Geek Video of the Month

Raspberry Pi smart glasses translate in real time

It's great when various technologies come together to create something innovative, exciting and useful!  We have already seen the scope of the Raspberry Pi and the hope that it might get children interested in programming.

Will Powell is a good example of that creative approach to technology; he read about Google’s 'Project Glass', which was our May Geek Video of the Month.

Will decided he’d have a go at a DIY attempt to try to achieve something similar. And what he’s come up with is downright remarkable. Here’s his automatic translation system, which uses a couple of Raspberry Pis, a 3d headset, some microphones, a TV and an iPhone to display real-time subtitles in your glasses as you have a conversation.
We could all have done with this technology whilst travelling throughout Europe in the 80's!

If you want to see examples of where Rocktime shares a love of innovation with our clients please check out OM Property Management's Property Online (YPO) Business System ARMA Innovation Award 2011, or our approach to web consultancy as a way to determine the best strategy for your business website.

Author: Andy Clarke, Fiona Anderson

Benefits of using CSS3 - Cascading Style Sheets

Cascading Style Sheets separate the content of an HTML page from the presentation

It might help to think of CSS3 as a sequel, and like all good sequels you’ll need to understand a little bit about previous releases to get the most out of it.

The idea of Cascading Style Sheets is to separate the content of an HTML page from the presentation. There are two main benefits from this:

• Each page on a site can reference the same style sheet, and changes made to this document can affect the whole site.
• The mark up is kept clean and easy to read by both humans and search engines.

That’s pretty much it. Doesn’t sound like much does it? It’s pretty useful stuff though.

To illustrate the first point, imagine that you run a website with 100 pages and for some reason,  and I can’t think for the life of me why you would, you think it would be a good idea to change the font used through the site, to comic sans. Well, without 'style sheets' you would have to go into every page to manually change all the relevant tags in the mark up and this would take a rather long time, as well as being incredibly infuriating. (Doubly, should the client then realise that comic sans is not actually to their liking and want to change it back to arial!) With style sheets you can simply change one file and it’s 'job done'!

Then there’s the benefit of cleaner mark up. The content to code ratio has long been considered important in the world of search engine optimisation. If cleaner code gets you better results then it could ultimately mean more revenue for your business and who doesn’t like a bit of extra revenue these days?

So what of the very first incarnation? CSS 1 came along at the tail end of 1996 and allowed you to have control over, amongst other things, font styling, colours, tables, images, margins and borders. While this all sounds great, it wasn’t very successful and not many people used it. The browsers of the day simply didn’t support it very well, so what was the point in using something that, for most people, simply wouldn’t work?

Eighteen months later the imaginatively titled CSS 2 was released which allowed you to do even more things. Now you were able to control positioning more accurately, layer items on top of each other and even add funky shadows. It still didn’t work!

A few years later came CSS 2.1 - an obvious naming convention. The idea was essentially to fix some bugs and get things working uniformly across the browsers. People had started taking up style sheets with more enthusiasm now, as more and more browsers were sticking to standards that, on the most part, had been adopted. But there was a fly in the ointment...the dreaded IE6. Microsoft had decided to do whatever they wanted when it came to implementing CSS support, and as a result, has become the thing of nightmares. In some cases it was possible to make a site look fantastic on every single browser on the market but IE6 would render nothing but a blank screen. It was infuriating and still to this day, causes headaches, as larger companies can be reluctant to update their systems.

This brings us on to CSS 3. As with the previous releases, it essentially just builds on what came before it, allowing you to do a whole host of fun and exciting things like rounded corners, gradients, text shadows, multiple columns and more...and guess what, it still doesn’t work! Actually that’s a little bit harsh. When I say it doesn’t work, I mean that it still isn’t fully supported across all browsers but after more than fifteen years we’ve learnt an important message... it doesn’t matter. If a design is well thought out and works well, do we need to get 'hung up about things' if it doesn’t look exactly right in 'older browsers'? Of course not! If a button doesn’t have a rich gradient background, rounded corners and a drop shadow effect, could it still look good? Of course it can! If the main text doesn’t have a drop shadow on some browsers, so what? It’s still exactly the same font, colour and size. Design just requires a little bit more thought and a general acceptance that things aren’t going to look 'exactly' the same, across all browsers. On the plus side, you’ll get faster loading times and much richer looking sites on the browsers that do support CSS3.

