Colin Charles Agenda

Nokia World 2010 is happening today, and I got to watch snippets of the keynote via their live stream. I saw the demo from Anssi Vanjoki where he played a video, in full HD on all their screens. He was especially proud it did not happen via a computer in the back – it was live via the Nokia N8. It comes with a HDMI port. Note that many laptops don’t even come with a HDMI out (yet). So this is revolutionary right?

So I quickly asked on Twitter: Do you really watch movies out of your smartphone? If you do, isn’t the use case on it, rather than output to a TV?

I got some interesting answers, and lots of points to discuss. First, how I might use my smartphone to watch a movie:

• Watching movies on my phone is something I envision doing when I commute. If I’m on a train or in a crowded LRT/MRT, I might whip out my phone and watch a movie. I might do this on a plane too, but the moment I get to a place with a TV its quite unlikely that I’d be interested in watching anything on my mobile phone.
• I should not forget about video podcasts – I subscribe to quite a lot of them, but I tend not to watch it on my mobile phones. I presume my usage might increase if I carried an iPhone (because my podcatcher of choice is iTunes), but the moment I could whip out my laptop or iPad, thats probably where I’d watch the video. Plus quality is an issue – HDMI out is great and all, but if the content is lacking (as most video podcasts are – you want to ensure you get quicker downloads), it’s not going to look pretty on a TV.
• I might want to watch videos I create on my mobile device. This is where it might shine – watching user generated content on the big screen. To be fair, the Nokia N8 includes a very basic video editor, and this might be where HDMI out might make sense.

Now, for the rather interesting answers.

Matt Armitage tells me that he watches movies and TV on his smartphone while he is at the gym. He usually does it via a video cable to the treadmill monitor. Furthermore he tells me that some treadmill monitors allow you to plug it in via an AV lead in, and others give you an iPod adapter (compatible with all iOS devices) and you can now use the touch screen interface on the treadmill. Advanced!

Carolyn Chan tells me that she watches Futurama on her iPhone. But when pressed if she would watch it on TV via her smartphone, she says no, largely because getting movies on the phone is already a painful experience, and poor battery life is not going to help the cause.

Asrial Baker and I had a rather interesting conversation. He watches full length movies on his smartphone, with proper earphones/headsets. Asrial does this on his long commutes, and he notes that others do it on buses and trains too. Asrial’s daily commute is probably over one hour but less than two hours, one way, everyday. He can get quite a bit done while he’s on the train. He goes further to tell me that its useful when you are at a hotel, and the hotel TV is not that entertaining, its best to have the N8 + HDMI out to enjoy your movies.

Now, I never thought of this use case. When I’m at a hotel, I’m usually beat from the day and I rarely have time to watch television, let alone a feature length film. But I do spend a lot of time at hotels, and recently during my vacation, I stayed in six hotels over 3+ weeks. I am writing this while in a hotel room.

Not all hotels have a HDMI input. Asrial says every hotel he’s been to had one. Thinking back, during those six visits, only 50% of the hotels had flat screen TVs. The rest were all CRT based, and would not have had any HDMI inputs. The one I’m in now, has 3 HDMI ports, but you’ve got to get to it via the TV. No chance of plugging your phone in to get it charged (otherwise, you’d have a flat battery in no time).

What you see above was taken in the Four Points by Sheraton in Kuching, Malaysia. That’s two power sockets, a 5 volt USB charger, computer VGA in, HDMI in, iPod in, and regular AV in. In recent times, I can only remember one other hotel that does this: Intercontinental Bangkok. What is common in hotels though is an iPod dock. This commonly connects to the TV as well, so you can enjoy music & videos from your iOS device.

David Lian tells me that the idea behind this is: everyone carries their personal content/media wherever they go. Of course, now which manufacturer/hotel ends up “getting it“?

On an airplane, for example a Singapore Airlines Airbus A380, you will get a USB port, an Ethernet port, and a video AV in port. No HDMI.

In conclusion, do you watch movies on your smartphone? How will you use HDMI out?

Today I turned the switch off for Google Friend Connect (something I turned on in February 2009). There is now no longer a social bar when you visit (though most of you read this site via RSS).

