Little kids and memory

Interesting experiment. Seem to remember reading somewhere that the childhood memories often return in later life too. Might be an interesting follow up!

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Most adults don't have any memories from before they were age 3 or 4. That's certainly true for me. My earliest memories that I can accurately place in time come from when I was 3, just before Return of the Jedi came out. I'm pretty sure that my earliest memory is watching the Death Star explode on TV, followed closely by memories of a vicious preschool playground debate over whether or not Darth Vader was actually Luke's father. (I got that one wrong. I totally thought he was lying.)

But a Canadian study suggests that this limit to how far back grown ups can remember doesn't apply to kids. A group of 100 children, between the ages of 4 and 13, were asked to describe their earliest memories. After verifying events with parents, researchers found that the youngest kids could recall things that happened when they were as young as 18 months old.

But, when the same kids were brought back two years later, those memories had faded. Their earliest memories were now different, later events. And the kids couldn't recall their previous early memories even with prompting. The researchers are speculating that our brains may encode memories in different ways during the first few years of life than they do later on.

BBC: Children can recall early memories, Canadian study suggests

Via Mark Changizi

Image: Unpacking My Brain, a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (2.0)

Star Wars-Osama Bin Laden-New York Times parody/mashup

Fabulously geeky

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Galactic Empire Times.

(Via Dave Itzkoff)

BBC News - Redundancy rules could be relaxed, says government

Love the mixed message. We're going to make it easier to get rid of jobs so that we can create more jobs...

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Rules governing levels of compensation for workplace discrimination, and how long firms have to consult staff over job losses, are to be reviewed.

Installing MySQLdb on Snow Leopard

This is completely useless if you don't want to install a connector between Python and MySQL on a Mac.

If you did need to and didn't want to spend hours searching for how to do it - this is the solution (after a stupid amount of time looking on and off over the last couple of months).

Spent ages trying to install this component on Snow Leopard.

Firstly - Snow Leopard removed one of the old gcc compilers (needed to build the package). This needs to come off the installation DVD.

Secondly - MySQLdb has the wrong config path in site.cfg. You need to change it. It's in /usr/local. You need to tell it the path to the mysql config file (in bin inside the mysql install directory).

Thirdly - there's something necessary called an Arch flag. Don't know what that is.

Fourthly - MySQLdb is calling the wrong version of gcc so you need to correct that.

Therefore instructions are:

Download latest version from sourceforge.

Next modify the config path (fuller instructions here:http://www.mangoorange.com/2008/08/01/installing-python-mysqldb-122-on-mac-os-x/?cp=all).

Now go into the relevant directory through terminal and:

sudo python setup.py clean
sudo ARCHFLAGS=’-arch x86′ CC=/usr/bin/gcc-4.0 python setup.py build
sudo ARCHFLAGS=’-arch x86′ CC=/usr/bin/gcc-4.0 python setup.py install

Overly complicated but worked in the end.

Found the instructions in the comments halfway down the article linked.

Fairy Dust

“The e-book is a beautiful, beautiful dream, that newspapers will be saved because people who weren’t prepared to pay for content on one screen will magically decide they will on another screen. Maybe the tooth fairy will drop nuggets of gold on the newspaper industry as well!”

Really liking Paid Content - nice blog about internet publishing in the UK.

Photo from dreamglow

The Media Decline Continues

New quarter, new proclamations of pain from traditional media owners. Many of them are seeing significant declines in their precious advertising revenues.

The problem, as articulated by 'Free', is that advertising was once a scarcity market. It was a market that was defined by a lack of supply. I've lost count of the number of briefs that use the words 'cash-rich, time-poor'.

The implication we're using in this case is that the people we're targeting don't consume much media. They will only see our adverts in a couple of places in the rare times when they're not working or doing aspirational things.

Clients loved it. We loved it. The media loved it. It was even and recycled and sold back to consumers: here and here among the 11.2 million results in Google. Consumers loved the idea that they were so important they couldn't be bothered to engage with stuff that wasn't either fun or self improving.

Our entire industry was then wrapped around this problem. Fickle people need clever strategies for finding them. Media agencies will sit there and come up with cunning ways to reach them. Publishers will dream up shiny media vehicles that are tailored to these people. The agencies will come up with a way to value the audiences that publishers own. The Publishers will then find ways to 'reach' that audience that will turn out to be particularly costly.

Problem is that we've gotten a bit too good at finding solutions to this problem. The internet has been a fantastic leveller in terms of media consumption.

In the old media world, one could argue that the only way to reach a 'high flier' was to buy ads in the FT, maybe the economist and possibly get some posters around Canary Wharf. You wouldn't find them watching Pop Idol or at least the wastage you'd see in that buy would make things a bit pointless.

