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Freeview coming to the UK in 2009
It's exciting that 4 channels of terrestrial Freeview HD should arrive in parts of Britain next year. London is on the roadmap for 2009:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/22/london_high_def/ Unfortunately new players will be needed to receive the HD signal as it's encoded differently. Buyers of older equipment will be left out in the HD cold. I don't know whether it would be technically possible for manufacturers to update older equipment with software updates. The channels will only be in the lower 720p HD resolution (HD comes in two resolutions - 720p and 1080p/1080i): http://www.avforums.com/forums/home-cinema-tech-news/737341-freeview-hd-plan.html In comparison, standard definition TV is 576p (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/576p) and also narrower. There is limited capacity for HD channels on Terrestrial TV as the bandwidth available is limited. Satellite (Freesat and Sky) and cable have more bandwidth available and will continue to be able to broadcast more HD channels. 09:46 PM, 22 Oct 2008 by Michael Bluett Permalink | Comments (0) Updating myspace vs youtube vs facebook usage stats [www.google.com]
A while ago I wrote about how youtube was catching myspace and
facebook. Well, according to Google's trends it has overtaken them.
But what is still surprising to me is how strongly Facebook is still
growing (as mentioned in this BBC article called Facebook
over? Only in Islington). Facebook doesn't look to have
"saturated" any of its markets, whereas Myspace looks to have saturated
the US according to the Trends graphs. Bebo, on the other hand has yet
to get off the ground in Canada or the US.
01:57 PM, 03 Jul 2008 by Michael Bluett Permalink | Comments (0) Google Trends - search trends and website trends [www.google.com]
Google's trends tools give you the ability to peer inside Google's
saerch logs - seeing the relative popularity of search terms such
as:
When comparing websites, the "Also visited" part of the results seems to include unlikely sites, suggesting that this section is less accurate than the traffic numbers. 04:37 PM, 25 Jun 2008 by Michael Bluett Permalink | Comments (0) Adblock Plus - reduced download times and fewer adverts [adblockplus.org]
Adblock Plus (Firefox only) blocks most adverts, speeding browsing, and reducing the visual clutter on many sites - banner adverts, adsense etc.. Some website owners object to its use, anticipating reduced revenues. There doesn't appear to be much downside from the user's perspective.
If it is widely used, it may prompt a conflict between those trying to display advertising and those trying to block it. With the default settings it doesn't manage to block ads on Google, for example. It's another technological arms race waiting to happen, where people trying to catch our attention vie with people helping us filter what we see (email spam and comment spam). 01:12 PM, 16 Jun 2008 by Michael Bluett Permalink | Comments (0) Techdirt's catchup on giving away content [www.techdirt.com]
Mike Masnick from Techdirt describes how people have been able to raise their profile by giving their content away (their music or videos), and then sell scarce goods on the back of it (their appearances or premium merchandise).
He envisages large changes in the music and video market as the content becomes more of a trailer for how much fun you can have at a live concert (for example). Where freely released videos of gigs are the band saying "Look how much fun we had at this gig! Why not pay to come to our next one?" 01:05 PM, 16 Jun 2008 by Michael Bluett Permalink | Comments (0) 
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