

Obviously this has come true. I predicted that companies would need to start demonstrating clear revenues, including Twitter, and this has materialised as $140million this year.

Prediction rating: 10/10

12. Chrome to far exceed Firefox market share

Perhaps 'far exceed' is an exaggeration, however in early December Chrome overtook Firefox for the first time, and it's here to stay. I'm a big fan of Chrome for a number of reasons (all the settings are stored centrally "in the cloud", it auto updates seamlessly and it's very fast), and hardly use Firefox any longer.

Prediction rating: 8/10

So there we have it. Overall I was reasonably accurate with the predictions. I'm working on 2012 predictions, which feels more difficult at this time. Maybe it's the economy/ general outlook. Any help would be appreciated!

Photo courtesy of lacomj on Flickr

tags:

Adobe, Facebook, Firefox, Flash, Google Chrome, Kindle, LinkedIn, TV, advertising, apple, banking, ecommerce, economy, finance, iPhone,

4 Comments

The future of consumerisation

Aug 1, 2011 at 3:26pm

One of the major shifts in the last five years has been the “consumerisation” of technology. Consumerisation is a swanky word for technology moving outside of the office/professional life into personal lives, and then moving back into the office in a different guise.

The shift started with broadband Internet. Once staff had broadband installed at home, they checked their email from home. They stopped taking laptops home with them and used their home computer.

Smartphones have accelerated the amount of consumerisation. You definitely know some people who have been provided a mobile phone from their employer, and the same individuals also have a smartphone on a personal contract. They will then use their personal phone to check their work email because they prefer their personal device.

This grey area of using personally-paid-for devices is a real issue for IT departments at the moment because of lack of standardisation (having to support iPhones, Android, BlackBerry, Nokia, etc.) and security risks.

Consumerisation isn’t limited to hardware either. I use Outlook 2010 at work, and mainly Google Mail for personal email. New features on Google Mail are appearing regularly. One of my favourites is if you type “I have attached the document” inside a GMail email and press send before attaching a file, Google gives you an alert to ask if you want to attach a document. Brilliant. I wish Microsoft had built the same functionality to prevent me forgetting to attach a file in Outlook.

In fact Google understands consumerisation on a new level. GMail and Google Docs started their lives as consumer tools and then became available as white labeled enterprise tools (a matter of opinion) for businesses. And there's recently been a lot of commentary about Google refusing to let businesses on to their new social networks - they want end users on there first.

Technology is continuing to become more consumer-focussed, which means we’ll use more of our personally-paid-for technology in our working lives. As my post earlier this week demonstrated, once we start checking our work calendar on our bathroom sink as soon as we wake up, the grey line will been very broad indeed.

tags:

Microsoft, Outlook 2010, consumerisation, email, google, iPhone,

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Spotify Premium

Apr 15, 2011 at 9:48am

I had a new hard drive installed in my laptop this week and when I re-synced my iPhone I lost all my MP3s.

I don't understand how Apple can produce such a great phone, with great synchronisation with a number of computers, but be so damn awful with keeping my music catalogue together. That's my frustration over and done with.

I decided once and for all to upgrade/buy Spotify so that I can use it on my phone. I've used Spotify regularly on my laptop and home PC (I should enter an award for the most varied music styles in a single playlist) for ages and even before wiping my iPhone, it was frustrating only have a couple of dozen, old MP3s available on the phone.

In fact Spotify is so good that I'm considering changing our in car stereo to one that accepts a line-in (i.e. from the headphone socket in the iPhone) rather than an iPhone specific connection - to make it futureproof.

A major advantage of the iPhone app is that it downloads the music to your phone rather than streaming it - which means you can carry on listening without an Internet connection.

The one remaining issue in the house is that with the kids starting to get MP3 players of all shapes and sizes (and budgets), Spotify is only useful to my wife and I. The kids still require me to buy MP3s for their devices.

We think of music as ultra portable nowadays, but in reality, compared to records, tapes and CDs from the past, you can't swap music as easily as you used to, when music really was social!

tags:

application review, freemium, iPhone, spotify, traditional media,

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Eat your own dog food

Feb 3, 2011 at 12:37pm

During the launch of Microsoft Vista, we implemented a number of projects with Microsoft. There were a few things I learned from Microsoft at the time, however one of them - the concept of 'eating their own dog food' - was something that sticks out.

The concept is simple. Get your own captive audience to try your products before the public. Understand how they use it. Be ready for the public reaction, because you've already been using it for a few months.

You don't need to create your own products to have this approach.

I strongly believe and encourage the staff at Endava to use the latest social networks, tools, applications, so that we can have a view and opinion on them for our clients. What works better than Microsoft Project? Is Twitter useful? What's the difference between Yammer and Skype? What's the best task tracking system, or should we be using TFS? Is an iPhone better than an Android?

One specific client always follows up these types of questions with "And have you used it?"

The only way to answer these questions is to have experienced them personally before providing the opinion to clients.

