Next, there will be the TV app wars. All the major TV manufacturers have started thinking and working on ways to connect your TV to the internet, and enhance your viewing experience by publishing content from both their own portals and content from others such as LoveFilm, YouTube and BBC iPlayer. Panasonic have Smart Viera, Sony have their Internet TVs and Samsung have their “Smart TVs”.

But that’s only pre-market gadgetry, there’s also the post-market kit in the form of set-top boxes and integrated hardware in games consoles. Apple TV aims to extend the now well known and adopted iTunes platform and push its space into the living room. The Sony PS3, Nintendo Wii and Microsoft XBox 360 have all got their own services and ecosystems that extend their software into your everyday life rather than limiting itself gaming.

The problem is the market place is currently fragmented, arbitrary and proprietary. When buying a TV, you are asked to make your purchase decision with regards to internet content (which is a significant domestic purchase) based only on trade relationships between the TV manufacturer and the content provider. Want LoveFilm? Then Panasonic TVs are no good. Want iPlayer? Then Microsoft’s XBox 360 is no good. Buy a Panasonic, which can serve YouTube content, but you already have an XBox 360, which can also serve YouTube content. Now you have duplication. Whereas previously you had multiple players vying for the same market, we now have multiple players vying for converging – but separate – markets. And that provides one key feature to the user: confusion and doubt.

Meanwhile, Samsung have their own application platform. XBox 360 has just launched (or rather re-launched in a more obvious format) its own app marketplace. So you have a YouTube app for your Samsung TV, your XBox 360 and your Android phone. I guess you never can get enough of cat videos, no matter where you are. These application marketplaces are fundamentally incompatible. Your app from Microsoft will not work on your Android phone, or even its own Windows Phone 7 line. Features are also dependent on trade relationships. LoveFilm only recently launched on XBox 360 despite being available on “selected” TVs and the PS3, and BBC content was taken out of Windows Media Centre for some reason while the XBox 360 is the only console that it continues to be unavailable for – based only on the BBC’s stance that the content should not be confined to users with a paid XBox Live subscription. I struggle to see their logic. TV License holders have paid for the content, but I have also paid for Apple users to have their content, too. Such grandstanding is inconsequential to Microsoft, but the user is given a second-rate experience.

There is hope. Ubuntu TV is hoping to launch and gain ground in TVs, which could create a more open marketplace using an established operating environment. Windows 8 and Windows Phone 7 will ultimately converge so could conceivably execute the same code. Download it for your phone, and you have it on your PC. And with rumours of a Microsoft set-top-box in addition to the XBox 360, the same execution environment is possible (think WinRT/Silverlight and HTML5/JavaScript). Like your smartphone, it depends to a large extent on your ecosystem at home. And if your ecosystem doesn’t fit the trade relations content providers have made, tough luck.

Countless times, UK companies have expressed enough confidence in the Manx pound to justify investing on the island to create new outlets or expand existing outlets (this, in spite of a challenging retail environment). Tesco have been refused permission to sell home goods and clothing several times, and now we find Next have been shown the finger for wanting to open a retail outlet selling their quality home wares.

Reasons (excuses) for these rejections add up to nothing more than protectionism. Tesco was rejected due to local traders crying foul. Next has also been stuffed due to “goods weren’t considered suitable to be sold from the site”. Town planners seem to not only be able to justify laying pink paving stones when more important road improvements are essential, but can also dictate where goods are sold on the island. They claim clothing and home wares should be sold in Douglas Town Centre. Has anyone told them about Tynwald Mills? The most expensive and pretentious building with a few shops in this side of Saudi Arabia. (Wait, isn’t that just down the road from Braddan?)

While the motives of these civil servants are to be commended they are missing two key factors which are undeniable in modern retail:

• Customers demand value, particularly in austere times. The Manx pound gets little value due to inflated prices. I don’t mind paying more, if it is backed up with good customer service. Time and time again, Manx customer service is shoddy and insulting. UK companies on island are trained to UK standards, and this shows in their service. I always shop at Boots, Tesco, B&Q and Next for this reason.
• If customers can’t get what they want on island, they will just get it on the internet. The UK retail sector is in dire straits due to the massive detrimental effect that sites like Amazon have had on bricks-and-mortar shops. If these planners think the Isle of Man is somehow above this trend they are even more stupid than I’m giving them credit for. And no daft Cretney-inspired Venda scheme can avoid this fact.

