iPlayer 2.0 - a long way to go

On the same day that the BBC announce tomorrow's launch of version 2 of the iPlayer, comScore release some details of where UK internet viewers are watching their videos. Despite all the whinging from the ISPs, the BBC is a distant second to Google's collection of video sites, both in terms of the number of videos watched and the number of unique users, unfortunately they don't compare the number of hours watched (the BBC programmes are likely to be a lot longer...and in the whinging ISPs defense, higher quality).

What is particularly interesting is that neither 4OD or ITV's catch up service even make it on the top ten list. Reiterating the point I made when the BBC were criticised for over-spending on their online services: The BBC is not competing with commercial UK companies. Rather than criticising the BBCs spending, other content providers should be looking for ways of working with the BBC. Whilst the elusive project Kangaroo will help create an online presence for the traditional TV viewer, it is probably not enough.

People have changed the way they watch video, they are now seemingly watching shorter videos as they click through sites like YouTube. The traditional providers need to find ways of getting part of that market. Whilst attempts are made to make short clips available, it tends to be with a top-down approach, rather than giving the users the free reign that they want. Obviously such free reign is difficult as the BBC, Channel 4, and ITV work within copyright rules, whereas YouTube takes a more laissez-faire approach.

Its obviously not all doom and gloom for the traditional video providers. The iPlayer is still relatively new, Kangaroo will put a bit of bounce in the figures, and as the TV is replaced by computer entertainment systems people will probably start watching longer programmes again. Nonetheless, before the UK tv stations fall further behind, they need to start thinking outside the box a bit more :-)

bbc.co.uk: Reviewed

In its extensive review of bbc.co.uk the BBC Trust concludes (amongst other things):

bbc.co.uk is an excellent service that is highly valued by users and makes a strong contribution to delivering the BBC's public purposes

Definitely the most obvious finding ever. Although the 75 page report does have some other interesting bits and pieces.

Whilst we all follow our Google Analytics, few of us could afford the traffic levels of the BBC:

My own hosting package (with streamline.net) includes un-restricted visitor bandwidth, however the most any of their customers uses is 1313.07GB, a thousandth of the BBC's traffic. It would be interesting to see how the traffic has increased since December with the iPlayer (it didn't launch to all until December 25th).

As someone who has enjoyed a limited amount of traffic from the BBC it is interesting to see the number of click-throughs they send:

My own 202 visitors from the BBC (over a number of months) quickly pales in comparison to these figures.

Whilst overall things at the BBC seem to be on the up, I was particularly pleased to notice that there seems a slight downward trend on the Have Your Say section of the site.

It sounds good to let the public publish their opinions, unfortunately most of them are extremely odious.

Unfortunately not everything is positive. The BBC got a bit carried away with their spending so the commercial rivals are having a bit of a whinge. However, the BBC is not competing with ITN or ITV, they're competing with the world. If we want to have the British perspective promoted to the world, rather than a right-wing US perspective, then we need a strong BBC.

BBC's Sound Index: The latest and greatest

Despite all the information technology at our finger tips, I am still amazed at how long it takes for stories to spread around the web. The BBC has launched a Sound Index, a social media music chart that is updated every hour. Despite being mentioned in the Radio 1 blog on the 11th April, and in the Guardian on the Friday, it suddenly seems to be talked about everywhere since blogged about in the ReadWriteWeb. The way we access news has changed, and despite what we may think, it is not always faster...

Anyway, the Sound Index:

Every six hours the Sound Index crawls some of the biggest music sites on the internet - Bebo, MySpace, Last.FM, iTunes, Google and YouTube - to find out what people are writing about, listening to, watching, downloading and logging on to. It then counts and analyses this data to make an instant list of the most popular 1000 artists and tracks on the web. The more blog mentions, comments, plays, downloads and profile views an artist or track has, the higher up the Sound Index they are. So, the Sound Index is a music buzz index controlled entirely by the public.

It is an interesting twist on the traditional charts, potentially making a person's actions as important as their songs as they attempt to create an internet buzz.

The top of the Sound Index is unsurprisingly full of the usual suspects, although as it is a top 1000 there is plenty of room for the lesser known acts, and the classic pop canon.

Whilst it is an easy and enjoyable way to waste time, I must admit that I was shocked to find that Cliff Richard has yet to make it into the index....obviously something wrong with the algorithm.

iPlayer on the Wii: Now where should I put my Wii?

