Can brands own colours?

According to marketing lore, it was once possible for a single brand to 'own' a colour; Coca Cola owned red, IBM owned blue, UPS owned brown (or so the legend goes). Regardless of whether this was ever really the case, it certainly ain't true now. Our globalised, digital world has more brands, shouting more loudly, across more media, than ever before.

Not that all companies have given up on the dream of owning a colour globally. Vodafone still seems pretty set on wresting red from Coke's clutches (with some success according to Martin Lindstrom’s 2005 book Brand Sense, in which he claims 30% of UK consumers now associate red with Vodafone, compared with 22% for Coke). The fight for red has been further complicated by the entry of (PRODUCT)^RED last year, which is hoping to own red across multiple sectors. That said, most companies have moved away from a goal of universal colour ownership and relocated the battle for colour supremacy to their own market sector.

Exhibit A is the 2005 legal dispute between Orange and easyGroup over the use of Pantone 151. Both companies had been using the distinctive shade of orange since the mid-90s, but it wasn't until Stelios announced the launch of the now-defunct easyMobile in 2004 that the mobile operator called in the lawyers; unsurprising when you consider that colour is the tacitly agreed brand differentiator amongst the mobile operators, where blue is synonymous with O2, magenta with T-Mobile, orange with, er, Orange and red with Vodafone (sorry Virgin). 3 opted out of the colour war by creating a chameleon logo, which employs different colours in different contexts.

Exhibit B is an Australian court action brought by Darrell Lea Chocolate Shops against confectionary giant Cadbury Schweppes last year. The judge found in favour of Darrell Lea concluding that "Cadbury does not own the colour purple and does not have an exclusive reputation in purple in connection with chocolate in Australia". Whilst Cadbury may have lost in court and been forced to amend the trademark claims on its packaging, it remains indelibly associated with purple in the minds of chocolate-loving consumers.

All of which is a precursor to asking whether it is possible to own a colour in the online space. My instinct is no - there are just too many competing brands. Strong colour/brand association is possible amongst UK mobile operators because there are only half a dozen of them. Likewise, cigarette companies successfully carved up the colours amongst them because there was a limited number of brands, enabling them to take out billboard ads or sponsor Formula One cars primarily on the strength of colour association (purple meant Silk Cut, gold meant Benson & Hedges, red meant Marlboro, black meant John Player Special).

However, the barriers to entry (and by extension, brand creation) on the web are so low that even in the same market sector, companies seem to have accepted the futility of attempting to own a single colour. The practicalities of web design may also feed into this; it's fine for Vodafone's full-page print ads and billboards to be almost entirely red, but that wouldn't work on its website (unless it was aiming to make its visitors' eyes bleed).

If ownership of a single colour is unattainable on the web, how about a particular combination of colours? Graham Beale got the ball rolling on this with a colour scheme montage posted on his blog, Hold and Modify. However, of the 15 represented, I could identify just 2 (Flickr and Blogger). Whilst Graham assures me that his fellow web designers were able to name many more, I think it's fair to infer that Joe Public wouldn't.

Interestingly, the one site which comes closest to achieving colour ownership on the web for me is lastminute.com which has had almost 10 years to stake its claim on a particularly aggressive shade of pink. Shown a swatch in isolation (or in a pink line-up with Smile and T-Mobile) I reckon I would be able to identify it, although that may just be the subliminal impact of their weekly newsletter in my inbox.

Whilst colour will undoubtedly remain a critical element of brand identity, both on and offline, I wonder if it's moving lower down in the mix as the marketplace becomes increasingly crowded and colour ownership is redefined as a pipe dream from a bygone era (the mythology is that Coke began its ownership of red in the 1950s by changing the colour of Santa's suit from green). The democratisation of branding, facilitated by the Internet, has blown the lid off the notion of colour exclusivity and marketing will need to become more sophisticated in response.

The favicon - your 256 pixel brand identity

Despite often being deprioritised (or forgotten about altogether) by web developers, the lowly favicon (a contraction of favourite icon) is becoming an increasingly important aspect of brand identity on the web.

Usually measuring just 16 by 16 pixels, favicons are the small logos that appear next to the website names in your browser's list of favourites/bookmarks. Chances are they are also displayed in your browser's address bar, before the URL of the site.

Another place you will see them is on the tabs of tabbed web browsers such as Opera. Mozilla Firefox, and Internet Explorer 7 which, collectively, now account for over a third of the browser market (according TheCounter.com).

The rise of Web 2.0 has also contributed to the favicon's higher profile as a growing number of social bookmarking sites, syndication tools and API-enabled mashups make use of favicons when linking to other sites. In particular, the increasing use of favicon-based buttons on blogs encouraging visitors to summit to del.icio.us, Digg, Furl, Reddit, Stumble, Technorati etc. (see AddThis).

So, how are web developers responding to the increased attention on the favicon? Representing your brand effectively in just 256 pixels is undoubtedly an enormous design challenge and four main approaches seem to have emerged:

1.) Attempting to replicate the site's logo in it's entirety

This approach stands or falls on the complexity of your site's logo, which clearly favours those companies who designed their logo with favicons in mind (e.g. Blogger , del.ico.us , Digg ). Long-established brands which pre-date the web have more of a conundrum - should they attempt to shrink their existing brand down to 16 x 16 pixels (e.g. BBC , NPR ) or should they design a new logo with this new branding space in mind? Companies who have already successfully distilled their brands down to a simple image (e.g. Apple , Nike , Smile ) have a clear advantage in this area.

2.) Abstracting the initial letter(s) from your site brand

Championed by Amazon (), Google () and Yahoo! () this approach has become increasingly commonplace. The challenge here is to ensure your design treatment is distinct enough from all the other sites using the same letter, or in some cases, a different letter - compare Blogger () and easyJet (). Amazon and Yahoo!'s favicons are particularly successful as they incorporate another brand element besides the font (an arrow and an exclamation mark, respectively).

