Seeing this chart from Chetan Sharma Consulting makes me think that the world has gone slightly mad if there are more mobile devices out there than people who have access to fresh water.

The growth of smartphones – especially over the last few years – has been phenomenal. And it is these devices that are the norm for the consumers of tomorrow (i.e. the teens of today).

Some recent stats from the latest Cisco VNI Mobile Research make scary reading. In 2011, mobile data traffic was 8 times greater than all of the entire global Internet traffic in 2000 (597 petabytes vs. 75 petabytes). That was only a dozen years ago, but it may as well have been eons. Within a few years Smartphones will account for nearly 50% of all web traffic. Given the number of mobile devices in the world is nearing the amount of people on our planet, that is one hell of a lot of smartphones.

Trend: Laptops and Smartphones Lead Traffic Growth (Source: Cisco VNI Mobile Research)

This raises a few more questions.

Have we finally reached “the year of the mobile”? Why did Facebook buy Instagram? Will HTML5 get round compatibility issues across varying mobile platforms or be another flash in the pan that didn’t amount to much (like WebOS)?

But whilst mobile is spreading like wildfire, recent data and articles have talked about the demise (or not) of social readers, the decline of Zynga and the growth in video sharing platforms. Are all of these telling us something about a shift that is happening?

Is Facebook on the way out and are we starting to get fed up of its intrusiveness and its big brother attitudes towards providing content that “is right for us”?

Are Facebook worried that as web usage becomes more and more prevalent through mobile that their current platform/app is not fit for purpose?

When Facebook launched, MySpace had become old, messy and unusable and quickly lost critical mass. Is the same about to happen to Facebook with the growth of less structured platforms such as Pinterest and Tumblr?

Other recent trends also add to the overall picture that things are changing. Social readers launched in a blaze of glory last year (Built on Facebook’s Open Graph Platform). Trouble is, you like a few pages and suddenly your timeline is filled up with articles they [Facebook] think you should be reading. And users are tailing off rapidly, as people get fed up of being lectured.

John Hermann from Buzzfeed writes “And god, why would I sign up for the thing that seems to have tricked its way into my timeline? It’s an app that broadcasts Internet illiteracy for everyone to see.”

We know Facebook are constantly tweaking their algorithms and they are testing the concept of fewer trending articles and shorter feeds. They also claim that whilst users are down, engagement levels are up. Facebook’s response to the recent swathe of articles on this “We’re trying to get the right content in front of people, to up the signal to noise ratio.” (Quote from Mashable)

Whilst this would seem an altruistic endeavor, for higher signal-to-noise ratio, read higher engagement levels. For high engagement levels, read more advertising dollars.

So are people being put off by social readers or are they getting bored of Facebook and running off to the next shiny bright object?

Maybe. I recently asked my daughter if she wanted a Facebook account, to which she replied: “I am not sure I want Facebook, it’s for old people and they control things too much!”

Perhaps some young people don’t have any sense of ownership or sense of belonging to Facebook? Is its rigid control over look and feel, forceful implementation of new features and opaque security model alienating the next generation of users?

It is hard to be definitive but there are many signs that things are changing and that Facebook has to change. Consumer habits are changing in the way they use the web and social media in particular, any of the social media platforms have to adapt to stay ahead of the curve, especially as new – and different – competitors enter the market.

The growth of mobile and Social 3.0

Latest Comscore data shows that whilst Facebook maintains a huge lead in terms of average minutes per visitor, aggressive new kids on the block like Tumblr and Pinterest (despite the recent copyright furore) are making inroads into their ‘face time’, leaving other established players like Twitter far behind.

Source: BI Intelligence, Comscore

To counter these threats, and knock out another quickly growing competitor, and one that had grown even quicker than them, Facebook bought Instagram for a billion dollars!

The method in this seeming madness (Instagram only had 13 employees) is that it was recently the most downloaded photo-sharing app globally (its Android app was adding 1 million users a day, its IOS app 25 million) and a lot of Facebook’s traffic is from photo sharing. Facebook also has to get better at mobile, and in buying Instagram, they’ve acquired a piece of technology and a user base to help them do that. They knocked out a threat and got some cool tech into the bargain. Other companies were beginning to look at Instagram as well, despite being in the middle of an IPO Facebook had to move quickly and decisively.

