Other than work: a quotation from Auden.

I've been making time to read recently and remembering things I love other than work.

In Humanity, Jonathan Glover quotes W H Auden's The Shield of Achilles . Here are some striking lines from that poem.

She looked over his shoulder
For vines and olive trees,
Marble well-governed cities
And ships upon untamed seas,
But there on the shining metal
His hands had put instead
An artificial wilderness
And a sky like lead.

A plain without a feature, bare and brown,
No blade of grass, no sign of neighborhood,
Nothing to eat and nowhere to sit down,
Yet, congregated on its blankness, stood
An unintelligible multitude,
A million eyes, a million boots in line,
Without expression, waiting for a sign.

Out of the air a voice without a face
Proved by statistics that some cause was just
In tones as dry and level as the place:
No one was cheered and nothing was discussed;
Column by column in a cloud of dust
They marched away enduring a belief
Whose logic brought them, somewhere else, to grief.

Social experiment: being 4oD

For the last couple of months I've spent a few minutes each day and a few hours each evening "being" 4oD on Twitter.

Why on earth would I want to do that? A few reasons:

1. I believe very strongly that corporations have no excuse for being "faceless". We are "only" humans and other humans, on the whole, respond well to being talked with on a level. Twitter's a great tool for doing this.
2. 4oD gets mentioned quite a lot on Twitter. Some of the time people need help or are asking a question.
   
3. VOD is about to get very competitive. It's no good 4oD just being available. We've got to offer as good an experience as possible. One element of that experience is "interaction". And interaction happens everywhere, not just via official channels.
   
4. I can't very well ask someone else to do this stuff until I've had a crack at it myself.
5. OK, so I enjoy it.

So what have I learned?

1. Tweetdeck, set up right, means this isn't a big time commitment. During the day it's a 1-minute catch-up whenever I return to my desk. On the train home I usually help a few people out via my BlackBerry. And when at home, the laptop's on anyway so it just happens in the background; usually while I'm doing something else.
   
2. Actually most people don't track Mentions from people they don't follow.
   
3. But people who do are stunned and delighted when 4oD offers to help or answers a question. And they're often keen to strike up a short conversation.
4. People who, when confronted with a technical problem, use a lot of expletives, tend not to respond when offered help.
5. People use @ a lot when they mean # .
6. When you admit a muck-up like we did today (we accidentally turned off access to 4oD from the Channel Islands and Isle of Man when we turned it on for Ireland), people's estimation of you goes up.
   

Here are a few of my favourite exchanges from the last 10 days:

@Tweeter1: Other companies would just pretend everything was Fine™ and not say anything. Well done all! [with reference to the Tweet about the Channel Islands debacle)

@Tweeter2: [to no-one in particular] does 4od work on Macs yet?
@4oD: yep
@Tweeter2: well *that's* jolly decent of you :)

@Tweeter3: ah bless! lovely @4oD found me after i mentioned watching IT Crowd last night - thank you for get well wishes!

@Tweeter4: hahaha i said "4oD i love you" and 4oD replied? thanks @4oD you made my day!

@Tweeter5: [following a tweet saying that Ugly Betty hadn't been updated] I take it all back! @4oD tweeted me to say that Ugly Betty wasn't on last week, which is why 4OD is a week behind

@Tweeter6: Very impressed with 4od customer service. Answered my question AND said thanks, amazing!

Customer service, eh? Well yes. And what's not to like about that? One person thought I was a bot! We almost had our very own Turing Test on our hands ...

All aboard the Clue Train.

Great expectations

At work we've observed that consumer expectations rise in step with advances in technology.

For example: when a programme isn't on 4oD immediately after it's transmitted, some users get really outraged and declare everything to be rubbish and a total disaster. Like Veruca, we seem to want it and want it now ("and if I don't get the things that I'm after I'm going to .... Screeeeam!").

Until very recently, if you missed something on TV that was it: game over. Unless it was repeated (another source of complaints) or else you'd managed to figure out how to use a video recorder (and had a blank tape) you'd just have to get over it. Now, with on-demand a whole new world of choice and convenience has opened up. It's amazing. It's also very new and so sometimes - just sometimes - it doesn't all go perfectly.