3.) Creating a custom graphic which attempts to convey the site's USP

More in line with the design conventions of desktop icons, this approach sidesteps the challenges of representing your site brand, but introduces the equally daunting task of effectively conveying the site's purpose in just 256 pixels. More successful examples include Lego () and Threadless ().

4.) Creating an abstract image

The least common approach, its main advantage is that in a world dominated by reduced logos and initial letters, abstract images stand out by virtue of being different. The downside is that is that it swims against the tide of received wisdom regarding branding and the resulting images are often indistinct or unmemorable (see this site's favicon, which I really must do something about). Interestingly, Flickr recently abandoned the initial letter approach () in favour of something more abstract ().

Whichever approach you adopt, it's worth remembering that your favicon is your (potentially permanent) brand presence on the limited and valuable real estate of people's browsers and across the wider web. The cardinal sin of favicons is not having one at all, which just looks lazy. Not having a favicon is like not having a sign promoting your store ahead of the turn off from the main road, when all your competitors have one. Yes, visitors will still find your site via search engines and weblinks and some may bookmark it. But they won't have the visual reminder of your brand when they scan their bookmarks/tabs, deciding where to visit.

In spite of this, a surprising number of high-profile sites are currently without favicons. I was so disappointed by the absence of a favicon for Empire that I created one () and emailed it to the developers who I'm pleased to see have since put it live.

So, what lies ahead for the humble favicon? Well, larger sizes (32 x 32 pixels is increasingly common) and alternative image formats both seem inevitable as does a growing prominence on the mobile platform. I'm hoping use of animated favicons don't become more widespread as gratuitous animation usually pisses people off.

To finish off, below is an A-Z montage of initial letter favicons. First person to name all 26 gets a Cadbury's Cream Egg (click through to Flickr to annotate).

Lost the plot: Why US dramas can't help jumping the shark

Whilst the debate rumbles on over if and when Lost 'jumped the shark' (my personal vote would be Mr. Eko's death by CGI smoke), few seem to be discussing the more significant issue of why.

My contention is that fundamental characteristics of the US broadcasting ecosystem are to blame. More specifically, the economic drivers of commercial television in the States dictate that a show cannot be cancelled if it is still attracting a significant revenue-generating audience, regardless of the quality of the output. The horse must be flogged until it is well and truly dead.

This first hit home for me a while back whilst reading an interview with Lost's creator, J.J. Abrams, in London freesheet The Metro (unfortunately not replicated on their website) in which he explained that he had the overall narrative arc of the series clear in his mind. The creative challenge stemmed from not knowing how many seasons he would need to string that narrative arc out for. As long as enough people kept watching he would need to keep writing.

This disarmingly honest assessment of the realities of making commercially viable television drama in the States brought me up short and got me thinking about why this isn't so true in the UK, where there is a long-established history of quitting while you're ahead (think Fawlty Towers, Monty Python, Blackadder, This Life, Our Friends in the North, The Office, Life on Mars).

Compare this list with some landmark US drama series of the last few years, almost all of which outstayed their welcome (e.g. Friends, The X-Files, Ally McBeal, ER, Sex and the City, 24, The Sopranos, Desperate Housewives, The O.C.) and/or spawned gratuitous big or small screen spin offs (e.g. Friends, The X-Files, CSI).

The most notable exceptions to this rule are Six Feet Under and The West Wing which called it a day after five and seven series respectively, without any discernible drop in quality. The West Wing even survived the death of one of its stars (John Spencer) and a significant change in emphasis in its final series - normally both classic precursors to a bout of shark jumping. The Simpsons looks likely to one day join this list although until the final episode airs (and with a big-screen outing on the way) it could still blow it. I also have high hopes for House which has already clocked up three seasons without dropping the ball.

So, why are there more examples of British series which have called it a day before jumping the shark? The most obvious explanation is the strong role of public service broadcasting in the UK. Unlike its commercial competitors on both sides of the pond, the BBC can afford to prioritise quality when deciding whether to commission additional seasons as it doesn't need to worry about ad revenue. The shorter seasons may also be a factor (UK seasons are typically 10 or 12 episodes versus 22 in the US) as may the absence of a syndication model.

However, I also wonder if there's something embedded in the British psyche (which extends to programme-makers) about not over-egging the pudding, in play here. I suspect that the BBC would have happily commissioned additional series of Extras or The Office if Gervais and Merchant had been willing to write them. Similarly, there feels something inherently British about the Blackadder team calling it a day after four series when the temptation to carry on must have been almost irresistible.

Of course there have been popular British TV series that refused to take the hint and carried on well past their sell-by dates (Only Fools and Horses leaps instantly to mind) although they seem fewer and farther between than their transatlantic equivalents. Here's hoping that my latest US drama of choice, Heroes, knows when to call it a day. I have to confess I'm not optimistic...

MediaGuardian Changing Media Summit 2007

Somewhat belatedly (thanks to avalanche of day-job work) below is a distillation of my notes from last Thursday's MediaGuardian Changing Media Summit. Rather than summarise the whole conference (which would no doubt duplicate much of the Guardian's own blog coverage) I've picked out some of the key themes and stats. So, with a nod to John Crace, here is the MediaGuardian Changing Media Summit 2007 digested:

The 10 key themes

• We continue to overestimate the short-term impact of technologies whilst underestimating their long-term impact
• Underlying audience needs remain unchanged (information, entertainment and communication)
• Media companies need to focus on the impact of technologies on user behaviours rather than getting hung up on the potential of technologies
• 'Old media' has lost its stranglehold on distribution. In response, media companies need to work out what they do best/uniquely and focus on that, then form partnerships (with both amateurs and professionals) to do the other stuff
  
• Communities are not the same as audiences and require engagement not just eyeballs
• Editorship is important in the changing media space. Journalists will always be needed but the ones who will survive/thrive are those who actively listen to/engage with communities
• Young people don't care about brands/only care about brands (no consensus on this one)
• The industry's current approach to user-generated content and rights is to take down content if someone asks you to
• On-demand consumption of broadcast content won't overtake live consumption anytime soon, although on-demand listening/viewing will increase and live audiences will continue to decline
• Revenue models are still uncertain in the changing media space. What mix of ad-funded, subscription and free content will work best?