Now a whole host of companies have come along trying to find ways to get to those people. We can identify them from registration data across Facebook and LinkedIN. They will be reading the business sections online across the Guardian, Reuters, Bloomberg, FT, WSJ, CityWire, Interactive Investor, etc.

This worked for a while but at some point some more clever people came up with ways to identify these people across the internet. Now we can use tracking technology to find regular readers of the FT \ business sections \ heavy online purchasers. Once we've found them, we can target ads to them wherever they are. For the price of one placement in the FT, we can get ten when that person's reading up on the latest gossip on HeatWorld (they still indulge their trashy side too).

The targeting change hasn't fully hit the media landscape yet. We've yet to nail the exact places our ads are going to be appearing in. Testing of the effectiveness of the targeted ads hasn't come back with solid enough results.

What's certain is that once the recession has ended, publishers who rely on pushing high rates for their 'premium' audience are going to have difficulty pushing their rates back up to where they were before the recession.

Image stolen from Big Huge Labs

Daily Mail 'Beats Guardian'

You'll probably see this kind of story being repeated across the press for the next couple of days.

This is because the ABCe have now changed access to their report so that normal people can't access them without registering (and being an employee of a member company).

The Daily Mail has somehow managed to add an extra 5 million readers in the last month. This is more than adding all the people who live in Birmingham. It's a bit unlikely to say the least.

Looking at the actual certificates, the Daily Mail's gone from 7.974m UK uniques last month to 8.316m UK uniques this month. That's an increase of 400k, which is 5%. That's good but definitely no the 19% that Brand Republic are reporting.

The increase has come from international traffic.

By UK traffic, the position is currently:

Guardian - 10.211m
Daily Mail 8.316m

Guardian wins.

Brand Republic - AgencyDMG takes search analysis beyond 'last click wins' model - Media News - Brand Republic

Surprised these people manage to get this into the industry papers. This kind of technology's been around for at least three years.

Never heard of AgencyDMG, but it's quite a good name.

Digital Brain:Search also sounds like proper fancypants technology. Hopefully it lives up to the name.

Newspapers Trying To Evolve

Will be interesting to see if there are any anti-competitive actions out of what this group of newspapers are planning to do.

So the American guys are getting together in Chicago to go through what they can do.

Our European guys are getting together in Barcelona to discuss their digital problems. Would have thought they can webconference that!

My own opinion is that there's room for a couple of large news providers to function but not room for all the ones that currently exist. Some are going to have to explore different ways to do what they do, and stomach a huge drop in their earnings.

Got Published!

After a long period of not having time to actually write anything for this, I recently got hte chance to write an opinion piece for our industry mag, "Media Week".

The subject was sparked off by an article by Rupert Murdoch talking about the fact that free content will not endure.

My edited opinion is below. Wrote it in about three hours so it doesn't detail everything I wanted to.

Essentially I think charging is unavoidable for most news sites. I think the bit they add value to are the opinion sections rather than the news sections (many people write news, few people write opinion that people agree with).

The future news site will select relevant news stories from various sources and then add in their own opinion. You'll have to pay to see the opinion but the selection \ filtering will be free.

That's what I think anyway. Grand writing here:

Looking at newspapers' current print-focused businesses, it's almost enough to cheer bankers up.

Their traditional market is drying up, attacked from the internet, the BBC, TV and freesheets. The inescapable problem is that papers make as much from the cover price than from advertising. But there's simply not enough money to support the number of online news sites.

Fantasy football or crosswords do not provide sufficient money either. Charging will come about or the number of news sources will have to reduce significantly. Charging users will be painful and needs a good micro-payment system, which doesn't yet exist.

If an easy way of paying a couple of pence per article can be implemented, then charging will happen successfully. Subscription will be a struggle, but giving users options is always the sensible way to run.

'Pre-historic Viagra' found in Siberian mammoth DNA could boost your sex life and let you live longer | Mail Online

Does anybody ever fact check?

Just a quick Google search shows this "Anatoli Broushkov" seems to have appeared within the last twelve hours on Google - nothing is older.

There's no journal publication being mentioned, nothing with any detail on it...

Seems a completely random thing to test the bacteria for too.

Good news of the day

Blue line is 'Redundancy' and red line is 'recession'. Running just for the UK.

Ouch!

Sprout getting Confident

Sprout Builder Pricing | Sprout
Gave the Sprout Builder a go a couple of months ago (might have been a year!). I was very impressed with its abilities, though I don't think I've got enough design experience to create anything useful.

I like seeing that they're confident enough to start charging. It will be interesting - I've seen some agencies charge as much as £20,000 for building a Widget. I'm not sure what they used to build it but the fact Sprout are now willing to create solutions directly for agencies means we may see some slightly more realistic prices for Widgets.

My own opinion is that, while free is good, quality is better. Paid for apps tend to be more usable than those that are free. The most usable (in my opinion) are the ones that are paid for by advertising since they have to bring people back to using it.

