Radio 4 and the vote button

I’m not normally one to complain, in fact I’ll usually go out of my way to avoid complaining at all costs - even putting up with broken things for the sake of avoiding conflict.

So, if I’m prepared to put up with a dead watch because I don’t want to go through the process of taking it back – you can imagine my opinion on complaining about programming or the BBC.

In fact, as the BBC employs me I try to complain about it as little as possible. But there is something that got me a little riled.

So, for the first time in my life here is an ‘open letter of complaint’ about the BBC Radio 4 website.

Don’t get me wrong, it isn’t about the website itself, I love the new look and will love it even more as the programme teams start to fill the wonderful /programme pages with the mass of content they used to put into the old Radio 4 pages.

No my complaint is about a small 68×68 pixel, 1.6kb GIF that has appeared on the far right of the top navigation bar.

Dear BBC Radio 4

I’m usually a big fan of the BBC Radio 4 website, even in its latest implementation.

I’m also a very big fan of the BBC Radio 4 output for its quality, humour, intelligence and the fact that it expects the same level of intelligence of me.

However, imagine my surprise when I pointed my browser towards bbc.co.uk/radio4 only to discover a blemish, a little black and white square in the corner of the otherwise pristine BBC centre piece of excellence.

I had to look twice at the text of the abomination because, surely the mighty Rado 4, home of Humphries, Archers and the Now Show aren’t prostituting their homepage for votes like a normal, every day cheap website (yes I know I’ve done it but that’s different - ed).

The great BBC Radio 4 is asking me, through a permanent graphic on their homepage to vote for them in the Webby Awards – ok so it isn’t ugly – but it feels OH SO WRONG on BBC Radio 4.

Yes, please ask me to vote for you, I don’t mind that but do it through an article – write something and link to it from the promo space – not through a permanent blemish at the top of your banner.

Then I start to click around only to discover this blemish on EVERY SINGLE PAGE of the BBC Radio 4 website.

Please, for the love of all that is good and normal – remove it. I’ll vote for you but I don’t want to be preached at and pushed in this way.

Radio 4 you are bigger than that.

From Disgruntled of Cyberspace

As you can see from my little rant above – I got a bit wound up at the sight of this little spot on an otherwise Clearasil manufacturer disappointing face.

The BBC Radio 4 design team do deserve the Webby Award – it’s the People’s Choice award for the amazing World on the Move site.

Throughout 2008, Radio 4’s World on the Move tracked the most awe inspiring natural spectacle - great animal migration.

Through a worldwide legion of reporters, scientists and amateur naturalists they built an interactive map and full site packed with reports to create a record of the journeys of animals as diverse as Humpback whales and Monarch butterflies.

As you can see - a great thing to vote for that is, unfortunately, let down by the way they’re asking for vote.

I voted anyway.

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Been a bit slow lately

OK so hands up who hasn’t been blogging very much recently - yup my hands are up and you’re right, things have been a little on the quiet side around her recently.

There are a couple of reasons for this including a lack of time, Easter holidays, a new computer I’m trying to bed in and a few issues with my host.

I’m not complaining about my host at all, not specifically as I find them helpful, good value for money, fast and reliable - however, my blog has been causing a few issues.

Not the editorial but the technical side. I received an e-mail from my host (Fasthosts for anyone interested) suggesting that my site is causing the rest of the shared hosting server to slow down.

The problem is that I’m on death row. This site has been moved to a ‘probation server’ which is probably why things have been running a little slower AND if I don’t fix it within a reasonable period of time then upyourego.com and associated e-mail accounts will be deleted.

So instead of blogging I’ve been working out what’s wrong. The description of the issue didn’t really help me much:

The site creates 10 PHP processes as soon as the application pool is recycled and we found the server after the pool had recycled with a total of 20 PHP processes running a result.

These PHP processes, all owned by your domain, were busy doing things, with varying amounts of server CPU utilisation. At one point I saw 2 processes using 40+% each, but in general the total of all the processes doesn’t seem to fall below 40-50%.

