Categories
Net Culture

Old news: Firefox in the New York Times…

Final old news entry of the night, I think. It’s 1.30am and frankly I’m not as young and spritely as I once was. So anyway a while back I linked to a hooji whereby you could get your name in an advert in the New York Times by donating some money to Firefox. My link read as follows:

Help promote Firefox by getting your name in the New York Times $30 a shot gets you a name in the New York Times advert as well as helping the open source community and encouraging real human beings to use the best browser on the PC (although not necessarily on the Mac)

Long and the short of it – they ran the advert a while back. It looked great, did the job (see some stats on browser usage) and indeed my name and the names of my web-lovin’ peers around the world were all dutifully recorded. I feel quite proud about the whole thing, in a vaguely dumb and clumsy way. You can read all about the advert at the spread firefox site, or – if you’re particularly weird – you can just have a quick glance at the tiny part of the advert which has my name on it:

Well I thought it was neat…

Categories
Net Culture

Graf report published…

The Graf report – the independent review of BBC Online – has just been published. Despite the fact that I’m basically on holiday today, I am now going to start reading it in earnest. I’ll probably knock out a summary of the key points later in the day, but in the meantime I’m going to keep the most pertinent quotes below. Be warned – this is likely to be a very long post, and only really of use if you want to get a quick sense of the material suggestions in the Graf report:

Ultimately, if BBC Online is to continue to operate in content areas that go beyond traditional programme support, the Board of Governors or whoever regulates this service will have to exercise some fine judgements. They must do so, and be seen to do so in a rigorous, open and fair minded way. (Page Six)

When asked how much they individually valued the BBC internet site, 18% of the sample said ‘very much’ or ‘quite a lot’. This grew to 36% of 16-34 year old internet users. Also, when respondents in our audience research were made aware of the amount of their licence fee invested in Online (approximately 3%), most respondents, including light and nonusers of BBC Online, felt that this sum was fairly insignificant. They considered that the opportunity presented by BBC Online, to access BBC resources in more depth and at their convenience, represented value for money. This was a similar finding to public responses at a Board of Governors Seminar in early 2003. (Page Six / Seven)

The remit and the strategic objectives, which guide BBC Online, should be more clearly defined around public purposes and/or programme-related content and should be clearly communicated to the public and the online marketplace. I recommend that:

  • The BBC considers aligning online services to the framework for online public purposes and strategic priorities, as outlined in chapters 8 and 9
  • BBC Online must actively seek to engage and communicate its purposes and strategic objectives to its audiences and the wider market
  • BBC Online continues to act as a home and guide to the internet for those who require it; it must however develop a more consistent and transparent approach to linking to all relevant sources (commercial and public) and ensure that its search tool prioritises user experience over BBC content
  • The remit and strategic objectives should be directly underpinned by a financial and performance measurement system, which clearly links the BBC’s remit and strategic objectives, through BBC-wide new media objectives down to divisional priorities. This improved clarity should work to encourage focus and further efficiencies

BBC Online should be clearly distinctive from commercial offerings. The quality of a particular service, however high, does not constitute distinctiveness per se. At times, it seems that BBCwide Online goals are not effectively transmitted to actual delivery – for example, goals of distinctiveness can lose out to the day-to-day realities of competitiveness and, in some cases, there seems little real difference between BBC Online and its commercial rivals, apart from advertising content. [particularly highlighted: What’s On / Linking Policies and Homepage design]

Given that search is becoming such a fundamental part of how the internet is used, it is worth keeping a publicly funded, UK competitor in the market place. The size of the BBC site means that it needs an internal search engine in any event; a condition of also providing a worldwide web search facility should, however, be that it is reorganised to provide a truly independent capability, i.e. not one that favours BBC sites. (Page Ten)

In future, therefore:

  • BBC Online should prioritise news, current affairs, information of value to the citizen, and education. Within these areas, it should prioritise innovative, rich, interactive content
  • I believe that it is legitimate for BBC Online to provide online Sport content. As a public service provider the BBC should, however, prioritise sports news, programme support, the major listed events, and the provision of material on minority sports, with an emphasis on encouraging participation. It should not be competing for other online rights, unless linked to broadcast ones
  • The BBC has a role as a home on the internet for those who wish to have a safe guide and introduction to the web. To fulfil this role properly, however, the BBC needs to rethink a number of areas within BBC Online, including the purpose and layout of its home page, its site navigation, its links policy, and its search engine

I, therefore, recommend that: The BBC sets a target of, at least, 25% for online content (excluding news) supplied by external and/or independent suppliers by the end of the current charter (Page Twelve)

The technical delivery of BBC Online is of a high standard. For example, BBC Radio Player, which enables users to access their favourite radio programmes or missed interviews within a two-week window has boosted radio listener numbers, and it has been met with broad consumer approval. If additional costs can be managed, the BBC might encourage more users to access rich, audio/visual content by the use of alternative streaming products, such as Windows Player and associated codec, or an open source alternative. (Page Twelve)

The BBC should continue to develop a ‘new relationship’ with users through more extensive engagement in community/user-generated content, which would further deploy the capacity of the medium to provide opportunities for interaction between users and producers. (Page Thirteen)

The present management structure of the BBC, however, can make it difficult for an outsider to engage constructively with the organisation. Its operational structure reflects the relationship of New Media to the BBC’s Television and Radio divisions, as well as to its central policy and strategy units. BBC Online’s resulting matrix management structure has encouraged ‘360’- commissioning, and more coherent internal budget and strategy setting processes. It can, however, also create a culture and organisation that, at best is confusing and, at worst, is a recipe for dodged responsibility when dealing with third parties. (Page Thirteen)

