March 2005 Archives
March 31, 2005
Election 97 on BBC.co.uk
Download a print version of this article A few months ago BBC Broadcast introduced a 'site owners database', which looked at the directories on the live BBC site, and attempted to gather contact information for every area of BBC.co.uk. It is very useful in my day-to-day work, but even more useful because it provides a facility to look for orphan sites - top level directories on BBC.co.uk which nobody has claimed. Some of these turn out to be very...
March 30, 2005
Politics 97 on BBC.co.uk
Download a print version of this article A few months ago BBC Broadcast introduced a 'site owners database', which looked at the directories on the live BBC site, and attempted to gather contact information for every area of BBC.co.uk. It is very useful in my day-to-day work, but even more useful because it provides a facility to look for orphan sites - top level directories on BBC.co.uk which nobody has claimed. Some of these turn out to be very...
March 29, 2005
Diana Remembered on BBC.co.uk
Download a print version of this article A few months ago BBC Broadcast introduced a 'site owners database', which looked at the directories on the live BBC site, and attempted to gather contact information for every area of BBC.co.uk. It is very useful in my day-to-day work, but even more useful because it provides a facility to look for orphan sites - top level directories on BBC.co.uk which nobody has claimed. Some of these turn out to be very...
March 28, 2005
Budget 97 on BBC.co.uk
Download a print version of this article I've often worried about whether the BBC, and indeed the wider media landscape, is effectively archiving web sites. The Wayback Machine is great and the Google cache a useful short-term fallback, but I can't help having a nagging feeling that the online world is heading into the same territory as early television - a few screengrabs, some memoirs, and a lot of wishful "if only we'd kept that". This is one of...
March 27, 2005
Haunted Hampstead
At Christmas I bought my wife a book called "Walking Haunted London" by Richard Jones, with the aim of getting to know London a bit better by visiting these haunted places. With spring arriving we made our first trip today - to Hampstead. We skipped the first pub on the haunted agenda - the William IV - as especially with the clocks changing it was too early to start having a drink. Instead our first main stop was the Parish...
March 22, 2005
Hot tags and Flickr spam
Flickr have added a new "Hot Tags" section to the main tags page, which displays tags that have been used frequently over both the last 24 hours and the last week. Let's hope it doesn't make it even more attractive to use Flickr as a new haven for spam....
Why Ringmain?
And then she appeared...on a flat-screen TV in our gleaming ultra-modern new offices, was the girl and the clown and the noughts and the crosses. I've written before about the Test Card F nostalgia trip, and the fact that although you seldom (if ever?) see it on BBC One or BBC Two nowadays, it is still used in the BBC prior to internal communications broadcasts on the ringmain. Apparently (according to Wikipedia) since 1999 we have used the same image...
March 21, 2005
I've had the painters and decorators in
So currybetdotnet has been getting the annual wash'n'brush up for the new year. Well, it is a bit late for the new year, but it has taken me a while to get round to it. I was really pleased when Paul Hammond's old site visually compared a whole host of blogs, not only because he included currybetdotnet, but also because from one full-page screengrab of my homepage it didn't look particularly like any other blog. However, I started to get...
The Independent on Sunday's sense of fair play
Yesterday The Independent on Sunday led with a story claiming "Howard stirs race row with attack on Gypsies", citing: an advertisement on page 8 of this newspaper Having been happy to take the party's money and run the advert, in what I am sure must have been a total coincidence caused by the layout of other stories in the paper, the continuation of the front page story ended up on page 9. Which just happened to mean that the full-page...
March 14, 2005
h2g2 and Wikipedia
Download a print version of this article Frankie Roberto's post about the future of h2g2 pointed me in the direction of this article about the site's future, which includes some points about what the differences are between h2g2 and Wikipedia. "We are a collaborative online guide to Life the Universe and Everything, but you knew that already. In this respect we appear to be the same as Wikipedia, and this illusion is a dangerous thing. The BBC have a...
March 12, 2005
When Oyster Card fails think "Thanks for the uptime"
In Friday's Evening Standard there was a small article by Local Government Correspondent Ross Lydall about the Oyster card: "Oyster card users have been overcharged about £1 million because of delays in limiting fares, it was claimed today. The revelation came as pressure grew for an inquiry after a computer crash caused the £50 million smartcard system to collapse. Card readers across the 270 Tube stations and on 8,000 buses failed yesterday morning - taking five hours to repair and...
March 10, 2005
A warped sense of loyalty
Tonight's Evening Standard printed a letter from a London Assembly Member, Labour's Cllr Murad Qureshi: I see that French Arsenal and Chelsea players have aligned themselves with the Paris bid to host the 2012 Olympics I would have thought Londoners who pay £40 a match to watch footballers who are paid £20,000 a week would expect a little more loyalty. Hmm, I wonder what the public reaction would be if a certain David Beckham and Michael Owen showed the kind...
The logo that time (almost) forgot
Very, very occasionally, in our brand new White City offices, you come across a piece of equipment that earned a BBC asset sticker in the dark distant days before the great logo straightening purge of the late 1990's...
New Doctor Who site(s) on bbc.co.uk
It's just like buses you know - you wait sixteen years for a new series of Doctor Who, and then two brand new websites turn up at once. This week the official BBC Doctor Who site got a new look for the new series, with trailers, a screensaver, and sound-clips to download. The five minute video with Murray Gold talking about re-making the iconic theme tune is very interesting, and they've even gone to the trouble of re-packaging the old...
