New look for Radio 2

The home of Terry Wogan, Steve Wright, Russell Brand, Jonathan Ross, Bob Dylan, Chris Evans, Claudia Winkleman, Courtney Pine and many more is set to get a new look online - and the team aren’t taking any risks.

Well I say they aren’t taking any risks - they are changing the design and navigation of a heavily visited website aimed at an audience not particularly open to the idea of regular and rapid change - but at least they’ll cope better than the Radio 4 audience will.

I am of course talking about Radio 2 who will very soon see their site move into the new wide format that already encases Radio 1, 6music, 5 Live, Radio 3 and BBC 7 (the later very slightly controversially).

The station that includes Dale Winton, Jeremy Vine, Jools Holland, Mark Lemar and Richard Hammond among its presentation fraternity will move to put /programmes at the centre of the site (much like all the other radio sites).

The show pages will stay pretty much the same to start with (much like Radio 1 and 6music did with their re-launch) but will eventually change.

A quote for you “We’ll be redesigning the network’s show pages next but we wanted to bring listeners some of the benefits of features we are able to deliver now.”

That comes from the page that drew the inspiration for my ‘not taking any risks’ comment at the start of this blog post.

Speaking of the show pages - the page also explains what will be in the gap (although if you already follow this sort of thing you’ll know it is the network branding).

“If you are a regular visitor to Radio 2 then you will notice that the actual content area on many pages hasn’t changed but the page layout has.

“This results in a lot of space on the left-hand side of those pages. We have used the network’s branding to fill the space whilst we continue to work on redesigning the existing site.”

You see what’s different about the BBC Radio 2 re-launch is that they’ve taken on board the lessons learnt from the massive negative response to the BBC 7 re-launch and are telling their users/listener well in advance of the changes set to come.

The Some Changes page takes the form and template of a show page but is basically full of information and screen grabs on the changes people can expect from Monday 27 October at bbc.co.uk/radio2.

Some of the changes include clearer and cleaner navigation - across the top instead of down the site, big promotional boxes, bolder colours etc…

Content has also been better organised into fewer more distinct sections that before. Again to the page: “The Radio 2 Homepage had been redesigned and reorganised into distinct sections with bigger promotional spaces to allow us to tell you more about what’s available on the site and the station.”

(all images on this page from the BBC Radio 2 Some Changes page)

I already mentioned it will make use of the /programmes page - well this will come in through the schedule and by providing an archive of specific episodes of shows.

Basically this means you can go to the Russell Brand page and then go back through every show to get an overview of what was said - this is already directly available through /programmes but will now be available under the radio 2 format as well.

The other area they seem to have got it right is in asking for feedback.

They say: “We’d really like to hear your comments and feedback on the changes that are taking place. Please use the contact form on this page to let us know your thoughts.”

Now feedback is regularly asked for - and given - on new BBC website changes but it normally comes AFTER the site has been changed and on the BBC Internet Blog (which really speaks to the converted/initiated).

What’s different about this approach is that the feedback is being asked for BEFORE the launch and on the same site that the people using it stay/hang out.

Although a public beta would be more useful than a few screenshots.

James Cridland - BBC Audio & Music interactive big brain talks about this issue on his blog - seemingly after a geek crush conversation with Digg’s Kevin Rose.

Apparently Kevin told James (in response to a question about the negative response to BBC 7 et al): “Tell your audience what you’re doing. Show them your new designs, talk them through them, listen to them.”

Which is very good advice and advice the BBC seem to be taking on a more consistent basis - although it will be interesting to see how people react to the new BBC Local pages when they launch - I’ve seen them and although they look good - they’re also VERY different.

It’s great to see new designs, new look pages and these wider templates are bringing the BBC into a more consistent visual and navigation language - but people don’t like change and when they clearly tell us things they don’t like - we should take it on board.

Kevin Rose also told James: “People don’t like change, so you’ll get a few days of pain, but if you still have problems after a few weeks, it’s time to look at what they’re saying and taking them seriously”.

Can an organisation like the BBC actually do that? Are we open enough yet to listen and where there are lots of consistent complaints about something specific - do something about it?

You can do that HERE.

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10 things to do on a rainy lunchbreak

We all love lists, they’re the mainstay of the blogosphere and pretty much the sole type of content on the DIGG homepage (or at least it often feels that way).

I’ve made lists before, I’ve put together lists of the people I’d most like to have dinner with, the people I’d like to run my fantasy magazine and others - this is my first top ten list.

It’s the list of things to do on a rainy day during your lunchbreak.

1 ) Read a book
Reading is fun and I like to keep a book in my bag at all times - that way I can quickly pull it out and read it. Although reading at your desk in an open plan office isn’t much fun - you need ’spaces’ in your workplace for this to work.

2 ) Eat
Just gourge yourself on nasty fatty snacks to kill time.

3 ) Listen to podcasts on your iPod
What it says on the tin really, just find a quiet corner, put the buds in and listen away to anything from TWIT to the Friday Comedy Podcast from BBC Radio 4.

