The BBC announced today that it would start offering its TV shows on its iPlayer service for longer than the seven days it originally offered them.  According to the organization, its “series stacking” initiative is one that should see more people watch its shows.

Prior to this announcement, BBC only allowed shows to air for seven days before it took them down.  But after realizing that most customers didn’t approve of such a policy, it reversed its stance and said that videos would be left on the site ‘indefinitely’ to allow users to catch up to their favorite shows.

Perhaps more importantly, the BBC announcement also included a point that would see the entire season of shows be made available and not just a select number.  According to the BBC, that more than anything this should see customers find more reason to use iPlayer.

But the BBC announcement runs in direct contrast to what’s currently offered on services like Hulu or Fancast, which only offer a select number of episodes from shows for a finite amount of time.

The BBC’s decision to do this runs directly against the services currently being offered on Hulu.  For its part, Hulu offers shows like The Office for a limited amount of time and only does so at about four to six episodes at a time.  That said, shows are made available (usually) right after they’re aired live.

Regardless, it creates an important dynamic in the space and could put the onus on US sites to do the same sort of thing.  After all, don’t users want to have constant access to as many shows as possible?

The BBC has made the right move in this regard.  It has finally realized that allowing people to watch shows and do what they want with available videos is the key to its success on the iPlayer.  And if it proves to be a success — and it probably will — look for Hulu and others to follow suit.

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Jackie Peters is CVO and Founding Partner of Heavybag Media

I am pretty heavily involved in the expanding startup community here in LA and make my way up to the Bay area on a regular basis. I meet a lot of entrepreneurs and see new startups every day. Many of these companies and the entrepreneurs who found them are deeply ensnared in the echo chamber, they’re all drinking each other’s Kool-Aid. We’re talking about people who are not just at the top of the technographic ladder, they’ve gotten to the roof and are looking down on everyone else like they are a bunch of ants.

We forget that there is a whole world out there. Most people have never even heard of Twitter, Brightkite or many of the other services that we have become accustomed to using. It’s a given that eventually these sorts of tools will be adopted by a larger audience, but only when they add real value and only if we present them in a way in which the barriers to entry are minimal.

I believe that if an idea is ever going to make it out of the echo chamber and appeal to a mass market, a company needs to be mindful of the market it’s hoping to serve from the get-go. It’s not enough to have amazing technology. In the end, very few of these companies are technology companies; they are simply built on technology. These companies typically begin with an initial vision that the founder(s)/ CEO use as their road map for success. Having an amazing vision is a requirement for sure, and it’s a great starting point. But rarely is the original vision the best outcome.

The initial vision is basically just one person’s idea of what they think will be cool, successful and profitable. Ultimately, it’s up to the market to determine what meets their criteria. The CEOs that I have admired the most are the ones who use that initial vision as a launch pad, and then listen to their market and iterate on their product, their brand and their marketing strategy to align themselves with their audience.

Photo Credit: 4pizon

It breaks my heart to see so many startups with amazing technology, brilliant minds, and visionary leadership fail due to the fact that they never bothered thinking about the market their product is designed to serve, or worse, they never saw the bigger picture of how their technology could be applied to better serve a larger, or more profitable market.

Good example: Private Beta strategies. It’s typical for most Web-based startups to implement a private Beta strategy, they invite people in who, in exchange for having a sneak peak, will find the bugs in the site, offer their feedback on the experience overall, and in some cases blog about the product or otherwise leverage their social graph to spread some buzz on behalf of the new product. It’s a sound strategy in many ways. Here’s the problem: the typical private Beta invitation list is primarily key influencers within the echo chamber. Is this minute portion of the population really the target audience for most of these companies? If they are, then how do these companies ever plan on monetizing?

An entrepreneur came to me recently with a new online product. It took fantasy football, a very middle-America sort of activity and added components which socialized the process and made it more interesting and captivating for the user. He was concerned that his product might not appeal to his audience and asked me for my advice. He had been describing it to some of his non-tech friends as being like “the Digg of fantasy football.” To which his friends responded, “What’s Digg?” You see, we forget the rest of the country isn’t up here on the roof with us. My advice to him was to explain the product from the point-of-view of the market it was designed to serve. Don’t worry about middle-America grasping on to social media.