The 10 key stats

People invariably bandy stats around at conferences. Below are ten which caught my attention (with attribution).

• The Guardian's podcasts are generating 1 million downloads a month (Emily Bell)
• Reuters employs 2,400 journalists and has an estimated audience of 1 billion people each day (Geert Linnebank)
• Second Life has almost 5 million 'residents' (Justin Bovington)
• 25,000 businesses are trading within Second Life (Justin Bovington)
• The average age of Second Lifers is 33 (Justin Bovington)
• Habbo Hotel has 74 million player characters and 7 million unique users a month (Timo Soininen)
• 1 in 5 people surfing the Internet are listening to radio at the same time (James Cridland)
• 47% of mobiles sold in the UK in the last year have had an FM chip in them (Natalie Schwarz)
• Feedburner serves 21 million feeds to 14 million unique users each day (Steve Olechowski)
• Last.fm has 15 million unique users a month (Felix Miller)

The 10 key buzzwords

• engagement
• distribution
• content
  
• brand
• on-demand
  
• community
  
• blogging
• syndication
• "dead tree version" (i.e. printed)
• multi-platform
  

The 10 key namechecks

• Second Life
• The Guardian
  
• Twitter
• Google
• YouTube
• BBC
• Channel 4
• Sky
• Reuters
• BT
  

The long tail of social networking

In case you hadn't noticed, social networking's gone got niche. Whereas the first wave of social networking sites (e.g. Classmates, SixDegrees, MySpace, Friendster, Linkedin) were relatively broad churches, with demographic emphasis the main differentiator, some of the latest kids on the social networking block are more niche than a Wim Wenders movie.

The unspoken rule of the first generation of social networking sites was to keep the focus general enough to facilitate a rapid growth in membership. However, the inclusive social networking model has become increasingly less viable for start-ups as the marketplace has become more crowded and dominated by a handful of big hitters (e.g. MySpace, orkut, Xanga, Facebook, Bebo).

This has paved the way for a new wave of social networking sites focused on niche areas of interest or identity. Don't believe me? Check out the hastily cobbled together A-Z list below which runs the gamut from Activism to Wine via Training shoes (strictly speaking it's an A-W, as I haven't yet found a social network dedicated to xylophones, the Yakuza or Zoroastrianism).

The narrow focus of a site like SneakerPlay may put a comparatively low ceiling on its potential membership, but it also increases its attractiveness both to users with that particular interest and to advertisers who are keen to hit their target demographic with greater precision (Nike currently has a banner ad for its AF1 Playoffs running on every page on SneakerPlay).

The recently relaunched Ning is the logical next step in the specialisation of social networking, as it enables you to create your own social network. With over 30,000 Ning networks already created, this opens up the possibility of a significant long tail of social networking although many of the networks are either still being set up or only have one member (the founder).

Whilst I suspect the current long tail of social networks doesn't begin the stack up against MySpace's 150 million odd user accounts, I doubt that will still be true in a year or two as niche social networking matures and more generic social networks start to see a decline in traffic.

A-Z of niche social networks

Activism: Care2, TakingITGlobal
Art & Design: Amateur Illustrator, Stuart, Teapotters
Auctions: biddingBuddies
Books: LibraryThing, Shelfari, Tagabook
Cars: CarDomain, CarSpace, Carster, Motortopia
Clubbing: AfterTheClub, DontStayIn
Comics: ComicSpace, Hypercomics
Cooking: BakeSpace, Group Recipes, Open Source Food
Cycling: BikeSpace.net, velospace
DIY: Curbly
Ethnicity: BlackPlanet, Koolanoo, Quespasa, WorldLounge
Fashion: ShareYourLook, Shoutfit, Trendmill
Fitness: ontri, PlayLocal, Traineo, We Endure
Film: Flixster, Yamji
Football: Joga
Gambling: Gaambol, Gottabet
Health: DailyStrength, OrganizedWisdom, RealMentalHealth
Hunting: TheHuntZone.com
Intelligence: intellectConnect
Motherhood: ConnectingMoms, MommyBuzz, MothersClick
Music: Hip-Hop.net, Linked Musicians, MakeOutClub, MusicHawk
Neighbourhood: ((echo))MyPlace, My Neighbourhoods
Outdoor activities: MyOutdoors.net, Outdoorzy.com, thoos
Parenting: GotKidsNetwork, Minti
Pets: Animal Buds, Catster, Dogster, Fuzzster, HAMSTERster, Petster
Photography: The Black Stripe
Politics: essembly, HOTSOUP.com, My.BarackObama.com
Religion: MuslimSpace, MyChurch, OakTreeIdea, ShoutLife, Xianz
Rugby: RuggerSpace.com
Smoking: Smoking Passions
Sports: FanPage, FanNation, FanSpot, Takkle, SportsMates, Ultrafan
Trainers: CriticalSole, Sneakerplay
Travel: TravBuddy, Travellerspoint, TripConnect, TripUp, WAYN
Video games: Gamervision, The Great Games Experiment
Wine: Bottletalk, Cork'd, Vinorati

How many posts is too many?

