Informationoverlord

There must be something in the online water, as it seems to have been a mixtape few days.  I have found myself creating one on Muxtape (which requires you to upload songs) and one on Mixwit, which searches music already available online using Skreemr and Seeqpod.

Both are fun. The Muxtape one allows you to choose exactly what you want, as you need to already have the tracks, but Mixwit certainly has the advantage of speed and the nice ability to inbed the finished item on your site (see below). Nice way to waste  some time for those of us who miss the concept in this digital age.

My Muxtape one, is a female artist themed one, featuring several different music styles.

The mixwit one is below

Earlier this year I posted about Paddy Power’s “Where have all the women gone?” poster ads for being refused by several Bus operators and London Underground, and Paddy Powers’ daft claims that they were being censored. Anyway, three months on and the Irish Advertising Standards Authority have decided they don’t like the ads either, in particular, the one of the man breastfeeding, which was ruled distasteful by the Authority.

They considered the volume of complaints received and found that based on this volume of complaints alone, the advertiser had breach 2.15 of the Code. The Complaints Committee said that they had taken into account the advertisers’ response in relation to the light-hearted nature of the advertisement, however the Committee agreed that the campaign was distasteful.

Congratulations to Richard Thomas.  The UK’s Information Commissioner (and ex CC employee) has received the International Association of Privacy Professionals’ 2008 Privacy Leadership Award for his ongoing commitment to raising the public profile of privacy and data protection issues.

According to the IAPP, the world’s largest association for the privacy profession,
“Commissioner Thomas has demonstrated an enduring commitment to strengthening privacy protections during his tenure,” said Sandra R. Hughes, Global Ethics, Compliance and Privacy Executive, The Procter and Gamble Company. “Under his leadership, the ICO has focused on raising public awareness of important privacy issues and strengthening the UK’s approach to preventing and addressing misuse of sensitive data and other harmful practices. The Commissioner has diligently worked to further the protection of citizens’ rights through public debate, education, regulatory action and enforcement.”

Hat tip

Ofcom, has confirmed that channel Five has been given listed event status, the same as BBC1, BBC2, ITV1 and Channel 4 . This means that it is now in the category of free television channels which must be given a genuine opportunity to bid for the right to broadcast listed sports events such as the highlights of Cricket Test Matches played in England. Ofcom is satisfied that Five has met the two qualifying conditions, which are : the service is provided “free” at reception and the service is received by at least 95% of the UK population.

This is interesting as it comes just after a European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruling which has rejected an appeal by the European Commission relating to a decision under the Television Without Frontiers (TVWF) Directive. The case related to the broadcasting rights for the 2002 and 2006 FIFA World Cups. These were designated by the UK as so-called “listed events”, ensuring that they must be offered for broadcast via free-to-air television. The Commission`s subsequent acceptance of this designation was contested by Infront WM, a Swiss media company, which had previously purchased exclusive European broadcast rights for these events. Following an action by Infront, the Court of First Instance (CFI) annulled the Commission`s decision, on the basis that it had not followed procedural requirements. The ECJ has now upheld the CFI`s ruling. It is not clear that Infront`s challenge would have been successful had the Commission`s decision been made properly, although the case confirms their right to appeal such a decision. The TVWF Directive has been amended since the CFI`s decision and is now being replaced by the Audio-Visual Media Services Directive. The provisions on “listed events” remain.

A good link to EU case law on media and broadcasting is here

The Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market (OHIM) Board of Appeal has upheld an opposition to an application by Google to register GMAIL as a Community trade mark (CTM) in respect of telecommunications, electronic mail and other services in class 38.

Class 38 – Telecommunications; communications by computer terminals; message sending;electronic mail services.

The OHIM Board tuned down Google’s request to grant it a CommunityTrade Mark due to the existence of a prior German trade mark registration by Daniel Giersch, for the figurative mark which has been registered for the following services:

Class 38 – Telecommunications, particularly services in and for electronic communication networks, like Internet or World Wide Web, electronic mail service,dissemination of information.
Class 39 – Transporting; particularly postal services, collection, storage, sorting, franking and delivery of mail; courier service; parcel service.
Class 42 – Development of programs for data processing; particularly development of programs for electronic communication

Google tried to argue that this registration should not stop their registration succeeding, arguing that Giersch’s service was initially intended to be used for postal delivery services and not electronic communications (nicely ignoring the fact that Giersch got the trademark registered to cover email services). According to Google there were other things that weighed in its favour:

The OHIM wasn’t having any of this. It agreed that yes, in Giersch’s trademark their were some additional words. It consisted of the word and slogan “G-mail …und die Post geht richtig ab” (G-mail … and off the post goes). However, the word “G-mail” was depicted more prominently than the slogan. The two marks sounded exactly the same when spoken. They also looked the same for all intents and purposes which the difference of upper and lower case and the hyphen not detracting from that fact. As a result, the Board held that because of their overall visual, aural and conceptual similarity, there was a likelihood that the German public would be misled into thinking that the marks shared a common commercial origin.