In practical terms, a precautionary approach means that, if there is a ‘close call’ between the public service benefits of a proposed BBC Online service and the costs of that service, the proposal should not be taken forward. If the governors take this approach, they will be wary of any proposals for new online services that are not accompanied by a reasoned judgement on market impact. (Page 14)

With respect to any positive market impact of BBC Online, although it is clear that BBC Online will have stimulated some internet take-up, the evidence that this has been (or will be) a significant impact is weak. (Page 15)

Page impressions are an industry standard (in the commercial sector), which describe, or at least give some indication of the pattern in consumer demand. The BBC News website’s page impressions have grown from 21.6 million page impressions per month in December 1998 to 187.6 million in December 2002. However, any assessment of the impact of BBC Online’s news and information services presents challenges, in so much as which metrics are capable of giving a fair and meaningful description. Whilst the only consistent year on year metrics for BBC Online are page impressions, they only provide a description of how many pages have been delivered to users rather than how many individual users (or ‘unique users’) the site has, or any sense of the ‘stickiness’ of the site in terms of time spent. (Page 19)

BBC Sport online has, as an example of the impact of these types of services, reported an increase in page impressions from 33.2m to 92.8m between December 2000 and December 2002, and it now reaches 17% of the UK internet universe. Factual evidence alone, however, cannot accurately illustrate this objective’s impact on audiences. The review’s audience research revealed users and non-users alike were surprised at the extent of information and features on topics that did not necessary align with BBC broadcast programming.

The BBC has also used a number of technological solutions to enable users to access programming relevant to their interests at any time, from across the networks. For example, the BBC’s Radio Player, which streams live and archived radio programming, has been a significant step in the BBC opening up its audio archives (now available within a seven day window). It should be noted that the provision of streaming services, such as the BBC Radio Player which provides live and archived material, is a relatively complex technical process and, as a consumer proposition, constitutes a new and innovative technology-based service. However, the BBC Radio Player primarily relies on users using a single streaming application, provided by Real. Such downloads can deter new or inexperienced internet users and, on the BBC site, users cannot in most instances choose to use an alternative steaming application such as Windows Media player, which is pre-installed on any computer with a Windows operating system.

The review’s audience research presented some reservations about the design and ease of navigation from the BBC Online home page. Users, other than the very inexperienced, tend to be goal orientated, seeking to find a specific service or information as quickly as possible, but members of the public found the BBC Online homepage too cluttered and that it did not adequately serve as a guide to the rest of BBC Online. They did however find that the navigation within specific genres such as News and Radio was generally effective, particularly when indexes were kept concise and sites used minimal graphics, which they felt could unnecessarily slow download times. (Page 25)

Applications developed by the BBC, such as DNA 26 have also enabled user-generated content to be more stimulating for the user and more efficiently managed. The current growth in web log usage also allows users to contribute richer content (e.g. to news stories) in the form of text, pictures, and audio and video clips.

MORI research, conducted for the BBC, found that 7% of UK users were encouraged to go online specifically by the BBC 30. However, more detailed research would need to be undertaken to establish whether the BBC had played a key role in developing skills or building confidence.

News, education, provision for minority communities, and developing users’ confidence and skills base in new technologies reveal themselves to be the service’s key priorities. (Page 31)

There would seem to be, at best, a lack of understanding of BBC Online’s core purposes by the wider market, and at worst, an unnecessary adverse impact on their investment priorities due to other providers loss of trust in BBC management’s intentions. Such lack of understanding and trust would not be surprising given that there is some evidence to suggest that even within the BBC, the online service’s limitations are not consistently well understood. Whilst pseudo mini ‘E-bay’ sites for the sale of junior football kit or downloadable mobile phone ‘Ring tones’ may be quickly withdrawn by central editorial policy, their very emergence would suggest that Online’s remit is so broad that it risks being at times mistaken for universal. (Page 31)

Reach is a key means to ensure that increasing numbers of licence fee payers can derive some value from the BBC’s online services. This strategic goal does, however, risk the BBC being perceived by commercial operators as an aggressive, and unfairly advantaged competitive force. Submitters to the review also argued that the BBC’s current inconsistent approach to linking, the prominence of BBC Online results in its search engine, and the low level of joint venture or externally commissioned projects have compounded this impression.

The review’s discussions with BBC staff made clear that, at a senior level, content divisions have an acute sense of their responsibility to make a ‘good’ judgement as to an appropriate balance between popular services and those that more obviously provide public service value. For example, whilst Sports feel they have a responsibility to provide up-to-date, impartial sports news, they also have an obligation to provide some entertainment and encourage participation in sports (for example, through Sports Academy). This strategy of case-by-case judgement has not, however, been actively articulated or discussed with the wider market, and the Board of Governors seek the public’s views on a particular service’s success in this regard on only an ad hoc basis. (Page 34)

BBC Online’s survey of users in early 2003 revealed that approximately 22% of users were from outside the UK 40. The BBC has developed geo-locators that can, with reasonable success (particularly for broadband content), re-direct overseas traffic to the BBC’s internationally facing site, which is funded by the World Service (and subsequently Grant-in-Aid rather than the licence fee). However, until such tools can guarantee 100% accuracy, and there is no risk of licence fee payers being blocked from reaching BBC content, more stringent measures have been deemed unworkable. Members of the public who took part in the review’s research were also not unduly concerned that non-licence fee payers were able to access the content and indeed, many felt proud that the UK had such a good advocate of the British nations on the internet. Some users were also appreciative of being able to access BBC content when abroad themselves, on holiday or on business. (Page 37)

