UK | Ryan Morrison (Up Your Ego)

Aug

Voting at 16

Just over two years ago members of the States of Jersey narrowly voted in favour of giving 16 and 17 year olds in the island the right to vote.

The first real opportunity for islanders to use that vote was at during the elections for Constable, Deputy and Senator at the end of 2008 – that and the island’s first referendum.

The next major opportunity for the islands 16 year olds to vote will be during the elections at the end of 2011 when the youngest people voting will have been only 12 when the law was first changed.

The issue over whether to lower the voting age is being discussed in the UK again including a programme on BBC Three as part of the ‘Adult Season’.

The show follows actress Melissa Suffield, who has just turned 16, is paying tax and is leaving school – and thinks she wants a say in how things are run. It’s called ‘16: To young to vote‘.

However, not everyone thinks 16 year olds are old enough to vote. Despite being one of the first 18 year olds to vote in the UK, Sue Palmer, an expert on childhood development thinks that young people should not vote until the age of 21.

“Very broadly speaking human life divides into three lots of seven in terms of the formation of the brain and personality.

“The first seven years which are mainly little kids playing, that’s when you develop conscious control of your mind. The second seven years when you are basically being shown the ropes and disciplined and taught to self discipline your mind.

“And then the final seven years are sort of an initiation into adulthood and actually that fits with brain development.

“We now know that over the teenage years, right up to about 21-ish, there is something called milination going on inside your head, a finishing off of the neural networks.

“So it has made me think that we should go back to 21 as the voting age.”

Niger holds poll on third term (news.bbc.co.uk)
Banking reform ‘should be more radical’ says Treasury minister Lord Myners (telegraph.co.uk)
The only way to win back voters (guardian.co.uk)
The Millennial Generation (themoderatevoice.com)
Boys develop closer bonds with Bob the Builder than with parents (telegraph.co.uk)
Profile based Video segmentation system to support E-learning (slideshare.net)

Aug

Who needs Kangaroo

When ‘Project Kangaroo‘ was first announced I got all excited, I love watching TV, I love watching old TV shows but I like to watch them on my terms – and buying DVDs can get overly expensive for something you might watch once in a year.

Part of the whole ‘watching TV on my terms’ thing was resolved in a legally grey way in the first instance with sites like UKNova and Pirate Bay and then later, in a simpler, easier to use and legal way by first 4OD and later the BBC iPlayer – now all the main ‘original content’ networks in the UK have their own on demand player.

But that still didn’t solve my DVD problem, my desire to watch a show that suddenly jumps back into my head at short notice. This hasn’t been a problem for Channel 4 programmes, and to some extent ITV shows – but for the BBC it’s always been a case of relying on DVDs and to a small extent iTunes.

And at the point I first started taking an interest ITV Player didn’t exist or was Windows Media only and Channel 4′s 4OD was either pay per play behind a horrible app you had to download and keep running.

What I was looking for was plain and simple, I want to have an idea for a show I wanted to watch, go to a website and click play – a few seconds later I’m watching it.

Fortunately attitudes have changed with technology, demand and an increasingly cheaper supply of broadband to the home and the server.

Lack of community

In a bit I’ll go through each of the main on demand sites in turn but before that there is one major thing missing from ALL the British on demand sites, something that exists brilliantly on Hulu, MSN Video uses and is the lifeblood of sites like YouTube – community.

The problem with all the UK broadcasters is that their sites exist a player, a place to come, watch what you want and move on – the idea being that if you want to discuss then do it somewhere else.

But, what I really want is to watch a programme and then write my thoughts on it in review form, maybe join a linked discussion thread and even have the ability to embed that video on my own site where I can write a full review – in fact they COULD allow me to write the review on their site under the video and include a ‘post to your blog’ option for registered users.

Working in a similar way to Digg and Flickr – this would let me post the video and my review, created on say the BBC iPlayer site – directly to my blog with all embed and links in place automatically.

But if you can’t wait for that you can get the iPlayer embed code, in a bit of a crude fashion, from my iPlayer PIP tool – go to http://upyourego.com/pip/

Hulu (Most major US networks)

A great example of how to merge social, community and online video is Hulu – not available in the UK at the moment and with a player that isn’t really as good as the iPlayer, Hulu does have a couple of tricks up its sleeve.

: Image via CrunchBase

The navigation is far better than any UK broadcaster giving users a lot more information about the show on the first page than any UK broadcaster does. It also allows for debate, review AND embedding of the content on another site.

