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New research by the IPA has shown that almost a third of people between the age of 15 to 25 have watched TV via the internet. And around 18% of people aged between 25 and 64 (a very broad ‘old people’ category or what?!) had too.

The IPA Touchpoints report surveyed over 5,000 people and also looked at mobile behaviour. It was found that 30% of 15 to 24 year olds watch video clips on their phones, with 13% of all mobile users doing so.

Jim Marshall, chairman of the IPA Media Futures Group, said, ” the young are still driving the take-up and use of digital media and new technology, however, the older age groups are also moving steadily towards greater adoption.” Personally, I would have thought that more than a third of 15 to 25 year olds would have watched TV online, but I suppose if this statistic was expressed as a number than a percentage it would seem greater.

Just as an extra update - overall broadband penetration now stands at 73% of all UK adults, with internet usage at an average of 45 minutes on weekdays and just over an hour at weekends.

After only one week of airtime, Heinz have pulled the plug on their latest TV advert in an apparent move to appease the sensibilities of a vocal homophobic minority. When I first watched the ad I couldn’t quite believe that people could feel so strongly about a short peck on the lips. I was truly expecting tongues and all sorts.

The ad, by London-based agency AMV BBDO (now there’s a catchy name), revolves around the central concept that Heinz Deli Mayo tastes so good “it’s as if you have your own New York deli man in your kitchen”. At the end of the ad, as the father prepares to leave the house with his sandwiches, the two men share a brief kiss.

According to the Guardian, viewers have complained that it is “offensive” and “inappropriate to see two men kissing”. What exactly is inappropriate about this, in an age where same-sex relationships are perfectly accepted and same-sex marriages legal? Other parents complained that the ads would require parents to discuss the issue of same-sex relationships with their children. I can’t see how this can possibly be justified.

As reported in the Independent, Ben Summerskill, the chief executive of the gay rights group Stonewall, has urged its supporters to stop buying Heinz products. Whether this will be carried out to the point where it actually harms Heinz remains to be seen.

I personally don’t feel as angry with Heinz as I do with the idiot viewers who took it upon themselves to complain. As someone in the office pointed out, the Heinz brand is centered around the idea of the family, and a protracted fight over this issue may go against the overall interest of the brand.

As the debate spreads across the Internet it seems that despite being withdrawn, the ad will find an audience on YouTube and other video sharing sites.

I think that Sarah Britten, a blogger from the South African newspaper The Times, sums it up well:

“Heinz showed even less spine than Thabo Mbeki on Zimbabwe.”

“Never underestimate the wilful stupidity of the viewing public”

Once arguably the best-known “social networking” site in the UK, even before the term social-network was widely used, Friends Reunited recently been redesigned to give it a new “contemporary” feel. According to Airlock, the London-based agency responsible for the facelift, there has been a “dramatic” improvement in activity since the launch. But is it all too little too late?

It is interesting reading the history of Friends Reunited to see just how dramatic the rise of the school-friend catch-up site was. Launched officially in July 2000, by the end of the year it had 3,000 members, a number that had increased to 2.5 million a year later. By 2005, Friends Reunited had been the centre of a TV show (The curse of Friends Reunited), resulted in libel payouts and attracted 15 million of us to the site. Looking back, it seems crazy how a site that demanded payment to actually contact anyone could become so popular.

When ITV bought the site at the end of 2005, there was every reason to believe that the site would continue to grow in popularity. Facebook was, at the time, a high school network, only opening up to key companies in 2006. However many of the features which have come to define modern social networking sites, including the ability to make friends and communicate with these friends for free, were not a part of Friends Reunited. It seems that over the next year or two social networks moved on whilst Friends Reunited stood very much still.

My experience of the new Friends Reunited site was generally positive, albeit this was when I recently deleted my profile (having not been able to unsubscribe from emails without logging into my profile, I thought that having gone to the effort of figuring out my username and password that I may as well just go the whole hog and delete my entire profile). The new design is very much in the “web 2.0” mould; stripes, gradient-background titles, uncluttered.

The new features also go some of the way towards replicating the key features of modern social networks. It seems that it is now possible to join up with friends, and all monetary barriers have been removed (it’s free!). From the new-look homepage it looks like there’s a news feed feature and more of a focus on sharing pictures.

But do people need another social network? I personally don’t know a single person who uses Friends Reunited regularly, and this is going to be a huge barrier to wanting to use the site. Whereas most people I know do use Facebook. Now I don’t even like Facebook (I’ll save that for another day) but I think the key thing here is that if I do want to contact one of my friends, Facebook is currently the place to do it – simply because of the number of people who do use it.

I think another problem with Friends Reunited is that it’s lost much of the original purpose and focus. The original idea was simple – log in and find out what your friends are doing. Right now I’ve been there and done that. I don’t actually care anymore what everyone from school is up to; and the people I am vaguely interested in are all on Facebook.

