I’m not just an insufurably grumpy geek, I’m not just the guy complaining about everything in the corner of the office – I’m also the annoying one passing on CDs of new music all the time and raving about new bands I’ve heard.
I get my music in many different ways – promoters and bands send it to me (en mass some days), I get mp3s, I use the BBC Introducing uploader, I use MySpace BUT mostly I make use of 6music.
Not just to discover music that’s just been released but to discover music I might not have heard the first time around for some reason.
BBC 6music is the only station in the country brave enough to let its presenters have a say over what they play.
OK I’m not disputing the fact that BBC 6music have a playlist, they do – in fact they have three, an A, B and C list – but they also give their presenters a free choice over some of the songs they play.
In fact they even have a link to their message boards from the BBC 6music Playlist page giving listeners the chance to discussion, dispute and debate the playlist.
That gives it one of the most diverse music profiles in the world and a selection of brilliant presenters that are interesting to listen to and engage with.
The live sessions on station from some a massively diverse range of musicians and the live music at gigs and festivals and the archive sessions with people like John Peel all make for more than just a DJ led station with the odd tested song.
If you cut BBC 6music you should cut BBC Radio 3 as they’re both as important as each other when it comes to core BBC broadcasting just with different music tastes.
If the BBC gave John Peel a budget, a blank piece of paper and an empty radio station to fill – 6music is what he would have come up with.
Save 6music – please - for the sake of British music and the next generation of music fan.
I wrote a blog post two weeks ago about SeeSaw, the new television on demand service – mainly for archive content.
This service, currently in a limited invite only beta, is born out of the ashes of the rejected Project Kangaroo – planned by BBC, ITV & C4 but rejected by the BBC Trust.
When I first got my invite I was very excited by it, but I was instantly confronted by a message telling me it wasn’t available in the Channel Islands (well I think it said my location).
This was down to rights reasons, they didn’t have permission from the various rights holders (even though all the same shows were available through 4OD and Demand five for the islands) to make it available in the Channel Islands and Isle of Man – independent territories that have to be negotiated separately.
Then I got a message this morning to tell me that they’ve now managed to negotiate rights to make their shows available to the islands – which was a nice thing to read after a day flying to and from London.
It said: “We’re pleased to let you know that we’ve recently acquired the rights to show programmes in the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man.
“You should now be able to join in the fun and watch your favourite programmes on SeeSaw.”
Which more than made my day and – I’ve tried it and it works brilliantly. This puts SeeSaw, even though it is still in invite only beta – well ahead of all the rest as it is the ONLY multi-network service available in the Channel Islands and Isle of Man.
I know inline linking is important, I do it all the time and I understand how it helps keep the information flow going and aids the user journey from one site to another or between two sites.
And I understand how linking large chunks of text, describing the thing your linking to helps with Google Juice and page rank – that’s all obvious.
But what I’m really wondering is, and I’m thinking here about the person reading the article and not the money I might make from ads or the Juice I’ll get from Google – does linking long bits of text cause problems for novice users and skim readers?
According to an article on the Read Write Web, research by Jakob Nielson shows people only spend 4.4 seconds for every additional 100 words written on an article with more information and words.
The research also found that people read around 20% of the text on an average page and that they will spend some of the limited time on the page working out navigation and looking for images.
I’m not convinced this is people only reading the first 20% of the article, although they are more likely to be reading the first 20% properly – I think it is people reading the first few paragraphs and then skimming through the rest.
I don’t mind people skimming my articles, when I’m writing for the BBC I’ll write with all the main information in the first four paragraphs and then expand underneath that.
The idea there is that people can get everything they need to know about the article by just reading the first 70 words or so – but I prefer to be able to write more conversationally on my blog.
Should link titles be kept very short in the body text?
Having to tell a story within four paragraphs and then being able to continue it after that makes it a lot harder to write in a conversational way – it’s no impossible, just more difficult.
So, if you do decide to do what I’ve done on my blog and attempt to hold people for longer, to converse with them throughout the post and try to keep their attention – you need to be careful about post clutter.
For example
When I add an image to this blog I always make sure it is aligned to the right, that keeps the left hand side clear for text.
I’ll try to put sub-headings into very long posts to break it down and make it easier to skip through bits you’r not bothered about, or even to get a ‘rough idea’ of what’s going on.
I try to write very short paragraphs, ideally no more than one point per paragraph to make skim reading even easier.
