Hello!

Its come to my attention that few of you, if any, know what my job actually is. Well, this might be the most boring blog of all time, as I explain what I do in my job and how I can describe it as “watching YouTube all day” or “playing with phones all day”.

Firstly, a little background. The internet you get on your phone over 3G isn’t the same internet you get over WiFi. Its a bit… smaller. For example, using the YouTube app on a smartphone over Wifi will serve you good quality video where you can make out faces and decent text, but uses more data. Over 3G it will (by default) serve lower quality video, that in some cases, looks horrible, but can be streamed over much weaker quality a connection. This is just how YouTube works. Now all these videos can be inefficient in how well they are compressed, are not well optimized for most devices, and could in fact, be reduced in bandwidth use further, without reducing quality significantly, using a process called Mediation just before it gets send over the airwaves to your phone.

So, Carriers buy our product to reduce the bandwidth use of videos, before it gets sent to your phone, therefore decreasing the load on their systems, and lowering your data planbill.

Now every video on the internet has different factors that may impact our optimisation system, and every device will handle them differently, and that’s where I come in. My job is to confirm that our software can optimise videos from different sites, (though primarily YouTube), on different devices, and the user experience is not impacted. I usually watch popular videos, previously problematic videos, and then random videos if I have time. For example, in the last version of our software, I watched Taylor Swift (popular), Yogscast (troublesome) and Robot Wars (random), along with MANY others, across multiple 3G connected devices. I may have to watch some videos dozens of times if there’s a problem, which is a problem for my sanity, but it wasn’t really there in the first place, and now everytime I hear that taylor swift song I want to stand up during one point of the chorus. Grrr….

Some of this is automated, fortunately, and saved me from watching Bieber earlier, but user experience is key, so nothing beats an actual user. Except 2 or more users. Or an angry man with a big stick.

I do do other things in my job, like the automation, and digging deep into our product to work out issues, but this is the bit I can explain…

Now for some fun things I’ve learnt thanks to my job.

30% of streamed content, over 3g networks, so most likely NOT in a persons own home, or place of work, is adult content. Lovely thought.
iOS and android are equally problematic when it comes to streaming video.
Working with all phone OS’s has converted many apple fan boy’s to android. And we all agree Nokia’s Windows Phone’s are pretty, but lack of Apps and updates make it difficult to justify.
Japan has only one model of phone identical to western phones.
Students are weird. (Particularly fashion students. We work beside the Art college…)

Anyway, I went to the cinema! We watched Resident Evil!
<SPOILER>

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It sucked.