Month: March 2018

  • Rail v Road During Holidays: Compare and Contrast

    The above press release dropped into my inbox the other day.* It’s from Highways England, and is of the sort that is regularly published at holiday times of the year. So as we enter the Easter weekend, roadworks all over the country have been temporarily lifted to enable the flow of traffic. They even have…

  • Facebook Pixel Tracking

    This morning Nieman Lab had a really good piece asking whether if there was a certain amount of hypocrisy coming from certain news organisations castigating Facebook for leaking data, when at the same time they’re helping Facebook collect more data on you. Recall yesterday, when I said that some of Facebook’s data was missing from…

  • Is Netflix Quite As Smart As Everyone Says It Is?

    That’s possibly a provocative title, but I’ve come to the conclusions that while Netflix is very good at some things, I’m not certain that its recommendation engine is entirely as linked up as you’d think it’d be. A couple of recent cases in point. I was really looking forward to the new Alex Garland film,…

  • Examining My Facebook Downloads

    One very good consequence of the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica story is that a lot of people are discovering the surprisingly large amount of data that Facebook holds on them. The BBC’s Rory Cellan-Jones was “somewhat shocked” to see what it had on him. And The Verge has a good piece on the subject with particular reference…

  • Facebook and Cambridge Analytica

    I’ve been following the stories surrounding Cambridge Analytica and Facebook for some months now, and in recent days, following stories from The Observer, The New York Times and Channel 4, the story has really blown up. However, I do think that the story, while completely valid, and asking some really critical questions, perhaps over emphasises…

  • The Business Models of MoviePass and cPass

    Over the weekend, a new company raised its heads above the parapets. cPass is a new subscription cinema going scheme that allows members to see one film a day at the cinema for a monthly fee of £9.95. Cinema membership schemes aren’t unheard of, but they tend to be more expensive. Cineworld has its Unlimited…

  • Netflix: $8 Billion and 700 NEW Shows?

    How much programming is Netflix actually making? The answer is a lot, but I think that the widely reported numbers are a little misleading. Heavily retweeted earlier today was this: Wow. Fact of the day: Netflix plans to spend $8bn on content this year. That’s roughly 700 (!) new series and 80 films. Shows how…

  • Snow and Mist

    Snow and Mist from Adam Bowie on Vimeo. The country has been covered with snow for the last week or so, but it’s not straightforward to get some spectacular drone shots because of the weather. Consumer drones aren’t capable of flying while it’s snowing. And you also have to consider wind speed, and there’s been…

  • On Sky Q, Netflix and BARB

    Note: This is a subject likely to be of even more niche interest than many of my other blogs here. You have been warned! Yesterday Sky announced that it had reached agreement with Netflix to add Netflix to their Sky Q platform. What this means is that Netflix programmes will appear within the wider Sky…