44 posts tagged “rxdxt”

A friend of mine shared a new company with me (new to me I guess) Check out www.popmorphic.com . Their focus is on music videos currently, but I think there is something rather magical about this offering.  - I'm going to learn more - but my 1st thought was that we could use this to allow audiences of something like BBC Archive, to mashup or recombine videos into new elements - similar to a concept called Creative Archive, which has been drifting around for a while..

Products like garage band and this bring amazingly powerful creative tools to the masses.  Just like recording technology did at the beginning of my career.  The creation of the home studio brought us a flood of mediocre new age demo tapes -but it also brought us some amazing creativity, like Beck & Moby in the pop world. Personally I love the idea that technology can be a facilitator to bringing more people to the creative process.  Given the chaos in our world right now, this can only be a good thing - I can't wait for the outcome.

Thoughts anyone?

Search and Content Discovery

• Richard Titus
• 26 Sep 08, 2:00 PM

A few months ago, I gave one of the keynotes at our annual BBC Future Media & Technology conference.

I ended my speech, which ranged from an overview of the evolution of user interaction models on technology to cloud computing and the semantic web, with a picture of the Google search window...

...and the statement:

All this innovation, and yet this is the best we can currently do for content discovery: brute force text search. We have to do better if we want to evolve.

Okay, it was for dramatic effect, but I believed then and believe now that I was absolutely accurate.

Search is one of the darkest backwaters of technological and experience development (particularly on the internet.) Since then, I've been thinking a lot about how we, the BBC, can improve search on our site, and how we can drive innovation around search in general in the industry.

Earlier this month, there were a couple of really interesting launches in the world of search.

First, Yahoo! released Boss, which is a completely open, virtually limit-free search API. What's interesting about this is that it's a brilliant defensive move against Google's dominance.

Yahoo! is clearly Number Two, but since it's a marginally zero sum game in terms of monetisable search traffic, it needs a different way to take market share. "Embrace and extend", indeed.

This was followed almost immediately by Cuil, a Xoogle (ex-Google employee company - more about that later) which launched to much fanfare, and mostly collapsed into a mess of unmet audience expectations - always risky.

Frankly, I haven't played with it enough to make a decision, but it wasn't nearly as compelling as the rest of those mentioned in this post.

I was lucky enough to join Jane Weedon, our controller of business development, on a trip to Asia and to the USA to do some learning about small, young innovative companies and market trends.

In the realm of "oh my god, that looks like rocket science", we file Viewdle. Essentially, it's an image search engine with facial recognition software.

Born in the Ukraine out of what I suspect was a largely military development effort, the technology is funded by Anthem, a SoCal VC and frankly, after a thirty minute demo, I was blown away.

See for yourself at reuters.viewdle.com/searchm. I'm keen to spend more time on this, and feel like there's an unknown number of ways to leverage this.

One of my favourite meetings from Asia was Naver, the Korean search giant owned by the largest online gaming portal in Korea (another interesting space for a blog).

With near 80% market share in Korea (Google has less than 4%!), 16m people visit Naver every day. They have managed to capture and data cache the majority of Korean language content on the internet.

Now, to my non-Korean-speaking western eye, this is a confusing, hard-to-understand site, but there are some really keen innovations here:

• They mix different kinds of results into an answer, presenting only relevant ones
• Their scrap tool (sort of like social bookmarking à la digg or delicious) allows users to copy parts of one blog or site onto another, helping to grow the interconnectedness of the interweb and building relevance
• Behind Naver is an engine of editorial staff who review
• They have a Google Answers- or Yahoo! Knowledge-like offer which helps to identify new subjects and content to deep dive on
• Other than the aforementioned editorial staff, which is outsourced to low-cost centres like China, the company is run by a team of just over 80 people who are amazingly innovative and agile
• They also have JR Naver kids' search

Interestingly, US-based Mahalo lists Naver as its biggest inspiration. They have duplicated the Naver editorial model, but built it up into an amazing engine of content discovery and improvement.

Mahalo creates pages about selected subjetcs using its amazing editorial/ curation team which is distributed around the world . Their page curators, who come from all walks of life - professors, doctors, homemakers - create the pages for a nominal sum (under fifty quid) per page. It's a model similar to Wikipedia, but managed (ie, you have to demonstrate your skills and you are evaluated regularly to assess the quality of your work).

It is an interesting alternative to the approach taken by Daylife and others (including the BBC with its Topic Pages - previously blogged here) where pages are produced automatically using search queries to find and aggregate content. This is obviously cheaper and computers can find much more content than human editors ever could. But Mahalo's pages have a hand-built quality that can only be produced by skilled editors and well thought out workflows.

Co-founder and CEO (and a long-time friend of mine) Jason Calcanis talks about how this makes his content more "trusted"; which I think is a really interesting concept.

His new line, which I'll repeat here, is that trust is one of the most important currencies/assets in the digital future. Frankly, I'd put it up there with metadata.

Digital has a function of changing the nature and assets in the future. Attention, data and trust, rather than cash and inventory: brave new world, indeed.