The BBC's iPlayer can now be streamed on the Wii, currently through the Opera browser, but eventually with its own channel. Whilst the public will generally welcome the move, the ISPs will continue their whinging after selling packages that they can't afford honour properly. Suggestions from the ISPs that the BBC should help pay for the rising costs are idiotic; services like the iPlayer will help push the UK's internet infrastructure to higher standards and shouldn't be penalised.

My own problems with the iPlayer will be less costly than it will be for the ISPs. My biggest problem is that I don't know where to put my Wii now. I currently can't get the iPlayer on my TV as the files refuse to be routed via the Netgear EVA 700, but at the same time I like my current PC/Wii all-in-one set-up. Nonetheless I think the latest platfirn has partly placated my wrath from when they rolled out on the iPhone before the N95.

Whilst I have found that the iPlayer on the Wii isn't as good a picture as on the PC, this is probably due to it being routed via a TVBOX to my PC screen, and will probably improve when it gets its own channel.

BBC Internet Blog: A blog in tune

Every now and then you read a blog post which is surprisingly in tune with your own thoughts and ramblings. Today that blog post was at the BBC, about the future of the mobile internet in the UK. Unsurprisingly, for a post on the technological future, it was more questions than answers:
-What device will win? Mobile phone, e-readers, £100 Linux laptops, or full blown notebooks?
-And most importantly, what sort of role the BBC can play?

I doubt whether any single device will 'win', instead it will be a case of horses for courses. Different people have different needs, and people will make the selection that meets their needs. For me this is the mobile phone, and the £100 Linux laptop (although the Eee PC was £200); if I can get the laptop out I do, but as I am walking down the street it's not particularly practical. For others it may be a mobile phone and an e-reader, or they may only want to access the mobile internet on a full blown notebook.

Whilst the market seems to be quite good at getting the devices into people's hands these days, I think the BBC could provide a service in telling people how to use them more productively. These day the average person has a mobile phone and a computer whose potential is barely touched. What proportion of users are aware of the additional programs and services they can download to their phones, or the information that they could get from the web with a bit of basic programming? The BBC could play an important role in raising the technological-literacy of the masses rather than the few; surely it is the only organisation with the capacity to do it.

Coding for the Eee PC

The Register notes that Asus have just released a Software Development Kit for the Eee PC. A cheap, widely available personal computer which can be easily programmed: Will the Eee PC be this generation's BBC micro?

The SDK is a welcome addition to the Eee PC, although it will mean that I have to learn another new language as it supports C and C++, but hopefully it will encourage a future generation of programmers in the same way the BBC Micro did. In fact it should be more encouraging, this time you don't have to be locked away programming in a room on your own, you can sit around in the park sharing code with your friends. Maybe the BBC could get involved this time with some nice 'how to program your Eee PC' television programmes :-)

Who is going to deliver the news tomorrow?

One of the many web topics that is of interest to me is the delivery and sharing of news on the web. Despite the rhetoric of the blogosphere I have never been persuaded that traditional journalism can be successfully replaced by so-called citizen journalism, for the most part the blogosphere highlights, and puts their own opinions on, news stories coming from traditional sources. Whilst I have always cast a cynical eye on the traditional media, I must admit that I didn't quite realise how far journalism had gone in the cutting of corners and trimming of budgets. After finishing Nick Davies' "Flat Earth News", you can only conclude that news is up the proverbial creek.

Even the great BBC, which brought my attention to the book in the first place, is not immune to criticism. Can correspondents really do their job properly as they constantly jump between tv stations, radio, and the web?

At a time when the market is clearly not up to the job, surely it is time we should be emphasising the Beeb's public service credentials rather than trying to force it into playing by the market rules. Surely there should be a campaign out there to increase the licence fee.

Not all links are equal!

Thanks to a single link on the BBC's delicious roll on Saturday night, yesterday saw Webometric Thoughts get its highest number of hits ever. Whilst for many sites 121 absolute unique visitors in a day (according to Google analytics) wouldn't be worthy of note, the webometric blogging community have fairly low aspirations.

What is interesting, from the perspective of a Google Analytics junkie, is the difference between the amount of traffic this link drove in comparison to a similar on the BBC's delicious roll on the 16th January. Whilst the January link only drove 17 unique users to my site, Saturday's link drove 102 users over a three day period!

Was the extra traffic all due to the extra time the link was visible on the BBC? It was visible a lot longer, but weekend traffic is often slower. Or was it the topic of the posts? The first was about ISPs, whilst the second was about the iPhone. It seems equally likely that the difference in the traffic is due to the link's anchor text. Whereas the first text referred to 'David Stuart research fellow', the second link merely referenced the blog 'Webometric Thoughts' (AC seems to have done much more digging than NR).

