MusicDNA, a new music file format, launched this week. It seeks to combine music with additional features (eg. lyrics, blog posts, artwork, searchability etc) in one single file format. The motivation, it seems, is to enrich the user experience and drive consumers to paid downloads rather than down illegal routes.
On the face of it this sounds great, but you know that I’m a cynic. A few things spring to mind, so I’m jotting them down here.
- When CDs were en vogue I didn’t read the lyrics in the insert, look at the artwork, buy magazines to read people’s opinion of the band etc. The MusicDNA proposition doesn’t offer me anything that warrants the fuss of changing my entire collection to the new format.
- The BBC article here quite rightly points out that the iTunes LP format is already a contender in this field. Coupled with the fact that MusicDNA does not [yet] have any buy in from major record labels I would wonder whether the format would have any real commercial success. That said, it is an open format, which has to be a good thing.
- Illegal file sharers will do so whether the file is in an MP3 or a MusicDNA format. People just don’t want to pay for things.
There’s an interesting post over on Gavin Hewitt’s blog at the BBC. It is about the ongoing debate in France around what it means to be French, a debate centralised on the politician Éric Besson.
Gavin’s post talks specifically about the inhabitants of France’s banlieues. The translation given for this is ’suburb’, but that doesn’t do it justice. The connotations of the word in French are very, very different. Forget picket fences, large gardens, close communities. A banlieue is likely to be littered with high rise blocks, with poor access to public transport, high unemployment etc.
As Gavin puts it:
The debate of what it means to be French, and what can be done to maintain a French society, is very different in this environment. These are people who are marginalised by mainstream French society in many ways.
Gavin goes on to say that at the moment there are no concrete proposals from Besson and states that more generally, on an international level, societies are asking themselves the same questions.
Do we expect people coming to our country to change their culture to fit in with us, or do we permit enclaves filled with different beliefs away from the mainstream? The former is very Borg-like, and the latter reminds me of several episodes in recent history where difference was actively fought against.
My view on this is probably quite clear already, but I’ll point out the obvious anyway.
When we as a society learn to understand and accept difference, and not just pay it the lip service that ‘tolerance’ demands, we will be in a far better position to understand what it means to be British, or French, or American, or whatever. We are not all the same, and there will never be one single way to define a modern nation.
What I believe is that blindly forcing jingoism onto people, whether national or immigrant, leads to only one thing. It leads to people recognising within themselves that they do not meet the norm you are expecting of them and quietly becoming more and more marginalised.
Mathew is mighty pissed off, and that’s putting it lightly. In November last year I took out Tiscali’s TV, broadband and phone package and not a day has gone by since where there have not been issues.
I have, therefore, decided to document my experiences in the hope that others will see this and avoid like the plague.
A few comments before I begin:
» The products that Tiscali offers are actually very good. I have no quibbles with the TV, broadband or phone.
» The service that Tiscali offers is, in my opinion, terrible.
In the beginning
In November last year I moved to London and towards the end of the month I got my BT phone line sorted and then went to Tiscali to set up my package. The sales guys were very helpful and so I took out the package, with provisioning due to take a couple of weeks.
Shortly after this I received a letter advising that they would need to push back the installation date, so I called to make a new appointment. The new appointment date, a few days after the original one, came and nobody turned up. So, again I called Tiscali and they advised that they had not arranged for a visit.
Slightly annoyed at having stayed home all day to deal with this, I arranged another visit. This time I needed to work from home to enable this to happen. Again, the day came and no engineer visited. Again, I called Tiscali and was informed that the visit was not arranged because of a system issue of some kind. The agent I spoke to gave the impression this was commonplace.
Finally, with some degree of cajoling, an engineer came (!), set me up and went on his merry way. We were finally up and running.
People sometimes remark about me, sometimes to my face but often behind my back, that I am not camp. This is meant to be a compliment. I want to break this down a little.
When people say this they mean it in a nice way. They are saying that they feel it is easier to identify with me because I am more like them. I understand that completely. There is no intent to offend in what they are saying.
You know what I’m about to say, though. It does offend.
What is actually being said is this: My view of homosexuality is of a closed stereotype, where a gay man is camp and enjoys pink things, and a lesbian wears vests and has short hair. Any deviation from this view is to be commended.
Whilst I am not offended at a personal level by the intent of what is said, the subtext to this kind of comment gives away just how much work still needs to be done in addressing the perception of LGBT / queer communities in the eyes of others.
Public Perception
Things like this probably do not help. I am not the first to call it out, either.
I watched this this for the first time on Friday night with my family. What I hadn’t realised until watching it was that this is not the only character playing on the camp stereotype for comedy.
This is not comedy for subversion, to highlight our social ills and get people thinking about how they view homosexuality. Far from it. This is hopping on a growing trend that legitimises this world view.
A Little Sense
I am not a killjoy and I recognise the role of satire / irony in comedy. What I am pointing out here is that we are not in a place yet as a society to start collectively looking gay stereotypes as comedic in this sense. Why? Because the public perception is still that this is the norm in gay culture. It isn’t viewed as a bad stereotype to have.