On its homepage it has featured video, popular video and editors picks – making it closer to iTunes in navigation concept than iPlayer – but then you can also break it down by Channel, collections and more.

It includes links to share your content on social media sites and if registered you can see your friends viewing and rating activity (which to be honest could get a bit embarrasing if you’re friend is watching a lot of BBC Three).

The British broadcasters could learn a lot in the social sphere from Hulu and will learn a lot when they bring their technology to the UK in the near future.

LIVE: No
SOCIAL: Yes
EMBED: Yes

http://www.hulu.com

BBC (BBC iPlayer)

So I can now go to BBC iPlayer and watch what I want for around seven days after broadcast, or longer in the case of series linked shows.

: Image via Wikipedia

The iPlayer is easily the best player of all the UK broadcaster sites and has the easiest to use navigation and layout.

It also has the best range of features, the highest quality video, the option of downloads and no ads – but then it IS funded by the licence fee so no commercial constraints to worry about.

It’s all the little bits as well that make the iPlayer as special and useful as it is, things like the listings, the recommendations (the incredible volume of programming makes this useful) and the live search tips.

LIVE: Yes
SOCIAL: No
EMBED: See here

http://bbc.co.uk/iplayer

ITV (ITV Player)

I could also now go to the ITV Player to watch new and archive content in what is becoming an easier to use site and player.

But it is still a little clunky and I’d say, unless you’re looking for a flagship programme like Coronation Street or Britains Got Talent – has the worst navigation and ‘findability’ of the UK on demand sites.

The fact that ITV are opening up their archive but ad supported is a pretty big deal because, although there are VERY FEW shows on ITV I watch now, there was once a considerable number of good quality programmes coming out of the multiple broadcasters that USED to make up this now massive national entity.

LIVE: Yes
SOCIAL: No
EMBED: No

http://www.itv.com/player

4OD (Channel 4)

Then there is Channel 4, whose player I think probably takes the longest to load but is fairly glitch free on a reasonable broadband line, it’s also pretty easy to use, certainly easier than ITV Player but nowhere near as easy as the BBC Player.

C4 is another broadcaster opening up its archive, and interestingly marrying that archive with clips as well – so if you don’t want to sit through a whole show, you can find a clip with the segment that you remember and just watch that.

I would say Channel 4 have some really interesting navigation ideas on their site – including the live search where you can start typing the name of a show and it will give you the link – but again that is one of the almost ‘hidden features’ of the BBC iPlayer – just try it by starting to type into the search box.

LIVE: No
SOCIAL: No
EMBED: No

http://www.channel4.com/

Demand Five (Channel 5)

Channel 5 is a really interesting case, they have the weakest content set of the UK broadcasters but, thanks to some fairly recent developments – have an increasingly impressive on demand service.

Their player isn’t great but the navigation isn’t bad and they’re the only UK broadcaster to have any form of social interactivity – ok so it is just star ratings and social media sharing – but it’s better than the rest of them.

LIVE: No
SOCIAL: Some
EMBED: No

http://demand.five.tv

Sky (Multiple networks)

It could be argued that Sky were the first company to launch a multiple network on demand site in the UK – beating Hulu, MSN and Kangaroo.

It’s a really impressive piece of technology allowing Sky subscribers to watch most of the channels in their subscription package online as well as a number of shows, movies and sports (depending on whether you have those premium packages or not) on demand.

This is brilliant for me, and makes much more sense than having Sky+ in multiple rooms as my wife can watch her shows on the TV in the living room while at the same time I can sit at the computer and watch a movie or a TV show (like Eureka) with headphones.

Now some shows do cost money, but it is a fairly small amount and you have to have Sky Multiroom or Sky Player Multiroom to watch live – but I don’t see why you shouldn’t be prepared to pay for on demand content – it costs money to make and screen.

I’d rather pay a small fee/top up subscription than have adverts.

LIVE: No
SOCIAL: No
EMBED: No

http://www.sky.com/player/

Aggregators

Of course the individual sites are becoming increasingly irrelevant as sites like TeeV pull all the shows together in one place and allow you to find it easier.

Then when you get Hulu UK and MSN Video launching over the next few months – you’ll have the archive content after the networks time-out window and I’m sure an integration of the ‘new’ content through feeds.