Mahalo is a Sequoia investment. I was lucky enough, with some colleagues from the BBC and Sony, to attend a Sequoia open day in SF. It's essentially a beauty parade by the VC of their best and brightest (and most relevant) investments for larger strategic or VIP friends and family.

One of the most compelling things they showed us was SearchMe, which I was quite impressed by. Essentially, it's a combination of a new search engine (built by Xooglers) with a new, Flash-based interface.

Now, the interface borrows heavily from Apple's interaction pattern library and it's a bit clunky for browsing, but it is quite striking.

I find that it's also really good at predicting what I'm looking for, with a few exceptions. I see pieces of the old snap search engine (the creative director, Jason Fields, just joined us at the BBC) as well as X1 (long may it live - one of the most useful tools ever).

Frankly, however, it really shone when they loaded up the Searchme Ap on my iPhone. Oh MY GOD! WOW. Extremely compelling search on a phone (it replaces the internal search and I don't miss it a bit.)

I'm converted, though they need some slightly better browse mechanisms (see what Apple did in the newest version of iTunes.)

Cuil has some interesting visual metaphors as well: the blue type, minimalist and frankly ugly and not very usable Google UX seems to be crumbling!

I really think that the next two years will be defined by those of us who can really raise the efficiency of discovery (both targeted - ie, I know what I want, and browsing/snacking - ie, I'm looking for something stimulating).

When you marry solid data and indexing (everyone forgets that Google's code base is almost ten years old), useful new datapoints (facial recognition, behavioral targeting, historical precedent, trust, etc) with a compelling and useful user experience, we may see some changes in the market leadership of search.

Richard Titus is Acting Head of User Experience & Design for FM&T.

Just installed new firefox - it's GREAT. such a better UX & Design, small tweaks (like the BIG back arrows, adaptive text, add-in buttons) it's quite well done.  IT seems faster too.

Actually find myself reverting back to firefox from Safari because of this - haven't seen anyone else do a better analysis. Maybe I'll take a crack.

So I hosted an away day at the BBC for the entire User Experience & Design teams + a few extra's.  About 160 people in all. We had it at the Magic Circle, which I thought was quite appropriate - more and more User Experience seems to one part magic to two parts science; wrapped in artistry and a bit of luck.

I went 1st and ranted on my favorite points lately:
1 -  The fact that the BBC needs to sort out its digital content strategy.
2 - The fact that we (the BBC) have no real relationship as a brand with audiences in the post CBBC pre BBC News demographic (that's 11-24 for those of you who cares).
3 - A thing I call the public service platform, where I think the BBC should re-order a bunch of its digital works/technology/services to provide platforms for public & private organizations, including startups, to build businesses on top of its digital services.

You'll here a bunch more about the latter one as these three feed most of what I'm thinking about for us for the next year.

We had two external thinkers Mat Hunter, from Ideo (see photo) who was great, and Clive Grinyer from Cisco (formerly from Orange).  We talked a lot about the evolution of product & service development into design, a bit about how user centered design & a touch of naivety place designers (in the broadest sense of things) in a great place to design and develop products.  In essence, our disconnection from business or technology limitations makes us focus 1st on what the audience wants, 2nd on how they will use it - then we manage back the technical and business issues from there.

Interestingly we talked a lot about the issues facing the BBC, one of the  topics I sent people away to think about was "How can we make the BBC the most creative place to work? - which isnt' it now?"

- most of what we got back was the usual (though likely truer at the current bbc) more training, more tools, more time to be creative, more people...

But most interesting to me was that we heard, from people on the periphery of my team; more leadership, more clear decision making (they actually said  benevolent dictatorships!) and in private afterwards someone said to me, they want more people like me ! While flattered I feel like there's something here in general. People want a leader who makes decisions, quick, concise, and effective ones. They want clarity of purpose, and they want to be given the time, space  & resources to get on with executing that vision.

UX&D is very empowered these days - bit of a change management infection starting to spread... - I hope.

Which cultural festivals will you be attending this summer?

My Kids summer garden party, Glastonbury and maybe, if I'm lucky, Burning Man... 

So I've given three BIG presentations this week. One to the entire future media team at the BBC about the future circa 2012. One today for a group of Sr. management consulting strategists - and one virtually to a group of lawyers about environmental film making.  I have to say, the the one made me the most nervous was the BBC one, it's always tough to present to 1000 of your peers when they HAVE to be there. I always find audiences who've paid a grand to see you are much more cooperative.

It went well, I'll post the presentation online someplace this weekend if you're interested post here and tell me.  I also went to a visionary - leadership conference hosted by Ad Network Tradedoubler. I have to say it was GREAT!

My favourite two speakers were Richard Eyre, who in addition to making lots of witty "Long Tail" references made some great connections between the ethos of Punk Rock and blogging/social networking.. Great stuff.

