Colin Charles Agenda

So, I just came back from watching Star Trek, which I believe premiered tonight. I’m by no means a Trekkie, but I think the movie was great — you don’t need to be a die-hard fan, to enjoy the show.

Some friends of mine, had already seen the movie last week, as it was available for friends and family of the screening company. Both @mikefoong and @thechannelc didn’t notice the Nokia phone quite early on in the film.

But they did, this time around. Coincidentally, Nokia did sponsor the screening.

Does the mind play tricks when it comes to branding? I know most of the James Bond films have Sony-Ericsson phones there. I distinctly noticed the Nokia, but then again, maybe I always notice phones.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about business models and new media with a specific focus on verticals. I’m passionate about the open source movement, and have been involved with free software since the mid-90’s. In fact, I’ve earned my crust, all these years, thanks to open source, so I have no complaints there!

Anyway, lets talk about new media. I’m thinking specifically around podcasts, video podcasts, and even online magazines.

Online magazines

We’ve seen the demise of LinMagAU (regularly hit Slashdot, when it was running), and even the MyOSS Magazine, all labours of love. In this space, I think the most successful magazine that sits online today, is Linux Weekly News (LWN). And they do it, thanks to having a business model – affordable subscriptions (USD$5/month), or group subscriptions.

Podcasts/Video podcasts

I think one of the most successful podcasts, is the now defunct LugRadio. So popular, they even managed to create a conference around it (LugRadio Live!).

That seemed to run on pure love, with sponsors for hosting. I don’t recall any ads, and I think they did it for the fun of it. Now if you search for “Linux” in the iTunes Podcast directory, there are just under 150 related podcasts (and video podcasts, maybe), that have Linux or an open source connotation in them.

Their quality varies. Some aren’t even updated any longer. One of the most successful FLOSS podcasts, that have a business model behind it, seems to be FLOSS Weekly (part of the whole twit.tv army that Leo Laporte has). They have advertising on the TWiT network, and you can support the network via donations (one time contribution, $2/mo, $5/mo, or $10/mo recurring). This stuff works via Paypal, and I can’t imagine the $2/month recurring option makes so much sense (considering Paypal fees that go with it). Plus you can buy some merchandise (something you can do, when you’re established).

Something that has recently caught my eye, is the Ubuntu Podcast. Its a video podcast, they accept Paypal donations. It also seems like a labour of love.

Hosting

Media (audio, and video files aren’t small) hosting and delivery isn’t cheap. The TwIT network makes use of CacheFly, and they’re not cheap, though they seem to have a reliable, global CDN. The Ubuntu Podcast seem to use DreamHost, who must have affordable hosting options, as they host their videos on the site too.

And that’s the other thing – if you’re doing something in the open source vertical, you better have multiple file formats. You want to provide audio files using MP3’s, yes, because people have iPod’s, and they might want to play it in their cars, but for the purists, you need to have OGG files too. That just about doubles your storage space. Think video, and you will start to cringe.

YouTube seems like a good hosting platform, with sensible CDNs, but you’ve got a 10-minute video clip limit (which might be a good thing). Blip.tv wants to help you monetise your video, however, getting video from them in Malaysia is a painful experience, so far. TWIST uses ustream.tv – I haven’t tested them out yet.

Business plans

A lot of labours of love, work for a while, but then die in time. It seems that unless you have a kosher business model, you’re not in it for the long haul. LWN and the TwIT network seem to have got it right – you need to get some kind of income, to defray the cost of doing business.

Advertising

Are most open source people blind to ads? I recently checked my Google Analytics account and found that no Linux users clicked on any of the ads on my blog. The Windows users were kinder than the Mac users, naturally. So Google AdSense might cover things like the cost of hosting, but its not exactly a business model.

Looking for sponsors might make some sense. I don’t know what the TwIT network rates are, but Jason Calacanis has This Week in Startups, and his rate is currently at:

Each commercial is $1,000 and you can purchase them in 10 week run by emailing sponsors@thisweekinstartups.com. All sponsors must be pre-approved and have groovy products like DNAMail and Ustream (our first two products).