If we look at the latest data from AppData on Facebook Apps, this also gives us an idea of a shift occurring from social networks to social sharing amongst app users in a social network environment. Especially in images and video.

In this recent report, SocialCam, Viddy and Chill, two video sharing platforms and an app that generates random noise. No games!

SocialCam is now the largest app on Facebook with over 42M monthly average users. Chill went from nothing to over 7M MAU in a week!

Trend: Mobile Video Will Generate Over 70 Percent of Mobile Data Traffic by 2016 (Source: Cisco VNI Mobile Research)

And if we look again at the Cisco VNI Mobile 2012 data, we can see that it is predicted that by 2016, 70% of web traffic will be mobile video. This, combined with the growth of video sharing apps means that if Facebook doesn’t adapt and embrace mobile then their revenue growth will stall even quicker than it is currently doing.

This apparent move away from gaming is backed up by latest data on Zynga. Their acquisition of DrawSomething (OMGPOP) in March for $200M instantly bought them around 12M (source AppData) users. But since then, life has not been so pretty. Daily average users of Zynga games are now back to pre-DrawSomething levels only two months later. Is this the start of a terminal decline or just a blip? The halving of its share price would seem to indicate a long term problem.

(Source: Business Insider)

Part of Zynga’s troubles can be traced back to changes made by Facebook (there’s a surprise), limiting the viral channels the games makers use to invade your newsfeed with updates and requests. Though, going back to my earlier comments on intrusiveness, this is probably no bad thing as far as users were concerned. But, these changes forced companies such as Zynga to look at creating their own platforms, trying to divorce themselves from Facebook. So ironically, the very intrusiveness of the gaming platforms initial growth that was welcomed as innovative at the time, ended up back-firing on them as Facebook sought to counter criticism by changing the rules.

Going back to my comments on Instagram, interestingly Zynga’s biggest area of growth is mobile. Games such as DrawSomething and WFF have a vast amount of mobile users. Is this the way forward for them? Facebook Camera app has just launched; funny, looks just like Instagram but not as good. Perhaps a billion dollars was not such a bad price after all. Could Instagram become Facebook’s You Tube?

Rumours are also gathering apace that Facebook will launch a smartphone this year. Now that Google’s purchase of Motorola has gone through, is this yet another defensive move?

Recent data from the US would seem to indicate that whilst mobile advertising (and let’s face it, advertising dollars are what they are all after) is a huge growth area, it might be a little bit misleading, as it might never catch up to time spent on mobile devices.

(Source: Business Insider)

Then there is also the whole native app versus HTML5 debate. At the moment, ad spend through Nexage (one of the leading mobile ad exchanges) would seem to show an even split with both having their merits and weaknesses. There is no right or wrong answer as to what will win, remember BetaMax vs VHS, the better technical product lost in the face of marketing and content.

So where does this all leave us?

There are interesting times ahead. Will Facebook become the new MySpace and become old and uncool? Will Pinterest get round its major copyright issues? Will Tumblr ever actually make sense? Will Google ever admit that Google+ is a monumental failure? Or are we all actually living in a new world created using Unreal Engine 4?

Only time will tell.

In case you missed it, these are essentially Oakley-style sunglasses with a lens-mounted HUD (the head-up display fighter pilots use for altitude, vector, targeting etc.). Wearing a pair, you can read and compose emails, view calendar events, check the weather, take phone calls and, according to the promo video accompanying the launch, learn to play the ukulele.

While this all may appear like great fun, it’s being touted by some quite serious tech journos as nothing less than the natural replacement for the smartphone as our primary communications device.

They’re dead wrong.

Information isn’t moving to the bridge of your nose. It’s moving to the end of your arm. Even people who wear glasses don’t always wear glasses. Whereas, for most people at least, a watch is something you feel naked without. We even sleep and shower wearing them.