Not all links are equal, however equal they may seem.

iPlayer on the iPhone: Does the BBC believe the hype?

I am probably the world's biggest BBC fan, and think they have made some great moves on the internet, especially with the rolling out of the iPlayer. But now they have managed to annoy me. Just catching up on my RSS feeds, and found that yesterday the iPlayer became accessible on the iPhone. Whilst I look forward to the BBC rolling out on mobile devices, choosing the iPhone first is just annoying.

I appreciate that they have to roll the services out across the different systems one at a time, but I don't understand why they chose the iPhone over the S60 based devices, specifically the N95 which would have made the service available to many more times the customers. It is not a repeat of the Linux/Apple/Windows debate as Windows was always the dominant platform. The iPhone is only the dominant device in the minds of certain sections of the blogosphere.

"We started with iPhone because it is the device most optimised for high quality video currently available"...seems a pretty lame excuse to me, especially as the N95 would have allowed for true mobile viewing as it could utilise 3G rather than being limited to Wi-Fi.

Obviously part of my annoyance is due to my having an N95, but in my defense I haven't moaned about the lack of access on the Wii or the fact that when I try to access BBC files on the Netgear EVA 700 it refuses to give me a picture (unlike the Channel 4 programmes which work perfectly). I think this time it's a legitimate whinge.

Google Top UK Brand? Not worth reporting.

I was quite surprised to read on Search Engine Land that Google is the top brand in the UK. However, following up the story you soon realise that the the title isn't really worth that much. The ranking is actually based on a survey of '1,500 professionals', rather than the public at large, and rather than being surprised that Google has knocked the BBC from the top spot, we should be surprised that the BBC ever held the top spot in the commercially focused business world.

Whilst the more vocal elements of the online community may worship in the church of Google, I think for the average UK user (myself included) the BBC brand is still a better indicator of quality, reliability, and distinction. The factors that the survey's ranking was meant to reflect.

QR Codes at the BBC...but I am not sure why

All about mobile life have pointed out that one part of the BBC have now started incorporating QR Codes (not the upstart Upcodes), although I'm not sure how much use the QR codes are.

BBC Programmes beta, which provides information on all current TV and radio programmes across the BBC, has provided a QR code for each of the programmes listed, simply by adding /qrcode to the URL. So, the QR code for Torchwood (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006m8ln) is available at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006m8ln/qrcode.

Whilst I love the BBC and can see a lot of potential in QR codes, I am waiting for them to roll out to more useful areas of the site before I get over excited. I can see how QR codes embedded on news and sports pages, linking to mobile optimised versions would be useful. However, I can't imagine that it is very often that people think "I really want to be able to access these programme details on the move...if only I could easily transfer the URL easily across". Whilst I suppose an avid fan may wish to embed a QR code on a T-shirt, to show affiliation with a programme, the BBC codes don't even help with that as they are not in a useful format.

Although hopefully this is a sign of good things to come.

Bloglines after a Christmas break

If I don't look at my Bloglines account every few hours the number of items soon starts getting out of hand. If I don't look at it for a couple of days I find myself putting off the inevitable confrontation. Returning from Christmas in Norway, after not looking at Bloglines for a week, I find myself dreading the task in hand. Would I really miss out on some important item of note if I ditched the 1,358 items I am told I haven't looked at? Probably not, but there is always the fear/hope that there will be something really interesting buried amongst the rubbish.

The only web story I came across whilst I was away was the Royal Channel on YouTube (every news channel seemed to discuss it), although I also noticed advertising on the BBC web site for the first time outside the UK (whilst checking the football scores). Both good examples of traditional institutions adapting to the modern world.

Unfortunately not everyone is as up-to-date as the Queen and the BBC, T-mobile's current data plan could quite easily see many people dragged off to the poorhouse when travelling abroad: £7.50 per Mb of web browsing! Admittedly you have to be pretty foolish to not pay close attention to these things before travelling, but with 3G connections the Mb can quickly add up. My solution was to simply not use the web on my phone whilst away, but really it is time that the phone companies' caught up, we aren't looking at WAP anymore!

BBC iPlayer Flash streams: Linux friendly

The Beeb have been promising flash streams for a while, and when I went to download some programmes on the iPlayer tonight, I found it had already rolled out. This should go some way to placating the linux hoardes who have been complaining. As the picture below shows it now works on firefox/linux, even on the much maligned Eee PC/RM Minibook (the rather poor quality is because I sent the picture to myself via MMS rather than messing about with a wire or bluetooth).