Social media in another year or two will be non-existent, it will just be the Web, same as it’s always been, just the next evolution. We don’t need to confuse the masses by getting over their heads with all of the technological mumbo jumbo. We just need to integrate the functionality into our products and services and make sure that there’s a good enough reason for doing so - that it adds value and fulfills the needs and desires of a market, the rest will fall into place. So rather than focusing on the technology, why not focus on how the product makes the user’s experience better.

And what about the marketing strategies these companies employ to let the world know about their product? It’s understandable that a company that’s based on technology would want some presence within the tech world. In the fund raising process it’s essential to be visible and generate buzz within the community so that the investors know you’re there. But beyond that, these companies need to look at themselves and decide: Are we really a technology company? In most cases the answer is no. The answer might be: “We are a social shopping company” or “We are a search and discovery company” or “We are a music company” or “We are a dating company” or “We are a travel company” and so on. I see it over and over again, these companies and their agencies are so mired in the tech world, so caught up in the echo chamber, that they never break out, they stay inside and slowly whither away.

Who cares about the echo chamber? Who cares if they like your product or not? What every startup should be thinking about above all else is their market. How are you going to make money? Where is that money going to come from? And do everything in your power to make your product, your marketing communications, your brand, everything about your company, about one thing: Appealing to and serving the market that is going to make you profitable.

[Canyon image credit: James Marvin Phelps (Attribution)]

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Listen to an iPod during a storm and you may get more than electrifying tunes. A Canadian jogger suffered wishbone-shaped chest and neck burns, ruptured eardrums and a broken jaw when lightning traveled through his music player’s wires.

Last summer, a Colorado teen ended up with similar injuries when lightning struck nearby as he was listening to his iPod while mowing the lawn.

Emergency physicians report treating other patients with burns from freak accidents while using personal electronic devices such as beepers, Walkman players and laptop computers outdoors during storms.

Michael Utley, a former stockbroker from West Yarmouth, Mass., who survived being struck by lightning while golfing, has tracked 13 cases since 2004 of people hit while talking on cell phones. They are described on his Web site, http://www.struckbylightning.org.

Contrary to some urban legends and media reports, electronic devices don’t attract lightning the way a tall tree or a lightning rod does.

"It’s going to hit where it’s going to hit, but once it contacts metal, the metal conducts the electricity," said Dr. Mary Ann Cooper of the American College of Emergency Physicians and an ER doctor at University of Illinois Medical Center at Chicago.

When lightning jumps from a nearby object to a person, it often flashes over the skin. But metal in electronic devices — or metal jewelry or coins in a pocket — can cause contact burns and exacerbate the damage.

A spokeswoman for Apple Inc., the maker of iPods, declined to comment. Packaging for iPods and some other music players do include warnings against using them in the rain.

Lightning strikes can occur even if a storm is many miles away, so lightning safety experts have been pushing the slogan "When thunder roars, go indoors," said Cooper.

Jason Bunch, 18, says it wasn’t even raining last July, but there was a storm off in the distance. Lightning struck a nearby tree, shot off and hit him.

Bunch, who was listening to Metallica while mowing the grass at his home in Castle Rock, Colo., still has mild hearing damage in both ears, despite two reconstructive surgeries to repair ruptured eardrums. He had burns from the earphone wires on the sides of his face, a nasty burn on his hip where the iPod had been in a pocket and "a bad line up the side of my body," even though the iPod cord was outside his shirt.

"It was a real miracle" he survived, said his mother, Kelly Risheill.

The Canadian jogger suffered worse injuries, according to a report in Thursday’s New England Journal of Medicine.

The man, a 39-year-old dentist from the Vancouver area, was listening to an iPod while jogging in a thunderstorm when, according to witnesses, lightning hit a tree a couple of feet away and jumped to his body. The strike threw the man about eight feet and caused second-degree burns on his chest and left leg.