March 9, 2005
From The Editor's desktop to my in-tray
Pete Clifton, the editor of the BBC News site has started writing a column for the site called "From The Editor's Desktop", looking at "the headlines of the week, and some of the highlights and lowpoints of the coverage". There is the opportunity for users to send comments at the bottom of the page. I've enjoyed it so far. I've written before about how difficult it can be for named BBC staff to put their head over the parapet, because...
March 8, 2005
Chelsea in, Manchester United out, Martin annoyed. Natch.
So some of the ties in what is now called the 'Super 16' round of the Champions League were decided tonight, and they saw Chelsea stay in and Manchester United go out. I can't help but get aggravated by the exaggerated hype that accompanies such an occasion. On Radio Five Live Jonathan Pearce said to Gavin Peacock that the Chelsea match "would have made a great final", and the ITV television commentary team claimed of the same game that "There...
"Dear Television" on BBC Two
If you get a chance try and catch "Dear Television" on BBC Two, a short ten minute vignette of a programme which showcases "strange and wonderful letters cataloguing the pre-occupations and passions of television viewers". Culled from the pages of vintage editions of The Radio Times, it marries a narration of the letter to clips of the original show. The joy of the programme is not just in the bizarre nature of the letters, but in the way the clips...
March 7, 2005
Digital doesn't automatically mean quality
I was interested in Owen Gibson's article about BSkyB's proposed HDTV service in Media Guardian today. I saw a demo of the Euro1080 service at the BBC's Kingswood Warren Reasearch & Development department last year - and I have to say I was taken aback at the difference in picture quality. It was showing basketball, and the thing I couldn't get over in my head was that I could actually "see" the people in the crowd. Of course you...
Could Arsenal station be retro-renamed?
A while ago Arsenal announced that thanks to the quick bung of £100m in their direction, their new stadium is to be known as Emirates Stadium. It made me wonder what might happen to the name of Arsenal station on the Piccadilly Line. It was renamed 'Arsenal' on the 31st October 1932 to reflect that it was just around the corner from the club's Highbury ground. The re-naming is very noticeable, since over 70 years later the tile-work on the...
Doctor Who's "Rose" leaked on the internet
The next few weeks are going to be a minefield as a I try to avoid anyone who might tell me anything about the new Doctor Who series. I have a vague dream that I will be able to sit down and watch it with the wild-eyed enchanted naivity I enjoyed as a child. Naturally, since I work at the BBC, and I know far too much about the new series production already this is going to be impossible. The...
March 6, 2005
Adopt-a-Station with 'one'
Earlier this year whilst at Tottenham Hale waiting for the Stansted Express I picked up a copy of the 'one' rail franchise's newsletter. One article grabbed my attention - "Adopt A Station extended". The company was announcing that: 'one' railway stations on the Crouch Valley line - Althorne, Fambridge, Woodham Ferrers and Burnham - will soon receive makeovers thanks to the 'one' Adopt-a-Station initiative. The scheme is aimed at improving lines of communication between the train operator and railway station...
Comic Relief are go!
The bbc.co.uk homepage has entered the spirit of this year's Comic Relief appeal by adding a box under the regular promo box, linking through to to the official Red Nose Day site, as well as some choice BBC content about March the 11th. Of course if you haven't already bought your exclusive Comic Relief "Little Britain" DVD, let me assure you it won't be as good as the Doctor Who Comic Relief special from 1999. So OK, the Little Britain...
Baxter vs Moore - Costing you money in Parliament
The London Development Agency has been running a competition to name a new bridge at Wembley Stadium, and like all good online votes it has attracted people trying to hijack it. First up it was a campaign by Scottish fans to get it named after Jim Baxter, and then according to this Evening Standard article, the Irish and Welsh have joined in with campaigns backing Roy Keane and Scott Gibbs respectively. The Scottish campaign has allies in Parliament, with SNP...
March 5, 2005
Don't talk to me anymore!
It hasn't been the easiest of months for the BBC's online communities. Late last month it was announced that a swathe of the message boards on the drama and entertainment areas of the site were to be closed. It prompted an outcry amongst the users which even graced the pages of The Times: They are members of one of the country's most clandestine communities. Predominantly female and in many cases highly educated, they have gathered - unbeknown even to their...
March 4, 2005
Thanks Nick!
Who would have thought a photo-sharing application could be such fun... It all started back on the 22nd of February, when we got a late night sprinkling of snow in Walthamstow. Since my wife lived most of her life in South Africa snow is still something of an exciting and enchanted novelty for her. I'm surprised at this as I would have thought that it only took two winters to realise that in Southern England snow is always an unwelcome...
March 3, 2005
bbc.co.uk/search - How the memory plays tricks
I wandered down to visit the BBC's Search team, who are no longer on the same floor as me in our new building, and was struck by a new display on the wall which illustrated the way the BBC's online search had changed over the years. One screengrab in particular caught my eye. "But of course", I said, "we never launched that". I was, of course, wrong. This page existed between the time the global toolbar was launched to rebrand...
Tag fun at Flickr
I was wryly amused the other day when looking at all the public photos on Flickr tagged with my name. The related tags? Mark, John, beach, family, king, Christmas, portrait. And beer! But how did they know?...