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I came across this Techcrunch article via Twitter this morning, which got me thinking about where iPhone applications and accessories could (or maybe should) be heading.

The article is about the Flip video cameras- compact pocket-sized camcorders.

And the iPhone has something that the Flip will never realistically have, cellular and wifi connectivity that lets you upload your videos immediately. No need to sync back with your base computer to edit the video and upload it. You can do basic editing right on the iPhone, and publish it to YouTube immediately. As an added bonus, that video can be geo-stamped via the phones GPS capability.

One of the features of the iPhone 3.0 operating system is the ability for applications to tie in with accessories. Now, the camera built into a phone is always going to be compared to a dedicated camera- whether a compact still or video camera, or a bigger camcorder or SLR. The tiny blob of glass that a phone has for a lens that is right next to the tiny sensor is always going to be inferior to the bigger lens and sensor in a dedicated device.

But why should it be a competition? Why couldn’t they work together? Why couldn’t a dedicated camera connect via a USB to Dock cable, Bluetooth or WiFi to the iPhone, allowing the iPhone to act as a controller? The same touch-screen autofocus that the iPhone 3Gs has could be used as a remote control for a dedicated camera. The iPhones internet connection and GPS could be used to stamp locational data and upload to Flickr or YouTube. Perhaps with existing cameras ability to send pictures via USB, the ability to upload via an iPhone application could be as straightforward to achieve as selling a USB to iPhone dock cable…

If Apple chose not to allow it through the iPhone or Apps store (say, because they saw it as a reason not to buy the more expensive iPhone models) then it could be a killer feature for another less restrictive mobile platform- Android, for example.

We’ve still seen remarkably few applications that make the most of the new operating system- I’m waiting for a blogging application that will let me select a chunk of text and then add HTML tags to it, let me know through push alerts when I have comments or trackbacks (through the Push alert system) or a Twitter app that will let me copy the URL of a web page I’m looking at. Accessories are obviously another step away.

It’s an opportunity either for an iPhone developer to get first-mover advantage, or another platform to steal a march on the iPhone.

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By now you've probably heard about the new iPhone Apple announced last week- the "iPhone 3Gs". You might also have heard about the mixed reactions it received.

While it isn't a marketing triumph in the way the first two iPhone launches were, I think that in another 12 months it will be looked back on as the moment Apple locked down their mobile phone product and changed it from being a high-end, premium smartphone to the de-facto device for anyone looking for a mobile device that does something more than calls and text messages. By changing the hardware line up from one iPhone with different storage sizes to two iPhones with different storage, speeds and camera qualities, this marks a split in the iPhone product line from being a "premium" smartphone to a "regular" smartphone with a "premium" alternative.

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Twenty five years ago, when Microsoft were advocating the Personal Computer over the mainframe/terminal combination, they were promising that their software would allow users to work collaboratively over a network within a few years.

Meanwhile, those working at Xerox were actually using the time-sharing mainframe systems that they were selling. This is the company that invented the concepts of WIMP- Windows, Icons, Mouse, Pointer, the paper paradigm (using paper terminology to describe the workings of computer software- files, folders, trashcan, desktop and so on.) They were using email. They were working collaboratively on documents. They were doing the stuff that is considered an information revolution today, back in the days when Solitaire was seen as a pretty cool computer game.

In 2007, Microsoft released Office 2007 which finally delivered on their promise. But by then, the mainframe was pretty much dead- the corporate customers, when told that Microsoft would be delivering the same features "soon" believed them and bought into the "Personal Computer on every desktop." And why shouldn't they have done?

Don't get me wrong- the Personal Computer is great, and we wouldn't have them in our homes (or at least, not in the same way) if the business mainframe had been the chosen model for businesses. The point is that there is a difference between a technical promise and a marketing exercise, and I think this old technical promise clearly falls more in the camp of the latter. The aim wasn't so much to sell PCs as to stop people buying time-sharing mainframes.

So when I hear about Project Natal, I'm reminded of the stories I heard about Microsoft's history of announcing wonderful things that will be available at an unspecified time in the future, for an unspecified price, and I am wary.

Interested- yes. Excited- sure. But wary.

John Gruber points out that "when Microsoft makes a product announcement that people actually get excited about, it’s almost always for a product that isn’t scheduled to ship for a year or more"

So put it this way- I'm not going to be buying an Xbox 360 just yet on the back of this product. I'm sure that there are plenty of people who will be holding off buying a Playstation 3 or a Wii after hearing about this, and I suspect that's the real point of the exercise. My bet is that it won't be on Christmas lists for 2010.