Here's a funny take on the same theme via Ian Tait's Crackunit.

Favourite 4oD Tweets

My name is Richard and I am addicted to monitoring the Twitterverse for mentions of 4oD.

Here's a selection of my favourite Tweets from the last few weeks (my italics and asterisks).

Verb (You know: like "Google" and "Hoover" ...)
• 4OD much?

Considered (Might be nice as a letter or perhaps a telegram)
• I approve of 4OD being on channel4.com.
• Nice to see 4oD has changed to more of an iPlayer format. I can actually tolerate it.

Hyperbole (Bullet #3 is my favourite one of all)
• Freakin' love 4OD. Right now I adore it. God bless 4OD.
• #4OD is feckin amazing ! love it
• EUROTRASH ON 4OD! EPIC F**KING WIN!
• 4oD is actually taking the p*ss out of my life
• 4od maybe my new best friend...
• 4od and iplayer are godsends
• New 4od guaranteed to take over my life
• In some cases, such as this one, I refer to 4OD as God
• Brookside on 4oD. This is incredible. (Like inventing anaesthesia, landing on the moon etc.)
• Mybloodyjesusexploreronfire! When did 4OD get so f**king amazing!
• Staying up using the best thing ever! 4oD!

Positive
• Ooooh, has 4OD become entirely web based? We used to have to download some crappy software didn't we?
• Wait, 4oD is now on the web! when did that happen? good work channel 4 :)
• New #4od online is awesome...
• 4oD kicks ass (is the geo-blocking not working?)
• 4od is amazing ! fair play to whoever invented it !

H8rz (we're only human .. apart from the computers of course)
• 4oD is the worst thing ever!!
• F**k you Channel 4! Leave the 4OD App alone, I don't want to be able JUST watch it in the browser!
• What's happening?? 4OD is bad (Or is this a MJ tribute?)
• Chanel 4OD is SH*T.
• It's official... The new 4od is a massive steaming heap

Bonkers (Bullet #2 is genius)
• I may use 4oD. Great name. "Watch your favourite shows on Four Overdose!" Some of the stuff on its so crap you can only watch it on drugs.
• My dad is being a nob and not letting me watch the Cut Up An Elephant Program. I will have to watch it on 4oD LIKE A COMMON ANIMAL
• Don't mess with me, 4oD, I've taken enough of your sh*t. (Sorry. Sorry. Can we make up?)
• Wow, 4OD has turned from a crap program to a useful website where I can see my friend on Supersize vs. Superskinny. You tubby f**k.

Comparisons with "the other service" (selected entirely objectively, you understand ...)
• Hm I'm not sure but 4oD may be better than the iPlayer. Slightly.
• There is always 4OD which p*sses on BBC iPlayer.
• dear 4od and bbc iplayer, i love you.

Ads (jeeez)
• 4od comes with actual ad breaks. Jeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeez
• 4od is annoying. I thought the whole point of watching stuff online was to avoid adverts.

--

Joking aside: the insights a business can glean from reading what people are saying about its products on Twitter and further afield really are of huge value. Thanks to all the authors of the above for their help, intentional or not.

New 4oD ad

Clever colleagues in Marketing have created a lovely new 4oD Ad to accompany the rebirth of 4oD on Channel4.com, archive 'n' all.

Here's the long version. It's not CGI-ed. All the products are real. We've got them in the office ... !

One EPG to rule them all

Do we need a single place where all the UK’s TV VOD is aggregated?

Following the demise of Kangaroo, rumours abound as to the imminent entry to the UK of would-be aggregators such as Hulu and YouTube .

Meanwhile I’m really enjoying the work of 123webTV, Tanktop TV and Teev.co.uk (and doubtless others), all of whom enable discovery of all 4oD, iPlayer and ITV Player content by aggregating not content but metadata.

The eyes have it: Politicians' sight problems.

I found out today that Nick Griffin has a glass eye. It's the one foreign body he's ok with.

Then I remembered that Gordon Brown is blind in one eye.

Tony Blair of course has a mad eye, as picked up on by Steve Bell .

Charles Kennedy's eyes were not always in focus.

John Major had a roving eye.

David Blunkett: blind since birth.

David Cameron: blind ambition.

Any more?