And, if this is to be the next information interface, at least in conjunction with the smartphone in your pocket, shouldn’t it be where most people have most access to it most often?

Now, before you start bringing up the fact that smart-watches have been attempted before – Microsoft SPOT anyone? – I’d remind you that tablets had also been around for years before someone made them the hottest tech on the planet.

Sooner or later, science always catches up with the concept. Power is better managed, silicon is made smaller and more powerful, promise becomes reality.

But it isn’t solely the display of at-a-glance information that makes watches the perfect communication accessory.

Near-field is near.

Despite all the false-starts, NFC is going to happen. And, when it does in earnest, it’ll spread like a fire at a match factory. It will offer new applications by the hour, literally.

Nowhere will this shift be more tectonic than in replacing things you hand over. Using your hands. And that makes a watch a far better option than a phone or pair of glasses.

Think about it, you’re getting the train home after some Christmas shopping. You have half a dozen bags on each arm and your grizzly six-year-old has totally lost their sense of festive wonder and wants carrying – too bad your train leaves in less than two minutes.

So you hurriedly approach one of only three barriers not displaying a red diagonal cross and, while trying not to lose your first-born in the sea of fellow travellers, you attempt to shift all the bags onto one arm and fumble past your heavy coat for the pocket containing your NFC-enabled smartphone.

Once you’ve got hold of it, you pop it between your teeth and start patting down little Alfie for his. You’re going to be really popular with everyone at this point.

Of course, if you’re wearing smart-glasses, and presuming you don’t have to get them out of their protective case first, you could simply bend over at the waist and place your face close enough to the sensor to open the gate.

Then, when you regain consciousness after being knocked into the barrier by the onrushing commuter behind you, you can marvel at how easy this new technology has made your life.

How much more practical it would be if you were simply to wave your hand, Jedi-like, and have the gate obediently open up before you. No fumbling, no awkward bodily adjustments, no trauma injury to the head.

While Google hasn’t implied that their space-age specs will even utilise NFC, if they’re talking about them replacing the mobile phone – and they are – then they’ll have to. People don’t want to carry any more devices than necessary, as the decline in sales of digital cameras, mp3 players and PDAs will attest.

Well you can now add traditional watches to technology’s death-row.

Your next watch is going to be your Oyster card, your wallet, your work security pass, your Tesco Clubcard, your train tickets. Followed before long by your car and house keys.

These are things you use multiple times daily – and they don’t belong on anything that has to be taken out of your pocket or off your nose. They belong on the end of an eminently dexterous appendage that can quickly, accurately and naturally place a chip inside a near-field bubble with a single, effortless motion.

The clues are out there.

I’m pretty sure Apple’s seemingly off the cuff suggestion at the launch of the 6th gen iPod nano in 2010 – that it could be used as a wristwatch – wasn’t a casual comment at all.

Instead, it was the first move in getting people used to the idea of a watch as an extension of a smartphone or tablet.

Already, at least a dozen third parties make straps for it. But just wait until it comes with everything NFC offers, and Bluetooth so you can read texts and emails from the smartphone in your pocket. Bung in a wireless headset and you’ll be able to place calls from it. Change the strap, and you’ll have an always-on heart monitor.

Clearly, you’re never going to want to read the FT, play Angry Birds or watch the director’s cut of Aliens on the thing; but it accomplishes enough well enough to justify itself as a new, truly useful adjunct where nothing existed before.

I might be going out on a limb, predicting that next-gen communicators are going out on a limb. But I feel that nature sides with me on this. Your hands have evolved on the end of long, multi-pinioned arms for a reason: to allow them to move effortlessly through a multitude of different positions.

Why would we assume to second guess this natural selection by putting the most essential of tools on your face?

Besides a few cute applications, like turn-by-turn directions and watching porn on your daily commute, the idea of forcing communication into a pair of glasses is an idea destined for extinction.

It simply lacks vision.

They’re also complete and utter nonsense.