This is a new show, and the projections are anywhere between 10,000 – 25,000 viewers in the first six months after it debuts. At a size of nearly 1GB for an 18 minute podcast, I wonder if that’s being kind?

So it comes down to finding sponsors, who believe in what you’re doing. And donations might work (it works for No Agenda with John C. Dvorak and Adam Curry, and it seems to work for the TwIT network of shows).

Subscriptions work, if you have premium content (LWN), that people can sample for free a week later.

So, what are the up front costs?

Quite simply:

• A good mic [for audio podcasts]
• A (cheap) video camera (Flipcams seem to work even these days) [for video podcasts]
• Hosting [this requires a lot of thought - remember that bandwidth isn't as luxurious all around the world]

It looks like there might be some time involved in post-production. The tools are available fairly easily, on most operating systems that you’re on (though I hear, iMovie on the Mac is about the best for video on the cheap).

And yes, I’ve not figured out where to host podcasts or video podcasts yet….

About a month ago, I was surfing the Net, reading my mail on GMail, and I spotted a smart ad by Kah Bintang telling me in a short span of words (in the top — sponsored links in GMail – or it might have been a sidebar link) that the new Hyundai Accent 2008 model was a 1.6L car, with a very reasonable price tag.

Normally, I am blind to ads, but the message itself was very captivating, so I bit, and clicked the link. I arrived at the 2008 Accent Home, quickly jumped to its specifications, was impressed by its price tag (compared to the Toyota Vios S that I was driving, this car beats it in many ways), and brought it up in conversation.

Conversation, you ask? Yes, conversation with my parents. I was telling them it might be a nice car to have, it comes with leather seats, etc. Within a month, I hadn’t realised they had ordered it, and the car arrived early last week, and they handed the keys over to me – an early birthday present. Nifty. Thanks!

But that’s not the point. I would have never even heard of this car, had it not been for the Google ad. Someone at Kah Bintang, that’s in charge of marketing/gathering sales/et al, know that your Google ad, definitely works. In fact, I think the ROI is greater – imagine paying a blogger to write a review, versus actually running Google ads?

If you know the person from Kah Bintang responsible for this, don’t hesitate to have them call me, I’d love to interview them about their forward thinking nature. And I wish I took a screenshot of the ad itself — I can’t seem to replicate it now!

The Proton Exora

In other news, today I was listening to mix.fm. I heard them present some fun fact, and then, they tied it in with an advert for the Proton Exora. Smart, I’ve seen them do this with Harvey Norman ads before, but that’s just usually with discounts — the fact that with the Exora, they made some effort to expand my knowledge, then lead me back in, it did seem interesting.

Of course, going to mix.fm’s website, I seem to be a tad disappointed. There has got to be a better way to display ads, no?

I’ve been noticing that more and more Starbucks outlets are not just having the “timezone” wireless access point any longer, but also having one named “Starbucks”. Timezone is available for free, without registration (except in KLCC’s concourse), however, the Starbucks AP is provided for by MOL AccessPortal.

They’re quite annoying. They make you watch an ad for 30 seconds, before granting you “free” Wifi (in exchange for some information).

The real problem? I run Flash Block in Firefox, and don’t see the ad playing! In fact, once that ad is done with, and you’re done registering (that seems to be a one-off process), you are shown a five-columned website, in where you see relevant information about Starbucks, however, there are three columns that are also blocked via Flask Block (the ads!).

Maybe I’m not the ads target market. Then again, browsers don’t come built-in with ad blockers, or flash blockers, so this probably doesn’t affect majority of the people showing up at Starbucks. I wonder how effective the 30 second ad actually even is?

For folk going to Starbucks, its a win all the way. Two access points, double the chance of having faster Internet. For those going to Coffee Bean? Sigh, Airzed, you’re losing out… For those in other countries where Starbucks makes you pay for the Internet (I’m looking at you America [t-mobile] and Australia [horrendously expensive Telstra]) – you’ve found another reason to move :-)

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On another note, I’ve noticed that from February 1 – April 13 2009, Starbucks is running a loyalty program, that rewards you after buying seven tall cups of any beverage – you get the eight one free. Starbucks isn’t normally into these loyalty goodies, so I’m guessing they want to keep you loyal during the down economy (besides, coffee at the mamak is averaging RM1.50-1.80 now).