A good decision.

The Latest edition of Hammonds’ Sports IP focus looks at two important recent cases concerning football broadcast rights. The first deals with the Karen Murphy case , and the liability of publicans based in the UK who opt to show foreign broadcasts of Premier League games.The second, the QC Leisure case, focuses on the companies which supply those publicans with the equipment - decoder cards - required to receive and view those foreign broadcasts, and the question as to whether licence agreement provisions restricting foreign broadcasters from selling decoders, etc., for use outside their territory, is an illegal restriction of competition contrary to Article 81 of the EC Treaty.

Harbottle & Lewis also look at the Karen Murphy case and are not the first to comment that it is interesting that BSkyB should bring a case such as this when it supplies decoders to customers on the continent, in the same manner in which it has been complaining of people doing in the UK. Watson, Fraley & Williams give another view on QC Leisure

“Let me take you far away, you’d like a Holiday” (’Holiday’ - schenker/meine (Scorpions))

One of the many things that has been changed by the internet, is how most people go about booking and arranging holidays. It used to all mean a trip to the travel agent, pick up a few brochures, and then go back and book it. Maybe you’d do it over the phone. After a while Teletext (in the UK) was were you might look; and then the internet. These days I actually wouldn’t think of not sorting out my holiday online.

As a result there have been a lot of sites popping up to help make things easier for us. This post will take a look at some of these sites and resources, and pick out thise that I feel are the best in class at the moment.

Picking/Researching a Destination

Travel Books

Yes, those things made of paper. I often start with these and still always have at least one travel guide book in hard copy with me when I travel. However, these days most of the publishers also have online offerings, which are worth checking out. So, part one of my Travel Sites posts will start with a selection of these.

Fodors

Fodors actually put quite a lot of their content online. Destination guides include sights, hotels, entertainment, shopping, restaurants, travel tips. You can find a lot of good information about where to stay, go, eat, drink and be merry etc. Example: Queensland with Brisbane & Cairns

You can book trips via the site – using Expedia.

Also featured on the site are: Features (short article on specific places, sights, experiences); and the Travel Talk forum (user discussion and reviews)

A good resource to include in any holiday planning.

Lonely Planet

Easy to navigate and friendly site. Contains short extracts of information covering places to see (Sights), Getting there, History, Events, and Overviews of destinations. Example: Washington DC

You can search hotels (as reviewed and recommended by the site); flights (powered by Globaltravelmarket). User feedback is in the form of the Thorn Tree online forum; and Bluelists (collections of tips and country highlights etc.) Additionally the site offers a nice collection of Travel Stories, providing nice insights into things to do, places to see.

If that were not enough, then you can also check out Lonely Planet TV – collections of video clips mostly from users, such as this example of London by a couple of Australians.

Some good stuff here. Bar and restaurant listings come with a map view which is handy. Bluelists and Travel Stories also contain some useful material.

Rough Guides

Offers limited short extracts on destinations, which are hardly worth the trouble to find.

You can book trips via the site – using Expedia.

The strength of this site however, is the extras: Podcasts , Podscrolls - available for ten major cities and feature Rough Guides travel content in full colour, taken from our acclaimed Directions guidebook series) mobile guides (pay services) Rough Guides Phrasebook (free); RG Mobile - information on more than 200 cities in 33 European countries, as well as maps for over 15,000 points of interest across Europe ( $10/£5) eBooks - a broad selection, plus the offer of free eBooks of Hard Copy Guides you’ve purchased.

Worth seeking out for the free downloads, but not much else.

Insight Guides

Disappointingly, this site seems more about plugging their hard copy books and less about adding much value for the online user. Avoid.

Berlitz

Another site that is more about their hard copy books than offering online content. However, this site does contain the best selection of free language downloads, inc learn local slang and swear words that I have come across thus far.

Frommers

This site contains some of the best quality extracts on destinations covering the usual Sights, Getting there, History, Events, and much more. Because the site also offers updates to its Hard Copy books online free, so you can keep up-to-date in between publications – it has some of the most complete offline/online content replication out there. See Amsterdam Guide or New York for example

You can book trips via the site using Travelocity.com ; Cheapair.com, ixplore.com and others.

User reviews and chat can be found at Travel Talk

This is one of the best places to visit for information on travel destinations. Great lists of places to eat, drink, and visit.

Time Out Travel

More disappointment. Very basic destination overviews, and very little reason for visiting the site. Uses Globaltravelmarket for flight search.

Conclusion

The F’s had it for me. Fodors, and Frommers would be my starting points of these examples, closely followed by Lonely Planet.  All three have good quality and choice levels.

