thelump.net

This Week in Lumps
#9 [17/07 - 23/07]

· If you had one superhuman wish, what would it be? The ability to fly? To read peoples minds? Accurately predict the future? What one unique ‘gift’ would you like to be able to show off to the world, and use for your own needs? Maybe you’d like to teleport to work everyday, maybe you’d prefer the ability to heal wounds like they never existed. Aside from that, would you be paraded and applauded by those around you as an amazing human being, or would you be rejected and classed as a freak? If these are situations you find yourself dreaming about on some idle Tuesday evening, you might be more than interested in Heroes.

Hugely popular and critically acclaimed US Sci-Fi drama ‘Heroes’ is flying its way onto BBC2 this week, after its undeniable success across the pond. The setup is simple, yet undeniably intriguing; its clearly been influenced by comic books, which is shown by its addictive twists and turns, the unique characters we’re introduced to, and with the super-power situation they find themselves in. To set the scene, the main characters in Heroes discover they have legitimate, differing superhero powers such as telepathy, time travel and flight. At first, they have no idea why, but as the series progresses, they learn they have these powers for specific reasons, and the plot builds up from there. Of course, they learn all this, and still have to hide it from Joe Public.
The series, when premiered in the US, was the most-watched program among adults aged 18–49 for the night, attracting 14.3 million viewers overall and receiving the highest rating for any NBC drama premiere in five years. It’s now set to land on BBC2 after the success on its first British station, the Sci- Fi channel. The premiere attracted 600,000 viewers and the series is averaging 450,000 viewers per show which is five times more than any other programme on the Sci-Fi channel.

Comparing it with two other hugely popular US programmes: 24 and Lost, I think Heroes has the possibility of being bigger. Like the two aforementioned shows, Heroes is strongly character based, so you learn to love or hate their idiosyncrasies over time. I thought initially that I would be put off by the lack of special effects and the like, but this programme seems to be even better due to the lack of it. It will be clear after the first few episodes that the BBC have landed a great programme here, that I strongly believe will grow with popularity, the likes of which possibly haven’t been seen on the Beeb since Spooks, and with current BBC shows like Rome and Jekyll not hitting the mark (and bordering on flops in my eyes), this will regenerate ratings, and grow a huge fanbase.

You can watch the first episode on BBC2 and BBC HD this Wednesday at 9:00pm.

~

· We’ve all heard the saying “if isn’t broke, don’t fix it“, and it seems Steve Jobs agrees wholeheartedly. Fresh off of the success in America of the touchscreen, all-singing, all-dancing, “wait-why-cant-I-send-MMS” iPhone, Apple are expected to announce that the next iPod will be available for purchase either in August of September, depending on which blog you read, and yes, you guessed it, it’s looking like its going to be touchscreen. The 6th generation iPod its expected to will work and feel like the new iPhone… but without the phone part. There’s little in the way of details regarding pricing and release dates, although rumours are circulating that this new iPod could be running OSX.
I’m actually more interested than I thought I would be. My big fat heavy Sony Walkman is a few years old now, and it still does the job I bought it for, but with regards to software, and transferring music, it fails on every count. I cant add music without it deciding to add the same songs I already have on the mp3 player, therefore needing to delete and re-add everything every time I download new music. Sony’s awful attempt to rival iTunes ended in disaster, the product has now been recalled and replaced, but I never stopped using iTunes in the first place, and common sense screams at me to get something that can actually sync properly and do what you need it to do.

Okay, so the iPod has received its praise where it has deserved it, but lets slip into our ‘what-if‘ jeans for a minute: What if this next-generation iPod is indeed touchscreen… and runs OSX… and does all sorts of other wonderful things we could have only dreamt about a few years back; could this affect sales of the iPhone? What if all the people who slept outside those stores had known that if they had waited a few months for an iPod announcement they could have saved an awful lot of money, shelved some of it towards a new iPod, and bought a much cheaper, and more worthy mobile phone? As I’m sitting here and typing this, what if in a few months time, and a few blog entries from now, Apple announce something else thats new and wonderful, and makes me regret even thinking about purchasing the new iPod?

