Tedx on Future of Journalism

TedxNWC

View more presentations from tedxnwc.

The media earthquake as desribed by Jeff Mignon ), presented at TEDxNWC on July 8, 2009 -

Future of Passport Book in Limbo

You knew that VHS tape was dead when Disney started giving away a free player with a set of videos. Confirmation that shortwave wireless is finished in the Western World comes when one of the two remaining shortwave annuals announces the 26th edition is uncertain.

In recent months other considerations have had an increased bearing on the future of Passport to World Band Radio®. So it is that the 26th Edition of Passport to World Band Radio® is being held in limbo.

Despite this, for now we are continuing to maintain the WorldScan® database and uphold all proprietary material. Among other things, this should help allow for an orderly return to production, under IBS' aegis or otherwise, should conditions allow.

Can't see an orderly return to production coming anytime soon, when this kind of production has shifted platforms ages ago, despite denials to the contrary. There may be some fans of the medium left in the Western World. The problem is that that doesn't include advertisers.

Bored or Board - Is the BBC World Service having fun yet?

So, is the BBC World Service Board having fun yet? Not by the body language radiating from this year's annual report. Most look extremely uncomfortable. Shame - some of these people are known to be passionate about their work but the photographer has totally failed to capture any of that in the BBC WS annual report. Looks more like a UK passport photo where you are not allowed to smile any more. Why so serious?

Mashup Tools Disappearing

Now its the turn of Microsoft to turn out the lights in a mashup tool.

More here

Augmented Reality App Launches Soon

One of the first augmented reality apps to go live in the iPhone AppStore soon, once it's approved by Apple. Forget boring 2D tube maps! The video shows you how your 3GS phone (and it has to be the Apple 3GS) can tell Londoners and New Yorkers where their nearest tube station is via their iPhones video function.

When you load the app, holding it flat, all 13 lines of the London underground are displayed in coloured arrows. By tilting the phone upwards, you will see the nearest stations: what direction they are in relation to your location, how many kilometres and miles away they are and what tube lines they are on. If you continue to tilt the phone upwards, you will see stations further away, as stacked icons. I could have used this in Moscow and Prague last month. Especially Moscow is a zoo when it comes to the Metro and you don't realise how far apart the metro stations are.

Iliad Fails, Cool-er Scores

My first generation Iliad reader has just failed completely. The screen seems to have packed up along with the battery which was going anyway. Am I going to replace it with a 2nd generation Iliad for a mere 599 Euros? Er, no. Never.

I bought one and tested it for a client, following how it was implemented by one of Holland's leading dailies, the NRC. But the device had very poor navigation and battery life and didn't do what it said on the box. If the battery failed you didn't get the last page held in memory - it just faded to a green screen. That combined with the ludicrous formating of the NRC (each article was a new page) and you couldn't cancel the paper edition. The start-up running it was slow to respond to complaints in the chat rooms, which means they didn't really care about their early adopters. Were they offered discounts when the new version came out? No. Loyalty meant nothing.

I cannot see a future for these guys in Eindhoven when there are devices like the Kindle and now Cool-er on the market. iliad is 2.6 times the price of the Cool-er and that means for me Iliad has entered a new phase. History.

At the same time we're seeing some strange going's on with Amazon's Kindle. They have deleted copies of books some have already bought. Ouch....very bad week for the e-book

The Day Today - still fresh

The Day Today was a surreal British parody of television news programmes. The series was six half-hour episodes and a selection of shorter, five-minute slots recorded as promotion trailers for the longer segments. Only six episodes were made, and were originally broadcast in January and February 1994 on BBC2. It got a bit stale towards the end - there is only so much you can do. But the problem is that it looks like many of the rolling news services that have since developed, like BBC News, CNBC and BBC World News on a slow news day.

TV Graphics Warning

Be careful if you do TV graphics yourself.

Interesting Diavlog

No that's not a spelling mistake. Great conversation about the challenge of cyberwarfare, or rather distributed denial of service attacks. I quite like the concept of bloggingheads.tv, though it would be better if you could browse by topics.

Vimeo Dumps the Originals

Don't get me wrong, I think Vimeo has ever right to clean-up huge files which are hardly used. I have a pro account on Vimeo and have been pleased with their upload speeds - better than Youtube.

From vimeo....

Starting August 1st, basic accounts' original source files will be stored for one week from the upload date, after which they will be removed. Of course the converted Vimeo video will always be there in the Vimeo player, ready to be watched again and again, anywhere you choose to embed or share it. We will also still provide a download link so people can save the converted file to their computer (in MP4 format).

This new one-week policy applies to all basic accounts' videos uploaded from this point onwards. For videos that were uploaded before this blog post, those original files will be available until August 1st, to give you some time to download them if you need to. After August 1st, those files will also be removed.

For Plus users nothing will change: we're going to continue hosting your original video source files for both your existing videos and any new videos you upload. We appreciate your support, and we want to continue improving the Plus service, not limit it. If you choose not to renew your Plus service, we'll keep your original videos for one month past the end of your subscription to give you time to download your videos or decide if you want to renew. Additionally, if a basic user upgrades to Plus within the one week window after they upload a video, that original file will be kept as long as they are a Plus member.

Michael Jackson replaces Stalin in Prague

There used to be a statue of Stalin in the communist period. Joe beamed across the river from a hillside park on the North shore across the bridge and into the historic centre of Prague. The statue was removed and replaced with a sort of metronome. I climbed the 254 stairs to the top to find a skateboard park and what appears to be a sort of shrine to the late Michael Jackson. An English language broadcast by Radio Prague in May 2005 gives the background to the Stalin Statue and its rather macabre connection with death.

Tourists come here today, not only for the breathtaking view but to see the large ticking metronome, which was erected here in 1991. But for the local residents this spot holds a darker memory - little do the tourists around here know that exactly fifty years ago, at this very site, some six hundred men and women were working around the clock to create the world's biggest monument ever to honour the Soviet Communist party chief Josef Stalin.

The 50-metre high massive statue of the finest marble was proudly unveiled by Czechoslovakia's Communist regime on May 1, 1955. For seven years the residents of Prague had the Soviet leader follow their every move from the hill above. The 17,000 tonne statue - Stalin's jacket button alone, decorated with a hammer and sickle, of course, was half a metre wide - featured the Soviet leader in front of a line of workers - jokingly called the "Fronta na maso" or "meat queue" by Prague residents, as this was a time when they were a daily part of life in the city.

There are some dark legends associated with the statue. Its creator, Otakar Svec committed suicide a day before the unveiling. The man who posed for him as Stalin - an electrician from the Barrandov film studios, failed to shake off his nickname "Stalin", took to drink, and died three years later. And, the vast statue's glory days were short-lived. Stalin's reign was denounced by the new Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, and the statue was destroyed just seven years later, on Moscow's orders in 1962.

Too heavy to be displaced, it was blown to pieces with 800 kg of explosives and 1,650 detonators. Some witnesses claim the party chief was decapitated immediately after the first explosion, his head rolling into the river waters below. Before the remnants of the monument were stored, they were loaded on a truck and paraded in front of cheering crowds that gathered to celebrate the event in the streets of Prague's Old Town. Was it just a coincidence or a bad omen that less than a year later, the driver of the truck died in an accident?

Michael Jackson replaces Stalin
Originally uploaded by Jonathan Marks

iCav

iCav
Originally uploaded by Matthew Sylvester

BBC English Regions has been using an Internet Content aquisition vehicle. Its has been on trial on BBC Lincolnshire. Its basically an office with editing facilities on board that can be operated by a single journalist.

Future for Radio's Terrible Dial

Playing with this iPod Touch application at the moment.

Cookies Ice Cream

Cookies Ice Cream
Originally uploaded by Jonathan Marks

This Italian Ice Cream looks a bit strange at a Moscow shopping centre near the Kremlin

Kremlin Chimes from Saviour (Spasskaya ) Tower (Frolovskaya).

Kremlin Chimes from Saviour (Spasskaya ) Tower (Frolovskaya).
Originally uploaded by Jonathan Marks

I have listened to these bells for years in the days of Radio Moscow World Service. But I didn't realise until now that the chimes have always been built by Dutchmen.

On April, 16, 1658, according to the decree of Tsar Alexey Mikhailovich, the tower was renamed Spasskaya after the Vernicle Icon placed over the gate facing Red Square. The icon itself has not survived. Russian architect Bazhen Ogurtsov (Cucumber) and English clockmaster Christopher Galloway supervised the construction of the marquee.

The first clock on the Spasskaya Tower was installed by Galloway's team. In 1707, a Dutch musical carillion chime was sent to Moscow on the order of Tsar Peter the Great. That lasted a century. Ivan Butenop and his brother Nicholas, Moscow mer­chants of Dutch origin, founded in Moscow in 1830 a mech­anical workshop manufacturing farm machinery, fire-fight­ing hoses and tower clocks. From 1851 to 1852 the Butenop Brothers fully reconstructed the Kremlin chimes inside the Tower of the Savior in Moscow. For the following 15 years the Butenop Brothers mechanical es­tablishment took care of the proper operation of the mechan­ism of the chimes and the firm's craftsman wound them.

More Students Celebrating

More Students Celebrating
Originally uploaded by Jonathan Marks

Students celebrate the end of the school year in a big way in Denmark. Like hiring a cattle truck to drive through town singing and drinking. Occasionally some fall off.

Leo Laporte in Moscow, Russia

Leo Laporte in Moscow, Russia
Originally uploaded by Jonathan Marks

Not quite, but it did look like the chief TWIT there for a second on a sign very near the Kremlin. Compare this with www.premiereradio.com/.../621_show_portrait.jpg Snapped this on a very wet Sunday in Moscow.

KGB HQ Moscow

KGB HQ Moscow
Originally uploaded by Jonathan Marks

Or so we are led to believe. Love the car which I managed to capture by accident.