Currys/PC World are vying for the same retail unit. This has seen further opposition from various quarters bemoaning the effect on local traders such as Waltons and Colebourns. The “it’s not fair” moan is wearing thin, particularly when the sets in local outlets are typically £100+ more expensive than UK retailers. Where did I just by my new 32” Panasonic television? Amazon. What about my audio-system? Super-fi. (Or maybe they can solve this by slapping a tax on any box with Amazon written on it as they come off the boat?)

I’m not for a minute condoning the practices of some of these UK companies by not paying their local dues, but one really should stop and think. How many people does Tesco hire? And B&Q (the Q stands for Quayle, by the way, a Manx name – something else I learnt while learning the Manx language)? Each of these people are given employment, which gives the island income through taxation and reinvestment through their wallets and purses. This is real value and while the island may miss out on sums of money in taxes, the personal income generates additional income for the island through further spending which secures jobs, investment, etc.

If these so-called planners had any sense, and I’m thinking the same level of sense I learnt during GCSE Business Studies, they would see this and maybe manage the situation a little better. Create an out-of-town retail park, but make their own car-park with their own pay-and-display income. Train and look after the local town centre shop staff. Put them on customer service and marketing courses. Subsidise their rates. Talk to their landlords and have them justify why their rents are so high. Businesses should survive only because they offer quality and value, not because their mates on the town council are “looking out for them”. At the end of the day, money talks, and money is going to be leaving the island faster than it stays for reinvestment.

This month we’re planning on having a bit of a bite at The Velvet Lobster on Friday 13th January. It’s their Jolly Time, which means cocktails are cheaper (and they are very good, made from fresh ingredients). After food, we’re hoping to grab a taxi down to the new Crescent Nightclub which has just re-opened for some frivolity, music and dancing.

Hopefully there’s enough for everyone in the night. If you plan on coming and so we can book tables, please contact me by tweeting me @programx or leaving a message in the comments and I’ll add you to the spreadsheet!

Hope to see you there!

I can achieve this position by having them answer a few questions.

Do you have Apple devices in your house and/or are you a frequent iTunes user?

While a phone may be the best phone in the world, if it does not fit within your lifestyle/ecosystem, it is just a clever gadget without connectivity. If you have already invested in an Apple lifestyle, then the odds are iOS is best for you, so get an iPhone. You can use your iTunes, and the user interface will be pretty similar to what you’re used to. Coupled with the iPad, and you get yourself a really cohesive user experience.

Are you a tinkerer? Do you like to install apps, play with your phone for hours?

Android is an “open” source operating system. I’m saying “open” because I’m using the Google implementation found on mobile phones as the benchmark, here. And not all of it is open in the truest sense. If you like to play with your phone, hack it, configure it, tweak it, update it and hopefully avoid bricking it, then Android is a great choice. For most users, it’s simple enough to just work.

Do you have an XBox, with an XBox Live profile (Silver or Gold)? Do you want your phone to “just work”?

In this case Windows Phone 7 is a gem. It does not get in the way of what you need to do. It is not trying to be clever, it is trying to help you use your phone for what it is good for: making calls, texting and interacting on social networks. If you have an XBox, you can use your XBox profile on the phone and enhance your Gamerscore through XBox Live achievements. If you have Zune (that’s Microsoft’s poorly marketed iTunes competitor), you can listen to music on your phone, your XBox and your PC. It really does “just work”.

Are you interacting with your workplace/colleagues regularly?

BlackBerry may be on the wane, but it is undeniably a strong OS with regards enterprise integration. If you demand secure communications with your office, BlackBerry is a tough act to follow. However, whether the relevance of BlackBerry is on the decline as a result of the failure of the OS to keep up or changing user requirements is not clear. While BlackBerry is a strong contender, it isn’t necessarily a contender that will be around for long.

Under the covers, all these phones are the same. They are all running the ARM processor. They are all able to make calls, send messages, browse the web, etc. So it is not about “what phone is better”, it is “what phone best fits your lifestyle”. They all have application marketplaces, games, music players, etc. Some phones may do it better that others, but this is always relative to your own requirements.

For example. If you have iTunes at home, an Android is not going to play your iTunes.

If you have an XBox, an iPhone is not going to help you increase your Gamerscore

If you like to tinker, Windows Phone 7 is going to work against you.

On the other hand …

If you use Office a lot, maybe have a SharePoint of Office 365 scenario, Windows Phone 7 integrates seamlessly into this. All phones can read/write Office documents, but which one works naturally and fits best for you?

If you have high principles regarding software ownership, then Android is by far the winner. All phones have an established API and can be “hacked” to different levels, but how deep do you want to dig?

If you want to keep up with the Joneses, then an Apple a year will keep the stagnation away. There are a huge number of phones available and being made available month on month, year on year; but which one is the one to be seen with?