Then Ray Hammond, who I personally adore, jumped up and explained that he was from the future..  It's a fun schtick and I thought he had a few interesting things to say, particularly I LOVED his simple summary of the principals businesses and entrepreneurs (ok i'm paraphrasing) need to pay attention to in regards to the next 25 years

I The most important principals influencing our future - according to Ray Hammond

1 - world population explosion: 2030 = 8.2 billion, 2050 = 9-12 biillion

2 - climate change: extreme weather wreaks havoc on economy

3 - energy crisis: oil used in plastic and petrochemicals is 8% the remainder is burned for combustion. The 8% is worth, economically speak as much as the 92% !

4 - globalization: ethical/sustainable is a god thing. 2 billion new consumers protect economic opportunity!

5 - extend & prevent: medical technology, dna profiling, nano medicine.

6 - accelerating and exponential technology development . Moores law has shrunk from 18 to 12 months, 2030 computers 1 billion times more powerful..

7 - mobile, embedded, implanted, personalized virtual device, avatar, phone replacement. Your interface with the world.

8 - the bottom billion, who have NO access to the above. Source of future war & terrorism

Heady stuff!!! But thank God I'm back from the future, I need to go to bed - I'm exhausted from all this time travel.

So Chris Anderson has given me my new favorite quote of the week.

I spend a lot of time wrestling with both the power of Social Media and with the inane time-wasting most of it encourages..  I sense there's something powerful there, but wrestle with Wisdom of Crowds, vampire-kiss-of-facebook-uselessness.   Jury is still out on what/why this is important long-term. We all know I agree with him on the long tail niche content theme - won't belabor it here.

One interesting stat lately. In looking at the behaviors of our younger demo at the BBC, we've noticed that email is primarily the domain of old people (i.e. +25) employed, higher earning and retired.

Young people use IM, facebook/myspace. They think email is quaint.. and useless. Maybe this is an age thing? maybe Facebook is the new eudora ?

BTW I'm relatively intrigued by Twhirl - which I use in conjunction with Twitter & Friend Feed. It's rapidly making me like FF more - especially as I integrate it everywhere else - facebook, here, etc.

I'm with Michael Arrington - I want unity of my messaging & social networks. But with Avatar control... like personalities. Just like a human, I want to have different expressions of myself while unifying my control of those selves and selective publishing of their content..  My facebook, myspace, blog, linkedin & even a few others you might not know about selectively share pieces of me with groups of my associates/friends/acquaintances and random people I don't even know. I think that's wonderful and I wouldn't change the different aspects of me I share with them:
- Linkedin says highly successful serial tech entrepreneur with a big Rolodex
- Facebook says adventure sports loving father of two
- Myspace says .com filmmaker possibly confused about age appropriate content/behavior ( I haven't touched it since my last sabbatical)

None of these is problematic until you try and link my myspace to my linkedin with no filters or controls.  there's lots of people messing about with solutions to this headache, but many of them miss the point. the issues are:
- I want to enter my data once. (cue open id)
- I want to update once and change everywhere (ibid, maybe)
- I want to control where and when I publish my data..  (creative commons?)
- and to whom

Lots of partials, no full solution. Feels like a start up for somebody, but not me - I have a big British website that needs lots of sorting out and thinking about.

So I had dinner with my dear friend, and Lawrence Lessig's mortal enemy, Chris Castle last night at Benares.  First off, that is definitely one of the best nouveau Indian restaurants in history... amazing meal and fascinating conversation. He's quite active - opposed to Lawrence of course - on the Orphan works/copyrights.  Talking to him made the debate much more interesting to me - especially in consideration that my wife and I own quite a few copyrights between us.  His take on libraries and schools is quite interesting too - essentially free use for ANY non commercial use for works which were already public... but the catch is how to define libraries and museums and to avoid the GOOGLE MUSEUM locking up materials. 

Essentially the question is, how hard should people be made to work to find copyright owners, and should the lack of ability to find them make the works unusable.  When we made Who Killed the Electric Car? we had serious issues on this due to our desire to use some footage of which provenance was at best hazy. It's a very real issue in the world of digital where everything has potential permanence.  At the BBC, we think about this a lot vis a vis the Archive.  Many of the rights holders in some of that material would be quite hard to find or could actually be quite in need of compensation.  Personally, I come down in the middle some place: I think content should be able to be experienced, and that there should be simple ways to find/register copyrights as well as simple ways to set aside part of revenues for future claims.   But I don't think we should lock anything up in a vault. Vaults are cold dark places and frankly I'm claustrophobic.

So this a.m., since my foot is still quite swollen, I was drifting around the blogosphere and suddenly remembered I'd suggested going to Burning man with an old friend. The idea is recapturing momentum in my small brain. I think I'm going to go, I need a break, a solo break with 20,000 of my closest non-friends.. and a few close ones. My fear is that it's just a mid life crisis rearing its head - but optimistically I think I need some spiritual/mental space.

It could be a blast - given the right group of friends.. hmmm...

So I got an email today.. RTL has just launched their new website...

http://www.rtl.hu/

feels pretty similar to

http://www.bbc.co.uk

We were all quite flattered.