Ö÷²¥´óÐã

There's been a lot going on lately.

Tom Scott on a new set of natural history sites under the umbrella of "Ö÷²¥´óÐã Earth".

Jennifer Clarke at the Radio 4 blog describes how the Ö÷²¥´óÐã's prestigious Reith Lectures are being "multi-platformed".

Erik Huggers' thoughts on the Ö÷²¥´óÐã iPlayer in a recent speech at a Broadcasting Press Guild event provoked . The Ö÷²¥´óÐã Trust have released a statement (:

The Ö÷²¥´óÐã has no plans for charges to use the iPlayer or changes to the licence fee. In any case changes to current arrangements would need to be made by Parliament.

The Ö÷²¥´óÐã has issued some stats on online radio listening. See , and the numbers themselves are on the Ö÷²¥´óÐã radio website.

Philip Morton of "The State of Subtitling in Online Media"

And while we're on the subject of how Ö÷²¥´óÐã people use microblogging I discovered that Director General Mark Thompson had .

There isn't really a Chinese Wall you can draw between personal opinion and what appears on the Ö÷²¥´óÐã - the same thing with the blogs and the tweets. What you can't do easily is take off the cloak of the Ö÷²¥´óÐã and put it back on at will.

Nick Reynolds is editor, Ö÷²¥´óÐã Internet blog

Last week I found myself in a lively editorial policy meeting discussing the Ö÷²¥´óÐã's use of Twitter and other micro-blogging services.

Filling the White City conference room to capacity, we were there to discuss the implications of micro-blogging on the Ö÷²¥´óÐã's editorial guidelines and what, if anything, we should do about it.

Rory Cellan-Jones, a technology correspondent who has been using Twitter for , , and how, he habitually shares his thoughts and ideas online.

Rory's beat is technology, and he told us he'd started investigating social networking sites for The Today Programme. Rory initially decided that he was but didn't take long to change his mind and soon realised that he was hooked on Twitter. He joked that one reason he uses it is for "ruthless self promotion" but went on to say building a reputation (and a few thousand followers) had involved telling people what he's thinking about, getting ideas and leads for stories as well as handling responses to his journalistic output.

How far can you trust something you read on Twitter? "You wouldn't go to air with it any more than you would with something your mate told you", Rory reminded us. It's one research tool, but journalists are careful about how they use the leads they get, regardless of the source.

Steve Bowbrick, who regular readers of this blog will remember as the blogger in residence and an , talked about how he uses Twitter to see what people there are saying about Radio 4, as well as joining the conversation using a .

That's a good example of a Ö÷²¥´óÐã branded account. and are other examples. There are also plenty of individuals at the Ö÷²¥´óÐã making personal use of Twitter and other micro-blogging tools though, in the same way that there are plenty of us with personal blogs.

When the Ö÷²¥´óÐã created its blogging guidelines they were , with input from people who were already blogging, and shared as part of a set of editorial guidelines for personal use of the web. They contain specific advice for news and current affairs staff as well as guidance for managers on how they 'should not adopt an unnecessarily restrictive approach to their staff blogging'.

Although the guidelines are just as valid for a micro-blogs as they are for a traditional blogs, there has been a fair bit of discussion about the need to update them to provide clearer advice about micro-blogging tools, which is why we were meeting. Steve Bowbrick suggested that this was an opportunity for us to publish a package not of rules, but of 'principles and guidance', in which provide useful encouragement and support. Someone else pointed out that it would need to include helping people understand the dangers and the risks too. Rory agreed, and "Education rather than regulation" seemed to resonate with the room.

Rory summed up by saying that we should always want to be where the conversation is taking place.

"If there's a conversation going on, it can't be bad for us to be involved, but we have to be aware of the rules of that community"

Which was a great point with which to close the meeting; wherever we go to join in a discussion online, we always need to consider the norms and conventions of the communities we are joining.

The editorial guidelines will receive an update to give clearer advice on micro-blogging, but it won't be a clampdown. The guidelines will continue to grow and evolve as new ways to interact with our users are discovered, constantly building on a foundation of the Ö÷²¥´óÐã's values and helping people apply a healthy dose of common sense.

Roo Reynolds is Portfolio Executive for Social Media, Ö÷²¥´óÐã Vision.

We're in the process of reviewing our help pages and notification emails for moderation, and I'd like to ask you for some help.

It's fair to say that we get a lot of complaints about the moderation of the various social media services on the Ö÷²¥´óÐã. Even Jonathan Ross can't unite the users of Ö÷²¥´óÐã Online in communal rage in quite the same way as moderation can.

Sadly, a large proportion of these complaints are inevitable. On a reactively moderated service - where most material is only looked at by the moderators as the result of a complaint by another user - it's a fact of moderation life that half of the people involved in each decision will be unhappy. If someone complains about another user's comment, then the complainant will be annoyed if the moderator rejects the complaint and leaves the comment up. If they uphold the complaint and remove the comment, the person who posted it feels hard done by.

So we expect some flak from both sides.

