NeilCocker.com

For those of you that have not heard about it, it’s a program that sits on your laptop/PC/phone/whatever and automatically syncs your files and folders across all those devices. Or, to quote the Wikipedia page on the subject: “Live Mesh is a data synchronization system from Microsoft that allows files and folders to be shared and synchronized across multiple devices. Live Mesh consists of a software component that allows synchronization relationships to be created among different devices. Once a folder is set for synchronization, it will be available in all devices, and any changes made to the content of the folder will be reflected across all devices.”

So, this morning I was working in my office. I made some changes to a document in Open Office (not Word, sorry Microsoft!) and when I saved them Live Mesh sent the changes over the internet to my account in the “cloud”, which were then very quickly downloaded (in the background) when I logged on via my laptop in my local cafe. Meaning I didn’t have to do any file transferring before I went out to work remotely. It was done quietly, quickly and silently in the background.

A few important things to note about Live Mesh*:

- All the files are stored locally, on the machine you’re working on, as well as online so you only ever download any updates to files. The files open instantly and normally. You don’t have to wait for them to download.

- This is basically like having a local network where you can access a folder from any computer on that network. But it’s done over the internet.

- You can invite other people with Live Mesh to have access to particular folders. So collaborative, remote working is a breeze.

- It’s done really, really well. Once I’d uploaded all the files I needed to be available from anywhere (and then downloaded them to the other machines too), I was pretty much ready to go. It’s been a dream for me because I work from a couple of different machines and often find myself in a cafe, realising that the document I need is sat on my machine at home.

Many thanks to Microsoft’s Steve Clayton for highlighting it. For more info on Live Mesh you should check out all his posts on it. There’s loads of writing and videos about it on there. And it’s a cracking blog, full-stop. Ideal for people like me who like to think they’re techie, but they’re not really! Sign up at the Mesh homepage for a chance to preview it. Or nudge me for an invite. I haven’t found them yet, but apparently I have them…

*It needs to be noted that I’m making assumptions about much of this stuff. I really have no idea how it works technically!

For those of you that have not heard about it, it’s a program that sits on your laptop/PC/phone/whatever and automatically syncs your files and folders across all those devices. Or, to quote the Wikipedia page on the subject: “Live Mesh is a data synchronization system from Microsoft that allows files and folders to be shared and synchronized across multiple devices. Live Mesh consists of a software component that allows synchronization relationships to be created among different devices. Once a folder is set for synchronization, it will be available in all devices, and any changes made to the content of the folder will be reflected across all devices.”

So, this morning I was working in my office. I made some changes to a document in Open Office (not Word, sorry Microsoft!) and when I saved them Live Mesh sent the changes over the internet to my account in the “cloud”, which were then very quickly downloaded (in the background) when I logged on via my laptop in my local cafe. Meaning I didn’t have to do any file transferring before I went out to work remotely. It was done quietly, quickly and silently in the background.

A few important things to note about Live Mesh*:

- All the files are stored locally, on the machine you’re working on, as well as online so you only ever download any updates to files. The files open instantly and normally. You don’t have to wait for them to download.

- This is basically like having a local network where you can access a folder from any computer on that network. But it’s done over the internet.

- You can invite other people with Live Mesh to have access to particular folders. So collaborative, remote working is a breeze.

- It’s done really, really well. Once I’d uploaded all the files I needed to be available from anywhere (and then downloaded them to the other machines too), I was pretty much ready to go. It’s been a dream for me because I work from a couple of different machines and often find myself in a cafe, realising that the document I need is sat on my machine at home.

Many thanks to Microsoft’s Steve Clayton for highlighting it. For more info on Live Mesh you should check out all his posts on it. There’s loads of writing and videos about it on there. And it’s a cracking blog, full-stop. Ideal for people like me who like to think they’re techie, but they’re not really! Sign up at the Mesh homepage for a chance to preview it. Or nudge me for an invite. I haven’t found them yet, but apparently I have them…

*It needs to be noted that I’m making assumptions about much of this stuff. I really have no idea how it works technically!

