How technology started a riot - then helped clean it up

Should we blame rioting on BlackBerry's BBM?

Why the rash of rioting, looting and arson that started in London and spread viciously across the UK in the last few days took plae is still being discussed, by everyone from the national press to the government. Some say the economic climate and high unemployment rate in the affected areas has created a hotbed of tension just waiting for a spark - the alleged shooting of Mark Duggan by Police being that spark.

But what is definitely clear is that technology has had a big part to play in the events of the past week - both good and bad.

BlackBerry Messenger has been widely criticised for helping the riots to happen.

All it takes is a quick BBM pin swap - easily distributed en masse through other technologies like Twitter - and potential troublemakers are quickly in contact with one another. All BBM conversations are private, and one message can send to several users at once, for free. Perfect for starting a riot.

Another reason BBM has been chosen as the method of choice is that the looter demographic and the BlackBerry demographic align. Not that all BlackBerry users are rioting thugs - far from it. But as ABC News points out: "BlackBerry made a specific effort to market its product among black youth in London, recently sponsoring a "secret gig" in London featuring top U.K. rappers".

Indeed, as The Telegraph reports: "RIM’s BlackBerry smartphones are very popular among inner city youths on both sides of the Atlantic. The devices themselves are typically cheaper than Android models and the iPhone, particularly on pay-as-you-go packages".

MP David Lammy has even called on RIM to shut off their BBM service: "Just been on 5Live asking BB to consider suspending their messaging service this evening...", he said via Twitter.

"Technology is ruining us," agrees tweeter Jessica Kennedy.

BlackBerry have certainly got a lot of damage control to do in terms of their tarnished image. No company wants to be responsible for rioting and destruction which has seen entire streets razed to the ground, including a 150-year-old furniture store and a huge Sony distribution centre, which was torched.

But it is important that we don't over react and blame the technology for the way people have used it. After all, quick communication tools like BBM and Twitter can only be as beneficial - or as destructive - as people make them through how they use them.

What is clear is that technology in 2011 can be immensely powerful. But if that power is being used to organise riots in the streets, it is not the fault of BlackBerry, it is the fault of the people doing the looting. I see no reason to shut off a legitmate service used by millions because a band of senseless thugs can't be trusted with communication tools we could only dream of a decade ago.

Technology can and has been used for good, too. Within days of the riots, Twitter account @riotcleanup was established, helping to get hundreds of people armed with brooms and bin bags out onto the broken streets and cleaning up the mess.

Similarly, Police in South Yorkshire, through @syptweet, have helped to keep people informed by countering destructive rumours that riots had started when they hadn't - which could have ironically caused riots to form had the rumours persisted.

Technology is like anything else - it is only as good as the people who use it. Let's hope we can use CCTV face recognition technology as well as Twitter to help put away those who can't use it responsibly.

iPad: Saviour of the newspaper industry?

©Alex Evans 2011

For hundreds of years, the newspaper has been a staple component of the morning routine for millions of people around the world. From businessmen vanishing behind the vast expanse of their broadsheets on the Underground to builders sat in Transit vans trying not to drip brown sauce on page 3, newspapers have for many years, and for millions of people, been absolutely essential.

But perhaps not for much longer. The internet, for all that it’s given us – better communication, cheaper shopping, social networking, has the newspaper squarely in its crosshairs. After all, why spend £1 on a lump of messy paper, half of which you won’t read, when you can pick and choose news content on the internet, free of charge?

Print circulation is in sharp decline. Average net circulation of daily newspapers has dropped 15% in four years, down from 11.5million in May 2007 to 9.8million in May 2011, according to figures published in The Times, Friday July 15 2011.

The same research suggests print costs have risen by 20% in the last year while advertising revenues for, as an example,  The Daily Mail, are down 7% in three months. Meanwhile, the cost of newspapers has risen – The Guardian, The Independent and The Daily Telegraph have all risen from 70p to £1 in the last four years, while The Times has moved from 65p to £1, The Daily Mail has risen from 45p to 55p and The Financial Times has doubled, from £1 to £2.