That's not to say that moderators don't make mistakes, and improvements can't be made. The trick for us is to communicate our decisions and policy more effectively while avoiding costly one-to-one discussions over individual posts. This is why we're looking at the notification emails and the help pages, so if you don't understand why your content was removed you can find further explanation without needing to write to us. We'll keep adding clarifications to these pages as we answer your queries.

Some things aren't going to change. In particular, we get a lot of requests for the moderators to write individual notifications when they fail something, pointing out exactly where the post broke the rules rather than the standard emails that are generated by the moderation process. We simply can't do this, at least not without several million pounds that we're not going to get (sorry Sutara). If you only use a few of the hundreds of Ö÷²¥´óÐã sites that the moderators work across, it's hard to imagine the impact of any extra time added to the moderation process, but even a small amount of time costs a lot of money. What we can do is rewrite the failure emails to make them clearer, and add more thorough explanation of the reasons why content is removed to the help pages on the site. We're trialling the first of some proposed changes here on the Internet blog from today, so if any of you are unfortunate enough to have a post removed, please leave a comment here to let me know whether you were any the wiser as to why.

We think the Ö÷²¥´óÐã goes much further than our peers in explaining moderation decisions and allowing right of reply when content is removed, as well it should. However, if you think there are other big companies that are doing a better job than us, do please give me examples so I can nick these ideas we can strive to improve in this area.

For a few hours this afternoon on the I'll be on a Points of View Ö÷²¥´óÐã topic thread, answering queries as best I can about the way we moderate the boards. Anything useful that comes out of it can be added to our help pages, and if it works well we might make it a regular thread. So please leave a comment below, or join the discussion on POV if you want your say about moderation on the Ö÷²¥´óÐã.

Paul Wakely is Content Producer, Ö÷²¥´óÐã Online

Last Friday we published Seetha's thoughts on Ö÷²¥´óÐã online and behavioural targeting.

If you read SevenOfMark's comment you'll know that a was working its way through the system.

The Ö÷²¥´óÐã's response to that request has now been published. You can read and at and I've also reproduced the main body of the letter on the extended entry on this post.

I know Seetha has read all the comments so far and wants to know what you think. So please do keep them coming.

Nick Reynolds is editor, Ö÷²¥´óÐã internet blog.

Read the rest of this entry

Last week I gave a talk in Gateshead at the about how we work in a digital future, considering the Ö÷²¥´óÐã's imminent move to in Salford and the Ö÷²¥´óÐã's regional production policy.

I ran through the Ö÷²¥´óÐã's plans to move people, production and resource to Salford - five key departments: Ö÷²¥´óÐã Sport, Children's, Radio 5 Live, Formal Learning and over 300 people from my department, Future Media & Technology. In line with the overall vision, FM&T's focus will be very much on partnerships with technology companies and public institutions to create the next wave of digital media innovations.

Overall, the move to Salford was broadly welcomed by the Gateshead audience, but one aspect provoked comment: I referred to the move to Salford as being about a major 'tilt to the North'. In the North East I was that Salford is- travelling time to Salford is no shorter than to London.

In response to the speech, some commented that the Ö÷²¥´óÐã still has a "London & The Rest" approach to the UK and one asked if there was "hope" for the North East. Yes, there is hope for the North East. Such a major commitment to the North by the Ö÷²¥´óÐã is just the start. A move of this scale is a fundamental shift in mindset for the Ö÷²¥´óÐã and should get us away from the "London & The Rest" approach.

But we need to improve our ways of working to ensure that shift. So I now pose two questions:

What kind of technology solutions can we use to make sure production teams and our partners across the North are in close dialogue with the Ö÷²¥´óÐã at Salford, whether they're in Yorkshire, Cumbria, Tyneside or wherever? at our Manchester site and they're keen to work with partners to make this possible. I do hope that technology can help us move away from a "jump on the train" mentality.

And, how can the Ö÷²¥´óÐã's commissioning system ensure that the move to Salford results in the best ideas for all platforms as well as more equitable spend across the North? This is something that the Ö÷²¥´óÐã is actively thinking about at the moment.

I'd welcome your thoughts.

Kerstin Mogull is Chief Operating Officer, Ö÷²¥´óÐã Future Media & Technology

One of the best and also the most challenging things about working for the Ö÷²¥´óÐã is the size and nature of our audience. Due to our public funding, we have a responsibility to ensure that all of our UK audience gets value for its licence fee, and that includes people who may not normally be catered for by commercial organisations.

A group like this is children with complex physical disabilities, including near total loss of motor control, who are not able to use a keyboard or mouse.

Computer access for these children is achieved through Switch technology - a small piece of hardware that accepts input from one or more custom devices, such as a large button, motion sensor or even a tube to blow into, and then maps this input to a key on the keyboard.

Content available for this technology is fairy sparse, custom-made, and often geared towards pre-school age groups. However, the high quality age-appropriate content which we already provide for other older children is often very difficult or impossible to use for this audience, although it would be of huge benefit to them.

That's the conclusion that Jennette Holden of came to. She felt that the ideal content for her pupils would be news - as most were interested in how the football was going or celebrity gossip.

However, she'd written off the idea as impossible for anyone to provide, as no-one could possibly have the time or resources to do the daily updates and maintainance on a news website made specifically for this audience.