And I’ll make sure any body links are clearly identified – brighter blue, bold and or underlined.
But that is what made me come up with the idea for this blog post.
I was reading a post the other day, can’t remember exactly what I where it was but I know it had a very long body link.
This link was spot on for Google Juice etc, it linked the explanation of the site it was linking to – it explained why it existed.
Unfortunately I nearly missed half the paragraph of text because my brain has been trained, over years of internet use to skip the link.
I just didn’t notice it and my brain just automatically stopped read at the last word before the link and picked it up with the first word after the linked text.
If your brain works anything like mine it would have read ‘link taking you to a …. that has nothing to do’ filling in the bit in between with the word group.
So the question I’ve been asking myself is – does long body linking cause problems for skim readers?
Google started introducing an expanded right hand side bar (under a plus button) to let you filter the results a while ago – it let you show results from within a time frame or from a certain type of site.
Now, for users of the Chrome browser that side bar is more blocky – a sort of 1990s style channel bar – that lets you filter by the different types of Google results including Images, Maps, Videos, News, Blogs, Updates, Books, Shopping and Forums.
You can also filter by time (although that is in a traditional Google style text link) and further results including Social, images, shopping sites, previews and change view to related, standard and timeline.
That’s not the only difference though – the Google logo is much larger, the search button is blue and the ad block at the top of the search area is more prominent.
What with the addition of extension and native support for Greasemonkey – the speed of the browser and the fact that it just looks better than everything else – Chrome is getting better with every release.
Even now, having to go into Firefox to take the screengrab on the left above felt clunky and old.
SeeSaw is the name of the online video service that was born out of the ashes of the fallen Project Kangaroo – purchased from the consortium of broadcast partners by the telecommunications infrastructure company Arqiva.
Arqiva was born out of a history in broadcast infrastructure running transmission faciltities as Crown Castle. Now they’ve moved into online transmission with the launch of SeeSaw, a service that will allow you to watch a raft of old and new television shows online.
The shows are displayed through a flash player, streamed and at the moment support by either advertising or pay per play.
SeeSaw wasn’t the first of its kind to launch in this space, beaten by offerings from both Google (YouTube) and Microsoft (MSN Video Player).
The YouTube offering has content deals with a number of content providers, most notable are Five and Channel 4 and for MSN their content deals are with BBC Worldwide and Channel 4.
SeeSaw has content deals in place with the BBC, Channel 4 and Demand Five as well as hints at a much wider range of content in the future.
Not to mention my favourite of all the online video services, BlinkBox, which has a huge range of content from the BBC, Channel 4 and American networks to view for free, pay per view or to keep forever for a fee.
And then there’s iTunes – a download you can put on your iPod, iPad (more on this in my next post) or iPhone and watch when you like.
This all sounds amazing, something I could easily spend hours using, catching up on shows I already own on DVD but can never be bothered to open – or shows I would like to watch but don’t want to spend money on the DVD.
Six different video players
But it isn’t that simple for me – because I live in the Channel Islands.
I’m not complaining about the fact that I live in the Channel Islands – I love it, I chose to live here and wouldn’t want to live anywhere else – but the perculiar political situation means some things work …. differently.
One of those things is content rights.
Yes we have the BBC in the Channel Islands, we have Channel 4, Sky and pretty much everything people in the mainland UK have – our television and radio is more or less the same.
However, when it comes to the internet things get a little bit more complicated.
For the iPlayer, 4OD (on the Channel 4 website) and Demand Five things are fine – we can access and watch shows on all of those services as if we were in the mainland.
But when those shows move across to YouTube, MSN or SeeSaw – things are a little different.
I recently got a beta invite to SeeSaw – very exciting, couldn’t wait and first impression were good – it’s usable, easy to navigate and seems to have a reasonable selection of content for a beta service.
But when I went to click play I got the same message I’ve become used to from Hulu, MSN and YouTube shows – they allow follow the ’sorry this content isn’t available in your location’ structure.
My intitial reaction to this message, something I’ve not had confirmed despite several e-mails, is that it’s down to the fact that they’re using a GeoIP list that doesn’t include Channel Island IP addresses.
However, a little bit of research and an actual response from one of the companies involved (SeeSaw) suggests that in fact it is a rights issue.