With a little help (ok a lot of help) from people on my Twitter friends list I’ve so far installed WP Super Cache and removed any plugins not essential for the running of this theme.

I also removed an image of Terry Wogan that seemed to be getting a rediculous number of hits.

I’ve now sent an e-mail back to Fasthosts asking them if they can check again to see if the problem is fixed. Failing that I’m going to delete the blog folder, re-install Wordpress and start again with a basic theme and no plugins.

I’ll keep you posted but this is just to say sorry for any errors you might spot over the next few weeks.

Ideally I’d just moved to a dedicated server, the basic package from Fasthosts is only £65 a month BUT I only just make enough in ads from my blog to cover the cost of the basic hosting plan at the moment - so can’t cover the rest yet.

Normal service WILL resume shortly. In the meantime I’ll try and post an iPlayer pick today to make up for it.

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Wossy and BobbyLlew in Tesla

I have a post coming very soon with the title ‘the rise and rise of online video’ that looks at sites like ChannelFlip and Rev3 and how they’re fast becoming the ‘Digital TV’ of the 21st Century.

To understand what I mean by that you need to take a step back in time to around the early to mid-nineties when Digital TV (in the form of Sky) was taking off in the UK - becoming mainstream.

At that time it would be really cool if you saw someone you knew (in the fame sense of knew) on one of the digital channels (i.e. not BBC, ITV or Channel 4) - even though the shows were relatively low budget and often a bit crap.

Well Online is fast taking on that role - as Digital Television has become the norm, as it is taking over from ‘traditional’ television in terms of new shows, big commissions etc - online is taking the role of ‘known people’ doing their own things, creating their own shows and doing the whole ‘ooo cool lets get cult’.

It isn’t television but Phil and Phills Perfect Ten, Stephen Fry’s Podgrams and Colling and Herrins Podcast make for great unique, original straight to the audience radio.

And in television you’ve got people like Robert Llewellyn (Red Dwarf, Scrapheap Challenge, Top Trumps) creating their own shows and even networks.

The latest from Robert is LlewTube - which has one main show in the form of Car Pool - that’s just had its second episode (first official). It basically sees Robert driving around London in a car (either Tesla or Prius) with someone famous or interesting or both.

The first episode was with Red Dwarf (and other things) director Ed By and the second with Jonathan Ross. You can watch that now - but please do check out www.llewtube.com.

Did you enjoy it? OK so the quality isn’t perfect yet, the camera work needs a bit of tweeking and the audio needs a bit of a sledghammering - but the concept is brilliant, the content is brilliant and there are another 16 already recorded - being released weekly.

But this isn’t the only online video Robert is doing - he also presents MoWer (or Machine of the Week) for ChannelFlip - the network launched by Wil Harris and Justin Gayner.

ChannelFlip, despite a slightly slow start that saw several months go by without an update - has rapidly increased both its output, its profile and its user numbers.

As well as having Robert Llewellyn - Wil Harris recently announced via his Twitter stream that comedian David Mitchell (Peep Show, Mitchell and Web) will be presenting a show for the network.

That will be added to the already impressive line-up of shows from lesser known presenters - including Wil and Justin themselves.

You can watch an episode of Robert Lewellyn’s MoWer which has just broken the iTunes top 30:

Back? Right so lets move on - it isn’t just the big high profile sites providing great content - there are also smaller players - just go through YouTube Channels or look at Blip.tv for some of the brilliant independent video content online - but ignore my channel.

As video production gets increasingly more simple, as costs of bandwidth and ease of putting online (set up a blip.tv network, upload video, tick podcast box and go) improves - and as advertising revenues for podcasts increase - I can imagine an increasing number of mid-level celebs launching their own shows.

How long before Andi Peters launches a weekly cooking show - actually Wil Harris - how about giving Andi a call or sending him a Tweet - xxandip?

