Have you re-booted?

A lot has happened lately including BT buying Dabs.com, the BBC changing the way they do things and becoming more democratic, News Corp having a whinge about the BBC, the Express printing pictures of Diana looking sad, a shagfest in the Labour house and BBC reboot.

I’m going to ignore everything else and look at re-boot. First I like it, there you have my opinion, do with it what you will, for all it’s worth. Second I don’t think it’s getting the profile and credit it deserves.

A lot of people have complained about it, suggesting the BBC are just trying to get peoples wireframes and ideas for free and then will use them in a homepage re-design - this isn’t the case and the Beeb have made it clear on the Reeboot homepage.

Why do I like it? I like it because it’s another brilliant example of the democratization of the BBC, the publicly funded organisation giving the public a chance to have an input into how it works and the way it looks.

Anything good yet?

The first wave of submissions to something like this are always the weakest, mainly because they are the ones that have been completed the quickest, however there are a couple of interesting concepts.

There are a couple that are just a re-imagining of the current homepage, not really adding any of the other sources that are hinted at in the Reboot FAQ.

There is one that although a shockingly simple design that would need a considerable amount of work does put forward a couple of plausible concepts. It was submitted by Chris McEvoy of Confusability who also came up with Simply Google which uses a similar design/concept.

First what I don’t like - I don’t like the multiple texboxes and the design but there is more I do like - with a slight re-working (ok a big re-working).

If we take the concept of easy find boxes for major BBC content areas (expressed here with search boxes for things like News Stories, News Media, h2g2, What’s On and various other community related features) and adapt it to, for example show the most recent/most popular content from that area in a specific box with a link to more… instead of just a search box then the idea starts to become realistic and potentially useful.

The other area I liked is the concept of a simplistic, minimilist version of bbc.co.uk for either users on a very slow connection or users that get quickly put off by two many choices - this is something I think the BBC Homepage could do with now - I don’t mean the low graphics version, thats just plain ugly, but one with less options, something simpler and … well … minimalist (I’ll do a mock later).

BBC Blogging

I posted a while ago on the fact that we should soon start seeing more blogs from the BBC - during my time off the ball, aunty (unless your young and then you don’t see the Beeb as aunty anymore - apparently) launched bbc.co.uk/blogs AKA the BBC Blog Network, a central page with the most recent posts from all BBC Blogs as well as a directory of BBC blogs and various other bits of blog related information.

This is actually a really nice page, I love the way the BBC is doing blogging they are keeping it as simple as possible using traditional (as traditional as new media gets anyway) design concepts and covering a range of topics and keeping blogs to the point.

But I also like the Guardians approach to a blog index which still takes the traditional approach but guardianafies it a bit - plus a site with a Zeitgiest is a site worth keeping in my book

Democratization of the BBC

For years people have been screaming for the BBC to give it more say in the programmes it makes, more input into what the corporation uses licence fee money for and now they can.

You’re never going to get a chance to have your big TV idea made, TV costs to much money and takes too long to give every single licence payer a say and Radio isn’t much better to be honest.

However the internet is the perfect medium for letting people have an input into how it looks, what goes on it and how it works. For instance people can already use BBC archive material to make their own films/clips and have them showcased on bbc.co.uk and this is only going to grow.

An area I know well, BBC Where I Live, is a great place for people to have their work showcased from Animation in Norlfolk to various gig reviews, band profiles, stories and features across other sites.

To be honest if you’ve got an idea for something that fits within the WiL style and content type (lifestyle, entertainment, arts, politics etc…) and is aimed at a 18 - 45 year old audience then it’s a great opportunity to have the idea showcased on an ever increasingly popular platform.

While on the subject of the Where I Live sites what do you think of the new look homepage, re-designed to give a bigger prominence to news.

Share/Save