The electric current left red burn lines running from where the iPod had been strapped to his chest up the sides of his neck. It ruptured both ear drums, dislocated tiny ear bones that transmit sound waves, and broke the man’s jaw in four places, said Dr. Eric Heffernan, an imaging specialist at Vancouver General Hospital.

The injury happened two summers ago and despite treatment, the man still has less than 50 percent of normal hearing on each side, must wear hearing aids and can’t hear high-pitched sounds.

"He’s a part-time musician, so that’s kind of messed up his hobby as well," Heffernan said.

Like the Colorado teen, the Canadian patient, who declined to be interviewed or identified, has no memory of the lightning strike.

In another case a few years ago, electric current from a lightning strike ran through a man’s pager, burning both him and his girlfriend who was leaning against him, said Dr. Vince Mosesso, an emergency doctor at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

Eardrum ruptures are considered the most common ear injury in lightning-strike victims, occurring in 5 percent to 50 percent of patients, according to various estimates — whether or not an electronic device is involved. A broken jaw is rare, doctors say.

On May 1, Indaba Music (www.indabamusic.com) will launch their advanced online production console with integral new features for their international community of professional and amateur musicians. Using the application, musicians can access, edit and mix their music from any computer in the world. The console will now allow for mix down, where individual tracks submitted by different users are mixed together into a single file, creating a finished song ready for distribution. Other new features include looping, automated pan/volume and the ability to export session tracks and information directly to ProTools, Logic, and all other desktop audio applications. The new console builds upon the features of the existing site console, which include multi-track editing, auditions and session track contributions from multiple users, a chat window for real time communication, and the ability to save multiple mixes of the session.

Where once music creation was bounded by geography and online opportunities scarce, Indaba Music now offers a diverse community and an easy-to-use set of collaborative tools in one place. Indaba is a Zulu word that invokes the spirit of collaboration and community. It refers to a gathering or a forum for sharing ideas, and it embodies concepts that are central to the mission of Indaba Music.

Indaba Music’s additional features include public or private “Sessions” to manage new recording, mixing, or mastering projects together and a recommendation system whereby site members are suggested to other users that they may be interested in working with. As part of building a new marketplace for music creation, Indaba offers the ability to establish terms and payment for work and then to rate the experience of collaborating with other session members, forming a meaningful feedback system.

By JOSHUA FREED, AP Business Writer

MINNEAPOLIS - Best Buy pulled further ahead of consumer electronics retail rival Circuit City on Wednesday, reporting an 18.5 percent rise in its fourth-quarter profit while Circuit City swung to a loss.

Best Buy Co. Inc., the nation’s biggest consumer electronics chain, said it earned $763 million, or $1.55 per share, during the quarter that ended March 3, up from $644 million, or $1.29 per share, in the three months ended Feb. 25, 2006. Revenue rose 21 percent to $12.9 billion from $10.69 billion a year ago, driven by store openings and a quarter that was a week longer than last year’s. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial were expecting earnings of $1.52 per share on revenue of $12.67 billion.

Best Buy also announced that it would carry Apple computers in 200 stores by this fall. Meanwhile, Circuit City Stores Inc. continued to struggle.

On Wednesday, the nation’s No. 2 consumer electronics chain said it lost $12.2 million in the fourth quarter, hurt by hefty restructuring charges related in part to store closings. It said revenue growth was slow because of declining flat-panel television prices and uneven demand for computer hardware in advance of Microsoft’s launch of its new version of Windows.

For the quarter ended Feb. 28, Circuit City lost 7 cents per share compared with profit of $141.4 million, or 81 cents per share, a year ago. The latest results included pretax charges of $144.6 million related to store closings and other restructuring activities and a lowered value for its international unit. Circuit City closed about 55 stores in Canada in February, and expects to close about 10 more this year.