And besides... although it’s not yet supported, CSS 4 is just around the corner!

Please check out some of our client case study examples. CSS3 is just one the many web consultancy areas Rocktime can help your business with. If you want to find out how we can help your business be found faster in the search results because CSS coding can be read very fast by search engines, then please contact us for a Sales quote.

What have been your experiences with HTML5 / CSS3 webapps?

Authors: Foz, Thom, Fiona Anderson

Social Mobile Local Global and the Olympics

Team GB uniforms by Stella McCartney and adidas

At the time of writing this, The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom, or Great Britain and Northern Ireland, or more recently 'Team GB' are doing rather well at London 2012 Summer Olympics. With a haul of 26 gold, 16 silver and 14 bronze medals - it’s our best showing for over a century. With 204 countries competing, this Olympic Games is truly a global event and shared throughout the world on social networks.

Social - Twitter
Before the games even started a Greek athlete was kicked off the team for tweeting with a racist overtone and it’s been a story of highs and lows for Twitter ever since. After posting some pretty malicious tweets about the diver Tom Daley, a teenager from Weymouth was arrested and given a dressing down by the police. For a fleeting moment this story was global headline news and seems to have re-ignited the debate as to how the authorities should deal with social network incidents of this nature.

Adam Naisbitt set up @2012TicketAlert after he tried to get hold of gymnastics tickets for his fiancée. This unofficial ticket alert helped thousands of people get tickets and filled the empty seats that were causing such a stir in the media. Of course the people at Ticketmaster and  LOCOG didn’t like his code crawling their site and they put a stop to it. But 30,000 angry Twitter users ensured that the service was re-instated. The Ticket Alert profile now has 54,466 followers.

Google
Each day Google has been running little games on their home page that typically take less than 30 seconds to play. They look nice, well illustrated as with all Google Doodles, are easy to play and are relevant to the day's sporting events.

Any search involving the keyword ‘medals’ results in an up to date medal table at the top of the SERPS. Yep, the UK does seem to be doing rather well!

Facebook
After winning gold in the Women's Heptathlon, Jessica Ennis had amassed over 600,000 followers and counting: today it is 726,516 with 957,976 talking about this page. Chances are that at least one of your Facebook ‘friends’ has liked her official page. But that is still a way off from the American basketball player, Kobe Bryant’s who has 13 million 'Likes'!  David Beckham, Britain's most decorated football player of all time, has 20 million. There’s even a trend in celebrity chart  if you prefer that to the actual medal count! Naturally, Usain Bolt is the most popular Olympian today.

There’s an app for that.
Shortly after the first athletes started arriving at the Olympic village, 'GPS, location-based Grindr', an app, or also known as a 'geosocial networking application', that hooks up gay men with others in the local vicinity, crashed due to the increase in traffic. Both the BBC Olympics and the official London 2012 apps have proved extremely popular. The free BBC Olympics app for iOS and Android devices gives headlines, video features, schedules and details about every sport, country and competitor.

The Join In app for iPhone, Android and BlackBerry phones connect viewers with local news updates and information about everything that is going on, in and around the Olympics, such as maps, guides, schedules, information on cash machine locations, ticketing issues and wheelchair access.

Rule 40
“Except as permitted by the IOC Executive Board, no competitor, coach, trainer or official who participates in the Olympic Games may allow his person, name, picture or sports performances to be used for advertising purposes during the Olympic Games.”  In the interests of protecting big global business sponsors, this effectively barred athletes from thanking any unofficial sponsors on social media platforms. The athletes are considered 'labelled marketing assets' and Twitter as a 'marketing tool'.

Media - BBC
The BBC, as usual, have done us proud. The 'Danny Boyle, Isle of Wonders' opening ceremony had 27M UK viewers and not surprisingly, generated more tweets than the entire Beijing Olympic Games four years ago and amassed a staggering 9.66 million worldwide tweets . Nice touch honouring Tim Berners-Lee, the founder of the Web, in the ceremony. You can watch any event live on the BBC website. You can get involved with live comments and nowadays the BBC even retweet comments.