Check for Penguins in Copenhagen

Check for Penguins in Copenhagen
Originally uploaded by Jonathan Marks

Great exhibition of wierd signs in Copenhagen city centre. Organised by contributing editor to Lonely Planet. These are real, no photoshopping. It was cleverly organised so that toursist were allowed to take photos of the signs - and many also bought the book with plenty more inside. Organised by Kilroytravels.com in Copenhagen.

Nearly abandoned Revox

Nearly abandoned Revox
Originally uploaded by Jonathan Marks

An old Studer Revox is tucked under a desk at DR just incase they need to load an old audio tape into their Dalet editing system. Which isn't that often.

Bill Belly in action

Bill Belly in action
Originally uploaded by Jonathan Marks

These are solar powered garbage containers that use sunlight to compress the trash, and therefore need emptying far less frequently. They reckon an average trash bin costs 30,000 Euro to service during its lifetime.

The Bridge at DR, Byen

The Bridge at DR, Byen
Originally uploaded by Jonathan Marks

Inspiring use of daylight in the design of the new broadcast complex at Danish public broadcasting. Seems that the odd pane of glass fell out in the early stages, but that's been fixed now.

Radio Tivoli by the toilets

Radio Tivoli by the toilets
Originally uploaded by Jonathan Marks

Outside the main toilets at Tivoli amusement park in central Copenhagen. I note this radio is analogue not digital! Will it be converted before digital switch-off in 2015?

Broadband Bus

Broadband Bus
Originally uploaded by Jonathan Marks

One day we will laugh at these prices. They're in Danish Kroner by the way. Check your currency on www.xe.com

Danish Public Broadcasting's new Concert Hall

Danish Public Broadcasting's new Concert Hall
Originally uploaded by Jonathan Marks

It's finished. Too bad I couldn't see inside on this trip. Apparently still some acoustic teething troubles and bits of the organ were put in the wrong way round. But, when all is said and done, they have built one of the most amazing concert halls in the world. I also love the way they use daylight in the adjoining broadcast complex.

Light in Copenhagen

Light in Copenhagen
Originally uploaded by Jonathan Marks

There's a great exhibition on city lighting at the Danish Design Centre opposite Tivoli at the moment. Includes some interesting thoughts by light designers about why they don't illuminate buildings the way they do in Amsterdam or Paris. Didn't realise that both the Netherlands and Belgium are one of the worst light polluters in the world. Belgium has lit every inch of motorway and the Dutch have all these greenhouses. If the light is leaking upwards then it is not being used efficiently.

Signposts to Editorial Guidlines

In the past, the BBC has made copies of its Editorial Guidelines for Journalists available during training sessions in other countries. Now that they've set up a journalism training school, they have opened up their training to different sectors too with projects like the 21st Century Classroom.

The news agency Reuters has also been training journalists from the press in developing countries though its non-profit arm. They have now released their guide to good journalistic practice here in the spirit of improving standards. It's definitely food for thought. I think many broadcasters would do well by leafing through, especially the section on standards and values. They are too often "void when inconvenient".

Walk Backwards for Michael

I like this idea from Belgian radio station Studio Brussel. It is an eternal moonwalk involving listeners...Just for fun. Nice tribute....

Emerging from Research Project

Boy....June turned a bit into a blur with travels to St Petersburg, Moscow, Copenhagen and Prague. Variable connectivity has meant I have put the blog on hold until I get back to the Netherlands. But I am snapping photos and shooting video like crazy. Will be writing more in July when I am back.

CNN, Twitter & Iran

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Irandecision 2009 - CNN's Unverified Material
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Joke of the Day

Scathing attacks on CNN's Unverified coverage of Iranian riots following the elections. I just changed my photo to green and my location to Tehran...does that make me a reporter on the ground. I get the impression BBC Persian service is doing a much better job, but I am also surprised that BBC World News is not making much use of those fantastic Google-earth type maps that I know they have. You want the overview? Then you need something better than broadcast media.

Dinner Tonight

 

On a train between St Petersburg and Moscow. Just picked up the all inclusive menu.....

VC Non Admissions

reminds me of despair.com

VC Non Admissions

View more Microsoft Word documents from vcobserver.

Salim on A24 platform

I met Salim a few years back at Newsxchange in Amsterdam. He was trying to start a pan-African TV channel from his base in Nairobi, Kenya.

Salim is a passionate media professional. He's the son of Mohamed "Mo" Amin who was a Kenyan photojournalist noted for his pictures and videotapes of Ethiopian famine.

Apart from Ethiopian famine, Mo contributed exclusive photos of the fall of Idi Amin and of Mengistu Haile Mariam, and was author of numerous books, including Journey Through Pakistan, and covered various themes like East African Wildlife and the Uganda Railway.
Amin died when his Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961 on November 23, 1996 was hijacked and he tried to rally passengers to overpower them.

Salim is taking his father's memory further, not only finding ways to take the collection further, but also create a platform for other African journalists.

In this interview, made at the 2009 Global Media Forum at the Deutsche Welle Bonn last week, Salim updates us on the current plans, explains why a lot of journalist training in Africa fails, and his vision for content on mobile phones. He's suspended the idea of a 24hr channel, and is currently concentrating on building a African Media Agency.

Salim Amin A24media.com from Jonathan Marks on Vimeo.

Public Interest in Germany Severely Threatened

I have just come back from Germany where I think public service broadcasting has gone into a tailspin this week. ARD and ZDF seem to have capitulated on calls by politicians and commercial interests to scrap a lot of the work they do on-line. The Berlin Wall came down nearly 20 years ago. This year a firewall of silence is being raised in Germany - which can have grave consequences for investigative journalism and feature making. I was struck by the entry and comments on this page from the Radio Netherlands Media Network site. I've cut and paste the following from there.

German public broadcasters reduce Web offerings

Germany’s public broadcasters will drastically reduce the programming they put online in response to attacks from commercial channels and newspapers that the online offerings represent unfair competition. Markus Schachter, director of public broadcaster ZDF, said the channel will reduce its online offerings by 80 percent and cut the length of time that catch-up programing is available for streaming. Reports on the official websites of ZDF and sister channel ARD will now be taken down after one week, and reports on sporting events, such as Germany’s Bundesliga soccer games, will be pulled after only one day online. Schachter also said ZDF would focus more on posting video to its site and greatly reduce its text-only offerings. The move is a sop to the German newspaper industry, which has complained that ARD and ZDF’s free websites unfairly compete with the online versions of their publications.

Readers added: It’s not like the German public broadcasters had given in voluntarily. Twelve months ago, EU commissioner for information society and media Viviane Reding had complained about the public broadcasters’ web offerings, citing EU regulations. She appealed to Germany that they should set limits to their public broadcasters on what kind of online content is acceptable, and the German states (Bundesländer) followed suit in their new state treaty on broadcast services and telecommunication media (Rundfunkstaatsvertrag).

ARD and ZDF really tried to defend themselves. For example, they argued that their fee payers had funded their productions and should have the right to continuously access it. But in the end they had to cave in. I guess some politicians aren’t too unhappy that all the critical reports from political TV magazines will now vanish after one week.

The matter is even more complicated. Any online activities beyond making broadcast content available for seven days (equivalent to BBC iPlayer, considered as broadcast distribution, not as real online service) requires a procedure that is basically a copy of the “public value test” for the BBC. So it remains to be seen what will be the outcome of these public value tests. However, ZDF indeed choose to eliminate 80 percent (that’s the figure quoted in Germany) of its online content and not submitting it for the public value test at all. Also related to this matter is the closure of two WDR radio channels, presumably prompted by the circumstance that it was no longer possible to run more radio stations than authorized*) by way of distributing them online only. Thus WDR 2 Klassik and 1 Live Kunst have been eliminated. The latter was on digital broadcasting platforms (including DVB-S via Astra 1H) as well, and it has been replaced by Kiraka here, a previous online-only channel with repeats of childrens programmes from WDR 5.


Those reader comments are spot on. I wonder how the German public will repond? I feel the public broadcasters have been rather weak in their argumentation. Look at the image campaign like this one which outlines what rights you have to be informed. It doesn't explain that all this is severely compromised by what the politicians have decided to do now.

Related Academic Meeting on Public Media Policy

I am usually critical of the academic world for writing about the past rather than helping to map out the future. But a conference at the start of October in London looks like it has antipcated this move. The Communication and Media Research Institute (CAMRI), University of Westminster, and the European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA) are organising a discussion on Media policy responses to the private sector recession in Europe on October 2nd.

In virtually every European country, the private media sector is suffering intense economic pressure from the cyclical downturn in advertising and the structural shift of advertising revenue to the web. As a result, corporations are pursuing every avenue to exploit new and existing means of generating revenue, and of maximising the potential of digitalisation. This is having a direct impact on the policy making process at both national and supranational levels as governments and regulatory agencies are coming under increasing pressure to restrict new initiatives in the public sector, to apply the strictest possible criteria to publicly funded media organizations, and to relax overall regulatory oversight of the private sector.

More details of the conference here. No connection with the organisers, by the way.

Onion Makes Fun of User Generated Content

Police Slog Through 40,000 Insipid Party Pics To Find Cause Of Dorm Fire

The Onion News Network continues to poke huge holes in the broadcast news industry. They are so slickly produced, they're way ahead of the skits produced for David Letterman, etc.

Reboot 11 reboots their website

Reboot11 is happening in Copenhagen again this year. It is an off-beat mix of great minds over two days in the Danish capital. This year seems to be a bit more chaotic than usual - perhaps it is a sign of the state the industry is in. But I get the impression it will turn out fine in the end. The videos from last year are up on the website (embedding seems to be problematic I have found) but they do give a flavour of what's to come. 450 have signed up so far. The dates are Thursday June 25th and Friday June 26th 2009. If you're planning to attend, give me a shout.

Serious Lens

 

Sitting in the DW Global Media Forum, I realise I am not really using a camera. This guy has a camera. And a really serious lens.

