Uber to trial recording audio of rides - what could possibly go wrong?

News in that that Uber is to trial audio recording of rides in Brazil and Mexico in a move that could see it rolled out to other territories.

The reasoning behind the move is that it might increase driver and passenger safety and help to arbitrate in disputes or criminal acts during the journey. There is logic to this, but there are also numerous concerns with the trial:

- Privacy: concerns over your personal conversations being recorded and stored on Uber's services
- Data: the audio would be recorded on the driver's device and then passed as encrypted files to Uber -  what about the cost of the data on the driver's data plan?
- Encryption: this is a minimum but what if the recordings are hacked in a data breached and the voice recordings and voice print of the users are used for nefarious purposes
- Opting-in: what about your consent to have your voice recorded? Can you opt-out

On the face of it, it looks like a legal minefield and raises all kinds of privacy concerns even if the intention behind it is a positive one.

Pirating of The Mandalorian set to break all records

The Star Wars juggernaut is coming to a small screen (possibly not) near you with the release of The Mandalorian as part of the launch of Disney+.

Disney+ is yet another streaming service set to compete with the giants of Amazon Prime, Netflix, Apple TV+, Hulu and the rest. It's only available in a few countries at launch (Canada, Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand and USA) due to pre-licensing deals and won't reach the UK until March 2020.

The Mandalorian is the latest iteration of Star Wars since Disney acquired Lucasfilm back in 2012 for just over $4 billion. Disney are hoping that it is one of the crown jewels that will drive new subscribers to its Disney+ service as loyal fans follow the content.

With the exclusivity to Disney+ and the limited geographical distribution coupled to the popularity of the Star Wars series, it is predicted to set new records in piracy as frustrated fans seek how to download The Mandalorian any way possible.

While the streaming services have gone a long way to reducing piracy and increasing the options available to fans wanting to watch their shows legally, we are entering an era of increasing fragmentation with hit shows spread across the different platforms and fans understandably reluctant to fork out for multiple streaming services.

It does beg the question of whether a new one-streaming-service-to-rule-them-all might emerge with a higher monthly fee to access all shows. At present it's unlikely as the services compete for market share and ownership of customers. However, user experience combined with content are king. Fans want easy access to their favourite shows and even if you did have multiple accounts it's a challenge keeping up with which show is appearing where.

It's a transient web, but some things stay the same

Thought provoking post from Steve 'Barney' Rubel about 'The Transient Web', providing a potted history of the evolutions and revolutions in how we use the internet taking it all the way from the geek to the high street.

From my side of things I have been using the internet for 11 years now, having been brought up trying to get any enjoyment out of an Acorn Electron. I first went online when asking a friend to 'show me the internet'. We sat down and fired up a computer.

"So, what are you interested in seeing?"

"Well, just show me what's there."

"It doesn't work like that. You have to be searching for a specific topic."

That basic premise has remained through to the present range of Web 2.0 services available. It puts the user at the heart of the experience. This principle is evolving into other media, as part of the 'me, me, media' that I've blogged about before:

"Me, me, me media: when you saw your Luddite friends getting to grips with 3G, Sky Plus, IPod, Tivo, Blackberry's, Desktop Search, RSS, and the rest. What you want, when you want it and on what device you want it."

The internet may be transient, but the basic principles remain.

Review of 2004

The year is drawing in and all through the land(s) bloggers are typing misty-eyed reviews of 2004. Despite the temptation to Google everyone else's thoughts and get stuck into the mince pies early, I will add my take on the significant developments of the year when many former winks in the milkman's eye really hit the public consciousness:

- Google's flotation: the big headline behind the story that new media is back from the dot com crash. It also saw Google the verb (see usage above) being used in the mainstream, along with its many other variations: 'Googling', 'Googlewhack' and 'just popping down the pub for a Google, dear'.

- Me, me, me media: when you saw your Luddite friends getting to grips with 3G, Sky Plus, IPod, Tivo, Blackberry's, Desktop Search, RSS, and the rest. What you want, when you want it and on what device you want it.

- Mass media broadband: when broadband in the UK finally became affordable.

- Email wars: Gmail hit the headlines with its 1G storage, sparking an almighty dust up for customers among the big players, with Lycos, Hotmail, AOL all indulged in a free-for-all.

- Blog, blog, blog: when colleagues started writing them, clients starting asking about them and people actually started reading them

- Blood boiling: yes, the year that my boiler decided to pack in on Christmas Eve. Do you know how difficult it is to get a plumber out at this time of year?

Given that it is the season both of giving and receiving, in true 2004 style I invite you to Google your predictions for 2005.

Chance to end your online identity crisis

Those in the UK that joined the internet revolution later than others (or those with particularly common names) have had to suffer the indignity of a split identity online. The thousands of john2365's out there are getting another opportunity to be referred to by their real name (provided they still remember it) with news that Hotmail.co.uk is being launched.

