YouTube signals the start of tailored TV content?

When YouTube was bought for $1.65 billion in 2006 many people were shocked by the amount Google were willing to pay for the video streaming site. Now, over 6 years on it's starting to look increasingly more like a bargain.  YouTube has now launched a trial which allows users to pay for individual channels on their site. There is a small number of channels available in the pilot scheme (http://www.youtube.com/channels/paid_channels) with prices beginning at just 64 pence a month.

Whilst other companies such as Netflix, Lovefilm, Now TV and Hulu already allow users to pay for Internet streamed content, YouTube has taken a slightly different approach. Rather than the one cost all-in subscription offered by the aforementioned companies, YouTube is letting the user pick and choose individual channels to tailor their viewing experience.

I personally like the 'buffet' approach where the user can select the individual channels that they want to watch rather than paying for lots of channels that might not be any good. I also see that in the long term the quality of the content on these channels will improve as the individual channels will be competing more for the user subscriptions.

Whilst this all works well on a personal computer, it will be good to see this approach move into consumer's living rooms and be available seamlessly on television sets. At the moment there are a few options such as Google TV, Apple TV and Roku but, whilst these are good, no-one has really created the ultimate tailored user experience. However, I do think this will simply be a matter of time.

The Price of Fame

In January of this year Facebook implemented a charge for those users who wanted to contact Facebook's founder, Mark Zuckerberg. The fee was a staggering £61.00 ($100) just to send him a message. The obvious reason for Facebook doing this was to stop Mr Zuckerberg from being spammed by members of the Facebook community....or was it? It now appears that Facebook is looking at rolling this out for other users of the social network who fall into the 'famous' category.

Using a special algorithm (which is a secret) Facebook will charge users different amounts depending on how famous the person is that they are trying to contact. For example, to contact diver Thomas Daley users will have to pay £10.68 and for comedian Miranda Hart it will be just 71p. It's not clear how the algorithm will work but at a guess it will take into consideration the number of messages the user already receives and perhaps how bigger following (in terms of friends and likes) they already have.

There are two ways of looking at why Facebook might be introducing this. Firstly, it might be because they are looking to protect their famous users, who are most probably being inundated with spam messages. This might in turn encourage famous users to promote the delights of Facebook and potentially stop a celebrity exodus to Twitter. Secondly, it might just be another revenue stream for the social media giant. Only Facebook will really know how many messages are sent to famous people and what the fee could potentially bring in for the company. Without knowing the statistics it is really difficult to tell, it could be a combination of both.

Currently Facebook have implemented this as a test scheme in the UK and have not announced whether it will roll it out across the social network. Only time will tell to see if Facebook deem it to be a success, either by making money or keeping superstars happy.

Get Microsoft Office on Subscription

Microsoft have taken a new step by offering their Office applications via a subscription based service. Users can take out the subscription for either £7.99 per month or £79.99 per year. For that they will receive Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, Publisher and Access as well as 20 GB of SkyDrive (Microsoft's Cloud based storage) and 60 minutes of Skype calls each month to over 40 countries. Not only will users be able to get all this but they will be able to use it on 5 PCs or Macs within a household. All-in-all this looks like a very decent offer, especially when you consider that  Office Professional, which contains all of the same applications will set you back £389.99.

Microsoft have faced stiff competition from free or cheaper alternatives from the likes of Google and Open Office which may be their reasons behind the offer. Either way it's certainly a good option to have and may just tempt a few 'ex-users' back.

You can get the new version of Office on subscription from Microsoft's website.

What's up with WhatsApp?

WhatsApp is messaging app which allows users to send text, video, audio and images across platforms. Once download, the app then uses the user's existing address book to populate the list of contacts within the WhatsApp app. The app uses the list of contacts to identify the user's contacts who also use WhatsApp.

Following scrutiny by Dutch and Canadian regulators the WhatsApp messaging app has been criticised for the way it handles phone number privacy. The main issue highlighted in the investigation is that once the app imports the contacts from the user's address book it doesn't then remove any contacts who don't use WhatsApp. By retaining these contacts this contravenes Canadian and Dutch privacy laws which states that information may only be retained for so long as it is required for the fulfilment of an identified purpose.