When a technology/soft drink/holiday company approaches an ad agency, they’re buying expertise, experience and talent that they don’t possess themselves. If they did, they’d have no need for external professionals and I’d be playing piano in a bar somewhere.

Yet I’m hearing those words – along with the more colourful acronym, JFDI – much more than I used to. And that’s a shame.

It’s a shame and it’s also self-defeating. You see, “The Customer Is Always Right” benefits no one: not the agency, not the client, not the end customer.

Being unable to challenge each other produces work that doesn’t entertain or excite. Just like the Christmas cracker joke that’s terrified to offend any possible demographic, the result is a message that doesn’t engage, inspire, delight or persuade. And certainly won’t be remembered.

Now, before half my client-service colleagues here have heart attacks and collapse on the spot, let me be clear. This isn’t a Banner issue, it’s an industry issue. And one that’s getting worse as time goes by.

So what am I asking?

Simple. Let’s forget the notion that ad agencies simply provide a service and realise that we are full partners in a company’s success. Don’t be surprised when we disagree with you. And sure as Hell don’t get angry (no, really, this happens). All it means is that the people you pay to give you advice are giving you advice.

And the ability to provide that advice is what we’ve spent our careers earning. Yes, we understand you know your company intimately, that’s not being disputed; but that very familiarity carries its own can of worms. It’s what I call the “no one thinks your holiday photos are as interesting as you do” syndrome.

Loosely translated, don’t expect your customers to react as if they have the same agenda as you – they almost certainly don’t. And that’s where the difference between your expertise and ours becomes apparent: you know your company and customers, we know how to get them to engage.

Yes, a few sensitivities will occasionally get hurt along the way. But that’s alright, we can always go down the pub afterwards and work it out over a pint. I won’t even claim the expenses from you.

If we change this customer/supplier mind-set, we’ll all produce better work together.

And good work works – it sells. I know the economy’s crap and everyone just wants to keep their heads down and hold on to their jobs but let’s still enjoy what we do and produce work we can all be proud of.

So, is the customer always right? No, of course not. Nor should they be expected to be. It is the client and agency, working together to the fullest extent of their respective areas of expertise, that brings the right result.

But what did you ever do with it? Me? Poorly thought out space stations and spaceships. In this edition of the Couch we’ll be seeing what creative-types around the world have been doing with the old plastic bricks.

Cool Creative

From the White Stripes “Fell in love with a girl” video to the wildly successful “Lego <insert movie franchise here>” game series from Traveller’s Tales, people have been taking hundreds of bits of plastic and making some pretty cool stuff with it for years.

What happens when you mix stop motion animation with Lego? Perhaps the greatest thing on the Internet.

“In a medieval forest, a simple lumberjack is granted the greatest power of all time.” THE POWER OF HEAVY METAL.

Take a different perspective on the world with Build Anything by Studiocanoe.

Build Anything from Studiocanoe on Vimeo.

New Tech

Lego have not been slow to use emerging technologies with their products. Mixing online tech with offline plastic bricks has given rise to a couple of sweet little apps.

Seeing what your new Lego kit looks like on the back of the box is great, but why can’t you see it in action? The guys at Metaio have fused Augmented Reality with Lego to give you a new look at your product. Simply hold the back of the box up to the in-store installation and it’ll show you the finished version of what you’re holding in your hands. Moving the box around moves the video around. A simple idea well executed.

Want to see how quickly you can build stuff? To challenge your friends to build Lego shapes? There’s an app for that. “The world’s first interactive game combining real LEGO bricks with apps”, Life of George is a new-ish app that brings together your iPhone and your bricks.

Published by Lego themselves, this free app blends technology and the physical world together to create something different. One to keep the kids amused or one for the grownups to flex their shape-building muscles? I’m too busy digging out a red 4 by 2 to comment…

See the demo video here.

Lego creative

And what about Lego themselves? They have a lot of fun (and achieve no little critical success) with their own marketing. Lego is all about making things: things you see, things you’ve seen, things you want to see, impossible things. This flows through their own marketing through a series of campaigns from around the world.