It all adds up to a situation in which newspapers are trapped in a self-defeating cycle – the more circulation dwindles, the more prices rise – and the further prices rise, the quicker circulation drops. 

According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, The Daily Telegraph has dropped from 911,454 to 651,184 daily circulation between 2007 and 2011. The Times has dropped from 670,054 to 457,250, while The Guardian has dropped from 384,070 to 279,308. Of these four, only The Daily Mail has seen a small decline (in terms of percentage of overall readership) – from 2,354,028 to 2,136,568. 

The one factor pointed out by analysts most often as the cause of this plunge in readership is the free online news movement.

Newspapers have reacted very differently to this new environment where news is quick, simple and free. The Daily Mail’s website is incredibly successful, pulling in millions of unique users every day, offsetting declining print circulation. But others have fought against it – The Times have locked their content behind a paywall, pushing readers to identify the newspaper’s web output as something worth paying for – with mixed results.

There is, though, one last saviour for traditional print publications: tablet computers, like the iPad. Apple’s hefty slab of screen is the first device which can actually mimic a newspaper exactly. The huge, bright screen lends itself perfectly to presenting full versions of newspaper pages identical to those sitting on newsstands. Indeed, The Times’ iPad app does exactly this – repacking the newspaper every day into a digital edition, complete with turnable pages and, unlike print, added interactivity.

The iPad offers newspapers and magazines a lifeline. A chance to sell their newspaper as a whole, as it was meant to be, complete with rich analysis, opinion and photographs. Never mind web pages with short stories written to gain immediate traffic, the iPad can deliver the deeper newspaper experience in digital format. Crucially – people are willing to pay.

How many people? And will this news revolution turn the whole industry to tablet computers overnight?

Certainly, from talking to newspaper and magazine editors and senior journalists from across the country, there seems to be hope. Hope that the same generation who buy iPods to listen to music, not CDs, the same generation who rent films over the internet rather than buy DVDs, the same generation who want everything with them, everywhere they go, in one device might want to buy newspapers for those devices.

iPad might not kill the newspaper industry – it might just save it.

__________________________________________________________________________

This is the introduction to my University dissertation; for confidentiality reasons I cannot publish any further excerpts, but any feedback is appreciated. This is an update of an earlier article from April, fleshed out after interviews with three major newspapers. All writing ©Alex Evans 2011.

Is Google Plus Facebook Minus the brilliance?

Facebook is dead. Or at least, that's what Google are hoping will be written on sites like these in a few years from now. Just like Facebook killed Myspace, Google hope to topple the current giant.

Thing is, to do that Google's social site has to not only equal Facebook, but leave it trailing.

Thing is, Plus is nowhere near offering the kind of ease of use Facebook offers. The big F can take you from new user to sign-up within a matter of mere minutes. Google, on the other hand, seem to operate in some sort of exclusivity bubble, demanding new users seek 'invites' from current customers. It's not exactly the approachable, easy to sign up service we've come to expect.

It does bring some new ideas, though. The 'circles' which allow you to place your friends into particular groups and keep them from seeing content and conversation (and drunken photos) with other groups you've got. It's like Facebook, but with optional barriers.

It may not sound like fun - isn't social media all about inclusion? But it does offer a more personalised experience, allowing you to keep your old school friends from spilling all your embarrassing secrets to your new work colleagues.

Similarly, it means your boss won't be able to see those drunken photos. And it's just perfect for affairs. Google Plus? That means wife plus mistress.

Similarly, Sparks allows users to establish a 'feed' of only the content they're into, rather than a catch-all Wall like Facebook.

Hangouts, on the other hand, are a sort of online skulking ground meets Skype - you can let users know you're online and go into video calls, or arrange a virtual meet there in future, like a web video cafe thing.

But is it enough innovation to tempt users away from Facebook? I'm not so sure. People know Facebook. They like it (no pun intended). There is no real reason for anyone to make the switch and go through the pain of inviting all your friends to the new service. Especially as most of them won't be on there.

And who wants to keep two social networks running? I already receive millions of emails and notifications both on my phone and laptop from Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Any more and I think my email inbox will explode. Then there's the time involved in keeping both going.