4 ) Catch up on TV
If your in the UK you can visit bbc.co.uk/iplayer or itv.com and catch up with last nights television that you might have missed. It’s also a great way of knowing what people were talking about on your office facebook group or even around the water cooler this morning. I haven’t included 4OD as it requires a download and probably won’t work in most offices.

5 ) Read blogs
Just go to technorati.com and read blog posts on a massive range of issues from Britney and her kids to the cost of a loaf of bread in Brighton!

6 ) Annoy workmates
Find different ways of pissing off the other people stuck in the office during a busy lunchbreak. This could be another list on its own but for example you could:

1) Shout out the results of last nights footie match so that anyone that recorded it hears.

2) Hum really loudly an annoying tune so nobody can get it out of their head.

3) Talk about the ending of a TV show or film you know people haven’t seen yet and want to.

7 ) Play games
Go to somewhere like king.com or search the BBC for a range of games and get playing. See if you can beat your own personal best bejewelled score.

8 ) Get wet
Go outside and get soaking wet and then come back into the office and pretend to everyone that you REALLY LOVE THE RAIN and NEVER GET COLDS. Then spend the rest of the day sneezing and coughing.

9 ) Go virtual window shopping
Head over to Apple.com, Amazon.com, Play.com, Dell.com or any e-commerce site of your choice and make up shopping baskets of things you’d love to have but can’t afford.

A good game is to set yourself a budget (say £10,000) and see if you can hit that figure EXACTLY within a certain amount of time (say 10 minutes).

You could make it more challenging by setting certain criteria like it must include at least seven CDs with a folky-blues feel and a green label.

In fact you could involve other bored workmates and set each other challenges. (I might do a full post on the Virtual Shopping Game next time I’m bored at lunchtime).

10 ) Make a list
Think of something and then make a list and see if you can get everyone else in the office also bored and not able to go out due to the rain to join in - might start a fun debate.

Can you think of any more?

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Not to adblock?

Every time I read the comments under a story, Digg post or forum thread that has even a small mention of adverts on web pages there is always at least one, but often MANY MORE, posts from people saying “I never see adverts” or “I use AdBlock so it doesn’t bother me” or annoyingly “what ads?”.

I can sympaphise with people that block ads, some websites go well over the top with the flashy, noisy, introcive banners and other sites aren’t using particularly trustworthy ad servers - so you could end up with all sorts of crap loaded on to your computer if you’re not careful.

But there is another side to this as well. I don’t normally contribute to threads about adverts on websites because my point of view seems to be the polar opposite of many others.

If you read some of these threads you get the feeling that they think everything should be free, there should be no adverts and they shouldn’t have to do anything to get what they want.

Content isn’t free though - ok it might appear to come online for nothing - this blog for instance doesn’t cost you a sausage and I can’t imagine anyone wanting to pay to read my ramblings - but it still costs me to host it, the domain name costs money and although I do it for passion - it still costs time to produce.

The same applies to other sites, especially newspapers and magazines where the content is written by professional writers who need to be paid, has heavy bandwidth that costs a small fortune and often includes images that have rights costs associated with them.

With this in mind I posted this simple comment to a thread on a message board about adverts on a popular magazine website recently “I don’t mean to sound harsh or anything but don’t you feel guilty about using adblock?”

My argument FOR leaving AdBlock off is a simple one - its the ads that cover the costs of running the website - it’s been made fairly clear that people aren’t prepared to pay for content online so the advertising model has been flourishing as a way of covering the costs of paying journalists, bandwidth bills etc.

At the moment not enough people use adblock for it to matter but if it does spread and nobody is seeing ads - do you think content on sites like topgear.com or guardian.co.uk will stay free for long?

I personally make a point of looking at ads on a site and if it interests me - clicking on the ad - after all - if I’ve enjoyed the content provided by that site - for free - then I think I owe them a little of my time in return.

If a website doesn’t get enough money to cover costs it will be forced to drop staff or cut services - nobody wants to see that from a site they enjoy.

Also - with advertising revenue and sales dropping through the floor in the traditional newspaper business - online revenue is going to become ever more important - that means showing adverts.

Good quality content doesn’t come cheap. Top writers charge a lot of money for their words, great photographers go to great legnths to get the photo and expect to be rewarded - musicians deserve some reward for their craft, talent and art - and so do film makers.

If everybody had the same attitude as some on forums, comments etc then nothing would get made. I do think we pay too much for some content - £15 for a DVD when it first comes out is rediculous - especially as the creatives behind the film see very little of the profit made in the end - Music is even more of a telling tale with most of the money going to the labels.

But we’re starting to break free from that now - musicians are releasing their own music and getting more of the final profit - indie films are becomming more popular and finding wider markets and soon we’ll see authors doing much the same.

Back to websites - A question I was wondering was “would you pay a monthly subscription for your favourite website in order to have the adverts turned off?”