You can't have too much of a good thing, right? Not so, suggests a recent poll on why readers unsubscribe from blogs. The (admittedly unscientific) survey on ProBlogger found that "too many posts" was the most common reason for readers unsubscribing from a blog's RSS feed, way ahead of "infrequent posting" and "uninteresting content".

Whilst the methodology and sample size (109) can hardly be described as robust, the sentiment struck a chord with me. It also bought to mind a recent Read/WriteWeb post on The Attention Economy, which argues that the information explosion precipitated by the Internet is causing a scarcity of attention. We no longer read, we skim. And we vote with our feet.

This chimes with my recent experience of trying to keep on top of 40 odd feeds via Bloglines, some of which are populated with new posts upwards of 40 times a day. Catching up with all my blog reading only to return a few hours later to find dozens of unread posts elicits a bailing-out-a-sinking-ship feeling in me, which is why I too have started voting with my feet. Is Ubergizmo a half-decent gadget blog? Yes. Are the posts generally interesting? Yes. Do I have the time/inclination to read 40 Ubergizmo posts a day? No. Have I unsubscribed as a result? Yes.

"But you don't have to read them all!" I hear you cry. Well, that's true but I don't want to have to scroll through all those posts to see if there are any that really float my boat. Not when I can subscribe to Gizmodo UK which publishes a far more manageable number of posts per day.

Of course, one man's over-posting is another man's under-posting and there's clearly no optimal posting frequency (there are no doubt some readers eagerly refreshing their browsers every other minute in anticipation of the next Ubergizmo missive).

Maybe the problem isn't that there are too many posts, but that I need a more effective filter. Perhaps it's outmoded of me to attempt to source my reading solely by author/publisher. Which is presumably where Spotplex is hoping to come in. The recently launched Digg-alike differs from the daddy of all popularity sites by tracking user click-throughs (rather than votes) to determine which posts should make the front page.

Whilst it's nice to have an alternative barometer of the blogosphere, Spotplex doesn't (yet) take account of my personal tastes or those of my friends (which Bloglines kind of does do, albeit in a dumb way). I'm thinking maybe I need some sort of mash-up of the two which indexes my favourite blogs, but prioritises the most popular posts, as well as filtering the wider blogosphere against my profile for posts which may be of interest to me.

On the basis that pretty much anything I think of in Web 2.0 space of late seems to have already been realised somewhere, I'll wait for someone to point me in the direction of a Spotplex/Bloglines hybrid. Until then, I'm off to cull some prolific posters from my blogroll...

Directory of online profile aggregators

Following on from my previous post on Ziki and Frank Gruber's (presumably tongue-in-cheek) suggestion of an 'aggregator of aggregators' in his excellent round-up of web profile aggregators, below is a quick A to Z list of sites which enable you to aggregate your digital life. Feel free to point out any I've missed and I'll try and keep the list up-to-date.

claimID
Explode
FindMeOn
Iceflake
Lijit
Metathings
Mugshot
Naymz
onXiam
Opinity
Ozmozr
Profilactic
ProfileFly
ProfileLinker
Snag
SocialNetwork.in
SocialURL
Spokeo
Suprglu
The Internet Address Book
TheyMatter
ufeed
Wink
Ziki

I say roll on OpenID...

Ziki: social networking lite

Interesting promotional model from new(ish) social networking site Ziki, which is offering the first 10,000 people who sign up (they've had 7,960 so far) $10 of free sponsorship on Google, Yahoo and MSN so when someone searches for your name, a link to your Ziki profile is displayed in the paid-for results. In addition to basic personal info (age, location etc.) and a photo, you can also state your reasons for having a Ziki profile from a set list (e.g. networking, job opportunities, friendship, dating) and input tags/keywords which describe your areas of knowledge/interest (which then operate as a navigational tool to find like-minded people). Once you've verified your registration you can also start adding links and feeds to reflect your wider web presence.

It's an interesting example of 'lite' social networking, where your profile is more of an aggregation page (à la claimID , Profilactic and Suprglu) than a MySpace-style content repository. As a result it's more likely to appeal to older, more web-savvy users than your average social networking site.

The free search engines links (presumably a precursor to a paid-for service) provide a nice incentive to sign up and will particularly appeal to those with common names (Google returns 180,000 matches for "Dan Taylor"), although may be of less value to high profile bloggers and the geek elite whose names already appear top of most web searches.

My media consumption diet

With nods to Jeremiah Owyang for kick starting this meme and James Cridland for alerting me to it via his blog, below is a rough approximation of my media consumption diet.



(chart created using Zoho Sheet)

Web

The web is undoubtedly my main media channel (maybe because it encompasses all of the below in one?). Excluding work access, I reckon I stack up around 18 hours of web access a week, which probably breaks down something like this: reading blogs/news feeds (5 hours), trying out new sites (4 hours), writing this blog (4 hours), emailing (2 hours), searching for information (1 hour), Flickring (30 mins), buying stuff (30 mins), selling stuff (30 mins), website design/maintenance (30 mins).

Estimated time spent per week: 18 hours

Music

Having parted company with the bulk of my CD collection last year, the vast majority of my music listening (excluding radio) is now done either via iTunes or on my iPod. According to last.fm I've listened to 11,355 tracks since registering at the end of February 2005, which works out just over 100 tracks a week. Assuming a average track duration of 3 minutes, I'm averaging around five and a half hours of music listening a week. Factoring in the listening which last.fm fails to capture I reckon the actual figure is nearer 7 hours a week.

Estimated time spent per week: 7 hours

TV

As previously posted, I don't watch a great deal of live TV, with DVD boxsets and downloads accounting for the vast majority of my TV viewing. It also fair to say that I have something of a penchant for US drama. In the past 12 months I've plowed through assorted seasons of Lost, House, Desperate Housewives, 24, The O.C., The Sopranos, The West Wing, Six Feet Under and Entourage. For my money, the standout UK series of last year was Planet Earth which just blew me away.

