I remember working in Wilkinsons in Melton Mowbray and on my break wondering over the road to Blockbuster video for some chocolates. I remember hiring Apollo 13 and Braveheart on VHS in 1995 (maybe 96 – it’s hazy!) from the very same Blockbuster store and quite a bit later (plus many movies later) in 2001 hiring my first Playstation 2 game.

Blockbuster is a fantastic brand – from it’s very simple ticket stub logo to it’s global coverage of its stores and online websites. It may not have been the first company to offer movie rental, but it was certainly the first chain to offer it on such a scale. The Blockbuster concept of a “great night in” which seems to have been lifted shamelessly by Dominoes, altered the way we enjoyed our time infront of the TV at night. Blockbuster cunningly offered up popcorn, chocolate and sweets alongside movie rentals so everything you needed was there in one place.

The first Blockbuster store in the UK opened in March 1989 (Walworth Road, London) and rapidly expanded to it’s 650 stores and over 5,000 staff it currently has in the UK today.

Recently though, the global presence of Blockbusters has suffered, the TV campaigns have halted and stores have closed down. So what went so badly wrong, that has led Blockbuster to recently announce they are working towards bankruptcy?
In my opinion, one word sums up what went wrong for Blockbuster, Innovation.

Blockbuster probably didn’t realise it, but they operated in an area of technology. Or at least an area which has been affected so dramatically recently with the introduction of DVD, blue-Ray, games consoles and more importantly the Internet.

Blockbuster have always reacted to the market and since their launch have never ventured into markets until they are mature.

The killer nail has been the likes of LoveFilm and NetFlix, which have revolutionised the way in which we consume film. Sky Box Office was bad enough for blockbuster, but at least they could be rest-assured they would have more recent films on offer.
Blockbuster.co.uk was launched in 1996! So they were very quick to adopt online. They even offered online rentals as early as 2002, but the one thing they have not been able to master is streaming video. If they had took a risk and been the first to offer streaming, even before home broadband was really good enough for it, with the strength of their brand they would have led in a market that will generate millions in the uk alone.

Just think of the advertising revenue online video streaming will generate once it is commonplace. Blockbuster could have had a slice of that and I would be writing a very different blog.

In the UK all is not lost for Blockbuster. It is a separate company to the US Blockbuster and is not yet staring down the barrel of bankruptcy. It is however, up for sale for a mere £50m!

Problem is, a large portion of the £50m will get you the 650 stores – which to survive is the exact thing Blockbuster don’t want to retain. They want to build on the brand, offer online streaming of movies and pioneer in the integration of targeted advertising online.
To compete with the likes of Netflix is now going to be an uphill battle for the UK Blockbuster, but it’s by no means an impossible battle.

I for one hope it’s something someone somewhere takes on. It will be a real shame if the Blockbuster brand is sent to the great big branding bin in the sky.

Inside Microsoft HQ:

Mich Matthews (VP of marketing) – Ok guys, we have a pretty impressive smartphone that we’ve worked pretty damn hard on and I reckon we should let people know it exists. What-da-ya-reckon?

Steve Ballmer (Microsoft CEO) – Good catch Mich, that’s why I pay you $280k+ let’s get our best guys on this baby right away. We need our ducks in a row on this one, we need an xbox success, no repeat of vista… Ok!

Mich – Well, let’s fly some kites, get some serious blue sky going on in here. What made the xbox such a success and vista such a… Um… a…. Well not such a success?

Steve – We never make bad products, it must have been the marketing budgets. How much did we spend marketing xbox?

Mich – $100m

Steve – and vista?

Mich – $500m

Steve – Ah. Vista must have been bad. I hope windows phone 7’s better.

————-

Although Microsoft are reported to be spending $400m on the launch of windows phone 7, this doesn’t ensure it’s success. However, it does show you Microsoft are serious about its new smartphone and by spending serious marketing budget it’s guaranteed every man and his dog are going to hear about this one.

It’s also interesting how close the budgets are between the vista launch and that of windows phone 7. Although when you consider the desktop market is in such decline and the smartphone market is enjoying such growth, it does make sense. Smartphone sales are expected to outstrip those of the desktop by next year, so for me Microsoft have set their budget about right.

The right amount of spend is so important, let’s take the $100m budget of Verizon and Motorola on the original Droid smartphone compared to the non-existent marketing budget for Google’s Nexus One. The Nexus One was a better handset with better software, but was outsold by the Droid – marketing made the Droid a success, simple.

It shows you can have a slightly inferior product, but through marketing tell people repeatedly that it’s good and they will believe you! Apple have been doing it for years… It works! Of course I jest a little, Apples products are damn good, but in all honesty are they the best out there? Or are we blinded slightly by the Apple razzmatazz of it’s marketing campaigns?

Windows phone 7 now has every chance of success. The marketing $’s behind this device plus the fact it isn’t going to be a poor (vista) product is why this could really shake up the smartphone market. This smartphone will support Office, Windows Live services and have the Zune music store. This smartphone will have an innovative UI not a clunky Windows Mobile platform UI. We’re sure to see a Microsoft app store, multitasking and notifications. We’re also going to experience Microsoft making the most of the Xbox Live brand within the handheld for gaming.
The final aspect will be the community. Developers have jumped at the chance to unleash their talents on both the iPhone and Android platforms. If they do the same with vigour for the Windows phone 7, there may be no stopping this new kid on the smartphone block taking the lead.

Microsoft have been quiet recently and has almost slipped into the underdog style status when compared to Apple and Google. Something a decade ago we would never have imagined. We also would never have imagined feeling slightly sorry for Microsoft, but I think there is a new public perception towards them, after all, we love the underdog.