No, the only people using Plus will be hardcore Google fans and those looking for a change from Facebook. And I don't think Circles and Sparks are enough to bring down the current networking titan.

Is the handheld console still relevant?

Uncharted and Zelda are great, but are people happy enough with Angry Birds in their pocket?

PS Vita looks great. Sony's new handheld has twin analogue sticks (for COD on the go) and graphical power to match PS3, all for only £280 - which is very cheap considering the technology involved is right on the cutting edge.

PS Vita smashes iPad, iPhone and 3DS in terms of graphical power, and gameplay experience. A full set of buttons is always going to be more useful than just a touchscreen - and Vita's got one of those, too.

But PS Vita could be a huge failure. The handheld market has changed so much in the last five years since the original PSP release, and PS Vita may just represent an outdated business model.

The 3DS, Nintendo's newest handheld, has had a stuttering launch, and while the lack of games must be partly to blame, it's tempting to see the rise of the smartphone as the real culprit.

Do people still want to play on a dedicated handheld? Do the masses want to lug around a hefty handheld console when they already carry a smartphone everywhere they go?

That smartphone, too, already has games. Nothing on the scale of Uncharted, like PS Vita, or Zelda 3D, like 3DS. But thousands of games ranging from free to a few pounds/dollars. Why spend £40 on a new 3DS game when you've got Angry Birds expansion packs at no extra cost?

The smartphone, whether iPhone or Android, is clearly a huge threat to the handheld gaming market - and threatens to destroy the market entirely.

There is one thing that can save PS Vita and 3DS though: Differentiation.

What Sony and Nintendo must do is show people that these consoles offer a rich enough, a different enough experience to warrant the extra expense; the extra pocket weight, the dedicated games machine.

Sony need to show that having a PS Vita means having a PS3 in your pocket. Uncharted: Golden Abyss (Pictured, right) is basically a full-fledged version of the blockbuster franchise, and it looks every inch as beautiful as its bigger brother, but it's portable. The iPhone will never have that - and even if one day smartphone graphics caught up, the iPhone lacks the twin analogue sticks, face buttons and Trophies.

Will it be enough? Not for some. But there will always be a crowd looking for a deeper experience and I think Sony still has a market to aim for; a market who want Smartphone + 'proper' games machine.

Nintendo has a bigger task on its hands. Aiming mostly at casual gamers, Nintendo has a tough time persuading the people who bought a DS with Brain Training, or Professor Layton, or Sudoku, that the 3DS is what they need next.

The 3D is the key differentiation for Nintendo, but even that will not last - Glassesless 3D capable smartphones are coming, and they're going to be here by Christmas.

The only thing Nintendo have left are their big franchises: Mario, Zelda, Pokemon, etc. These games will never appear on an iPhone, and the company now more than ever needs to rely on these games' appeal to push the 3DS into peoples' hands.

But it all seems a little desperate. In reality, both companies' business models are beginning to look a little dated.

Differentiation may save them for now - but one day, iPhones or other Smartphones will figure out a way to close down these differences, too - and both game makers will have to try to stay one step ahead or risk falling behind.

Looking at the 3DS sales, I fear it may have already happened.

Hackers? Do us a favour

Is it right to punish hackers for exposing security flaws which put our personal details at risk?
 
Today a British teenager was arrested over the recent spate of hacking which has seen the likes of the NHS, the CIA and a range of companies like Sony and Nintendo's websites hacked open.

The arrest, co-ordinated by Essex Police and the FBI, saw a 19-year-old who is the supposed ringleader of notorious internet hacking group LulzSec taken into custody.

Yes, he broke the law. But is it fair to punish someone for exposing the security flaws which could have put us all at risk?

Hacking, you see, has become all the rage. Everybody who's anybody (read: a bedroom shut-in nobody) has been hacking into bigwigs' websites for a laugh, leaving messages inside their 'secure' servers and boasting on Twitter about how they could get access to all these companies' personal details. Aka, your personal details.

These are not simple little Norton firewalls. These are, in some cases, multi-million pound security software systems which have been compromised by groups of internet anarchists seemingly intent on watching the world burn, one web hack at a time.