But there is a more serious side to this online video lark - with sites like ChannelFlip trailblaising their way through and millions using the iPlayer on a regular basis (an average of 700 thousand a week for Top Gear alone while it was on) - could we see a new online PVT service funded from the £130 million BBC digital switchover fund?

Should that money go towards creating a new PVT online broadcaster that carried documentaries on difficult subjects, carried entertainment shows that aren’t commercial enough or wide audience enough to work on television but still interesting enough to follow up?

Could an online PVT service include live streamed (or even just reported) coverage of all the local councils in the country or more specific local news - that there is NO WAY local newspapers will effectively deliver across the country.

Who knows.

Speaking of cookery shows - I got my wife to film me making pasta salad as a sort of test piece to see whether I should continue with my ‘Reluctant Geeks Diet Diary’ idea - the camera work was brilliant - lets leave it there.

So back to the drawing board for my own video ideas - I need an idea for a project that isn’t just me talking into the camera - answers on a postcard - or ideally in the comments bellow.

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The future of news?

This blog post started life as a comment on the blog of Birmingham Post Journalist, Joanna Geary.

However, having gone read the comment back I thought it was worth sharing with you as well.

Joanna ponders a world ‘beyond the parasitic news model‘. How news will be funded and organised online when the bottom falls out of the ‘mainstream’ media market.

My suggestion - let it go.

It’s possible that there is no way around the problem and we have to accept that we’re moving into a new era of journalism.

We’ve had the coffee house era, the pamphlet era, the newspaper era and maybe now we’re moving into the social era - almost back to the idea of news spreading in coffee houses - but in this case from individual bloggers talking directly about their own story.

Instead of several newspapers employing journalists to tell stories and spread news - we’re moving to a time when people tell their own stories in their own space and those stories are in turn spread by search engines and aggregators.

Each blogger, twitterer, podcaster or even message board contributor could make small amounts of revenue from their story in their space – others could make slightly larger amounts of money by sharing the stories of others in their space.

But it’s all much more social, much more democratic and on a much larger scale globally but smaller scale in terms of where the stories are held and produced.

Local newspapers could still exist as papers of record – possibly on a public service model – reporting on local politics and big issues in each area – maybe part funded by advertising and part funded by a ‘local media tax’.

Just an idea

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Zero to 1000 in 10 minutes

OK so I just witnessed something a bit weird - the opening up and first postings of what will soon become one of the highest profile Twitter accounts.

It’s great that @Wossy (Jonathan Ross) and @stephenfry (Stephen Fry) and even @bobbyllew (Robert Llewellyn) are on Twitter but now that @rustyrockets (Russell Brand) has joined the BritTwit fellowship - things are going to go mental.

I watched Jonathan Ross post at around 10.25pm “russell now has proper twitter account ! Would you like his name ?” which was quickly followed by “@rustyrockets” three minutes later.

Between that moment, which was quickly followed by this post from @rustyrockets “i have come to join you pleas be gentle with me as ive been feeling vulnerable… yet implausibly, sexy” and now - he went from 0 to 1700 followers.

It seems to have settled down a little bit now but at one point - a refresh every second saw an extra 20 or 30 followers.

There’s even a TwitPic from @Wossy - I guess Russell was at his house. Oh and “Hello Daily Mail Hack searching for Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand in the hope of finding another pointless story”.

Of course this comment from @Wossy might mean a limited number of posts from @rustyrockets “my kids just told russell that twitter is for oldies. he is cursing me now.”

But somehow I doubt that would have an effect - although interestingly not long before that @bobbyllew was talking about his daughter describing Twitter as being like “MSN for old people”.

Is Twitter really for old people? OK so I’m now in my late twenties - so what are the, oh god I can’t believe I’m about to post this but, what ARE the kids using nowadays?

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New look iPlayer boards

The iPlayer message boards are a really interesting place to hang around - mainly for some of the vitriolic comments from people that can’t get shows they want or can’t make it work.

But the other thing that makes them interesting is that they seem to be the first of the BBC message boards to go wide.

