A larger bite of the Apple

I am in London for a press release for new Apple products. Pretty secret beforehand, and there has been speculation mostly of a new film service for iTunes. Which was also introduced, but there was more. After having just seen a live telecast from Steve Jobs the news is: More space and better pictures on big brother iPod and little sister Nano which also is back in vivid colors. Baby Shuffle looks amazing downsized to only about dobble the size of a sim card! Now with a clip for easy mobility.

Then there is iTunes which has been severely pimped. Back to the days of flipping through the colorful covers of vinyle albums- almost. We can now sort our digital music libary alphabetically after cover titels or artists. A much improved visual experience. Apple also solved the problem of digital music always having gaps between tunes, even in otherwise coherent classical works or rock albums like Pink Floyd The Wall. Now we have now seemless transition. Nice to see. The technology is there and it is getting better all the time. When Apple launches Apple iTV in 2007 music, film and television will be spread over all platforms. Exept mobile. But rumours say that should come along before too long….Amazing but also a bit scary when one company takes over the digital world like that. But they do a damn good job.

Dramatic content engineering

Today I paid a visit to Congin. A Copenhagen based company specializing in dramatic content engineering. The company seems to be taking off now as bandwith is finally widespread enough for most people to be able to see advanced flash graphics. 

It is a storytelling form of branded entertainment. And as in any case where we as consumers spend time on entertainment, it is important the entertainment is of a certain quality. There are soo many chanels pushing all sorts of commercial messages to us. We dont want to spend our time on boring commercials. But if the form the advertising is brought to us in is interesting and entertaining enough, then we will willingly give our attention.

The days of boring commercials are numbered. With TiVo and timeshifting no one ever needs to see another sleepinducing television commercial. So new ways of getting through to the consumer must be cultivated. Everybody loves a good story and that is why www.congin.dk is a pretty interesting company to monitor the next few years.

Teens have no respect for teachers

This might not seem like news, but in this case it is the teachers lack of IT knowledge that the children have lost respect for, if they ever had it.

A new report from CBS shows that 90 % of kids betweren 12-18 use the internet everyday at home. But only 2.8% use it daily in schools. 46% if the teens actually doubt that the teacher even knows how to navigate online. 82% of them never even talk to their teachers about the net.

The report once again underlines the generation gab between the online generation and the offline generation. Finally it seems that this conflict is being taken seriously. For once teachers should be ahead or at least at the same technical level as mainstreem teens. I predict that the alienation between teachers and students and in many cases also between children and parents can create big social conflicts if not being appoached now.

Right now students learn IT skills from friends and not from teachers.  Adult product developers are creating future products for a generation, that in many cases is already way ahead. The large companies are headed by old men in suits who have often never heard of the technology that the current and future consumers have integrated in daily life. It shocks me everytime I hear top executives showing their lack of knowledge. It is about time that even the graying generation knows and at least tries out simple things like Skype, messenger, MySpace, Ipods, MMS, online gaming, Youtube and blogging. Otherwise I think some people will be wawing their jobs goodbye when the online generation very soon starts entering the jobmarked.

 Tjeck out the report on http://www.mediappro.org/

Arto.dk not the black sheep

Arto.dk is the most popular internet community for young kids in Denmark. There has been some focus on the site, because of several cases of mobbing and sexual harrassment. There is however more than half a million users on Arto, and most of the kids seem to have good experiences and gain knowledge, friendships and social skills from being an active part of the community. Malene Charlotte Larsen, a researcher from the University of Aaborg does not recognize the negative picture of Arto that the media creates. The conclusions of her research include: 1. Fake profiles are looked down upon. 2. Sexy profile pictures are most often not related to sex, but more a way of being accepted. 3. There is alot of love on Arto. 4. The users help each other creating wellwritten profile texts. 5. New things happen every day so it is important to keep up 6. The children consider the online friends as important as offline friends

Awareness Node Denmark

Today I am at the annual meeting for the Awareness Node Denmark.  Danish media council for children og young people is acting as Awareness Node in Denmark under the EU Safer Internet Action plan. I am a part of the work group consisting of representatives from groups and companies related to children and digital media.