Apple are more of a hardware company than a software company. When Apple launch a product, it's a "here is our new product. Here is someone on stage, using the product, showing you how it works. Here is the release date, and here is the price. Any questions?" This is clearly aimed at getting people to buy the product.

Microsoft's seems to be more of a case of "here is our new product idea. Here is a well produced video of what it will look like when it works the way we expect it to work." You can see why it would be better than the competition, so you are less likely to buy the competitors product.

Meanwhile, Sony were showing off their own motion controller- with an actual demonstration of an evolution of an existing product- the Eye Toy. They say that it will be available early next year, and I tend to believe them. (At least, that it will be available in the first half of next year…) Sony are also primarily a hardware company. The product they are showing off isn't an idea; it's an actual, physical thing.

Interesting to see how the different schools of thought operate though.

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For years, a mantra about the internet has been that "Content is king." Without a doubt, good quality original content is important online- you need to have a reason for people to visit your website.

But perhaps that doesn't really tell the whole story.

As the business model of "online content" is still being developed in a number of areas, it still seems to be considered in isolation. I think the way it exists alongside "offline" content is something worth paying a bit more attention to.

The big difference between online and offline "content" is that offline, content has a container. The paper text is printed on, the CD that holds music, the cinema or venue you visit to "consume" a film or concert.

The lack of a container is a big part of what makes the internet great. As Philip Greenspun explains, "content" that didn't conveniently fit into a 5 page magazine article or a 200 page book simply wouldn't find it's way to an audience. Similarly, in the same way that CDs changed the way an album was made (with no A and B side, there was no "break" half way through), and iTunes has changed things again, as we can now buy individual songs instead of being forced to buy a collection as an album.

This has caused a whole new set of problems for an industry historically geared up to giving away singles in order to sell albums. We have been listening to music for free on the radio or on TV— the singles that the industry wasn't just happy to give away, but would spend money on promoting (each single being effectively an advertisement for the artists' albums), but once that music is packaged up in a box we naturally expect to pay money for it. Without that boxed product, it seems that the attitude people have to music is more like the way we look at the toiletries in a hotel than the ones in a shop; not something to buy if you want them, but something that's there to help yourself to— and if that means popping them into your bag rather than using them if you need them, well, that's what they are for, isn't it? The "container" of the hotel room seems to change the way we look at them. (If you saw an unattended maid's trolley, carrying hundreds of the same "complimentary" bars of soap and bottles of shampoo, would you still feel OK helping yourself?)

So perhaps it's that "container" that is the real key to making money from content?

Cheap container, cheap content

"News" is an area where online distribution has an obvious advantage; the speed that a story can go from the journalist's keyboard to a reader's screen is an important factor, so it isn't surprising that readership is moving away from the printed page and towards the web. But the relationship between the printed newspaper and the online equivalent isn't really a symbiotic one. Often the online version breaks the news first, and can have additional content that simply don't work in a paper format (such as comments and discussion around a story, more photos than can be squeezed onto the limited number of pages of a newspaper, or video content.)

But there's a lot of competition in the world of news, and when there is free content available it will be difficult to compete on a paid-for basis. After all, why would I pay to access a news website if I can read what the bloggers who share my interests are talking about? That way, I get the same "news", along with an added level of editorial/opinion.

So the model that is more efficient at delivering news will also be the one that is cheapest for the consumer, and with ad-supported websites, user-generated content spreading from word of mouth etc. and companies still chasing an "audience first, revenue second" model, this means that "free" is almost certainly the future as far as news is concerned.

But it's the paper versions that can carry both a cover price and a healthy (or at least healthier) profit margin. There just doesn't seem to be any reason to read a free online version and then pay for the printed version of the same thing later on. (Unless you want to save that copy for posterity, I suppose. I understand that copies of the New York Times on the day Obama was elected are now worth significantly more than the cover price…)

The printed page- a physical container that carries the words- makes a huge difference to the way we value the content. Something you take away when you leave a shop that you need to pay for. Something that has to be physically produced and delivered to the shop, by people who need to be paid if they are going to do it again. (Unlike the perfect digital copy of a digital download, with the distribution paid for by your internet subscription.) But we don't value the cheap container when it's sole function— to deliver the content as quickly as possible— can be done better by something else.

Premium container; premium content

Magazines revolve more about the editorial, the in-depth interviews and analysis rather than a more immediate report of what is happening right now, they are more suited to the physical medium of the printed page. This means that the relationship between online and offline versions is less parasitic; maybe it doesn't matter if magazines can't make their websites profitable by selling advertising- because the website is advertising; virtually free advertising for the magazine itself.