That was until she shared her idea with Ian Hamilton from the online team who immediately though that the children's Newsround website might be the answer. Two years later, with the recent launch of the CÖ÷²¥´óÐã Newsreader, Ian and his team have made her idea a reality.

Here Ian tells the story behind the creation of this innovative new service.

Jonathan Hassell is Head of Audience Experience & Accessibility, Ö÷²¥´óÐã Future Media & Technology.

Idea

I was introduced to Jennette's idea while investigating possible projects at an accessible technology lobby a couple of years ago, and it was immediately obvious that it wasn't so impossible after all. We already had access to perfectly suited content in the form of the Newsround website, and due to the clear division now between content and layout, it would be a relatively simple task to present our content feeds in a simple, highly accessible alternative interface, capable of being operated by a single keypress.

Ideas such as Jennette's which are simple to execute and have a real benefit to our audiences are the lifeblood of innovation at the Ö÷²¥´óÐã, and we have various mechanisms set up to incubate them. One of those mechanisms is our 1-in-10 process, which the project was chosen to be an early test-case for.

Since then we have researched and worked with her and other industry experts and academics to bring this about, in particular from within the Ö÷²¥´óÐã thanks to sterling individual efforts from Leigh Jenkinson and Mark Swinson, and also some assistance from Ö÷²¥´óÐã RAD.

Development

Switch-accessible controls rely on scanning interfaces, which automatically move a coloured highlight around a menu, pausing on each option in turn for a given amount of seconds before moving on to the next. So to navigate around the interface the user just has to press the key (or their switch device mapped to that key) when the desired option is highlighted.

These kind of interfaces are normally bespoke applications, however the method we created for the CÖ÷²¥´óÐã Newsreader was to provide it on a normal HTML website by using some JavaScript to move the browser's built in tabbing focus around, which I believe is a first, and opens up some very interesting possibilities.

Another key feature of the Newsreader is dynamically generated speech via high-end , used to read out all of the story text and buttons. This is important as this audience could well have problems with seeing or reading, and may have difficulty using standard screen-reader software.

It's a very simple principle and one that could easily be applied to other content and audiences. Adults for example have even less age-appropriate content available than children, but providing this access could provide just as much benefit.

Results

Technology like this can have a huge impact on people's lives. Allowing those who are not able to do much without assistance to have some independant interaction can be really empowering, especially if it means being able to access exactly the same content that everyone else can. The Ö÷²¥´óÐã's combination of public service mandate and access to a wide variety of high quality content gives us quite a unique opportunity to be able to develop it, and in doing so give some real help to people who need it the most.

We've already seen some very encouraging results from our user testing and initial post-launch feedback. The target audience of children with motor disabilities has really benefitted, and the teachers are also using the Newsreader as a teaching aid for children with learning difficulties.

Another particularly exciting finding is the Newsreader's potential to help people on the autistic spectrum, due to the low cognitive load of the simplified interface, the repetition between text and audio, and the strong connection between the content and the real world. Seeing autistic kids now able to cope well with the content was quite unexpected and rewarding, and we've been told that the it is already being used in lesson plans for autistic children.

We launched the service two weeks ago, and the feedback so far has been overwhelmingly encouraging, for example:

"Just to say a big THANK YOU on behalf of all my pupils and clients all over Scotland who are switch users and poor readers - the new accessible newsreader is absolutely brilliant and much needed."

"This is excellent. I've added it as a link to my site and will be telling lots of people all about it through my work supporting London pupils with assistive technology needs and I'll get you feedback. Thank you for such a useful resource."

"We are a school for moderate learning difficulties and Autism. I will be using it with my children (age range from 7-16). A key to working with ASD children is to find something that motivates them and this is usually more easily done through technology. This will be a useful tool for the classroom and to initiate discussion etc. with them. Simple but brilliant!"

As a result of the feedback we've had and also findings from our testing sessions we are currently working on the next phase of development, to further open up the benefits to as wide an audience as possible.

Ian Hamilton is a senior designer in Ö÷²¥´óÐã FM&T Vision.

The CÖ÷²¥´óÐã Newsreader can be accessed from the CÖ÷²¥´óÐã Ö÷²¥´óÐãpage by clicking on the Switch icon or link bottom right of the page

:

Jake [Archibald]'s second comment made me aware what happened. Instead of seeking the error in my own setup I immediately thought the Ö÷²¥´óÐã messed up (this is the typical developer bit I was talking about). The solution to the problem was easy to remember once I was aware of it.

(.)

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based around Seetha Kumar's recent blog about behavioral ad targeting, as does . on the PC Pro piece include this one from hiccup:

...there is absolutely no reason for the Ö÷²¥´óÐã to get involved in what is ostensibly a commercial battle between competing technologies.

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Now, I'm quite a proud internet user. I like to think I know what I'm doing. But, that considered, I have no shame in admitting I have no idea what this means: .

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h2g2, which celebrated its 10th birthday recently, is having a redesign. Read about and discuss the changes here.