Hot off the press from German agency Jung Von Matt is the ‘Imagine’ campaign. Take some of your favourite cartoon characters and lego-ise them (is that even a word? It is now). How many can you guess?!

Lego Earnie and Bert

Lego Sipmsons Family

Blattner Brunner have taken simplicity to heart with this series of press ads. Who didn’t have the imagination when they were little to see four little bits of plastic as a dinosaur or an aeroplane?

Lego Plane

Lego Dinosaur

See more examples of lovely creative here.

Finally, from my badly built/designed spaceships, to actually taking a Lego man and putting him in space. Any suggestions that these kids actually ARE the Canadian Space Agency are unfounded, ya hoser!

FireBug

For when you absolutely, positively have to go into the code yourself and have a dig around. Indispensable little add-on when troubleshooting sites, giving you (the tech-savvy PM) the ability to check the code that builds the site. Also has a handy “Net” tab telling you which files are loading (or ever handier, not loading).

Full version for Firefox only, Lite version for other browsers, all completely free here.

Example of FireBug on Banner’s B1.com

Example no. 2 of FireBug on Adobe.com

Web Developer Toolbar

Absolutely brilliant add-on. How does my site look when javascript is disabled? Can you fill in all these forms for me with dummy data? Send this page to be W3C Validated for me, will you? The Web Developer Toolbar offers a huge range of little features to help you get to the bottom of problems.

Want to see how your site will look in smaller screen resolutions? Set up a series of 800x600, 1024x768 and 1200x800 shortcuts and it’s easy to see how your site scales up (or down).

Free for Firefox and Chrome here.

Ghostery

Want to see what scripts are running on that site? Or what Publisher Networks they‘re using? Ghostery can help.

“Ghostery sees the invisible web — tags, web bugs, pixels and beacons. Ghostery tracks the trackers and gives you a roll-call of the ad networks, behavioral data providers, web publishers, and other companies interested in your activity.”

Turning Ghostery on will let you see who’s tracking you from a personal level, and what networks and applications they’re using from a professional one. Might give you the edge when you can tell the client what programmes they’re using before they tell you themselves.

Free, and available in all browsers here.

Once you’ve established your site is in a good place and it’s doing everything you expect it to, it’s time to see how it looks in other browsers. Since you’re a tech-savvy PM, you and your Dev team are likely to be using the latest piece of kit.

However, there’s a good chance your target audience isn’t.

Browsers you will need: Firefox \ Chrome \ Internet Explorer \ Safari \ Opera.

Check the latest Browser usage stats to see what people are using and base your testing plan around them. Don’t forget to test on a PC and a Mac, and consider mobile Operating Systems – iOS, Android, Blackberry etc.

For formal, static page rendering across a huge number of browsers, Litmus is hard to beat. Render your site and publish the results out to your client to prove you’ve done your homework.

Also really useful for email testing: cross-client compatibility and Spam Filter checking. We’ll leave that for another day though…

$49 per month for the basic plan, sign up here.

Examples of Litmus testing on B1.com

Sometimes showing how a page looks in a static view isn’t enough – you need to open it, scroll around, and check that the transitions and effects are all working as expected. If you want to see how your site renders in a range of browsers and interactively test it, install IE Tester and get an Adobe BrowserLab account.

IE Tester installs onto your machine and allows you to open any web page through its interface, simulating the effects of IE6, 7, 8 & 9.

Free to download for Windows only here.

Adobe BrowserLab allows you to open a site in a number of browsers at the same time, going side-by-side to see how your site stacks up. See what works (and what doesn’t).

Free to use (for now…), create your account here.

Example of Adobe BrowserLab on B1.com

Another great add on from Chris Pederick is User Agent Switcher, which allows your web browser to masquerade as a multitude of Operating Systems and devices. How does this site look if I open it on an iPhone? Or a BlackBerry? Tell your target site which OS and browser to impersonate and sit back and marvel at your team’s coding genius (or prepare to read them the riot act).

Free for Firefox only, download here.

