TechCrunch’s Mike Arrington calls for the End of The BBC!

File under ‘WTF’ and ‘ill-informed’.

[update: March 14th 2007: Long Live the BBC! ]

Apparently, during a panel at yesterday’s Future Of WebApps Conference, TechCrunch’s Mike Arrington said ‘The BBC should be dissolved’. (see video here from BBC backstage’s Ian Forrester)

Listen here (edited) “The BBC Should Be Dissolved” : Mike Arrington : FOWA Feb 2007

download and share this mp3 here

And the longer version here

download and share this mp3 here

Judging by the things he said, he clearly has no idea about how the BBC works in the UK. It *is* different to BBC World and he also gets some facts wrong about a kids social network.

I will agree to a point that the TV License (that every UK household who owns a TV is forced to pay) is often abused and unwisely spent on some astronomical salaries for many people who I happen to know first hand don’t have the required knowledge to make certain decisions.

iPhone Default Ringtone?

Something that I think would be interesting to know is: What will be be the default ringtone on the Apple iPhone?

Sure, these days we can all change our ringtone to anything from a cartoon yelp to a hip-hop riff, but there has to be a default. And I want to hear it now.

Apple should see this opportunity to increase brand awareness by coming up with the perfect ‘earworm’ – a bit of music or riff that you hear and cannot get out of your head – even better if it’s ‘good’ and not something annoying.

UPDATE: Thanks to Derrick here it is (apparently):

I would say that many of us know the default Nokia ringtone, for example – you can hear Leo Laporte etc singing (‘dee di dee di..’ etc.) it in the theme music for TWiT. It’s a ‘classic’.

Talking of ringtones and evolution – back in 1994, I was working for a B2B ad agency on the then recently launched mobile operator ‘Orange’. We went to the Telecom Managers Association conference in Brighton, where I met a guy who was responsible for sorting out the new handsets they would have on offer. He showed me the latest Nokia handset which they were about to launch. The classic 2nd gen black bricks they did back then. He was very excited by the fact that this model had 7 ringtones on it.

I suggested to him that it would be a great idea to have a ringtone that sounded like an old bell ringing telephone. It was a few years before this found its way into the default ringtone offering Heh.

I doubt that chat I had had anything to do with it – but it makes me smile inside everytime I hear it.

Apple iPhone = Cisco iPhone

It looks like Apple and Cisco have decided to ’share’ the iPhone brand. I think this is a bit odd and possibly silly.

Whether Cisco like it or not, Apple’s useage of the brandname will be always ‘mentally connected’ (that’s kind of what brand awareness is, right?) with their forthcoming Apple phone – not a cordless VOIP Skype handset (which I must say are very good – I have one)

There’s got to be some crazy deal going on under all this, or Cisco’s lawyers are in awe of Apple’s.

Is there such a thing as an ‘Apple Lawyer Fanboy’?