Sales rose 1 percent to $3.93 billion from $3.89 billion, but fell short of analysts’ estimate of $4.04 billion, according to a survey by Thomson Financial. Sales at stores open at least a year slipped half a percent. "Fourth-quarter sales growth was somewhat less than we expected," said Philip J. Schoonover, chairman, president and chief executive.

Circuit City said personal computer hardware posted strong sales growth in both December and February, but January sales were hurt as the company kept inventories lean in advance of the Vista introduction. The company’s shares fell 39 cents, or 2 percent, to $17.90 in morning trading on the New York Stock Exchange. Since hitting a high of $31.54 a year ago, the stock has steadily declined and recently hit a new year-low of $17.02.

While Circuit City blamed TV and computer volatility for its troubles, Bank of America analyst David Strasser wrote in a note that "we believe competitive pressure from BBY is a big part of the issue."

Best Buy’s revenue grew faster than its profit — meaning Best Buy profited slightly less from each dollar in sales than it did last year. The company said that was because of growth in areas that carry lower profit margins, such as video game consoles, online sales, and its Five Star electronics retail stores in China. Best Buy also said margins were pressured by tough price competition in home theater, music and movies.

The company said margins would have been worse if not for gift card "breakage," or cards that don’t get redeemed. That added up to $23 million for the first three quarters of the year.

Best Buy said it plans to spend $800 million to $850 million this year on new stores and other initiatives, in addition to spending for acquisitions such as the $97 million purchase of Internet provider Speakeasy announced last week.

Best Buy’s comparable-store sales gain — a key retail barometer — was 5.9 percent, driven mostly by a strong increase at stores outside the U.S. Sales grew 4.8 percent at U.S. stores open at least 14 months, down from 7.4 percent growth during last year’s fourth quarter. Best Buy said the comparable store sales gain was driven by an increase in the average sale made to each customer.

Best Buy has already made moves into China, and on Wednesday it said it might open test stores in Mexico and Turkey within the next year and a half, said Bob Willett, who runs Best Buy’s international operations. "We believe that international expansion is one of the key ways we will meet the growth goals of the company," he said. He said China operations would contribute more than $1 billion in revenue this year "and be modestly profitable — a bit of a feat during the rapid growth phase for any business, particularly in an environment of such rapid change," he said.

Best Buy said it expects to earn $3.10 to $3.25 per share during the current fiscal year on revenue of about $39 billion, which would be an increase of 9 percent. Analysts were expecting earnings of $3.18 per share on revenue of $39.8 billion. Best Buy shares dropped 88 cents, or 1.8 percent, to $48.25 in morning trading on the New York Stock Exchange. They have traded in a 52-week range of $43.51 to $59.50.

___

Associated Press Writer Zinie Chen Sampson in Richmond, Va., contributed to this report.

We maximize the productivity and quality of service by giving customer service agents the power to access expertise anywhere within a company or to collaborate with external partners for tailored case resolution. Neocase provides all relevant business units with direct, customized access for solving each customer issue, organizing back-up teams as well as all internal and external departments of a company around a single customer contact.

Neocase can be deployed on-demand, on-premise, or bundled with Microsoft CRM 3.0 sales and marketing modules.

TechAddress:  What makes your company stand apart from your competitors?

Neocase:  While most CRM vendors focus their efforts on the marketing and salesforce automation elements of the CRM equation, Neocase hones in solely on the customer service prong to create both deep domain expertise and a more complete, customer-focused product offering. We implement a unique parent-child collaborative case creation, whereby a case can be easily duplicated by an agent, then administered to internal and external experts to resolve the case quickly. The customer service agent is not always able to solve a case on his own, so Neocase allows for collaboration among the appropriate expertise within a company to solve customer issues.   

We also leverage an innovative channel strategy where channel partners are kept in the sales cycle for our on-demand product, something they have been left out of by many other on-demand vendors. Additionally, the combination of our solutions with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 delivers the only complete CRM solution available to address the full cycle of sales, marketing and customer service operations.

TechAddress:  What are some of the main features?

