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BBC1 has just announced that within the next year, all of its programmes will be simulcast as a live video stream on the internet. This makes it the first of BBC’s analogue TV channels to be aired on the web - ITV has already been simulcasting ITV1, ITV2, ITV3 and ITV4 for a year.

The channel will be available via their website, bbc.co.uk, which is being relaunched with improved listings and programme information. BBC Director, Mark Thompson, said that “building on the success of the iPlayer, we want to develop bbc.co.uk to include a broad range of the BBC’s broadcast content, as well as new and interactive forms of media that enable audiences to interact with and contribute to the website.”

Despite the fact that we no longer need a TV to watch BBC1, they are still going to make us pay the licence fee: “You need a TV licence to use any television receiving equipment such as a TV set, set-top box, video or DVD recorder, computer or mobile phone to watch or record TV programmes as they are being shown on TV.”

For the full article, visit: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/jun/04/bbc.television2

A recent article in NMA has announced ‘poor levels of user take up for branded applications on Facebook’. Branded applications for MTV, Warner Bros and Woolworths were found to have as little as five daily active users. Similarly, applications from Boomerang promoting Fraggle Rock had 31 daily active users and applications for BBC Torchwood, iPlayer and BBC Weather have a combined average of 120 daily active users.

Whilst these examples show bad results for Facebook applications, many have had a great success. We think that the key to succeeding on Facebook is to stand out from other applications. Brands shouldn’t just jump on the bandwagon and create any old Facebook application - they should plan it as they would any other media. Creating something that users will be interested in and find useful, fun or entertaining is key.

The full article can be found here - however you will need to have a NMA subscription to view it…

http://www.nma.co.uk/

Persuasion psychologist Professor B J Fogg has created a course called The Psychology of Facebook. Students at Stanford University in Silicon Valley can take the course, which ‘blends popular culture with the more time-worn principles of psychology’.

In terms of his reasoning behind starting the course, he says: “When Facebook came along I was one of the developers at the launch and what struck me was how there was this new form of persuasion. This mass interpersonal persuasion.” He said that a pivotal moment for him came when watching an application on the site go from “literally zero to more than a million users in a week”.

The class dissects a certain aspect of Facebook each lesson, from status updates, to news feeds, poking and writing comments. They study the way the feature works, the psychology behind it and what impression users are trying to convey.

It sounds like an interesting course, but surely by taking this course you are limiting your options a bit?!   Apparently though, the course isn’t just relevant to Facebook, as “the psychology that drives Facebook relates to other online success stories, including those blockbusters yet to be invented.”

Read more about the course at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7357934.stm

According to the BBC, sales of smart phones are predicted to overtake those of laptops within the next 18 months, “as the mobile phone completes its transition from voice communications device to multimedia computer”.

And I can’t see any reason why not, as companies like Nokia, Samsung and Motorola have finally began to convince us that the idea of having a multimedia computer in your pocket, is possible.

“Converged devices are always with you and always connected,” said Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, Nokia chief executive at last week’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.  Nokia predict that they will sell 35 million GPS-enabled phones this year, as personal navigation becomes the latest feature to be assimilated into the mobile phone.

Nigel Clifford, chief executive of Symbian, said: “All of those single use devices - MP3 players, digital camera, GPS - are collapsing onto the phone. We are going past the point where this was a phone with a few other things”.

For the full BBC article, visit: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7250465.stm

The BBC and ISPs have been rowing over the effects of the BBC iPlayer.  In the first 3 months since its launch, more than 42m programmes have been accessed via it’s  on-demand TV service and ISPs have said that it’s putting too much strain on their networks.

They believe that they shouldn’t have to pay for the extra network costs it causes, or the upgrades needed to cope with the iPlayer - the BBC should pay. According to Ofcom, it’s going to cost ISPs around £830m to pay for the extra capacity needed to allow for services like the iPlayer. Simon Gunter, of Tiscali, is heading the fight for the BBC to help pay this.

