Merry Christmas

I’m off on Holiday for Christmas so posting will be thin on the ground between now and January. Have a Happy New Year and Seasons Christmas to you all!

All about YOU

This isn’t a post about the fact that I’m the TIME Magazine person of the year - mainly because you are as well.

No this is a post about the fact that, according to my sites stats the most searched for keyword bringing people to Up Your Ego is YOU!

Around 12% of all the searches resulting in a visitor hiting this website were a result of the search term YOU.

To me this is perfect - I love this result as it is pretty much everything Up Your Ego, web2.0 and the social web is all about.

I guess I’m getting something write at least.

Other popular keywords include Christmas, download, bbc, song, chimney and arse. These are all within the last seven days or so.

More interesting though are the phrases that result in people finding their way into the bowls of my blog. A much more pleasant place with the new theme I’m sure you’ll all agree.

Top phrases include “british isles vote at 16″, “being for dummies”, “christmas my arse”, “podshare download”, “pulling a sicky”, “web2.0″ and most interestingly “retirement cake idea” - not sure where that one came from.

Other slightly interesting but not particularly useful information from stats in the last seven days is the fact that Google counts for 88.3% of all search engine referrals, the blog sending the most people my way is Doctorvee (thanks!) and Windows XP counts for 73% of operating systems visiting the blog.

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Queen goes digital

I was just reading on BBC News that the Queens Speech is going to be available as a podcast for the first time this year.

But it really isn’t though is it? At least not in the true sense of the word. To me a podcast is the overal show concept - so MacBreak Weekly is the podcast and (for example) iPhone My Eye (20) is the episode.

Some British newspapers and more or less every government department seems to have thrown this out. For example, the 10 downing street podcast calls each individual show released ‘a podcast’, like the Eddie Izzard Podcast released under the Downing Street feed.

Maybe it’s moving to that though - instead of a podcast being released under a single feed, we’ll start to see ‘feeds’ being released with multiple podcasts.

So maybe we will see a Radio 4 feed with all the seperate BBC Radio 4 podcasts released under that single, large feed - tWiT could do the same.

Back to the Queen though. I’ve spent the last 15 years, since I was about 10, trying to avoid the Queen’s speech on television.

Unfortunatly while I still lived at home I was forced to watch it as my mum is a major royalist and my parents insisted on us spending Christmas day together as a family (I couldn’t go to my room).

Then I got married and moved to Jersey with my wife. Things didn’t improve though - I now end up having to watch the Queen’s speech because my Mother in Law spends Christmas with us and she is just as much of a royalist as my mum is.

Originally when I saw the fact that it was being made available as a podcast I jumped up and said “I spend a decade trying to avoid it on TV, do they really think I’ll go out of my way to actually download the bloody thing”.

Then I realised I wasn’t the only person in the world and in fact there are a lot of royalist nutcases in the UK so I should shut up.

However I now think it’s a bloody good idea. If we can get the royalist nutcases to watch the Queen’s speech on their own terms on a computer we might be able to campaign harder for it to be removed from our TV screens.

It will never happen but let a man dream!

I wan’t to use the term republican, but as the web is an international affair and there are a lot of Americans online, the term would more likely be taken in the sense that I’m a member of a ‘right wing party’ instead of the sense it’s meant - someone who doesn’t think a modern 21st Century country should have a Monach at its head.

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iPlayer and on demand online

There is a story on The Register at the moment about the Venice project, a new streaming video service from the team behind Kazaa and Skype.

It all sounds very nice, very pretty and fairly useful. However, unless they want major lawsuits it will be just like every other tame video app service (Democracy and Zudeo).

I’m not saying these applications are a bad thing, they do a really good job of bringing top quality indie programming together and making it easier to find - but for people looking for mass media programming, the big budget stuff from the big studios - they don’t quite cut it (and probably won’t for a long time without a finance method).

Interestingly the BBC does seem to be noticing something in the Zudeo platform. They will be launching a channel on the platform with a series of classic shows including Fawlty Towers and Red Dwarf.

Even that though will be on a pay per play basis and heavily covered with DRM.

The Register article talks about the BBC iPlayer and how it seems to be lagging behind because its about to go into another trial.

This is wrong, or at least its wrong as far as I understand. The iPlayer will still be launching to the general public in the first quarter of 2007, the iPlayer in its original format with BBC programming available to download for free.

However there will be an extra element of the iPlayer, the BBC Archive element that will let you download thousands of hours of BBC Archive programming for free - that will go into another limited trial, not the whole iPlayer.

Last thing I heard almost everyone in BBC New Media is working flat out on the iPlayer to get it ready for launch in the new year. Apparently nearly every aspect of audio/video on bbc.co.uk and through the iPlayer app will be inside the iPlayer branding.