(nb. its Peggy and Phil in the Queen Vic kitchen).

Single on-demand player for BBC, ITV and Channel 4!!!

The BBC's iPlayer, Channel 4's 4OD, and the streaming content from ITV.com have fundamentally changed my TV habits; about the only programme I now watch when broadcast is 'Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip' (available from 4OD, but for a price). Unfortunately however the iPlayer and 4OD don't work perfectly, with the iPlayer being especially erratic (occassionally having a frenzy that eats up all the processing power), and the two downloaded services often rub each other up the wrong way as they use similar technologies. Hopefully a single player will solve many of the current problems and will increase adoption of video on-demand.

Whilst a Mashable posting has a little bit of a whinge about the use of DRM, compatibility, and UK only access, it seems be missing the bigger picture, as TechCrunch states "Ultimately the biggest winner from the deal will be the British viewer who will have unparalleled access to legal TV content online in the one spot."

DRM is a necessity in the world of broadcast television, as is the restricting of access on a national basis, overcoming these boundaries are years away and will require unprecedented international cooperation (DRM-free music is a piece of cake in comparison). Compatibility will come with time, but it makes sense to start with the dominant system.

I did notice one comment on the TechCrunch site whinging about the BBC TV licence (and I am sure there will be more to come), so in the interests of keeping the balance, I would like to point out that I would willingly pay an increase in the TV licence!

Life's a bitch...and then you marry one

Usually coming across the above oft-used title would make me groan with despair at the state of modern society, but seeing it on the front page of the BBC is tantamount to having some great maiden aunt swearing at the christmas dinner table (the actual story is merely a diversion).

BBC Flash Player Starts to Roll-out

Less than a week ago the BBC announced that it had come to an agreement with Adobe allowing it to stream programmes with Flash. Whilst there are no exact dates as yet, the BBC doesn't seem to be messing around. They announced in their Archive Newsletter last night:

We're also launching a new media player that uses Flash instead of RealPlayer or Windows Media. We have to stress that as this is more to help us with technical aspects of the trial, it won't be released to everyone, sadly. We'll be e-mailing a selection of triallists soon with more information. We're sorry, but we won't be able to extend this group of triallists, but we thought you'd like to know that it exists, even if we can't give everyone access to it.

At this rate the streaming should be completely rolled out by Christmas, and come Christmas Day the Queen's speech will fit into my schedule...surely that must be treasonable!

BBC: The Best of British

If you had to create a list of the best things about Britain only a fool would ignore the BBC, and despite being in existence for over 75 years, in various forms, it continues to be at the forefront of the latest technologies. Last night its news site (probably the best news in the world) announced that the BBC site would be accessible at The Cloud wi-fi hotspots throughout the UK for free, but even more interestingly it provided some further details of the future of BBC TV on the internet.

Key points:
- A streaming Flash version of the iPlayer
- Downloading to portable devices (such as N95 and PSP)
- Not commited to offering download version of iPlayer to Linux and Mac

Whilst the streaming version will be a more inclusive version for the whinging Linux and Mac users, I am sure there will still be complaints that they can't have a download version, but as the BBC says "It comes down to cost per user". Of course I personally welcome the proposed addition of the N95 version (especially as I have numerous trouble connecting to my Sky Sports package), and hope that the Flash version will be compatible with the Wii, but I also realise the need for the BBC to be cost effective.

The biggest probably I have at the moment with the BBC is finding time to watch and listen to all their programmes. The iPlayer is slowly filling with programmes I will probably never have time to watch, my N95 is filling with podcasts faster than I can listen to them, and I am constantly battling with the wi-fi radio to utilise the 7-day catch-up before we reach day eight! The change in the media landscape is best expressed through a comparison of launch of the Channel 4 twenty-five years ago, and the launch of Dave on Freeview yesterday. Where one was launched with a blaze of publicity that everyone was talking about, Dave was launched with little more than a whimper. As yet I haven't even bothered to re-tune my digi-box.

Watching and enjoying the BBC Archive Trial

As I never tire from saying, I am huge fan of the BBC. Therefore I was pleased to note last week that they were trialling access to their archive, and unlike previous trials, I was quick enough off the mark to get accepted as part of the trial. This morning my password arrived.



Currently the archive provides streaming access to 781 programmes, 488 television programmes and 293 radio programmes, with the promise of more being added all the time. Whilst the streaming quality is not as good as the iPlayer video, it will no doubt placate the ISPs and Apple users who have been complaining about the iPlayer.