The collaborative investigation has reportedly led to WhatsApp making changes to the existing app including the encryption of messages. It also reports that WhatsApp have committed to make further changes which should help to better protect users 'personal information'.

A report of the findings can be found over on the Office of the Privacy Commissionaire of Canada's website.

What's Vine all about?

Last week Twitter launched a new video sharing service named Vine (Twitter actually acquired Vine). The idea of the new service is that users are required to record a short 6 second video which they can then share with others.....it's very much like the video version of Twitter which is limited to 140 characters of text. Videos can also be integrated into tweets, as demonstrated by Twitter's CEO Dick Costolo.

Having had a quick play around with Vine's new app it's fun, simple and I can certainly see a lot of people being very creative with it. You don't need to have a Twitter account to sign-up and you can share your creations with friends on both Twitter and Facebook (Facebook have since blocked the Vine app from accessing its site on the basis that Vine is replicating one of its services.....sounds like sour grapes.....ahem).  I think for many existing Twitter users it will be a nice way to enhance their tweets but whether it will take off in its own right remains to be seen.

Vine is currently available for free as an app on iPhone and iPod Touch.

What's wrong with Flexible Working?

If you ask people what the term 'Flexible Working' meant to them you might receive several different answers. For some it might be the inclusion of flexitime or duvet days. To me it means the ability to work remotely from home (or somewhere else for that matter).

During some recent flooding and subsequent road closures my daily commute time increased three- fold. I'm usually lucky in that on a good day my daily commute is around 20 minutes. Living around Oxford you soon realise it doesn't take a huge problem for the roads to quickly clog up, a problem that I imagine is shared by many towns and cities across the country. It was during this redundant time sat in a traffic jam I started to think more about flexible working. Flexible Working certainly isn't a new concept but it's probably fair to say it isn't really common place. There are disadvantages to working remotely but there also huge advantages so it's interesting to see that Flexible Working isn't more widely adopted.

Starting with the disadvantages of flexible working here are a few of the key points:

• For many people going to work provides social stimulation. Being able to make small talk with colleagues is a very big advantage of working in an office and is often not realised until employees decide to work from home.
• Working from home can cost the employee more. Working from home essentially means you will be paying to heat and light your home when you wouldn't normally as well as using your own electricity to run your equipment. This will increase your utility bills.
• Motivation can be a real issue when working from home. A home is a home and not an office and can be filled with many distractions. It is important that employees can work comfortably from home without any real distractions in order to be focused on their job.
• Physical room can also be a disadvantage. If an employee does decide to work from home then it is important to create a physical divide between a work area and personal area. It is not uncommon for employees to setup a dedicated working area or even turn an entire room into an office. For some this may result in the need for an additional room in their house if space is limited.

Some of the key advantages of flexible working include:

• You don't lose the social side completely. There are many new technologies and social enterprise networks (most of which you can now get for free) which allow people to stay connected to one another both in terms of chat but also visually.
• A reduction in commuting time.  Depending on where you would flexibly decide to work from your commuting time could be non-existent providing more personal time. Gaining an extra hour or two a day can make a huge difference to people's lives giving them time to do more things personally. There is also a potentially large cost saving in not having to spend time travelling.
• You get your own office exactly how you like it. Whether you choose to go and work remotely from a local coffee shop or at home, you get to decide. The employee ultimately gets to choose the office setup that suits them and create a space which they are most comfortable working in.
• How many times have you missed a parcel delivery been too short of time to put the washing on at the end of the working day. Working from home means you can benefit from the small things such as being at home to sign for parcels, put your washing in at lunch time or being able to eat at home. These area only small things but overall it contributes to a much better work-personal life balance.