This isn’t the first time I’ve come across ‘rights’ being used as a reason why a service isn’t available in the Channel Islands.
iTunes isn’t officially available here and an Apple spokesperson told me late last year that it was because they haven’t got rights agreements in place for the streaming of samples for the Channel Islands.
The e-mail from SeeSaw explained that: “Unfortunately, SeeSaw is not currently available in the Channel Islands (or the Isle of Man) as we don’t yet have the rights to show programmes there.”
However all is not lost as the next paragraph in that e-mail explained that they were in negotations with rights holders.
“The good news is that we are currently in negotiations to make our service available to you, so hopefully you’ll soon be able to watch your favourite programmes on SeeSaw.”
What I don’t understand is how I can easily watch the full range of 4OD shows on the Channel 4 website – with 4OD actively going out of their way to fix an issue that blocked access to CI users last year – but I can’t watch it on YouTube, MSN or SeeSaw.
Fortunately I work for a large UK corporation so my computer at work is behind a proxy that IS in the UK – so I got to try SeeSaw out, even if I didn’t have enough time to watch a full show.
My second impressions are that, although it is completely lacking in ANY social or sharing functionality it does have some nice features.
It is EXCEPTIONALLY easy to use and has a couple of nice touches like a fade to back on the background on the player page when focus moves away.
It has a lot of information on the programme you’re watching, the advertising isn’t OTT and it is very easy to find previous and future episodes of the same series.
So for a beta service with a limited user base and no external access (where sharing and social stuff wouldn’t be that useful anyway) I’d say it is pretty impressive.
As long as they work towards introducing social and sharing for launch in March I’d say this is a real contender for the television site of choice crown – especially as they’ve launched so far ahead of a UK release of Hulu.
But if they want to compete with Hulu when it launches - the social, sharing and ratings content will become increasingly important.
Easter in 2010 doesn’t fall until the first weekend in April, yet for some reason I’ve already had my first Cadbury’s Creme Egg of the year.
Not only that but I’ve seen Easter mugs, bunnies and all manor of chocolate based symbols of the dawn of Spring.
All this despite the Christmas decorations still being up around us and Slade being played on the radio.
We complain on an annual basis about how early Christmas crap starts appearing in the shops – the earliest sign for me was wrapping paper on sale in September.
But having Easter based eggs out on Boxing Day? That my friend is just taking the very sweet, egg shaped gooey desire a stretch to far.
Although to be honest – it’s never too early for a Creme Egg – just keep the bunnies locked up until March.
Now be nice to this sleep deprived grumpy old git in his 29th year or I’ll write a blog post about all the cool mantoys I got for Christmas from my wonderfully geeky wife.
Credit: The photo used on this post was taken by by adobemacand made available under a Creative Commons licence through Flickr.
I’m writing this post listening to a Spotify Playlist I created specifically for blogging (it inspires me to actually write instead of thinking about writing) and praising myself for having avoided the X-Factor and I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here this year.
And I don’t mean just avoid watching it – I mean avoid it almost completely (with the exception of the odd photo of the stupid haired jedtwins thing) – I’ve not seen a single episode or video clip, I’ve not heard a song by or seen performance from ANY of the two shows.
But to achieve this I’ve had to pretty much avoid all of the main television networks, all television news, YouTube, shop windows, electronics shops and more – I’ve even had to avoid looking at the plasma on the wall in the BBC Jersey newsroom.
I haven’t watched a single show on ITV, the television at home has not been set to the channel once in the last few months and I only watch shows on the BBC or Channel 4 recorded through Sky+ or through iPlayer/4OD.
This isn’t so much because I’ve got a moral objection to the show – talent shows have been around for decades – more than I know I’ll get sucked into the crap and hate myself for it afterwards.
However, I have now heard the winner singing his version of the Miley Cyrus song, The Climb (heard not watched) – so I could comment with a tiny bit of knowledge and …. It’s rubbish.
He sounds like a poorer version of Gareth Gates, he has no feeling or emotion invested in the song and just dies.
I’m not a massive Miley fan but as I have a 9 year old Hannah Montana obsessed daughter I do know her music well (was dragged to see the film) and at least she has an interesting twang to her voice, a unique element and a bit of passion – the X-Factor one is just rubbish.
I can’t bring myself to come up with anything more creative than that because his voice and interpretation doesn’t deserve anything more creative.
