With recent news that Windows (Europe) will no longer bundle IE with Windows OS, this article on the current state of IE browser share makes for very interesting reading indeed, hard to believe that IE6 will outlive IE7 but unfortunately, that seems to be what we are stuck with..
I do love when a creative agency gets an unlimited budget and told to go do what they want. However, sometimes I can’t help but think the creatives had a little help when storyboarding ideas.. check out this ad for Adobe CS4 to see what I mean…
I was heartened to learn this week that Microsoft has announced that it will now bundle IE8 into it’s Windows Automatic Updates. This means that users will be presented with a priority update which will upgrade their web browser from IE6/7 to IE8.
There are also several campaigns raging throughout the Internet to finally get shot of IE6 including Bring Down IE6 pioneered by the excellent .net magazine and a useful little piece of javascript from IE6 Update. Although with the latter, however worthy the cause, I’m a little uneasy about the fact it pertains to be an official Windows message when in actual fact it’s not. It’s a little too like a Trojan tactic for my liking.
As much as this is all very encouraging, it may not have the impact many are hoping for as many the users still using IE6 have managed to resist upgrading to IE7. This may be down to a few reasons including users owning an illegal copy of Windows or being locked down in a corporate environment. I know this first hand as many non-tech people in my office still use IE6 as their primary browser as the BBC hasn’t even managed to roll out IE6 yet.
To this end, I’m afraid to say, the reports on the death of IE6 may be great exaggerated.
At a recent monthly departmental meeting, I met Seetha Kumar, controller of BBC Online. Seetha is responsible for the editorial and strategic development of the mammoth web presence that is bbc.co.uk and she reports to the BBC Trust.
BBC Online faces many challenges as it continues to scale and must move and adapt quickly to keep up with new technologies and trends. Some of the challenges I have encountered since I started working on sites for the BBC include;
These are exactly the types of questions Seetha was tasked with answering and this week she has published her ten very insightful publishing priciples for BBC Online. However, these principles are not unique to the BBC and should be a must read for every website owner, however big or small.
It is continually drummed into us at the BBC to put audiences at the heart of everything we do. This is something that every website owner should also do. Design and develop with your user at the heart of your process at all times. Only then will you see your site reach it’s full potential.
I’ve reproduced Seetha’s guidelines below but they can also be found on the BBC Internet Blog.
1. Web sites and products should be designed to meet a clearly-defined audience need
Anticipate needs not yet fully articulated by audiences and meet them with products that set new standards and even exceed expectations.
2. The best websites do one thing really, really well
Do less, keep it simple, execute perfectly.
3. Ensure there is nothing similar already published on BBC Online
We are all contributors to one website. How are you adding to what exists already? Can you reuse what has been built and is your content, in turn, reusable? Don’t create a web cul-de-sac - we have so many of those already!
4. Any website is only as good as its worst page
Ensure best practice editorial processes, technology and UX standards are adopted and adhered to. Your content may be linked to, forever, so plan for the full lifecycle. Consider how will it look in three year’s time, how it can be curated. Will it degrade gracefully - or should you set a date for it to be mothballed or archived?
5. Accessibility is not an optional extra
Sites designed that way from the ground up work better for all users. Your site should, where appropriate, easily translate into other languages.
6. Maximise routes to content
How will people know your site exists? Keep the URL as simple and memorable as possible (and remember that all URLs should be lower case). Optimise your site to rank high in Google and other search engines. Develop permanent URLs and contextualise with as many aggregations of content about people, places, topics, channels, networks and time as possible.
7. Free up your content for consumers to take away
Don’t reinvent Facebook or Bebo - just make it easy for users to take nuggets of content with them, with links back to your site or the wider BBC from wherever they are. Wherever and whenever users find your content make sure the feedback loops work.
8. Do not attempt to do everything yourselves - “do what you do best and then link to the rest“
Link to other high-quality sites - your users will thank you. Use other people’s content & tools to enhance your site and vice versa.Don’t feel you have to host the conversations about your content, just link to them or join in as appropriate.
