It’s also interesting that there’s so little reference to smartphones in this. The new Google TV interface can be controlled by an Android smartphone; the iPhone works very nicely as an Apple TV controller and allows us to set our Sky+ box from afar. We increasingly rely on our smartphones to control many of the other things that matter in our life. Isn’t it a logical next step – if only to reduce some of the clutter on our coffee tables? Discuss.

If you ask tech-savvy teenagers to choose between a TV, a mobile and PC internet (as the survey does) many of them will quickly work out that if they choose a laptop or a mobile, they could do many things on it: talking to friends, listening to music, visiting websites, keeping up with people on Facebook, playing games, following celebrities on Twitter, sending partially-clothed images of themselves to school friends. And watching telly. The TV, on the other hand, looks rather one-dimensional by comparison. Logic, innit.

Slides from today – Slideshare

Just in case you should be in the vicinity of Olympia on 18 Oct, I’ll be sharing a platform with Nigel Whalley of Decipher at the Streaming Media Europe – Connected Home conference. And I will be talking about consumers: how they are changing, what they are doing, and what they need from technology and content providers. And if that all sounds a bit vague, it is. I haven’t written it yet. But I’ve got a month…

We’ll continue to operate out of our current offices, with our current brand and current techniques and ‘Essential Way’ of working – but as the latest member of the SPA Future Thinking group, we’ll get access to the resources and support that we need to push on to the next level.

SPA Future Thinking has its own field force, DP unit, Analytics Hub, operations and finance teams, marketing and business development teams, and a team dedicated to developing innovative new quant and qual techniques. We get to use all of these services, to ultimately deliver even better and more efficient research to more clients – while still being us.

So the next phase of our growth starts here.

Working with the BBC and Sony Professional Solutions, we’ll be conducting research at a number of 3D cinema screenings of the men’s final, as well as some additional qualitative research around the 3D TV screen experience.

As research projects go, it’s a pretty exciting one: a showpiece event combined with a milestone for a major new TV technology. And with the new roof on Centre Court, even the rain can’t spoil it!

Following Essential’s and ITV’s ‘Best Consumer Insights’ Award from the MRS in December, it’s now been shortlisted for ‘Best Research and Insight Project’ at the AOP Awards. Prizes are announced on the 9th June, so we’ll keep our fingers crossed.

To me this seems like the biggest and most attractive step so far, in moving computers from a product-based to a service-based business model. The Chromebook is really just a means to an end – to get on to the web. Without a web connection it is really just a glorified paperweight; so why own one? We live in a servicised world, where the focus is on the service rather than the product. If you take me and my boyfriend as an example: we don’t own a car, we are members of Streetcar; we don’t own any CDs, we use Spotify; we don’t own DVDs, we use SkyPlayer; oh, and (in case you’re reading Tom) I want a Kindle for my birthday – good bye books. It is a much more sustainable way of living; healthier for your bank balance and healthier for the environment.

The Chromebook is by no means perfect (it doesn’t have PowerPoint for a start!) but, in my opinion, it’s a step in the right direction.