There are a myriad reasons as to why I disabled it, but it generally boiled down to the fact that I never figured out how to fully use it. I thought it might be useful for blog readers to connect with each other, but thats what the comments are really for.

Running YSlow or Page Speed, the thing that slowed my blog down the most, seemed to be the Friend Connect social bar. This is expected, but for not providing anything additional, I decided to zap it.

The Business Times still has their Friend Connect enabled, but its not the social bar – they’ve preferred going to using the members gadget. Currently, they have 1,327 folk who are members, while 7,051 people like their Facebook page more. I’m thinking more sites will find that a Facebook widget will benefit more in terms of user engagement.

I thought about utilizing Friend Connect to email newsletters to my “fans”. And while there is newsletter support, only about 10% of the people on my site have opted in to receive a newsletter (to be fair, I never did encourage anyone to signup for a newsletter – and this feature was not around before, as far as I remember). That’s a pretty poor conversion rate. There does not seem to be any other way to connect to members – no way to email them.

I also tried this on another website, a community for fashionistas in Malaysia. It was removed rather quickly, because chatboxes are still preferred, in comparison to Friend Connect!

And then there was the other thing… When I loaded up the blog on my iPad, the Friend Connect social bar would stick on the screen. Did not seem very UI friendly, and I had no intention of fixing it.

I’ve not seen Google put much effort behind Friend Connect any longer, and they seem to have other foci when it comes to being social on the Web. Even during their recent DevFest’s, the whole Friend Connect topic seems to have gone silent.

Thanks to all of you that joined the community, made comments, etc. Goodbye Google Friend Connect.

Last year when I purchased my MacBook Pro, it was about three weeks before Snow Leopard was to come out. Essentially the upgrade DVD was free and has been sitting on my desk for the better part of the year.

So I finally bit the bullet and upgraded. A few things of note:

• The upgrade took quite some time. It was in excess of an hour, and I noticed it stalled from time to time. I whipped out the log file and realised that it was repairing the disk quite a bit. Had I not noticed this, I would have assumed something had gone wrong and rebooted the computer. Command+L gives you the log.
• iTunes got a library update (it takes quite some time).
• Evernote got a database upgrade.
• My git went missing, so I had to reinstall it. Bazaar was however still gainfully installed.
• MenuMeters disappeared. I had to get a more modern version online to ensure it continued working.
• There was a huge combo update waiting for me, to take me from OS X 10.6 to 10.6.4. It nearly weighed in at a gigabyte.
• Mail, which has been handling my mail since I ditched Thunderbird, went through a rather lengthy database upgrade. While it upgraded, I could not use mail. This process was about one hour long as well, which I felt took too long.

After over two hours, all I can say is my laptop is a lot snappier than it was before. Everything works as expected. I guess its time to start rolling it out on the iMac, and probably clean installing the MacBook Air for travel use.

Update: 16-09-2010 – Needed to reinstall Quicksilver, to B58, since the older release seemed buggy.

Today I installed iTunes 10. Apple has stopped requiring you to reboot your computer the moment you get an iTunes upgrade – I consider this a plus point. Its now sporting a new logo, and things look a little more polished in the application.

Noticing no Ping, which seemed to be all the rage in the morning, I wondered what the cause might be. Quite clearly, you don’t get in on Ping, Apple’s new social network, if they don’t run an iTunes Music Store in your country! The moment I made the change to my US-based iTunes account, all seemed to be OK, and I could start playing around with Ping.

Then it became clearer why they didn’t want me to use Ping. “Each time you purchase, review, rate or like music on the iTunes Store, it will appear here” (so it said on my profile). At the moment, Ping does not fit my use case – I rip audio CDs that I purchase, and they have information within iTunes thanks to the CDDB database it syncs with. I have never purchased music from the iTunes Music Store, because I cannot be bothered with using a foreign credit card or looking for iTunes gift certificates.