Once more agencies are using tools like Sprout (rather than just randomly building from scratch) we could see some better Widgets appear.

What's True?

I'm increasingly thinking the best solution for the Israel vs Palestine problem would be a big games tournament, using an obscure board game that none of them are likely to have played.

Decided to have a read of some of the things which are happening. It's quite interesting in some ways.

Public relations
Although many of the recent wars (or probably more accurately 'sustained airstrikes') have featured some PR, this one has even more. The decisions that the military and government are taking are talked about in terms of the propaganda effect they are trying to achieve.
They are doing well in terms of keeping Hamas' rocket fire in the frame, though in some ways I'm quite impressed with their ability to keep firing despite the efforts that Israel is putting in.
An own goal though would be the IDF's YouTube channel. It reminds me hugely of one of the parts of Call of Duty IV.

IDF hitting Gazans:

Call of Duty hitting Randoms:



I honestly think this kind of video is pretty awful for their public relations as it highlights the asymmetric nature of the conflict. It's people using little Mortars against robots. They're not going to win...

Sourcing Information
The most interesting thing from this conflict is the issues with information are being brought to bear. I was watching the C4 news this evening and an IDF spokesperson was seriously questioning whether the Red Cross was actually a credible source against that of the IDF. For me it highlights the questionable nature of all the information we are receiving about the conflict.
The IDF's youtube channel disturbed me as it's all action fully removed from context. It's just people talking about how someone is a terrorist with no proof. This blog makes a good point that the IDF makes mistakes (that's not to say that the red cross never does either!).
It made me think about many of the facts going on here. We hear all the time about Hamas missiles landing on Sderot. There are some issues around facts here:

Is Sderot an illegal settlement?
Was Hamas firing these before the ceasefire stopped?

Both sides of the conflict have different views as to the veracity of the claims above. It is quite interesting as it brings a point as to what valid data is and what it could look like. This is the kind of site that is talking to us about the attacks on Israeli soil. Al Jazeera is more than happy to report on what's happening to the Palestinians.
I'm not going to go anywhere near the question of what was at Sderot before Sderot arrived.
The problem is that people have very blinkered views as to what is going on. They all throw conspiracy style theories out about what's happening in the disputed areas. Video is about the only thing that can't easily be doctored (photos are very easy to change) but video robbed of context is problematic.

Traditionally us Brits have trusted the BBC, but in recent times most articles are simply rehashes of AP information about other people's reports. Even if they were in, both sides would be accusing the BBC of bias. American networks can't be trusted but neither can the Arabic ones. It's difficult, the only ones I really believe are the Chinese Media as I don't think they care either way...

For the internet, distrust of the media is actually a good thing as it will hopefully educate people to look at more than one source when investigating what's going on. This will increase the number of pages looked at and give us poor little media planners more choice in titles to use.

Unfortunately for media owners increased cross readership with other titles means that their site do not offer a unique readership and it makes it easier for us to 'buy around them'. In turn this will reduce the total number of potential outlets for news.

Internet Explorer users warned to change browser over security fears - Times Online

Internet Explorer users warned to change browser over security fears - Times Online: "A spokesman today estimated that one in 500 internet users had been affected."

1 in 500 is stupidly high when you've got billions of people using your system. This is the kind of thing that can actually destroy people's trust in the internet.

Hope they manage to solve this quickly. If more people switch browsers, we should see these sort of problems become less frequent - someone would have to find a way to compromise firefox, IE, chrome, opera and safari (plus numerous others) in order to get to 1 in 500. If there are 600 million internet users (a stat I remember seeing recently), then we're talking about 1.2 million people being compromised. That's stupidly huge.

I hope the spokesperson was just being wrong and meant that 1 in 500 may be affected...

Me being Slow

Founders of Google looking Geekys somewhere

It's taken me a long time, but I finally got around to reading the paper Google's founders wrote when they had their search engine up and running.
I haven't seen a similar example from any other startup where their actual process of starting up is written up in so much detail. Obviously it is still quite biased as it is an academic paper which will naturally try to talk up the achievements of the authors.
Just seeing what they did though does impress me. They came up with:

• The whole concept of crawlers
• A new way of storing files on disks
• A programme that could understand web pages
• The pagerank idea (and more importantly the implementation)
• Storing the index in a flexible manner
  

Much as we all hear about the company, it's very interesting to see how it all started. Right from the start they were looking to create a platform rather than just a search engine. Quite scary really.
Also interesting to see they wrote the initial crawler in Python. Been playing around with this recently and it's good to see the best in the business are using this too.

Pre Budget Report

Was quite pleased with the announcements yesterday. More tax on people earning stupidly large sums of money. Less VAT. Quite good really.
Only problem is that I can forsee having to make some custom changes to lots of random things in order to accomodate the changes.

Anyway. Here's a nice Wordle view of the speeches from Darling and Osborne.

