Open message to BBC worldwide

Subject: Non iOS version of iPlayer and full access please!

From: Peter Jenkins

To: bbciplayer@bbc.com

Hi,

Why limit the global version of iPlayer to only Apple mobile devices?

When you tried to have a Windows only iPlayer the reaction was rightly very bad:

(in case your memory is short)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_iPlayer#Development

Here is the money quote from the BBC trust:

"the Trust noted the strong public demand for the service to be available on a variety of operating systems. The BBC Trust made it a condition of approval for the BBC's on-demand services that the iPlayer is available to users of a range of operating systems, and has given a commitment that it will ensure that the BBC meets this demand as soon as possible. They will measure the BBC's progress on this every six months and publish the findings"

Why did you think you could pull the same trick twice?

When the existing iPlayer service is web based and cross-platform, why did you make this new service closed and only on Apple hardware?

I have access to several computers at home (Apple Mac, Windows PC, Linux) and an Android phone - none of which can run this software so I'm forced to not pay for BBC content even though I would be happy to.

I really want to pay to support good quality BBC content, but currently can't. There are plenty of cheap services which allow me to watch the UK version of iPlayer without paying the BBC from my home in Finland.

For example, TVexpat is charging 30€ for 3 months access:

http://www.tvexpat.eu/subscribe

Of course, I'm not a UK resident, so can't pay the licence free even if I wanted to (I don't).

You must see you are missing a huge revenue opportunity by offering a closed software platform with a restricted range of programming locked to specific countries. With each week you delay resolving this mess more and more users will figure out services like TVExpat or use other means to view BBC content without paying. For example:

http://isohunt.com/torrents/Top+Gear?ext=&op=and

I think you'd be surprised how many people would pay for content if you make it possible to do so.

Cheers,

Pete.

Cultural differences: Car Wash

You wouldn't know it from reading here, but these days I'm living and working in Finland. After a while living in a new place you really start to notice all the subtle differences between countries. I thought (ok, I was told), I should write about the here.

Car wash

For reasons I can't explain, in Finland it's seems a social faux par to wash ones own car. I've just not seen any car washing going on in our part of suburbia (Olari, Espoo). Instead you must either use the expensive hand wash places in most car parks or go to the automated car wash machines - both places are an experience.

Most car parks in Finland are underground (and double as bomb shelters lest the Russians invade) so the workers in these underground car washing places, in my imagination at least, are rather strange creatures, deprived of light and perhaps only fed after washing each car. A basic wash costs about 25€, which seems a lot because it is.

The automated machines here are roughly twice the size and price of the equivalent automatic car wash in the UK. Gone is the social stigma of using a automated car wash which, at least in my family, is seen as being lazy and a waste of money. Instead of going into the garage shop and buying strange mythical tokens from the hunch backed sales person, you go straight to the car wash and are greeted by real life members of staff happy to take your cash, fold down your ariel and fire up the huge machinery. I like to imagine that they stand behind a lead screen like operators of an X-ray machines before pressing the big red WASH button.

But of course not. The button says "PESU".

Window cleaning

In surprising contrast to the car washing situation, I realised this morning that there are no window cleaners (at least for peoples homes). In the UK its common for a window cleaners to turn up at your house a few times a year and offer to clean the windows on the outside. Finland has solved this problem in a more practical way bymaking all windows not on the ground floor open inwards. Even the really large windows can be opened right into the room.

At first I thought this was a brilliant idea because you don't need a ladder to clean the windows, but after experiencing the hot summer nights here with only a few hours of darkness I realised how annoying is to want to close the curtains with the window open into the room. Maybe this summer I should just wear a blindfold.

0.085p per track

Regular readers will note my interest in how much artists get paid for their music. Essentially I'd like to see total transparency and realistic options for musicians to make it big without signing to a major record label.

This is just an uninformed ideal of mine, so I was really interested to find this article about the prices musicians are paid for online music streaming.