Remembering Tiananmen Square - 1989

OK, so you can't read this blog in China now with tags like Tiananmen and June 4th 1989. But that doesn't stop me recalling the very dramatic broadcast from the English service of Radio Beijing as it was then (now China Radio International). The announcer called on all listeners to recall the events of the evening of June 3rd 1989 in Tianamen Square. At the time we believed the announcement to have been made by Li Dan, a producer in the English department. A full transcript is here. Just look at Footnote 47.

I haven't (yet) managed to find the Media Network broadcast a few days after. But in April 1992 I made a Media Network special feature (with help from the Asian Broadcasting Institute of Japan) which looked at what happened in the propaganda war between China and Taiwan immediately afterwards. Want to hear it? Then download the MP3 file of the programme segment here. It's 27 MB. I note the BBC World Service has been putting out documentaries out about Tiananmen, although they have been broadcast well before the anniversary. May be it is a clever tactic to get around the great firewall just before the blocade intensifies? Many reports out there of heightened censorship this week. Kate Adie, one of the BBC correspondents in Beijing at the time, wrote an interesting account in the UK Daily Mail newspaper.

Human Rights Statistics

Hans Rosling is at it again with fascinating stories on statistics. Check it out.

BBC World Service kills off YourStory citizen participation

Your Story project - The End from BBC Your Story on Vimeo.

BBC World Service is building a reputation for killing off good ideas before they have had time to mature. I think this was the case last year when the used citizens to help redesign their website and it looks like the case now, especially when the cost to run this kind of scheme is peanuts. I have no connection with the BBC, just think that Nina Robinson needs a round of applause for the work she's done. Not sure the BBC technicians are doing Nina justice by uploading the message in the wrong aspect ratio and cutting her off after 1 minute.

Spring Cleaning Estonia

Amazed at how a small team can motivate an entire country to clean up a small country - Estonia, from thousands of tons of trash dumped in the forests. They produced the virtual garbage map which showed the extent of the problem. And they did it in a day! That was a year ago...now they are working in two other countries. Now this is an idea I hope will spread.

More Video on Radio Decibel

Hans Knot passed on this link showing the relaunch of Radio Decibel in Amsterdam earlier this year. It's in Dutch, but its quite obvious this is a group of very passionate people who believe there's a need for music radio with personality. Many of the original founders of the pirate Radio Decibel are involved in this legal venture. I'm glad they captured the moment on video. So much of radio is being lost by poor record keeping.

Radio Decibel Kickoff 1-2-2009
Uploaded by keezer - Watch more music videos, in HD!

Lost in Schiphol?

 

Standing by the luggage belt to pick up my suitcase, the lady next to me looks at the screens above and then charges off to the KLM Ground Services desk almost in tears. I think she misread the Dutch message which says that all baggage has been unloaded, not that all baggage has been lost. The luggage from the flight arrived eventually...Schiphol is definitely slowing down these days.

filming in Prague

 

Thanks to a tip from Douglas Arellanes, I found a truly stunning spot to film the sunset over the old town of Prague. I'm in the Czech republic on business, but took Sunday off to interview people about 20 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

PINC truly terrific

 

There are too many conferences at the moment, but there are not enough of the calibre of PINC. Had a chance to meet with some truly inspiring people at a gathering in Zeist right in the heart of the Netherlands. PINC has been around for a decade, but I have only just discovered a world-class circle on my doorstep.

Hilversum West

Hilversum is rebuilding its ring road, so these are not parked cars. It is all just part of the gigantic queue to escape the media city. To be avoided at all costs!



 
 

Media Songs

Making a collection of songs about different aspects of new media. Beats Video Killed the Radio Star.

Rosling's Media Alert on Swine Flu

Hans Rosling, of Gapminder fame, is one of my personal heroes. He is able to give clear context to important stories and I believe the mainstream news media should pay far more attention to what they are doing. His latest video puts swine flu into a much more sane context than I am getting from traditional media. It would be great if some of the media monitoring organisations would also start measuring stories with the news/death ratio.

During the last 13 days, up to May 6 2009, WHO has confirmed that 25 countries are affected by the Swine flu and 31 persons have died from Swine flu. WHO data indicates that about 60 000 persons died from TB during the same period. By a rough comparison with the number of news reports found by Google news search, Hans Rosling calculates a News/Death ratio and issue an alert for a media hype on Swine flu and a neglect of tuberculosis

Broadcast Asia Shuns Bloggers

Looks to me like the press department at Broadcast Asia in Singapore is living in a time warp....round about 1999. There is a clear definition of who they regard as "press"

Media registration is reserved only for editorial professionals (ie.reporters, editors, writers, publishers of trade publications and newspapers, as well as producers and presenters of broadcast and webcast media). Media registration is not opened to non-editorial staff of media groups, research analysts, bloggers and writers of company/corporate newsletters.

I think they seriously underestimate the influence that (group) bloggers are having on the broadcast industry. Entrance to the exhibition is free anyway, and that would be the only reason to head in that direction. The conference is just bizarre. It reflects an industry that has clearly lost its way in that part of the world.

Beyond Twitter & Facebook

Short interview with Alasdair J Munn, a third generation Zimbabwean who has founded a very interesting communications company together with his sister Clare. At the Africa Gathering in London in April 2009 he explained the work they're doing for both commercial and non-profit organisations to help them discover the power of social media tools. Completely void of the twitter hype, their research is showing major differences in the way different parts of Africa search for answers on the web and mobile. www.thecommunicationgroup.com. Not to be confused with the communicationsgroup which also does work for media organisations but is unconnected.

Alasdair J. Munn from Jonathan Marks on Vimeo.

GSMA Open Collaboration

Mobile operators and innovation are not two terms you'd put usually together. Most still operate their network as a walled garden. But there are some chinks of light, as highlighted by a talk I attended at Forum Oxford. I didn't realize that non-members of the mobile phone association GSMA could also get involved in collaborative projects.

You have to dig through their website to find it, but as Graham Trickey of GSMA explains, there are some interesting opportunities emerging.

GSMA Open Collaboration from Jonathan Marks on Vimeo.

Greasing the wheels of trade through local mobile payments

I continue to be very impressed with Simon Cavill of Mi-Pay Ltd. He is the strategy director of a company doing pioneering work in the mobile payments world in Africa. I caught up with him again at Forum Oxford at the end of April 2009 and asked him to give us an update on how the market is developing and the immediate challenges ahead - cash shortages in rural areas and keeping the system secure. As usual, Simon is open and passionate about what they're up to.

Mobile payments are happening all over the world, but especially in rural areas of Africa, where ATM machines are scarce and most people don't have a bank account. The mi-pay method focuses on the diaspora who are crucial to the economies of many African countries. Global aid is estimated at 60 billion dollars. The amount sent back to Africa through the diaspora network is ten-fold that figure - and 600 million may be an underestimate because this form of informal trade is difficult to measure.

Personally, I see mobile payments as being very important to ensure that correspondents working for radio and TV stations get paid for their work. I know that so much training in developing countries turns out to be a waste of time because those trained cannot make a career out of what they learned.

In the first interview, Simon explains how the system works and why it is growing so fast in developing countries.

Watch this...

Greasing the wheels of trade through local mobile payments from Jonathan Marks on Vimeo.

and then this update recorded late last month in forumoxford09.

More on Mobile Payments from Jonathan Marks on Vimeo.

Banks on the Frontline

Ken Banks is the brains behind a great free software programme called FrontlineSMS. In this interview he explains the problems it is solving. I think this is a superb software suite, especially for radio stations in Africa. I see that Ushahidi are using it all over the place as part of their production suite, as well as Google for research projects in East Africa. They have also been extremely clever with the branding...would have cost millions on the commercial world.

Frontline SMS \o/ from Jonathan Marks on Vimeo.

Music as a media strategy in Africa

I've always believed that NGO's and especially radio stations in Africa have not used the power of song to the fullest extent. Somehow in educational circles, dance, theatre and music are seen as much lower down to information leaflets or posters. David Mason was one of the speakers at the recent Africagathering.org.uk in London and he explained to me how his organsation has partnered with Sengalese singer Youssou N'Dour to make mashups to promote health and relevant technology. I hope that the results of the contest (which runs until May 12th) will be used in Africa as well as in documentaries about Africa.

IntraHealth Open Source Music Project from Jonathan Marks on Vimeo.

Ted Talk on the Flu Pandemic

This video from the TED conference is though it was recorded yesterday. It looks back to what we can learn from 1918. But it certainly has a very different take on what we're getting on the mainstream newsmedia. So are we ready? Not in the least. The number one side effect of TamiFlu is flu like symptoms. I wish that more journalists were asking these questions - and that broadcast sites kept their overview a little longer than a few days. The latest tracker is here at http://flutracker.rhizalabs.com/. I'm starting to suspect this is simply a dress rehearsal for something much worse to come. The over-reaction of the Chinese government concerns me the most. It is unusual in the sense that they have had more time to prepare than the avian flu. But the ability of the scientists to communicate timely information to the general public is pretty poor in most countries.

Chlorophyll Calling

Royal webcast on my blog - Prince Charles has a message about the rainforests. all this reminds me of my father who spent a lifetime in plant genetics and still says that we need to guard the most powerful engine of the planet - chlorophyll.

"Help Twitter the Revolution in Moldova" protest outside the UN

"Help Twitter the Revolution in Moldova" protest outside the UN
Originally uploaded by Dan Patterson

Reminds me of the "Thank You BBC" banner during the student riots in Tianamen Sq in June 1989. Not impressed with the Twitter noise surrounding Mexican Flu.

Unwin on African ICT

Tim Unwin is well-known in UK ICT circles so it was great to see him support the London Africa Gathering back on April 25th. He's clear about what's going right and wrong - and that collaboration between people of different backgrounds is the only way forward. I particularly like his last point about African governments. Things would be so much more efficient if they had a clearer strategy.

