“@mikebutcherBBC iPlayer app launched for iPhone & iPod touch, w 3G streaming across all networks. Details: http://bbc.in/uJabd5”

Note that devices older than iPhone 3GS and iPhones and iPod touches that continue to access the mobile web version, will remain a Wi-Fi only service.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2011/12/iplayer_bbciplayer_iphone_android.html

The BBC has today released its BBC iPlayer app for Apple iPhone and iPod touch devices, introducing 3G streaming across all mobile networks.
“BBC iPlayer app has live radio, TV, 3G/ wifi streaming, watch & listen again”
source: http://thenextweb.com/uk/2011/12/12/bbc-iplayer-app-comes-to-the-iphone-with-3g-streaming-on-all-networks/

Will this be available internationally? It already is.
“Last week, the BBC announced an international version of the iPlayer iPhone app for audiences outside the UK, which is free to download but comes with a monthly subscription of €6.99 (£6.15) per month or an annual cost of €49.99 (£44).”
source: http://www.macworld.co.uk/ipad-iphone/news/?newsid=3324451

Sue Beckingham’s talk on Using Social Media to create a Personal Learning Network provided some great insight on the tools available and how to use them to best effect. I’m definitely going to be looking at the use of Posterous and WordPress to create private blogs for personal use.

Sue mentioned The Conversation Prism which is not only a beautiful data visualisation but a great way to find new tools and services.

Sue also included The Geosocial Universe showing the amount of mobile devices and the number of users on popular services.

Sylwiva Presley joined the event via Skype from Oxford to discuss the issues around children having access to Facebook. With some very interesting statistics she raised concerns over our attitudes to how children behave online:

In the US:

• Of the 20 million minors actively on Facebook last year, 7.5 million (one third) were younger than 13 and not supposed to be using the site.
• More than 5 million were under 10 using their accounts unsupervised
• One million children were harassed, threatened or otherwise bullied on the site

Sylwia also recommend a TED talk by Adora Svitak on how adults can learn from children.

Lunch break was good fun with everyone getting to grips with the tamales from Rico Mexican Kitchen. The sun shone and we all got some fresh air.

Mark Spofforth from Lovefre.sh gave a very personal account of the story behind Lovefresh. A demo of the apps gave everyone a taste for finding more local produce. Discussion around the use of the word checkin was interesting as they are using it in a different way. Also interesting to hear their struggle with web standards on mobiles for using features like the camera and microphone.

Very interesting talk on Digital Inclusion by Matthew, discussed the DAIN project and their new venture Das4Life. Some great work going on to help those without skills, knowledge or access to technology. Interesting to hear stories of 70 year olds getting to grips with digital cameras. Concerning that some choose to exclude themselves and almost end up opting out, but why should they have to adapt?

The day was rounded off with a stunning performance from Linda Harrison. She’s pretty much everywhere on the internet so find her on Youtube, iTunes and Bambuser.

See all Instagram photo’s from the event thanks to Instagreat.

And damnit, still didn’t go to see the Fibrecamp studio.

Updated (22 May 2011) :

Photos on Flickr from Paul Mellors

Unexhaustive list of MCN4 attendees on Twitter

I’ll be there all day. Come say hello. I’m @mawawa (don’t ask me why, I don’t have a good answer!)

If you can’t make it to the event, follow me @mawawa and #mcn4 on Twitter. And there will probably be a followup blog here afterwards.

(And I’m not just doing this for a #freelunch)

1. everything that’s already in the world when you’re born is just normal;
2. anything that gets invented between then and before you turn thirty is incredibly exciting and creative and with any luck you can make a career out of it;
3. anything that gets invented after you’re thirty is against the natural order of things and the beginning of the end of civilisation as we know it until it’s been around for about ten years when it gradually turns out to be alright really.

It has these universal truths while also mentioning dinosaur technology terms: Hayes modems, Netscape, phone call cost with no reference to those things we take for granted today: broadband, iPlayer, iPhone, Facebook, Twitter.

This is a problem so cruel for the festival that the irony is overwhelming. The festival has been created to celebrate the industry, to applaud the creative geniuses behind games loved by millions, to help us appreciate gaming as an artform, to better understand its place in our culture and to discuss its social impact. But the very industry that it is celebrating doesn’t get it! The videogames industry, which loathes itself so much that it insists on being called the interactive entertainment industry, has missed the point completely.

Ian Simons was almost calling out that without the support of the videogames industry, there isn’t much of a festival and that the festival or the industry needs to bend to meet in the middle.

