You know... I can't remember! I know I got to visit the "Broom Cupboard", and I'm pretty sure I did a lot of data entry, oh - and I sat in a meeting for "Two-Way TV".

These were the early days of the consumer Internet. The WWW was still brand new and it wasn't certain that it would be the dominant communications medium of the future. Digital TV had just launched in the UK and users were regularly exhorted to "press the red button now!" Doing so would bring up an MHEG page which acted as a sort of fancy teletext.

But, crucially, it was one way. You could do a quiz via red button, but there was no way to send your answers back to the broadcaster.

Two-Way TV aimed to change that. My memories are hazy, but I'm pretty sure it was a flimsy grey box which (somehow) integrated with your OnDigital TV Box and a modem. If you were watching "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire" you could play along at home, send in your answers in realtime, and win REAL CASH PRIZES!!!

That was their pitch - you can read their now defunct website. UK broadcasters held trials but, ultimately decided to go for interaction via premium rate phone numbers. That led to Two-Way TV going bust. And, of course, sowed the seeds of a huge scandal in TV-land.

But that wasn't the only form of interaction that broadcasters trialled.

In the year 1999, Children's BBC launched a TV show called "Sub-Zero". Hardly anyone remembers it - indeed there's barely a paragraph on Wikipedia. It doesn't exist on YouTube. Essentially, it was kids' version of The Crystal Maze. With some kids taking part via webcams!

Here's a brief clip of the first episode of the second series - 27th February, 2000:

Not exactly impressive, but pretty good for a minimum viable product.

By the second episode, 5th March, the producers were comfortable enough with the technology to support four simultaneous participants!

I'm grateful to the archivists and researchers at the British Universities and Colleges Film and Video Council for tracking down and digitising the episodes.

Webcams of that vintage - as you can see - were low resolution. A max of 640x480, but more likely to be 320x240. Which was fine because the fastest dial-up speed was 56kbps. The ability to transmit video and sound simultaneously was non-existent - hence having the kids on separate phones for voice.

I think it is a fascinating glimpse into the way audience participation developed. Moving from the ubiquitous phone-in to juddery video-in.

By October 2000, Tomorrow's World were interviewing people via webcam.

Nowadays our TV screens are full of pundits Zooming in from home. I don't know if Sub-Zero was the first UK show to use webcams for audience participation - but it was certainly an early pioneer. They proved that it was viable to have multiple video calls being muxed into a TV show. Sure, it was a little shonky, but 20 years later it still looks futuristic.

Was there anything earlier than 2000?

On UK TV? I don't think so.

In the USA, four months prior to Sub-Zero, one of the inventors of the first live camera on the web was interviewed on a cable TV show called ZDTV. Indeed, ZDTV had users calling in via webcam+phone from around mid-1999

In 1995, CNET's Cable TV show described a webcam - but they didn't stream any humans, just a view of San Francisco.

If you know of an earlier example of people participating in a TV show via webcam, please let me know!

Thanks

Many thanks to James O'Malley for leading me down this rabbit hole. Hasn't he grown!?

I thought I'd take a look at how they stack up today. And investigate whether the BBC is still living up to them.

Here are the slides if you want to play along at home:

1. Build Web Products that meet user needs

This is still good advice! Sadly, there are still too many services around the web which are built on business needs. People grudgingly sign up for accounts to basic services which don't really need it - all because a business wants to see a number go up.

I find my needs being increasingly unmet by the BBC - other than them continuing to produce Doctor Who. I suspect I'm not their demographic target. But, more importantly, I see lots of digital products (like Sounds) which seem to go against the grain of user needs and instead focus on what the BBC wants.

2. The very best websites do one thing really well

An extension of the UNIX tools philosophy.

I have mixed feelings about this. I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with a site which does multiple things. It's just rare for any site to do two things well. For example, both Twitter and Facebook could have created something like TikTok - and it would fit in relatively well with their existing site. But the business culture of most organisations just doesn't allow any deviation from a central mission.

Does it make sense to have a website which does both cake recipes and Estonian literary criticism? If you can do both, great! But that's a rare skill.

Does the BBC still embodies this principle? I think it depends on how you define a website. They have multiple sites doing multiple things.