Darling first:



As you can see he was talking about lots of rises and changes, hence percent becomes one of his bigger words. Most interesting is the use of the words 'Government', 'help' and 'support'. Pretty much gets his meaning across.

Mr. Osborne was slightly more negative:

Lots of the word Chancellor, which is quite standard for the nature of the House of Commons debating style. Lots of 'recession' and 'tax' in there. ALthough the policies have changed, it still Tories talking more about tax burdens and Labour talking about funding public services.

We'll see where things go in the future, but the most telling thing back was the best day for the FTSE 100 ever. Obviously Darling can't take full credit for that, but it definitely didn't do any harm.

A new Christmas

We are spending large amouts of time seeing bad news about the economy. It's still not clear if we're at a point where the economy is going to improve or if we're at a point where it's just going to continue to get worse.
The newspapers constantly serve us up news that tells us that things are going bad. The bank's own random surveys tell us that people are pessimistic about the future. Companies are laying off workers in their droves (according to reports) and hgue names are teetering on the edge of bankruptcy.
However the genuine figures I keep on seeing are not too bad at all. My clients are all going to spend more on online advertising next year. We are forecasting more internet sales. We are seeing problems from too much competition and the possibility that other people may be cutting prices more than us.
It's a confusing world. As deflation rears it's unknown head, we face an interesting world where the assumption goes from 'buy it now' to 'wait until it is cheaper'. That's not a world most marketers here have faced before. The usual immediacy message of 'SALE' is now not as effective.
We've been facing this problem with Christmas sales for the last couple of years - consumers have known that shops were going to cut prices towards the end of the season, and the shops have had to. This Christmas may see the first bucking of the trend.
Retailers have been pessimistic about their forecasts for Christmas this year. They worry that people will be stockpiling cash \ unable to lend for presents. This means they assume consumers will be spending less on Christmas. Shareholders are demanding that companies hang onto cash rather than investing it in stock. Therefore they haven't bought as much inventory as they normally do, meaning it is possible that shops will sell out.
What will happen then?
We won't see obscenely large January sales
We will see larger queues in shops
These two things will be fantastic for the retailers.
Lack of large January sales mean the retailers will hang onto more margin, making them more profitable businesses. This will in turn enhance shareholder confidence in them (something which is sorely lacking at the moment).
Larger queues in shops will be fantastic for me as it will encourage more people onto the internet. It will also be fantastic for shops as for once they will be able to recycle some urgency into their customers. There must come a point of 'sale fatigue' and I'm sure I've hit it. If I see a shop I like with a sale, I just don't bother popping in as I don't think it's siginficantly different from normal operation. I'm sure other customers are similar.

Overall a sold out Christmas (but not necessarily a good one in terms of total revenue for the shops) will improve matters on the high street. If they can't sell their inventory, expect January to be fantastic for bargain hunters, but the retailers will take a couple of years to recover.

New Things

I went to the Economist's Innovation Awards last night. It was held at the Science Museum, which was a fantastic venue for the awards - surrounded by random world changing inventions. They had a fondness for pointing out the world's first Telegraph machine, but there were lots of interesting props around the building.
Most award ceremonies I go to do not really award based on things that have a real impact. However this one did.
The winners also gave a little speech. Most of them, admittedly, were along the lines of 'thanks for the award but I couldn't be bothered to turn up'. One of the people who gave a proper speech was Jimmy Wales.
His point was that he didn't invent anything, he just used existing things in a new way and that's what innovation is. That's exactly what these awards were about. Thinking about it in this way, there's very few major world changing inventions that have come about in the last twenty years.
It's hard to think of any examples. The ones I would usually think of:

• Mobile Phones (more than twenty years old)
• LCD screens (more than twenty years old)
• Even the web is more than twenty years old (I'll take Mosaic as the starting point)
• Search is older than twenty years (Altavista was the start?)
• Hybrid cars are from the 70s

I suppose we could count Ajax or some rubbish like that, but those don't feel like things that have changed the world. Hopefully this lack of innovation is just due to the cycles involved in bringing new technology to consumers.

We're due something properly new. Hope it comes soon!

(image from Zinkwazi's photostream)

Burying the bad news

Home Retail warns of tougher times to come

I suspect we'll start seeing this kind of results reporting in the next couple of weeks. All the bad news companies have been burying for a while will suddenly come out with the bosses washing their hands and moaning about the current economic climate.

"Oh no, the business I bought for £900m is now worth less than half? Damn this credit crunch!"

Not my job to go through these reports but I suspect that there'll be a lot of extremely pessimistic write downs that will be miraculously turned into profits next year.

The Chief Execs who wrung their hands at the evil global markets today will then take all the credit for their cunning skills in turning their loss last year into huge profits. They'll then hit their targets and make loads of bonus money.


Good work if you can get it!