Tim Unwin opens London Africa Gathering from Jonathan Marks on Vimeo.

Behind Leonardo.info

Leonardo.info - interview with Christine Maxwell from Jonathan Marks on Vimeo.

At Forum Oxford this year we were treated to a fascinating talk by Christine Maxwell. She's currently running a startup looking into mobile search, but her talk was about the Leonardo, an online network where Art, Science and Technology converge.

The heart of their work seems to be the journal Leonardo which was founded in 1968 in Paris by kinetic artist and astronautical pioneer Frank Malina. In the years before widespread use of the Internet, Malina created an international channel of communication between artists, with emphasis on the writings of artists who use science and developing technologies in their work. After the death of Frank Malina in 1981, and under the leadership of his son, Roger F. Malina, Leonardo moved to San Francisco, California, as the flagship journal of the newly founded nonprofit organization Leonardo/The International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology (Leonardo/ISAST). The organisation has grown along with its community and today is the leading organization for artists, scientists and others interested in the application of contemporary science and technology to the arts and music.

Christine is a former Trustee of the Internet Society and The Santa Fe Institute. She serves on the Advisory Board of Leonardo, and it was in this capacity that she gave the presentation in Oxford. There is a mine of fascinating information on the website leonardo.info, although navigation is a challenge. Clearly offline publishing of the journal is the main priority.

Queens Day Drama

All kinda of shocked here because of a lunatic who drove through barriers into a crowd gathered in Apeldoorn to see Queen Beatrix and family. It looked like something out of Grand Theft Auto. At the moment it looks as though it were the actions of a single person, who for some reason had planned to ram the royal bus. He's currently in intensive care.

African Mobile Phone Trailer

An Austrian group has been busy on a trailer for a film about Mobile phones in Africa. Complements nicely some new material I collected at Forum Oxford and the Africa Gathering a few days ago. More postings to come on that.

Warm Beer

Saw this great sign while wandering around the county town of Hertford, UK on Sunday. I know the Brits have a reputation for warm beer, but actually heating it in the garden is crazy! :-)

Google and Morse Code Today

Samuel Finlay Breese Morse (April 27, 1791 – April 2, 1872) was the US creator of a single-wire telegraph system and Morse code and (less notably) a painter of historic scenes. Google paid their respects today on their home page. Probably one of the biggest promotions for Morse in its history!

Applestore Hits a Billion downloaded applications

Everyone likes a countdown clock. Apple is using one at the moment to celebrate the billionth download of applications for the iPhone and iPod touch. Should be sometime in the early hours of tomorrow. But Apple will need to restruccture the way it handles applications for consideration. Its processing requests VERY slowly - people are getting annoyed.

Complete Nonsense in Geneva

I think the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, needs to consider her position and leave the responsibility for a review conference against racism to someone more capabable. She has an excellent career behind her, but if she couldn't anticipate the comments from the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad this afternoon (which were utterly predictable), then why create the platform? Now the conference on a very important topic has ended in a complete shambles. It's no good wasting public money on something that was so obviously a disaster waiting to happen.

Lifting the Lid off Lift

If you haven't discovered the LIFT conference, then you haven't yet experienced one of the most interesting gatherings in Europe. Started in 2006 by Laurent Haug, it has grown into an ongoing discussion that now happens in three cities, not just Geneva. At LIFT-09 I had a long talk with Laurent about what's behind the LIFT concept and what he plans to do next. For my part, I am amazed at the broad range of speakers they find. Unlike other conferences, LIFT is willing to take risks in finding new talent - but also in coaching new speakers to get the best performance. It's not TED, but then it's not trying to be. It's different.


Lifting the Lid on Lift - Surprising People as a Business from Jonathan Marks on Vimeo.

PINC Tea - Concert in the Car Park

I've discovered an interesting organisation that's been operating in the Netherlands for quite some time under the leadership of Peter van Lindonk. I only really got to know what they do when I bumped into Peter on a tram at the excellent LIFT-09 conference in Geneva. It turns out they have been organising a one day conference called PINC (People, Ideas, Nature & Creativity) for the last 10 years. They hold them in Zeist, a town right in the centre of the Netherlands. Around 500 people attend to get away from it all and focus, at least for a day, on something completely different.

PINC has now started to organise spin-off events, with the same basic idea, but this time in a different location. I was invited to attend a PINC Tea on April 9th. Until a few days beforehand, we were only told it would be in Barendrecht, a suburb of Rotterdam. 24 hours before the event we got an address and a map, pointing to a car park next to a playing field. PINC is strict about timing on all of its events. Be there by 1410 said the e-mail. I heard there were roadworks on the way, so I left a bit early. In the end, I was too early - arriving at 1330. I remembered the tripod was in the back of the car, so made a spontaneous decision to film what happened next.


PINC Tea - Concert in the Car Park from Jonathan Marks on Vimeo.

Happy Birthday Pete Myers - 70 today

Today, my late friend and colleague Pete Myers would have been 70 years old. Sadly he passed away on December 15th 1998, much too young to enjoy retirement. I've been sorting through a series of sound archives and I constantly keep bumping into his voice, and the rich contributions he made to programmes I produced. He was the host of great shows on the BBC African Service, being recruited in 1976 to revamp Radio Netherlands African service with a show called Afroscene. When I first came to Radio Netherlands Worldwide in 1980, he showed me the ropes, always advising his students to adapt what he was doing - never to copy. He later went to start Mainstream Asia and Asiascan, as well as produce countless documentaries both on fact and fiction.

There's an old unwritten rule in international broadcasting called the "rule of sixes". After 6 weeks off the air, the audience will start to forget you. After six years they may even deny you were ever on the air.

I'm concerned that if you Google Pete's name today, you now only come up with an obituary in the UK Guardian, which reflects his early days at the Beeb, but very little of the Pete I was proud to know for 18 years at Radio Netherlands Worldwide. I note they got his birthdate and date of death wrong in the Guardian. In case of his birthday, that may have been Pete's fault. I remember his scrapbook of newspaper cuttings from his early days in broadcasting where he would make up all kinds of stuff to add to the hype around himself - born in Venezuela according to one article.

I've uploaded the show we made as a tribute to Pete - it was more of a celebration of his genius, rather in the style of BBC Radio 4's Great Lives. It's a 47 minute tribute to a great man. Enjoy the MP3 audio here. It is an 87MB download so it may take a few moments.

MIPTV - Attendance plummets 14 percent

OK, attendance at the MIPTV fair in Cannes was down. I tend to ignore the official registered figures because there were so many last minute cancellations. Great if you were doing serious business of course, more of a market of the serious and less of a total zoo.

But some figures surprise me. Xinhua reported that China has made a record high worth of deals at this year's MIPTV, the world's largest audiovisual market, amid the ongoing global economic downturn.

The five-day MIPTV trade fair ended its 46th edition, where China had its largest delegation ever, with more than 40 Chinese companies striving to break into the European and American market for television programs.

China scored 6.49 million U.S. dollars of deals at MIPTV, the highest since it began participating in the fair in 1990, CITVC senior marketing director Cheng Chunli told Xinhua.

What? 40 Chinese companies do deals at the world's largest TV market for 6.49 million dollars. Is that worth coming to Cannes for? Some phone manufacturers make that kind of money in a couple of hours.

HD Video Schools

South Bank HD from Philip Bloom on Vimeo.

I am increasingly impressed at how HD videographers are organising themselves outside the traditional film schools, experimenting with "cheap" technology and coming up with some stunning results. I'm uploading HD video interviews made as part of a documentary project, with the idea of grouping some of them into a channel along the same lines. I'd be interested in your feedback.

Ten Minute Filmschool

An avalanche of brilliant advice from Robert Rodriguez.. I do something similiar to explain that being a cross media reporter requires curiousity, background research and a lot of hands-on interviewing in the field. If the broadcasters don't do something about it, the audience will solve the problem themselves.

Forget Twitter - Now there's Flutter

Great idea. Twitter messages are too long. Flutter limits your messages to 26 characters. One full alphabet. Great parody on the twits.

Inspiration in Zwolle

This is truly a brilliant name for a hairdressers' website. I presume the name of the shop Hair Today, has a subtitle - Gone Tomorrow. There are two of these shops it seems in the Dutch market town of Zwolle, about 90 minutes North-East of Amsterdam. I really enjoy wandering around these market towns in the North and East of the Netherlands. Never underestimate the power of creativity in the provinces - they have to try harder to compete. Former DG of the BBC, Greg Dyke would be proud, having run a similarly worded campaign within the Beeb. (I wonder if he has Dutch heritage with a name like that).

Prague Airport was never like this....

Prague's Franz Kafka International Named World's Most Alienating Airport

This reminds me of Zavertem airport near Brussels or CDG in Paris rather than Prague.

Careful parking in downtown Austin

Careful parking in downtown Austin
Originally uploaded by Jonathan Marks

Your friends will know you were parked in downtown Austin.

Learning German has its price tag

Learning German has its price tag
Originally uploaded by Jonathan Marks

Personally I would be wary of putting 219 dollars into a vending machine incase nothing came out. Seen at Memphis airport.

African Inspiration

Preferred Futures for African IT Projects - Erik Hersman from Jonathan Marks on Vimeo.

In the days when I hosted a radio programme on Radio Netherlands Worldwide, I really enjoyed the documentary work in the form of safaris to see great projects in action. Now, after travelling the world a couple of times, it is time to release the video compilations of those who have inspired me so far. I've shot everything in HDV but only recently had the capability to edit it - and the context is becoming clear now.

This profile looks at the work of the work of Erik Hersman, who grew up in Kenya and Sudan. For the last 5 years he's been organising innovative technology projects in Africa, acting as a catalyst for others. At the 2009 SxSW conference (www.sxsw.com) in Austin, Texas I got a chance to talk with him in some depth. I'm sure, like me, you'll be inspired by what Erik and his colleagues are up to.