Of course Facebook isn’t facing demise. That would be ridiculous. But for the first time since their launch their audience number in the UK has dropped. While they’re still hitting a staggering 8.5m unique visitors a month, this might be the first sign that there might be a saturation of the market. I know I’m certainly finding it difficult to stay on top of everything (4 email addresses, a blog, 2 social networks plus some business networks and a bunch of casual forum memberships). I’ll be deleting my Myspace account shortly (I never use it and find it so clunky in comparison with Facebook) because I just seem to be the target for being a new friend of millions of bands. But despite us reaching this stage there seem to be more and more social networks every day, with platforms such as Ning.com offering everyone the chance to build their very own networks for free.

So, what’s the future? Either people will retreat to ever more specialised networks according to their personal interests, or more sites such as Moli.com will spring up. Moli allows you to manage profiles on various social networking sites from one place. Sounds like a dream for those network addicts. But as far as I’m concerned, I’m looking for a little simplification in my life. Shame I’m a sucker for signing up and trying uot every new site, app, service and technology!

It’s worth noting that despite my moderate predictions of doom and gloom AOL (a branch of the Time Warner juggernaut) has got into the social networking game by spending $850m on Bebo. Not a bad deal for the 3rd biggest social networking site in the US (after Facebook and Myspace), especially when Microsoft would only have got about 10 percent of Facebook for that when they invested in a small 1.6 percent stake last year. But Youtube sits at the top of this tree. It’s latest figures show it as the world’s most popular social media site , with a massive 10.4 million visitors in January alone.

2008 Rank….Website…………Unique audience (m)
1……………YouTube……………..10.4
2……………Wikipedia……………9.6
3……………Facebook…………….8.5
4……………Blogger……………..5.1
5……………MySpace……………..5.0
6……………Bebo………………..4.1
7……………Slide……………….3.4
8……………Yahoo! Answers……….3.3
9……………Windows Live Spaces…..3.1
10…………..TripAdvisor………….2.4

* “Concert promoters have joined performing artists’ managers in their battle to get secondary ticketing companies to pay a levy from the profits they make on live shows”, says an article on FT.com. In essence this means that they want the likes of eBay to pay a percentage of any profits from tickets sold online. Part of me says this is an important way to start to eat into the “problem” of ticket touts buying up normal price tickets before the real fans can get there, and then selling them on at several times the price. Another part of me thinks we can’t mess with market forces. If I sold a car to a man for a price I’d set, and then found out that he’d later sold it on for more money I couldn’t demand a share of his profits too, could I?

* I’ve been keeping half an eye on the swelling giant of a market that exists in China. There’s so much potential for any entrepreneurs who are willing to take a punt on providing for the burgeoning middle classes in this exciting country. I can’t say I’m much of an expert on consumer goods, but if you can leap the cultural hurdle (if you’ll excuse the metaphor) and find a product or service that captures the imagination of the Chinese nouveau riche there’s plenty of exciting opportunities ahead. I for one would love to spend time out there. It’s a vast, intriguing country that is just asking to be explored. My friend Rob has been out there for the past year and I always enjoy checking out his photos.

* You may remember that I wrote about working from my new local cafe recently. Well, a few days ago Microsoft’s Steve Clayton blogged about the very same thing. He links to some great articles on the subject of “Digital Nomads” (hey, I’m a Digital Nomad. I like the sound of that!). Definitely worth a read if you’re the type who does (or could) work from anywhere.

* I mention Steve Clayton because I’ve really enjoyed reading his blogs of late, and he has really “humanised” the Microsoft behemoth for me. They are often seen as the faceless, corporate flipside to Steve Jobs’ “hip and groovy” Apple. But through reading Steve’s blogs I’ve got a sense of the passion with which Microsoft go about their creativity and innovation. I was lucky enough to meet one of his colleagues, Steve Beswick, recently when I sat on the panel of a Dragon’s Den style event for Make Your Mark‘s “Ideas Igloo”. A really cool event, supported by Microsoft, which aimed to identify and encourage young entrepreneurs and innovators. I really enjoyed the event and it reassured me to see that this bunch of young students had some amazing ideas and tons of energy.

