Re: UKNM: The next stage in the game - was Dreamcast delayed

[Sam Michel]

At 11:41 01/09/99 +0100, Stefan Magdalinski wrote:

>interesting one, ADSL. Many of us have spent 5 years developing the

>skills and knowledge to shove the maximum amount of content (content,

>not shockwave spinny interative snickers demoes, VRML walkthrus, 10 meg

>java apps or other nonsense) through 28.8,33.6, and 56Kbps (read 40Kbps)

>pipes. We optimise, we optimise and we optimise. then we optimise a bit

>more. 

>

>will all those skills be useless in the shiny new age? will fat content

>be king? will people expect the web to be just like the telly?

>

>will we be out of a job, overtaken by the gods of the spinny-text

>wizard, obsolete old duffers moaning about how it was in the good old

>days?


Interesting point. Seems to me, the UK's new media industry will benefit in

the same way the UK games industry did over the last 20 years - games

programmers may wish to disagree...


Traditionally our hardware has been more expensive and less ubiquitous than

the US, which in gaming terms led our programmers to be far more efficient

and squeeze more out of the equipment available. This led to tight

programming and maximum optimisation.


Theoretically we should benefit again with the Internet. UK web-designers

should have learnt to optimise more, and produce sites which download

quickly whatever connection you're on because we (generally) don't have

flat-rate Internet access. Of course, now I'm sitting here writing this, I

can't think of any good examples to back this up.


I was watching a presentation online today (ADSL is very good for streaming

media) from one of the US conferences (I think it was the CEO of Excite

@Home) and the one thing that came out of their focus groups over and over

again was speed. Users liked the information fast, they liked searches

fast. He said that in many cases a badly designed site with poor

functionality rated better than a well designed site with improved

functions if the former was faster.


Is speed everything? Better hope bandwidth charges this side of the pond

start dropping eh?



Toodle Pip


Sam

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