Embedding BBC video now allowed
Posted by Simon Crisp | Filed under Journalism
Do you see what I did there? Good isn’t it? The BBC have finally allowed the embedding of their videos in other peoples websites.
The third-party service does what you would expect and gives you the basic html code which can be slapped into most any website … just make sure you have read the terms and conditions.
Embed-able BBC videos (which are starting off with the Tech news section) can only be used onpersonal sites and the Beeb warn that due to licensing issues they ‘may’ not bew viewable to people outside the UK.
The usual ‘not a BBC endorsement ‘ and ’Don’t put this content on sites that contain illegal or offensive material’ are also there.
As you can see below the implementation of getting the code is to the BBC’s usual standards, nice, clean and simple but I don’t know how keen I am on the box under the video (above) with the headline, link and top paragraph of the article.
It makes the embed object quite big and doesn’t ’do’ anything that couldn’t have been done with a hover over the video. My biggest gripe with it is that it makes it look like something from Voxant Newsroom, and that is never a good thing.
BBC videos, now on your site.
Top 50 media sites bloggers link to
Posted by Simon Crisp | Filed under Journalism
Technorati has produced a chart of the media sites bloggers are most likely to link to (as apposed to other blogs) and while it is no surprise YouTube gained the top slot the list is quite interesting.
For example UK sites BBC News, guardian.co.uk, telegraph.co.uk and the Daily Mail all feature in the top 20 of what is otherwise a pretty US centric list.
Also while the ‘Technorati Attention Index’ lets you compare the links in to the more traditional media sites it would have been interesting to see how their Technorati Authority compared with the likes of Engadget and Boing Boing
Technorati Weblog: Since You Asked: The Technorati Attention Index.
Dire state of iPhone news apps
Posted by Simon Crisp | Filed under iPhone News Apps
I have just been having a quick play with the new(ish) ITN iPhone app and it is not half bad. But what did surprise me was the dire state of the majority of apps in the News section of iTunes.
Most are just custom RSS readers while the ones from major news orgs don’t seem to me making the most of what the device can do.
Take a look at any other category and you will see innovative ideas which use the potential of the iPhone to enhance the experience, not in News, most have just created a native app version of their mobile site.
Prompted by this I am going to start reviewing some of the the News apps here and would be interested to hear what you think about them and any ideas you have about what news orgs should be doing with mobile apps.
Dail Mail gives an example.com in bad links
Posted by Simon Crisp | Filed under Journalism
The Daily Mail added some rather nice little video adverts for themselves today saying ‘Celebrate Daily’ ‘Smile Daily’ and ‘Scream Daily’ … I don’t know about you but reading the Mail only make me do one of those things ;)
While I am not a fan of any auto-playing video on sites (especially adverts) they didn’t slow it down too much and even prompted me to click on one.
I half expected it to be a subscription drive on or offline, but I didn’t expect to end up where I did, at example.com. The reason for this is I have only ever clicked links to example.com while in the process of setting up websites.
Lets see how long it takes for someone to spot the error.
UPDATE – Thurs 19th – The links have finally been corrected and now got to the main DailyMail.co.uk homepage.
Who needs two accounts on Twitter…
Posted by Simon Crisp | Filed under Interwebs
In an idea shamelessly pilfered from Pete Ashton I have set up a second twitter account to follow all the kind people who put up with my mundane witterings.
On my main account I don’t like following more than about 100 people – I can’t keep up and tend to ignore Twitter altogether.
But as Pete says if people are interested enough to follow me it stands to reason that I would also find them (at least some of them) interesting.
So I will be using @simoncrisp2 as a sort of overflow account and dip in and out of it to read what people who follow me are up to and use it to help me find new people to follow.
It also gives people a way of sending me a DM, though I will respond from my main account.
Until we get groups on Twitter I can’t think of a better solution, while I tried Tweetdeck it was no use for me on my phone which is where 80 percent of my twittering is done.