For example - its very likely that people outside the UK are going to start seeing adverts across bbc.co.uk soon - the idea being that with half of the sites users coming from outside the UK, or people that don’t pay the licence fee that covers the sites costs - those people should contribute something.

Would you pay a monthly subscription of, say $5 to be able to view everything on bbc.co.uk without adverts?

Another question I was thinking about was “If a way was found for sites to be able to block access to anyone with AdBlock enabled - would you disable adblock to view the site or stop using it completely?”

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Changing pages

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the BBC adding those little buttons to the bottom of story pages that allows users to Digg, Facebook etc a story. Doctorvee wasn’t overly impressed, not being a fan of little buttons and pointing out that the BBC shouldn’t be favouring some providers over others.

Personally I find them helpful and have used them more than once - mainly to read reaction to a story - something that isn’t available on every BBC News Online article.

But I do agree that they look a mess and should really include more than just the five providers selected by the BBC.

I use social bookmarking buttons on Up Your Ego but not in a way that looks a mess - I use the brilliant Share This plugin that lets me group them all into a neat little layer based pop-up and direct links to Digg and Del.icio.us on the right hand block of a story page.

Which brings me on to the point of this post - The Guardian.

Now gaurdian.co.uk was given a bit of a facelift a while ago but they ignored the rest of it - just the homepage. The story pages and some of the sub-indexes where left in their original form.

This wouldn’t have been a problem if it wasn’t for the fact that the once brilliant Guardian interface was now creaking under an ever increasing weight of social media tools.

It was starting to feel tired, narrow and a bit behind the times. Well they’ve finally started moving their story pages to a new design and it makes a massive difference.

As you can see from the red marked screen grab above - they’ve increased the width of the main content area, added related links near the top of the left hand navigation, kept the strong header space and made their advertising/related content column more prominent and useful.

The screen grab above shows the difference between the old content area (still active on news stories) and the new content area (that covers most of the rest of the site). The extra space makes a big difference to the comfort of reading and is similar to the leap the BBC took with News Online a couple of years ago.

The new ‘More On’ section at the top of the left hand menu seems to be a combination of direct links to hard section indexes and on the fly generated, metadata based soft indexes although I could be wrong - they might actually have an iPod index.

The bottom half of the story is where the interesting changes have come into place. Under the old style the bottom of a page would include related articles, related links, links to a photo story and sometimes outside links.

Which, in a pre social web world would have been fine - in fact any major site carrying links to other sites was a rare thing once upon a time. And related articles are always useful - but as a simple text link at the bottom of a feature it’s easy to overlook them.

This meant, more often than not - brilliant related content wouldn’t be seen - content that really adds to a story.

Under the new style this is more visual, more interactive. Social links have been added and the related content links have become more visual and highlighted.

You’ve still got the traditional ‘print version’ and ‘email’ links as have always been there - but now, instead of the Guardians own ‘Save this story’ link they’ve used the very same Share This Plugin I talked about above - the one I use on Up Your Ego and is used on MANY a blog.

Then we have the related information displayed in a visual format and broken down into specific sections. First the Related Pictures area. This is another interesting addition to the site.

Click a photo or the title of the gallery underneath the photos will will pop-up a new window with a photo story inside - this is basically a selection of photos annotated with relevant information - a useful device for telling a story and one that often has more impact than writing a 600 word article.

The photo story page also includes a More On this information box and the Share This button I mentioned before. The problem with the share this function in the pop-up (and I tried it out ont he story shown in the screen-grab above) is that it opens Digg or whatever your social net of choice is - in the pop-up instead of refering back to the original window.

Now for many this is probably ok as it keeps it self contained but if you’re looking to move on and follow the strand presented to you by Digg then it’s a pain - however they’ve probably gone for the for everyone approach.

Back to the article page now and to finish off they’ve got a great selection of related articles - things that are worth reading to broaden your knowledge of a topic a little more - they’re all grouped together at the bottom with a headline, summary, date and tags.

A nice re-design that incorporates a selection of modern web features without going over the top - although the ability to comment on news stories and maybe pulling in related blog posts would have given the Guardian back the edge they used to have.

However I can understand why they wouldn’t want to have commenting on EVERY story - it would be expensive, offensive and horrific to moderate.

So now we’ve had new looks from The Guardian, The Times, The Telegraph, The Daily Mail (hate the paper but one of the better websites) and the Express.

I know The Mirror has also had a re-design but to me it was a step backwards - some nice ideas but all badly implemented and The Sun has been gradually adding new features and I’m sure they’re great but a few too many tits for me.

So that really only leaves The Independent in the UK newspaper list of websites that needs a new look - the current design is simple and elegant but too narrow for modern monitors and a bit clunky.

I’m working on another post for the TV and Radio news sites to go up sometime next week but I’ve already commented on the fact that the BBC could do with a new look for news online - something that isn’t an evolution but a whole new branch of creation

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