Yes, lots of chateaux (it being the Loire Valley and all), and an unhealthy interest in pains au chocolat (resulting in a few too many pains au stomach), but I also picked up a few musings about multimedia along the way:
1. When the chips are down and you only have 5 minutes at the campsite internet cafe, what do you browse? I checked my email and my husband checked the news and sport headlines and the weather. Apparently we were behaving true to our gender – females use the internet to communicate and males use it for information and fact-finding. Obviously this is a huge sweeping generalisation, but it does seem to be true from segmentation research we did last year with Orange customers. And I was reminded of it when I read a newspaper article on the ferry about the explosion of pink gadgets on the market (phones, ipods, power screwdrivers, taser guns – you name it, there’s a pink one for girls). Handset manufacturers for one would do better to look at differences in online behaviour rather than re-setting the colours on their production line for geeky early adopters. More on this at a later date.
2. Why do mobile operators find it so difficult to make email work on your phone. Yes, there are hundreds of different email clients, yes, there’s POP3 access and webmail and hotmail isn’t joining in with everyone else and yes there are lots of different handsets, but come on guys – sort it out! (And then explain it to everyone in customer services too, so there’s just a chance they might be able to help or have a clue what you’re talking about.) Phew, rant over!
3. Radio phone-ins. Late-night shows for nutters and insomniacs or the great grandaddy of user-generated content depending on your viewpoint. We flicked between two phone-ins on the drive home in the wee small hours (5Live and Radio 2) and were educated on subjects such as Paris Hilton and George Michael – should they be given special treatment by the courts; Big Brother – what’s with the race row and why’s everyone talking about it (including us) and finally religion – what’s all that about?! All mildly entertaining and mildly irritating at the same time, but the thing that struck me was how old-fashioned the DJs were. Both said independently that they weren’t allowed to have their own opinions and that struck me as the problem. How can you have a proper conversation with someone if you can’t speak your mind. Maybe that’s why so many of them sound so insincere.
4. Back to work stress now starts before you get back to work. Some social researcher will invent a name for it soon (if there’s any of them left in Big Brother season!), but these days it’s not just your inbox you have to worry about catching up on – it’s all your social networks too. There’s so many things to check: LinkedIn invites and updates, Facebook postings, Flickr comments and contacts photos, blog stats, RSS feeds, subscription newsletters, Ebay bids, Youtube views…and that’s before you get to SkyPlus. There’s only one answer – book another holiday!
June 9, 2007