Photo courtesy of nancybeetoo on Flickr

tags:

Endava, Skype, brands, business, iPhone, innovation, twitter, website production,

0 Comments

To build an App or not to be build an App

Jan 10, 2011 at 8:16am

We have a customer at Endava who is at the innovative end of the spectrum. I wouldn't describe them at 'bleeding edge', however they are willing to take some risks by prototyping new technologies and if the ideas succeed, a more rubust version will be built.

Last year they produced a number of prototypes for an annual event - a YouTube channel, the start of a social media implementation, and an iPhone app.

The iPhone app was more successful than a most expected, for a very simple reason. The web analytics from the website showed a low number of users were browsing their main website using an iPhone. So there was little evidence that an iPhone app would work.

However, as soon as the iPhone app was launched, it was downloaded in the tens of thousands within a week. The following year, a new version was released and downloaded 250,000 times in the same period.

What we're learnt from this experience is that iPhone apps are another route to market. They exist in parallel to your website rather than a promotional element of it. For this client, the app was hardly promoted on the main website.

It's ever been quicker or cheaper to produce prototypes such as the ones listed above as long as the core infrastructure is in place - specifically APIs and a decent Content Management System. 10 years ago, these types of prototypes would cost 10 times as much for equivalent first versions (a WAP site, a video portal and as for social media - it hardly existed!).

So the answer to the question in the title - try it.

tags:

YouTube, analytics, iPhone, social media, website production,

0 Comments

Twelve Digital Media Predictions for 2011

Dec 30, 2010 at 7:22am

Well here we are. 2011 predictions below. My 2010 predictions worked out pretty good and I've been asked for the 2011 predictions for the last six weeks.

1. Rapid demise of Flash

Flash has two big problems in 2010: Apple (specifically, the iPhone and iPad) and HTML 5. I don't see Apple relenting on their decision to enable Flash (specifically pre-compiled code), and users will start moving away from Flash sites out of necessity. Developers already like HTML 5, and it looks reasonably flexible to replace a lot of what Flash has historically need to be used for. YouTube is already using HTML 5 to deliver video. If the BBC iPlayer is using HTML 5 next year, let's award 10/10 for this prediction!

2. Local local local

Local businesses will 'never have had it better'. FourSquare, Facebook Pages and Places, and Google Places can all help local businesses. My local sandwich shop at work can now have a digital relationship with consumers for no cost. The rising use of smartphones will continue to provide more local results when searching (for example, type in hospital into Google on your smartphone - even at the moment it produces a list of local results).

3. LinkedIn to IPO

The Facebook for business, the most useful social network of them all if you want to hire staff, track companies, keep in touch with former colleagues, research 'people' will float in 2011.

4. More "paywalls" will increase the expectations of having to pay for content

Paywalls will undergo new branding, and together with mobile apps charging a subscription fee, the days of free content will start coming to an end. I'm not saying all sites will become pay only within a year, however expect to see at least another half dozen main titles beyond Murdoch's empire start charging for their hard work.

5. Financial Services move into social networks

Financial services are walking around social networks scratching their heads wondering how to approach the biggest B2C of all time. I predict at least one Financial Services organisation will get it right, and everyone else will copy and improve. Expect some big announcements of huge Financial Services brands linking together with the big social networks.

6. Facebook to follow Compuserve even more

I've likened Facebook to the walled garden environment of Compuserve before. Expect to see 'new' features in Facebook like sending files to friends, Facebook wireless access points or even broadband provision (remember - Compuserve started life as an ISP), premium (paid entrance) Facebook Pages, offline browsing or a phone service (think Google Talk or Skype). We'll all think it's brilliant, and then read the Wikipedia Compuserve article and realise we've been here before. I also expect Facebook to break into China and reach 1 billion global users.

7. A clear leader will emerge in Interactive TV

Buying a new TV at the moment? Which Internet/Interactive TV standard are you going to buy? There are so many types available, it's really confusing to consumers. By the end of the year (Christmas 2011) there will be one or two clear leaders. And expect to see a wireless keyboard lying on your sofa next year or 2012 instead of a simple remote.

8. Rapid rise in CPC

Ad CPC (Cost Per Click) rates are rapidly rising. Take the biggest network, Google AdWords. The cost per click of the following items as of 29/12 is:

ebook - £0.55
sandwich - £1.00
drink - £1.00
laptop - £1.25
paper - £0.75

I estimate costs will go up at least 50% over the next year because of the growth of online businesses, and they will all want to advertise their products.

9. A $50 A5 eReader

eReaders will hit a critical mass when the price point is low enough. I estimate this to be around $50 (£35) because this is a reasonable price point where a consumer won't be too upset at losing their eReader. At that point, schools will seriously consider replacing paper books with eReaders. Expect more mainstream books to only be available electronically.