While the "news" part of a magazine can be more effectively distributed online (competing with other titles in the same category), for the more in-depth editorial content that is less suited to online reading, the printed page is better. The distractions of online communications (email, IM, RSS, Twitter etc), and the nature of reading from a backlit screen make it harder to read longer pieces of text than a well-designed printed article. A magazine that sits on a coffee table, in a rack or is carried around in a bag gives more opportunities to read it- and therefore make it worth buying- than a newspaper that is thrown away at the end of the day.

So the online news helps to build a relationship with the magazine, where the reader can take the time to read the in-depth analysis.

Instead of being printed on the cheapest paper available, with ink that doesn't even stay on the pages (and pages that don't stay inside the "cover"), this is a quality product; glossy paper, colour print, properly bound. We happily wait, because we know we aren't going to get the best story first. We don't want our in-depth essays to be fast; we want them to be considered, well-researched, informed and educated. We want them to be good.

I wrote something recently about Wired magazine, and this relationship between the freely available online content and the paid-for printed version;

If I'm paying for a printed version of something that I can get online, then I want a version that's worth paying for— a premium version. [...] if what you're getting goes against the grain of why you're getting it then there's probably little point in getting it, and the reason you're buying a printed magazine like Wired is precisely because of the "premium" nature that it has over online content. Even if— and this is a point that I think the publishing industry is struggling to get to grips with— the actual content is the same.

In other words, I read it for the content, but I buy it for the container.

Expensive containers- no content

One way of taking this line of thinking a step further would be to completely separate the container from the content. It might sound like a strange idea, but we've already seen it happen; you buy an iPod to listen to music, but it doesn't come with any music to listen to. It's simply a better container than a walkman and a pile of tapes, or a CD player and a wallet full of CDs. Similarly, you buy a Kindle so you can read books, but take it home with nothing to read; it's just a container (which Amazon makes money on!) for online content. (Whether eBooks will become a mainstream medium is yet to be seen.)

The high price tag means that we don't think of these in the same way that we think of magazines; when we spend a couple of hundreds of pounds on something, we usually aren't considering it disposable. But the fact is that technological advances mean that these kinds of devices get cheaper and better- meaning that after 2 or 3 years, the time comes to buy a replacement. This is roughly the lifespan of the battery- although they can be replaced, there is usually significant enough developments to make a new model worth considering, and the trend towards multifunctional devices, bought along with a contract to a mobile network service, it seems reasonable to expect this to continue for at least a few more years.

So even if we aren't paying for a monthly mobile subscription, insurance against mechanical failure, or buying applications of software updates, then we're still paying a few hundred pounds every couple of years so that we can listen to our music when and where we want to- before we've started thinking about the music we want to listen to.

At the moment, this is still a relatively small part of the "Media Landscape"— most people don't have a Kindle or an iPhone, but the idea is going to become increasingly important as mobile services develop and 3G (or 4G, or wifi) coverage increases, and the "mobile device" shifts from being primarily a communication device with other features bolted on, and becomes a media tool, used to access music (eg. Spotify, last.fm), TV and news online, with telephone functionality bolted on.

Premium packaging, free content

A different idea is the case of "premium" packaging- the hardback edition of a book, or a "basic" CD release, accompanied by an expensive, limited edition, signature edition CD with art prints, a booklet, poster etc. The value here obviously isn't in the content— you don't get a better quality recording, or a better version of the album (although you might get the odd "bonus track", but after all it would be commercial suicide if the "basic" version of an album left off the hit single, or the paperback copy of a book omitted the final chapter.) So the value is clearly in the container.

The catch here is that once you've bought the "basic" version, it seems unlikely that you would then "upgrade" to the premium version when the content is the same. (Which of course is why music piracy is such a problem; the "perfect digital copy" that was such a selling point for the Compact Disc when we had taped copies of albums wasn't so much of a selling point when the cost of making your own perfect digital copy dropped like a stone.)

But a legal dispute has recently led to what might turn out to be an even braver experiment (albeit an accidental one); a recent collaboration between DangerMouse (probably best known for "The Grey Album"- a remix of The Beatles' White Album and Jay-Z's Black Album) and Sparklehorse, along with a number of different vocalists, on an album called "Dark Night of the Soul."

The experimental factor isn't so much the music though- it's the way it's being distributed. Due to a legal dispute, EMI won't allow the record to be released. You will probably never be able to buy the music.

However, from June 15th, what you will be able to buy is a blank CD-R with the album's name and either a booklet (limited edition, with over a hundred pages of visuals by David Lynch) and a poster, or a different designed CDR with a different poster. (If you can't find them in the shops, you can order them online.) And, naturally, the music itself has found its way onto various file sharing networks.