LulzSec's now-notorious logo

But have hackers, like the infamous 'LulzSec' and 'Anonymous' groups, become demonised unfairly? After all, these sites are supposed to be secure websites housing, in some cases, very sensitive data and have been hacked open as if it were as easy as shouting 'open sesame' at the NHS database.

Yes, some of the hacking has been silliness. The news site PBS posted a story stating that legendary, deceased rapper Tupac Shakur was actually alive and living in New Zealand. This was obviously useless, borderline dangerous joking by hackers at the expense of PBS.

But a lot of the hacks have actually served a beneficial purpose - they have exposed serious, some might say criminal, flaws in the supposedly secure systems of these websites.

Hacking group LulzSec allegedly left this message inside the NHS database which holds the names, addresses and other personal details of millions of people:

"While you aren't considered an enemy - your work is of course brilliant - we did stumble upon several of your admin passwords".

"We mean you no harm and only want to help you fix your tech issues".

If these apparently harmless hackers can hack in so easily, though, what's to stop a more malicious group from gaining access to the details of anyone on that NHS database?

Similarly, the group has highlighted serious flaws in the security of the government's 2011 census database; which surely holds enough information about each and every one of us to put all of us at risk of identity theft.

Whilst I would never condone what these hackers have done - after all, Anonymous put the PlayStation Network down for a month, at the estimated cost of some $100million to Sony - which could have repercussions for their employees.

And whatever their stated intentions, we should always be wary of any group which is openly admitting to accessing databases of personal information. It only takes one rogue, less noble member of LulzSec to sell on these personal details to someone unscrupulous to put everyone at risk.

But these hackers have shown us just how fragile these 'secure' databases really are. Sony held PS3 users' credit card details in its records, yet secured them so poorly that some bedroom-dwelling teen might have made off with the lot. Government bodies like the NHS, too, must be secure enough to stop any intrusion.

If they are going to force us to hand over our personal information, the least they could do is look after it properly.

Hacking is obviously illegal, and the arrest made today shows how seriously the authorities are taking it. But some blame must lay at the companies' cyber-doors.

If this spate of web attacks results in more secure databases for all our personal info, they may just have done us all a favour.

I'm not trying to argue that this teenage hacker is some modern day martyr. But this is one area in which the law clashes with ethics - we must all question whether it is really right to punish him when his actions may have helped get us all better protected.

Why Ocarina is 3DS' Time to Shine

3DS has had a rough launch. For almost 4 months, its 15 mostly mediocre games sat lonely on store shelves while DS Lite and even PSP outsold the 3DS. As launch periods go, it was barren to say the least.

Today, though, the Legend of Zelda returns. Widely heralded as the best game of all time, the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D is looking to do for 3DS what the title did for Nintendo 64 all those years ago (1998, for the record). Does it succeed, or is it time to move on?

Not only is Link's greatest adventure still as magical as it is epic, it's actually matured with age thanks to the abilities of the 3DS system - and not just the graphical ones.

It's not really about the graphics - even though they are luscious in eye-popping 3D and more bright and beautiful than they ever were on N64 (and you really will worry about your eyes popping when arrows soar straight at your face). No, what's most startling about OOT 3D is just how well it shows off what 3DS can really do.

There's nothing worse for ruining a game than getting stuck. With any other game on any other console, the solution would be to slam the console or controller down and scurry off to the laptop to look up the solution. Not any more.

Thanks to the recent 3DS online update, you can suspend Ocarina of Time 3D with a quick press of the Home button, then launch the Web Browser. In seconds, you can go from traversing the wild plains of Hyrule to trawling the depths Gamefaqs.com for the answer to the next puzzle. Once you've found the solution, another couple of clicks and it's as if the game was never paused. Just like every good idea, it suddenly amazes you that no-one's thought of it before.

Sure, you might have a laptop or a smartphone you could have used. But then you'd probably get distracted and check your facebook or get sucked into Twitter, never to return. The beauty of the 3DS, as Zelda so brilliantly outlines, is how it integrates everything you need for gaming - and gaming alone.