9. Consistent design & navigation needn’t mean one-size-fits-all
Users should always know they’re on a BBC website, even if it doesn’t look exactly like another. Clear signposting is vital to ensure users won’t get lost within or beyond your site.
10. Personalisation should be unobtrusive, elegant and transparent
After all, it’s our users’ most personal data - respect it. And adhere to our forthcoming cookie policy!
Mistajam is a man after my own heart.. He is also a pretty funny guy as we discovered when he came into the office recently for The 5:19 Show. Anyone who has heard KIG’s anthem ‘Head, Shoulders, Kneez & Toez‘ will know it’s incredibly difficult to get out of your head, however, I think Mistjam’s parody is worse as I have been singing it for days! Watch the video below and see what I mean.. RUMBLY, RUMBY!
I asked my Twitter followers this week if they thought Twitter had hit the mainstream. Of those who replied, all said that in their opinion, it had not. I tend to agree but I can’t help but think Twitter is very much on the cusp of it and I can’t help but wonder, at the end of 2009, will it be as commonplace in conversation as Facebook or mySpace?
According to Hitwise, Twitter use has rocketed over 1000% in the UK in the last year. This is phenomenal growth by anyone’s standards, and helps explains why Twitter has struggled to maintain consistent uptime in the last year as they strive to cope with surging demand. This week, market share also surpassed social media giant Digg for the first time.
Over the last year many, many people have embraced the idea of conveying a succinct nugget of opinion, trivia or irrelevant minutia to friends and strangers alike, in less than 140 characters. These include celebrities Jonathon Ross, Stephen Fry and John Cleese.
Jonathon Ross at his Twitter Account
Ross, in particular, has helped raise the profile of Twitter significantly as he posted while suspended from the BBC for making naughty phone calls on Radio 2. The mainstream media soon picked up on this and suddenly Twitter was being mentioned on TV, radio and newspapers nationwide.
Twitter hit the news once more when the first pictures emerged of the Hudson plane crash in New York on TwitPic, a third party site used to post image to Twitter. The guy who took the pictures was interviewed on many major news outlets worldwide, where he prefaced all questions with an explanation of Twitter.
Twitter was also a constant source of information when the attacks on Gaza started. with nearly all journalists banned from entering the region, many were forced to report what they had read on Twitter rather than what they had seen themselves. Many had also used Twitter to keep abreast of events during the Mumbai terrorist attacks.
This week, the big conversation on Twitter was all about Obama’s Inauguration, with many Tweeting from the actual event.
However, ask 10 people walking down your local high street asking people about Twitter and you’re very likely to be greeted with blank expressions. To become a “household name” takes alot more than just wooing the tech savvy.
Twitter has also not revealed how it intends to monetize. Millions of visitors is all well and good but if they are not making you a return, you’re basically a charity, aren’t you? I can’t help but think whenever they do eventually introduce a system to make money, will this curb the growth?
What do you think? Will Twitter ever make the mainstream?
I’ve always been a big fan of music and remember fondly the heady days of free (if illegal) music downloading with Napster circa 2001. Then of course, the music big wigs, woke up smelled the coffee and then realised it was being stole from under their noses. They subsequently took action and all free Napster bit the dust.
Since then, those unwilling to pay for downloading listening pleasure, have had to use Bittorrent or dubious peer-to-peer applications such as Limewire to obtain their favourite music, navigating the minefield of spy ware and trojans viruses which are riddled through both.
The other alternative is the immensely popular Last FM, with more than 21 million users in over 200 different countries. Last FM has been around for almost 7 years and is the undisputed king of streaming personalised music choice. However, I have now found an alternative in Spotify, which also complements Last.fm by hooking into it’s audioscrobbling service..
Spotify is a Swedish based service which streams music instantly to your computer via a lightweight downloadable app, available for Windows or Mac. You can search for artists, tracks or albums in a huge range of genres and listen to them all, free!