The BBC however, believe that the costs of network upgrades should be carried by the ISPs. And he has argued that “content providers, if they find their content being specifically squeezed, shaped, or capped, could start to indicate on their sites which ISPs their content works best on (and which to avoid).”. In response to this Simon Gunter said it was a “bit rich that a publicly-funded organisation is telling a commercial body how to run its business”.

Michael Phillips, from broadband comparison service broadbandchoices.co.uk, believes that ISPs are partly to blame for the bandwidth problems they face, as they “have priced themselves as cheaply as possible on the assumption that people were just going to use e-mail and do a bit of web surfing”. He thinks that ISPs need to stop using the term ‘unlimited’ to describe their services and make it clear that if people want to watch hours of video content they will have to pay more. However, he also believes the BBC need to compromise.

We’ve just come across a really nice article, explaining how the web has impacted  journalism. The article, written by independent journalist, Bill Thompson, outlines some of the key changes relating to news online, and how they have affected journalism. These include:

• Blogging turning from a ‘curious habit of the self-obsessed into a defining use of the internet for all forms of communication’
• News feeds, aggregators and personal recommendations on social network sites replacing the front pages of major news providers, as the way that people find out about breaking news
• The Guardian moving from a newspaper with a nice website, to an online information source that also publishes a dead tree edition
• New services like Twitter offering alternative ways of getting the news, in the form of short updates about breaking news or links to longer pieces

In terms of the future of journalism, a key thinking point from the article came from a comment made by Solana Larsen, one of the managing editors of Global Voices (a site that offers easy access to many of the world’s bloggers and tries to “aggregate, curate, and amplify the global conversation online”). She believes that in 5 years time, the “foreign correspondent” - sent off to a strange land to report on the activities of the “natives” - will no longer be needed. The main reason being that there are becoming more and more places online where we can simply ask those who are living through the events what they think of them, and seek insights and analysis from those who know the people and the places involved.

Whether you agree with this or not, the full article is definitely worth a look: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7338238.stm

A new survey carried out by Ofcom has revealed that more than a quarter of eight to eleven year olds who are online in the UK have a social networking profile - despite sites such as MySpace, Bebo and Facebook having older age limitations. Ofcom says that parents need to keep an eye on what their children do online.

The research also shows that 19% of all UK youngsters have a presence on an online social network, with James Thickett, director of marketing research at Ofcom stating that “social networks are clearly a very important part of people’s lives and are having an impact on how people live their lives”.

The Home Office has been working with social networking sites, and is expected to publish a set of guidelines this Friday around best practice, security and privacy. The report is expected to recommend that profiles created by children are set to private by default, or are only viewable by friends nominated by the user. It also suggests that social sites maintain a distinct contact page listing contact numbers, such as 999, children can use to get help.

The Ofcom report looks into the impact of social networks on people’s lives in the UK as part of a wider media literacy campaign and surveyed 5,000 adults and more than 3,000 children. For the full research, visit BBC News:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7325019.stm

The BBC redesign seems to be pushing ahead, and extending to other areas of the site (other than just the homepage which has been running the new version for a couple of weeks now).

Today I was pleasantly surprised when viewing a sports article; partly because it’s amusing to see how optimistic Kevin Keegan can be having finally won a game (or two), and partly because I liked the new-look article pages.

My first impression is how little has been changed from the old version – and I mean that in a positive way. I always found the old BBC site very easy to use, with the actual content being the centre of attention. The only exception perhaps being the left-hand navigation which I always found a little confusing. The new-look pages use very minor stylistic changes to make the navigation easier to use, without drastically changing how the site works.

This approach seems markedly different from the new-look homepage.