Hopefully this will help to separate vendor-religion, community politics and marketing sex from the mechanics of choosing a phone. It’s all about you and what works for you, as under the hood, they’re all the same.

But their distribution model is dated. We live in the internet age of instant gratification and preferably within 140 characters. So posting disks out, while good value and useful, doesn’t always address the question, “what shall we watch tonight?”. Which is why I was very pleased when they launched their online streaming service. Finally, I can go over and above my allocated disk and have more choice as and when I need. Having tried Zune Video, with its flawless HD streaming and fairly impressive catalogue coupled with integration with my existing media system, I was expecting great things.

However, they chose to stream over a web browser in the first instance, which is not compatible with my own viewing intentions. From reports, the quality wasn’t anything to write home about, either, often below DVD quality. Integration into consumer devices was a no-brainer, and that dutifully came in Sony and Samsung TVs and the PlayStation 3. At this point, I saw red, as I felt I was excluded based on my choice of a Microsoft eco-system.

The recent 2011 Dashboard update has changed that, however. Finally, I have LOVEFiLM where I want it and can stream films when I want them. Brilliant. Or so I thought. I tried it out last night …

Firstly, the user interface is uninspiring. The Metro UX is beautiful and while they have used the Metro UX, the feel of the application feels flat and while I appreciate the colours are reflecting the brand, they do contribute to an unexciting experience. Additionally, the combination of red text on dark grey produces a difficult to read font, particularly with the Segoe font used in the Metro UX. Transitions between screens and pages is not flowing, and certainly should reflect the experience in the core dashboard making the transition between interfaces less jarring. If you’re using the Metro UX, you need it ALL.

While navigation between film collections was simple enough, I was disappointed with the number of titles available. While the Zune catalogue is limited, I thought it was the lesser force in terms of number of titles. How wrong I was. I was very much looking forward to a sizable proportion of the offline catalogue being available.

My package gives me 2 hours of online viewing. So I had to find a film that was less than 2 hours. Unfortunately, this is not easy as you have to go into each title to see how long the film is to see if you could watch it. Hardly a thoughtful user experience. I found Supersize Me, a documentary that looked to be interesting and has received positive feedback. Unfortunately, it ran to 124 minutes, 4 minutes over my allocation. “That’s okay, the last 4 minutes will be the credits.” Maybe I’d be warned about missing the last 4 minutes? No. I was not allowed to watch the film, so removing my choice of losing those 4 minutes. Which raises the question, if I can’t make conscious decisions like that, and a lot of films run longer than 2 hours, why charge per minute? Surely viewing should be paid per film? If I only have 2 hours on my account, I am already discriminated from viewing a sizeable portion of their catalogue. And, I will ALWAYS have “change”, and therefore unused credits. That doesn’t work in my favour, as the user.

I finally found a film that ran below the 2 hours, and opted for the original Tron film. On selecting it for playing, I got a big fat error “MP1006”. So it seems I wasn’t going to be able to watch Tron. I tried again for good measure, but the same result was received. Maybe there was a problem with that particular title. I opted for another film, “The girl that played with fire”. I could not watch this either, but this time, because I had insufficient minutes left on my account. So in watching – and failing – to watch Tron, I had been debited (stolen from) my minutes allocation, rendering my online service useless for the rest of the month. This aside, what if I thought that film was no good 10 minutes in, do I still lose the entire film minutes? Again, WHY charge in minutes?

So between a flawed charging model (if they’re not allowing rollover minutes and/or portion viewing), plain not working films and stealing my credits I was left underwhelmed, frustrated and finally angry from what could have been a very positive experience. So while I was going to upgrade my account, I’m considering cancelling it (joining the users cancelling due to the switch to Silverlight) and going wholesale into the other video providers on the platform, such as Zune and – heaven forbid – $ky. And with Channels 4, 5 and the BBC introducing content soon, I – the consumer – am going to be spoilt for choice. Oh, and Netflix is coming soon …

Update

Lovefilm have tweeted me back apologising for the problem and have reimbursed me with 100 digital minutes. Which gives me 9 minutes more than my 2 hours! Maybe I’ll be able to watch Supersize Me after all. I’ve asked for feedback on resolution of the original issue before I retry.

Follow up tweets: 1 and 2

For “to go”, in English you would use “go” as the verbal-noun and imperative. That is it is both an instruction “Go to bed!” and a statement “I go to bed early”. The infinitive being “going”, such as “I am going to bed”. Obviously in Manx, this all changes.  

