BBC Mobile wins in 2008 .Net magazine awards

BBC Mobile (which I’m the managing editor of) has been lucky to get alot of recognition over the last few weeks. Sure, I’m bragging – the stuff we do is great – and its great to see everyone who I work with getting some recognition for the work we all do everyday.

.net award - click to enlarge

We won the Mobile Site of the Year award where the judges said: “BBC Mobile is an attempt to squeeze Britain’s biggest website onto some of the smallest screens around. The incredible thing about it is: it works’. “  Here’s a screen grab since the awards themselves aren’t posted on the website.

However, in some ways it was more interesting to me to see another award the BBC won in these awards.

The BBC iPlayer also won the Web Application of the Year Award. More great news for the Beeb, of course. I worked on the very first BBC iPlayer team many years ago and seeing it live and winning awards has been great.

The really interesting this about this award though is that the photo in the foreground is of BBC iPlayer on mobile. Awesome stuff and I think this just shows how in the last year the boundaries between web content on mobile and web conent made for desktop PCs is blurring. I think it sets us up for a really exciting year where the wealth of content and services available on mobiles will increase dramatically, as will usage. I also think it could be one of the drivers for making mobile AV go mainstream – and I certainly hope so.

.net award - click to enlarge

An ‘interesting’ use of 3G video – Video Hookers

One of the dirty secrets of the new media industry is that a lot of major technical advances that have been made (especially with regard to digital video distribution and billing) have been developed largely to fuel the online adult content market.

Now, I’m not naive enough to not know there was plenty of porn for mobiles out there. But, I have to say I was pretty darn surprised the other night to see this new service – PlayDate – advertised above a urinal (sorry ladies – they really do put ads at eye level above urinals):

Video escorts

It’s not just video porn for mobiles, it’s actually a way you can preview an escort before you meet her.  Could this really be legal?

I can’t say I approve (though I have to send kudos to whoever did the copywriting on the poster) – but it does lead me to think whatever will these wacky kids thing up next?

I guess, as they say in Avenue Q, it’s true, “the internet is for porn.”

Last.fm is Rude – and so is their Customer Service

This morning I got really, really annoyed with Last.fm.

I know its not their fault but, I really really wanted to listen to a particular song over and over while I had my coffee (as I’m occassionally known to do – this morning it was Human by The Killers).  Obsessive yes, but darn it, it’s a catchy tune.  I don’t actually own the song so just thought I’d listen on Last.fm.

Annoyingly, after listening 3 times, Last.fm told me I couldn’t listen anymore because I’d reached my limit!  Now, if Last.fm was a free service, I might understand this but, I’m one of their paying customers.  I’ve been subscribing for years to get access to all of their functionality – I thought.

Now, I know the real reason underlying this is music rights agreements – record labels just hate the idea of us listening to their music without buying a CD – but, common, I’ve already PAID for a subscription to this site (and have done for years).  Why can’t I just use all the features?  So I emailed them hoping to get an answer and provide them with ‘valueable user feedback.’

I can see no reason why I can’t listen to a streamed song over and over – even in the restrictive world of music rights.  I can watch the video over and over (via legit and illegit copies) on YouTube and other services, so I suspect this is mainly Last.fm reserving the right to commercialise on this at some point and not completely rights related.

All I can say is that Karen Groenink’s point that ’Digital Products are Rude‘ applies here as much to the product as to Last.fm’s customer service.  Their response to me didn’t appolgise for my unhappiness or potential misunderstanding but gave me a snippy, legalistic response.  When I replied saying I was annoyed becuase it just appeared that they changed the terms of what their subscription was AFTER I’d subscribed, they just suggested I cancel.  Nice customer service.

Thoughts on MobiThinking’s ‘Best of the Mobile Web’

It was great to get some more recognition for what the team I work in is doing here:

http://mobithinking.com/white-papers/best-and-worst-of-the-mobile-web

Of course, we normally promote our services as bbc.co.uk/mobile - but, MobiThinking are advocates of the .mobi domain, so not really surprising they called us bbc.mobi.  Anyway, praise is always welcome.

Here’s some more information about it (and an interview with the boss!).

Other than being appreciative for the praise they’ve given the site I work on, this report is interesting because because it names great examples and poor examples on the mobile web. So, I decided to take a look at what they thought was some of the best of the rest to see what I thought and look for some inspiration.  I haven’t gone through all of them here – there are alot – but these were some that I really admired and that gave me something to think about.

‘Make Sure It Actually Works’: Winner: ESPN: http://www.espn.mobi

Sport is one of the most popular things the BBC does on mobile and I think we’re lucky we’re not in direct competition with ESPN’s site on this front.  The site is incredibly user friendly AND its content is increidbly deep – not an easy balance to get right on mobile.  There’s an incredible amount of linking throuhout the content, which makes player profiles, stats of all sorts, etc easy to access.

‘Solve a Real Problem’: Winners: http://www.nwa.mobi and http://google.mobi (maps)

Simplicity, and doing something useful is key on the mobile web  – users tend to be incredibly task oriented and don’t want much interuption and both of these do this.  NWA’s site (for an american airline – not the band NWA!) is deceptively simple and straightforward looking considering how much fucntionality it provides.

‘Maintain Laser Focus’: Winner: http://www.fidelity.mobi and http://www.obamamobile.mobi

When I first saw this category name, I thought I’d missed the boat on the memo about how to turn your mobile into a laser gun.  While the little boy inside me was disappointed, I was happy to see that it was talking about highly targetted services with one mission at their heart.

I talk to alot of web producers who are used to working to create deep, rich experiences on the web, with an unlimited canvas to work on, where users have the luxury of time and space and the comfort of their home or office to explore sites.  The opposite is true on mobile – when you’re standing in the rain (hey, this IS London) trying to find that one tiny piece of information you need, the last thing you want to do is explore or browse one page more than you need to.  Fidelity clearly provides this for its busy banker target audience.  ‘Do one thing and do it well.  Don’t try to do everything you can do on the ‘full-fat’ web.’ is something I tell people frequently.

Content is King… but in small bites : Winner: http://mobile.nytimes.com

I’ve always loved The New York Times and just about everything about it and their mobile site is no exception.  Simple and elegant, its got some great features others should envy.  Pagination that works really well for mobile users, send to another mobile feature (US only, sadly),  resized graphics and photos (which most sites strip out), and some podcasts that really serve mobile user needs.  Some of their navigation is clunky, but the site is so slick it hardly matters.