Targets relating to ‘reach’ and consumption appear as priority targets throughout the period under review. The apparent prioritisation of reach as a target for BBC Online, particularly during the services rapid build has been interpreted by many competitors as evidence of the BBC’s fiercely competitive drive to gain audiences to the disadvantage of other commercial content providers. The BBC has argued that a reach target is essential to ensure public value is maximised. The BBC’s current reach target is based on users reached amongst the UK internet universe, rather than as a percentage of licence fee payers. (Page 38)

Submissions to the review made clear a sense of cynicism towards the Governors capacity to sufficiently challenge BBC management’s advice and strategic priorities for BBC Online. The dramatic growth in BBC Online’s budget, content genres and capabilities were cited as evidence of a service that been allowed to develop under a culture of ‘imperialism’, unfettered by careful consideration of the public value or market impact. (Page 39)

It is the nature and purpose of the BBC as a public-sector body (funded by the licence fee) to affect the mix of services consumed, and nature and conduct of other suppliers involved in the markets concerned. Thus, it might create economic changes or alleged ‘distortions’, or ‘crowd out’ private enterprise and investment. Such effects are inherent to public provision. (Page 41)

The KPMG report estimates that BBC Online may have reduced the total expenditure on UK online advertising by around ‘5 million per annum (out of an estimated total of the order of ‘200 million). However, while this figure has been the subject of significant dispute, its relationship to the public interest has not been established. We have not seen any reason why an online advertising market worth ‘X million per annum is any better or worse for the public interest than an online advertising market worth ‘Y million per annum. Some commercial operators have sought to demonstrate that BBC Online has an adverse market impact by showing that it diverts audiences and thereby revenues away from their own businesses. However, we found no reason why a consumer’s decision to use a BBC Online service rather than a commercial service should be considered in itself to be a factor operating against the public interest. (If BBC Online attracts audience in a way that has an adverse impact on competition this would be relevant to the assessment, as explained below.) (Page 43)

A common complaint about the BBC is that ‘the playing field is not level’. BBC Online has considerable competitive advantages derived from its access to licence fee revenues, and the cross-promotional and other resources that are connected to the BBC. If the BBC wants to provide certain online services it will almost certainly be able to do so, and does not need to receive any user revenues in order to justify its investment. However, genuine though they obviously are, and even though they might have adverse effects on competition as discussed below, these advantages do not preclude effective competition in the markets supplied by BBC Online. Effective competition does not need a level playing field. For instance, in the context of television the BBC competes against ITV1, Sky One and many others, and competition for audience appears generally effective despite the BBC’s funding advantages.

The development of the BBC’s online activities may also affect competition in other types of markets, such as those for technology. For example, the BBC’s principal choice of Real Networks’ proprietary audio and video encoding and streaming technologies means that consumers wishing to access the BBC’s online multimedia content will generally need to download and install RealPlayer on their computer. This feature could be considered to increase competition in markets for encoding software (on the grounds that other online providers can rely on the existence of a significant UK user base with access to RealPlayer, as well as to Windows Media Player which is pre-installed on the majority of computers), or to damage such competition (on the grounds that other/new encoding technologies are shut out from the market and cannot match either Microsoft’s or Real’s ability to establish a significant installed user base).

However, any potential adverse effect on competition arising from a requirement for Internet users to install RealPlayer in order to access BBC Online content would only exist if there was no alternative way for users to access substitutable content, which is to say in connection with a relevant content market in which BBC Online was in a dominant position. In these circumstances, competition law would place a special obligation on the BBC to avoid such a lessening of competition (as it would amount to an abuse of a dominant position).

For example, the existence (and editorial strength) of The BBC News website may have deterred newspaper publishers from introducing subscription charges on their online news websites, and thereby precluded investment in enhanced or specialised services on these sites, such as better archive searching tools and/or personalised news delivery services that would produce a genuinely customised online newspaper. At the current stage of market development we observe a mixture of free, registration-only, pay-per-view and pay-subscription models for online news content, which suggests that managerial decisions over appropriate business models could be a close call. For this reason, the impact of BBC Online, with a deep and wide supply of free news content, seems capable of having affected such decisions, and therefore of having affected the business models currently applied. In this way, BBC Online might have prevented ‘focused’ competition in these value-added and/or specialist services, and instead forced all UK mainstream news providers to compete with the BBC and with each other in broader online news markets. This outcome can be contrasted with professional business and financial news, where BBC Online does not operate and commercial providers compete in supplying a range of high-value-added subscription services. (Page 54)

Whilst these examples indicate that, in theory, BBC Online may have lessened competition in a range of online content markets, commercial stakeholders did not provide robust evidence (such as business plans or strategy papers) that could support these hypotheses. It has been put to us that the impact of BBC Online is so large that many investment ideas never get off the drawing board. This factor could reconcile the lack of evidence with the hypothesis that BBC Online has a significant deterrent effect.