It will be very interesting to see what happens to this release- actually forcing people to find the album through illegal download sites raises some interesting questions. It's not clear what sort of licence/copyright the album is released under, and although the artists aren't actually telling people to download it the message seems quite implicit. Nobody seems to be losing money through downloads of the album. So would anyone argue that it's "wrong" to download it?

Yes, it is still copyright infringement (at least, it seems to be- it could be that it's released under a copyleft licence such as the Creative Commons. I assume that it's artists' contractual obligations rather than copyright issues preventing the release, but nothing has been stated in public to my knowledge.)

But might this be a business model that works for music? Download the music, see if you like it, and if you do then buy a container to keep it in? Maybe more to the point, isn't this what many downloaders are doing (or at least profess to doing) anyway? It isn't exactly unlike the loophole that filesharing networks like The Pirate Bay exploit— while they don't distribute copyrighted content themselves, they do make it easier for people to find and share copyrighted content for themselves.

The wider consequences of this kind of distribution for copyright could be interesting. If I made a mix CD (or recorded using samples from other songs), I wouldn't be allowed to sell it without permission from the artists whose music I had used— but would there be anything stopping me from just putting it on a filesharing site and then selling a well-designed sleeve for it to go in?

How royalty-collecting organizations like the PRS for Music or MCP will react to this should also be interesting to see as well. Can they collect royalty fees for the sale of a blank CD and a booklet which contains nothing more of either the songs or recordings of the music than the track listing?

Could the future of record stores actually be exactly the same as their past— stocked with shelves of empty CD cases, and customers flicking through them, looking at the artwork as they decide which one they want to buy? Only instead of choosing between the albums they have already heard (and maybe taped) on the radio or from their friends, they are choosing between the albums they have already downloaded? Perhaps they could even see the packaging get larger again- 12" squares to show off the artwork to it's full, maybe even a fragile yet collectable analogue pressing of the album inside... With Virgin Megastores following Tower Records' demise, and HMV looking more like a DVD and computer game shop than the record store that I grew up knowing, it seems pretty clear that they have to figure out something soon if recorded music is going to continue to have any kind of physical form.

Whatever happens, this release should be an interesting one to watch- whatever you think of the music it contains.

(Or rather, that it doesn't.)

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Baroness Susan Greenfield, a member of the Royal Institution and neuroscientist, has received a fair amount of attention recently for her comments over the last few months on how new waves of technology is changing people's brains.

In short, the human brain is a very flexible organ, and changes as it develops. Like a muscle, the more you exercise it, the better it gets at that particular task. This means that it is sensitive to your environment. So as the environment is changing- with more time being spent playing games, using social networks and so on- therefore the way our brains develop is changing.

This has naturally led to a number of scaremongering headlines...

As a call for greater understanding— for debate and research into what's happening, I think it's something to be welcomed and applauded. The debate is something that is already happening— an article by Nicholas Carr in The Atlantic last year ("Is Google making us stupid?") generated a considerable amount of discussion and debate about how the internet is shaping the way we think as we consume information.

The problem with research is that, when put through the filters of "PR-reviewed phindings", headline-friendly soundbytes and publicity-seeking journals, what actually comes out of the other end doesn't necessarily match up with the original science— as was clearly illustrated recently when headlines such as Twitter and Facebook could harm moral values, scientists warn and Facebook and Twitter 'make us bad people' caught people's attention. With a bit of digging around, the Language Log blog joined the dots between the report and the headlines and found that the actual research had nothing at all to do with social networks or fast-paced media…

As I've said before, this is why I often tend to trust the amateurs… (Although there are professional journalists like Ben Goldacre who cross the line by writing some excellent blog posts in— I presume— their spare time. So maybe I trust the semi-professional too…)

Anyway, the problem as Greenfield puts it is actually slightly different to the real issue as I see it. The idea that "less time is spent socially because more time is spent alone playing computer games" (quote, unquote) seems to me to apply better to children of the 80s— my own generation who spent hours playing games when Atari and Sega were making consoles, Sinclair and Amstrad were making computers, and the hardware debate of the day was whether the Spectrum's higher resolution was worth the payoff of only being able to have 2 colours in an 8x8 pixel sprite. (Back then, you had to understand how computers worked to use them— graphical user interfaces were still some way from being mainstream, and hard drives were considered a luxury.) The point being that back then, we were playing games on our own because we didn't have the option of playing them online. If we were playing with friends, it usually meant taking turns with the controller.

What would we have been doing instead? Well, playing out in the street isn't necessarily an option today- especially if you live in an urban environment— because of different concerns (whether or not they are justified is a whole other debate.)

