You get bbc.in that’s what – If you head over to Bit.ly, or even through Twitter herself (got to be a women with all that gossip and bieber love in the trending topics) you’ll get something other than a bit.ly/[id] as the shortened url.

This has been done to make it more obvious to Twitter users that the URL they’re going to WILL BE a BBC one.

The only place a bbc.in url will take you is to a BBC story.

To me this is a very clever move and one I think other companies might want to catch on to – not sure whether there is a cost implication for the BBC in getting Bit.ly to provide this – although it does strike me as a good premium service model for the company.

Here is an example I tried out for myself – shortening the BBC Internet blog in Bit.ly gave me http://bbc.in/bGNXoP instead of http://www.bit.ly/bGNXoP – although both take you to the same place.

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When there is a cross over I’ll share those posts on here.

This one is relevant – it’s an entry about covering an eco music festival and the problems you get trying to ask opinions.

Covering any festival can be hard work – oh don’t feel sorry for me – I know that wandering around taking a few photos, filming a few interviews with ‘stars’ and coming up with something interesting to say isn’t exactly work.

But, sometimes getting those interviews mean running from having a chat with a stall holder at one end of the field, back to the main stage, waiting around for the previous interviewer to finish, doing a quick interview and then running front of stage to take photos for a gallery.

Straight after taking photos it’s time to go out and get a vox. This is my least favourite part of being a journalist as nobody ‘really’ wants to talk to you and you’re asking the same question over and over again.

At least that’s what is supposed to happen.

At the Grassroots festival I went around the field at Val de la Mar with our BBC Blast Introducing reporter Sam Falle.

We started well – finding someone to talk to, asking them what they think of the festival and their highlight and then moved on.

Unfortunately that was about the only part of our 20 minute ‘voxing’ experience that did go according to plan.

We spent the time chasing people and asking them to talk to us, we had others talking to us but saying things like “I like grass, I like roots and I like eating grass roots” or talking about looking forward to bands not due to play.

But because of the pace we were moving around and the speed between questions – the chance of getting enough sensible responses for a ‘traditional vox’ were slim.

In the end I did manage to get about four responses into a piece I made for BBC Channel Island News – but that was a fraction of what we had available.

So, instead of leaving it on the cutting room floor we decided to make something of it and create the ‘Grassroots ambush’ focusing on Sam Falle chasing people down for a response to the question: Are you enjoying the festival?

There were a lot of people at Grassroots taking photos, filming and asking questions.

The festivals official photographer was Matt Porteous who has put together an amazing gallery on his website.

You can read some great comments from people on the events Facebook page.

Including Charlotte, who highlighted just how good the event turned out to be for families: “Thanks soooooo much, first festival for my three boys (8,9 &12) and they had a blast!! Well done to you all xxxx”

And of course you can see everything Sam and I created on the day through the BBC Jersey website.

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It isn’t the greatest mobile phone in the world but it is small and has all the functionality I need from a phone.

That functionality is pretty much everything but a phone – I need to get online, I need to easily post to twitter and facebook and I’d like to be able to e-mail.

Over the course of owning the phone I’ve installed apps, uninstalled apps, re-installed apps, re-installed the whole phone and broken the shell of the phone.

Over that time I’ve come to settle on a few ‘essential’ apps that have either made my life easier, made it more enjoyable or improved what I do in some way.

So I thought I would compile a list of a few of those apps.

Most of the apps are available in the app store, some are beta versions and easy to find – others you’ll have to look a little harder for if you want them.

All HTC phones have the HTC Sense home screen alternative – which is a bit rubbish to be honest and apparently the reason we haven’t got Android 2.1 for the Tattoo yet.

Home Screen

So the first thing I’ve done is find an alternative to Sense for the home screen – the best thing about Sense was that it gave me an extra two screens but the ADW Launcher  app does that for me and is much prettier than Sense UI.

It allows for a couple of docked apps in the bottom bar, can hide the top bar and has five screens – it also has a lot of ‘customisable’ functionality.