And of course there is sharing through Facebook and Twitter and the new TestTubeTelly from Channel 4 – pulling their shows together and adding an interactive layer.

Now the BBC is starting to make more of its video content available on other sites, but at this stage only through a branded player on signed up newspaper partner sites.

But, if its through a branded player anyway – why not just add an embed link to ALL their online video content and let people use and display it as they like (within the confines of a T&C agreement and refer blocking if necessary)?

That way anyone that wants to use to a)illustrate an article, b) improve their AV content or even c) look good – can! If it’s BBC branded with links back to the originating BBC article – I don’t see why it shouldn’t be accessible everywhere – same goes for the BBC iPlayer video.

Hulu in talks with ITV for UK start (telegraph.co.uk)
Beeb and co offload failed Kangaroo platform (theregister.co.uk)
Microsoft’s MSN Video: Now everyone’s playing catchup (telegraph.co.uk)
Arqiva set to leap into video market with Kangaroo (telegraph.co.uk)
Arqiva in talks on Kangaroo technology (guardian.co.uk)
‘Insufficient justification’ for Canvas joint venture says Sky (telegraph.co.uk)
BBC’s Project Canvas internetonTV plans attacked (telegraph.co.uk)
Microsoft gunning for Hulu in the UK with MSN Video Player (arstechnica.com)

Jul

Tagged with the UK

There are a lot of differences between Bing (Microsoft) and Google maps – I won’t list them all here but lets say Bing has a bit of catching up to do.

But there is one particular difference that annoys me, the others just mildly irritate – they put (U.K.) after Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man.

OK so you’re probably thinking – but I thought they were in the UK – well if you’re thinking that you’d be wrong.

Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man are British Crown Dependencies – not part of the UK, not part of Great Britain, but autonomous juristictions that pass legislation through the Crown.

So seeing (U.K.) under Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man on the Bing Maps was a bit of a red rag and bull scenario.

Normally I would have just let it go though – it didn’t bother me THAT much, or at least not enough to stir me into action.

But, as you probably already know I’m working on an interactive map of my own for the BBC and as the BBC uses Bing Maps, and as my interactive map had Jersey as a focus – I needed to find a solution.

So I did a search for more details on Bing Maps and found a blog post by Chris Pendleton, the Virtual Earth Technical Evangelist for Microsoft Corporation.

He was raving about the number of interactive maps on the BBC using Bing – and they are fairly impressive.

So I left a comment saying:

I’m working on an interactive map for BBC Jersey that should go live in August looking at the islands beaches.

My only concern is that they label Jersey and Guernsey as UK and I KNOW I’ll get complaints about that from islanders as Jersey isn’t in the UK.

I can’t say I REALLY expected a response but to his credit I DID get this in reply – not a solution but at least an explanation.

Ryan – good eye. Guernsey is not part of the UK, but it is controlled by it, since Guernsey is a dependency of the UK and not an independent nation state. We currently label dependencies with a parenthetical “controlling power” suffix, so that is why you see the “(UK)” after the name.

It seems this may cause confusion. In our data model, that island is not part of the UK, but I can see how that subtle distinction might be lost given the way it is labeled. We’ll have have to investigate how to make this more clear, but at least you’ll have an answer for your customers if/when they ask.

CP

So I took that response and spoke to people that work around creating the maps for the BBC and was able to get a fault ticket raised with Microsoft over the issue.

An e-mail came back hours later saying that they agree with my analysis – that it shouldn’t have UK at all – and will contact the third parties responsible for the maps and data to see if it can be changed in the next update cycle.

So in the next few months Bing maps should no longer say (U.K.).

And they even found a solution for third party uses of Bing maps – so the BBC uses – that involves replacing the tiles in question and scrubbing out (U.K.).

Wonderful!

Channel Islands ‘double in popularity’ with tourists due to weak pound (telegraph.co.uk)
Google mocks Bing and the stuff behind it (theregister.co.uk)
Beach Guide: Introduction (upyourego.com)

May

Loving the Eurovision

I’m a big fan of the Eurovision song contest – so much so that my new music, bleeding edge BBC Introducing branded radio show will be taking a Eurovision theme this week.

Don’t get me wrong I won’t be playing Boom Bang a Bang or even Dum Tek Tek (Turkish tip for Eurovision top spot that means Boom Bang a Bang).

But I will be playing songs from around Europe – namely the four countries with a reasonably large population pressence in Jersey – just so I can keep a bit of a local angle.