3. Link to other high quality sites

The BBC's news pages still don't do this regularly. When reporting on a publication, it is rare that they ever link to primary sources. There's a real reluctance in most organisations to let people leave the site.

But it is still a relevant principle! The web is a series of links. It only works because people can trace backwards through your sources.

4. Fail Forward, Fast

A bit of early-2000s culture there! For new services, it still makes sense. For larger and more established services, it isn't OK to "move fast and break things".

But the principle of trying new things and being prepared to admit that they've failed is wonderful. It's humbling and informative. I don't see much evidence of this in the BBC. I'm not a regular user of their services - but there have been a few big launches recently which seem to have failed - but haven't yet been put out of their misery.

Failure is only a problem if you don't learn from it.

5. Treat the entire web as your creative canvas

This is a bit of a weird one. I think they're trying to say that users exist outside of your site. You need to have a presence on other sites - and then use them in the appropriate way.

For example, the BBC has multiple Twitter accounts. They exist independent of the main BBC web site.

This is mostly good advice. If you have the resources, you should be playing around with other sites and maximising your presence there. You've got to meet people where they are.

6. The web is a conversation, join in

I despise the faux friendly tone of voice adopted by most organisations. Nevertheless, you can't ignore what people are saying about you. You don't have to take the advice of your critics, but you probably ought to show that you've heard them.

The BBC is usually good at joining in with conversations - but like all large institutions, it has a pathological fear of expressing contrition.

7. Any website is only as good as its worst page

Oooh! A spicy take! 100% accurate. We've all seen a shiny front page, and then an absolute shitshow of a subsequent page. Think of all those airline websites which make it so easy to book a flight and then horrific to cancel your booking.

People do remember negative experiences. If you've ever run a moderately popular site, you'll know that people lovel complaining about how awful it is based on an obscure and unloved section.

8. Make sure all your content can be linked to. Forever.

You would have thought, after flushing the early Doctor Who recordings down the memory hole, the BBC would have learned from this mistake. Apparently not.

Timbl was writing about this problem in 1998!

I get that the BBC might have licencing agreements that make keeping some stuff online impossible. And old webservers need to be continually fed, watered, and patched to stop them from becoming a liability. But too many of the Beeb's early sites and links are dead.

This is still good advice. Keep your content up as long as you can. You never know when someone will stumble across it.

9. Remember your granny won't ever use Second Life

Ooof! A bit of casual sexism and ageism there. But probably accurate in that no one is using Second Life.

The underlying point - late adopters have different needs from early adopters - is helpful. The words we use, the tropes we employ, and the interfaces we design all need to be accessible for new users.

I wonder how well the new BBC sites work for that demographic?

10. Maximise routes to content

Again, still good advice. I suppose we'd call this an "omnichannel strategy" today. Get your links out on social networks, videos, TV screens, and anywhere your audience are.

But, the BBC kinda breaks this. So many of their routes in are "download this app" or "search for us on". That obscures the direct link to specific content.

People don't live on one site. Well, OK, maybe Facebook! You have to accept that they won't all come through your front door. Make it easy to go from outside your site straight to a specific part of it.

11. Consistent design and navigation needn't mean one-size-fits-all

I think we all know the power of consistent branding, and it is reassuring to users if they understand how to get back to the start of a page. I agree that navigation needs to adapt depending on the size of the device.

Judging from the few BBC sites I visit, this isn't a priority for them any more. Each site seems desperate to push its own brand identity - which is a business need, not a user need.

12. Accessibility is not an optional extra

Tattoo that inside people's eyelids! Excellent advice.

13. Let people paste your content on the walls of their virtual homes

Things like OEmbed make this pretty easy nowadays. There will always be sites which want to jealously guard their own content, but it's still good advice.

The BBC seems reasonable at doing this. Of course, copyright often gets in the way.

14. Link to discussions on the web, don't host them

The BBC seems to flit back and forth on this. Some of their sites embrace comments, others don't.

I have mixed feelings. I don't think sites should "own" the user and try to force them to comment in one officially sanctioned place. And moderation is a complex and costly business. It probably makes sense to let people know how to join in with a conversation on social media ("Hashtag Strictly!").