10. App stores will decentralise, leading to confused customers (again)

The beauty of the iPhone's app store is that all apps come through the store tested and vetted. It also provides a full backup solution if you regularly synchronise your iPhone with a computer. The Android Market is the opposite - it's like anarchy! Apple are releasing their own full app store for Apple computers. Amazon will do something similar. You'll have lots of app store logins, and it will all be confusing. In fact it will become so fragmented that it will be similar to how you buy software at the moment - one piece comes from Amazon, another from Apple, another from eBuyer, and so on.

11. The economy will continue to splutter

It doesn't take a brain surgeon to work this one out. However the implications will be that brands will drive their marketing organisations to produce clearer ROI on campaigns (especially Facebook, to pay for the expensive UK based full time Community Managers). This is currently difficult to do, but marketing departments will drive analytics vendors to improve their products beyond just referrer stats. Despite huge funding increases at the end of 2010, Twitter will need to start generating some serious revenues, so expect ads on Twitter similar to the reach blocks on Facebook.

12. Chrome to far exceed Firefox market share

Chrome is here to stay, and will only increase market share when the new Google laptop (and tablet) arrives. Microsoft won't back down on Internet Explorer either. Which leaves Firefox in third place, and will just slide further down because users won't know why they'll want a third browser on their computer.

tags:

Adobe, Facebook, Firefox, Flash, Google Chrome, Kindle, LinkedIn, TV, advertising, apple, banking, ecommerce, economy, finance, iPhone,

2 Comments

2010 favourites

Dec 27, 2010 at 12:23pm

Here is a summary of some of the best parts of 2010.

Favourite new gadget

I still think homeplugs are the best gadget for home. They are much more reliable than wireless, and feel quicker. They can't win the 2010 award because I've had them for a few years now.

Best new purchase of the year was a new A3 network printer for home. The quality is so good that I've stopped using Photobox, and just print from home using original Brother inks on Photo Paper Direct (pearl) paper.

Favourite book

Future Files by Richard Watson. I've bought probably half a dozen times for different people, and bored many dinner crowds by talking about the future of education, consumer brands and commerce.

Favourite iPhone app

Perhaps Facebook in terms of usage, but definitely Evernote for random note taking whether its text, photo or anything else. And it syncs with the computer application and website.

Close second place is the BTFON app, which allows BT Broadband customers to connect to Openzone Wifi without needing to manually sign in all the time. Special mention to the eBay selling app which creates a listing in under 30 seconds - by far the best user experience on a mobile app.

Favourite award

Coming 16th in the New Media Age Top 100 Interactive Agencies award was a great milestone for Endava and makes me extremely proud of the team.

tags:

awards, book review, iPhone,

2 Comments

Double the length of your iPhone battery

Dec 21, 2010 at 10:02am

Totally fed up with my iPhone battery lasting until mid afternoon after a full night's charge, I started playing around with some settings. After a few weeks I've managed to get the battery to last....wait for the suspense....until late in the evening.

To do this, I turned Push email OFF, and set the phone to check my email hourly. Hourly? I know what you're thinking, but hear me out...

It usually doesn't matter if you push email to the iPhone - there's no new email notification when the phone is in standby (i.e. when the screen is off) anyway. And if you're like me and mainly use the phone for email, each time you switch the phone back on (to check if there are new emails), the email application will be open, and the phone instantly starts checking for new emails.

For the small price of 5 seconds for the phone to check for new emails when I switch it on each time, I've doubled the battery life.

tags:

iPhone, power, tips,

0 Comments

Akamai Digital Media event

Nov 3, 2010 at 10:25am

Yesterday I went to the a Digital Media event hosted by Akamai. Here are a number of key points from the session:

Only 1% of video is currently delivered over IP (i.e. the Internet). This will keep growing as more TVs are Internet enabled. This probably accounts for why Akamai and the other CDNs share prices are doing so well, outperforming the indices and competitors (see chart above).
1. Video IP usage is up more than a third from 2009
2. and we’re watching video almost 50% longer.
The UK is well advanced of the US in terms of peer to peer – most of the UK’s broadcasters use it, whereas in the US it is only used for illegal file sharing.
60% of Europe’s iPhone market is in the UK. This explains why our sites have low iPhone usage globally. (It’s worth noting that the time spent on apps makes up for the low iPhone usage).
Akamai are bringing out some interesting new services on their Edge network. Other organisations who own huge numbers of web servers such as Amazon and Microsoft are virtualising their environment and renting it out as well known Operating Systems (e.g. AWS and Azure both can both run as Windows servers, sold by the hour). Akamai are working differently by expanding Value Added Services to their customers – keeping the technology proprietary.

All in all it was a good day, hearing about a number of new technologies and an excellent case study from Adam Lynch at The R&A.

tags:

Akamai, Amazon, Content Delivery Network, Endava, Europe, Microsoft, iPhone,

1 Comment

Tags

2011 favourites

Review of my 2011 predictions

The future of consumerisation

Spotify Premium

Eat your own dog food

To build an App or not to be build an App

Twelve Digital Media Predictions for 2011

2010 favourites

Double the length of your iPhone battery

Akamai Digital Media event

Bradley Howard

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