Would it be better to be alone with a book? Watching television? Neither of these really work on the social skills that Greenfield seems to think would be being developed if we (and our children) weren't using these new technologies.

How about talking on the phone? Something that is changing too— another technological throwback that my generation had to put up with in pre-mobile, pre-VOIP days; one phone number shared by 4 people in the house, billed by the minute, risking having to speak to a girl's dad every time you called… Tell that to kids today and they won't believe you! But is anyone worried about the impact that this changing social behaviour is having on future generations? I doubt it.

The point is that I don't believe that usage of things like the web, computer games and instant messenger have a direct relationship with the "face time" we spend with friends; they are a supplement, rather than a replacement. A study by BT last year found that two thirds of people prefer to speak face-to-face rather than using technology, compared to 52% ten years ago. In other words, while we are spending more time communicating online, we are placing more value on communicating offline. We might be able to fit more online communication into a 24 hour day, but as a result we appreciate the value of the limited amount of face-to-face time that we can get.

So, back to the changing brains; how do we research the changes that are happening? For starters, it would be difficult, if not impossible to find a suitable control group for any study; a group demographically identical to the Facebookers, texters and IM-ers, but who aren't using the internet, playing games etc. So I suspect that it's a non-starter. But what happens when you start to take a wider view than just the technological developments of the last decade?

The fact is, as "Getting Things Done" guru David Allen points out in Wired (UK), a natural environment provides a wider range of stimulation through sounds, smells and sights than any other environment- yet is considered the most soothing. On the other hand, sensory deprivation— the opposite— is a formula for madness. How many thousands of years did our brains develop in this natural, chaotic environment, before we were blocking out the outside world with a pair of white headphones on our way to work?

But there are other changes that are happening— changes which don't require an understanding of neuroscience to appreciate, because they are happening on a larger and more visible scale.

When something changes an individual's brain, the easiest way to see the change is to watch their behaviour. When the same thing happens to a lot of brains, the thing to watch is the wider changes in society.

There's a change I've seen in my own behaviour, and I'm interested to see if it will spread beyond smartphone-using early adopters. For example, not long ago, I found myself searching Google Maps for "Hope."

Rather than some sort of existential mission for spiritual guidance, I was searching on my mobile phone, looking for a nearby pub where I was meeting some friends. In London, there are a lot of pubs, and I often struggle to match a name, a location and my own memories of previous experiences that link the two.

While this might well be related to what I'm doing to my brain cells in those pubs while I'm there, it's a problem that's increasingly simple to address with a Google search on a mobile device. Which got me wondering about the implications that this could have— not just on the personal level as your mobile phone becomes a virtual limb, but on a cultural level.

Firstly, this seems to have the potential to massively change the property market for inner cities. The value of a high street property is far higher than a shop front just a few hundred yards away, off the main pedestrian traffic areas. Where people don't go, people don't see, and where people don't see, people don't shop. But if everyone with a mobile phone also has access to locational services like GPS and online maps, it becomes much easier to find a nearby shop that isn't necessarily somewhere that you would walk past. So the "premium" nature of a shop on the main high street would be diminished.

Potentially at least, this could mean that mobile phones wouldn't just change the way we navigate our cities, but the way our cities develop. Interestingly, a large old city like London could be the most affected by this kind of change. All those hidden away winding back streets suddenly become valuable commercial spaces- no easier to see but, if they have what you're looking for (and a decent online operation), much easier to find.

According to some 'research' from Nokia, looking at how people use maps and give directions, some unique facts about Britain emerged. London is apparently the most confusing city to navigate- thanks to hundreds of years of development and natural growth (as opposed to an ordered and planned grid system), punctuated by events like the Great Fire and World War 2 bombings, and a traffic system put into place to deal with the relatively recent rise of cars and buses on streets that simply weren't made with the volume or nature of traffic that has arrived.

The British are also apparently the nation most likely to deliberately give wrong directions when asked, complicating the matter further for lost pedestrians. More interestingly, the most frequently used landmarks used by the Brits when giving directions are pubs. (The Chinese typically use skyscrapers to give directions, India is the top nation for using shops as a point of reference when giving directions, while in Bengaluru, apparently nearly one in ten guide themselves by the stars— presumably their night skies are clearer than London's...)

This probably highlights the special place that pubs have in British culture as social hubs; meeting points or party venues, the "local" retreat, the pub near the office that becomes the traditional Friday lunchtime haunt. Would this change in naviation change the way we use them? It's difficult to say for sure, but it seems plausible.

More than a quarter (26%) of people surveyed rely on online and mobile navigation tools to find their way around. 13% of people already use a mobile phone as their primary navigation tool. These are numbers that I'm sure will significantly increase over the next few years as "smartphones" replace "feature phones" and the costs of mobile data comes down.