Check out his various blogs like whiteafrican.com and afrigadget.com. He also explains in the video more about his latest collaborative effort at ushahidi.com.

Inside the France 24 media lab

Inside France 24's Media Lab, Paris, France from Jonathan Marks on Vimeo.

This was five minutes well spent with France 24's head of new media technology lab, Michel Levy-Provencal. From studios on the south side of Paris, he leads an enthusiastic team of developers who are sharing their ideas with the public to great effect. They launched the first live-stream TV ap for the iPhone & ipod Touch, ahead of the BBC and other public broadcasters. It means you can watch TV programmes live or on demand from France 24. They were first because they believe in crowd-sourcing. Giving things away and asking for help works much better than trying to invent for the public on their own. I see they are also organising small scale events with the public, including participation in LeWeb and the TEDx Paris affiliate programme.

Greasing the wheels of trade through local mobile payments

Greasing the wheels of trade through local mobile payments from Jonathan Marks on Vimeo.

Simon Cavill is doing some brilliant work in the field of mobile payments. It's happening all over the world, but especially in rural areas of Africa, where ATM machines are scarce and most people don't have a bank account. The mi-pay method focuses on the diaspora who are crucial to the economies of many African countries. Global aid is estimated at 60 billion dollars. The amount sent back to Africa through the diaspora network is ten-fold that figure - and 600 million may be an underestimate because this form of informal trade is difficult to measure.

Personally, I see mobile payments as being very important to ensure that correspondents working for radio and TV stations get paid for their work. I know that so much training in developing countries turns out to be a waste of time because those trained cannot make a career out of what they learned.

In this interview, Simon explains how the system works and why it is growing so fast in developing countries. I spoke to him at Forum Oxford, and see that he is contributing to the next conference in Oxford on April 24th 2009. Well worth showing up to listen.

Sony Pulls out of IBC 2009

Juan Enriquez (2008) Pop!Tech Pop!Cast from PopTech on Vimeo.

Sony pulled out of IBC 2009, deciding to concentrate on a more direct approach to its customers - even starting a broadcast TV channel to dealers...In short they are going to see their customers instead of paying millions of euro to appear at exhibitions in the hope that people will see them. Panasonic went a while back. I wonder who will be next? Gone are the days when people waited a year to announce something new. And those who have got into the spiral of "doing conferences" have started the search for a different approach.

This reminds me of the Comdex situation a few years back which went from boom to bust in the last downturn. With major belt-tightening right across the broadcast industry, I would be surprised if IBC did not suffer very badly this time round.


If you want to get a perspective on why a lot of what's being discussed in London at the crisis summitt is probably less than what's needed, just watch this excellent video from last year's Poptech.

Golden Tulip Hotels - End is Nigh?

I see that Golden Tulip Hotel chain, which has 780 hotels outside the Netherlands, is in severe financial trouble and has asked for bankruptcy protection. I remember in the 80's when KLM was running it - and expanded the chain of Dutch hotels worldwide. I stayed in one in Colombo, Sri Lanka and was impressed.

But then I stayed at one in Accra, Ghana and swore never to bother again. I think the staff had started to believe their own publicity brochures and were totally trapped in their daily routine. The prices were way over the top - and I noticed the KLM crew from the plane were staying in another hotel (novatel) downtown. I will never forget the business centre which had a terribly slow web connection and charged people 15 dollars an hour for the use of a tiny meeting room. That made it the most expensive real estate in the whole of Accra. We went outside to a coffee bar further into town for our meeting.

So may be, just maybe, this is a case of the clients voting with their credit cards.

Lee Bryant - Learning from 20th century mistakes

The 20th Century was an exception... from Jonathan Marks on Vimeo.

Lee Bryant of Headshift (HQ in London) is able to put complex trends into context. Why are large creative media corporations struggling to be creative? How are you measuring success, compared to a couple of centuries ago. During the recent liftconference.com in Geneva, Lee gave a great 5 minute open stage presentation. He explained his thoughts as to why the 20th century got it wrong with corporate social media. That prompted me to grab him for a short interview to explain. Watch this, and then check out his presentation from the LIFT website below.

The 3G Doctor will see you now....

The 3G Doctor is ready to see you now... from Jonathan Marks on Vimeo.

I bumped into David Doherty at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. In this extended interview, he explains a number of issues all connected with mobile health. He is actively busy with developing the 3G Doctor concept, but his blog is a mine of information on what he has found elsewhere in the world....and that's an enormous resource of ideas, concepts, projects and comments. I asked him to explain what problem he was trying to solve - and we then started discussing what strategies Google and the UN are adopting. Enjoy these highlights (its actually a avalanche of applications for mobile and health), and then head over to his blog.

David is also an active member of Forum Oxford...if you're interested in mobile you should sign up there too. www.forumoxford.com. See you there on the 24th.

Jonathan MacDonald

Jonathan MacDonald - Watch this guy! from Jonathan Marks on Vimeo.

Part of a new series of videos I am releasing under the title In Search of Problems Solved. Jonathan MacDonald is a brilliant strategist - doing similar things to what I do, but coming from it at a very different angle. Is traditional advertising dead - you bet it is! I am just amazed at how slow the agencies are to understand how to use social media to get attention.

Skype - Not Quite iPhone App

Lots of chatter on twitter about Skype launching an application for the Apple iPhone this week. Looks good until you see that the application only works with the wifi capability on the phone, not the 3G network. And although you can see whether your Skype friends are on-line (so you can phone them for free), if they are using another messaging system, then you're out of luck.

At DLD in Munich I met Geraldine Wilson from Truphone and she explained how their application goes one stage further, solving the problems above. You can call a anyone (including a Skype contact ) on Truphone when out of range of the Wi-Fi using what they call Truphone Anywhere. The same system is also IM agnostic, so it supports most of the popular instant messaging clients. The Truphone Anywhere service is able to make calls when not in Wi-Fi by routing the first leg of the call over the cellular network (not data over 3G) and then taking the call from there over Truphone's network, allowing consumers to make international calls at for next to nothing while on the move and out of Wi-Fi. The cost of the call will simply be a local call with a network operator (in my case already part of the contracted bundled minutes) and then the Truphone rate to the country being called.

Nokia and radio

By the end of 2008, Nokia says they had sold 425 million devices with digital music players. In addition to that, thay say they have sold 700 million devices with built in (FM) radio capability. Phones like the N85 even have a built in FM transmitter so you can play the music in the car on the existing car radio (its super low power, but handy to have).

Mark Selby has been giving a talk at several conferences about the importance of radio to the mobile industry. Given his background (including World Radio Geneva) it is perhaps not surprising that he's interested in forging partnerships between Nokia and broadcasters.


Nokia on radio's importance from Jonathan Marks on Vimeo.


Part of my current series of projects involves working with community stations in West Africa to build sustainable business models that bridge both the radio and mobile industries. They have a lot in common, but currently the gulf in terminology is keeping great ideas from happening. I think that as handset sales level off - and broadcasters evaluate the effectiveness of their broadcast platforms, that the two will start working out what they have in common. Believe me, it's already happening in West Africa. Contact me if you want to know more.

Drinking NOS

Drinking NOS
Originally uploaded by Jonathan Marks

You can't drink the NOS in the Netherlands. That's not to say drinking doesn't go on at the NOS. Greetings from downtown Austin Texas.

Forum Oxford Conference Trailer

Forum Oxford Conference 2009 from Jonathan Marks on Vimeo.

Have decided to do more experiments with Vimeo and HD editing because the waiting time for Youtube has become a pain. First upload was material I shot for a 2009 trailer for a conference coming up next month in Oxford. Highly recommended if you are interested in the mobile space.

Austin Captiol

Austin Captiol
Originally uploaded by Jonathan Marks

Glorious sunshine at last. It was raining when I first arrived at SxSW

BBC Worldwide Refocusses

In July 2008, the BBC Trust launched a review of BBC Worldwide's mandate, strategy and governance arrangements. The aim was twofold: to see if any changes were needed to reflect experience since the present arrangements were established in the current BBC Charter; and to consider concerns expressed by others in the market about the impact of BBC Worldwide.



The BBC Trust says....

Successive governments have encouraged the BBC to exploit the commercial value of its intellectual property and to return this value to public service output. The Trust fully supports this aim, and alongside the primacy of the public services welcomes BBC Worldwide's record of increasing profitability and the benefits it brings to licence fee payers.

Our review has been driven by two concerns. The first is to ensure that BBC Worldwide's strategy is properly aligned with the BBC's public service interest and so has a positive impact on the BBC's brand and reputation. The second is to ensure that in its strategy and operations BBC Worldwide is duly sensitive to the concerns of other commercial players in the market.

Our emerging thinking can be summarised as follows:

* The Trust should bring greater clarity to the direction, parameters and strategic priorities of BBC Worldwide's commercial activities in the UK and overseas, to ensure that they align properly with delivery of the BBC's public purposes
* We should make changes to BBC Worldwide's detailed control framework to establish a more contained focus for its operations
* None of this cuts across our ambition that BBC Worldwide should maintain and develop its commercial vigour and strength. In our view this is perfectly compatible with a challenging remit and clearer parameters for its operation and strategic focus

Other considerations

As part of the review the Trust has considered the rationale for the "first look" arrangements under which BBC Worldwide has an opportunity to acquire most BBC rights before they are offered to competitors. The Trust remains satisfied that the rationale in favour of the first look arrangement within existing structures remains strong. In particular it enables proper control of the BBC's brand and reputation to be maintained as its content is exploited commercially. The Trust is also mindful of the economies of scale it creates and has noted that many other content producers use similar 'vertically integrated' approaches.

The Trust and the BBC Executive have also been considering whether any adjustments to the current governance arrangements for the BBC's commercial activities might be necessary to ensure that the mechanics underpinning the controls are both streamlined and effective. This work is closely linked to the current public policy debate about BBC Worldwide and is ongoing.