The tracks are interspersed with adverts every now and again but I find them largely unobtrusive, certainly better than many major radio stations. There are also banner ads integrated into the app but all advertising can be removed by paying for a premium service.
The songs stream instantly for anyone with a decent net connection and songs are cached on your computer for your next play. You can however, choose how much of your memory you want to allocate for caching.
All songs are licenced to play online although none can be downloaded, which is why it will never kill iTunes.
I’m guessing only a handful of record labels have signed up as there are some albums I can’t find so I hope more will follow giving a wider range of music to choose from.
There is also a social side (isn’t there always?) to Spotify, with the ability to share playlists and tracks with friends.
Personally, I think it’s great, it looks great, it’s very easy to use and I’m addicted to playing with it.. I’m finding songs I haven’t heard in years, good times. I just hope they don’t start charging further down the line when they build up a following, bad times.
Right now it’s still in beta, and it was invite only, but I found this open link on Twitter during the week and half the office is now addicted to it, try it out for yourself and let me know what you think!
At BBC Switch this Christmas we have launched a very special Chris Mass appeal, as you can see from the video, it’s a very worthy cause so if you know anyone named Chris, then please let them know so they can make a difference. Maybe.
You can keep up with the progress of Chris Mass Appeal every day at 5:19pm on The 5:19 Show.
It was recently announced that BBC One & BBC Two will now be simulcast online from tomorrow, the 27th November. This follows a similar move by BBC Three and BBC Four earlier this year. With ITV also offering live streaming for their 4 channels, plus an extensive catch up service offered by the 3 main terrestrial services, I’m wondering if I really need my TV anymore?
It’s also worth pointing out that (if you’re a student) you will need a TV licence in order to watch a live stream although I’m not sure how a TV licence inspector could argue that you need a licence if you have a laptop/computer in the house even though technically if you have equipment capable of recieving live TV, you need a licence. To enforce this they would need to persuade ISPs to hand over user data, however two of the UK’s biggest ISPs, BT and Tiscali have already pledged their resistance with Tiscali stating “Handing over that volume of customer information could be considered legally and morally unacceptable”. This argument is set to go and remains a grey area if ever I heard one…
I know my personal consumption of TV has changed dramitically over the last 18 months. I used to regularly tune in to watch programmes at the time of broadcast, scanning the TV listings in early evening to see if anything interesting cropped up if I was spending the night indoors.
If I happened to notice that two equally appealing programmes were on at the same time, I might have been even tempted to break out a blank VHS and set the video recorder. However, in later years when DVD (Recorder) players took over, it just seemed like a lot of hassle.
But, this is no longer the case, I can’t remember the last time I sat down at a specific time to watch something on TV. Why would I when I know I can catch it again on the iPlayer, ITV Catch-Up, 4OD or Sky Player?
I no longer succumb to the hype of a certain TV show only to be disappointed when it turns out to be lack lustre at best, I just wait and see what bobs to the top of the most popular lists. I no longer have to interrupt my life to sit down to watch a TV show as i know it’s a watch it or miss it experience, (almost) everything is now on the Internet..
I say almost everything, because I am of course forgetting to mention that not all channels broadcast on TV are online although I would argue that the ones worth watching are. Freeview has been around for a while now and I still struggle to find anything decent worth watching whenever I flick through it. Also not everyone wants to watch their favourite show on a computer/laptop although I don’t mind in the slightest.
One area i think the TV will always have the edge is the family focal point, where the whole family can gather around, when you have one eye on the TV and the other on your Dad asking about your day. Where you are having a quick meal on your lap after a long day and are happy to just stare at whatever is staring back at you for 15 minutes.. Despite the conveniene of on-demand catch up, it requires a little more effort that just an on button.
This landed in my office email inbox this morning and seems to have been doing the rounds this week…
Even though it has quite a serious message, be aware of cyclists, it has managed to capture the attention of the elusive youth audience by being smart, re-inforcing that there is no such thing as making a viral video, you just need to make a good video. Or, maybe they were entering the YouTube competition?