Whilst this review did not uncover incontrovertible evidence that BBC Online has lessened competition in online and related markets, the level of concern among commercial operators and the inherent plausibility of the mechanism can be taken as an indication of the probability of future impacts of this nature. These impacts may be caused both by BBC Online’s supply of online content markets and by its supply of wholesale content markets. (Page 57)

Increased broadband and 3G access speeds and new compression technologies are already allowing a faster transfer of data to PCs and mobile handsets and this trend will accelerate over the next five years. Average broadband connection speeds will increase rapidly, permitting the reliable delivery of high resolution streaming and the rapid downloading of near-broadcast quality video. Mobile handsets will also become viable mainstream devices for downloading and consuming content, as hardware (including processor, storage, and display features) and software develop ‘ although such services are unlikely to become widely available at ‘massmarket’ prices for several years. These developments will make the Internet a genuine potential ‘third broadcasting medium’ for BBC content and services. BBC Online already provides live and archived (from the previous week) access to all of the BBC’s radio services, which can be consumed via a narrowband (at a tolerable sound quality) or broadband connection. Over the next two to three years, it will also become perfectly possible for many Internet users to stream or download full-length BBC television programmes (as opposed to just video clips); within the next five years, the majority of mobile devices will be capable of receiving and storing live and archived BBC radio (e.g. the ‘Chart Show’) and limited television (e.g. news bulletins; comedy clips) services. (Page 60)

The growing popularity of audio and video services over the Internet makes them a central component of future online service offerings, from a consumer point of view; as such, these services will be an area of core strategic importance for the BBC (and its competitors) in the coming years. As a publicly funded content provider, the BBC must strive for the optimal balance between distinctiveness, on the one hand, and audience reach on the other ‘ as well as the ability to influence the overall market. The provision of an appropriate level of audio and video services will be an important element in achieving this balance, and in preserving the attractiveness and relevance of BBC Online in the future. (Page 61)

More to come… (Sorry about the length – I’m really just pulling out the stuff I think is immediately pertinent and I know there’s a fair amount of it). I might filter it down a little later, or embolden the stuff that I think’s particularly interesting.

Categories
Design Net Culture Radio & Music

Developing a URL structure for broadcast radio sites…

One of the most common questions I’ve had about the Radio 3 redesign work that we’ve been doing has been about the URL structures that we have used to identify individual episodes of individual programmes. I’m really keen to address these questions with a full and maniacally over-detailed post because I think the issue of how we map broadcast programming to web URLs is a really interesting one, and because I think we’ve done some good work here that other people might find useful or interesting. Drew McLellan writes:

I see URLs like /radio3/showname/pip/randomcode which, as I understand it, would require a user to locate a particular show through the site’s navigational system. It looks like there’s no way of guessing a URL. Is that right? What’s ‘pip’? That makes no sense to me. My preference for date-based material is a path with the date in it – like /radio3/showname/2004/06/27/ Is there a reason why a URL format similar to this wasn’t chosen?

So the first thing to explain is that Radio 3’s new site is particularly interesting and ground-breaking because it doesn’t just have a page for every broadcast, it has a page for every episode. This is way cooler than having a page for every broadcast, but the full implications of it aren’t immediately easy to digest. Basically it means that there would only be one page for any documentary no matter how many times that documentary is repeated. That one specific page then becomes the definitive home for that episode of that documentary on the BBC and all subsequent information or supplementary material that is relevant to that episode can be stuck onto that page at any point in time. Imagine it as being a bit like having an entry in IMDB for that particular radio episode. It’s like creating the basis for an ever growing encyclopaedia of Radio 3 programming, and it should make it really easy to search for information about a programme without getting overwhelmed by dozens of versions of the same page, each containing little odds and sods of information, none of which are aware that they’re all talking about the same thing.

Having said all that, lots of programmes don’t ever get repeated on Radio 3. Let us take as an example, “Morning on 3”. This is basically the equivalent of the DJ-led shows that we’re all familiar with and which are common to radio networks the world over. These things are just broadcast live. That’s the whole point! It wouldn’t make any sense for it to be repeated. Some of the music on it will clearly be repeated – just like any popular music radio show, but the programme itself will not. For programmes like “Morning on 3” Drew’s URL structure (which is familiar to all of us who run weblogs) would work perfectly. You can imagine very easily getting to today’s episode of Morning on 3 via the URL bbc.co.uk/radio3/morningon3/2004/06/27/. That would be the perfect weblog-like kind of programme, where every individual entry/episode could only be connected to one moment in time.

But if wouldn’t work if they programme ever got repeated. By definition a programme that gets repeated has been broadcast on multiple occasions in time. Imagine a programme that was originally broadcast on June 27th 1985 and which is then repeated the following evening and then again nineteen years later (tonight). What would be the date-based URL for a programme like that? Well one approach would be to go for the date on which it was first broadcast. But what’s the experience of that for a user? They’ve gone to a schedule page for today (say) and they’ve clicked on the link to a programme that’s on this evening and found themselves with a URL from 1985. A plausible reaction would be to think that you’d got lost somewhere along the line and were on the wrong page. How did I end up here?. This situation gets worse when you consider that since we started capturing programmes on the 4th of June, any programme that was originally broadcast before that date would be assigned a URL based on a fairly meaningless broadcast date…

So, a date-based URL structure would work fine for programmes that never get repeated, but wouldn’t work very well for any programme that did get repeated. Immediately, we’ve got a problem then, because even though 99.9% of the time we know that “Morning on 3” won’t get repeated, we can’t exactly guarantee it. Just recently on the BBC we’ve had an unedited re-broadcasting of the live coverage of the 1979 General Election and the daily re-broadcasting in real-time of the Home Service’s commentary on the D-Day landings. So even those topical programmes we’ve talked about could quite easily be repeated.