More here >

Photoshop.com for Android

I love Photoshop, I’ve used it for work on PC and Mac in various forms for years and the mobile version is VERY easy to use and intuitive.

It allows you to crop, straighten, colour correction and apply a number of special effects or borders.

And you can upload to a number of different platforms including Flickr, Facebook and Photoshop.com from within the app.

More here >

Spotify & Last.fm

Spotify is NOT an app you would use unless you have an unlimited data plan, and although my data plan is unlimited but with a daily limit – it’s still enough to use it – ish.

Spotify is a great app, it’s easy to use and allows me to find music I wouldn’t necessarily buy – but do love playing every so often. It’s easy to use and can play in the background on Android while you do other things.

Last.fm performs a similar function and is better for ‘discovery’ and finding less well known artists.

More on Spotify here > and Last.fm here >

Skyfire browser

This one was a LOT harder to find as it wasn’t easily available through the Market – but Skyfire is, without a doubt the best mobile phone browser available.

I first discovered it on my last Windows Mobile based HTC phone and finding it for Android I actually jumped for joy – seriously – I made my wife laugh at me.

It is a fully featured browser – video, audio and full screen display with brilliant zooming function. If you can find it this is will completely turn around your Android web browsing experience.

The only fault I can find is the crappy start page and the delay in the top bar (search bar) disappearing when you get to the page you want.

More here >

Seesmic (twitter app)

Seesmic is my favourite Twitter app for Android – I prefer Brizzly for web based Twitter usage but Seesmic is a brilliant mobile app.

It allows you to run several Twitter accounts, easily look through replies and messages, update your profile and search for interesting topics.

The user interface is pretty simple, sticking to Android conventions and with big buttons for my fat fingers.

More here >

Amazon Kindle

This is a fairly recent addition to the Android app family and one that pretty much closes the gap between iPhone and Android markets.

It’s a beautiful application, easy to use – although the Kindle store could be more user friendly – the browsing experience is pleasant enough – but there are other book apps with a more ‘beautiful’ page turn – but the vast scale of the Kindle library makes it worth downloading.

More here >

Audible for Android

This is still a VERY early beta version of the Audible app – but it is an essential edition for any smartphone platform – I currently use my iPod for audible books but being able to leave them on the server and pull down when I like makes a big difference.

It’s very buggy and takes a long time to start up but when it is finally released as a final ‘gold’ version – it will be a must have for any Android owning audiobook listener.

More here >

Beebplayer for Android

There’s not a lot to be said for this app – it basically allows you to watch BBC tv shows and listen to radio shows on your Android phone – and for those of us without the most recent Android phone – it’s the ONLY WAY of making the most of BBC material on the move.

It works wonderfully, is simple and unfortunately – now discontinued – but pressure needs to be put on the Beeb for releasing an app, or at least making their website usable for people with sub 2.2 Android phones.

We can’t all afford to upgrade annually to the latest version of the form.

Other apps

There are of course many many more apps I use regularly – including the Movies app and a few games – my favourite being Abduction.

I’m also a big fan of Evernote because it is cross platform BUT I haven’t got it working properly on my phone yet so can’t include it.

There is also a mobile friendly version of this blog now – although if you use Skyfire you won’t need it.

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When the site you’re changing is the BBC News website, one of the most loved sites on the web, those little changes become even more contentious.

Changes to the BBC News website have usually come in the form of evolution, a tweak to structure, a change of banner image, an increase in width – small changes that have gradually improved the site a little bit at a time over the 13 years of the sites existence.

So, with the BBC News site editor, Steven Herrmann describing the next big relaunch as: “This has led us to the biggest rethink of the design of the site since 2003″, there can’t be many finger nails left on the hands of the News Interactive designers.

You can see a preview of the new look site in the BBC News gallery and I’ve got a few screenshots I’ve grabbed myself to illustrate this post.

The new look site includes an updated design giving journalists more space to play with when publishing stories and the homepage having more room to display those stories.

Video and images are more prominent on the site with big video and lots of images across the front page.