So why hasn't Flexible Working worked out? There are several reasons why Flexible Working isn't much more widespread. For some Flexible Working simply isn't practical, for example it's purely not possible for a production line worker to work remotely at the moment. Secondly, I think that for some it's purely not an option. Ultimately the businesses that people work for dictate whether people can work from home or not. For many of these businesses it's often not a consideration. Thirdly, I think for many people the disadvantage of not being able to physically see their colleagues each day outweighs any of the advantages. Finally, I think that the concept of Flexible Working has been around a fair amount of time and isn't a new idea. Unfortunately the concept of Flexible Working didn't have the supporting infrastructure which meant that working from home wasn't that easy and people had to have extra phone lines installed in their houses. As a result for those who tried working in this way it was more of a pain than going into the office.
I personally think that we will see a big increase in Flexible Working as organisations look to reduce overheads and make themselves more flexible. There are huge advantages to both employers as well as employees to flexible working. Today it is not unusual for people to have broadband connections which run into the 10's of megabits per second download speeds, something that never existed during the conception of Flexible Working. This ever improving infrastructure allows people to take advantage of remote meeting tools such as Citrix GoToMeeting where you can meet with colleagues and clients face-to-face as well as share screens, VOIP (Voice Over IP) phone lines such as those provided by Gradwell which eliminates the need for another dedicated phone line being installed into an employees home and makes it easier to work places other than just a home. We are also seeing an increase in social enterprise networks such as Yammer, Socialcast and  Jive which allows employees to remain connected with each other and to a certain point mitigates the disadvantage of lack of social stimulation which can be lost in flexible working. Ultimately it will be employers that dictate whether people are able to work flexibly but once more of the advantages are realised I think it will become much more commonplace.

...When did I decide to buy this?

As Apple are set to announce the iPad Mini (or iPad Air depending on what you read) I started to think about who is actually going to buy one? I can't imagine people that already have an iPad will be persuaded to part with their hard earned cash for one. I also doubt that iPhone (and Samsung Galaxy SIII users) see the iPad Mini as a big enough differentiation from their existing smartphones to justify buying the tablet? This then got me thinking, I recently bought the iPhone 5. When did I decide to buy one and why? There was nothing wrong with my iPhone 4 and actually it had done me very well. The features on the iPhone 5 are good but there isn't anything I can't do without or anything I use day-to-day that I couldn't do on my iPhone 4. I feel like I've been really sucked in by Apple's marketing.


Apple generally like to keep their new products very secret. They don't announce new product event launches until about a week before and then the product itself is usually available a very short period of time after. Whether this is Apple's way of not giving competitors much time to respond or keeping consumers interested enough in the time required to purchase the product, or both, it seems to work rather well. Even when some of Apple's more recent products have appeared on the Internet before the launch (iPhone 4, iPhone 5 and potentially the iPad Mini) it hasn't stopped them selling well. Perhaps this has happened just because Apple are having to produce so many units it's impossible to keep them all secret or perhaps this is actually very clever marketing by Apple and keeps the rumours and news stories flowing about the imminent arrival of a new product. Whether Apple have intentionally leaked information to the world about new products or not it appears to have the same effects. Anticipation of the product begins to grow, users start holding out on the rivals products until they have seen what Apple have to release and before you know it everyone seems to want one because they are sold out and therefore pretty exclusive.

So what made my buy my iPhone 5? I ordered it and then received it on the day it was released. I hadn't even seen one in real life up to that point and I wouldn't have done this with other products of similar value and certainly not one that I would use on such a regular basis. Was I sucked into the whole Apple marketing phenomenon? Simply, yes. However I don't think I would have if I previously hadn't owned an iPhone. I think what sealed the purchase was the trust in the Apple brand. I like the design, build and interactivity of their products. My iPhone 4 lasted longer than any other phone I have previously owned and it was dropped on a number of occasions. It's these same reasons that keep me looking out for what's coming next and then gets me sucked in again. I personally won't be rushing to the Apple Store to get myself an Apple Mini but I'm sure there will be plenty of people that do. I actually think that on this occasion Apple won't be too bothered that I don't, I think they have another target in mind. I think that Apple are targeting the education market by offering something more affordable. If Apple can get people buying and using the iPad Mini from a younger age there's every chance that they will be a loyal customer.....just like I was with my iPhone.