Are we playing too many video games?

We are all now well versed in the games that are available for X-box or Playstation, even if you have never touched a game controller you will have seen the adverts on TV. They offer the player a chance to live a totally different life without any personal danger (apart from RSI). The growth in the games industry has been staggering, and the UK is a major player. But just how massive wasn’t clear to me until this week when sales figures were released that indicated games sales now greatly exceed ‘video’ sales.

Taking over?

I am showing my age here as obviously videos are a thing of the past – but the figures relate to all DVD and Blue Ray sales as well as good old videos – and the figures are staggering!

Sales of computer games in the UK last year were £1.93bn! I know we all accept billions as small change now, but this is massive! By contrast, sales of DVDs and other video formats totalled £1.80bn, while music pulled in a ‘measly’  £1.07bn. Last year games accounted for 40.2% of the entertainment market, video for 37.6% and music for 22.2%.

In reality sales are falling overall (part of the reason for the demise of Game on our High Streets) and video won’t go without a fight. But I do think it is sad that we get our ‘jollies’ in this way – watching films is a social thing, playing games can be very anti social (it certainly is when my son is doing it)

So we have hit another ‘milestone’ in entertainment – I am not sure I like this one!

 

Why Microsoft “don’t get it “

For a while I have been ‘coming over from the dark side’ – that is to say I have been embracing the world of Apple. To some that classes me as a geek, historically Apple products were the preserve of the ‘Guardian reader’ set, not a bad thing in any way, but a stereotype that probably didn’t help their marketing! This puts me in the minority, but if I am honest I don’t care, as I find the Apple way so much less stressful.

With the massive growth of the iPod, iPad and iPhone, Apple are now a major player in the hardware market (for example they have almost 80% of the tablet market). Historically they have been weak in the world of software – and by weak I mean they did not have the business market particularly catered for – that was the province of Microsoft – and still is. But for how long?

Computing in the business and home market is going mobile, we are all getting smartphones, and the tablet is making desktop computing far less of a necessity. Our PC at home is used rarely now, either iPad or Mac has taken over. Consequently we are all keen to have our data available where ever we are – cloud computing by any other name. And who is doing this best and appears to have a game plan going forwards?

In my view it’s Apple and not Microsoft. I have started using Apples iCloud with its Numbers and Pages packages – all my documents are automatically available on all my devices (including my PC). The program’s are nothing like as ‘belt and braces’ as Word or Excel, but who uses anything like the full potential of those packages – they are just too complicated! Also on an iPad the Numbers spreadsheet is way better than anything Microsoft or any third-party converter can offer.

Apples iCloud is in its infancy, MobileMe was not a success, but the mobile OS has developed and I think we will see great things from Apple over the next few years in mobile data sharing and working – they never get things wrong more than once!

And what about Microsoft? Windows 8 is just about to appear and from what I have heard it is just Windows 7 with a weird front end. Their Office package has a web version, but it is not catching on (probably due to being too complex). Microsoft may be about to start to see the end of their dominance – a good thing?

 

4G Nottingham?

Not a good look - but you get the idea.....

We could become one of the first UK cities to get  super-fast 4G mobile broadband if Nottingham City Councils bid  for a share of the Government’s £100 million Urban Broadband Fund – which aims to bring world-leading super-fast broadband and wi-fi to ten of the UK’s cities – is successful.

4G – or fourth generation – is a more advanced version of 3G, the wireless internet that mobiles, laptops and tablet devices use. It is faster and means people will be able to access high-quality video and audio on the move – something that is becoming more and more of our everyday lives.

Only cities with more than 150,000 homes were allowed to apply for a share of the fund and from the shortlist Nottingham faces competition from Birmingham, Bradford, Bristol, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, Newcastle, Manchester and Sheffield.

The UK’s four capitals – Belfast, Cardiff, Edinburgh and London – are guaranteed to be awarded funding as part of the scheme.

We have to wait until Chancellor George Osborne’s Budget speech later this month to see if the bid has been approved, but there is some additional potential for success – the high-speed data cabling could be laid along tram tracks while the works for line two of the tram are built over the next two years – saving money on the infrastructure costs.