But let’s pretend for a moment that isn’t too much of a problem. Let’s also pretend that we can easily distinguish between those programmes that almost certainly won’t get repeated on the one hand (and say they might work with a date-based URL structure) and those that very easily could or will get repeated on the other (say anything that’s pre-recorded before it goes out on air). What kind of URL structure should we use for the latter?

One obvious and simple answer is that we should use episode numbers. The Radio 3 show Composer of the Week is broadcast each weekday around lunchtime and then is repeated the following week at midnight. This means that there are two episodes broadcast on each day (another place where date-based URLs might get confusing or seem broken). If we used episode numbers, however, that wouldn’t be so much of a problem. So you can imagine the URL being something more like bbc.co.uk/radio3/cotw/episode/2345. This would allow you to predict sequence and order and would make the URL structure nice and hackable by users. Except then you have to think about what you should base that episode number on. Should you base it on the definitive numbers for that episode – ie. the ones that the makers of Composer of the Week use? How should you source that number? Do you trust that numbering scheme to be consistent and reliable? On the other hand should you start with an arbitrary number? And what happens if your system for determining repeats isn’t fool-proof and you accidentally assign the wrong number to an episode at some point? The worst eventuality would be that you end up with episode numbering schemes that start to wander out of sync with one another because someone pulls and episode or a schedule changes. And then you get gaps in your URL structure, or programmes out of order. Imagine a circumstance where after six months of perfect running you accidentally pick something up as being a repeat when it isn’t… Suddenly that episode has to be reinserted into the scheme somewhere by hand, or you have to change the URLs for any episodes that have been made into pages before you realised. The URLs break or what they point to change, and that whole part of the site stops being human hackable or readable and starts becoming institutionally and forever broken.

Or you could do it by subject for some of the URLs. Again – Composer of the Week is broken into five part weekly chunks. You could have a URL structure for programmes like this which highlighted those divisions: bbc.co.uk/radio3/mozart/part/4 or bbc.co.uk/radio3/mozart/4. Here the problems are potential URL length and namespace issues. And while they might remain human-readable, they’re not machine predictable in any way. So even this kind of URL structure has its problems.

I want to make something clear at this point – each one of these URL schemes could have worked very nicely for that particular kind of programming. But in the end that’s not enough. Because fundamentally as soon as you’ve decided to use different URL structures for different kinds of programming you’re immediately in trouble – because radio programming isn’t a static thing, it changes and evolves – an individual programme brand (say Choral Evensong) might change format, change frequency or be cancelled. Another programme might be created with the same name ten years later. And each week there will be a number of specials and one-offs and schedule fillers (this week on Radio 3 there were around seven one-offs, including tonights zeroPoints) as well as regular short-series or new brands. Suddenly there’s a time-consuming and fairly-skilled job that has to be undertaken every day – which URL structure should this new programme use… And you’re never going to be one hundred percent correct. And so pages are going to be moved and URLs break and all hell will break loose…

Which brings us to the URL structure that we went with in the end and the rationale for it. Our first principle was that in order to stop URLs breaking and to stop the possibilities of human error in assigning URL structures to brands incorrectly (and to deal with the possibility of random repeats et al) the URLs should all follow exactly the same structure. Fundamentally, this meant that date-based URLs had to go out of the window straight away because they weren’t suitable for every episode of every brand. The only URL structure that we could identify that didn’t actually break in any circumstances is one that’s based on an episode number or identifier of some kind. After careful consideration we decided that we didn’t want to give the impression of human readability or order or structure where that structure was inevitably likely to be broken or flawed or mismatched with other identifiers. And we decided that whatever additions to the URL that we made had to be short – it had to be able to be appended onto the end of a brand name without sprawling out of control. More importantly still, we decided that it shouldn’t break any naming conventions already used around the site or make the site harder to maintain.

Which is where ‘pip’ comes in. We’d already decided that we didn’t want to have the episodes sitting in the top directory of the brand. We’re in this for the long-term, and we wanted to make sure that we could guarantee that whatever future changes were made to the content management of the site, however many new things or features were added to it, we’d never have collisions between these features and the episode pages. We decided to place all episode pages into a subdirectory, and after much discussion of what that should be called (episodes – too long, not always an obvious term for a news programme / eps – too likely to already be used and too close to the name of a file format for us to be sure that it wouldn’t overwrite anything at any time in the future etc) we eventually decided to stake our claim on the directory name /pip/ meaning (if you really want to know) nothing more than ‘programme information page’. [PS. In a few weeks time, this directory should contain a list of all the episodes for each brand, meaning that you can hack back the directories and keep going up a level in the site heirarchy from individual episode to all episodes to brand to network to broadcaster.]

With the final part of the URL – the episode number itself – having taken into account all the problems that we might have with sourcing and guaranteeing the integrity of the ‘definitive’ numbers for any given series of programmes, and having considered the problems associated with any and all possible bugs that might emerge (what if two random programmes started to be considered as repeats of each other and had to be broken apart – what URLs to give them? What if the programmes were broadcast out of sequence oor we started running the site halfway through the broadcasting of a run and had to move around the episode numbers later etc) we came to the conclusion that the actual episode number should be a non-human readable short code. After much deliberation we came to the conclusion that a five-character alphanumeric hash would be short enough to not break URLs in e-mail and long enough to give us up to 60 million different identifiers. And of course we’ve kept it as a directory level URL to future proof the URLs against changes in the technology that we’ve used to build the site. (You’ll notice some index.shtml’s around the place, but we’re going to clear that up).