All the major newspapers like @Telegraph2012  have set up dedicated Twitter streams of Olympic coverage. Many of the newspapers regularly make direct quotes from Twitter posts.

The Olympics inspired blogs from all over the world, from sport clothing designs, jokes, politics, women's rights, celebrity to youth engagement ideals.

Transport
In addition to Transport for London’s (TfL) permanent Twitter account (@TfLOfficial) a number of Transport for London Twitter accounts were set up to provide additional local advice on how services and roads are operating during the Games @TfLTrafficNews, @TfLTraveAlerts and @GAOTG.

The 'social media accounts' and 'travel mailing lists' introduced by TfL are supplemented by a number of other online travel platforms. Concentra launched an interactive graphic detailing which Tube stations were likely to face the most severe disruptions on any given day of the Olympics; Google maps offered cycling directions for Londoners planning on cycling to work during the Games.

Mashable Tech did their own article on The Olympics of tech which makes some entertaining reading about achievements in digital, mobile, social and programming.

Mobile
Half of all the searches and video streams in USA and UK are coming from mobiles and tablets during the Olympic games. Social Mobile Local Global; it’s all the same thing!

It is amazing to see all the technologies, social and search all coming together. Here at Rocktime we feel very proud of the Olympians and we are reminded yet again what a great industry of digital development we work in.

Which social or technical innovation inspired you the most at the Olympics?

Authors: Foz, Fiona Anderson

Picasa, Blogger, image optimisation and SEO

Rocktime has talked previously about Picasa as a photo sharing platform ‘Photosharing: Flickr versus Picasa’, in extension to that post, we would like to contribute some knowledge with regards to how Picasa integrates with your blogger account. Reason being, when using Blogger as your blogging platform, as we do here at Rocktime, you may not realise it but every image you upload through blogger goes onto your Picasa Web account.

With any free photo sharing web account, like Picasa, it is worth making sure about storage capacity. Picasa Web Albums offer a 1GB size limit, however, the additional charges for Google storage are fairly minimal. Not every single image you upload contributes to the total storage; images under a certain size will not count towards your 1GB limit. Furthermore, having a Google+ account will actually increase what you can upload for free, without taking it out of your 1GB limit. Google+ offers unlimited storage for photos uploaded in Google+, which are automatically resized to 2048 pixels. Videos up to 15 minutes in length are also free. G+ is almost turning into an image archiving facility.

An alternative is to use your own image hosting, uploading images to your domain, or using another online image hosting service, and then direct linking to the image through your blog post.

If you want to conserve space on your Picasa Web Albums account, another thing to look out for  is to manage duplicate images, which is an issue that sometimes crops up when uploading images to Picasa from your PC.

This is due to the way Picasa scans your computer for images; if you have the same image stored in a different file, Picasa might choose to treat it as two separate images. If you’re making use of the Import button to bring photos from your computer into Picasa, check the ‘Exclude Duplicates’ option at the bottom of the page. This will force Picasa to check for duplicate entries by comparing factors such as size and names etc, and hopefully remove the likelihood of any copies of images being uploaded.

Last year Google wrote some recommendations for improvement with the Google Picasa and Blogger integration which links to the Google Picasa Help Forum if more assistance is needed.

There are many other features from Picasa that help to keep a blog engaging, such as fast Picasa Web photo viewer, manager and uploader for Android devices - called Picasa Mobile -, which was designed to facilitate viewing and managing your online Picasa albums and photos.

Google Picasa Web Albums recently added a range of new image editing effects like Boarders, Vignette, Duo-tone, and more effects similar to editing in Adobe Photoshop, Irfan view and PaintNet photo editing software, which helps to make the photos look more professional.

There are numerous SEO advantages of optimising images in Picasa, like the ability to geo tag images, which adds geo-location details to help your local search engine rankings, high-quality backlinks pointing to your website, better page load time from reduced bandwidth and storage reduction, good search engine presence for your images, a library of images that can be shared socially, and you can even embed Slideshows in blog post from Picasa.