It seems we have a long long way to go:

We7 does indeed pay the 0.085p per stream rate that the PRS set. I ask him why, according to their press release, 1m streams can generate anything from £2,000 to £4,000. Is it because different record labels have different deals with We7?

"Yes, the range is indicative of unsigned artists (but registered with the PRS), small labels through to significant labels," Purdham said. "Most of the music on We7 is popular music so on average we tend to pay at the higher rate of the scale." In other words, songs by major-label artists get a higher per-stream rate (this does not apply to songwriters, however).

via Behind the music: We7's streaming success | Music | guardian.co.uk.

I've not used we7, but I am a big user of spotify and last.fm. I thought it would be interesting to work out how much revenue I might have given to some of my favourite artists assuming they'd been paid 0.085p per track and they were all streamed online. Neither of these assumptions are true but these days I'm almost exclusively using spotify so it's an interesting statistic.

Since October 2006 I've been logging most of the music I've played through last.fm. I've played 36438 tracks since then. You can view what I've played here. At 0.085p per track that would be 3097.23p or £30.97. A CD might have 12 tracks so thats roughly 1p per album to the artist each time I play the record.

That seems a pretty small, but really it's very hard to tell if that is better or worse than the traditional model of CD's and radio play. A key advantage of internet music technology is it should enable much greater transparency around pricing. But it just isn't happening. I think less people would buy from iTunes or stream from Spotify if they knew how much the middlemen were making compared to the artists. I guess this is why the pricing discussed openly ...

Gas vs Charcoal by Steven Skoczen - SixLinks.org

The Dilemma

It's summer here in the Northern hemisphere, and evenings are perfect for grilling. But as you head out the back door with a plate of veggie burgers and kebabs, is it more sustainable to light up some charcoal, or use a propane tank?

via Sustainability Showdown: Gas vs Charcoal by Steven Skoczen - SixLinks.org.

Great bit of green geekery, I like the level and tone of the analysis:

The CO2 production in beef or pork far outstrips the CO2 you make cooking the food. So if you're looking to be more sustainable, the most important place to start is with what's on your grill.

Samsung Galaxy S Pro Appears.

Shared by Peter Jenkins

Looks really nice. Maybe this will be my next android phone.

The rumoured Samsung Galaxy S Pro has been pictured, proving it's existence!



As per my other news post, the specifications are very similar (the same?)
The main rather obvious difference is the slide out Qwerty keyboard.

There is a suggestion that the Pro is going to be on Sprint in the US.
The non keyboard 'S' is rumoured to be on all carriers in the US.
No news yet on the European markets for either phone yet.

That's it! just a quick titbit of information.

Thanks to Intomobile
Strangely Androidcommunity were credited, but nothing is on their website?

Google preparing to launch music store?

According to multiple music industry sources, Google could launch a music service that offers song downloads and streaming music as early as this fall.

Google has already signaled that it wishes to give users of phones equipped with Google's Android operating system a better music offering. At Google's I/O conference last month, the search engine offered attendees a demonstration of a Web-based iTunes competitor.

via Google music store could launch this fall - CNET News.

I really hope they do this in a more open and fair way than Apple, Spotify etc have done.

It would be great to see more transparency around pricing, especially what % goes to the artists vs the labels vs google. It would be a great opportunity to change the model to an open music music service behind an API where applications and not just users could access any track. The artists/labels should be able to charge what they want and the users/applications/aggregators/radio stations should be able to decide whether a given track is worth the price ... you know, like an open market ....

Grid in Financial Services and Science: a comparison

(cross-posted from my new work blog: grid things)

I recently presented at HP-CAST in Hamburg, Germany. The title was "Grid in Financial Services and Science: a comparison" to a tutorial session called "Portals, Grids, Clouds".

I hadn't intended to talk about clouds initialy but I decided to change the content to fit the tutorial session. I was quite pleased with the end result and the reception I got was pretty good so I thought I'd share the slides here.