Versatile Amphibian

As January draws to a close, I've nearly finished developing my predictions for what will happen in digital in 2014 and thought that I’d post them here to get some wisdom from my readers! Some of these will be positive, some might be busting some myths about categories that have captured the zeitgeist. Now, more than ever, comments will be greatly appreciated. This one is a bit light on numbers – I need to work on that...   My prediction   2014 will see the launch of at least 10 new high quality, economically viable TV and tablet channels aimed at specific ethnic and/ or national audiences.   Why I think this   This is a simple one! As tablets have become ubiquitous in middle class homes and the penetration of connected TVs has increased thanks to the natural replacement cycle and the availability of extremely cheap dongles, like Sky Now, the cost of providing a TV channel into a home has fallen by an order of magnitude. A channel ...

Wearables are one of the tech' trends of 2014, with the launch of Glass upon us and continued interest in life-logging activity bands . I've been messing around with this tech since early 2012, when I was one of the first UK buyers of the Nike FuelBand . That device had it's flaws, but certainly demonstrated the potential for gamifying the lifestyles of everyday consumers. More recently, I've switched to a second generation device, Jawbone's Up. It's lighter, more comfortable and has better software than the Nike effort, although it lacks wireless connectivity. The second recent development is me training for the London marathon, which gives me the chance to try out the Up in a pretty in depth way. 6 weeks and 220km in, here are some early takeaways: It's more accurate than you'd think: +/- 5% or better in terms of distance travelled... ...but it has it's flaws: the lack of waterproofing is annoying for my swimming training (I'm doing ...

I’m in the process of developing some predictions for what will happen in digital in 2014 and thought that I’d post them here to get some wisdom from my readers! Some of these will be positive, some might be busting some myths about categories that have captured the zeitgeist. Now, more than ever, comments will be greatly appreciated.   Last time out, I wrote about the evolution of the digital camera market in 2014. On a somewhat different tack, here’s some thoughts about how a growing need to take a holistic perspective on digital will lead to large organisations moving into Shoreditch this year. My prediction By the end of the year, more than a quarter of companies on the FTSE 100 will have started or announced a dedicated digital team, based in or around Shoreditch. The digital journey Most large organisations have been on a 10 to 15 year journey with digital. This journey started out in the late 1990s, when businesses started having websites for marketing and t...

I’m in the process of developing some predictions for what will happen in digital in 2014 and thought that I’d post them here to get some wisdom from my readers! Some of these will be positive, some might be busting some myths about categories that have captured the zeitgeist. Now, more than ever, comments will be greatly appreciated. Last time out, I focused on personal health monitoring . On a somewhat different tack, here’s some thoughts about the camera market in 2014. My prediction Unit sales of ‘point and shoot’ digital cameras will fall by around 25% in 2014; however sales of specialist camera devices such as interchangeable lens (for example, SLR) and wearable cameras will offset this decline, meaning that although shipments will fall, the decline will not be catastrophic and the total standalone camera market will by around 80m units. Why do I think this? It’s no secret that the smartphone has reduced the need for point and shoot cameras in the last two or three years....

Digital’s a broad church and I think you need to read widely to get a sense of the changes it’s bringing. To that end, this blog summarises some of the stories that have caught my eye this week. This week: apps flop at Christmas, Polaroid launch tiny and huge imaging products, PC on the slide, super-tech on the rise Media Sony announce the streamed games service that was presumably the idea behind their acquisition of Gaikai in 2011. In summary, from the summer, PS3 games can be streamed to Sony Playstations and TVs. An interesting idea, but I’m not sure how the games themselves will compare to those already available on tablets, smartphones and even smart TVs. http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/playstation-now-lets-gamers-stream-ps3-games-to-ps4-vita-and-tvs/0126467 Ace Metrix ranks the most effective TV adverts in the US last year – Google #1 - I include it here because I’m not sure how it works! I’ll try to find out… http://www.acemetrix.com/news/press-releases/the-search-is-ove...