This will include the current news/sport players and the BBC Radio Player.

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One or two?

As I’ve already got two blogs and have several that I’m working on, plus a couple of non blog websites, projects, apps and podcasts in development - as well as my photography, I’ve decided to launch a portal for everything I’m currently working on.

I had two choices, either I could put it all at my own name - ryanmorrison.co.uk - but to be honest I’m happy with that pointing to upyourego.com as it’s the place I write about my own goings on.,

Or I could host it at freedommedia.co.uk, the site I started with the goal of showcasing my skills, talents and portfolio. I think it would be better used as a central point for all my current projects (it’s almost that already).

If you went and clicked on freedommedia.co.uk you will have noticed there is a site there already. I don’t like it. It needs to change and I want something more web2.0 like.

So I’ve started by creating a logo - in fact I’ve created two logos. Unfortunately I can’t decide which of the two I want to use. So with web2.0 in mind I’ve decided to let you have a look and tell me which you would use.

OK here is option one - the butterfly

Then option two - man alive

So there you go - over to you. Which of these two logos would you use? The site is going to be a central point for all my current and future web projects.

These include Up Your Ego, 5tracks, JerseyParents, My Web Radio, Grumpy Geeks, The Good Geek Guide, How to be a geek and the Food Box podcast.

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The Good Geek Guide

For a while now I’ve been thinking about starting a new regular feature on upyourego.com called the Good Geek Guide. Basically it will be a human edited directory of cool things.

Then I decided that would be too much of a nightmare and would just take over Up Your Ego, meaning the tech news style posts I like to write will get lost in a mass of media reviews.

So I’ve decided to host it somewhere else instead. Ladies and gentlegeeks I give you ‘The Good Geek Guide’. I’m currently working on the wordpress template and settings and should be ready to launch in the new year.

To start with this will be nothing more than a series of podcast reviews but will eventually expand to blogs, community sites, gadgets and more.

This is a big goal for a bloke on his own, so if you’re interested in contributing to the Good Geek Guide, a human edited review service for anything geek friendly - send an e-mail to ryan@upyourego.com or comment on this post.

While you’re waiting

While I’m working on the human edited podcast directory, basically a guide of podcasts I like and have reviewed instead of an automated one, can I point you in the direction of a directory that is between the two ideals.

The Digg Podcast directory seems to have been launched as part of the latest design refresh and, although slightly clunky is a very good way of finding the best podcasts. Especially given that there doesn’t seem to be any method to the iTunes directory madness.

In the meantime here is a list of the podcasts I’m currently listening to on my iPod (the short description underneath isn’t an example of what a review might be. These are podcasts I listen to regularly and like a lot, not ones I’m trying out to write about for the first time):

BBC Radio Newspod
Digital Planet
In Our Time
Jamie’s Podcast
MacBreak Weekly
Newsnight
Russell Brand
Snowmail Podcast
Start the Week
this WEEK in TECH
Today programme podcast

This isn’t all though

As you can see from this list, with the exception of the Today podcast they’re all weekly at best. This is because I sometimes can’t update my iPod every day for one reason or another, so daily podcasts tend to build up and get out of date very quickly.

The list above isn’t the complete one either, it’s a list of the podcasts currently on my iPod, there are others that I’ve already listened to this week or are currently off the air.

I also regularly subscribed to podcasts, listen to an episode or two, decide it isn’t for me and then unsubscribe.

This is where the idea for the human podcast review comes in. I’m going to scour iTunes and other podcast directories for shows (from big media to bloke in his room) to listen to.

When I’ve listened to it I’ll write a review based on a number of criteria including ‘how quickly does it get annoying?’, ‘does the voice make me want to stick hot pokers in my ears?’ and ‘does it actually have a theme or are they just rambling?’.

Now rambling isn’t a bad thing and a podcast won’t necessarily lose marks because of a ramble BUT if the ramble is pointless and not funny or interesting then it will get marked down.

If you have a podcast you’d like to hear my pointless opinions on then email ryan@upyourego.com with the details.

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My Blog Log

I’ve been toying with the idea of writing a post on what is easily one of the most important and exciting web 2.0 projects out there right now - My Blog Log.

The problem is I’ve always seen it as a bit of a lazy post. Everyone that signs up for the service seems to have posted at least once on the subject, usually taking the form of a review or analysis.

So with that in mind I decided not to bother. I’ve been using My Blog Log for a couple of months now and so far have managed to resist the temptation to write anything.

Well I had until I read a post on ‘Just a little Cooqy’ who has a really interesting analysis of the service, not one that looks at how it works but why it works.

Basically he looks into why My Blog Log is such an important service and at the same time raises a couple of ways the service could do with improvement.