How amazing would it be for Nottingham to be one of the country’s first 4G cities? Not only would existing businesses benefit from increased efficiency and improved connectivity, the city would also be in a much stronger position to respond to the rapidly emerging and anticipated future requirement of businesses.

Time to keep your fingers crossed and hope that the A453 announcement last year wasn’t a ‘flash in the pan’ for Nottingham.

 

Can cloud computing help reduce global warming?

There is a steady move towards cloud computing, both Apple and Microsoft are nudging their users towards it in different ways;

Apple via iCloud which is in its infancy, but has some potential. This however is currently based around machine based apps for word processing and similar, and only carries data.

Microsoft on the other hand is moving towards cloud based application use – Word, Excel etc accessed directly from their servers so that software is not PC based. This is perhaps more related to them trying to control pirated software than for our benifit though!

Is there a ‘green’ side to cloud computing though?

A study carried out late last year that focussed on large IT companies in France and the UK found that they could achieve large cost savings and carbon reductions by 2020 if they migrated their data storage operations to the cloud. The suggestion was that they could reduce their carbon emissions by up to 50%!

The study follows a recent forecast that use of cloud services could triple in the next two years, a fact that has  been backed up by a number of blue chip companies indicating that they intend to move to cloud solutions far quicker than many had thought. Obviously cost saving is the main aim – but a drop in carbon emissions has to be a positive side effect.

Cloud computing allows companies to reduce costs by buying less hardware and using servers located elsewhere to store, manage and process data. The report suggests that by 2020, large UK companies that use cloud computing could achieve annual energy savings of £1.2 billion and carbon reductions equivalent to the annual emissions of over 4 million passenger vehicles – figures not to be sniffed at.

And if your server farm is in a country that has lower emission electricity such as France, (where nuclear plants generate the bulk of electricity), that figure can be much lower.

So as we place more and more data in the cloud we can actually reduce our carbon footprint!

 

This is a brilliant explanation of social media…

This is just brilliant, often the best explanations are the simplest and this hits the nail firmly on the head – and I particularly like the reference to Google+!

 

iPad two years in…..

Amazingly the iPad is two years old (last week) – it has taken me two years to get into the iPad owners club, but I have to say now I have one I can really see the attraction!

When it was first launched there were a large number of people who said it was a pointless piece of kit which would never take off – well history has proved them wrong – and it is still in my view the machine to beat.

Why? Well it is a well worn adage about all things Apple – but it just works.

Hand an iPad to almost anyone and they can get into using it very quickly because everything is so intuitive. We have a number of ‘new users’ in the office and they just love it. They are all iPhone users but the experience is so much richer and better on the iPad.

Since getting mine a few weeks ago I have found a number of things that are better than I expected (and I had high expectations). They include;

Browsing – so quick and easy on a touch screen device, our desktop PC at home is slow and is becoming used much less because of this.

Wordprocessing – I have downloaded the ‘Pages’ app and have found it brilliant. the keypad on the iPad works really well (despite what some people say). And using iCloud allows me to share the files across my devices and keeps them synced.

Spreadsheets – The ‘Numbers’ app is also brilliant and allows me to use graphs on my iPad – something that other spreadsheet apps don’t allow. It syncs to iCloud as well.

Evernote – If you don’t use this you are really missing a trick – it is superb.

Games – I am not big into gaming but some of the driving games are amazing.

So all in all I love my iPad, it is not a total replacement for my laptop but it goes a long way towards it. The big plus is the fact that is instantly on. I am sure that Apple will develop the OS even more over the next few years which can only make it better!

And iPad 3 is due in only a few weeks?

 

Mobile phone users disturbing your meal?

Drag our Leaf Icon above to your taskbar to bookmark TGAM in Internet Explorer 9.

Show me how

Please don’t show me this again

Remind me later

This is a great idea – which appears to have come from the USA – to try to control people’s use of their mobile phones when they are out with other people. I am sure we have all suffered the friend or colleague who answers their phone during a meal. Well this is a great way to temper their enthusiasm for picking up calls (or texts or emails).

feeling stressed just seeing a phone face down?