As well as going wide and stretching things out a little bit there is a much cleaner look and feel to them.

The text is on a white background - in boxes that are in turn on the black iPlayer background.

The links are the iPlayer dark pink and there are permalinks to every section and post clearly labelled.

There are a few issues - when you view your discussions it no longer tells you how many posts have been made on that thread ’since’ your last visit or highlights the threads with new posts.

It’s also a little tough to get used to at first with the really bright white on a black background - but it works. It’s stylish compared to other BBC message boards and hopefully the way the rest will go.

It doesn’t feel nearly as cramped as other boards (such as Points of View) BUT to a certain extent does feel a little too open and wide.

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BBC going short?

The all new BBC Backstage Idea Store allows the more geeky of BBC user to suggest things that could be done with BBC data and ways of improving existing BBC web services.

One such suggestion is asking whether the BBC should have its own short url service like TinyURL or bit.ly.

The rationale as defined by the poster (LoopZilla) says:

bit.ly, snurl, tinyurl are used by the BBC and many others.  What doesn’t the BBC have its own short URL service?

The basic concept behind it seem to be that as the BBC increasingly uses services like Twitter (and those services become popular with the BBCs audience) and other such systems that involve creating content in a minimum of characters - making shorter urls available will become more important.

there are many a move taking place within the BBC to standardise URLs introducing PIPs and codes - BBC News and Sport already have them - /programmes and iPlayer share them and the new /music uses standard codes as well.

So the question is - would it be any stretch of the imagination for the BBC to introduce its own short url service with a BBC domain name instead of using a commercial one that could do any number of things that might bring the BBC brand into distripute without warning.

Short URL services are only of any use on micro-blogging platforms like Twitter, within Facebook updates or when sending Instant Messages.

Other than that you’d be just as well using the full URL. I mean on a blog you’d (in the post or in the comments) you could just as easily create a quick link with a word or two to send someone to a website.

On this blog I offer a TinyURL version of every story - for example the post on the new Being Human series has the full URL:
http://www.upyourego.com/blog/index.php/2009/01/06/the-next-big-geeky-cult/

But can also be accessed here:
http://tinyurl.com/73sgpy

A comment from Derivadow on the Idea Store post  suggests that short urls are NOT a good thing as they break Google Juice.

URL shortning serivces are evil, because they break the web and harm your google juice. A much better soultion is to design short urls in the first instance.

I’m not sure I understand why people don’t like URLs - they are what makes the web, services that try to replace them (eg DOI) or services that provide another level of indirection and therefore a single point of failure cause fractures in the fabric of the web. Don’t do it people!

To a certain extent that makes sense - but if the story lives in one place (at the full URL) with the short URL available using the same code it will still break the Google Juice - but does it really matter for the BBC?

In fact is Google Juice REALLY that important? Surely what is equally important is getting as many people as possible to see your content - if someone sends it to their 10 thousand friends on Twitter - that would be a big boost to anybody.

It would be interesting for the BBC to offer short url’s for some of their news stories and it shouldn’t be THAT difficult really - the code to do this isn’t exactly ground breaking.

For news you could just use the same code already in place.

So the page could exist at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7814054.stm

But have an alternative URL at
http://bbc.im/n/7814054

In fact a link to an iPlayer video could exist at:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00gndt1/

To:
http://bbc.im/i/b00gndt1

Dot IM is the domain for Isle of Man and is already owned by the BBC and not in active use.

The examples above use a folder like letter to show what area of the site it comes from - but if the codes are really unique that shouldn’t really be necessary.

The iPlayer example could just as easily be: http://bbc.cim/boogndt1.

If the app was built properly it could also be extended to those sites without unique codes (where the journalist writes the filename). At the time you create the story you’d also create the short code by giving it an ID (that was matched against the database to make sure it wasn’t already in use.