Neocase:  The concept of collaboration lies at the foundation of our approach to customer service. Collaboration ensures that customer requests are handled not only in the context of the help desk or customer service department, but also allows smart agents to work in real-time with other departments such as sales, marketing, supply chain, accounting as well as with external partners to utilize their efficiencies and achieve faster case resolution.

Our completely collaborative customer service platform is comprised of seven modules that work well individually and, when used together, function synergistically for faster case resolution. These seven components include a collaborative platform; Self-service Portal which allows for 24/7 online service access by the customer; a Partner Center which enables external partners to contribute to case resolution; Service Level Agreement (SLA) module; Knowledge Base containing extensive online library of past cases and case resolution information; Field Services module to dispatch field services agents through geo-localization; and a Reporting and Dashboards module.

TechAddress:  Who’s your target customer or audience?

Neocase:  Given the flexible implementation structures we offer, our target customer-base includes both SMBs as well as large enterprises. This includes global companies in a variety of industries including high tech, financial services, retail, hospitality and healthcare.

TechAddress:  Any new things in particular that you’re working on right now?

Neocase:  We’re always looking for ways to improve our technology for both the companies who implement Neocase’s solutions and the customers that they in turn service. We’ve recently been elaborating on our collaborative work with Microsoft in anticipation of their pending Titan upgrade later this year. We’re also continuing to expand upon our partner base and join forces with companies whose business practices align with ours, as well as heighten awareness regarding our on-demand offering.

TechAddress:  Where do you see your company heading in the future?

Neocase:  A main focus right now is on building out our worldwide presence in bridging our established product, customer base and success to date in Europe with our relatively new presence and growth in the U.S. We’ve brought together a top U.S. executive team since our launch stateside in early 2006 which should help in penetrating the U.S. market and becoming a truly international entity.

TechAddress:  Any negative feedback or criticism regarding technology and services?

Neocase:  One of the hardest things in the industry we’re in is being able to meet the needs of three different groups: enterprises, their partners and their customers. This creates a diverse base of needs, so in response we strive to take the feedback we receive from these different parties and incorporate it into our offerings.

Many people also believe that CRM is too crowded of a space to successfully break into, but the reality is that there are very few players in the industry that offer a truly comprehensive customer service solution, and that’s the gap in CRM that Neocase is looking to fill.

TechAddress:  So what would you say is the guiding principle behind your company?

Neocase:  From day one we’ve always been completely focused on the customer. While CRM is intended to boast a superior understanding of customer behavior, somehow the customer’s voice often gets drowned out of the equation. Neocase has a history of more than 15 years in the customer service business thanks to Supporter (our parent company), so we are fortunate to have this experience to make our products totally unique in our understanding of our customer’s needs.

TechAddress:  What is the mission of your company and what are you bringing to the market that is innovative?

Neocase:  We aim to help companies make the move from simple case management to complete, personalized customer care. Neocase redefines the customer service function by empowering the agent in a way can serve as a key competitive differentiator and bring the focus back to the customer, resulting in higher quality of service, new revenue opportunities, a substantial reduction in operating costs, and increased customer satisfaction and loyalty. Because the element of "customer" serves as the cornerstone of our products, it also rests at the core of how Neocase aims to treat its own customers.

TechAddress:  Where are you in terms of funding and your lifecycle?

Neocase:  In October 2006 we closed our series B round of funding, supported by Iris Capital. Iris Capital is a pan-European venture and development capital company specializing in media, communications and information technology.

Neocase’s first round of venture funding came from Caisse des Dépôts. Caisse des Dépôts is a state-owned financial institution that performs public-interest missions on behalf of France’s central, regional and local governments. It also manages substantial portfolios of shares in listed companies, private equity investments and real estate assets.

France-based Supporter S.A. provided the initial financial support during the company’s inception. Since 1990, Supporter has remained a major player in the field service and customer service markets.

TechAddress:  If your technology or service is not formally launched yet, when’s the launch date? If you have already launched, when was your launch date?

Neocase:  We formally launched Neocase 10 in the U.S. in May 2006.