So, from the wiring of our brains to the layout of our cities— what else are these kinds of advances in communications technology going to change?

(Disclaimer: I am aware of the irony in talking about the laughability of "PR-reviewed phindings" and Nokia's "study" on how people use their mobile phones to lose and find themselves in the same post— please regard it as an ironic juxtaposition.)

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I came across this article today that claims that "Mainstream Gen Y isn't Buying Into Web 2.0."

It struck me as kind of a strange claim that's completely at odds with everything I know about Generation Y. (Admittedly, in a recent office survey I discovered that I'm the least "youth" person in my office, but I don't think this is an area where it takes one to know one.) With a little digging around the numbers, I was fairly relieved to find out that I'm not quite as out of touch as the author.

Young adults 18-24 only make up 10.6% of the Twitter population in the US and are less likely than the average user to tweet. 45-54 year olds are actually 36 percent more likely than average to visit Twitter.

Why would Generation Y be in the Twitter population? With less than 7% of the online population using the site, it's still a long way from the mainstream, and with 68% of 12-17 year olds on MSN Messenger, don't they have better ways to communicate and ask what their friends are doing "right now"?

Unlike MySpace and Facebook, Twitter has grown from an older, tech-heavy audience. Not an audience that's terribly exciting to the Millenials.

Gen Y is not on LinkedIn. The average age of a LinkedIn user is 40-years old

Why would Generation Y be visiting LinkedIn? A site dedicated to creating networks of professionals to extend their networks, stay informed about their industry and opportunities. Don't they get enough of this at work to worry about it when they aren't working? Don't they get all this from their Facebook networks anyway? Aren't they worried enough that their bosses and parents are suddenly asking to be their friends?

Facebook is growing at an unparalleled speed, and the new adopters are older folks. The 35 to 54 Year old demographic grew at a rate of 276% over the last six months and the 55+ demographic grew more than 194% over the same time period, while 18-24 year olds only grew 20%.

"Growing" is a strange term to use when looking at what people are "buying in to." Perhaps the figures for the US are different to the UK where, although the 18-24 year old audience of 2.7 million is indeed dwarfed by the rapidly growing 35 to 54 year old audience of 6.8 million. But nevertheless, those 2.7 million Facebook-using 18-24 year olds make up 70% of the online 18-24 year old population.

If 70% are using it, then I think it's safe to say that it's something they are "buying into." However, it's much harder to show those big exciting numbers like 276% growth over six months.

For Gen X and Baby Boomers, Facebook is something big that's happening right now. For Gen Y- the ones who were using it back when it was "thefacebook" and only those with a college email address were allowed in, it's something that's already happened.

A recent Accenture survey concluded that Baby boomers, defined in Accenture's survey as those 45 years old or older, are embracing popular consumer technology applications nearly 20 times faster than younger generations. Compared to a year ago, Gen Y consumers between the ages of 18 and 24, are decelerating their use of consumer electronics and related services including social networking, blogging, listening to podcasts and posting video on the Internet.

Again, we've got those "big numbers." But what happens when you look at a like-for-like comparison from the same study? Such as the 45 percent of Gen Y who are engaged in reading blogs or listening to podcasts, while 26 percent of baby boomers have begun to do so.

Or, does Gen Y have an innate sense that too much connectivity and too much time online is unproductive and does nothing more than allow you to run in circles and chase something that you can never actually attain.

 

I think it's safe to say that the answer is no. Or at least, not in the way that us old folk are used to thinking about "time online." Because while we're still excited about wireless laptops that aren't tethered to our desks, Gen Y are happy with the kind of technology that they have grown up taking for granted, that doesn't leave them carrying around a couple of kilograms of technology just to connect to people.

From that same Accenture study cited earlier, "When asked about their preferred consumer services, 35 percent of Gen Y a year ago picked "home Internet access." Today, that number is only 25 percent. Instead, mobile phone service continues to rank number one, with 54 percent of Gen Y picking it as their preferred consumer service.

So what do you suppose they might be using those mobile phones for, if not to stay connected?

Given that this was a piece written by someone who "has appeared as a spokesperson for the new generation of workers -- Generation Y, on CBS's 60 Minutes, 20/20, and National Public Radio", I'm starting to wonder if Research might be the wrong line of work for me. Maybe I am "down with the hip kids" after all...

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It's a well known "fact" that 73% of all statistics are made up on the spot. ~Author Unknown…

Used wisely, research can be a powerful tool for understanding, whether that is understanding of a market, of people's preferences and affinities, or the kind of raw research that uncovers the laws of science.