One feature that should never be overlooked with any images is the actual image optimisation process. We will write a more detailed brief on this in the coming weeks. Generally though, the rule of thumb is to make sure that the image is named accurately, that the image contains some of the keywords relevant to the blog or content of the article and that Google is given all the contextual and any localisation details about the image. This way, the chance of the image being found on Google Images is greatly improved. Every image on Google Images is a possible link back to a website and helpful to users. All good for user journey, mobile viewing, relevant content, sharing opportunities and SEO.  This can all be done in Picasa before uploading the image. Picasa allows that image to be shared in a number of ways, which is great for running marketing campaigns.

Once the images are uploaded to the blogger blog, it takes just a few moments to go into the HTML or right click the image in 'compose' mode and add the alt text for the image. Alt text, or alternative text of an image, tells the user about the image depending on the context in which the image is used.  Alt is not a tag, or a place to stuff keywords, it is an 'attribute'. Basically, search engines cannot crawl images, they index the text part attached with it, so the alt text is an alternative for non-visual browsers.
Images play a massive role in mobile, directories, user reviews, blogger engagement, social networks, websites, press coverage and organic inbound marketing link building campaigns.

If you’re interested in learning more about Google updates, services or how Rocktime helps businesses to use image optimisation as part of good practice for SEO, Accessibility and an Integrated Digital Marketing Strategy, then please ask one of our Flashlight Search Marketing Team  about publishing your content to a larger audience, it is something we are passionate about and have been talking to our clients about for the last 2 or 3 years. Check out the blog we wrote back in 2010 about Good practice on adding images to Blogs.

Please get in touch with Rocktime Sales Team to arrange a meeting or leave us a comment below about how image optimisation can make a difference.


Author: Fiona Anderson

Geek Video of the Month

To honour Alan Turing, the clever people at LEGO have built a simple LEGO Turing Machine, to show everyone how simple a computer actually is. This is a great way to make every operation as visible as possible. LEGO Turing Machine was made using the automatic components of just a single LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT set.

According to Wikipedia: "A Turing machine is a device that manipulates symbols on a strip of tape according to a table of rules. Despite its simplicity, a Turing machine can be adapted to simulate the logic of any computer algorithm, and is particularly useful in explaining the functions of a CPU inside a computer."

The Rocktime software developers are very impressed with the Turing machine language. If you require something a bit less complex but of great importance and bespoke for your business development, then please give us a call.

Author: Andy Clarke, Fiona Anderson

Social Media Monitoring Tools and ROI

Percentage Change Calculator

ROI is the heart of business.
One of the areas we always try and encourage all our clients to adopt is to test, track, monitor, measure, evaluate and determine what is successful and work out what makes them some money.
That all important expression; ROI; Return On Investment. It is not a clichéd expression, it is the very reason to decide on one campaign over another, the reason to undertake new creative directions, the planning behind a new product development, the logic for expansion, the inspiration for optimising all the new channels. ROI is the heart of business.

Social media encourages businesses to do their business better
When it comes to social media it is a slightly different approach. Social media is really all about the users, the visitor, the customers. Social media is a wonderful medium that encourages businesses to do their business better, by offering real time customer services, creative ways of expressing their brand personality, making all their web pages and content relevant and user friendly and allowing pride in their brand to come through whilst tailoring everything they do be of value to their customers, their customer's enjoyment and their customer's user journey.

What to monitor on the social networks
Social media as a marketing tool is necessary and of benefit. The challenge comes when financial 'purse holders' in an organisation are less comfortable allowing insight in to the business structure.
So, when the question arises whether to engage in social media as a marketing tool, many businesses try to calculate what the return on investment will be. A very sensible approach!
The question is which metrics to use, what methods to use to capture the data, what tracking codes to add to the website, which free tools to employ, how much time and resources to expend on the process, how frequently to engage in the networks, which parts of the business to be involved in the communications, what data to calculate against another, what is an ideal conversion rate, how much testing needs to be undertaken, etc.
Quite a challenge for any business to determine straight off!

Search results have influenced what to monitor
Then there has also been some great Google updates that have recently taken place, to factor in and consider. These algorithm updates offer some real benefits to businesses, in terms of working out how their social media and search marketing come together but these updates also add to the confusion of what to measure, monitor and ultimately, how to calculate success and ROI. 
When Google announced the launch of Google social search update ‘Search plus Your World’ in January 2012 it brought social media and search marketing a giant step closer to each other, in terms of what is displayed in the search results.
Then the lines between social, mobile and local all converged in recent updates and businesses were again asking how they could best maximise their social media expenditures and prove a return on investment.