So my ‘alternative’ Eurovision picks covered four countries: Ireland, Poland, Portugal and France – oh and I dropped in one from the UK for good measure.

Iowa Super Soccer for Poland, Xwife for Portugal, Fight Like Apes for Ireland and Naïve New Beaters for France. And my UK tip came in the form of Frank Turner.

And looking now at the Google tips for Eurovision success (based on search results from different European countries) France (Patricia Kaas) is the only one in the top ten – not including Jade from the UK who is ninth – Frank Turner was only a wildcard throw in as I normally play UK artists anyway.

Here see for yourself – the top five are Turkey with 375 votes, Norway with 351, Greece with 264, Sweden with 205 and Ukraine with 173. The Google forecast puts UK in ninth with 70.

This is based on the number of searches for each countries entry from around Europe – with each country awarding a number of points based on the number of searches to each of the finalists.

: Image by Getty Images via Daylife

It excludes searches for an entry from within that singers country – so a search for Jade Ewen from within the UK won’t count.

Personally I don’t care whether we win or not – although it would be nice to see a ‘Home Eurovision’ in 2010 – even if it will probably end up costing around £3 million.

Although if the Aussies could vote then Greece would get 12 points – at least that is the way it’s shaping up on the SBS Unoffical Scorecard – although that is only based on the semi-final – might be interesting to keep track of though.

Anyway – if votes are awarded on how actively people are pushing for their country on Twitter – then I’d put Norway first, Hungary second and Ukrain in third. Although that is only based on a quick search.

: Image via Wikipedia

I’ve been a fan of Eurovision since I was a small child – watching it while my parents made sarcastic comments in the background – I loved the comedy, the glamour (or more often lack of) and VERY OCCASIONALLY the music – but most of all for the spectacle and … Terry Wogan.

But this is the first year we won’t have Terry in the hot seat – his place is being taken by another sarcastic Irishman – this time in the form of Graham Norton. Personally I think, based on interviews I’ve seen – he’s going to fill the boots admirably.

This is the first year though that I’ve watched the semi-finals – I always avoided them in the past because for me Eurovision is a social event and my wife would only tolerate the final.

But thanks to the wonder of Twitter I was able to watch it and engage with other Eurovision fans from around the world – including some (like @ewanspence) who were in the Eurovision arena.

I was there for both semi-finals twittering along and the two hours went by really quickly – I’m now going to spare my wife the “pain” (her words) of the whole final and Twitter along to that as well.

My Eurovision follow tips include: @bbceurovision, @sara_cawood, @ewanspence and @thoroughlygood. Anyone you can think of I’ve missed? Oh and feel free to follow me @upyourego.

NB: Main page photo credit: cc by CharlesFred

Eurovision: Just don’t start drinking too early, Wogan tells Graham Norton (guardian.co.uk)
Terry Wogan raises a glass of Baileys to ‘rubbish’ Eurovision Song Contest (guardian.co.uk)
Norton takes mic (news.bbc.co.uk)
Jade hoping to revive UK’s Eurovision fortunes (telegraph.co.uk)
Eurovision is it really a fix? (telegraph.co.uk)
Eurovision 2009: Could this be our year? (telegraph.co.uk)
Eurovision Singers Set For Battle In Moscow (news.sky.com)
A night of 1000 key changes (guardian.co.uk)
Ireland dumped out of Eurovision (news.bbc.co.uk)

Sep

They’re changing Gear

Actually that should be that they’re changing Top Gear – but the headline didn’t really work if I added the word Top before the Gear.

Basically the point of the post is that there will very soon be a new look TopGear.com – not sure if the public service site will be getting a make-over but the commercial one certainly is.

It looks pretty good – from the looks of the beta we’re in for wood panelling backgrounds, glassy effects and very web 2.0ey fonts and colours.

See another picture of the homepage at the bottom of this post v

They seem to be taking the social media thing a lot more seriously as well – they’re splitting the blogs up into: Horsepower, Transmission, The Foreman, The Cupholder, Fast and Dangerous and Sunday Afternoon Club (F1 blog that looks like it may be tied to the BBC F1 coverage somehow).

Playing around with the beta for a while it looks like the blogs are WordPress hosted – which is an interesting departure for the BBC which uses MovableType for its public service blogs.