Estimated time spent per week: 7 hours

Radio

It's a dilemma whether to count ambient radio listening as, like Mr. Cridland, I work in an office where the radio is always on. In terms of active radio listening then its Jonathan Ross on Radio 2 on a Saturday morning, Stephen Merchant on 6 Music (via the BBC Radio Player as I'm not normally near a radio on a Sunday afternoon) and snatches of the Today programme as I get ready for work. Excluding ambient listening I reckon it's around 5 hours a week; including, it's probably more like 35.

Estimated time spent per week: 5 hours

Books

I have something of a famine or feast mentality when it comes to books, depending on whether I'm on holiday or not. I read 18 books last year but almost none of them whilst in this country. Last year's reading list was predominantly a mix of contemporary fiction (Rupert Thomson, David Mitchell, Jonathan Safran Foer, Patrick Neate) and media geek must-reads (The Long Tail, The Tipping Point, Freakonomics, Everything Bad is Good for You). Assuming an average reading time of 6 hours per book, I spent 108 hours reading last year which works out at just over 2 hours per week.

Estimated time spent per week: 2 hours

Newspapers

I buy The Guardian on Mondays (for the Media supplement), Thursdays (for the Technology supplement) and Saturdays (for the magazine and The Guide). I occasionally get caught without something to read on the tube and pick up one of the London freesheets but invariably feel dirty afterwards.

Estimated time spent per week: 2 hours

Films

Films are an enduring passion of mine although I try to only see films I think will be worth the investment (which I guess is why 30 of the 40 films I saw last year appeared in my films of 2006 list). Of that 40, I watched 23 at the cinema and 17 on DVD. Assuming an average running time of 2 hours (the days of the 90 minute movie are all but gone), I spent 80 hours watching films last year which works out at one and a half hours per week.

Estimated time spent per week: 1 hour 30 mins

Magazines

My long-standing subscriptions to Q, Sight & Sound and PC Format all fell by the wayside some time ago and the only magazines I still subscribe to at home are Empire (still the bible for movie lovers) and Web User (can't be wrong for £1.99). I also tend to leaf through the office copies of Stuff, T3, .net and Wired, although less so now that Engadget is taking care of my gadget obsession in a more timely fashion.

Estimated time spent per week: 45 mins

Podcasts

Despite the dozens of podcast subscriptions currently eating up my hard disk/bandwidth, there's actually only one podcast which I listen to religiously and that's Mark Kermode's Film Reviews. Clipped from Friday's edition of the Simon Mayo show on BBC Radio Five Live, it's half an hour of pure radio gold. More occasional listens include the Best of Moyles enhanced and Media Talk from Guardian Unlimited.

Estimated time spent per week: 30 mins

Video games

Until the arrival of my Wii on Tuesday I would've put a big fat zero down for video games, but having had a quick go on the game-changing Wii Sports (and with WarioWare Smooth Moves and Zelda: Twilight Princess waiting to be unwrapped) I think I may have to revise that figure. Let's start with a conservative estimate of 20 minutes.

Estimated time spent per week: 20 mins

Conclusions

- I spend 44 hours a week (39% of my waking hours) consuming some sort of media (although some of those hours are concurrent)
- My media consumption habits aren't very typical

Online video reaches TV via Wii

Getting online video content off the small screens in people's bedrooms and studies and onto the big screens in their lounges is a nut that a whole bunch of big media companies have been spending a lot of time and money trying to crack.

Microsoft was one of the first out of the blocks with Windows XP Media Center, launched way back in October 2004. More than two years on and Bill Gates' dream of a Media Center PC under every TV is still just that, a dream. Put simply, not enough people were willing to shell out for a dedicated media hub to sit in their front room. Whilst the integration of Windows Media Center into Vista (Premium and Ultimate editions) will massively increase the number of Media Center PCs in the market, most of them will be sat on a desk rather than beneath a TV screen.

Apple took a different approach, bundling Front Row with all Macs from October 2005 onwards but waiting until January 2007 to finally bridge the PC/TV gap by launching a set top box (cunningly named Apple TV) capable of wirelessly streaming video (and audio) from your computer to your television. The obvious shortcoming of Apple TV (apart from the fact that it's still not shipping) is that it only works with iTunes.

So, if Windows Media Center and Apple TV aren't yet delivering online video to people's television sets in serious numbers, what is? The answer is the latest generation of game consoles, which are increasingly looking like the trojan horse of the digital home, delivering so much more than small Italian plumbers and hyperactive blue hedgehogs.

One such trojan horse is Nintendo's Wii, which, having sold 4.5 million units in its first three months of launch, is now the fastest-selling console in history. The launch of a (free) Wii-specific beta version of the Opera web browser (a.k.a. Internet Channel) last December turned those 4.5 million Wii's into potential conduits for online video. Whilst the browser can successfully render most webpages, it wasn't long before sites specially designed for the Wii began appearing. Below is a quick compendium of some of the best Wii-specific sites for accessing online video and music.

What's noticeable about these sites is how well designed many of the interfaces are. The limitations of the Wii controller and the likely distance of the user from the screen have forced the designers to come up with bold, simple interfaces which in many cases outshine their web-based cousins (compare the FineTune Wii Player with the regular FineTune site).

Wii video sites

MiiTube
http://www.miitube.co.uk



As the name suggests, MiiTube is specially designed for watching YouTube videos on your Wii. The homepage pulls in YouTube's 'featured videos' and there are separate pages for 'recently added', 'top favourites' and a selection of 'most viewed' charts (i.e. daily, weekly, all time) plus a 'viral chart'. For a site whose USP is accessibility on the Wii, some of the text could do with being a bit larger and there's no option to increase the video size (which you can do on the regular YouTube site).