Until we start to see a more representative, slightly more serious view of the LGBT / queer community we will not see society’s values changing. In the meantime this so-called comedy on our screens will only serve to reinforce the negatively held beliefs that people hold, whether they hold those views consciously or not.
END RANT.
This had me stumped for a while until I figured it out. Seems simple enough, but man, my mind chugged along for a good 20 mins before I got it.
The problem: show mm:ss as mm.00.
For example, 1 minute 15 seconds would be 1.25.
The solution? If your time in mm:ss format is in cell A1:
=A1*(24*60)
Then, format that cell to ‘general’ and there you have it- the solution to a problem none of you will ever have! It keeps me busy, though.
I fell in love today.
With a poet named Rives. Watch his stuff on YouTube here, and enjoy two of my faves on TED (which is my addiction this week, as you may have noticed) here and here.
I just watched this and thought it was a nice enough departure from what I usually post, but worth mentioning all the same.
Ignore the ‘American meddling with the world’ feel to some parts of the video, because the story itself is a good one.
Also, I pretty much recommend most videos on the TED website. Watch ‘em!
I had a table pulling in data from different places in Excel, basically feeding into a chart that would be used on a dashboard.
In order to stop people fooling with the formulae, I added a row where they could enter a Y if they wanted a given day to show in the graph. The formula I used was something similar to this:
This basically created an empty string every time a date was not required, like this:
Great, I thought, until I ran the graph. Excel read my empty strings (represented in the formula by the empty speech marks) as zeros, making it look like we were expecting a massive drop off..
After wracking my brain for an answer I came across the solution. The answer is to tell the formula to show an error instead of a blank cell. The updated formula for this is:
The table doesn’t look quite as nice, but it is still just as obvious which days have data populated, and which do not.. BUT the great thing is that my graph does exactly what I want it to: I get my line where I need it to be and don’t have to worry about my formula being messed with..
If you’re anything like me you deal with an IVR system most days. IVR, or Interactive Voice Response, technology is that oft annoying computer that answers your call when you want to speak to someone at the Bank / utility company / company x.
Now, professionally I have had experience putting together the options people can choose, making sure that callers are directed to the appropriate people and the relevant actions are taken. Outside of work, I have clearly used a plethora of these systems in my day to day life.
In all that experience, though, I never really stopped to think about the thoughts around the delicate little areas that were outside of my own little bubble. I’m going to think about it now, though.
To talk or not to talk
Do we make our customers use their touch tone phone to elect an option, or do we make them speak their choice? Interesting question, this, because, believe it or not, both have advantages.
Speaking means that the handset doesn’t need to move up and down from earshot to eyeshot every time a user makes a choice, and also adds a degree of intimacy in the faked conversation world of the IVR. If you have a strange accent (Birmingham, for example), then you’re pretty much screwed because if people can’t understand you, why would a computer?! When machines get it wrong repeatedly, users become very frustrated.
Touch tone means you can do away with the potential for error there. The problem here is that you are limited to 10 options at a time (the numbers 0 to 9 on the keypad), meaning that poorly designed IVR systems (like BT’s) can take an age to navigate.
Even though I’m not a massive fan of Egg, their IVR system is pretty good. Give it a call and have a listen: 08451 233 233. The style is very, very conversational and the options are few and simple. Say nothing and you will be put through to a real person relatively quickly, too.
Here [s]he is..
If you decided to call Egg and have a go at the speech recognition software they use, did you notice that the voice you were presented with was that of a bloke and not a laydee?
The decision to have either a male or a female voice on the line is an interesting one, as is the style that voice uses once you have chosen it.
ChildLine, for example, would be no good if an upset 10 year old called in and Brian Blessed boomed down the phone. “HELLO CHILD! I AM TRANSFERING YOUR CALL!”
If you have ever called the debt collection wing of your bank or a company you deal with, the voice you get on the phone can tell you a lot about their outlook as far as dealing with your debt is concerned. Well spoken male? We mean business. Softly spoken woman? We’re here to help. You can probably take the piss with the latter, and do business with the former.
Thinking about it
Having thought about it I tend to think practically about what the company is trying to tell me with the voice it chooses to represent its contact centre(s). It is naive to presume that there is no motive in choosing one voice and style over another, so next time you’re on the phone have a think about what they’re trying to tell you / sell to you 
A few months ago non-geographic telephone numbers stopped being included in my allowance on my mobile. They started to be charged at a standard rate.
I took to using saynoto0870 where I could, but there were still a good few numbers I still had to use.
My bill each month was coming to between £100 and £150 a time, which was shocking. Last month I got a landline extension at work, so resolved to using only that for these calls. The result is that my bill this month is £30.
Now, O2, wouldn’t you rather I make those calls on your network so that you can have the revenue? I’d happily pay £5 for a bolt on that makes 0870 numbers part of my inclusive allowance.
Please think about it. Please.
PS: Also, please could you get rid of those annoying pop-up messages on your website that I get when using Camino? My browser is not out of date, thanks. I don’t want to upgrade it. Your site works perfectly fine in it.