The integrated social media strategy
The tools to monitor social media are as varied as the social media strategies. A business signing off on a new social media campaign can be pleased with their efforts to determine what their social landscape is, their audience, their competitor analysis, their tone of voice, which social networks and channels are suitable to their business strategy, added social share and social badges and planned what type of content they want to share and have shared. They optimise their images, develop an inbound marketing strategy, sign off on engaging relevant content and set up a team to engage on a regular basis.
As visitors begin to leave comments and ask questions, occasionally post a review; both positive or negative, as in bound marketing links start to expand and content gets shared, often virally, the businesses start to realise the benefits immediately of having a social media strategy in place.
At some point shortly after this initial entry level stage, most businesses wonder how they managed before social media; the doors of communication are opened and both customers and suppliers get to be part of the business and no longer an entity to be broadcast to, or at.

Where to start with social media monitoring
This brings us back to the question of what to track, measure and evaluate. Well, there are loads of free tools to choose from and some with quite modest fees, that do a very reasonable job. 
Certainly opening a Google Account is a must. Google has not only set itself up to be a vast search engine but also has developed some splendid free tools to assist businesses with tracking their website performance. It is great to have a good presence on the social networks but if a visitor follows a link to a broken or slow website for more information, the positive user journey and brand impression is easily quashed.

Google Webmaster Tools enabled in Google analytics is ideal for tracking site traffic and conducting an SEO audit on the website; together these tools monitor and track social interaction analytics, user engagement, referring sites, conversions for e-commerce and landing pages, trends, adding goal tracking, event tracking and sales or multi-channel filters, cross domain tracking, and even a tool to help businesses experiment with content to improve goal conversions. There are also tools to give an overview on site load time, crawl errors, submitting XML sitemaps to Google, demoting sitelinks, discovering 404 page errors, working out which landing pages indexed by Google are bringing traffic etc, etc, etc. 
There are not only tools to track, measure and evaluate but there are also a plethora of reports that can be pulled from these 2 tools, plus plenty of forums and blogs for additional assistance.
So whilst the website is getting into optimum performance, the keyword research is being completed and the social media landscape review is being finalised, then this is a perfect time to start implementing the social media monitoring tools and determining which channells will be monitored by which tools.

Which social media monitoring tools to use
Having reread this summary list above, it sounds like we love Google Products. It is true! 
We haven't even started to mention all the other free tools in Google that help business grow and sell their products online; like Google AdWords, Google Shopping, Google+ Local, Google Maps, Blogger, Picasa with its great geo tagging facilities, Google Alerts, iGoogle Dashboard set up with RSS feeds of social media monitoring tools and plugins, Google Mobile and...back to social media; Google+ for brands and businesses. All activity within these products can be monitored for ROI.
There are, however, many other products we use, trial and consider for client use also. Each client is unique and has a unique set of requirements when it comes to reporting and demonstrating success and therefore, some monitoring products fit better with certain clients than others. 

Some of the following social media monitoring products will be very familiar to many businesses; like HooteSuite, Netvibes, Facebook Insights, Social Mention, YouTube Insight, Klout, SocialBro, Google Blogsearch, twilert and Tweetdeck. 
We also have insights into some of the fee-based options like Brandwatch, Meltwater, Wildfire etc and currently looking into some campaign specific tools that focus on leads and conversions, like Optify. Viralblog kindly wrote a useful guide to some of the other social media and monitoring tools. 
We are always looking for the least time consuming, the most accurate, easy to use and most integrated tools for monitoring. What we monitor is dictated by the brand or business sector, the social networks a business is active on, the amount of resources both budget and human to listen to the networks and process the data the monitoring tools provide. Also, importantly, we refine these processes as a business gains in confidence from the reports and starts to build broader strategies based on the insights and opportunities the reports provide. It really is a team effort!

Objectives of social media monitoring
So we can narrow this down a bit, to 'what we want to monitor'

• social media monitoring
• social media analytics
• social media reporting

and also 'why we want to monitor'

• review industry trends and business intelligence
• real-time monitoring with a view to good customer services and PR
• engagement

then we can 'choose a strategy for monitoring'

• goals
• choose suitable tools
• types of reports

Future direction of social media monitoring
Brands that actively embraced social media a few years ago will have seen many changes and also chosen to change how they conduct themselves.