I’d like to say a few words about True Thinker. This was one of those things that sounded quite cool around 18 months ago and I signed up, had a play and decided that it just wasn’t a very pleasurable experience to use, and was trying to make things harder than they needed to be.

But I am jumping ahead of myself

“TrueThinker, a brand-new web-based tool to help you more easily and quickly grow your knowledge of topics in which you’re interested. One of the key ways it does this is by learning to organize your saved website links based on what data you save and how you organize it’

* Throw away your bookmark file (after you easily import it into TrueThinker). Access TrueThinker (and your links) from any computer, anywhere in the world.
* Save search results into your TrueThinker Knowledge Bank categories and your TrueThinker Communities with only one click
* Continue to use the search engine you’re comfortable with, but let TrueThinker make sense of your search results by organizing them and making them useful to you
* Start training the AutoGnomeTM within TrueThinker to organize your Internet information. That’s Artificial Intelligence like none other!
* Join TrueThinker Communities. Collaborate with, share information with, and learn from people interested in the same things you are.

Now, the technology might be the greatest thing since sliced bread. I don’t know, because I have not got far enough and added enough to it to find out.

Explaining why is actually as simple as commenting that 18 months down the line, and with the product now out of beta - and being charged for! ($24.95 per year) - they still do not seem to have heard of social bookmarking sites. The options for importing bookmarks are to import your IE or Firefox ones. I’m sure the five I have there will get me off to a great start. Where is the import delicious, Furl, Diigo etc??

They also want you to use the site as your personal homepage. They have some modules you can add. There is one for the weather. With this I can find out what the weather is like all over America. There is a Yellow Pages search, where I can find businesses all over America too. Guess what? I don’t live in America. It is not just that, but the modules seem to indicate that the people at True Thinker have never seen iGoogle, Pageflakes, or Netvibes.

Now, I am sure the folks at True Thinker would say that it is the semantic web/search aspect that are the most important things. Fine. If that’s the case get rid of the rest of the crap. It really is the kind of stuff that Noah would have turned his nose up at working on Ark 2.0 - although maybe he’d have better look with the toolbar, and the feedback survey, where if you click on the link it says:

“This survey is currently closed. Please contact the author of this survey for further assistance”.

My advice, if your tech actually works licence it out and let others add it to their offerings, or if you want to really go with the portal/start page thing - open it up and get some decent widgets, and try and remember that America is not the world.

The House of Lords have dismissed an appeal by Animal Defenders International, against the High Court decision rejecting its claim for judicial review of a decision of the Broadcast Advertising Clearance Centre, which refused to allow the screening of a television advertisement against the commercial, species-endangering use of primates. The Lords agreed with the High Court that Parliament acted within the ambit of the discretionary judgment available to it, in introducing and maintaining the prohibition on political advertising. It also considered there to be a strong argument that the prohibition was necessary in the interest of maintaining the integrity of the democratic process, as the absence of such a ban would run the risk of undue access to the broadcast media based on willingness and ability to pay.

A sound decision from the Lords. The Appeal centred around Section 321(2) of the Communiactions Act 2003, and ADI had sought a declaration under section 4 of the Human Rights Act 1998 that the statutory prohibition is incompatible with its right under article 10 of the Convention of Human rights. The Courts have not been in dispute that the statutory prohibition of political advertising does constitute a restriction on ADI’s “freedom of expression” and that article 10 of the Convention is therefore engaged - nor that , in the words of Lord Scott (that has a nice ring to it doesn’t it) there may be respects in which sections 319 and 321 are incompatible with article 10.

I agree with Baroness Hale who states that the ban on political advertising “is a balanced and proportionate response to the problem: they [ADI] can seek to put their case across in any other way, but not the one which so greatly risks distorting the public debate in favour of the rich. There has to be the same rule for the same kind of advertising, whatever the cause for which it campaigns and whatever the resources of the campaigners. We must not distinguish between causes of which we approve and causes of which we disapprove. Nor in practice can we distinguish between small organisations which have to fight for every penny and rich ones with access to massive sums.”

Computer Weekly has a nice piece on LinkedIn, asking whether or not social networking sites can provide real business value. Many of the views voiced in the article seem to reflect where I am with it. I feel there is a value, even if it is not demonstratable to me at this moment in time. Killer quote: “LinkedIn seems to have realised that the site has become a bit of a Panini sticker album, where members collected contacts without there being an end goal or benefit in sight. So the danger is that it becomes bloated with extra functionality without delivering value for the time people invest in it” (Philip Szomszor, Berkeley PR)

Meanwhile, the Current Issue of the New Scientist has a couple of pieces on ‘home entetainment’ which includes a piece on citizen Media by Dan Gillmore and a look at what web3.0 might look like by Annalee Newitz - her conclusion ‘ web3.o will be about making information less free’ and ‘enjoy web2.0 while it lasts’