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It's the obsession even video gamers are almost ashamed to admit: game soundtracks are generally rather wonderful (. I hope). :

For that weekend Ö÷²¥´óÐã Radio 1 and Xtra1, which I'm sure the UK readers of the site know, will be playing gaming music on the radio, presenting reviews and featuring gaming leaderboards between Radio 1's superstar DJs.

There is much speculation on that post as to the best game theme ever. . We're hoping to get some more info about this very soon.

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The "feedback" topic on the Ö÷²¥´óÐã 6 Music boards has had to be suspended, provoking reaction from and .

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Ö÷²¥´óÐã Click's video of remote trojan horse hacking of computers

Dave Lee is co-editor, Ö÷²¥´óÐã Internet Blog, Future Media and Technology.

The . They discussed how the Ö÷²¥´óÐã can help its rivals, how age affects varying attitudes to the Corporation, and how the licence fee can survive in a digital world.

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Click's botnet experiment was a while ago now, but the IT security community is still debating on. :

And by the way, Mark, you didn't "pose as a customer", you were a customer. This isn't just flirting with the darkside: it's more like paying the darkside for services rendered behind the bike sheds, then bragging about it to the tabloids!

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Steve Bowbrick -- editor of the Radio 4 blog -- gives advance warning of Announcers' Week. A blog a day from the Radio 4 announcers. Steve says:

Each day, for the whole week, I'll bring you a post from one of Radio 4's announcers - the preternaturally calm crew who sit at the eye of the network's daily storm of news and comedy and weather and documentaries and drama (and the shipping forecast) and make sure everything keeps flowing as it should.

The more eagle-eyed among you will have also noticed that the Radio 4 blog has had a makeover too, going to the full 1024 pixels wide design that we now enjoy.

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If there's one thing that bugs this blogger, it's people dismissing HD -- and adding "I can't really tell the difference". Fortunately, . Breathtaking:

(Be sure to click 'HD' when you start the clip to get the full enjoyment.)

The clip is from the new Ö÷²¥´óÐã2 series, South Pacific.

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If you watched last week you may have -- in between booing and hissing -- been tweeting the night's events. . Matt Wardman .

Dave Lee is co-editor, Ö÷²¥´óÐã Internet Blog, Future Media and Technology.

I am fortunate in being surrounded by people for whom creative technology is intuitive, exhilarating and extraordinarily vivid. A connected world is the world we help shape.

However for those for whom the internet feels like alien territory, anxieties around issues such as safety, security and privacy can stand in the way of making the most of what the web has to offer.

These concerns are real. Our public service ethos acts as a powerful motivator: we want to provide a safe environment within which people can enjoy our offer.

Recently, there have been a lot of column inches on the use of so-called 'behavioural targeting' - the delivery of adverts to audiences based on their internet activity. 's behavioural targeting service, for instance,

I thought it worth sharing my thoughts. First, a recap on the main ways in which works.

First-party targeting is where user behaviour is tracked by means of a on a specific website. The data is kept by the website owner (or its contracted company), and targeted ads are served up whilst you're using the site. In a "network" advertising model a number of sites contract with each other to share the data about user journeys across a specified network of sites. The website's privacy policy should tell you how to opt out if you do not want your user journey site used in this way.

Of course, UK users are not served up ads on bbc.co.uk. We are a public service offering - funded by the licence fee. However, we do use cookies in order to provide users with a more customised service. But, you as the user are in control - you have the option of setting your device to accept all cookies, to alert you when a cookie is issued or to opt out - i.e. not to receive cookies at any time. If you want to know more, check Section 13 of our Privacy Policy for more information on our use of cookies.

A commercial company cannot provide good free content on the web without relying on advertising revenues. In which case, the better targeted the marketing - the more sales that are generated. I believe bbc.co.uk thrives by being part of a bigger competitive landscape of amazing content providers - mostly funded by advertising.

Our commercial arm, , uses first-party targeting technology on its UK sites - such as - and the international facing, advertising funded website at bbc.com, through a company called On our Privacy Policy we include a link for international users explaining more about the technology used and how to opt out of it. (You will find it at the top right hand corner of the privacy page). In a nutshell, Audience Science places a cookie that tracks the pages visited by international users of bbc.com, forms a profile based on that activity, and serves up adverts based on that profile.

Ads can be specifically targeted to users falling within specific "segments" - and there is a user benefit in that. It can also generate revenues that can be reinvested into supporting our public service remit of creating useful propositions for our audiences, as well as new ways of delivering them. Naturally, as a user, you have the choice to opt out.

Then, there is a further type of targeted marketing - ISP based behavioural targeted advertising (such as Phorm) - which is different. Targeted marketing here works by putting their technology into the ISPs networks. They intercept all users' browsing activity using , putting each user into a 'bucket' that broadly and anonymously categorises them, and serves them ads based on which "bucket" they are in. Whilst this enhances the quality of the targeting (as it covers a broader range of sites) it is also more invasive than first-person or network targeting as it collects the user's entire web activity.

My understanding is that Phorm is not currently deployed on a UK ISP, though it has been trialled. So the jury is still out.