Listen Learn Engage (2009)
Inform Inspire Interact (2011)
Reach Impact Influence (2012)

The future of communicating in a face-to-face environment is still vital; the social networks make it easier for people to decide who they want to do business with, work with and socialise with. 
The vast data crunching side of monitoring and metrics is becoming ever more sophisticated, as we try and justify business expenditure and making sure we are marketing ourselves in the most prudent fashion.
Since mobile and mobile applications have become a tool that seldom leave our hand, we have been supplying more and more data about our sentiments, our preferences and our whereabouts. WE are being tracked, monitored and analysed also. Local targeted marketing campaigns pinpoint where we are and what we are looking for and we share this information freely.
Likewise, we can set up all our monitoring tools to report and alert us on our mobile devices.

Social CRM and sentiment monitoring
The image above shows one of the 5 Rocktime useful online tools that we developed to help businesses: calculate the Percentage Change in campaign performance, the ROI sales funnel to work out how many visitors a site needs to increase reach to meet monthly targets, the Campaign Objectives Worksheet to assist with planning a strategy for social media, the Social Media Toolkit to determine the specific social landscape and opportunities for a business.

Rocktime even built our own BETA social sentiment CRM monitoring tool, called Chatabot, which we will use for ‘managing connections and networks of interaction’. Chatabot is a compliment to social media monitoring platforms that track ‘mentions’. We designed Chatabot to manually track potential engagements that a business wants to engage further with; so they don’t forget them.  We originally called it a 'virtual Social Networking PA'. There are dozens if not hundreds of platforms that can track the social landscape but they don’t seem to offer the human element of collecting leads together for future engagement
Such as

• blogger engagement
• social opportunities
• PR
• networks
• directories
• satisfied customers who could become brand advocates

Chatabot will certainly help to keep track of all the social engagements, better than a ‘spreadsheet / email / database / bookmarks / calendar’; which is what most businesses rely on. The market is gradually changing from purely monitoring likes, hits, shares etc, to the sentiment behind the engagement. That is the human side of monitoring social engagement.

Benefits of social media monitoring
Without monitoring a business's landscape, how will a business identify that there may be an issue that is being publicly debated and shared, or without tracking analytics how will a business know that we helped increase their web traffic by 400% within 2 weeks of launch of the website, how will we be able to prove that relevant landing pages with social media badges work best for paid search campaigns without the AdWords tracking code, how will the Hotels record that bookings are up from new optimised keyword research and integration with custom Facebook Apps, how can we see how competitive keywords within optimised web pages is increasing online visibility in the Google rankings without doing the keyphrase positioning review every month, how can a customer services team know they are dealing correctly with all issues unless they monitor their Twitter account for example. How will a business deal with a crisis if they are unused to explaining about their operation and ways in which they are good at solving problems for their customers.
This is all part of the consideration process we work through with brands and businesses about how best to use real-time data and advanced analytics.


On a humourous note, it was pointed out that within the Rocktime corporate name we had already given consideration to roi: R O ckt I me.
If you want to devise a strategy for social media and need to demonstrate to the Board of Directors that there is ROI then please give Rocktime a call; we can show you how exciting this development is for a business and satisfy the 'purse holder' that a strategy to integrate social media with search marketing, mobile and local is of value and profitable. Rocktime can help to 'keep it simple', define what to monitor and which reports will prove useful to the Team and therefore aid further investment and growth. We look forward to hearing what your business is all about!

We post regular tweets on @RocktimeSocial with interesting social and search developments, if you prefer to watch us for a while before you make contact.

What social media monitoring tools work for you? What are the best examples of ROI from monitoring that you have seen?


Author: Fiona Anderson

Now vs Then

A humorous view point from one of the Web Developers at Rocktime, about 'Now vs Then' and the advances in technology; with reference to some nostalgic technologies.


***
As a child, who was born in the 70’s, my childhood experience of technology differs greatly from the world that my daughter will grow up in.