On the most part I agree completely, that’s why I wrote this post, because my comment on his post spread over several lines and would make for an interesting post on my own blog - I’m a blogger, any opportunity is to be taken.

If you don’t know what My Blog Log is, take a look at the little faces on the right hand side of the screen. They are all My Blog Log users who have looked at my blog recently.

Robert over at Just a little Coogy put it perfectly “I feel that MyBlogLog is more like a socialization engine for any and all web pages. Sort of like a MySpace without walls.”

One of the biggest niggles Robert brought up was in terms of technology and interface design. However, as with most really good modern websites it WILL get better with time.

The most people use it, the more people pay for premium services, the more advertisers they can get, the better the design will get. From what I can remember wasn’t Technorati a bit shaky in its early days? It wasn’t until money came in that it started to perk up and look pretty.

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ITV ‘borrow’ a format

I know ITV are hitting hard times what with the advertising market drying up, but surely they don’t need to resort to ripping off ideas?

Oh wait, they’ve been doing it for a while. Basically ITV don’t seem to be able to come up with any original ideas anymore. OK so there are a couple of interesting sounding dramas coming in the Winter, but pretty much all of them rely on the standard ITV formula of big name, traditional storyline.

The latest promotion to come from the ITV camp is a show where people search for a lead in a West End play - sound familiar? In fact it comes at exactly the same time the BBC has announced that next year there will be a new series of the Maria show but looking for a male lead in something else.

The ITV show is looking for a Danny and Sandi in Grease and you know what? It will do brilliantly well. Two reasons 1) people seem to love Grease for some god forsaken reason and 2) people still watch ITV despite the fact that it’s full of copied, boring, repeated, painting by numbers programming.

Not only is it very similar to How do you solve a problem like Maria but it also has one of the judges from that show and is along the same lines as the BBC Worldwide production ‘You’re the one that I want’ for NBC (looking for stars for Grease).

Grease (working title) will be made for ITV by SyCo and Talkback Thames and will go out on Sunday 7 January with Denise Van Outen and Billy Bush.

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Mass media moving mico

I was going to lump a number of subjects together in one post but I ended up writing to much and would have created a post much longer than what is fair on anyone trying to read it.

Instead I’m going for them on their own. Of all the things I was looking to write about this is the most exciting. In fact probably the most exciting development since the announcement of the iPlayer about a century ago (or at least it seems that long anyway).

Basically the BBC are going to be putting a large chunck of programming on to the torrent based video platform from the people at Azureus - it’s called Zudeo and is currently filled with trailers, student films, music videos and indie clips.

Apparently the Beeb will have it’s own paid content channel on the platform and will use it to sell programming to the North American market.

It will however have DRM and will only work within the Zudeo player. Despite this it’s still an interesting development. Basically the BBC have moved in with the supposed ‘bad guys’ instead of joining someone like Apple or Amazon - actually the BBC have done all three in a way that the BBC seems to enjoy doing.

I don’t think it will work within the UK but to be honest that really doesn’t matter as, from around March (or maybe sooner given that everyone in the BBC seems to be working on it at the moment), the iPlayer will be launching.

It will allow you to download near on everything the BBC puts out every week for up to seven days after broadcast. You’ll have to watch it within seven days of its first play but you can keep it on your computer for a couple of months without playing it.

This brings me on to my next, related point.

The BBC Archive

Apparently a trial will start in early 2007 where 1000 hours of multi genre content will be available to a limited number of users to test servers, response time and usability. There will also be 50 hours of TV and radio programmes (from the archive) for general access on the BBC website.

Apparently “the aim is to test audience demand for a public service archive content and understand how they want to access it”.

Ashley Highfield, the BBC Director of Future Media & Technology told Broadcast Magazine “as part of our commitment to making our public service content more personal, more convenient and more relevant for all our audiences, we are developing a portfolio of services to offer licence fee payers access to the BBC’s archive”.

The Archive content trial will be an extension of the iPlayer app. In fact I get the impression every bit of video on bbc.co.uk will become part of the iPlayer, at the very least in terms of branding.

The last line in the broadcast story was the most interesting. “Subject to the licence fee settlement, the archive proposition will be submitted for approval to teh BBC Trust in the second half of 2007″.

THREE Cowards

While on the subject of video online. According to Broadcast Magazine, the BBC has commissioned the group behind the ‘Cowards’ live sketch show to take over the BBC THREE website and turn it into an interactive comedy zone. I’m not sure how long this will go on for but apparently the group will have editorial control over the site and will be writing and performing exclusive sketches.

I love this idea, it makes perfect sense to me, it’s a real move forward, well a minor move forward as the BBC and over organisations have played with the idea of web only programming a few times in the past - anyone remember the web video hosts tried by the Beeb a couple of years ago? No? Thought not!

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