Some principles remain true. They are quite simple - the privacy of our user and the code we follow as a public service broadcaster. This means it is not appropriate for third parties to use the data profiles of the users of Ö÷²¥´óÐã services for commercial gain.
Your ISP should always give you the choice of opting into their use of this type of behavioural targeted advertising. This has been laid down by the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) last year. As it's your ISP who decides whether or not to use this type of technology, it is worth knowing that there are steps you can take. In the case of Phorm, in particular, you can also opt out via their website.

Deep packet inspection is a big issue in Europe. So is the allied topic of users being in the driving seat and being able to give informed consent. The European Commission against the UK Government querying whether the law here goes far enough to protect users.

We are watching this space closely and waiting for details of the Government's response, which is due around mid June.

I am keen to hear your thoughts. There's more coverage of the subject in the links below if you are after further information.

Seetha Kumar is Controller, Ö÷²¥´óÐã Online and the Ö÷²¥´óÐã's Online Access Champion.

from Open Rights Group
website
"Phorm - one year on" from the Ö÷²¥´óÐã's dot.life
from FT.com techblog

I suppose for the relaunch of the you would expect me to write something funny. Well comedy is, as we all know, a very serious business, and not much funny comes to mind over the last 18 months of research, development, pitch, more research, more development repitch, greenlight, go, stop, freeze, , start again but on the red button, no honestly you can start this time online we mean it - stop, only joking, it's just the money we've partly stopped you carry on. And we did.

From the outset our Commissioner Martin Trickey and I knew the potential for this was just huge. The Ö÷²¥´óÐã is after all the biggest comedy production house in the world, we generate hundreds and hundreds of hours of comedy on TV and radio every year. Then there's the fact Comedy is a cut through genre online, just look at Ö÷²¥´óÐã3 comedy punching above its weight on , R4's Friday Night Comedy podcast delivering around a million stream requests a month, or with having done over half a million views. So we've set out to leverage the Ö÷²¥´óÐã comedy portfolio online and also create a new playground for the next generation of comedy talent.

Already on the site you can find Stewart Lee and Armando Ianucci alongside new sketch acts like Broken Biscuits, Tommy and the Weeks and bedroom pioneer David Firth. And over the next few weeks there's loads more exciting stuff around the new Reece Shearsmith & Steve Pemberton comedy Psychoville, a web only version of HIGNFY, animated Just a Minute, exclusive work from masters of the web like and .

And then when we get a community around it we can start to play UGC games like the great stuff you find on or that Adam & Joe do so well on . Then with better functionality and leveraging the best brains from FM&T we can personalise, widgetise and globalise our comedy too. What you can see now is really just the end of the beginning.

Now about that budget...

Will Saunders is executive producer, Ö÷²¥´óÐã Comedy.

...RAD is a relatively new team in a challenging environment and it has always been Agile in the sense that constant change is a part of life in our environment and we all embrace that. However we have been searching to find the right framework in which to track and report without incurring too many overheads in time for team members.

RAD has to contend with the following:

Fluctuating workforce

Skill set specialisations

Team members not always on-site

Multiple projects with a mix of complexities and uncertainties

As with all teams, we're resource constrained - this means we need to multiskill and work flexibly

In order to address this we've undertaken some research into various . In the spirit of being Agile (uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it) we decided that it was a good idea to try and share that knowledge, and so the "How I did Agile" Day was born.

Read more and comment at the Ö÷²¥´óÐã RAD blog

Claire Wardle is one of the academic project partners from Ö÷²¥´óÐã Nations & Regions' collaboration with Cardiff University examining the way that the Ö÷²¥´óÐã uses user generated content. Below she shares her views on how she feels the research project went and her current attachment with the Ö÷²¥´óÐã's English Regions New Media team. A copy of the research paper Claire produced with her colleague Andrew Williams can be found here and Claire can be contacted via.

Read more and comment at Knowledge Exchange blog.

We've made a couple of tweaks to the homepage today.

We've slightly enlarged the top right 'Find a Programme' panel, in order to present the link to all current Radio 4 programmes more clearly. The top picture promotion area has therefore been slightly reduced and, in order to preserve the image shape, we've moved the text to the bottom.

Read more and comment at the Radio 4 blog.

Leigh Aspin is Interactive Editor, Radio 4

Yesterday I posted a list of all the page numbers used on the Ö÷²¥´óÐã Red Button service - all 160 of them. They're used by many of our users to quickly jump to their favourite parts of their service, without having to spend time scrolling and selecting items from the menus.

Some people may find our numbering logic a bit odd - indeed it was made on the Digital Spy forums that inspired me to write this post.

Read more and comment at Press Red.

Andrew Bowden is senior producer, TV Platforms team, Ö÷²¥´óÐã FM&T.

Anthony Rose's has excited some conversations.

Jack Shofieldpulls out some of the numbers.

While in on Jack's post (that's a silly name - ed) draws our attention to this interesting fact:

Nothing is really achieved by direct download from the Ö÷²¥´óÐã - that would cost waaaay too much money, as proven by the total data usage. Instead, they set up peering agreements (free, ) which allow them to, with a little discussion, put iPlayer CDN (content delivery) boxes in datacentres and even possibly ISPs space in telephone exchanges, for a low/free/reasonable cost

The CNet piece encourages Rupert Goodwins to speculate about "

And paidContent the iPlayer "eats TV for breakfast".