Sure, Sony's PSP, or upcoming PS Vita, both offer millions of multimedia bells and whistles; music, movies, apps, you name it. But 3DS is a Nintendo machine. A games machine. It exists only to make gaming as perfect as possible. The mid-game Web Browser is just one small (inspired) step towards that goal.

See those icons? You can suspend your game and hit those

Not content with running to the internet for the solution? Well, you can use the Game Notes feature instead. This works the same way - suspend the game and hit the icon in the menu - and allows you to draw Pictochat style notes about the game and save them for later. The real beauty of this, though, is that it keeps a photo of your current game on the top screen. Handy if you need to write down a number, name, a clue or a certain order. It's ingenious.

Yes, these features work with other games, too, but with Zelda, the various bright ideas packed into the 3DS just seem to click into place. It's like the 3DS grew up in the space of one title release. Gone is the DS with a prettier screen - in its place is a smart, innovative and much more sophisticated system geared towards delivering a first-rate, painless gaming experience.

In short, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is just the game to experience how Nintendo's handhelds have matured.

For Nintendo, it may have been 13 years, but it seems Link's still working his magic.

Introducing Call of Duty: Monthly Subscription

Bang! That's not the sound of a headshot from an AK-47. It's the sound of Activision, publishers of the world-storming Call of Duty franchise coming up with an idea that will change not just the company's fortunes, but the gaming landscape forever: Call of Duty: Elite.

Activision's new subscription model, which offers Call of Duty players bonus content in return for a monthly subscription fee is sure to spark a war of words as much as a gaming one.

Starting with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, the latest entry into the blockbuster FPS franchise which releases this autumn, players will be given the option to sign up for a subscription to Call of Duty which will work with MW3 and all future COD games. In return for the monthly payment, players will get access to extra, exclusive maps as well as a stats service which shows them in depth which weapons they are having most success with.

It’s not known how much the charge will be yet, but this idea is, of course, from the company which runs World of Warcraft, an online role-playing game which can take £10-15 a month from each subscriber on top of the cost of the game.

Considering that MW3 costs an eye-watering £55 just for the disc, it seems more than a little excessive to start charging to play online, too.

Yes, the free service will stay in place. Players can still get online and shoot seven shades of shellshock out of one another for nothing. But the fact is, come this autumn there will be an exclusive section of the online community cordoned off – maps only subscribers can play, rooms teeming with pay-per-month customers who don’t want to mingle with the cheapo users.

It’s a worrying direction for gaming. We already have games which last at best, 5-10 hours in single-player, devoid of any split-screen multiplayer, with developers insisting the online modes (most of which are soulless clones of every other game’s online play) make up for the lack of meat elsewhere.

 As recently as five years ago, that wouldn’t have happened. PS2 games, for all their low-res, offline antiquatedness, had to deliver a compelling, lengthy experience and often a good split-screen mode to survive.
Fast forward to 2011 and we have games with content on the disc which you have to pay to access – DLC packs which were made as part of the main game, then locked out. Then they sell you the digital key to your own disc for £7.99. It’s absurd.

Now, Activision want to split the market entirely, into payers and non-payers. Sure, currently it’s only a few measly map packs and some data tracking. But if the idea catches on, expect what’s offered in the free zone to slowly diminish whilst the pay-for section gradually begins to resemble exactly what we used to get for free.

Sure, Activision are more than within their rights to do it. It’s a free market – and if people will pay, then Activision can – and in a pro-business sense sort of way – should offer it.

But embrace this future and we could suddenly see the glory years of free online play slide into yesteryear, much like PS2’s meaty single-player campaigns did. Show that we’re willing to stump up for one game, and every game developer will want to sell us a 12-month contract as well as a game.

Eventually, we’ll all buy one shooter (COD), one racer (NFS), one sports game (FIFA) and one action game (GTA) every year, subscribe to their online play and to hell with originality, innovation or indeed, free online. We’ll no be longer gamers, we’ll be loyal, contracted subscribers.

This may all sound like a ludicrous, exaggerated over-reaction. But MW3’s subscriber model is one small step away from this disastrous new reality. Don’t take that step. Step back, and throw up a middle finger, not a credit card.