An online survey (500 Malaysians, all online already, and in total, it was 26,000 amongst the countries surveyed) by The Nielsen Company, showed that Malaysians ranked fifth amongst 52 countries for being digital media consumers. The stats (with more from the NST):

• Malaysians ranked third globally for those that spent more than 20 hours a week watching streamed or downloaded content from the Internet – translation, Malaysians bittorrent a lot, or are in love with YouTube. Video in Malaysia is big, clearly.
• 53%/41% played(streamed, even)/downloaded video/movie/audio/game content online in December 2008. Translation? The ones with 1mbps broadband lines are streaming YouTube content… How about a local video sharing site, or a local site with content?
• 85% got on their computers, while only 77% turned on their TV sets – translation, if you’re not advertising online or your media buyers don’t know how to deal with it, its time to find new ones
• 4% download movies/movie clips more than 30 times in a month – that means about 7.5 TV series that they’re following, or less, but with movies thrown in – eep, no advertising seen
• 8% download music or other audio files more than 30 times – since there’s no iTunes music store in Malaysia, its probably entirely illegal content

So its skewed. With a broadband penetration rate of about 18% only, they asked the choir, and the results aren’t too surprising. I predict we’ll see more people online in the results of the June/July survey, as we face this economic slowdown, and more people buckle up, stay at home, and still live their lives.

I’ve been meaning to write my thoughts down on this for a while. Its on RSS feeds, and mobile readers (two separate issues). Spurred, largely today, thanks to a post titled: You can’t afford to lose mobile readers. The author is right – you can’t.

Mobile readers
While I don’t think sites need to be optimised for 800×600, largely because I think we’ve moved from the days on the Web where this was a necessity (what’s next, going back to the colour safe web palette? ;-)), I do think a mobile alternative to a site should be available.

WordPresss has plugins – the author mentions MobilePress and WPTouch. I’ve never used either, but I use the WordPress Mobile Edition by Alex King – in time, I’ll probably play with the other WordPress plugins.

Its nice to know that sites like Tumblr just have a mobile version available right there.

Note the bit about Flash. Most (if not all) Nuffnang ads tend to be flash based. You’ve just lost some ad readership.

RSS feeds
My pet peeve? Partial/excerpt RSS feeds. This is just plain silly. If you think people are going to click on to go and visit your site to view advertisements, you cannot be further from correct. If I’m savvy enough to be reading RSS feeds, I am almost certainly going to be using some form of ad blocker – if not via Adblock Plus, via some other method to not see ads.

If you’re worried about losing ad revenue, consider RSS feed ads. I don’t know what the click-through-ratio is, but I’m seeing more and more of them pop up nowadays. They’re a minor annoyance, I don’t block them, but I don’t actually click on them, either.

And why are partial RSS feeds bad? Because if I’m reading it on my mobile device (say, the E71 or an iPod Touch), I’m very unlikely to want to click to open another window and load your blog entry. I’ll just skip it. Skipping it is worse than showing full feeds…

Conclusions

• Have a mobile optimised site
• Have full RSS feeds. Run ads via Google if you need to. If your service of choice doesn’t support it, badger them
• If you plan on posting lots of photos, ensure that your mobile theme resizes them to something more sensible (then again, posting original sized JPGs, and having 20 of them load in a page is play stupidity – if you’re lazy to resize it, use a service like Flickr)

More thoughts? Share them in the comments.

A great, modern way, to promote a TV series. [spooks] code 9 allows you to upload an image, and play a “game”, that is generated into a movie (a short clip). It takes all of under two minutes to do, and the whole application itself (Flash based) will take about five minutes of your time.

Personalisation, has been taken to the next level. The video below will last for three months, after which all I have are the screenshots. Give it a twirl, you might enjoy it.

my ID; a rendered me (as a Caucasian woman, quite possibly :P)

I like the idea of allowing you to email, or upload to Facebook, or embedding it to your own site. I like how you “play a role” in the mission. You have choices, before the final movie is made. All in all, good job BBC.