Last week it was roughly 500 days since the Ö÷²¥´óÐã iPlayer officially launched in December 2007. Here are the top ten programmes viewed on iPlayer since then*:

• Top Gear Series 11
• Top Gear Series 12
• Doctor Who Series 4
• The Apprentice Series 5
• Live At The Apollo Series 4
• Little Britain USA
• Doctor Who Specials (Christmas 2005 - 2008 inc. & Easter 2009)
• Gavin and Stacey Series 2
• Merlin
• Mistresses Series 2

* In terms of average requests to view per episode, and excluding one-off programmes; data covers period from launch until end of April.

And finally, showing that you can't please everyone, 'Baby Times' about the arrival of the Cbeebies channel on iPlayer:

All the shows I'm sure I'll learn to hate really quickly are all readily available and when the cries of "more more more" come, you can always watch another episode right away.

Nick Reynolds is editor, Ö÷²¥´óÐã Internet blog

It's odd writing a blog piece about a new product that none of your intended audience can read.

But that illustrates why the latest Ö÷²¥´óÐã iPlayer release for Cbeebies (which went live today) needed such a different visual treatment.

Cbeebies is one of the Ö÷²¥´óÐã's most loved brands - hugely appreciated by parents, but often overlooked by those without children. It's target audience is the under sixes (from preschoolers up to early primary ages) and the main website is designed to work as both a dual experience (for parents with toddlers to play on together) and a solo activity for the older children as they become more web literate.

That in itself is quite a complex but the added complication is that you can't assume the same level of literacy as you do on adult sites.

So we've been working with the iPlayer team to come up with a walled garden version of the Ö÷²¥´óÐã iplayer that children can navigate without resorting to too much text based navigation.

The Ö÷²¥´óÐã's been making websites for children for over 10 years now and we've built a good body of knowledge about what constitutes best practice regarding usability for this age group. Young children are generally drawn by strong colours, they have an amazing ability to spot and recall individual programmes characters, and they are generally very good mimics. Once they identify an icon or user path they'll repeat it ad nauseam directing their grown-up by pointing to the screen or navigating themselves.

by on flickr

is often quite hard (not least because most aren't designed for small hands) so bigger buttons are essential. And text, even amongst the advanced children, tends to be overlooked whenever we do tests.

So the build of the Cbeebies iPlayer has had to incorporate all these best practice design features. In our tests, children and parents really like it.

Now there are some who will question why our children need access to yet more television. But this is not designed as a baby-sitting service - it's primarily a tool for parents and carers to have MORE control of their children's viewing NOT less.

We've intentionally targetted all the promotional links to the player at adults not children. And our research shows what parents and carers want more than anything is the ability to timeshift those favourite shows.

Our TV output on the Cbeebies channel is scheduled across the day with family routines in mind, but it can never be guaranteed to fit it with every household's hectic requirements. The Cbeebies Iplayer allows the grown-ups in the house to set the viewing timetable and better still, dictate what shows get shown.

So when there's the inevitable temper tantrum, you've always got the option to offer the ankle-biters "Time-out" with their favourite show. Other parents will just want to plan their children's screen time so it's not just a case of watching what happens to be on the box.

At Cbeebies we're not in the business of telling carers how they should bring up their kids or what the correct parenting approach should be in such situations, but we do know parents do value Cbeebies programming as educational and informative complement to the other activities their kids enjoy.

So the Cbeebies iplayer is designed to allow adults to set viewing patterns on their terms whilst the child-friendly interface both protects against any inadvertant selection of non-children's content (when their attention is distracted). Hopefully it will encourage more shared viewing and interaction around the shows the children appreciate most.

Marc Goodchild is Head of Interactive and On Demand, Ö÷²¥´óÐã Childrens

Big Weekend kicks off on the 9th of May in Swindon and historically we've always used the event to showcase innovation around technology. This year feels slightly different, we are still keen to play with new things, test out lots of ideas - but we've focused on 3 things that will be important to us over the coming 12 -18 months: Open, Visual and Mobile.

The topic of 'openness' has been much talked about in the Ö÷²¥´óÐã by such monster blogtastic brains as Jem Stone, Steve Bowbrick, Hugh Garry - and things are finally starting to stick. I want to see behave online like the friend it is on air. A friend that welcomes contribution, pokes fun, is honest, shares experiences, excites you about music. Big Weekend is a great place to start.

During the autumn, we found a strong visual mechanic that opens up our station and lets us have FUN. It came in the form of ScottCam - live (silent) video feeds from Scott Mill's flat. We had a feeling ScottCam would be a winner due to the slightly perverse voyeuristic experience of being able to peer into someone's life, but there was the glimpse of something exciting in the live audience feedback around the streams.

Increasingly, this mix of video, interaction and data gets more exciting. I appeared briefly on BeckyCam and watched emails pour in... warm, friendly emails - full of humour - mainly about my bald(ing) head - but still.... this begged the question, how can I show them to everyone else? How can we share that conversation on and let it spread across the web using status updates like and . The megaphone of Radio is a a powerful call to action, a unique kick start to online conversations - enhanced by live data and video. So check out the live streams coming out of Big Weekend in Swindon. Talented radio producers are set to have fun... and we hope an audience is poised to watch what goes on. We'll do our best to reflect back the comments the live stream brings - maybe even chat. I feel like we have a long way to go in being more open but Big Weekend is a good start...