The alphanumeric short code that we’ve got now also opens up a whole range of new possibilities. Because these identifiers are unique across all of Radio 3, we suddenly have a way to point to (and potentially manipulate) every episode that’s broadcast on the network. We’re still looking into the various affordances that this identifier might provide us with and we’ll let you know what we come up with.

So – in summary – we have a URL structure that is eminently suitable for dealing with the breadth and wealth of programming that could come out of a radio network – a URL that will shortly be totally hackable to the extent that each and every level of the directory structure will contain content appropriate to its place in the site’s structural heirarchy ( broadcaster / network / programme brand / episode list / individual episode), and which is human readable as far down its length as is practical. Drew’s quite right – in order to guess the URL for an entry you do need to use the site’s inbuilt navigational systems. However, it’s almost impossible to be able to build URLs for radio programming that are completely human guessable and as reliable and stable as we’re determined to make them.

We’re thinking five to twenty-five years in advance here, making sure that the URLs of pages about radio programmes on Radio 3 could conceivably last as long as the web does. We’re in this for the long-haul…

Categories
Humour Net Culture

From pirate dwarves to ninja elves…

I have always considered the profound distinction between ninjas and pirates to be an absolute one. One was either ninja or pirate – there were no inbetweens. One personality type was skilled and proficient, elegant and silent, contained and constrained, honourable and spiritual. The other type loud and flamboyant, gregarious and unrestrained, life-loving and vigorous, passionate and strong. I thought all people must pledge their allegiance, or be categorised accordingly.

The other day at work, another binary pair was presented to me – a co-worker who doesn’t declare people pirate or ninja, but instead elf or dwarf. For him, humanity falls into doers and thinkers – elves being elegant and timeless, conceptual and refined, abstract and beautiful while dwarves are practical and structural, hard-working and no-nonsense, down-to-earth smiths and makers. It’s a view of the world that’s expounded a bit in Cryptonomicon.

The wonderful thing about both of these classifications systems is how unladen they are with value-judgements. It is possible to consider an elven person to be intellectual and high-concept, or pretentious and useless. It’s possible to view a pirate as boorish and crass or as vivacious and life-loving. It is not better to be ninja or pirate – the world needs both. And the creativity generated by the collision of elf and dwarf is far greater than could be achieved by elf or dwarven kind alone. Not only are there no categories that come prejudged inferior or superior, but also people have no problem self-categorising themselves – there’s no shame to be felt in any of their self-classifications.

Both systems have these qualities – but still we’re left with a conundrum. Although so similar – the systems are different. So how to make them work together? Confronted with a collision between two such radically different ways of conceptualising the world, obviously our minds started working overtime. Could we find a way to map the two categorisation schemes onto one another? Could we declare all ninja’s inherently elven? Or all dwarves intrinsically piratic? The more we considered the issue, the harder it seemed to achieve some kind of detente. And then it came to us – a new view of the world, transcendent and illuminatory – a way not only to make the two systems work together but to make each infinitely more illustrative in the process! At that moment the Ninja/Pirate/Elf/Dwarf theory of human classification came into being – and with it the crowning achievement of all managerial arts, the following graph:

As you can see – the ninja/pirate polarity has become a spectrum. The elf/dwarf polarity has followed suit – it is now possible to exist directly between the extremes. But this spectrum is at right angles to the first, generating a person-space with an infinity of different potential placements. People now can be hardcore ninja dwarves, or err towards the piratic side of elfdom. Within this graph all humanity exists in all its polyphonic splendour.

Think of some of the humble bloggers on my blogroll. Where would they live? Ben Hammersley has something of the pirate about him. This is not a restrained man of quiet honour, but a proud warrior of the sea – hair flowing in the breeze. But his skills are more evenly tempered between the conceptual and the practical – as best evidenced by his work on the schema for various syndication formats. His position is clear. Matt Jones is far closer to elf than dwarf, but as swashbuckling as a man can come. Not so Dan Hill, elven once more but evidencing the self-mastery and discipline of a true ninja.

It takes little effort to spot the ultimate ninja’s quiet responsibility and attention to detail in the work of Jason Kottke and Matt Webb and both straddle the technical divide between thinkers and doers. Mark Pilgrim on the other hand has achieved a balance between ninja and pirate, while plunging into the vigorous constructive heart of dwarvish ways. And so it continues – until I can map almost my entire blogroll accordingly:

And it doesn’t end there! You could plot people’s operating systems against it – Dwarves being more Linux-focused, elves more Apple-oriented. Pure graphic designers have a tendency towards the top right, interaction designers are spread across the top. You can also deduce a lot about the people I tend to associate with online – there’s an enormous clump of people on the pirate / ninja axis who aren’t heavily elf or dwarf. In this context, this suggests a group of old-school web people who have tended toward balanced expertises across a range of disciplines. It’s interesting how those people with more clearly defined job roles tend to move towards the corners too.