How to check that what you’re seeing is what they’re seeing

Once you’re happy the site is good to go, you pass it over the client. I guarantee you’ve had this conversation before:

Client: “Well I’m not seeing that on my machine”

You: “What version of Flash are you running? What’s your Browser version? Do you have cookies enabled? What’s your screen size”

Client: “…………………………………………”

A solution? Tell them to go here: http://supportdetails.com/

Simple little site to check what browser your client is using. Nice.

After all of this you’ll need a quick refresher. G&T anyone?

Getting the LED out in London

What do you get if you take a camera with a long exposure, some LED lights, some London scenery and some Kraftwerk-esque music?

This: Lichtfaktor for Sky Movies. A bunch of guys hacking about with lights, cameras and action. Throw in some Star Trek and Star Wars noises and this is a great example of where creativity meets technology. Waste some time this afternoon with a browse through the Lichtfaktor Vimeo Channel.

Making the world mini

Tilt-Shifting (or miniature faking) has been around for a few years now too, but it still has the capacity to mesmerise.

And there aren’t many better at it than Keith Loutit, taking an idea and running and running and running with it. Singapore, USA, Brazil, Italy, China and his native Australia all get the treatment in his Small Worlds Project. You can see how agencies use tilt-shifting techniques on his commercial page.

DSLR vs Barbie?

The affordable DSLR has made taking thousands of photos accessible to the masses, but carrying around the full kit isn’t always practical. What’s that lump in your pocket (don’t be rude)? Your smartphone.

These little bits of kit have been moving on in leaps and bounds over the last few years. Remember the Nokia 7650? The first Nokia with a cameraphone released in 2002. Now? Nokia announce a 41Mega Pixel cameraphone at MWC 2012.

But how does an iPhone 4S stack up against a DSLR for photos? These guys think it stacks up pretty well.

And how well does the iPhone 4S stack up against a Canon D7 for video? “Amazing for what it is” according to the folks at Take Zer0.

More importantly, how does a DSLR stack up against a Barbie Video Doll? This is the sort of innovative research that gets the Digital Couch team out of bed every morning.

I don’t own an iPhone (I’ve got a Motorola Flipout – Android based) or an iPod (I use my phone) or an MacBook (I have a HP laptop, which has been tweaked to be superfast for my gaming / retouching use) or an iPad (I’ve got a Kindle).

So imagine my surprise when I was with my parents a few weeks ago and had a play on their iPad and loved it! I couldn’t put it down, so easy to use to surf the net, play games, check email, read books, etc. I was suddenly faced with an overwhelming urge to own one, even though I really don’t need one — for similar reasons as these people here:

But I was also wracked with guilt – this isn’t who I am. Surely there must be an alternative tablet for me / us. We use iPads in a work environment, for presentations, pitches, etc and previously I felt this was just a bit much, but after using one, I can understand why clients get excited when they see their work showcased on an iPad. It all just works. Obviously Apple have spent considerable time and money making this all seem so easy, but it really is easy to use.

I decided to rope my long-suffering husband into my new obsession. Asus, ACER and Samsung are producing the best tablets out there, but the prices are not encouraging, especially as we don’t really need a tablet! Cue more research for something more affordable, which is how we stumbled across the Blackberry Playbook, it was on offer at PC World for £169 for 16GB version. It’s quite pretty, a bit chunky, but also easy to use. The only issues we could see with the Playbook were the reviews of the limited apps and lack of email.

We decided to go for it, but once we got him home, we realised that there were other things we hadn’t really considered: the screen is a bit small, it’s too heavy to carry around or to hold for extended periods of time, the apps have to run in another environment and not directly on the Playbook and it really doesn’t do email without using the Blackberry bridge (if you have a Blackberry) which is a pain.

Enter the feeling of utter disappointment and stupidity! What to do now. The answer is (for about 2 weeks) to use it to play solitaire.

Then one night watching yet another recorded Basketball game that had been cut short by ESPN’s poor scheduling, my husband and I looked at each other and realised the Playbook might be the solution. It transpires that streaming from the web to your TV is what the Playbook SHOULD have been made for, enter one USB to Micro HDMI cable and one NBA League pass and voila! Unrivalled HD Basketball viewing at our finger tips. We also installed the Blackberry bridge on my Blackberry Curve and it now has a dual life as a phone and a remote control.