But when the statistics that it generates are used without due diligence, as a tool to inflate an argument rather than to inform and educate, the research becomes something else. The Internet (particularly since Google turned search engines into a powerful automated indexing tool) make it easier than ever to put the cart before the horse and simply to find the numbers that back up a theory, rather than use information and knowledge to inform and build it.

He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts - for support rather than for illumination. ~Andrew Lang

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A couple of months ago, I boxed up my CD collection and moved it out of my flat; the realisation that big pile of plastic in my back bedroom had essentially been transformed from the physical space that my music collection occupied into a large piece of furniture as the MP3 collection on my computers' hard drive had effectively replaced it, combined with the new arrival in a couple of months meant that it was something that had to be done.

In a kind of similar way, I used to hoard magazines when I was younger. Last weekend, I realised that about 2 years worth of FHM from around a decade ago were still stacked up in my parents garage. It was kind of embarrassing to realise that I hadn't really thought through the consequences of the decision I must have made several years ago to not throw them out, but to keep them in storage. (Why? Were they likely to become collectibles that I could sell on eBay for a small fortune?)

The thing is, my behavior hasn't really changed- yet. I still do the same things- CD is still my preferred format for buying music. I rarely buy magazines any more- but occasionally I still do. But, the cover price just doesn't justify the content for me; when so much "stuff" is available online, unless I've got a couple of hours to kill on a train or plane, it just doesn't usually make sense to me to buy a magazine.

Usually.

The exception to that rule is Wired. For the last year or so, it's the only magazine I can actually recollect looking for and buying. In fact, the only reason I occasionally miss an issue is because its a US publication, not always easy to find in the UK, and I've never got around to taking out a subscription. But this month, "Wired UK" was launched.

I was actually a bit worried about it when I heard; I figured that a smaller UK market, already saturated with PC, "Lifestyle", technology and gadget mags would lead to a dumbing-down of the magazine, turning it into another FHM/Stuff kind of read. If that happened, it would also make it much harder to get my hands on the magazine that I actually enjoy reading.

It wouldn't be the end of my relationship with the Wired brand though; after all, I already follow the articles via the RSS feed; I can read most of the articles online. But it's got me thinking about why it's the magazine itself that I like; partly, its the fact that I can shut myself off for an hour or two and read through it. Partly because I spend more than enough of my time reading text on a backlit PC, laptop or iPhone screen as it is, and at the end of the day, I would rather read off paper than a screen.

But mainly it's because it is a quality magazine; the weight of the paper, the consistent and familiar design of the front section along with the unique layout of the longer articles mirrors the quality of the writing. In short, I feel that I get my money's worth because I'm getting something more than what I get for free online- definitely enough to justify the cover price. If I'm paying for a printed version of something that I can get online, then I want a version that's worth paying for— a premium version. Which means that the "extra" stuff— the shiny pages, the binding and cover, the page layout and design— has to be premium. Otherwise, its like buying cheap caviar, an £8 bottle of champagne, or buying a portable TV to watch high definition films on— if what you're getting goes against the grain of why you're getting it then there's probably little point in getting it, and the reason you're buying a printed magazine like Wired is precisely because of the "premium" nature that it has over online content. Even if— and this is a point that I think the publishing industry is struggling to get to grips with— the actual content is the same.

In other words, I read it for the content, but I buy it for the container.

Ultimately, that's the difference between a magazine and a newspaper, between watching a film at the cinema, buying the DVD and watching it on TV, or between downloading an MP3 from a filesharing network and buying the same music (although the difference there is more subtle, but there is a reason that an album that you can legally and freely copy and share was also the best selling MP3 album on Amazon.)

So I was very happy to discover that my fears about a sub-par UK version of Wired magazine were unfounded; it's crammed full of interesting stories, many of which are very UK-specific (such as the cover story about the man who led the iPlayer project for the BBC), and is carrying premium advertising to match.

However, there are a couple of smaller questions that the UK edition raises for me, mainly revolving around whether the US version is still worth reading.

The last US edition I read (which I picked up in New York, so I'm not sure if it was the last issue that wouldnt have been shipped over to the UK), which had a great cover article about the energy industry, and the problems it faces in updating/upgrading the technology of the generation of electricity, the grid that is responsible for the distribution, and the economics of the various businesses and regions involved in the US. Now, this article would be interesting to a UK audience, but not necessarily relevant for a UK magazine. Would this kind of article be rewritten for the UK with additional information about the electricity grid over here, the various companies involved and the consequences of the privatization of the industry? If so, would it come as well as, or at the expense of the US-centric information? Sometimes articles like the one about the Comcast CEO aren't particularly relevant at all to a UK audience (in the same way that the iPlayer piece would be irrelevant to a US audience), but how articles like the one about the energy industry would be 'translated' is something I'm less certain about.