So this story on BBC Jersey:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/jersey/content/articles/2005/12/14/civil_partnership_feature.shtml

Could become:
http://bbc.im/jcivpart - or to make it more forumulaic could be date and creation based so http://bbc.im/09010625

Oh and the short url service I set up is gtfa.eu (get the flip away you). Oh and while you’re at it - this could be a useful plugin to install: http://www.longurlplease.com/

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Mapping down to your house

An idea was posted on the BBC Backstage Idea Store asking whether it was possible to search for stories that happened around the posters house - basically to get as local as possible.

It was posted by www.richardsprojects.co.uk and basically said:

Sometimes I would like to find news that is happening in a certain area. This area might be quite small and I might be less interested in how recent the news is.

I may for example want to find all news that happened near my house in the last year.

The original author suggested a few solutions to the problem - these including providing a location based search, making sure location data is available within the news feeds and metadata and creating an algorithm to search through the content on pages to look for place names and adding location data where necessary.

But there may be a solution in the offering from the BBC in the not to distant future - and it will come in the form of an enhance (albeit original video free) BBC Local.

As BBC Local moves into the News & Sport CPS and towards the new look service I think you’ll be able to do something along these lines from within your BBC Local site.

Mapping will probably play a fairly big part of these sites as they develop (without original video) over the next year or two.

Expect to see an interactive map of the region the site covers (so for example Bristol) with wide reaching stories created by the Bristol team (as well as TV/radio teams for the area).

Then as you zoom further in you’ll be able to see more locally relevant stories - eventually down as far as your own street - although I doubt they’ll be many at that level from the BBC.

Obviously I don’t know for certain this is what will happen - it is what I’d like to see happen but I’m also not convinced BBC Local content gets local enough to make it worthwhile.

I mean its ok for Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man - local is island wide here and there - but for someone like BBC Three Counties - local is an interesting issue.

Ideally local would go down to the street level - in fact it would go down to house level - but life isn’t ideal and the BBC Local content is a long way from being THAT local.

You might get the odd story you can tie to the odd street - but if you looked at a full detailed map of Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire - the number of pins would still be pretty sparse - even after nearly a decade of being am active site.

Maybe if a partnership agreement could be struck between the BBC and local newspapers you’d get the level of localness you’re looking for.

The BBC has the big regional stuff, local newspapers cover a town and then if you pulled in parish newsletters (giving them a blog or a way of publishing online and encouraged residents associations to blog as well - you could create a fully detailed map with a mass of truly local content.

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Inspiration into flattery?

The BBC has long been the beacon of inspiration for many a person in all aspects of the creative industry.

The BBC introduces a genre of programming and other TV networks take that genre on in their own way.

The BBC introduces a style of web interface and very quickly other sites start to introduce elements of that design style and language.

In some cases they just copy all the elements outright (from Your Site is Valid).

Then again some take the basic concept for what it is (a great example of user interface and interactivity design) and does it in their own way.

And then again still - some copy a bit of both - the elements themselves, the design style AND the navigation, interaction structure.

The latest site I’ve noticed doing just that came to me in the form of a television channel recommendation from my father in law.

Its an Iranian English language news channel called Press TV and its web presence bears a remarkable resemblance to the BBC news site.

You can see it at http://presstv.ir

The left hand navigation is the most obvious - the gray bar with red line at the end to show the area you’re on, then when you move to a section with sub-indexes it drops down in exactly the same way the one on news.bbc.co.uk does.

The actual index area is almost identical to the generic BBC news online index and the story page is layed out almost identically as well.

In fact the even the social bookmarking links are more or less the same as on BBC News.

Now the site isn’t identical in every way - the right hand navigation is very different, the top and bottom layouts are very different and not every index uses that style.

But the basic structure is close enough to the BBC site than can be put aside as pure coincidence.

However, this is where some would get all indignant and cry foul play - personally I think its a good thing.

There are so many sites online with piss poor user interface design that when something clearly works - I think it should be embraced and used across the board.

OK so PressTV.ir uses a similar colour scheme and layout - but if they can’t take it from a public service broadcaster who can they - share and share alike and in turn make the world wide web a less confusing place.

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