So that has done Visual and Open, but we are also learning a thing or two about mobile - how people use their devices and how we can get content to them to share. We are building a mobile site optimised for those high end devices (see pic) - but the real fun is in the 'Bluetooth Loo' where we will Bluetooth you great stuff for your mobile while you relieve yourself - we'll tinker with QR codes again too on site, gauging where our audience is at with these things... Hopefully we'll continue to learn in this space and find great ways to connect with young people.

As ever you can watch all live performances, DJ video, check out photos and follow the festival at

Lots more to come .

Ben Chapman is Interactive Editor, Audio and Music Interactive.

Since the problems with Have Your Say first arose last week, we have been doing everything we can to identity the causes and bring the service back online. Sadly, despite these efforts we are not yet in a position to say with certainty what caused the downtime. As such, we have now decided that the priority is to bring Have Your Say back online as quickly as we can, even if this means offering a slightly reduced service.

So that is what we are doing. We are publishing a new debate and you should be able to contribute to it via the usual Have Your Say index. However, though you will be able to log in as normal, we can't yet provide you with access to old debates or old comments. We are, however, continuing to investigate the issues that are preventing us from making this archive content available.

As we are effectively running a backup service, we're going to build up a full list of new debates gradually. It's possible that there will be some downtime in the future, but we are doing our best to make sure that this doesn't happen; we will provide updates on this blog if it does.

Comment on this post on the News Editors' blog.

Matthew Eltringham is the assistant editor of Interactivity

Over the last year, I've been really encouraged that usage of the Ö÷²¥´óÐã mobile site has virtually doubled. Ö÷²¥´óÐã Mobile now reaches around 4m UK users and much of the ongoing growth has been driven by the appeal of Ö÷²¥´óÐã News and Sport content, which currently accounts for the bulk of traffic on the mobile site.

Back in 2008, Journalism embarked on a significant project to deliver a quicker, richer and easier to manage mobile service, to build upon the considerable achievements of the existing news and sport sites.

The project presented a number of challenges for the team, not least because it involved rationalising the systems used to produce the site. It's now managed and produced directly from the same system Ö÷²¥´óÐã journalists have been using for years, to publish content to the desktop sites. So it kind of felt like returning mobile to the mothership.

Read more and comment at Ö÷²¥´óÐã Journalism Labs blog

We've just launched a new version of the

It is similar in look and feel to the one it replaces, but shows more headlines at the top level, makes it easier to get to our Sport and Weather mobile sites, has faster publishing speeds, and provides related story links at the end of stories - so for example analysis or on-the-ground reports from our correspondents related to a key story of the day, or a Q&A or background article.

Read more and comment at the Editors blog at Ö÷²¥´óÐã News

Steve Herrmann is editor of the Ö÷²¥´óÐã News website

In today's on-demand world, it's easy to forget just how far we've come. Gone are the days of schedulers deciding when we've seen enough sport, or enough news, or enough Ashes to Ashes. Instead, we're all our own schedulers now. :

If a sport event is taken up by the Ö÷²¥´óÐã you can watch it live when it is on traditionally, and when it isn't on red buttonly, or catch up with it after it's over on Ö÷²¥´óÐã iPlayerly.

As anyone who will have watched Matt Le Tissier prance about on Sky Sports' Player Cam will appreciate, the red button hasn't always been that useful. :

It was only for 2008's Beijing Olympics, however, that the scheme's popularity reached a point of near-universal acceptance. Deluged with sport, the Ö÷²¥´óÐã showed multiple live streams for disciplines it didn't have the space to show on its main channels, and millions of viewers fed - or discovered - at least a passing interest in challenges as diverse as open water swimming or the modern pentathlon.

For more Red Button related happiness, check out Andrew Bowden's entry on the Press Red blog.

to of Ö÷²¥´óÐã News headlines:

And, anyway, what's so great about those Ö÷²¥´óÐã headlines? If we take Italy buries first quake victims and look at the URL we get this: https://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7990029.stm. Now, let's take a look at a similar headline from the Daily Telegraph, which is not allowed to impose a tax on Britain's householders. . Unlike the lazy Beeb URL, the one here, shows off the craft of an SEO artist, who has to make it work for a living by using elements such as https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/5116660/ and Italian-earthquake-more-than-150-dead-Silvio-Berlusconi-confirms.html to satisfy the needs of the all-powerful spiders. That address contains not just information; it is crammed with the kind of words that will help rank the story.

The is just a couple of weeks away. We've already launched our dedicated minisite, and the show's special blog is now well and truly back in action.

And finally, congratulations to the Ö÷²¥´óÐã News team for .

Dave Lee is co-editor, Ö÷²¥´óÐã Internet Blog, Future Media and Technology.

So the roadmap for the next six months has arrived and we want to share it with you good readers of our blog.