Rating:

WiiToob
http://wiitoob.com/



Another Wii-friendly window on YouTube, with an infinitely swisher interface, WiiToob's homepage is dominated by a dynamically updating list of recently viewed videos, an alarming proportion of which are not suitable for the office. You're better off heading straight to the 'most viewed' or 'most discussed' lists. Giant font sizes and a visual style which successfully apes Nintendo make WiiToob a joy to navigate.

Rating:

SofaTube
http://www.redkawa.com/sofatube/



RedKawa certainly thought outside the box when developing the interface for SofaTube, using search rather than lists as the main mechanism for finding videos and deciding to present the featured videos as a jumble of Polaroid-style tiles which can be dragged, dropped and bought to the front. It's a neat idea which almost works but ultimately feels a bit gimmicky.

SofaTube's key differentiator from MiiTube and WiiToob is that it indexes videos from Revver as well as YouTube (although you can't search the two together and I wasn't actually able to get the Revver videos to play). Another niggle is that the search results don't fit on the screen (horizontally or vertically) which feels frustrating when the site has just accurately detected what browser I'm using.

An innovative approach let down by poor implementation.

Rating:

Wii music sites

FineTune Wii Player
http://www.finetune.com/wii



The FineTune Wii Player is a big-button version of the Pandora-esque online music service, FineTune (reviewed on this blog a few weeks back), offering streamed playlists/radio stations themed around artist or tag. It boasts a gorgeous interface and enables you to log on to your online profile to access your saved playlists, artists and tags.

Rating:

WiiHear
http://www.wiihear.com



Besides a pun-tastic name, WiiHear offers genre-based streaming radio stations (85 stations across 15 different genres at the time of writing) and supports the three 'R's of Web 2.0 sites (reviews, ratings and recommendations). The interface isn't a polished as FineTune's with too much small text, although there are a few nice touches, such as the 'past tracks played' lists which accompany every station.

Rating:

The number of Wii-specific video and music sites is sure to mushroom over the coming weeks and months (keep an eye on Wiidesigned.com) and will no doubt soon be joined by an array of sites tailored specially for Sony's PS3 (which launches in the UK on March 23rd and features a built-in browser). Opera has also indicated that Wii web widgets are on the cards, which could be very interesting.

As suggested in my earlier post on key technology trends for 2007, the converged digital media hub is arriving by stealth. The next trojan horse looks likely to be the set-top box, which are getting smarter and more connected by the day.

Tree-Nation

It's not every day you buy a tree in the middle of the Sahara desert, but that's just what I've done today over at Tree-Nation, a new ecological project which aims to plant 8 million trees in Niger (the poorest country in the world according to the Human Development Index) to combat desertification and land degradation.

Endorsed by the UN's Billion Tree Campaign, the site is very much a Web 2.0 affair, with an isometric cartoon map you can drag around (à la Google Maps) to find a vacant plot for your sapling and all the usual UGC elements (contacts, groups, photos, comments). Prices start at €10 for your bog-standard Acacia Senegal rising to €75 for a Baobab (seemingly the daddy of the indigenous tree population).

Once you've purchased a tree (which you can gift to someone else), a virtual tree appears on the map with its own unique URL (mine's here). With GPS coordinates (not yet added), your virtual tree will correspond to a real-world tree planted in the eco-park in Niger, whose progress you will be able to track online. You can even have photos of your tree sent to you should you so desire. Alternatively, you could wait till the trees (planted in the shape of heart) start showing up on Google Earth.

The interface isn't the smoothest and there have been some grumblings in the comments section of a recent TechCrunch post over Tree-Nation's for-profit status. Personally, I think we should be encouraging business models which benefit the environment and stop demanding that all ethical companies have to be non-profit.

Launched last October, only 387 Tree-Nation trees have been planted at the time of writing so they've still got some way to go. Why not head over there now and bagsy a bush. It's cheaper (not to mention a whole lot more worthwhile) than a Moon Estate.

Flixster vs. IMDb

Much as I love The Internet Movie Database, it's fair to say that it hasn't changed that much in recent years, either in appearance or functionality. Don't believe me? Check out the site as it was back in October 2000 (courtesy of the Internet Archive Wayback Machine) and then play spot the difference with the current site.

Whilst there's certainly something to be said for the 'if it ain't broke' approach, the IMDb's reluctance to mess with a winning formula has created space for a new kind of online movie database to take things in a different direction.

Launched in January 2006, but largely kept under the promotional radar until last November whilst the site was developed, Flixster is hoping to be that new direction. Unable to compete with the IMDb in terms of comprehensiveness, it's key differentiator is that it places its users (rather than the movies) centre-stage.

Whilst music-lovers have been spoilt for choice with regards to social networking sites, film buffs have been somewhat under-served in the Web 2.0 department. It's not that the IMDb is without any interactive features (it has ratings, personalised showtimes, message boards, polls), they're just not very well executed or integrated with the rest of the site. Not so Flixster, which has taken every opportunity to weave its users into the fabric of the site.

Below is a look at some key areas of functionality and how the two sites compare.

Ratings

Ratings are at the heart of the Flixster offering. In addition to rating movies you've seen (a feature which the IMDb also offers), Flixster encourages you to flag films you've not yet watched with either 'Want to see it' or 'Not interested', not only allowing the site to build up a more detailed picture of your viewing preferences but also generating a list of films you're keen to see, both at the cinema and on DVD. Whilst it is possible to create similar lists using the IMDb's cumbersome 'My Movies' area, it's a laborious process compared with Flixster's one-click approach.

Another nice feature from Flixster in the ratings area is the ability to see how your community of friends rated a particular movie. You can also see the gender split on any given title (the IMDb does have demographic breakdowns of its ratings but they're tucked away on a separate page).