It is being called ”The Phone Stack” and the game tries to curb cell phone interruptions when dining out with friends. After everyone orders, they place their phones in the center of the table, face down (that bit is important). They may even stack the gadgets, as the name suggests. Even as the phones buzz and ring throughout the meal, no one is allowed to pick up their device. If someone is unable to resist his smartphone’s siren’s song, he or she is responsible for picking up the bill for the entire meal – brilliant!

The creator of the game (a 20 year old from California) says that her intention is to encourage people to get off their phones, although she also recommends not being so hard on people about the rules;

“The basic premise is to just get people open to the idea of staying active and attentive to one another. It’s really more of a fun concept in this new age high-tech life of ours. Conversation is the spice of life.”

Well said!

The only problem I can see is that the biggest offender in our family is not currently earning – she is a student – so would not be able to pay, she would expect me to!

 

Is Facebook really the way to get youngsters to vote?

The state of British politics does not appeal to the average 18 year old it seems (or to most of us), the percentage turn out at recent general elections has been getting progressively worse so the question has to be how to get the kids involved as they are our future.

And recent research suggests almost twice as many 18 year olds use Facebook than are actually registered to vote!

The Electoral Commission used Facebook last year to encourage teenagers to get involved, with 15,000 going on to claim their right to vote. But analysis of electoral roll data from hundreds of council areas by Experian found the total number is actually falling.

There are an estimated 1.05 million 18 year olds in the UK with Facebook accounts, but only 520,000 who registered to vote, and that was 3% fewer than in 2010.

.Official figures show that only 56% of 19-24 year olds and 55% of 17 and 18 year olds are on the electoral register.

The Electoral Commissions campaign using social media to attract young voters is clever, but is not the answer. As long as our political system remains in its current ‘tit for tat’ state I can’t see youngsters feeling that they have any part to play in the political system – sad but true. And very unhealthy for the future of our country.

Surely we need to make this part of the education system – otherwise our politicians will always be as they are now – how depressing!

 

Another Google ‘duffer’?

As I have commented before I really like my social media and things – I keep up with the news via a combination of Twitter, RSS feeds and various news apps. But, in the main its the RSS feeds and Twitter that I find most effective, they provide a short headline that I can either ‘ignore’ or dig deeper on. All part of the ‘sound bite’ generation I suppose.

just not 'nice'

So as I blogged about earlier this week I was keen to give Flipboard a go when it came available for the iPhone and it did not disappoint. I am very impressed with it and find it as an iPhone app should be – very intuitive to use and smooth and ‘nice’ to use and look at.

I have been keen to look at Google’s effort in this sector of the market, it’s called Currents and was released a week or so ago – but only in the USA. I have no idea why Google always seem to do this. They are a global brand so you would think it would be possible to release things world-wide at the same time – but apparently not!

Anyway, I remembered that I have a US login for iTunes that I have used previously to access things like this via the US iTunes store. So after a quick reactivation today I downloaded Currents to have a play.

My initial reaction was that it is quite a good attempt at bringing a magazine style experience to this type of feed – and if Flipboard had not been there it might have been quite impressive! But it just does have the same feel as Flipboard. It is not as easy to use or as pleasing to the eye. More importantly it doesn’t work as smoothly and consequently isn’t as ‘special’ an experience.

Particular annoyances?

• You have to swipe sideways to read more in an article rather than the iPhone ‘norm’ of scrolling down.
• It doesn’t show feeds with new stories differently from ones without
• It is like Google+ – not obvious to use

So will I keep trying it out? Possibly for a week or so, but unless I have an ‘epiphany’ I don’t expect it to remain on my iPhone long-term. Is it me or do Google lack a certain something when it comes to design these days?

 

Zeitgeist 2011: Year In Review

I am not a huge fan of Google – any company that has such a significant hold over us all can’t be healthy. However as a company with so much data and access to it they are able to put together a fairly impressive review of the year.

This is a typically ‘flashy’ multimedia tour of the year and is well worth a view.

The review can be seen here – enjoy.