Whether the benefit of having a decent email address will outweigh the pain of telling all your contacts that you have changed email address is another question. No doubt the common names will be snapped up by those enterprising souls hoping to sell them straight back on Ebay, small print permitting or ignored (Hotmail are themselves auctioning off the most common for charity).

Those readers with an eye on future trends may well wonder whether they should even be bothering with email given news from tech-obsessed South Korea that email is for old people. In a survey, over two thirds of students rarely or never use email, prefering the more informal texting or instant messaging as the way to communicate. No doubt this is the same old story of when your Dad has something, it's just not cool anymore...

Close the Windows, I have a nasty cold

Kevin Warwick, cybernetics Professor at Reading University (non-UK readers: it's not really a university for illiterates), has clearly not being watching his fair share of science fiction movies. Ignoring the clear warnings from the silver screen from War Games to endless Terminator sequels, he has taken the first steps towards becoming a cyborg by wiring up his arm to a computer to operate a mechanical arm - surely an irresistable opportunity for a hacker to wreak havoc.

He believes that in the future the vast potential of networked brains will render other humans obsolete, proving the old adage that two heads are better than one. As ever, the threat of viruses looms large, with a warning that software and biological viruses could become one and the same in his cyborg-tinted world. If you think Windows paperclip is annoying already, just wait until it starts sneezing all over your document every couple of minutes...

Broadband pricing goes mobile

The race for your broadband access has never been more competitive with a wealth of new low(-ish) priced offers from the major providers. From the bad old days of £50 a month access, prices are now starting around the £17-20 mark. All very positive you might think, until you check the details of the bargain basement prices.

Apeing the confusing pricing of mobile phones where the plethora of peak/off-peak, mobile-to-mobile and monthly tariffs are surely designed to confuse the unwary, broadband prices is now all about maximum download/upload levels, variable speeds and extra charges for installation/modems. This doesn't bode well in turning the whole UK broadband as such fog-like pricing structures leave consumers confused and cynical.

Diverse strategies in the hunt for e-commerce gold

Diverse strategies this week from two big online brands, Napster and e-bookers. Reversing recent trends from many pureplay online brands, such as lastminute and dabs, to move into offline partnerships and limited high street exposure, travel site e-bookers has retreated to online. The travel stallwart has cut 15% of its staff and closed 10 shops across Europe in a move to cut costs and move more operations onto the internet.

In the opposite camp, former illegal download phenomenon Napster, back from courtroom drama, takeover and going legal, has announced a partnership with classic traditional brand, Dixons, which will see Napster being promoted in-store and pre-installed on Dixons-brand PCs.

In an increasingly cross-media world, such moves are typical of the strategies of maturing internet brands searching for the best media positioning to maximise revenues and reduce costs. Just don't expect to see Google on your high street quite yet...

P&G sends brand publishers in circles

When the big brands starting hearing about this whole internet thing, some bright spark explained that here might be a route to cut through the media and talk direct to the customer while saving vast amounts on expensive ad slots. So we saw the emergence of a series of branded consumer portals delivering news and content galore to their customers direct with the odd subtle or less subtle product plug along the way.

Annoyingly for the brands, consumers can be cynical and choosy in the competitive internet space and didn't go for the idea of their brand as their content provider and many of these sites simply ran out of budget and now live on in muted versions of the grand vision.

Interesting then that things are starting to come full circle and P&G is looking to invest further in their consumer sites after the success of their HomeMadeSimple portal with the launch of Healthexpressions.com, a healthcare portal. Also consider Coke's repeated content driven initiatives such as the move to Coke music downloads and there is food for thought for all big brands.

Certainly it's not going to start a brand content rush on the previous scale, but moving into the area of broadband and premium content is king, expect others to follow suit.

I don't blog, I nanopublish

First there was trying to explain blogging to people - 'it's an online diary' seems to register - and now the humble blog is spawning its own sub-sets. Now blogging has hit the big time, the inevitable attempt to categorise, jargonise and a whole other bunch of '-ise's is starting to take root. As the great Ice Cube prophetically said, 'giving our music [read: blogging] away to the mainstream, don't you know they ain't down with the team.'

Now there's moblogging (surely the Ice Cube thought this name up?) which is putting words and pictures on the web via your mobile phone and now nanopublishing (or mo money mo blogging?), a form of micro-publishing, with the aim of making profits from blogs. This might be in the form of taking advertising on the blog, requesting donations from readers or even good old affiliate links from Amazon. With the likes of Google investing heavily in blogging software (Google owns Blogger.com now) the humble blog is becoming big business. Will it be the next internet bubble, only time will tell, but given its take-up and the once bitten twice shy business mentality now dominating online, it's likely that blogging dollars are here to stay.

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