Yes it will probably go to number one this week and so be Christmas number one (hopefully Rage Against the Machine will be at number two) but that doesn’t mean it isn’t rubbish – it’s just another item of merchandising that the fans of the television drama that is X-Factor have brought to support and show alliegence to their favourite show.
I’ve got no problem with that at all, in the same way that I’ve got no problem with the charts being manipulated by Facebook fans – the charts are meaningless and have been for a long time.
What matters is the songs/artists my friends suggest – the songs I discover myself through hours of scouring Spotify (like tonight) and the playlists I find hidden around the blogosphere.
Than and the charts in iTunes around specific genres. But that hasn’t stopped me getting the Rage Against the Machine song or listening to the rubbish X-Factor song.
I promise I won’t write about Christmas and nothing else as we move from December towards the moment of the year where we can all get away with eating to much, trying to look pleased at crap presents and watching television.
I’ve written a little bit about food, in a way that works with the premise of this blog – by talking about a new BBC site dedicated to Christmas food.
Now I’m going to talk about the mass of brilliance (and some of the chaff) that will be shown across the BBC television network in the last two weeks of the year.
If I can find anything worth pointing out I’ll cover the other channels in a post next week – but for now here is Aunties festive delights.
In one line I’ve noticed there’s some seriously brilliant looking new drama, a combination of old favourite and newly charming comedy, cartoons, Shakespeare and a few instanced of David Tenant.
In the last two weeks of 2009 the BBC will be showing a mythical beast played by Robbie Coltrane, the end of all time with David Tennant and Catherine Tate’s Nan taking on Charles Dickens Christmas spectacle.
Nan will be visited by a number of Christmas spirits
But that’s not all, I’m nowhere near done yet – in addition we’ve got Victoria Wood with a mid-life christmas filled sketch show, boys dancing, a bit of costume drama and the usual mass of Christmas specials.
For the Christmas specials there will be Gavin and Stacey, Outnumbered, Eastenders, My Family and more. Add opera, Steve Coogan, dancing and even more costume drama.
Even CBBC and Cbeebies are in on the whole Christmas special series with David Tenant reading a bedtime story, Justin from Gigglebiz as a panto dame introduced by Chris Evans and a story about children finding a glass bottle on CBBC.
There are a couple of Casualty specials, the day of the Triffids, Top of the Pops at Christmas AND New Year, more toys from James May, Three Men in a Boat going to Ireland and yet more costume drama.
In detail
So lets look into what’s coming up in a bit more detail – starting with the kids stuff.
But first here is a video that will tell you a lot more than I can hope to – even though I’m still going to give it a go.
Back to the mass of text.
For those of you without pre-school children, Cbeebies bedtime stories is basically famous people coming into the Cbeebies studio and reading a book at the end of the day in the ‘Bedtime Hour’.
The Christmas one will see David Tennant read a book about a Bear Cub who leaves his parents to go exploring on Christmas eve. In fact the soon to be former Doctor Who star will read a total of five books during the festive season.
Moving back a bit to CBBC and their Christmas highlights include a drama called ‘Ingeniuous’ that baiscally tells the story of 11 year old Sally and friends who find a magical genie in an old bottle.
And the CBBC sketch show, I’m Sorry I’ve Got No HEad, featuring Marcus Brigstocke, David Armand and Mel Giedroyc among others doing stupid things to make kids laugh.
A little bit more Grown Up
BBC Three is going all dance mad on the run up to Christmas with ‘Balletboys’, a new version of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring making the 100th anniversary of the Ballet Russes – dance groups from all styles across the UK coming together..
There’s a film combining documentary and peformance form the Balletboys – Michael Nunn and William Trevitt.
And, something they’ve been trailing heavily – the final of Move Like Michael Jackson where dance acts get the chance to show their skills as they attempt to give some of Michael Jacksons dance moves a go.
Shakespeare and more
Patrick Stewart in the RSC production of Hamlet
BBC Two will be showing The Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of Hamlet starring David Tennant.
However, it isn’t a straight filming of the stage show – this is a recreation of the stage production for television but with the same cast and crew as the stage show.
If you’ve watched the preview above you’ll see that this looks set to be something spectacular with both David Tenant AND Patrick Stewart.
High profile stuff
On BBC One there are some pretty big high profile dramas and they’re not all old fashioned costume dramas either.
There’s a couple of Casualty Christmas specials which are always good for a cry or two, there is of course the costume stuff in the form of Cranford but there’s also a new version of Day of the Triffids.