In place of the focus of the original site, Friends Reunited now offers an expanded set of features, including Genealogy (Genes Reunited of course!) and dating.

So has the horse already bolted? Alexa traffic graphs seem to suggest that interest in Friends Reunited did increase markedly after the new launch (June 2008), although shown over a ten month period traffic is still definitely decreasing.

Compare this traffic with Facebook and Bebo and you start to get the impression that the founders of Friends Reunited got a good deal, and maybe ITV should have kept their money in their pocket! (Hint: Friends Reunited is the blue line that runs at a parallel to, and infinitesimal above, the x axis).

It will be interesting to see if the redesign can have a long term impact on Friends Reunited, or if the horse really has well and truly bolted.

If you were not fortunate enough to catch the aptly named “life after people” on TV last night you are in luck. I have compiled an accurate summary of the program in the following bullet-point list.

• no people
• lots of plants
• buildings will fall down eventually
• there may be animals in places that there aren’t now; eg: in the middle of Trafalgar square

see – Rhinos in the street – crazy!

Although the bit about animals could be absolute rubbish because this is assuming they escape from the zoo somehow.

That’s it really. I reckon if I had some editing skills I could probably get the program down to a mere 2 minute commercial-length piece of TV. Or maybe just a single still with caption:

Look! No people! Rusty car! Road with grass growing over it!

I think I’ll have to agree with Sam:
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/tv/2008/05/last_nights_tv_life_without_pe.html

I reckon a monkey with a Mac could probably knock this out!

I know this ad has been out for a while and I’m possibly a bit slow on the uptake with this one but I still wanted to get my tuppence worth said about this.

I am referring of course to the recent Honey Monster adverts. What the hell is that?

As most people at Neoco are aware I am a huge Mighty Boosh fan and I heard this ad (I was in the spare room at the time) and came rushing into the lounge so fast I slipped on the wooden floor, exclaiming to my amused other half, that’s a crimp if ever I heard one.

Some of you may be unaware of what crimping is but it is a style of erm well not quite sure how to describe it…… of rap and poetry, that boosh fans have come to know and love.

It is basically a rhyme of nonsensical words that ensure that you end up with a bizarre look on your face. It is actually very clever.

To give you the idea here are the lyrics from the ad

Sugar Puffs, Sugar Puffs HUP!
Honey coated puffs in a milky bath
Put ‘em in your mouth and they make you laugh
Kept in the cupboard taken out for breakfast
Spoon’s best friend and the fridge’s favourite
Huff! Puff! Huff-puff!
Huff! Puff! Huff-puff!
Wheaty chums that settle in transit
Golden pips of a sunshine princess

The Boosh started to crimp as far as I can tell in their radio show back in 2001. Each TV series has included at least two or three crimps. They are a bit of a highlight to us booshy fans or Mod wolves to those who are in the fan club (yes arguably its sad I’m a member but WHATEVER!).

I’m sure the people at Sugar puffs see this as some sort of hip, cool, down with the kids type of tribute, but that’s certainly not how they see it. They are currently in a huge legal battle over this issue, as they are saying it is a direct copy.To be fair I have to agree, that I think it is.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/bizarre/article934592.ece

After seeing this I sent the following links round at the office to spark some of the usual chit chat and see what they thought. There is only one other Boosh fan in the office, so it was a fair floor to see peoples take on it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLXMxU-FC1E

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSIQ4IJAYfk

This threw up the question of can you really copyright a style of singing? I suppose that is a fair question. The lyrics are original and it is purely the way they are being said that is the issue. Do they have grounds for suing?

I suppose that we shall see what the higher powers in court have to say and see the outcome of the legal battle is.

Apparently the ad is set to run until May, and then again from early July to mid-August. All I can say is that I for one think that in the words of Tony Harrison ‘This is an outrage’

MySpace has signed a deal, to air it’s shows such as Quarterlife, Roommates and Special Delivery on screens outside the US. The deal covers DVDs and merchandise but MySpace will retain all net rights to its programmes.  Despite bad figures for NBC’s broadcast of MySpace’s “Quarterlife” in February, MySpace are clearly having another attempt at finding an audience for its programmes beyond the internet.

As expected, they’ve also just entered a partnership with Universal Music Group, Sony BMG and Warner Music Group, which will offer music services on MySpace, a site that’s been known as a music community ever since all the sensible people fled to Facebook in 2007. Enhancing the MySpace Music platform already in place, they’ll offer DRM-free digital downloads, ad-supported audio and video streaming, a mobile store plus plenty of other knick knacks…

Users will be given tools to personalise their profiles even more (uh oh…) by creating playlists and easy-music searches. Artists signed up to MySpace Music can offer the users digital downloads, mobile ringtones, wallpapers and text messages regarding tours and the like, plus sell concert tickets and other merchandise.