The other down side is that I'm now gathering a collection that could end up being another big, heavy waste of space in my flat as it transforms from "magazine I'm in the middle of reading", to "magazine I've read, but with a few articles I want to read again", to another collection of a medium that (like my CDs and my small FHM library) I will one day realise has transformed from a collection of media into a large piece of not-particularly-attractive furniture that's cluttering up the room.

But perhaps this is actually a less obvious example of the benefits of the magazine existing both off and online- I don't lose anything anymore when I throw the old issues out because by the time I've lost interest in the paper, design and reading experience, I'm not losing the chance to go back and read the content that I'm still interested in if I throw away the paper that contains it. In fact, it's actually easier for me to find an article online than by rifling through old issues to find the right one, before flicking througg to find the page that I'm looking for. The fact that I still won't toss it out as soon as I've read through it once makes it more "permanent" and attractive to buy than a newspaper (I know that it will live in my bag for a week or two at the very least, as opposed to a paper that I've lost interest in long before the end of the day), but at the same time the fact that I know that the physical medium is "disposable" actually makes it more attractive to me.

Which means that there is only one medium that I'm left with that still takes up shelf space in my home; books. And despite the advances in eBooks and e-readers, I can't see a time when that will change.

Unlike a newspaper or magazine, books don't age in the same way. A newspaper from last week, or a magazine from six months ago has a very different value to one on the newsagent's shelves today. But a book that was published ten years ago is often just as valuable as one published today. (By "valuable", I'm not talking about the cost or cover price, but the value to me of having those words on those pages on my shelf or carried around in my bag.)

If I read a book, I probably won't want to re-read it in an electronic form. I probably won't want to refer to just a particular chapter in six months time, with little or no regard to it's context in the larger work. I won't want to skip past the first few dozen pages of news and adverts to get to the "meat", or start with the more frivolous parts at the back, working backwards to see if there's anything I didn't get to when I read it before. I'll want to read it from start to finish.

That's not to say I won't be interested at all in an electronic form- if it's all that's available to me then I'll be perfectly happy to read that instead. (As I realized when half way through Cory Doctorow's "Content", and realized that I could read it online even though I'd left my physical copy at home.)

Obviously, this applies more strongly to novels than some other books- the "long form" continuous narrative is what makes them different to a reference book, where an individual chapter may well be the only interesting part at a given moment in time (not just because that's the chapter I'm up to, but because it covers a subject I want/need to know about.) However, a reference book will still tend to cross-reference between chapters, so while you might only be interested in, say, a recipe for Blueberry Muffins in Chapter 12 of a recipe book, you might need to refer to Chapter One's conversions between ounces and kilograms, Chapter Three's information about how to make icing, or something in Chapter Seven about how to make buttermilk.

But, as Nicholas Carr observes, when those references can point to something else, something outside of the binding of the book itself— say, a Wiki page about icing, or an online weights and measures conversion tool— then it also opens up to all of the clutter of the internet; every piece of online infomation in the whole wide world. And this changes the fundamental nature of the book as a self-contained work, where everything that matters sits within its binding and pages.

So— counter-intuitive as it might seem— a shelf full of books doesn't necessarily represent the "clutter" that it might appear to be from an interior design perspective. Instead, it represents closed-off moments, immersed in a single, linear narrative that simply won't be the same once those words are digitised and uploaded into an iPhone, Kindle or some other device that has a screen you can read off and a connection to the world wide web.

Because, as Dave Gorman discovered quite early on in his Googlewhack adventure, the clutter of everything in the whole wide world can actually be pretty distracting. Sometimes, that's a great thing to have- if I'm reading the news or researching something, I want control of the information I'm reading before I want to find editorial to shape my interpretation. But other times- like when I've got an hour or two free to switch off and relax with a good book- it's good to have an "off" switch on the outside world as well.

Read the rest of "Wired UK, and media as furniture"

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A while ago, I rambled on about the difference between bits and bytes, and how sometimes an amateur reporter with a passion for a subject will be more reliable than a professional reporter who just needs to get a report written and out of the door.

Well, this BBC story caught my eye and reminded me why I bothered writing that post, as the BBC reports that;

"Homes and businesses in South Yorkshire will receive super-fast broadband as part of a scheme to put the region at the forefront of digital technologies.

A 25-megabyte connection will be available from the end of 2009, reaching 1.2m people in Barnsley, Doncaster, Rotherham and Sheffield."

So what does that mean?

Read the rest of "Faster broadband to boost the economy? Many questions raised…"

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