Microsoft have recently been putting videos online to bring attention to the internet marketing research done by their Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions (MDAS) team. There’s three installments of these videos. One shows a man trying to advertise a toaster in a fine art gallery and another shows someone encouraging partying at a funeral. The message? That “context matters”. In other words – advertise to the right people, in the right place, at the right time.

Well… no shit Sherlock!

Surely anyone with a most basic grasp of advertising or marketing should know this. However, one of the videos shows a group of kids dancing at a studio when the “advertisers” very literally waltz in.

Video: Microsoft – context matters

What’s clever about this is that the kids just move to another part of the room and carry on. I’ve no idea if Microsoft intended to convey this message, but the fact is that if users get overwhelmed with bad advertising on their chosen site they will just go somewhere else. It’s something that social networks (whose value is driven purely by the number of users they have) need to be very careful about in the drive to monetise their services.

Regardless of the videos, it’s definitely worth looking at the research booklet (PDF doc). They took 24 hour diaries with several thousand people across 6 countries to find out their online habits. And some of the findings are fascinating…

There’s been a 30 percent increase in social networking users in less than a year (something Facebook surely is largely responsible for). It shows how broadband users are online 20-40 times a day for a few minutes at a time, instead of the concentrated burst that they were as dialup customers. And this neatly echoes something I said just a few days ago when I was talking about why the dotcom bubble is back and stronger than before. As the document says: “broadband changes everything… What really happened is that broadband allowed the internet to be fully integrated into daily life”.

There’s some great info on what time of day people are more likely to read blogs, pay bills or check their emails etc. And I was reassured to find out the majority of people multi-task whilst using the net. I’m forever doing other stuff (whether it’s listening to an online radio show or watching TV) whilst emailing, blogging or browsing.

I’m only halfway through the document so far (I haven’t even got to the case study of the Norwegian male’s typical day online!) but it’s already proved itself as an absolutely invaluable tool for anyone involved in media planning, advertising etc etc.

Microsoft have recently been putting videos online to bring attention to the internet marketing research done by their Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions (MDAS) team. There’s three installments of these videos. One shows a man trying to advertise a toaster in a fine art gallery and another shows someone encouraging partying at a funeral. The message? That “context matters”. In other words – advertise to the right people, in the right place, at the right time.

Well… no shit Sherlock!

Surely anyone with a most basic grasp of advertising or marketing should know this. However, one of the videos shows a group of kids dancing at a studio when the “advertisers” very literally waltz in.

Video: Microsoft – context matters

What’s clever about this is that the kids just move to another part of the room and carry on. I’ve no idea if Microsoft intended to convey this message, but the fact is that if users get overwhelmed with bad advertising on their chosen site they will just go somewhere else. It’s something that social networks (whose value is driven purely by the number of users they have) need to be very careful about in the drive to monetise their services.

Regardless of the videos, it’s definitely worth looking at the research booklet (PDF doc). They took 24 hour diaries with several thousand people across 6 countries to find out their online habits. And some of the findings are fascinating…

There’s been a 30 percent increase in social networking users in less than a year (something Facebook surely is largely responsible for). It shows how broadband users are online 20-40 times a day for a few minutes at a time, instead of the concentrated burst that they were as dialup customers. And this neatly echoes something I said just a few days ago when I was talking about why the dotcom bubble is back and stronger than before. As the document says: “broadband changes everything… What really happened is that broadband allowed the internet to be fully integrated into daily life”.

There’s some great info on what time of day people are more likely to read blogs, pay bills or check their emails etc. And I was reassured to find out the majority of people multi-task whilst using the net. I’m forever doing other stuff (whether it’s listening to an online radio show or watching TV) whilst emailing, blogging or browsing.

I’m only halfway through the document so far (I haven’t even got to the case study of the Norwegian male’s typical day online!) but it’s already proved itself as an absolutely invaluable tool for anyone involved in media planning, advertising etc etc.