Recommendations

Both sites offer Amazon-style 'Like This? Try This' recommendations. The difference is that Flixster's recommendations can be voted on by other users (thumbs up or thumbs down), whereas IMDb users only have the option of disagreeing with a recommendation (i.e. they can't endorse an existing suggestion). Recommendations are, by their nature, subjective but I have to say I was more convinced by Flixster's suggested alternatives to Magnolia (Boogie Nights, Short Cuts and 21 Grams) than by the IMDb's (The Living and the Dead, Blue Velvet and The Devil's Advocate).

Flixster also enables you to recommend a title to specific friends in your network or you can make use of its simple (but awesome) 'Movie Night Planning Tool' which compares the films you want to see with those your friends have earmarked, to come up with a list of mutually agreeable titles from which to plan your evening's viewing.

News

The IMDb's News area features syndicated celebrity news from the World Entertainment News Network and movie news from Studio Briefing. Flixster adopts more of a digg approach, allowing users to submit and rate news stories from anywhere on the web. The quality may be variable but it feels a whole lot more dynamic.

Interface

Whilst Flixster is unlikely to win any design awards anytime soon, its interface is a damn sight more visually appealing than the IMDb which is in desperate need of a lick of paint. An intriguing design element of Flixster is user-submitted 'skins' themed around particular movies or actors, which can be applied to your own profile. Admittedly some of them look like bad MySpace pages but you can always switch them off.

There's a lot of talk about machine-readable URLs these days. Well, Flixster gets bonus points for having human-readable URLs. Unlike the IMDb, which assigns each entry a number, Flixster uses the actual name of the film in the URL (appending year of release where there's more than one title) making it easy to find pages without having to use the site's search engine.

Information

The one area in which the IMDb comfortably walks it is quality and quantity of information. Having existed in some form since 1989, the IMDb is unrivalled as a source of movie data and it's unlikely that Flixster will ever catch up in this area (not least because it isn't currently capturing cast and crew information beyond the names of the director and lead actors). Whilst I can understand why Flixster has opted not to go head-to-head with the IMDb in this area, it does put a ceiling on potential converts, with serious movie buffs unlikely to put up with Flixster's more superficial treatment of production information.

Discussion

The IMDb's primary discussion forum is its message boards, although it also allows users to submit comments (which tend to be more like reviews). Flixster doesn't have a message board but does offer separate reviews and comments sections. In terms of quality of debate, the IMDb currently has the edge, with Flixster's demographic skewing the conversation towards discussion of the attractiveness of the leads.

Associated media

Their approach to associated media is another point of difference between the two sites. Whilst the IMDb only hosts photo galleries for a selection of entries and links to external photos and A/V clips, Flixster invites users to upload images and videos for any entry in the database.

Summary

Whilst the IMDb is undoubtedly more comprehensive and authoritative, Flixster has taken advantage of starting with a blank piece of paper in a Web 2.0 world and has outflanked the IMDb on almost every aspect of interactivity. I will doubtless continue to use the IMDb as a reference but suspect I will be spending more of my time on Flixster.

It's a cautionary tale for other established Web 1.0 players tempted to rest on their laurels. There are no sacred cows in the online space and if another site is providing a better service then your users will defect. Flixster is still not in the same league as the IMDb in terms of usage, but it has seen rapid growth in the past 12 months whilst traffic to the IMDb has remained flat.



Right, I'm off to play The Never-Ending Movie Quiz...

UPDATE: Somewhat inevitably, the IMDb began rolling out a phased redesign (starting with the name and title pages) just two days after I posted this. In development for almost a year, the changes are mostly cosmetic at this stage although they've still managed to cause consternation amongst a section of IMDb die-hards. Kudos to Col Needham (founder and managing director of the IMDb) for his full and frank responses to the criticisms on the site's message board and for attempting to ease the transition by keeping the old design up for a while. It's a useful reminder of just how resistant to change an established user base can be.

New (to me) music apps - part two

Following on from last year's posts on next generation music discovery and new (to me) music apps below is a round-up of some other web-enabled music services which have caught my attention in recent months, which broadly divide into six categories: Playback & Promotion, Playlists & Personalised Radio, Plug-ins, Portability, Performance and Search (damn, I was going for all Ps there...)

Playback & Promotion

radio.blog.club
http://www.radioblogclub.com



radio.blog.club aims to make it easy for Joe/Josephine Public to add commercial music to his/her site/blog/MySpace page either via an embeddable Flash player (which can stream individual tracks - see below example) or by linking to a playlist (known as a juke.blog). It works by playing out mp3 files (cunningly renamed .rbs to flummox the would-be pirates) made available by other users, which inevitably results in a fairly haphazard catalogue with some very messy metadata. On the plus side, no registration is required to embed single tracks and the playback experience is pretty smooth (check out the crossfade!) It's owned by French company Mubility which explains not only why it hasn't been taken down for breach of copyright yet but also why you are invited to update "your informations". The radio.blog.club backend has been given an iPod front-end at blogmusik.net.



Rating:

Alternatives: Sonific, SeeqPod

iJigg
http://www.ijigg.com



iJigg allows users to upload their own MP3s (music or spoken word) which subsequently appear on the site in an Odeo-style embeddable player. They are then rated (jigged) by the community (à la digg) with the idea that the best bubble up to the Most Popular page. Launched on the 15th January it's still early days for the site which, whilst refreshingly easy to use, is struggling to find content which isn't either copyright or crap. Still, it's a potential boon to unsigned artists looking for a straightforward way to upload and promote their music and it gets bonus marks for not requiring a desktop download.