In Manx, the same verb “goll” is used for both the verbal-noun and infinitive. So “Ta mee goll dys lhiabee”, “I go to bed” could also mean “I am going to bed”. The imperative, or commanding form, is “immee”. Therefore, “Immee dys lhiabee!”. Of course, there is no simple rule between goll –> immee as there is in English go –> going. So, learning is necessarily by rote.

The nine key verbs most often seen are below. The exclamation marks are my own to try and help distinguish the use of the word as an instruction from the original noun.

In “çheet” we see the first appearance of the cedilla. This “çh” form has the same sound as in English “church”. This is as opposed to the Manx “Cha”, which is “ha”.

So examples of the use of these verbs:

• “Gow my leshtal” – Take my excuse (“sorry”) (Note that this is instructive, not aggressive, despite my exclamations)
• “Vel o goll?” – Are you going? Equally …
• “Nagh ren uss goll dys Doolish?” – Didn’t you go to Douglas? And …
• “Immee dys Doolish nish!” – Go to Douglas now!

I have a great little book with these verbs in and I regularly just stop and quiz myself on them. I’m using Goodwin’s “First lessons in Manx”. You could also print this page out and test yourself.

So in this renewed effort of learning I’m using Social Media to create that environment. By using similar sentence structures, it’s easy to tweet feelings, thoughts and actions. For example:

• Ta mee skee – I am tired
• Ta mee feer skee – I am very tired
• Ta mee goll dy valley – I am going home
• Ta feme aym er jough! – I need a drink!

These are pushed into my Twitter feed and my Facebook wall, probably annoying many of my followers and friends.

In addition to this, I try and stretch myself out of these standard sentences by creating sentences from film quotes, famous songs, etc. I have been known to make some disastrous mistakes, particularly the quote from Breakfast at Tiffany’s; “I am a very stylish girl” which I rendered as “Ta mee fashanagh mooar ben”. Unfortunately, due to synonyms/translation differences, that could also mean “I dress up as a big lady”. This caused much amusement to a couple of Manx learning tweeps :/ .

To my surprise, I found a definite interest in my tweets! Both by professional Manx speakers, experienced speakers and equally importantly, learners and people who want to learn but are unsure of how to make the leap.

Adrian Cain, the Manx Language Officer, has also started to add #manx and #gaelg hashtags on to his Manx tweets. This has set a precedent, with others using the same tags to help aggregate Manx tweets by interest (#manx) and language (#gaelg). Using these tags, and the retweets that using such tags generates, I’ve gained a few additional followers of Manx and Scottish Gaelic speakers.

So despite some complaints by friends and followers about my Manx tweets, I’m going to continue to tweet, learn and spread the word. If you’re on Twitter, make sure you use the #manx (for Manx interest) and #gaelg (for Manx language) hashtags.

The same structures seem to apply, instead of using “ta”, “va” is used.

The negative form introduces “row” (as in “cow”) which means “was”, though I’m not sure if you could use “row” on the affirmative form, for example, “row mee” gynsaghey”.

Also note that the singular of “You were not” has changed its form. This is to avoid confusion between “r’ou” and “row” when speaking as they both sound similar. I guess one should use the “uss” form to avoid any confusion.

Updated 25 September …

If you need to use the “do” form, the table below shows some examples. I distinguish the two by another of my silly rules:

• row = was – “W” is in both “row” and “was”
• ren = did – Totally no pattern!

So I guess that it follows that as you can use “Nagh row” for “Wasn’t?”, you could use “Nagh ren” for “Didn’t?”.

I think that completes the past tense in the simplest form. I’m told that it is possible to man-handle your Manx and use these simpler forms rather than looking for the past tense verb of each stem when starting out. I’m counting on it.

Positive questions seem to just replace “ta” with “vel”.

Negative questions simple add “nagh”, or sometimes “ny”. I’m sticking to “nagh” for simplicity’s sake. The forms here feel contrived, but are basically “aren’t I?”, “aren’t you?”, etc.

So to use one of those forms in an actual sentence, we could use the famous quote from the 2000 Gladiator film:

Am I not merciful?

might be:

Nagh vel mee myghin er?

Taking the meaning of “merciful” as “myghin” according to the online dictionary developed by J. F. Craine at http://www.mannin.info/Mannin/fockleyr/e2m.php.

Fellow Manx Gaelic learner @NettyIOM pointed me to IndigenousTweets.com today, and specifically the Manx Gaelic page which performs a similar trick to Grader, listing the top n users who are tweeting in the Isle of Man, and what percentage of those tweets are in Manx Gaelic. Finally! A metric on which I can beat @OwenC!