The general idea behind the homepage seems sound enough – let the user choose what should take precedence. Some of the features, however, seem to stray into the realm of the completely pointless (analogue clock top-right – I already have a clock on my PC thanks, and on my wrist, and on my phone; in fact I’m usually fairly aware of the time). In addition, some of the execution grates; the fact that clicking the Sport sub-heading momentarily makes the entire block float and then defloat before you are taken to the Sport page*.

*Update: They seem to have fixed this now – all credit to the guys at BBC! I reported this via the online feedback form (and I’m guessing so did quite a few others) and now it doesn’t try to drag the block by clicking on the headline.)

Interestingly having re-vistited the homepage I’m now at a loss to remember some of my previous issues with it!

I think overall the redesign is a success. The fact that it is not too far away from the old BBC website will keep a level of familiarity for regular users, and probably prevent alienating them (most people generally don’t like change!) The differences are generally well though-out and do seem to be an improvement on the previous site. And thankfully the BBC are moving away from the old embedded Real Player / Windows Media Player approach to the much more straightforward inline flash player for video playback.

It’s not all smooth-running though. I guess we all have teething problems with new projects occasionally - except at Neoco.

Web creator, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, has told the BBC that he is against web tracking systems, and he would change his ISP if they introduced it. He believes that consumers need to be protected against systems which can track their activity on the Internet.

Recently, plans by leading ISPs to use Phorm, a company which tracks web activity to create personalised adverts, have sparked controversy. Like Sir Tim,  many people agree that their web history and data belongs to them, and no one should be able to have access to this without permission.

Talk Talk has said its customers will have to opt-in to use Phorm, while BT and Virgin, the two other companies which have signed up are still considering both opt-in and opt-out options.

Sir Tim thinks that the use of such private data could have negative effects for consumers : “I want to know if I look up a whole lot of books about some form of cancer that that’s not going to get to my insurance company and I’m going to find my insurance premium is going to go up by 5% because they’ve figured I’m looking at those books”.

Phorm however, has said that its system offers benefits for consumers, including security benefits which will warn users about potential phishing sites, which attempt to con users into handing over personal data.

Since last week, Benn has been raving on about the BBC iPlayer on his iPhone, but what is it?…

BBC’s iPlayer is their online on-demand TV service, which allows users to download or stream any BBC content which has been broadcast during the last 7 days, and watch it on their computers - or in Benn’s case his iPhone. As it’s the BBC, the iPlayer is free to use. It uses peer-to-peer technology for the download service, so that content can be downloaded from the nearest point in the network and not always directly from BBC servers.

The iPlayer first came out in summer 2007 but it didn’t have its proper launch until Christmas Day 2007. Within the first 7 weeks of the launch, 17 million programmes were streamed or downloaded and recently over 500,000 programmes were streamed or downloaded in one day! In January, around 2.2 million people used the iPlayer.

The iPlayer website has recently had a facelift to add extra functionality - the 10 most popular programmes, ‘Last Chance’ for programmes about to expire, and ‘Recently Added’, which is updated every 10 minutes! We think that the iPlayer really shows how hard the BBC is working to build up its online and digital presence. Over the past year the BBC has signed deals with IBM, YouTube and Apple’s iTunes and it has recently announced that it will be collaborating with ITV and Channel 4 on a shared on-demand TV service called Kangaroo.

However, since its release there have been a couple of issues with the iPlayer. When the download version of iPlayer initially came out, it only worked on Microsoft Windows XP and many people were unhappy about it excluding a significant number of people not using XP. In response, the BBC has consistently said it wants to offer a multiplatform iPlayer and has already made the download version compatible with Vista, with a Mac version promised by the end of 2008. The BBC also has plans to broaden access even further, making it available on the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch.

There has also been concern expressed from broadband networks, about the sheer volume of traffic that iPlayer will ultimately generate. Tiscali suggested that content producers like the BBC should be made to pay to fund broadband network upgrades to prevent it from crippling them and Ofcom has said there is the possibility that the ISP-content provider business model may need to change in the future to fund the huge growth in digital content.