This is a busy week for the MCMC. They’ve just announced that Mobile Number Portability (MNP), will now be a reality (a rather delayed reality. There is a FAQ available. Key things to note:

• Don’t terminate your mobile number before porting – only active numbers can be ported
• If you’re contractually bound (12 months, etc – such offers apparently can exist, with incentives to consumers) porting will be denied (unless you break your contract, I guess)
• Prepaid users beware – all existing credit doesn’t transfer over – so use it all up!
• A request to port, therefore, is notice to your current provider to terminate subscription
• Porting can take between 5-10 business days (utter bollocks, this kind of thing should take hours)
• You may get suspended international roaming during porting, so beware

Its about time. It will only cost a minuscule RM25 to change the provider. Customer service will clearly have to improve (this would be the sole reason I move off a network, IMHO)

A long time ago, Adam (017 – now owned by Maxis) used to offer “free calls” to 017 numbers, for users on a postpaid plan; plus they had the cheapest prepaid options. I was a heavy phone user in those days – it was a long time ago, during the Nokia 5110 days (so late 90s?).

Wonder how many new service offerings like this will crop up? Optus has free 20 minute calls to Optus customers (Yes Time, from 8pm-midnight), 3 has free 3-to-3 calls for 10 minutes anytime of the day, and so on. But knowing what service provider people are on, is key. This is the main reason I carried 2 SIM cards (and phones) in Melbourne.

Well, here’s to saying goodbye to 012/017 being Maxis, 013/019 being Celcom, and 016 being DiGi.

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I’m sitting here at a talk about the mobile industry now, and its all mostly focused on an overview of the mobile platform(s). Its basic (for me, but from the wide range of attendees, I think they got a lot out of it)… Location based services, APIs, Java, XHTML, all the joyous buzzwords. There’s plenty to do in the mobile industry, in terms of content creation in Malaysia (and Australia, fwiw). Lots of sites don’t have mobile specific sites, and scrolling, etc. is a pain.

Wild idea being thrown around in my head… Content creation isn’t complicated. At the last government event I attended, apparently, MOSTI has got lots of money to throw around. Some of the amusing things people got 5-figure funding for, included a guide to Malaysian beaches (not mobile related) available. Smells to me like a weekend hack for easy money.

Bandwidth is a problem… Metered bandwidth per kilobyte/megabyte isn’t something many in Malaysia think about (anyone in Australia knows the pain of this – but limitations make us present content better, IMHO). Its expensive. But I think this is a problem that will fix itself, as mobile data becomes more ubiquitous.

Then comes how to monetise this whole shindig. An interstitial does not work – they are annoying, they are a waste of bandwidth, and Mowser tried them and I believe removed them because they were largely a failure.

Mobile AdWords? Google doesn’t believe there is a market for this in Malaysia (or maybe anywhere else outside of the US). Its chicken-and-egg – till a market is built, Google won’t enter it, I’d guess.

Banners? The Star has it on their mobile site. They don’t have any public information as to how successful they’ve been. But this seems like the strongest option, currently – use an ad system powered by Slash, go out to advertisers and create unique tiny banners for them. However, this goes beyond the weekend hack idea… and that just becomes too much work.

Location based services tied into a mobile website. This could work… My social life is largely unplanned (professional life on the other hand is driven by calendars, that SMS me of appointments, even). Say I’m around the MidValley Shopping Mall, its 12:10am, and I decide I have time to kill. Access the site, it figures that there’s activity at MidValley at that time: bowling, The Dark Knight in Gold Class starting in 10 minutes, etc. Book a ticket through the site, get a commission? Banner ad for bowling, so its a “promoted” link/sponsored link, over the regular stuff (again, breaks the weekend hack rule).

If data is always on, coupled with your location, if you’re near a Burger King, it might blast you with ads saying “bring this coupon in, buy a meal, get a free ice cream”. Bluetooth based advertisers, beware – always on data+location will kick you in the nads.

OK, talk’s over, time to be social! Looks like we won’t have the Google talk after all… Thanks again to Daniel for organising this…