They also now highlight the big stories of the day, show you the newest stories and make it easier to share the stories you like most.

The BBC gets a fair amount of its traffic from social media sites with Facebook dominating that drive.

Now the site makes it easier for people to share the stories they like – in much the same way the new look iPlayer makes it easier to share – there’s a recommend button at the bottom of every story so you can post it straight to Facebook.

There are also icons to show if something is audio/video and a ‘new’ graphic that will sit next to text links to show a recently composed story.

Alongside the new look BBC News site there is also a new version of the Content Production System BBC journalists use to publish stories to the website. It’s easier to use than before which helps.

I’ve been spending a little time playing with the new look BBC News website as it’s been made available to people within the BBC network (these opinions are all mine and not the BBCs) and I’m seriously impressed.

Ok so my first reaction was a Simpsons-esq “waaaaaatttt!” but I soon got over it and started to see the benefits.

There were still a few issues that will clearly get resolved over time as the new site is phased in over the next week or two but on the surface, accepting its beta state – it looks great and is MUCH MUCH easier to find your way around.

Although there is a LOT more going on when you first visit – bigger pictures, more options, a heavier page – it feels less cluttered.

The new site is actually exactly the same width as the old site – the difference is in the placing of the menu.

Instead of having a main menu on the left hand side it’s moved across the top – making use of dropdowns to aid in navigation.

The only problem I can see at the moment is that story pages don’t seem to be making full use of the available space – text doesn’t spread out to fill the extra screen real estate and the quote boxes feel a bit weird all big and pushed off to one side – half indenting the text.

But it might simply be that’s a problem that will solve itself as stories are written and published straight to the new templates – I get the impression the site I’m seeing is BBC News-old stories put into BBC News-new templates.

An example of an ill fit – and I’ve suffered this on the blog as I look up older posts written with pictures for a smaller template – is the wide picture that once filled the available ‘text area’ now sitting off to the left.

The current wide image is 466 pixels across – the new site looks like it could handle 620 pixels – but again it might be a design decision to have a large ‘white space’ buffer between the text and the sidebar.

With all changes it will take people a while to get used to it, but eventually it will become second nature and we’ll look back at the older stories and laugh at how old fashioned they look.

The new news online site is fresh, open and easy to navigate and with the promise of alternatives to flash for video in the pipeline – closer to brilliant than any version yet.

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In its heydey – the era of Alan Whicker and the jet set – flying was all champagne at your seat and comfort first.

Even as a child I found flying brilliant and fun – even though most of the time it basically involved a cramped plane on a package holiday to Portugal.

Now, travelling using one of the low fairs air shuttle services to and from England feels more like cheap, it passed into the realms of undignified.

Most of the fault here lies with security and that’s a ‘pleasure’ almost all travellers surfer regardless of class of travel.

You get your boarding pass from a computer, or when its broken from a person who closely resembles a breathing computer (they must be REALLY bored).

Then it’s security time.

You go from the check=-in desk through windy corridors, past signs telling you to put water into the bin and your dignity into a bag.

Then, after lining up for several years you are asked to remove shoes, belt, coat and the final bit of your dignity that isn’t in a clear plastic bag – sorry, re-sealable plastic bag.

They scan it all and sometimes you get to walk through the metal detector, pick up your bag, get dressed and move on.

But, if you’re a bit of a scruffy oaf like me – you go through, it doesn’t beep, they still decide to pat you down anyway – and is it me or are they getting more intimate?

Then you have to wait for them to open and rummage through your bag, all because your inhaler looked like liquid on their scanner.

And all of that is at a small regional airport, I really can’t wait to go through the peepy tom scanner and have my retina checked against my biometric passport.

If it wasn’t for the fact it takes so long I’d just go by boat from Jersey or the train across country.

I guess the price we pay for convenience is surrender of dignity.

Next step in the ‘security’ check list: Route A through security for men and Route B for women and children.

Remove all clothing, place ID hand with ID implant on scanner, put clothes and bags through X-ray machine – walk through cloud of cleaning spray, put clothes back on and enjoy your flight.