Now it’s over to you – take this epic revelation and place yourself within it. If you are a life-loving pirate with dwarvish leanings, perhaps you’d like to assemble a quiz to locate people against the axes like on that rather less important and trivial Political Compass site. I would love to help, but I’m simply not capable. What can I say, I’m an elvish pirate – I have better things to do with my time…

Categories
Net Culture

On e-mail as a means of exchange…

I’ve had lots of conversations over the last few years about ways in which rising marginal cost could deal with grotesque abuses of online services. There are probably a dozen posts in this blog about that subject alone. Now the obvious example of a place where this kind of thing has been proposed has been e-mail – people have been talking about ways to get people to pay for e-mail “stamps” for years as a possible means of avoiding spam. Bill Gates has proposed another version of this scheme recently. His idea – ten-second pieces of computing time on the machine that sends the mail being given to some worthy cause (or to just solve some abstract puzzle). This would – apparently – be a gesture of good faith on the part of the sender that a spammer couldn’t possible match.

Now, my personal opinions about rising marginal costs have mainly been about how to deal with noise, distance and abuse in online communities. I once touched on the issue in connection with e-mail (only because e-mail was a suitable jumping off point) and ended up in an almighty fight with Cory Doctorow about it. Since that time, I’m still of the opinion that exponential graphs of effort or diminishing causality over space or increasing marginal costs (all features of the real-world) still have a role to play in how we solve gross abuses online. On the other hand I’ve seen no evidence that there’s a model that works particularly well with regards to e-mail. Certainly my experience of sending the fifty or sixty e-mails I send from my personal account a day (and the other fifty or sixty that I send at work) wouldn’t be radically improved by having my various computers churn through puzzles for twenty minutes a day.

With regards to the 1p-per-e-mail approach – I’m still of the opinion that a more successful version would be about the redistribution of money rather than the paying of it. What if the person you sent your e-mail to got the 1p you spent to send it to them and could then use that penny to send an e-mail in turn to whosoever they wanted. In those circumstances, most users (who get as much e-mail as they send) would be financially unaffected, the spammed would get a financial reward for all the rubbish they were forced to consume (there might even be a legitimate business model in collecting spam) and the spammers would end up paying much much more money than before.

This is not a new idea either, and nor do I think it’s a particularly practical one, but it does present some interesting opportunities to think about e-mail in very different (ludicrous?) ways – perhaps eventually even as a unit of currency that you write upon and distribute. After all noted currency is only an abstraction of value written on a rectangular piece of paper – why shouldn’t our future currency be based upon the transactions of plain text files…

Categories
Net Culture Politics

On a difference between wonks and geeks…

Here’s a suggested difference between geeks and policy wonks that might go some distance towards making the two groups get on with one another better. It is my contention that the two groups simply have radically different registers and types of interaction. Policy wonks – like all politically oriented people – are encouraged to think in terms of combative point-making. The most respected and well-thought through acts of Parliament being those that have been fought over the most. The most convincing politicians are the ones who have solid positions that they can stick with and defend. Political life is a combative life, with positions being tested and retested before they’re taken out into the world. In terms of doing things you want to know that the thing you’re going to do is the right thing before you get too far down the line, particularly when the consequences of getting things wrong are so potentially enormous.

The life of the creative geek community is very different. The atmosphere of an event like ETCon is not one of absolutist positions (or at least it is on occasion but it’s mostly frowned upon), but of gradual accretion, iteration and development. Particularly (but not exclusively) in those realms where development requires time but not a lot of capital investment, ideas are thrown out into the world to see if they’ll stand or fall. Those that succeed are iterated upon. Those that fail are either abandoned or taken further by other groups who will try to solve the errors and mistakes that surround them. In terms of making things, each new idea is expected to be flawed and clumsy and full of holes and everyone knows it and works from that point onwards. It’s the model of the technologist community as competitive craftspeople, and it operates on the assumption that whether something will be successful or unsuccessful / useful or useless is something that must be left up to how people interact with it and its take-up with a community. You make it the best you can, in the way you think is right, and let the world decide if you got it right…

I think this is the distinction that explains why there are so many disagreements between the groups. One group looks for immediate application where there may be only potential. One group sees possibility where there is no immediate practical benefit. And in talking to each group, you have to use a different register. There’s no point talking RDF to policy wonks, because they’ll see no application until you can show them something made with RDF that they consider actually politically useful. And there’s no point telling technologists that their creations are politically naive, because they’ll consider them works in progress, building from a position of naivety towards – in time – something legitimately useful and ground-breaking.

It’s a difficult job – understanding which register to use in which circumstance – but it’s an important one for those people who have to straddle disciplines. Because one way or another they’re going to have to work with geeks or wonks who will by necessity have a very different mind-set. Being aware of the distinction will not only create the possibility of legitimate discussion (and minimise the possibility of large cross-disciplinary enmities) but also inspire actual creativity to emerge between the disciplines…

Categories
Net Culture Politics

Tories would close BBC website…

I’m going to just report this without much in the way of comment while I try and work out what my professional relationship with the BBC means about my ability to give my personal opinion about things like this: Tories would close BBC website.

The Conservative party would switch off a swath of the BBC’s digital services, including its website and the youth channel BBC3, if it won the next general election.

The party’s culture spokesman, John Whittingdale, told Guardian Unlimited Politics he was “not persuaded” of the case for a public service website and that he was “not convinced the BBC needs to do all the things it is doing at the present”, including providing “more and more channels”.

“As a free-market Conservative, I will only support a nationalised industry if I’m persuaded that that is the only way to do it and if it were not nationalised it would not happen.”

Mr Whittingdale’s comments will be seen within the BBC as a glimpse of what it can expect from the Tories’ review of the corporation. The party launched the review, chaired by the outspoken former chief executive of Channel Five, David Elstein, earlier this year.