Rating:

Alternatives: CC Hits, Project Opus, Jamendo

Streampad
http://www.streampad.com



Streampad is an awesome browser-based music player which combines remote access to your entire digital music library (via a downloadable Java app) with some great tools to find music on the web, including an archive of live concert performances and a web search which provides one-click access to MP3s scraped from blogs. It also offers integration with MP3tunes.com (who host online 'lockers' to store your music remotely) and last.fm (so your listening stats are safely scrobbled). Factor in 'Now Playing' info which not only pulls in album reviews, Flickr photos and related blog posts but also shows you who else is listening to the same track and you've got one kick-ass music player.

Rating:

Alternatives: Songbird

Playlists & Personalised Radio

finetune
http://www.finetune.com



finetune's core offering is a playlist creator and artist-themed radio stations. Unfortunately, a really rather slick interface (including an embedded player with CoverFlow-style visuals) is let down by the limitations imposed by finetune's rights agreements - namely that each playlist has to comprise exactly 45 songs with no more than 3 tracks from any one artist. Whilst there's an option to auto-complete your playlist using recommendations provided by finetune (the audaciously titled "I'm lazy!" button), the suggestions seem very linear (mostly other tracks from the same artists) and it doesn't offset the sense of frustration at having to create a playlist of a set number of tracks. It just all feels a bit laborious for those used to last.fm logging their listening and creating lists automatically. The artist-themed radio station element also suffer in comparison to a major competitor; Pandora enables you to give the thumbs up or thumbs down to specific tracks to educate it about your tastes which feels like a significant omission from finetune. It's a shame because it's a nice site nobbled more by rights than technology or design. Close, but no cigar.

Rating:

Alternatives: FIQL, SonicSwap

Plug-ins

Twones
http://www.twones.com



Twones is an iTunes plug-in (Mac or PC) which uploads your Top 100 Most Played tracks and then matches your musical proclivities with other users in the Twones database. Whilst it feels a little basic in comparison with the likes of MyStrands, iLike and last.fm it has the advantage of giving you useful recommendations from the off (the others take a while to build a useful knowledge of your listening habits). Incidentally, Twones was developed in the Netherlands so don't be alarmed if you get the error message 'Gebruikersnaam en/of Wachtwoord is onjuist' - a quick Dutch to English translation on Babel Fish revealed I'd simply entered an incorrect username or password...

Rating:

Alternatives: uPlayMe, Muiso, Musicmobs

Portability

phling!
http://www.phling.com



phling! aims to give users access to their digital music collection (and that of their friends) on their mobile phones. There's a decent selection of supported handsets, including my now rather aged K750i, although the desktop client is only available for PC and only supports Windows Media Player friendly file formats (so no access to tracks purchased from the iTunes Music Store). The mobile phone client is a 289Kb Java app which downloaded in a jiffy and worked straight off the bat. The interface is nicely implemented with navigation through your music collection proving fast and intuitive. The sound quality is excellent with surprisingly little buffering and the ability to rate tracks is a nice feature. phling! also enables you to access photos stored on your computer and (handset permitting) save photos taken on your mobile direct to your home PC. My only reservation is data charges which I'm guessing could easily rack up if you used phling! as your main portable music player.

Rating:

Alternatives: Mercora M, Orb, Avvenu

partyStrands
http://www.partystrands.com



partyStrands is an intriguing offshoot of MyStrands (ne. MusicStrands) which aims to get partygoers using their mobiles to influence the music at participating bars /clubs. The idea is that the partyStrands interface is displayed on the venue's TVs and punters can vote on what music they want to hear and send pictures and text messages to the screens. The messages and details of the tracks played are then aggregated and uploaded to the partyStrands site so you can log on the following morning and relive the night. It's only rolled out in France, Spain and the States at the moment and there are just three events listed on the Upcoming Parties page. Definitely one to watch though.

Rating:

Alternatives: Er, can't think of any.

Performance

eJamming
http://www.ejamming.com



eJamming is another service aiming to facilitate live music, this time by enabling musicians with MIDI-enabled instruments to jam online in real-time. I haven't had the opportunity to try it out yet but the demo video looks pretty damn impressive.

Rating:

Alternatives: NINJAM

SingShot
http://www.singshot.com



SingShot gives karaoke the Web 2.0 treatment, enabling the great unwashed to upload their warblings to be tagged, shared, rated and commented on. It's strangely compelling in a car-crash kind of a way and seems likely to succeed in these X Factor times of ours.

Rating:

Alternatives: kSolo, Internet Karaoke, bix, MyVideoKaraoke

Search

midomi
http://www.midomi.com



midomi's USP is enabling users to search for music using their voice (singing, humming or whistling) so the service pretty much stands or falls on how successfully it does that. Fortunately for parent company, Melodis, the answer is really quite well, especially when you consider that the service has only been up and running for a couple of weeks and its database of user-submitted tunes can't yet be that large. I sang it a quick ABC of karaoke staples and it successfully identified Angels, American Pie, Bohemian Rhapsody and Crazy (both the Patsy Cline classic and the Gnarls Barkley chart-topper). Assuming midomi's proprietary Multimodal Adaptive Recognition System (MARS) scales successfully, it's an interesting (and free) alternative to Shazam.

Rating:

Alternatives: Nayio, SongTapper, Musipedia

TuneFind
http://www.tunefind.com



TuneFind is all about exorcising the earworm and finding the name of the track from that TV show/movie you saw last week. The homepage features recent additions, hot songs and all-time popular artists (Snow Patrol are currently the most soundtrack-friendly band, with a whopping 38 entries). Song listings are submitted by users and then verified by the rest of the TuneFind community who can flag submissions as correct or incorrect. It's not exactly cutting edge but it's a useful resource and may stem the flow of 'what was that song...?' submissions to Yahoo! Answers.

Rating:

Alternatives: Commercial Breaks and Beats, Sounds Familiar, TV Ad music.co.uk