I’m predicting the Windows Phone 7 will be a huge success and with the troubles Apple have had with the iPhone 4, it’s going to make for a very interesting battle!
Most of all though, I’m looking forward to Microsofts marketing campaign for the new phone, I hope they really do fly those kites and make it one to remember!

I found myself in John Lewis at the weekend while looking for a digital camera when something caught my eye (as well as my ears!). It was a family cooing over a Sony 3D TV set up which was in the form of a mock-up front room. John Lewis had done well setting up a nice sofa, 46″ Sony 3D TV and surround sound, it was easy to see why the family were initially impressed.

The first thing that struck me was the kids arguing over who had the pleasure of looking stupid by wearing a very large pair of 3D glasses, the second was how the father took charge, said “just wait your turn” then donned the glasses himself and the final thing was how disappointed he looked when he handed over the glasses to the first child.

The previous week I had been at the Sea Life Centre in Birmingham where I had the pleasure of sitting in a small cinema for 4mins while we watched “The voyage of the turtle”. This was in 3D, but also had water that sprayed out the back of the chair in front, rumble pads in the chairs and wind pipes in the head-rest. It was a really good experience, the 3D was excellent and the extra 4D touches really impressed me. That said, 4mins was long enough for me.

Once the family in John Lewis had finished I thought I would give it a go. The experience was so far removed from that I had just one week earlier I had to question why on earth anyone would spend an awful lot of money to look stupid in their front rooms and enjoy an adequate experience.

Then in dawned on me. It would be because they have been to a cinema, watched Avatar 3D or Toy Story 3 3D and wanted to experience this at home. Well I’m sorry, but no chance.

Sony, Phillips, Samsung, LG and countless others are ploughing a lot of money into this market and I for one think they are wasting their time. 3D may be a good experience, but it has to be on the big screen in an environment removed from usual everyday life with surround sound and popcorn. At home I’ll be sticking to my plasma screen while only being frustrated i can’t find my remote never mind my special glasses as well. 3D… Keep it in the cinema.

I’ve used Firefox for years now and have always reverted back to it even when swayed slightly by Google Chrome or the latest IE. Obviously as a developer I always test in as many browsers as I can, but for my own personal browsing Firefox is the one I hover that pointer over and double click on the most.

Although I feel Firefox has always led in terms of new features which is down to the amazing efforts of an open-source community, for me it boils down to speed and put simply I have always found Firefox that bit faster.
That said, Google Chrome does give it a damn good run for its money which is why I do find myself now and again using Chrome.

The one feature that pulled in the punters for Firefox and set it apart was tabbed browsing. When Firefox introduced this feature way-back-when in 2002 it introduced an easy tabbed interface that helped users browse multiple pages quicker. It wasn’t until IE7 in 2006 Microsoft caught up. For me that’s a long time to react to such a good feature. Safari reacted much faster incorporating tabs in 2003.
Google Chrome launched much later in 2008 and has therefore never known a life without tabs.

So what’s the next big feature in terms of web browsing. Well, un-surprisingly it’s based on the feature that made Firefox one of the worlds favourite browsers… tabs.

The feature was code named Tab Candy, but will be incorporated into the official new release of Firefox as Panorama.
Firefox Panorama allows the user to group tabs together. This is done through the thumbnail tab view and by simply dragging one page over another to group them. You can drag just one page or as many as you want into a new group space and then name the group for easy access later.
If the window’s not big enough for all the pages your compiling together, Firefox cleverly stacks them together and you can select the stack to view the page thumbnails.

Being an iPhone owner I can see the process of dragging one thumbnail over another to make a group isn’t a totally new concept. This is after-all how the new “folder” feature in the new ios4 works to allow users to group apps together. I’m not a big fan of lifting ideas off others (see my last blog post) but this is only part of how Panorama works.

Enabling this grouping will mean you can easily have groups of pages for projects you’re working on or interests you have.
A simple concept, but amazingly powerful. For me though, it builds on a feature that meant quicker more efficient web browsing and that’s what makes me choose a particular browser.

This new feature will be available in Firefox 4 and is already in the Beta release if you want to take a look.

The launch of facebook places is not only significant in the fact that it shows as a company facebook is continually developing and looking for ways to expand it’s platform, but it is also significant in the fact it shows they can take any new idea which has been thought up by them or not and integrate it into facebook to open it up to the largest community on the web.

Facebook places is a way for users to “check in” to locations so their “friends” can see where they’ve been. Users can also add notes against places so their friends can see what they thought of it, what deals they may be able to get there etc, etc… just general info.

All in all, a good idea. Yes. But not an idea of some bright young developer within facebook HQ!

This idea happened to be the brainchild of Dennis Crowley who was named one of the “Top 35 Innovators Under 35″ by MIT’s Technology Review and Naveen Selvadurai.
This pair launched foursquare in march 2009 and now has over 3 million users.
Now, 3 million users all of a sudden doesn’t sound like that many. But that is only because of the monster that is facebook. The majority of websites would be more than happy and may even open a bottle of bubbly at the fact they’ve attracted 3 million users to their website.

The point here is that facebook can take any new idea, such as foursquare, integrate it into facebook and instantly expose it to an audience far greater than anyone else can imagine.

Therefore facebook faces no competition.

Although foursquare’s user base has apparently risen since the launch of facebook places, this will surely not continue. I can only guess this is due to the fact people are now more aware of the concept of “checking in” and are therefore searching for this and discovering foursquare.

Apparently facebook have been developing this for 8 months, so it took them only 9 months to track foursquare’s growth and decide to copy it’s idea.

It’s a shame, but I really feel we won’t see a new successful concept independently run, not integrated into facebook and grow enough to compete with the social giant.
It’s also a shame that more people hadn’t discovered foursquare first. As the 497,000,000 users that are members of facebook and not foursquare will think – cracking idea facebook… Well done.