Does this in any way hamper last.fm/AudioScrobbler? Probably a little, considering Ping is built-into iTunes. Plus you can follow your favourite artistes ;-) Does this mean people will quit last.fm for Ping? I find it highly unlikely. But last.fm is probably on their toes now, since there’s some overlap – concert recommendations, etc. Ping also is run within iTunes, you can’t use a web browser. There does not seem to be any API either.

Then, people got excited with Apple’s new Apple TV. I didn’t. Its not international. OK, not international enough. I can still buy the old Apple TV from the Malaysian or Singaporean Apple Store. The new ones seem to be available for sale in Australia, UK, the US, and probably a few other countries where you can rent/buy movies from the store.

The iPod Touch? Some good changes, but the camera isn’t all that hip. Good enough for FaceTime. Speaking of FaceTime, it is apparently based on open standards. Steve Jobs said something like it will be open. When will Apple release some information about how others can independently implement FaceTime? Or inter-operate with FaceTime?

Game Center looks interesting. Social gaming is going to be big (also, big in iOS4.1). The new iPhone 4’s don’t have iOS4.1 yet, but when the update comes (next week?), you will get Game Center too. And the iPod touch should be fast – sporting an A4 chip. Apple has successfully made devices do multiple things (iPod touch: music player, game machine, video conferencing tool, etc.). Would I buy one? I’m still too smitten with my iPad, so much so I haven’t used my 1st generation iPod Touch since April 2010!

The new iPod Nano looks cool. Its a pity they’ve removed the camera. And the shuffle, well, its a shuffle – I’ve never owned one.

So the Apple Music event turned out to mostly be a bummer, unless you live in a country where the iTunes Music Store is available.

Back in January 2009, we found out that the Malaysian Government had saved about RM40 million using open source. In a little over a year, that number has been topped: over the past six years, the total costs savings are now quoted to be RM188.39 million (USD$58.54 million)! That’s a hell of a lot of money for software licenses, don’t you think?

Worth noting is that before the OSS Master Plan started, there were zero companies supporting OSS registered with the Ministry of Finance. Now more than half of the 4,000 companies do (53% is the quoted number). For more information, read the latest newsletter from MAMPU’s OSCC. Key takeaways:

1. Saved RM188.39 million on software licenses over six years
2. Successful OSS adoption in 691 government agencies by the end of 2009 (till April 1 2010, the number looks like it has increased to 699 agencies).
3. In total, 95% of agencies are adopting some form of OSS solution, 87% are using it for back-end infrastructure (here its clear there’s Linux, MySQL in use), and 66% are using OSS on the desktop! (via OpenOffice.org and Firefox)*

* – Software use extrapolated from the actual OSS Master plan, and what was in the report in January 2009. I’m sure Joomla! is also used quite heavily, but never recall seeing it as the choice for CMS in the plan.

SMCKL‘s case study night, SMCKL #7 also had some other very interesting case studies. I picked up a bunch of interesting bits.

Rachel from Canon Malaysia

1. You can find them on Twitter at @CanonCameraMsia. They wish they had more followers on Twitter, because in comparison, their Facebook page has quite a lot more followers.
2. They’ve got 4-5 people in the marketing department, and most of the marketing executives are very, very young. One thing that was made clear: the marketing folk at Canon are very, very passionate. Corporate policy denies them from browsing social media sites, so they bring their own laptops, and use DiGi Broadband at work, to get their social media stuff going.
3. Their Facebook strategy has garnered them over 56,000 fans. Find them at their Facebook page. I just visited it, and realised that they have a landing tab (Explore! Canon), so they have invested in Facebook a little. Kudos! To bring traffic, they’ve also decided to engage Canon users: they change their Facebook profile picture on a daily basis. As a reward, you get your avatar, and name displayed on their Facebook page for a day. If you are the monthly winner, you actually get a prize – a printer or a camera! Canon has found this to be a rather successful campaign and it clearly works for them.
4. They also have a presence on YouTube – iLikeCanonCamera. There are commercials, and more. Now with more video on some of the cameras, like the 7D and 5DMkII, they’re also looking at using Vimeo for video.
5. They are going to build a virtual community at: EOS World. They already make use of newsletter blasting. They also mention they have a EOS Buddy Club, but that requires some qualifications (i.e. you have to own some of their upper-end DSLRs). The EOS World is open for all. I learned something new with regards to the Buddy Club – I qualify to join!
6. They do blogger engagement: Brian, aka goldfries, Kim Ong, a blogger called Ah Beng (no link because I couldn’t find it via Google easily), and Namewee.
7. Something they believe in: under-promise, over-deliver