The lesson here is that I may well have real reasons for not being an ‘i’ fan, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t appreciate the technology and, as I pride myself on being a fan of technology, I really shouldn’t be snobby about what I should and shouldn’t own. Maybe at some point in the future I’ll be able to heed my own advice and own an ‘i’ thing. Maybe.

The Digital Couch has never been one to shy away from a challenge, so this week he’s taken on kids and animals in the world of tech. Sounds like a recipe for disaster you say? Only time will tell…

Baby-Facebook

A new study compiled by Dubit has revealed that nearly 50% of the UK’s under 12s are using Facebook, despite being too young to do so. Facebook requires its members to be at least 13 yet many youngsters are logging on way before this. And 66% of six year-olds are also aware of Facebook, so the pressure to be part of it must be high – even at this young age.

This throws up all kinds of concerns from cyber bullying to Internet safety. So, should Facebook create a child-friendly version to protect the under 13s or should it be down to the parents to stop their kids from logging on? The latter is definitely a hard one, especially when you can access the Internet from so many sources now.

Is TV dead?

It is according to today’s average teenager – 65% of them listed social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter as their number one pastime – leaving TV for dust. We’re not sure you can really class it as a ‘pastime’; surely that’s something more like stamp collecting? But hey ho we don’t want to sound like your mum.

Click Consult conducted the study, which polled 1,300 people across the UK. They also discovered that nearly a third of those over 55 would rather log on before switching on – interesting. TV bosses are well aware of this trend and are fighting back with programmes that work in both arenas. Channel 4 for example, is currently enjoying huge success with its online version of The Million Pound Drop. Viewers can play along in real-time to really experience the show – something the Couch does on a regular basis. You should try it but be warned, it gets seriously addictive.

Talk to the animals

And so to the animals. Exciting news for our canine friends as the first advert for dogs aired on TV. The Bakers Complete ad shows a pack of dogs re-enacting The Italian Job and features a range of dog-friendly sounds. These include bells, barks, whistles and high frequency noises that are undetectable to the human ear. The Couch’s Jack Russell was certainly excited and retrieved an old bone that he’d wedged down the side of the Couch back in October – phew!

A brighter start to the year

Those clever artists at Greyworld brought some welcome sun to a normally dreary Trafalgar Square at the end of January. Weighing 2.5 tons, and using 210,000 watts of power, the sun illuminated the square to give Londoners a brighter start to their day. Tropicana, who, get this, also give you a brighter start to your day, commissioned the project. It’s a nice extension of their brand and a great way to get some cut-through – definitely a bright use of technology.

How many Belgiums does it take to change a light bulb?

We’re not sure how to answer that one but we know that more than half a million of them were interested in seeing some light bulbs at the 2012 Light Festival in Ghent.

Belgian light festival *Image supplied by thecoolhunter.co.uk

The Luminaire De Cagna was the star attraction, stretching 28 meters into the sky and covered in 55,000 LED lights – imagine the bill. Well, here’s the clever bit, it only used 20 kWh of energy – a beautiful example of green technology at its best.

Beligian light festival *Image supplied by thecoolhunter.co.uk

It’s lights out for Whitney and Twitter user reports it first

It’s sad news to end on but the couch was eager to bring you the story of Whitney Houston’s demise. Almost as eager as the person who tweeted it – 27 minutes before the news officially broke on mainstream media. @ajadiornavy, a relative of a hotel worker who had reportedly found Houston, wrote “Omgg, my aunt Tiffany who work for whitney houston just found whitney houston dead in the tub. such ashame &sad :-( [sic],”

Topsy Labs reports there were 2.5 million tweets an hour as news of the singer’s death spread around the globe – that’s over a thousand tweets a second – could that be quicker than the speed of light? Either way, talk about a powerful and fast way of spreading your message – whether you want to spread it or not.

RIP Whitney Houston