It comes after the division’s controversial £90 million acquisition of the Lonely Planet guides and the subsequent launch of a spin-off magazine which, unlike most Worldwide products, is neither tied to nor related to an existing BBC show.

I still believe this was a brilliant strategic move, but they should have concentrated on building a mobile platform to exploit the content, rather than trying to launch a magazine.

Though BBC Worldwide cited economic pressures for recently shutting BBCGreen.com with the loss of four jobs, some industry observers believe the environment site exceeded the broadcaster’s remit and parts of the site looked as though the corporation was campaigning.

BBC Worldwide has doubled its profits in the past year and made £112.5 million before tax in the 12 months to March, largely due to lucrative sales of TV shows and formats overseas like Top Gear and Strictly Come Dancing.

Though the trust says it wants to maintain Worldwide’s commercial “vigour and strength”, chairman Sir Michael Lyons told Times Online: “We believe that [Worldwide] needs a tighter set of guidelines. We want to see a little less activity overseas, and for Worldwide to predominantly concentrate on BBC intellectual property.” Lyons says the public value tests carried out before Worldwide makes any acquisitions “will be tougher in the future”.

As Digital Britain rolls on, the trust won’t pass comment on the possibility of Worldwide forming a new PSB JV with Channel 4, but is working with the BBC executive to assess the public benefit of such a move. The real questions surrounding the regulation and remit of Worldwide will have to wait until that is sorted out.

Which way in Prague?

Which way in Prague?
Originally uploaded by Jonathan Marks

Travelling for a bit on a research project and filming as I go. Normal service will resume shortly.

No noise at night

No noise at night
Originally uploaded by Jonathan Marks

my hotel in Prague is very clear with its signage

Coils of Pastry

Coils of Pastry
Originally uploaded by Jonathan Marks

Ye olde fresh Trdelnik. Of course

Prague trying to be spring

Prague trying to be spring
Originally uploaded by Jonathan Marks

bit too cold yet...but then its only the start of March

No barefeet at Radio Prague

NO barefeet at Radio Prague
Originally uploaded by Jonathan Marks

So do people have a habit of walking into the Radio Prague tape archive in bare feet?

Hard Rock Cafe Prague

Hard Rock Cafe Prague
Originally uploaded by Jonathan Marks

the cafe isn't open yet, but the shop selling merchandise definitely is. Got to get the priorities right

Patrick Gyger - not impressed about the future

So what went wrong with our visions of the future? This was a great opening speech at LIFT-09.

Rieback's RFID warning

Melanie Rieback gave an enlightening talk at LIFT-09 on hacking RFID systems. She's part of a team that is a professional pain in the butt for the RFID industry - the new low end of computing. What's worrying is that the Internet of things will have the same problems of attacks on physical objects. It is good that people in Amsterdam are thinking in these ways - forcing us back to fundamentals.

Vint Cerf - where the Internet's going.

The father of the Internet speaks at LIFT-09. What a nice man. He's mellowed over the years since I last saw him in Amsterdam many moons ago and become a truly great human being. He spent a long time before and after his talk at LIFT-09 just chatting with people and taking a genuine interest.

Bill Thompson on the end of Privacy

One nation under CCTV. Bill (of Digital Planet fame on BBC WS) gave a great short talk about the end of privacy at LIFT-09.

Liking Safari 4

I confess I didn't like the Safari browser in its earlier versions, nor the fact that iTunes kept pushing it in my face everytime there was an iTunes update. I resisted. Today I've been playing with Safari 4 and I must admit this is a major step forward in speed - compared to Firefox at any rate. As Firefox has added plug-ins, so it becomes terribly buggy - and it is not easy to reboot when it hangs (at least on a Vista 64 machine).

Of course, its too early to dump the others - my bank doesn't recognise Safari, and there are a few useful plug-ins not available yet for Safari. But so far, so good.

France 24 Live TV on iPhone via wifi

I've been playing with a new application just launched on iTunes from French external broadcaster, France 24. It is free on iTunes if you search for France 24 live application. In fact, there's some other stuff if you search for France24, without the space, so perhaps they should standardise on their nomenclature.

The application works on either an iPhone or an iPod Touch because it makes use of the wifi connection in the device, not the 3G phone connection. Click on it and you can seen live pictures on the iPhone/iPod Touch in French, English and Arabic. There is also an option to watch a previously aired segment, like the weather. The channel
claims that FRANCE 24 is the first channel worldwide to pioneer this ground-breaking service. While other stations are launching applications, I haven't seen one to grab live over the air content quite like this. Since the station is global, there are no rights restrictions.

Does it work? Yes, very well. Both the sound and picture look great on an iPod Touch. And its free to download and free to use. Compare that with the NHK World approach which seems to view the web and satellite TV as two completely different worlds.

UPDATE: France 24 announced Feb 24th that its application has now been approved for the 3G networks by Apple, so on the iPhone you now have a choice of accessing the station via 3G or the wifi. Since its launch on the Apple App Store on February 8th 2009, the FRANCE 24 LIVE application has been downloaded more than 100,000 times around the world. Of all the free news applications available on iTunes, FRANCE 24 LIVE ranks among the top 10 worldwide; most notably in the USA, the UK, Germany, Spain, Italy, Israel, South Africa, the United Arab Emirates, India, Brazil, etc.

BBC Mobile said at MWC Congress Barcelona last week (Feb 19th) that they have been experimenting with an Apple iPhone ap for radio, but have not released it to the public just yet.

UK Government Seeks Director of Social Media

Just a few days left if you want to apply for the post of Director of Digital Engagement. The duties include.....


• Ensure that digital engagement is always a leading part of Government consultation

• Introduce new techniques and software for digital engagement, such as ‘jams’ into Government

• Convene an expert advisory group made up of the leading experts on digital engagement to provide advice to Ministers and act as a sounding-board for the Government’s digital engagement strategy

• Work closely with the Ministerial Group on Digital Engagement, delivering the work agreed at Cabinet on digital engagement.

Influence is a key aspect of this role. You will be required to exercise influence across departments with Ministers and senior officials to drive forward the future of digital engagement. This will require Government and individual departments to change the way they do business – from consulting citizens to collaborating with them on the development of policy and how public services are delivered to them. It will involve supporting Ministers and senior officials in entering conversations in which Government does not control the message or the dialogue. Giving Ministers and senior officials the confidence to do this will require influencing skills of the highest order. This role has few direct reports and little direct resource at its command. The ability to make change and delivery of challenging objectives happen by negotiation, persuasion and influence will be critical.

This is not a role for a generalist. The professional skills required are formidable. Engagement in the digital space is a young ‘profession’ and the job requires someone who would be acknowledged by their peer group to be a leader in this field. The successful candidate will have a CV that creates instant credibility and confidence with Ministers, senior officials and digital communicators in Whitehall.

Salary tops at 160,000 quid a year which isn't bad for twittering on Gordon's behalf. This looks rather like an expedition to Africa to try and find out whether it exists and poses any threat. I love the term though, as if it replaces a post called "Director of Analogue Engagement".

Please Translate Facebook into English

Where does one start? What language do they think it is in now? Is Facebook insulting its users?

Sirius XM In Serious Trouble

We've noted before some of the stupid antics of Sirius XM satellite radio company, especially the wild success claims from the Sirius side before the merger. New York Times is reporting that the satellite radio company is now preparing to seek Chapter 11 protection over the next few days. Whilst this doesn't mean the end, it certainly heralds a reality check. The paper says that Sirius XM has been working with a restructuring specialists on strategies for dealing with $1 billion in debt repayments due this year. It comes as media mogul Charlie Ergen has been buying up shares, fueling speculation of a hostile takeover attempt. Frankly, with all the other options for entertainment in the car, pay radio looks the most vulnerable when times are tough. Pride comes before a huge fall.

Early Results on Mobile Application

It seems that "tens of thousands" of people are already making use of the "Missed the Broadcast" service launched a few weeks ago by Netherlands Public Broadcasting as part of their TestLab. A programme called "De Wereld Draait Door" (Life Goes On) and the NOS News Journal are the most popular on-demand shows and the viewing peak is around 22 hrs local time.

William Valkenburg, Director of Internet Coordination at the NPO said at a congress in Hilversum, Tuesday that their department offers two services, either via a special mobile site or through an application. He expects the service to grow gradually. In January, more than 86,000 streams were requested. The application has been downloaded 15,000 times, and the number of unique users is around 35,000. The application runs on around 362 different models of mobile phone, with a special application for the Blackberry Storm & Bold being launched next week.

Enhanced Reality

The on-line edition of the Dutch-language magazine Emerce is reporting that the ING Bank has done a deal with the Austrian company of Mobilizy which allows you to find the nearest ATM machine on your G1 phone from where you're standing. ING banks are marked on a map with the orange-lion logo of the bank, but other banks are shown too with a generic logo. The app runs on the Google G1 Android mobiles that are starting to roll out here. But playing with it lead me to the Austrian company's demo of what else the software can do. Further down the road I see all kinds of interesting possibilities if broadcasters couple their content databases with apps like this. By pointing the camera in the phone to an object, the device displays any information it knows about what it sees.

NHK World Relaunch Disappointing

Oh dear, it looks like the NHK relaunch was limited to the TV network. The website remains a very distant second to the satellite network. BBC World News, CNN, and France 24 seem to be leading when it comes to web presence and true cross-media thinking. Al Jazeera is advanced when it comes to mobile and web 2.0 apps, but their English language website is very difficult to navigate, especially if you're looking for something by subject rather than by time.

NHK appears to be well behind in all of this - blaming copyright as the reason for not offering their premium service on the web. If it was 1999 I could understand, but ten years on it seems incredible that they haven't sorted it all out. Japan is a world leader when it comes to mobile technology and banking systems. So do they have a chance at being in the same league soon as BBC, CNN, as claimed at the relaunch. Definitely not, judging from this.