[He continued] “…I am not persuaded that there is necessarily a case for a public service website. I’m not persuaded that anything on the BBC site could not be provided elsewhere, [for instance] the newspapers are mostly providing sites, which provide news and comment.

“They [the newspaper sites] are essentially trying to provide for the same market and therefore you can argue why does the licence fee payers need to be financing the BBC to do it when there are other commercial organisations who are doing the same thing.”

I’m just going to leave this one open to general opinion, I think. If you’ve got any thoughts or comments, then leave them below…

Categories
Net Culture

The internet is not shit…

I’ve been hearing the same sentiments by a lot of people over the last few months in different types of language. Some say The Internet is Shit. Some others say that Virtual Community has died. Without wanting to doubt the good intentions and aspiration of all the people who want to make more of the world in which they live, I can tell you right now why the internet matters and why it is not shit. While it’s true that people around the world are lamenting that there’s not enough of ‘precisely the right kind of information’ to finish their term-papers, the internet is more important than that. Take for example the case of support groups for gay and lesbian teenagers. Gay teenagers are two to three times to attempt suicide and two to three times more likely to succeed – and why? Because they think they’re completely alone in the world and they have no way of connecting with other gay teenagers. Over the last few years that’s all changed – I’ve seen it happening. Gay teenagers are exploring over the internet first – they’re finding other people like themselves, getting advice and support and connecting to a wider community. Hopefully the result will be less death, less depression and less wasted years.

And here are some other reasons why the internet is not shit and why virtual community is not dead: alcoholism, disabilities, addiction, mental health, prostate cancer, teen health… I could go on all day. Frankly, I don’t care who thinks I’m nuts or an evangelist or whatever, but as far as I’m concerned the internet has improved people’s lives, helped them understand and deal with health problems, eased depression, connected the lonely and the disconnected and been a fount of information on pretty much every subject in the world. I don’t give a damn what anyone else thinks about it – I’m proud of it and proud of my tiny corner of it.

Categories
Net Culture Personal Publishing Politics

Can weblogs change politics?

Are you interested in the political implications of weblogs and social software? Then come to Can Weblogs Change Politics? – an event held in the House of Commons on July 14th. Here’s an quick excerpt from the proposed topics of discussion:

“Weblogs (ëblogsí) and associated “social software” tools have been this yearís big news online. But can they be used politically, and if so, how and to what end?”

I’m really looking forward to discussing this component of the programme, because I think that it’s one of those statements that could only be made by someone directly involved in politics. The assumption seems to be that the weblogging publishing system is a tool created that one could use to effect political change – presumably by allowing MPs to communicate more fully with their constituents or by being a point to actively campaign around. What’s completely missed are the potential implications of a massive group of people interacting with each other and with information and news in massively more active ways. We’re not in that kind of world yet, and indeed we may not ever be, but if large blocks of the citizenry started to organise their relationships with each other, with information provision and with government and mass media then that would have a dramatic effect on political life in this country. When we see the whole Trent Lott debacle in the States, and the effect and importance (for good or evil) of people like Glenn Reynolds who quickly became politicised loci for massive numbers of warbloggers, then the question stops being “Can they be used politically?” and starts being, “Are they changing the nature of the citizenry?”. And if you need some help with that one, check out GW Bush’s presidential campaigning website and particularly the middle panel of this page

So anyway – it should be a good debate, even though (typically) all the invited parties seem to be relatively short-term webloggers who are employing them as tool to facilitate their day-jobs. It’s a shame that there aren’t any representatives of the culture itself on the panel. I’d have liked to have seen one of the UK’s directly political (or community ’embedded’) webloggers (the Politx crew for example) represented. But the UK has always been more suspicious of trends and behaviour that emerges from the masses than the States has, so I suppose I shouldn’t be that surprised…

Categories
Net Culture

e-flight.biz – unethical spammers…

So yesterday I got a comment on an older entry of mine. The comment read, “This wonderful site is worth dropping a line in your guestbook to say thanks!” How nice, I thought to myself. How sweet to send me a note like that… But then I noticed the name of the person who had left the comment – Mr http://www.e-flight.biz. How nice. How… blatant…

So clearly this company is spamming my comments. That much seems clear. Probably they’re after a little extra Google page-rank of some kind – they’re clearly trying to dredge a little traffic their way, get some page impressions, make a little money. That’s all fine, of course – we all have to make a living – but it seems to me that I shouldn’t really be just expected to help them make that living. It seems odd that they should be trying to make money by exploiting the traffic and reputation of my site. I should have a say, surely? I should be asked? Even if – unsurprisingly – the answer would certainly be, “No”.

So I’ve done some research, and it turns out that http://www.e-flight.biz (note that I haven’t linked to them yet) has a bit of a habit of spamming other sites. A quick search on Google finds 591 links to their site, pretty much all of them on guestbooks. But those 591 links don’t seem to be enough. That’s the only reason I can find from moving from guestbooks to sticking adverts in the comments sections of weblogs. Do they not think I’ll mind? Do they not think I’ll object to the precendent they’re trying to set?

So the question is, how do we stop them spamming all of our sites? What’s the best approach? What’s the best way to compensate for every frustrating piece of false advertising they stick on someone else’s online home? What’s the best way to communicate that e-flight.biz spends its time with unethical advertising and unsolicited spam and are therefore untrustworthy? Has anyone got any ideas?