This new version of a classic will see Dougray Scott as Bill Masen and his team of survivors attempt to battle back the horror of the Triffids in their rapidly breading push to consume a newly blinded humanity.
There are two episodes of Doctor Who on Christmas Day and New Years Day that see the 11th Doctor under David Tenant make his final journey and come into contact with his psychotic nemesis.
There is John Simm, David Tenant, Bernard Cribbins, Catherin Tate, Timothy Dalton, June Whitfield and more than a few Ood.
The Gruffalo
Eastenders goes all melodramatic for Christmas as usual Gavin and Stacey will probably be pretty funny as they enjoy a holiday on the beach in Essex and what will be the real highlight in my house – The Gruffalo.
It may well have at one time been the construct of a scared mouses over active imagination but that creature from the deep dark wood with his terrible claws and terrible jaws is much loved in the Morrison household.
The the BBC is bringing the magical tale of the mouse and his nut to BBC One for Christmas complete with voices from Robbie Coltrane, James Corden, Helena Bonham Carter and many more.
There will be costumes aplenty in Cranford and other dramas
In fact here is the breakdown of who will be playing who in this most wonderful of children’s tales.
The Gruffalo himself will be played by the giant Robbie Coltrane, Mouse by James Corden, Mother Squirrel by Helena Bonham Carter and Owl by John Hurt.
But that’s not all Tom WIlkinson will be playing the charming Fox and Rob Brydon gets to play the cold hearted eating machine that is Snake. Glorious.
Comedy Christmas specials and drama
Back to normailty (or as close to normality as Christmas gets) and we’ve got Holby City, impressions from Culshaw and Stephenson the end of the series for Merlin another Christmas special for the Harper Family in My Family (set in 2039).
There’s a Christmas special for one of my favourite comedies of recent years – Outnumbered, more from The Royle Family, a series finale for Spooks a bit of Strictly and yet more costume drama.
The costume drama in question though is ‘The Turn of the Screw’ a ghost tale starring Michelle Dockery and Sue Johnston – adapted from Henry James’s novel of the same name by Sandy Welcch who also adapted Emma and Jane Eyre.
And of course a Christmas classic that, in my opinion should be all year round – Top of the Pops – presented by Fearne Cotton and Reggie Yates.
It was filmed at Television Centre, featuring performances from the biggest stars of the year and the all important Christmas Number 1.
Not that Christmas number one is particularly important given that it will either go to a charity record or the bloody X-Factor).
So there you go, Christmas television highlights from the BBC (might put them all in to a Google calendar if I get time) for the last two weeks of the year.
And to finish here is an attempt by me to write the worst piece of not particularly poetic verse I can to some up some of the stuff in the post.
Who goes for two as the Master returns
Coltrane gets tusks in the Gruffalo
As Nan does Dickens in Christmas never heard
Justin from Beebies plays a butch bird
My Family is in the future
Outnumbered watch a play
The Royle Family goes on a trip
Then Gavin and Stacey play away
Eastenders make you scream as cheer disappears
Casulaty and Holby have the cues of Christmas fear
Culshaw plays the parts as costumes get worn
Christmas on the BBC, something for one and all
I’ve been a big fan of the BBC food site for a while now and have used it on more than a few occasions to make food.
In fact there’s a couple of pizza recipes that I go back for on at least a monthly basis for our monthly Pizza Saturday at home that include great base and sauce recipes.
With the recent re-building of the whole thing and new, simpler look, it has got both easier to use and more useful.
And one of the things this change has made possible is a brand new Christmas site from the BBC food team.
The New BBC Christmas food site (bbc.co.uk/christmas) has full menu’s for Christmas dinner including all recipes, a menu overview, preperation schedule, to do list and shopping list.
All of these from a number of celebrity chefs covering everything from luxury menus on a budget to a vegetarian Christmas feast.
The recipes and menus are contributed by people like Nigella Lawson, Rick Stein and Levi Roots (Vegie menu).
There are even menu’s for leftovers you can use on boxing day and, if you got a turkey a little on the large size, for the next few days as well.
As well as the menus and planners there are a number of standalone individual recipes from even more celebrity chefs and contributors including prawns, roast potatoes, stuffing and mince pies.
And then on top of all of that there is a cooks calculator for geese, turkey, ham and canapes based on size and amount.
It’s enough to make your mouth water just looking at the red and gold page.
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