Philip Sheldrake

Category: Entertainment & Leisure (page 1 of 1)

11 May 2009 / 0 Comments

Blinkx and you won't miss it – myChannel comes a step closer

I've just found out about the Blinkx and Miniweb deal from the Guardian's article "Blinkx moves into telly with new set-top box deal".

Blinkx is the rather astonishing video search engine that emerged from Cambridge University (with some confusing ties to Autonomy), and Miniweb is into "next generation TV" with their platform already powering set-top boxes in over 9 million homes according to their website.

Now you will be able to search through 35 million hours of video from your sofa. Cool, although you might be running dry as you approach your 4,000th birthday, although one would hope some more content will have been indexed by then.

But that's not the point.

Just over four years ago I posted a blog about "myChannel" which described a future without, effectively, any channels as we know them today. Or to put it another way, if there's 7 billion of us on this planet then there are 7 billion channels.  Everyone has their own.

myChannel will be created bespoke based on a customisable combination of four sources... Read more

21 July 2008 / 0 Comments

The Free Communications Group and the Death of Broadcasting

"Broadcasting is really too important to be left to the broadcasters". So said Tony Benn, Member of Parliament, to constituents in 1968. That same year, the Free Communications Group (FCG) was founded to demand "democratic control of all media".

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:BT_tower_in_central_london.jpg

Lets skip the next forty years' analysis of broadcasting motives and actions that so preoccupied these politicians, broadcasters and journalists. In 2008, convergence has emerged as a force of nature, irrevocably changing "broadcasting" globally, and the FCG might just be smiling if it still existed.

I put "broadcasting" in quote marks because I decided, as chair, to start last Thursday's Convergence Conversation, titled "Is broadcasting dead or merely taking a break?", by seeking to define broadcasting.  Not as trivial a task as it sounds, rather a critical task if the 65 conversationists who attended the event hosted by BT Media at BT Tower were going to reach a conclusion. Read more

16 May 2008 / 0 Comments

A Rolling Stone gathers no location based information

Ron Wood - Guitar Player - The Rolling Stones....
Image via Wikipedia

I met Ronnie Wood this week. He sat down next to me in a bar and bought me a drink. That ranks him in my book as a very nice chap. And I got a 90 minute window into living life as a globally famous rock star, an insight that confirmed my relief, as if the situation could be otherwise, that I'm not a 'celebrity'...

  • "Is that Ronnie Wood? Ronnie Wood? Rolling Stones? Ronnie Wood?"
  • "I don't believe it... is that really you? We're big fans of......"
  • "I've got all your albums."
  • "Could I have your autograph and a picture with you?"
  • "I don't believe it, is it really you?"

Although Ronnie has had four decades to come up with witty ripostes, I particularly liked his response to the last one... "Actually, I only came fifth in a Ronnie Wood lookalike competition." From what I saw, he has a lovely way in dealing with the countless people that approach him; what the rest of us would call invading our space.

We got talking about my line of work having danced through the ages of music technology, from the vinyl and 8-track of the mid-60s, through compact cassette and CD to mp3. Not unexpectedly, Ronnie mourns the passing of the physical format, but loves the idea that music has returned to the 60s notion that it's all about the music, having been distracted in between times by the huge music marketing machine. The 80s and 90s were all about shifting massive volumes of records and CDs, and gigging was just a distraction. Read more