Whilst 781 programmes is a drop in the ocean that is the BBC archive, it is nonetheless a very broad selection of programmes, and is likely to appeal to vast swathes of the public. From those who wish to take a nostalgic trip down memory lane, to researchers who are interested in the changing attitudes of the British public.

The only annoying aspect is that there are generally one or two episodes of any particular programme, whilst this is likely to change in the future as more programmes are added, that's not much solace for someone who has just watched the first episode of The History Man, and is waiting for part two! But who couldn't be forgiving with a 1970 episode of the Basil Brush show to look forward to?

BBC's Social Bookmarking Links

Two BBC posts in one morning may lead any readers that stumble across these posts by accident to believe that this is a blog all about the BBC, its not ... although if you cut me I do bleed red, white, blue and BBC radio 4. However after writing the previous post I dipped my toe in the blogosphere to see what others were saying about the BBC's iPlayer and came across a post describing social bookmarking links, new to the BBC, as a "stain on the Internet". So, should these bookmarking links have a place on the internet? And more specifically, should they have a place on the BBC?

Social bookmarking has a lot of potential, although there are without doubt major pitfalls. Many of the stories that gain credence on sites such as Digg and Reddit seem to be those which appeal to, for want of a better term, techno-liberal-survivalists. Whilst the technological aspect of many of the postings is unsurprising, the hardcore group that do a lot of the postings, and get their postings on the front page, should not be considered a cross-section of the population. Watching the popular posts for any period of time produces an almost contradictory image of the social bookmarking community, whereas on the one hand they believe in a liberal agenda regarding freedom from copyright and the right of the individual to do what they like, on the other hand they also seem to lap up any old survivalist right-wing conspiracy theory.

Maybe the introduction of social bookmarking links on sites such as the BBC will enable a broader cross-section of society to join the social bookmarking community, make authoritative stories more prominent on social bookmarking sites, and allow the social bookmarking sites to produce a more rounded view of society. Alternatively the BBC may just be introducing naive web users to some rather dodgy stories with little authority. Unfortunately I feel that it will be the later. What is really needed in conjunction with the promotion of these sites is a push on educating the public in assessing the worth of information that is found on the web.

BBC iPlayer has changed my life!

There is a lot of talk at the moment about the BBC iPlayer in both the blogosphere and the traditional media, with arguments raging about the suitability of the P2P technology, the fact that it only runs on Windows, and that it is gobbling huge amounts of bandwidth. In my opinion the entry of the iPlayer can only be a good thing for British broadband users: it will increase uptake of high speed internet connections, and force the ISPs to provide better services to meet the increased demand.

Whilst the iPlayer is not the first of the main UK television companies to make their content available online, the BBC's world renowned brand means that when it makes a move more people pay attention; even within the UK's vast collection of television channels, and despite its public self-flagellation for minor indiscretions, the BBC is still an important institution that the public feels they have a vested interest in. It is not surprising therefore that the wrath of the ISPs is being vented at the BBC's entry into the market, an entry that is likely to substantially increase the number of people using the internet for video-on-demand. But does the BBC really deserve to be the focus of their attention? Or should the ISPs really be living up to the promises they make in the packages they offer and stop whinging about it?

The ISPs make a lot of money by offering high broadband speeds and the promise of 'unlimited' downloads by relying on the fact that the majority of their customers will never utilise the high speeds or the unlimited downloads. Those that have been getting the best value for money are those who have already been using video-on-demand from less legitimate sources, and their broadband has been subsidised by those of us who have been biding our time for the legitimate sources to appear. The introduction of legitimate video-on-demand was seen to be coming for a long time, especially the BBC's iPlayer which had to jump through a million hoops to prove that it was in the public interest, and nonetheless the ISPs continued to offer 'unlimited' downloads with the caveat of a fair use policy. Well surely downloading from legitimate sources should be considered fair use, after all that is what the average user will expect to be able to use it for.

The iPlayer and other high quality video-on-demand web sites creates a market of users wanting higher broadband rates than before, and they are probably willing to pay a bit more for it. But if an ISP offers 'unlimited' it should be unlimited, and if they do include 'fair use' policy then it needs to accept that video-on-demand is fair use. The showdown between the ISPs and the BBC will force the ISPs to upgrade their services, and hopefully provide the UK with the best internet infrastructure in the world. Personally, the majority of television I watch is now online, after all they don't broadcast the likes of "The Sky at Night" at 6.30 in the morning, and if my ISP decides that I am in breach of their 'fair use' policy I would move to a new ISP without a second thought.