I’d say take a year off from pleasing a blinkered industry. Maybe better to ignore than include, that will guarantee that they’ll be begging to be involved. Next year, make it about the rich history of videogames. Some suggested talk titles would be:

• Jeff Minter: The Man, The Legend, The Llamas
• Angry Birds: The Flicking Phenomenon
• Codemasters Retrospective
• Outrun: The Game That Changed Soundtracks
• Bedroom Coding: Then and Now
• A screening of The King of Kong, and other classic videogame films
• The Book of the Game: How Players Guide are written

I loved the videogames festival and I think that it definitely has its place. There is such a wealth of games, fans and history that even without industry support or input it can continue its greatness.

Twitseek.com has been blessed with a glut of traffic in the last few months. After being up for over a year, something has kicked in to drive traffic to the site.

Increased Page Views

A combination of Google Webmaster Tools, Google Analytics and Google Adsense stats have been used to try to understand the recent surge in traffic. It appears that unfortunately, this may need to be called the Justin Bieber effect. No, I didn’t know either.

Page Impressions

These are the page impressions for 2010 so far:

Jan – monthly 115 – daily avg 4
Feb – 99 – 4
Mar – 118 – 4
Apr – 255 – 9
May – 1,212 – 40
Jun – 3,891 – 129
Jul – 3,845 – 124
Aug – 5,036 – 162
Sep – 6,110 – 203

That’s  a total of 20,681 hits this year so far, with over half of those occurring in the last two months.

Monthly increase stats are:

Feb -14%
Mar +19%
Apr +116%
May +375%
Jun +221%
Jul -1%
Aug +30%
Sep +20%

The June, July, August figures are where the traffic really increased to significant volumes, levelling out in July but steadily increasing again in August and September. In order for the site to become a real asset, growth figures need to return to being in the triple digits.

Ad Revenue

Ad revenue as also increased throughout the year.

Jan – no revenue
Feb – no revenue
Mar – no revenue
Apr – no revenue
May – pence
Jun – £’s
Jul – £’s
Aug – £’s
Sep – £’s

This corresponds to a small amount of ad revenue, half of which occurred in the last month. A doubling of revenue in August is due to change in ad layout with inclusion of extra ad panel, as well as increased traffic to the site.

Changes

New features are always rolled out at http://beta.twitseek.com and this receives a significant amount of traffic too. Changes trialled here in August were the extra Adsense panel which has already been rolled out. Also, a Popular strip has been added to the top of the site to link to some of the apps and sites which are used to frequently post to Twitter. The Retweet button is a possible for future rollout too. It seems to fit into the interface without breaking the layout. It would be great to get some A/B testing set up for the site to try new layouts before rolling out.

Update: Added September stats.

Using services like Foursquare and Gowalla I cannot do anything without my social network hearing about it through updates to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. I’d like to see the same integration with Kiva. It goes someway towards doing this but not enough.

Foursquare and Gowalla award badges and mayorships for completing certain tasks as a reward for both learning the system and using it.

It would be great to be rewarded the ‘First Loan’ badge or the ‘Peruvian Loan’ medal, the ‘Repeat Loan’ award, the ‘$100 Milestone Mark’ or the ‘Entrepreneur x 10′ medallion.

Adding a game element is a proven way to keep users returning to a service. The rise of social gaming also makes this a more acceptable process too. It is no longer just in the realm of World of Warcraft where you have experience points but also Farmville. If we could have as many people ‘playing’ Kiva as there are ploughing on Farmville, then the game would be on.

Updated - 13 Jul 2010
There’s a great article on exactly this topic on Inc.com, How To Incorporate Badges Into Your Website. Using terms like virtual merit badges and trophies it describes how services are encouraging contributions to the site. Foursquare has awarded one million badges to 500,000 users.

I’ve not really had any problems with O2 so was fine to carry on with them. Need to remember to monitor my data allowance use now that its capped/charged at 500MB/month. Preferably need to find an app for that. Difficult to predict how much I’ll use as adverts all state in terms of emails sent and websites viewed but not hours streamed on Spotify.

The charge not lasting any longer but as I’m doing more with it I suppose its holding up a bit better.

It is beautiful to look at and hold but I’m sure its going to get broken. That nice glass surface makes it much more likely to just slip and crash!

And nope. Not tried FaceTime yet.

So, how do we fix this? I would suggest that we start doing it more until it becomes commonplace, second nature, part of the culture. Part of how we use the web. All we need is a mechanism

Twitpay is a such a mechanism. All you need is an Twitter account and a PayPal account. There is then a simple format for making payment on Twitter:

@mawawa twitpay $2 for proposing feasible micropayment structure for indie content producers

And that’s it! At the top of your blog post, ask for payment. At the start of your podcast, ask for payment. At the start of your video, ask for payment. If you don’t ask you won’t receive. If you do ask you will receive.

On this blog, if I publish content that I think is worth charging a fee for I will ask for that fee.

This is all inspired by Mediacamp Nottingham and the problem of monetising content. Does this help? See you in the comments.