NHK World - a few hours to relaunch?

NHK is hoping its relaunch today February 2nd will put it in the same league at BBC World News and CNN. Frankly, the only way they can go at the moment is up, since it is rare to find a service that's so devoid of context. I haven't seen them do live dicussion events - its just newsreaders with autocues linking pieces. The Japanese international TV channel NHK World is to introduce hourly news bulletins in English, starting February 2.
A carriage agreement with Sky Digital in the UK brought the number of homes in which NHK World is available to over 80 million and NHK says they are aiming for 110 million homes by the summer. But they have to fix the website....seriously dull comes to mind. When I checked at midnight Amsterdam time on the 2nd, they were still showing a page which hadn't been updated in 8 hours. I presume the relaunch will be later in the day.

Al Jazeera & Twitter

Interesting claim on the Al Jazeera banner ad. Personally, I prefer their satellite TV service. I think France 24 and BBC Global News beat them to it.

Where were you on Jan 20th 2009 at 1710 UTC?

If you were out on the Washington Mall watching President Obama giving his inaugural speech on January 20th, then you might be able to find yourself on this incredible gigapixel photo by David Bergman using the Gigapan Epic, a $379.00 device that fits many digital cameras. This 1,4 Gigapixel photo has had millions of views in just a couple of days, taaking the site down a couple of times. Spot those not paying attention, yawning, or even asleep. Tip of the hat to Jim Cutler's Serving Donuts podcast.

World Economic Broadcast

I'm interested to see how the World Economic Forum is using social media tools to build a special audience gavel-to-gavel coverage of the presentations in Davos. The audience is the network without using peer-to-peer tools. The WEF seems to have a serious problem - they have invited so few top women leaders, yet business in many countries (of Africa) is dominated by women. Good coverage of the Co-chairs.

DLD-09 Kicks Off

I am currently at one of Europe’s leading digital innovation conferences, DLD (Digital Life Design) taking place from Sunday - Tuesday in Munich for the fifth year. Around 800 entrepreneurs, thinkers and creative leaders from a variety of sectors will gather at this synergy exchange at the invitation of Hubert Burda Media, to compare their experiences between panel
sessions from high calibre specialists. All panels at the English speaking conference will also be broadcast on the DLD video portal (www.dld-conference.com), so if you haven't been invited you can watch on-line.

This year the theme is “New Realities”, and it is calling on its participants to formulate perspectives for the future of their markets and sectors after the credit crunch. In the digital area new business models, video networks, cloud computing, internet

The group of 80 speakers will include successful entrepreneurs such as René Obermann (Deutsche Telekom), Martin Halusa (Apax) and Abigail Disney (Daphne Foundation);thought leaders such as Daniel Kahnemann (Nobel laureate for economics), Nassim Taleb(author of “The Black Swan”), Matthew Bishop (author of “Philanthrocapitalism”) and Arianna Huffington (The Huffington Post), and creative stars such as Rem Koolhaas(architect), Ross Lovegrove (designer), Fernando Sulichin (film producer) and Michael Schindhelm (cultural manager).

I hope there will be a connection to last year's DLD. There were several speakers, especially Martin Sorrell, who made predictions about how the market would change in the next couple of years. Sorrell was spot on, especially with the comments about Facebook and Murdoch. We shouldn't forget who got it right, for they are definitely the ones to watch.

BBC World Service Beyond Chapman

I think we're witnessing an end of an era with the departure of Nigel Chapman as Director of BBC World Service. He's been there at WS since 2000 and will probably be best known for his renewal plan for the world's largest international broadcaster, shift resources away from radio and putting them into more cross-platform offering. He brought focus by trimming the number of languages and reducing services that had little or no audience - or had outstayed their original purposes. You cannot run a network on nostalgia.

Chapman succeeded in writing and implementing his plan for renewing the BBC World Service, so I guess that now the mission laid out in the document is accomplished, it is a good time to move on. It's also a golden opportunity for the BBC World Service to make a break in tradition. It would be refreshing if the opening speech from the next director was from someone with a British-Commonwealth heritage and that she could build the next stage of the World Service strategy. Time for change at the Beeb too.

The Chapman strategy starts to expire in 2010, by which time a lot of purely radio thinking will already be severely marginalised to a point where the "broadcast" over-the-air distribution model is too expensive. Biting the bullet, we can conclude that digital radio DRM has failed after 13 years of struggle - no receivers, no serious interest from the commercial radio sector and so no point in going it alone. The DRM experiment on 1296 kHz generates more heat than listeners.

Audiences of 180 million who listen once a week sounds huge. But that means 6.6 billion people do not listen to the BBC World Service, so there's still a long way to go. International broadcast, being a niche sector, is evolving from public broadcast into a public access model. The BBC creates a wealth of content and offers a selection of it for people to access via the web, IP devices, mobile, etc. In areas of the world where there is limited access, for politicial or technical reasons, there is still a role for the BBC to compile selections of this content and broadcast them directly to audiences using any relevant technology, including analogue AM in some cases.

I recently discovered some 30-25 year old tapes of BBC World Service from the days when it was a full service network, rather than the world news service that it has become. The presentation sounds slow by comparison these days, but it was right for its day. They ran comedy shows like Just a Minute - even special versions of Weekending (a topical parody on the week's news - like rolling the NewsQuiz and Dead Ringers into one). Continuity added comments about the weather in London - and it was a shared experience with listeners everywhere. Especially since 9/11, the smile has gone from World Service radio in English, it is the serious person's information network. Which is why I can only take so much death and disaster in small doses. Thank goodness for the BBC i-Player or wi-fi radio and the access these bring to the much broader range of features from BBC domestic networks - including brilliant comedy, debate, and music. The Mac has a great program called Radiocast which allows you build your own "World Service" mixing and mashing radio shows broadcast from anywhere in the world and recording it to a hard-disk for listening later on demand. I know my way around the sites, it's shame BBC WS doesn't guide others.

World Service radio news shows themselves are in danger in being eclipsed in many markets by BBC World News TV which adds things that are useful while travelling. There's never any weather or travel info on BBC WS Radio. And the radios in hotels were a myth in most cases. Show me the businessman/woman who listens to the radio rather than watch TV in a foreign hotel.

BBC World News TV is still in denial - that one day they will make a real commercial business out of it. No chance at all, especially when the ad market for those kind of networks in miniscule. BBC Arabic has an advantage because its a three platform offering. BBC WS Radio is hampered by restrictions on cross-promotion which could be fatal in a cross-media world. Now that the BBC News international site is ad funded, WS radio is becoming an island, surrounded by a sea of on-line and video offering, none of which can be connected because of funding rules from a bygone era.

So the next WS Director will have to move from a cross-platform strategy to a cross-media strategy, or great audio/radio that WS is currently making will simply disappear in the media background noise. It is not being labelled, so it will not be found. Try and find something that has been broadcast on the World Today or Newshour earlier in the week. It would be a shame if some features were buried because some World Service programmes, like Digital Planet or several BBC WS Science shows, should also be on Radio 4 or other intelligent speech feeds. If it works for In Business, then it works for other genres.

On the TV front, I hope BBC World News will review its on-line programme line-up, allowing on-line access to BBC domestic news productions like Newsnight and Panorama. I can understand restrictions on drama and comedy series, not on news programmes. Find a way to cross promote with WS Radio breaking the current information apartheid. That means building channels in the iPlayer for non-UK residents - and experimenting with subscription models.

The procedure for Chapman's replacement has been muddled, crazy at a time when BBC has had serious management issues at the top and cannot seem to react fast enough to simple transparency issues. The Daily Telegraph picked up the rumour about the post not being advertised externally. Then there was the letter from (ex)-BBC staffers - including former Director John Tusa - demanding that the job be thrown open to external candidates. In the end it was - but the window of opportunity is so short, I suppose they already know who they want. The job description is strange reading in many countries, since editorial responsibility is mixed with financial and strategic responsibility towards government - in short the job is becoming a mission impossible. And there seems to be huge overlap with the responsibilities of Richard Sambrook, to whom the WS Director has to report. To restore credibility, the function needs to create the workspace and platform for a world class cross-media news network - but the editorial responsibility should rest with Sambrook - a bit like the DG and Deputy DG roles they created domestically for Mark Thompson and Mark Byford.

Applications close for the DG post on January 25th. I wonder if the board will find the right woman for the job? Now that really would be World News.

Ofcom on Public Service Media

Interesting to see Ofcom get into the video production biz itself.

Obama's Amateur Lens Man

Today, Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th president of the United States and delivered his inaugural address. Amazing to watch the event in HD thanks to a special Eurovision feed from Washington- really like being there. I guess the BBC crew in Washington was recording all the stuff in SD, because the summary at the end of their broadcast switched back to SD just before the news.

I was surprised that they let what looked like an amateur photographer (lens lice in the trade) stand on the red section of the carpet right behind Obama. I guess 4 by 3 viewers didn't see this twit, but I was surprised someone at Eurovision or whoever was producing the show didn't physically drag him out of the picture. He appears in vision 3 minutes 15 seconds into the speech. I'm sure Canon is cringing. How many zillion people watched this twit do the shuffle during what was an excellent speech.

HD may have 5 times the definition of standard definition. At events like this it conveys 25 times the emotion. Glad I was able to witness it.

Chaos in the Print Shop

Nice variation on the car commercial of a few years back. Thanks to Jim Cutler for the spot.

Preview Mobile World Congress

I am researching items for next month's mobile world congress in Barcelona and interested to see the discussion above - though not sure the old film effects in the video matches the "think forward" theme.

iShovel - Light snow shovel

Not sure this is going to be much use clearing my driveway at the moment. Reminds me of the robot vacuum cleaner I bought a while back. Nice idea...useless in practice.