For a full article on the MySpace TV deal, go to: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7339983.stm

Last week’s Media Guardian asked ” is it time to say “you’re fired” to Sir Alan Sugar?” To which Luke Johnson (chairman of Channel 4 and apparently an “unrepentant capitalist”) responded with a resounding “Yes”.

Now I have to sympathise with Luke for “[making the] mistake of doing some business with him almost 25 years ago”. I don’t think I’d enjoy that too much either. And in terms of a creating some “Entrepreneurial Apprentice” – what does this actually mean? Surely the point of being an entrepreneur is to have the drive to just get off your ass and make it happen. Landing a job as Suralan’s reasonably well-paid assistant may make it easier to pay the mortgage, but you’re not going to become the next Bill Gates.

However, with all that said, I for one am an unrepentant Apprentice fan!

So what other complaints has Luke got with Suralan? “The show presents a wholly bogus image of what commercial life is like.” Agreed! Is this a problem? Not really. I don’t sit around thinking that the Apprentice is in any way connected with real life. I also don’t imagine for a second that doing well on the apprentice would equate to being a successful entrepreneur. But I still enjoy listening to Jennifer inform me that she’s the best sales person in Europe. Or listening to Raef explain how words are his tools.

Luke’s not the only one, of course. The Apprentice seems to be fairly proficient at polarising opinion. It’s all just pantomime; unreality reality TV, but still thoroughly enjoyable. Long live the Apprentice!

Since last week, Benn has been raving on about the BBC iPlayer on his iPhone, but what is it?…

BBC’s iPlayer is their online on-demand TV service, which allows users to download or stream any BBC content which has been broadcast during the last 7 days, and watch it on their computers - or in Benn’s case his iPhone. As it’s the BBC, the iPlayer is free to use. It uses peer-to-peer technology for the download service, so that content can be downloaded from the nearest point in the network and not always directly from BBC servers.

The iPlayer first came out in summer 2007 but it didn’t have its proper launch until Christmas Day 2007. Within the first 7 weeks of the launch, 17 million programmes were streamed or downloaded and recently over 500,000 programmes were streamed or downloaded in one day! In January, around 2.2 million people used the iPlayer.

The iPlayer website has recently had a facelift to add extra functionality - the 10 most popular programmes, ‘Last Chance’ for programmes about to expire, and ‘Recently Added’, which is updated every 10 minutes! We think that the iPlayer really shows how hard the BBC is working to build up its online and digital presence. Over the past year the BBC has signed deals with IBM, YouTube and Apple’s iTunes and it has recently announced that it will be collaborating with ITV and Channel 4 on a shared on-demand TV service called Kangaroo.

However, since its release there have been a couple of issues with the iPlayer. When the download version of iPlayer initially came out, it only worked on Microsoft Windows XP and many people were unhappy about it excluding a significant number of people not using XP. In response, the BBC has consistently said it wants to offer a multiplatform iPlayer and has already made the download version compatible with Vista, with a Mac version promised by the end of 2008. The BBC also has plans to broaden access even further, making it available on the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch.

There has also been concern expressed from broadband networks, about the sheer volume of traffic that iPlayer will ultimately generate. Tiscali suggested that content producers like the BBC should be made to pay to fund broadband network upgrades to prevent it from crippling them and Ofcom has said there is the possibility that the ISP-content provider business model may need to change in the future to fund the huge growth in digital content.

MySpace and MTV are teaming up to launch a weekly show called “The MySpace Chart” on MTV2. According to The Guardian, the companies are launching a website, which will allow MySpace users to stream a variety of music videos for free. The MySpace Chart show launches on March 16th and will air videos based on the votes cast on the new site.

The move marks another collaboration between the most popular teenage social network and the TV network tailored to them. The two companies previously combined forces for the Presidential Candidate Dialogue Series. MTV is owned by Viacom, while MySpace is owned by rival media company News Corp.

It also reflects the emerging trend that charts from social music sites are starting to cross-over into mainstream media. In addition to the new MySpace/MTV initiative, iLike has teamed up with Billboard, while Last.fm has a partnership with BBC.

The European Union is spending 14m Euros to create a standard way to send TV via the Internet. Partners including the BBC and the European Broadcasting Union are also contributing a total of £3.7m. The four-year project ‘P2P Next’ aims to create a peer-t0-peer system that can pipe programmes to set-top boxes and home TV sets, based on the BitTorrent technology which many of us already use to share movies and music. So the system will have no central host handing out the content, but all the machines downloading a show will make parts of it available to all the others that want it - distributing the load across the network.

Jari Ahola from the VTT technical research centre in Finland said that the incentive of the broadcasters is to take their distribution mechanism beyond terrestrial, satellite and cable, and they can use the Internet as a distribution platform for very low cost. Once complete the system will be able to handle stored content for download and stream content from live football matches or concerts.

The first stages of the project are due to be complete this August, and by July 2009 a more complete test version should be released that can pipe programmes to set-top boxes so people can watch on their TV rather than their PC.