Freda Liu from bfm89.9 (popular radio station)

1. They do their own surveys, so it may be a little different in comparison to what other radio stations that pay external organisations to come up stats do. With over 500+ respondents, they found that 46% of BFM listeners earn more than RM5,000 per month, and over 45% of listeners live in homes with monthly income greater than RM10,000.
2. Their most popular listener age group? 26-30. The next highest are those aged 30-35.
3. They upload all their podcasts to their website. This is true for all their shows. They get over 7,000 podcast downloads, per week! They might be the most successful Malaysian based podcast channel, for what it’s worth.
4. They want to give more personalisation via their website in due time. Currently they tweet at @BFMRadio, about upcoming interviews, interviews released as podcasts, and they do try to ensure they are conversational (true – this is one aspect I like about their account), and they do run contests.

KK Chin, MyEG

1. First up, KK Chin is very funny! MyEG is not a government agency, in fact, they are a public listed company, established in 2001. The reasons they are on social media? “You’re there, we’re there”.
2. They have about 800,000 users in the MyEG database. They process 3,500 road tax renewals daily (this was five months ago); now, at the end of June 2010, they do 7,000 per day! In comparison, JPJ does about 22,000/day. Incidentally, you can also renew your insurance online, and they’re seeing uptake of 120-150 daily renewals.
3. They had a Facebook page, started in November 2009, iwth over 8,000+ fans. However in mid-May 2010, Facebook decided to delete the page. They have no idea why.
4. Their Twitter account started at the same time. They look for words like “myeg”, “road tax”, and “saman”. They will then reply and try to help you! That’s what I call customer service, plus a great customer acquisition strategy. From what I gather, they occasionally also give away free road tax renewals, and more via Twitter/Facebook.
5. MyEG has crazy ad spend on TV, as well as on AMP radio stations. In comparison, they spend close to 8-10% on social media.

Kenny Wong, P1 W1MAX

1. P1 believes they were the first to have a digital-specific customer care team in Malaysia. The team has about 8-9 people to engage on social media!
2. They know being a service provider they do get some flack. They have spent the last 6 months expanding their network, and now believe they will come back on SM a lot more!
3. They help sponsor Project Alpha, and 15Malaysia. 15Malaysia had some interesting stats: over 510,000 downloads, over 3.2 million streamed, over 15 million page views, nearly 94,000 Facebook fans, and over 1,600 Twitter followers. The most popular video (by viewer-ship and being shared) was Potong Saga.
4. P1 harnessed YouTube for their ads at one stage. They had spent their limited budget on creating videos, that there was no more money for buying air-time. YouTube was their free distribution mechanism.
5. Kenny mentioned that if you’re in customer service, working for a telco/ISP< you definitely like pain! You'll get more brickbats, rather than accolades. Sometimes, the same sort of person will condemn, but they will also complement - its about how much people value and resonate with the brand/service. Remember to take the hits. Laugh at yourself. And do that well.

Closing thoughts
Would like to say that SMCKL was very well organised. I see these events just getting larger and larger, and it just gets better, and better. I also enjoyed every single presentation given. I learned something new from every one of them. Yesterday, we also received some schwag: Cziplee sponsored a Moleskine, Papa John’s gave a 50% discount voucher, and Crocs provided a RM20 discount voucher, valid forever ;)

The question about metrics was never really answered. Kenny mentioned brandtology, radian6, and red dot. What is the cost acquisition of a fan? What is the ROI on fans? What’s a fan worth? More fans does not necessarily mean a loyal customer base. Having irrelevant non-targeted visitors also don’t necessarily help.

I also wanted to ask: why invest heavily in Facebook, when they may just zap your page? Sure, go there because people are there. But maybe acquire fans via Facebook, and migrate/sync them to a self-hosted BuddyPress or something?