My little girl turned one at the weekend and as such she will never know of a world without mobile phones, digital photography, the internet, on demand television, online shopping, iTunes, sat nav or Facebook. I on the other hand grew up blissfully ignorant surrounded by red phone boxes, cheap instamatic cameras, BBC Microcomputers, TISWAS, waiting 28 days for delivery, our price, maps and actually having to speak to people face to face.

So in the interest of having a little bit of fun, let’s have a look at each of these points in turn.

Mobile Phones vs Red Phoneboxes 


Although I work at Rocktime, I must admit to having a bit of a pet hate towards mobiles. Granted they have completely changed the face of communication and with each month there appears to be a new all singing all dancing model that claims to rival a Cray Supercomputer.

So what if you can play games, surf the web, take photos, listen to music, check emails, augment reality, or make a super skinny yummy mocha latte with your latest phone. I still can’t shift the 80’s image of larger-than-life men going through a mid-life crisis showing off their breeze block sized phones as a bizarre status symbol. Before mobile phones we made plans and we stuck to them.

Technology - 0 : Old fashioned red phone boxes - 1

Digital Photography vs Cheap Instamatic Cameras

I used to go travelling with a Boots instamatic, that cost about a fiver and come back with dozens of rolls of film, not having the foggiest what was on any of them. Eventually, I would get around to developing them and spend a few hours grinning like a deranged madman as I would re-live the events surrounding each photograph.

Of course, out of perhaps several thousand snap shots that I’ve taken this way, there are probably less than a dozen that would look good hung on a wall. While the professionals may debate whether film or digital produces the best results, the sheer numbers of photographs we can take inevitably mean that we’ll get a greater number of photographs we can be proud of using digital. But please remember people, simply going out and spending a few hundred pounds on the latest piece of kit does not make you David Bailey.

Technology - 1 : Blurriness - 1

The internet vs BBC Microprocessors

No contest, the internet wins. You can play the Acornsoft classic elite online!

Technology - 2 : 32kb - 1

On Demand TV vs TISWAS

Okay, if all TV was like TISWAS, great as it was, on demand would probably win this one. I do think that the likes of Virgin’s on demand service, iPlayer and the like have taken away the mystique of my beloved telly. I remember when there was only three channels and recall watching the first episode of Countdown the day that Channel 4 launched to great fanfare. We had to watch what the schedulers said we should watch and as a result some programmes became a national event.

The next day we would gingerly discuss the previous evening’s entertainment over monster munch and frazzles. Every Christmas they would show Star Wars and The Great Escape, there would be a Bond film pretty much every bank holiday and we would lap it up together as a country! Nowadays, you can download a film before the actors have even finished filming it and all sense of grandeur and occasion is lost as it squeezes onto a memory stick.

Technology - 2 : Nostalgia - 2

Online shopping vs Waiting 28 days for delivery

Firstly, whenever you sent away for something you had to pay for it with a Postal Order as very few children had bank accounts! These were only available from Post Offices (Do they even exist now????) and as such the experience would inevitably involve having to stand in close proximity to a gaggle of pensioners. Inevitably, the cost of the goods meant that you had to purchase a ridiculous combination of smaller denominations of PO in order to get the correct amount. You would then have to buy a stamp, find an envelope and a piece of paper, write down your details and order, address the envelope and then go and post it in the mail box. For some reason everything used to take 28 days to deliver which meant by the time it had turned up you were either no longer interested, or the purchase in question was so drastically out of fashion that you dare not be seen with it in public for fear of being branded a social luddite!

Technology - 3 : Rubbish - 2

iTunes vs Our Price

iTunes. If you could buy vinyl from apple I would have scored them 2 points!

Technology - 4 : My cassette has broken - 2

Sat nav vs Maps

Every so often you hear about someone who’s blindly followed their sat nav’s instructions and ended up either in the wrong county/stuck up a mountain/or at the bottom of a lake. Sensible route planning is in order.

Technology - 4 : Learn to read a map, it’s not that hard - 3

Facebook vs speaking to people face to face.

While Facebook is great for catching up with old friends, seeing what people are up to and having several different conversations at any given moment; you can’t beat good old fashioned human interaction.

Technology - 4 : The Dark Ages - 4

So it’s officially a draw. My daughter’s life will be pretty much the same as mine and in years to come, most of the items listed above will be obsolete and serve only to serve up fond memories.

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Author: Foz