There is a fine line between protecting children and still giving them the freedom and opportunities to explore and learn from the digital medias.

The media counsil is doing a great job producing information material for parents and children and arranging events about safety in chatrooms, gaming, sms, blogging and storytelling on digital media.

 Read more about it and find tips on how to get closer to the online generation

www.medieraadet.dk

Peter pulls the plug

Poor Peter. (AKA geriatric1927). It has all been too overwhelming. After two weeks of broadcasting on YouTube, after beeing seen by almost 2 mio viewers, after having received tons of fan mail and after having been the headline on several newschannels, it suddenly was all to much for the 79 year old british pensionist. He will be missed greatly on the video community YouTube, which he like soo many others, considers himself addicted too. The funny thing is, that most of his co-youtube’ers could be his grand children. But that didn’t stop the old guy from telling stories from his long life through the digital media. To the thrill of his fans. Obviously internet communities are great places for seniors to fend off loneliness and to keep themselves in touch with a world that might physically be less approachable than in their youth. More power to them!

A classic film from 2014

I just had a look at the classic Epic 2014 film. It´s been a few years since we first saw the future media preditions depicted in the film, and alot of the stuff is already happening. It’s pretty interesting, but could have been executed with a bit more speed. The 8 minutes could be cut down to 4. But it is about time to make a new forecast anyway. It does seem like things are moving fast in the media world these days.

http://mccd.udc.es/orihuela/epic/

War general in a fun park

Yesterday Copenhagen Consulting Company invited friends and costumers to an event in the fun park tivoli in Copenhagen. On stage were three speakers who attracted a large crowd from the danish business scene. Lars Kolind author and former CEO of Oticon- the brain behind “the spaghetti organization”.  Jørgen Vig Knudstop CEO and turn around mastermind of LEGO and Svenn Dam - very exposed media personality who is now behind the islandic free morning newspaper to be launched this fall. The war between the free news papers is escalating and it looks like there is a regular bloodbath coming up. Finally the media industry is realizing that it is about time to distribute news for free. Dam is very ambitious with the launch of “Nyhedsavisen”. Tabloid format which readers will receive on the doormat before 7 in the morning, the newspaper has no political affiliation and the paper is expected to have 1 mio readers and be the mostly read printed media from day 1. A cooperation with the danish mail service should secure access to all mailboxes. There is no doubt Svenn Dam is business man to be taken seriously. But he is not weighed down by the human factor. “We are a business, we are not here to save the democracy” as the war general says. Backed up by the islandic financial warriors.

www.cococo.dk

Keep it coming Murdoch!

Why would anybody want to waste shelf space with annoying plastic dvd’s? Media-giant Rupert Murdoch is now behind a new ”download-to-own” on demand film service. News Corp is opening the sale october this year. Since News Corp owns My Space, the hundred million users will be targeted by the new film service. As shown by mainly iTunes, people are (relatively) willing to buy rather than illegally download music if it is easily accessible online. It just took the music industry to long to act on this. Luckily it looks like Hollywood and Murdoch has a more rapid approach.

Youtube is a riot

I am having such a laugh over stuff on Youtube.com these days. All the crazy user generated content is cracking me up. Take fx. Lynne and Tessa. Two teenage girls from Frankfurt who have taken the popular teen concept, “singing infront of the mirror” to the ultimative level. They do their little choreography infront of a webcam and BANG, thousands of people watch it on the internet. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XM3WW84Xvdc I hope they are actually thinking about producing merchandise fast. Then there is also the classic of how to open a beer the scandinavian way. Watched by almost 400.000 people. Thomas Madsen-Mygdal is doing what we have all been doing since the age of 12 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zG4ztixR2KM 

Another personal favorite is the conversation between Britney Spears and now hubby Kevin F. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LB84A3zcmVo  What in the world have those two been smoking? Huh!?? HUH!???