Connectivity Whoops

Was writing a piece about improved mobile connectivity in Africa, and what happens? My provider XS4ALL has a breakdown lasting 3 hours until 3 pm. Everything goes off - only the mobile. To be fair, Xs4all did add update information quickly on the website, but I personally would like to subscribe to an SMS service in times like this.

VOA TV reports on future of American influence

How does this stuff get onto Youtube? Obviously not off air. Because the context is missing, it has lost a lot of its value.

Water Bottle Phone

Now this is a curious story. The Motorola publicity machine has announced the launch of two new mobile phones meant to make social connectivity and responsibility accessible to people all around the world. I am particularly interested in the MOTO W233 Renew which, they say, is a device made from plastics comprised of recycled water bottles. I wonder how they get hold of these water bottles, since the recycling systems in Holland at least are great at recycling glass, but plastic bottles are not separated. I thought at first they meant hot water bottles - perhaps it was the colour and the notion that Woolworths in the UK must have a pile of them somewhere in unsold stock.

This is a good start, but mobile phone manufacturers in general have to do more to ensure that some of the essential raw materials inside these devices are obtained in a fair and ethical way. Take coltan, for instance, a shortened name for columbite-tantalite, an ore from which the elements niobium and tantalum are extracted. Tantalum is widely used in consumer electronics products such as cell phones, iPods, TV's, radios and computers because its essential to the production of compact, efficient capacitors. However, export of coltan from the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo to European, Asian and American markets has been cited by experts as helping to finance the present-day conflict in the Congo.

The irony is that the main production of tantalum is in Australia, where Talison Minerals, operates the largest mine in the world in Wodgina. Tantalum minerals are also mined in Brazil, Canada, China, Ethiopia and Mozambique. The Democratic Republic of the Congo produces a little less than 1% of the world's tantalum, but coltan smuggling has been implicated as a major source of income for the military occupation of Congo. The Rwandan Army has made an estimated $675m in the last two years derived from Congolese coltan. I believe most of it goes to fuel to production of handsets and devices in China, though the trail of where it ends up after it leaves the region is difficult to follow.

So what? So it would be great if manufacturers had a sort of fair-trade label on handsets, iPods, laptops, etc to show that the components had been manufacturered from minerals mined in ethical ways.

Forbidden Holland

In the Netherlands, there was commentary in the Dutch press a couple of years back when a list of "blurred out" sites was published on the excellent Marketingfacts site. Most are barracks, aiports or military basis. In early lists, they claimed that the European Space Agency centre in Noordwijk was blurred too, but that doesn't seem to be the case these days. Strangely, I live close by to what looks like a Google Earth "bluurper". Go to these coordinates ( 52°15'37.43"N 5°16'47.78"E) and you'll see the marine listening post itself is blurred, but the circle of direction finding antennas next to it are in the clear. Not sure why they bother. They must be a lot happier in Emmnes now that the 500 kW transmitters from the Flevo polder ( 52°21'43.98"N 5°27'19.34"E) have gone off the air...that kind of power is not something you want next to a sensitive antenna field.

If you look in on-line history books you'll find that during the Cold War, Holland was littered with listening posts, some in old villas, or some like the Post Golf in Goes (Location: 51°32'2.48"N 3°52'32.83"E) who's occupants had the job of listening in to and transcribing the Dutch language transmissions of Radio Moscow which ran from 1956 to 1991. They also monitored traffic coming out of Warsaw Pact embassies in the Hague. These days, the place is used by the National Amateur radio society, the VERON.

Transmitter Search & Find

As part of a video documentary I am making about the big changes to international broadcasting, I put out a call on Saturday to see if anyone has tabulated all the geocoordinates for the main transmitter sites around the world. Of course, they have. Sign-up to the http://shortwavesites.googlepages.com where Ian Baxter and friends have made two extensive Excel sheets which tells the story of shortwave's hayday and slow decline. It's a brilliant piece of work, combining data that's been sitting around in the WRTH for years and some original detective work. There are also lists out on the Interwebs for very low frequency stations (like the time signal stations that drive radio watches) and special sites devoted to transmission centres in the UK

There are places like the Radio Liberty site at Playa de Pals (Girona) in Spain which now have little trace of their past, but others like VOA Delano in Calfornia ( 35°45'17.12"N 119°16'45.54"W), VOA Hawaii ( 21°25'35.83"N, 158° 9'34.29"W ) or Flevoland here in the Netherlands which still look like a transmitter site. (Of course the photos on Google Earth are not necessarily taken yesterday, so just because its on Google Earth doesn't mean it is still there. Some are so famous, you don't need any numbers. Just type Wertachtal into Google Earth it takes you to the front door of the huge HF transmitter site, built for Deutsche Welle but now, ironically, no longer used by them.
And there's a fascinating Cold War story behind the VTC Orfordness site (where BBC 648 and 1296 kHz originate) still shows the fan shape of the
old over the horizon radar station from the 1970's.

From bad to Worldspace

I have always been critical of the Worldspace operation, especially the over-hyped success claims in the mid 1990's (reaching 3.4 billion people was the slogan at ITU Telecom I seem to recall). No station on the satellites really had a business model for being there - mostly because radio stations are local and national - and the few international broadcasters on the planet never really committed to the Worldspace proprietary system. In short, Worldspace was a solution shot into space that then started looking for a problem. It was marketing schemes on steroids with no clue about how radio really works, especially in developing countries.

Chris Forrester of RapidTVNews published a fascinating list of creditors just before Christmas.

The major claims are already in, not least Worldspace’s lavish travel and expenses debt to American Express amounting to more than $300,000. The grand total of its debts and obligations (some of which are disputed) comes in at more than $2bn.

Worldspace itself estimates it has between $100m-$500m in assets, although states it has more than $1bn in liabilities and obligations. The Chapter 11 filings refer only to Worldspace Inc., Worldspace Systems Corp., and Afrispace Inc., and makes no mention of the other businesses, or its Asian satellite. There is also a royalty agreement in place and shown as a debt amounting to a staggering $1.81 billion.

Then there are assorted creditors who helped bail out the business through its most recent struggles. These include Highbridge Capital Management ($27.6m), Och-Ziff Management ($7.9m), AG Offshore ($2.3m) and Citadel ($35.1m) for a total of $72.98m. Bank of America has a (disputed) claim in for $1.6m.

Its ‘Top 30’ creditor list includes:

• Yenura Pte Ltd (a Singaporean company in which Worldspace’s founder Noah Samara, pictured above, has close links) is owed (unsecured) $55.2m and is considered an “insider company” under US rules.
• Micronas GmbH, a chip-developer in Germany, is owed $18.2m.
• Fraunhofer Inst for Integrated Circuits, in Germany, is owed $4.45m.
• Flextronics Inc, is owed $2.34m, although this debt is disputed.
• Thales Alenia Space, is owed $2.2m.
• Delphi Delco Europe, is owed $1.22m.
• Baker & McKenzie, is owed $1.148m.
• International Space Brokers, is owned $990,366.
• SED Systems, is owed $986,277.
• IFPI of Hong Kong, is owed $948,152.
• Phonographic Perf. of India, is owed $657,894.
• Astrium SES, is owed $650,549.
• Sanyo-Mgt of Osaka, is owed $612,250.
• Delphi Electronics of Indiana, is owed $600,000.
• ST Microelectronics of Italy, is owed $600,000.
• SAMRO of Johannesburg, is owed $592,852.
• Accenture LLP is owed $523,931.
• BPL Techno Vision of Bangalore is owed $506,046.
• Antrix Corp of Bangalore is owed $483,661.
• Performing Rights Soc, of UK, is owed $400,967.
• ESPN Star Sports is owed $400,000, although this debt is disputed.
• American Express Travel is owed $336,943.
• Fiat Grp, of Turin is owed $304,375.
• Gabon Telecom, is owed $290,963.
• University of Chile, is owed $286,740.
• SAP America is owed $277,113.
• Wistron NeWeb of Taiwan is owed $259,995.
• Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker, is owed $243,443.
• Certicom Corp of Virginia is owed $235,097.
• Microsoft is owed $231,679.

I wonder why the University of Chile got involved for such a large sum. What a total mess.

Barry Manilow Deleted

Several readers asked me to take down the Barry Manilow punishment video - not because of any copyright issues, it is simply drove everyone bonkers when they visited this blog. Couldn't find a way to shut it up.

Apple MacBook Wheel

Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard

Onion continues to get the scoops, that remain scoops. I love they way they do this.

Radio Audience Research

Audience Research in the US in 1947. Brilliant!

Crisis Prices

The sales have started here in earnest. You don't need to speak Dutch to get this one.

2009 starts with big bangs

Woah...lived in Holland for more than 25 years and never seen street firework displays like this before. Seems they are inversely proportional to the credit crisis - and the booms going on as I write this at 1.30 am are mostly all of the illegal variety....you can't buy fireworks like this in the local hardware store.

May your projects blossom where ever you are. If you're also doing interesting things in the field of cross-media, I hope our path's cross. It may be tough. But it is also extremely interesting.

Safe travels,

Jonathan Marks

Czech Clear Visions for 2009?

As the Czech republic takes over the presidency of the EU for 6 months, it's interesting to look at this film made in Prague in 1957 which tried to predict the kitchen of the future in 2000. Compared to the BBC's Tomorrow's World TV programme in the 1970's, I think the Czech's did a much better job in looking a half decade ahead. Induction heating is now an option for many kitchens and those dispensers remind me of many hotel breakfast rooms in 2008. Wonder what predictions we'll get right in this New Year?

800 Phones in the Google Sky-Lab

A sort of behind the scenes look at how Google is experimenting with the mobile world. Seems they prefer phones with good browsers and flat-rate data plans. Me too.

Eartha Kitt Wiki

I never cease to be amazed at how quickly wikipedia updates articles...within minutes of Eartha's passing being announced. I know some people laugh at its accuracy - but on subjects that I am researching I find it an excellent source (along with others). Gave up on EBrit years ago.