By the stats and figures of the iPhone sales so far, it looks as though we’re going to be buying it anyway.

~

· A few weeks ago I created a list at OnMyList, discussing the future of Google; what they might release in the future, and one of those things I listed was Google TV:

Realising most TV is rubbish, Google spend a bit more money on their own TV station, using Google Adsense in between programs, and creating some kind of crazy Google search feature instead of a TV schedule, for programs you want to watch, when you want to watch them.

For the first part of that prediction, it turns out that it could be rather close to the truth. Daniel Langendorf at last100 recently blogged that ‘Google wants to do for TV what it did for the Web’. He talks about Vincent Dureau, once CTO of OpenTV, now the main man behind the GoogleTV technology, who was quoted as saying that TV is “experiencing an identity crisis”. With regards to TV advertising, and the prospect of an Adsense made for TV, he said:

“You can actually make more money, because you can increase the relevancy of your ads. You can cut down on the number of ads - and still reach more people. At the end of the day, you’re changing the attitude of the consumer. They’ve reached a point where they expect the ad to be relevant and they’re more likely to watch it.”

For those who may not be sure what AdSense is, you’ve seen it, but may not have been aware of it. You may every now and again see ‘Ads by Google’ appearing next to your web pages. Website owners can enrol in Adsense to enable text, image and, more recently, video advertisements on their sites, with the main goal to generate revenue to that user. Its popular because it places adds based on words found on the website. Those who click on Desktop Tower Defense a lot will see adverts for CD Towers, or Scaffolding. It may not make sense, but its found words you may be interested in, and places its adverts there. Imagine what this technology could do for TV: no more car insurance ads during childrens’ programmes, and no more alcohol adverts during health programmes, ads solely aimed at the market that the TV show is playing. But its not just adverts that could change, referring to the second part of my prediction, it could be what we watch on TV as well.

I covered this topic way back in week 2, about how TV schedules will never be the same again, where I talked about the rise of PVR’s, and how its affected our TV viewing patterns to suit our personal needs. But what if TV were to progress in a slightly different direction; what if the Internet was the future of television? Think about what we watch on the Internet at the moment: Podcast and Vidcasts are hugely popular, you cant forget about the rise of YouTube, and other video sites, and with torrents and downloads available as well. It’s clear that personal viewing habits are changing television, what better way to mould it to our personal needs than to turn interactively completely on its head, and watch the programmes you like via the tubes of the Internet. TV will eventually end up like our music habits. We buy what we like, we ignore what we do not like. If online shops (such as the iTunes store) can sell us songs, why cant they sell us shows and episodes?
The secret is, they already are. With 4 on Demand in full swing, and the BBC iPlayer due to be launched this week, you can download programmes to your computer to watch. Imagine if Google got behind this: you decide you want to watch some television, so you type it into your TVs Google search bar, and it takes you to a list of episodes and series to choose from. Maybe, at some point in the future, TV schedules will cease to exist, and when we turn the TV on, the screen will be blank until we choose something to watch. Or, another possibility, the screen will resemble a PC desktop; you have your icons for email, and your Internet browser, but also your TV browser. You click to open the application as you would for the web, and just like the billions of pages on the net, your TV shows are just a few clicks away.

If you consider what Google did for the Internet in the 90’s, just think what they could be capable of doing for the TV in years to come.

~~~

That was the week in lumps, a week in which: Bebo follows Facebook and plans to start 3rd party development, MySpace blocks the letter ‘i’ from everyones blog, Pierce Brosnan is to become the new narrator of Thomas the Tank Engine, and seagulls in Aberdeen like Doritos.

This week comes to a close with The Simpsons Movie just around the corner. Admittedly, next week sees a review of the Transformers Movie, but to get a head start on the funny looking yellow people of Springfield in movie form, here’s a list created by best week ever, of the top ten best endings of current Simpsons episodes. a real sure-fire talking point, if ever I saw one.

ttfn
x