Interesting that the BBC public service blogs are hosted on a closed commercial platform and the BBC commercial blogs seem to be hosted on an open source free platform! Hmmm

As well as the very good looking, branded blogs – which will see James May and Richard Hammond join Jeremy Clarkson and Andy Willman as TG.com contributors – there’s a new media player.

It isn’t exactly the same as the EMP (BBC Embedded Media Player) used on bbc.co.uk/topgear (for a start the volume only reaches 10) but it is flash based AND unlike the /topgear player – it actually lets you embed the video.

Or at least that’s what the press release says: “nearly 300 new videos in a bright, big player that allows you to share or take away and out them on your own site.”

Although I haven’t actually been able to find the embed code yet – just a series of links to let you put the video on your social networking platform of choice. I’ll keep looking though.

You can of course just view the source code around the video player to get the embed code.

Episode Guide

There’s also something TopGear has needed for a while – something I started building myself (but got bored/lost interest/got to busy), something available in a very plane way on Wikipedia and something the good folks over at FinalGear are doing.

The most interesting feature of the Episode Guide on the new TopGear.com is the ‘The One With…’ feature – this makes it a lot easier for the more casual fan to find out about an episode.

There isn’t really much more to say about the Episode Guide – it primarily focuses on giving you video clips of that episode (which is what it’s all about really) and has a few little snippets of episode information.

For example: “The one where… Stig outruns a speed camera” and “This is also the one with… Clarkson reviews the Citroen Berlingo (and likes it) and Das Mazda6: Richard finds out if the Mazda6 can take on the Germans”.

Actually – quiz for you – without looking at the site can you tell me which episode this applies to: “The one with… all the poo”.

So back to the blogs

Instead of having the odd article (from the magazine) by Jeremy and James as an article under news and then the odd article by them in the blogs – they’ve now created a blog specifically for pieces by the ‘presenters’.

There is an outline of what each blog will do in the TopGear.com article about the new look site – due to launch on Thursday (although I’m sure it said Wednesday a week ago).

One of the blogs will be called ‘Horsepower’ and will include contributions from Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond. There’s also the suggestion that they will respond to comments. Apparently “if what you write is interesting enough, they’ll respond to you.”

‘Transmission’ is all about TopGear the show and will be written by Executive Producer Andy Wilman – in much the same vain the existing TopGear Blog is written I imagine.

Then you have the blogs by the magazine team. ‘The Foreman’ is apparently going to be full of inside information and will tell you “everything the car makers would rather you didn’t know.”

‘The Cupholder’ is the oppose and will be full of “is pure trivia, videos, links and general trivia from all over the world and all over the world wide web.”

And then there is the non F1 racing stuff with ‘Fast and Dangerous’ and the F1 blog in the form of the ‘Sunday Afternoon Club’.

Speaking of the F1 Blog – apparently they “have big plans for that when the BBC takes over the F1 coverage next year.”

/topgear

Then there’s the BBC and the issue of what will happen to /topgear with the launch of the new look and fully interactive topgear.com.

On the FinalGear Forum – controlspecimen asked the question of the public service Top Gear site “So.. is bbc.co.uk/topgear defunct now?”

That’s an interesting question – the problem is that bbc.co.uk/topgear isn’t allowed to link to topgear.com for a lot of political reasons.

So there is a bit of a requirement/expectation that the BBC has at least some kind of public service site for one of its most popular shows.

I wonder whether they will just move it towards /programmes instead – a number of programmes just have their own branded /programmes site now. Seems to make more sense than building their own site.

But there might also be an expectation that /topgear is kept and includes advert free versions of all the videos on topgear.com for a UK audience.

More still

There’s also all the usual games, car news, car stuff and a car chooser.

Actually the car chooser is pretty cool – in stage one you tick a few boxes for what you want in a car, stage two you move a slider to show how much you want to spend.

And in stage three you refine your choices.

It then orders the cars and you can add as many as you like (I think) to your ‘car bar’ that you can then use to compare your shortlist and read a mass of technical details, see photos and read the TopGear review.

It’s all very impressive and I can’t wait until its finished and live. It’s going to be great to have another place to regularly read the writings of Misters May, Clarkson and Hammond.

Oh and it looks like TopGear will be back on TV around 2 November – I’ll try and do a piece soon on what’s going to be in the upcoming series.

Speaking of which – there will also be a schedule that shows when TopGear is on TV – although most of the time it will just be repeating the word Dave over and over and over again.