It is a really critical time for Ö÷²¥´óÐã Red Button, with large audiences still using our services but with many, many more competitors coming into the market. So with one face focussed on serving existing audience and the other facing to the future, we juggle the difficult job of keeping present platforms fresh but ensuring that we are at forefront of new developments.

This year will see more broadband connected TVs and set top boxes arrive on the market. With this potential technology change, a number of our team are concentrating on understanding what the creative, technical and user experience will be on these new devices and how this will shape Ö÷²¥´óÐã Red Button in the future.

Read more and comment on the Press Red blog.

John Denton is Managing Editor, TV Platforms Group

Fast on the heels of our launch of HD in Ö÷²¥´óÐã iPlayer on the Web we are now able to bring HD catch-up to the TV in the living room. Content from our channel is now available in Ö÷²¥´óÐã iPlayer on Virgin Media Digital cable and I think it's the best Ö÷²¥´óÐã iPlayer picture quality yet.

picture taken from mobile in front of a very sunny window

The continuing demand for large, flat screen HD TV sets flies in the face of the credit crunch but there is still not much high-quality HD content available. The Ö÷²¥´óÐã HD channel is, of course, at the forefront of making more available as far and wide as possible, but adding a catch-up element to this provides more opportunity to watch some of the best of it.

iPlayer users with fast internet connections are already benefitting from HD on the web version of the iPlayer. And, by using the proprietary VOD cable TV network, we can now also offer even better HD video to the 500,000+ homes who already have an HD-capable set-top cable TV box*. And just like the standard-definition Ö÷²¥´óÐã iPlayer content, that 1.5 million cable homes regularly watch, the HD programmes play to the end without hiccup or pause, for everyone.

That's not to say what's being achieved is easy. HD video in the video format we're using has five times the resolution of regular TV pictures. The size of the HD video files we are shipping around are enormous, so we have to get them down to a size that can be sent more comfortably over the web: we squeeze HD video into a data rate of just 3.5mbit/sec with clever use of the very efficient H.264 encoding system. The older MPEG2 format supported by digital cable, however, needs 18mbit/sec for 1080i To support the older MPEG2 format needed by digital cable, however, we are encoding 1080i HD video at 18mbit/sec - a rate that is unthinkable on the open Internet today - a rate that is unthinkable on the open Internet today.

* To watch HD in Ö÷²¥´óÐã iPlayer on digital cable you will need a V+ set-top box connected to an HD-capable TV with an HDMI or component cable (not SCART). Also, the HD options will only appear in the extended Ö÷²¥´óÐã iPlayer user interface if you have chosen a "HiDef " video display option on your set-top box (from the Virgin Media Ö÷²¥´óÐã page chose Settings > Change Display and Audio Settings >TV Display Format).

Gideon Summerfield is Products Manager, TV iPlayer, Ö÷²¥´óÐã Future Media & Technology

picture taken from mobile in front of a very sunny window

is 10 years old! Which, in internet years, is the equivalent of a very old, very wise man. If you missed it, here's their post about the occasion.

that the set is just too, well, old to be used for HD filming:

"What we've concluded is that everything is there for us in design terms for us to upgrade to HD apart from the exterior set, which is 24 going on 25 years old," Santer revealed. "And it shows, particularly in the brickwork on the Square and Bridge Street which doesn't pass muster on HD."

Who says life has to be all hard work? Jason DaPonte and team have been playing working with Lego. He :

We worked through a process where we used the Lego to model our own role; then how we operate within that role; the wider organisation etc, until we built up a large model of how our roles fit together and fit into the Ö÷²¥´óÐã. We also built aspects of ourself that we don't bring to work and used these to do some introspection into how we might (or might not) change the way we operated, etc.

You can learn more about .

in response to the .

asking if iPlayer HD is good enough to watch on a HD television. They reach a heartening conclusion:

So, is iPlayer HD good enough for your HD TV? Yes, we think it is actually. The quality isn't perfect, but if you missed something, or simply don't have access to the proper HD channel, it's likely to be a godsend. We're hopeful that the Ö÷²¥´óÐã will continue to improve the quality.

The Knowledge Exchange blog has a summary of their 'A Collaborative Journey' event last week. If you're involved in any shape or form in academia or research you really should give it a read.

It's been a while since we changed our blog design, but some of us are still settling in. Your feedback is always welcome.

Sarah, the new Points of View message board host, is getting comfy in her new role. Here's a thread about all the places you can discuss Ö÷²¥´óÐã programming around the web.

***

Without sounding too much like a certain UK newspaper, we couldn't resist posting this comment on ThinkBroadband by reader TonyHoyle:

What the hell is wrong with this country? The Ö÷²¥´óÐã/ITV collaborate to produce an open standard and Ofcom jump up and try to kill it.

Where was all this bleating about competition when Sky produced a proprietary EPG and closed encryption standard that effectively destroyed the open market on satellite hardware in this country? Nowhere. It's got nothing to do with competition and everything to do who has been passing brown envelopes.

That outburst was in response to .

Another . Project Canvas in , we believe.

Dave Lee is co-editor, Ö÷²¥´óÐã Internet Blog, Future Media and Technology.