Posts tagged BBC
"If we can’t change the Beeb, we can’t change the country"
Fascinating rant by Boris Johnson in The Telegraph, arguing that the BBC needs a new Tory director-general if we are going to see our economic situation turn around:
We now have the twin problems of dealing with the debt, and recovering competitiveness – and neither of those is easy when the BBC is the chief mirror in which we view ourselves. If you are funded by the taxpayer, you are more likely to see the taxpayer as the solution to every economic ill.
If you are funded by the taxpayer, you are less likely to understand and sympathise with the difficulties of business; you are less likely to celebrate enterprise. I have sometimes wondered why BBC London never carries stories about dynamic start-ups or amazing London exports – and then concluded gloomily that it just not in the nature of that show. It’s not in their DNA. Fully 75 per cent of the London economy is private sector – and yet it is almost completely ignored by our state broadcaster.
BBC iPlayer comes to the iPhone and gets AirPlay support
The BBC have just released an updated version of their iPlayer app that will now run on iPhone’s and iPod Touch’s as well as iPad’s which it has been on for some time now. This is what I’ve been really waiting for though:
The app is compatible with Apple AirPlay. If you are running iOS5, you can connect your iPhone or iPod touch to Apple TV and watch your favourite programme on your television.
BBC replacing Spooks with a new spy drama
Tara Conlan at The Guardian:
Viewers missing Spooks after its recent demise will not have long to wait for a new spy drama. The BBC has commissioned a new “international espionage” series — from the makers of Spooks.
…
Nemesis centres around Sam (played by Melissa George), a member of an elite private intelligence firm who survives an assassination attempt that may have been ordered by her colleagues…Sam [is] a complex and mysterious Bourne-style female spy unlike anyone we’ve seen on TV before.
Sounds interesting. I don’t think it’ll make me miss Spooks any less though.
Everyone wins: Adobe to stop developing Flash for Android
ZDNET has got the scoop on some very interesting news: Adobe is going to cease development on mobile browser Flash and refocus its efforts on HTML5.
My initial reaction to this was that Steve Jobs and Apple have won. Apple - famously - chose to ignore Flash and refuse to run it on any of its mobile devices. It never considered it to be good enough and chose to go with the open HTML5 standard for video playback.
Android phone makers have however tried to make Flash a unique selling point of their devices (whilst playing down the fact that Flash was, to put it nicely, crap). So, this news that Adobe are stopping their development of Flash for mobile browsers would seem to be the final evidence that this is a battle that Apple has won. John Gruber makes the point though that, in fact, the death of Flash on mobile devices is a win for everyone:
Apple didn’t win. Everybody won. Flash hasn’t been superseded in mobile by any sort of Apple technology. It’s been superseded by truly open web technologies. Dumping Flash will make Android better, it will make BlackBerrys better, it will make the entire web better. iOS users have been benefitting from this ever since day one, in June 2007.
It’s definitely interesting that this move will help to ensure that Android, which claims (misleadingly) to be open, to actually fully adopt the open HTML5 standard and leave behind their use of the closed Adobe Flash plugin.
Hopefully this move will also give the BBC a good kick up the backside to get a move on with making the video content on their news site accessible via HTML5!
New beta BBC homepage
The BBC has a new beta version out for their homepage. You have to manually select it and you don’t see it automatically (yet), but I like what they’re going for. It feels a lot less cluttered than the current design, has nicer spacing, and is pleasing on the eye.
I’m not sure that I like the faded stories on the left and right-hand sides. They are there to indicate there is more content that is available to be viewed but I think the black arrows are enough of an indicator by themselves.
What’s your take?
Our children need time not stuff
We put too little store on family time and too much on material goods. Unicef paints a picture of a country that has got its priorities wrong - trading quality time with our children for “cupboards full of expensive toys that aren’t used”.
This is from a BBC News item that highlights the fact that the UK has come bottom in the European table when it comes to child well-bring.
I have so say that, when I watched this story on the news last night, I actually chuckled and said to my wife Rachel that we had yet another news article stating the bleeding obvious.
But then it struck me that, if this report is as bad as it seems, then what is obvious to me, clearly isn’t obvious to others. I’ve chosen to pursue a working life that maximises my time and involvement with my daughter Eloise. I want to be part of her life. I want to provide for her of course, but more than that I want to be there for her and with her. And this report clearly highlights that this isn’t normal.
Time will always be the more valuable investment in our kids than the things we buy for them. And I guess it’s always good to be reminded of that.
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BBC News website developments
BBC News site will finally be getting HTML5 video i.e. work on iDevices:
There is no doubt that video is an increasingly important part of the way users of the News website get their news. We launched a new version of the video player a couple of weeks ago, which is lighter and faster and has been redesigned to more clearly offer other related video. In coming months we will continue to analyse how video is consumed across the site and other digital platforms, and what else we can do to make it work even better. For example, we are planning to introduce the HTML5 video format soon for video clips on platforms that do not support Flash.