But the downside is that you're exposing your users to unmoderated and unfiltered content. Is that best for you? Is it harmful to them?

15. Personalisation should be unobtrusive, elegant and transparent

Ha! The BBC have reversed this in the last few years. Almost every one of their sites and apps begs you to sign in with an account. And, judging from the account they forced me to get on iPlayer, the personalisation is crude and obvious.

Do users want personalisation? That's hard to answer. Every power-user swears they want complete control and hates algorithmic choice. But for more casual users, it is a great way to find interesting content.

The real problem is that the algorithms are usually designed to promote profitable content. That is, content the business wants users to see - not what users would choose.

And now?

There's a fair bit of early-web-2.0 idealism in these 15 principles. In truth, I'm hard pressed to disagree with any of them. Throughout the web - not just on the BBC - they are often observed mostly in the breach.

I wonder if the BBC is culturally capable of producing something like this in 2022? And, more importantly, enforcing it on its own sites?

What will the next 15 years bring?

That's a situation which continues over a decade later. If you watch iPlayer on your laptop, you're stuck with 720p quality. If you want 1080p and above, you need a specially certified device.

Well, that's what everyone thought!

A few weeks ago, I found this curious forum post which said

Yes, iPlayer 1080p is possible, not as simple as just using one of these webUI tools but its certainly possible with youtube-dl and a good look around.. audio_eng_1=128000-video=12000000.m3u8

There wasn't much information about it that I could find. And then I stumbled onto this GitHub issue for youtube-dl.

With a bit of faffing around, I was able to patch my YouTube downloader (/usr/local/lib/python3.9/dist-packages/youtube_dl/extractor/bbc.py) with this code:

for fmt in formats:
   if '-video=5070000.m3u8' in fmt.get('url', ''):
      formats = [
         {'url': fmt['url'].replace('-video=5070000.m3u8', '-video=12000000.m3u8'),
          'height': 1080, 'vbr': 12000,
          'abr': fmt.get('abr'),
          'protocol': fmt.get('protocol'),
          'preference': fmt.get('preference'),
          'format_id': fmt.get('format_id', 'hack') + '-really12M',
          }, fmt]

(To be clear, this is a horrible hack. It changes the iPlayer download function so it only downloads 1080p. It also doesn't rename the file properly once reconstructed, so you'll have to do that yourself. This is a quick hack - not for production!)

And, with that, I was able to download iPlayer in 1080p.

Sadly there's no surround sound - AAC stereo only.

Learning from history

Back in 2008 (!) I was blogging about the BBC's ridiculous decision to restrict iPlayer streaming to iPhones. And in 2012 I blogged about how the BBC's insistence on using Flash had misfired. The BBC (and, to be fair, the video rights-holders) are desperately trying to avoid their content being shown at high quality on "unsanctioned" devices.

I get that they don't want to lose revenue. But anyone with a USB stick can record HD off air. 4K rips of every movie appear on the Internet 5 minutes after they're released. Trying to restrict who can view your content is a losing battle. It only takes one person to figure it out, and then the genie is out of the bottle.

What's the technical overhead of trying to manage this complicated infrastructure they've created? What is the tangible loss if someone watches a 4K stream from their browser rather than the app?

At some point, surely, media companies will have to realise that making easy access to their content is more powerful than blocking off every creative use. Right?

Bah. I'm off to count the pixels on the latest episode of Doctor Who.

You can listen listen to the latest forecast on the BBC - read by professional newscasters.

But what if we wanted a robot to read it? If our speaker is sick, bored, or too expensive - how would we automate the audio version of the Shipping Forecast?

The BBC publishes the general forecast - but it's important to note that this is not what is read out on air. Instead, they use this compressed version published by the Met Office.

The Met's version doesn't have an API - or any other way to get structured information out of it - but the HTML is relatively basic and easy to extract the data from.

Once done, it can be passed to a TTS (Text To Speech) service like Amazon Polly.

Here are the (quick and dirty) results:

Female

Male

Thoughts

I've previously experimented with Synthetic Poetry. Robots aren't great at reading out verse - they lack emphasis and emotion. But something like the Shipping Forecast is perfect for them. It requires a calm, even tone. No particular need for words or phrases to be stressed. Each syllable needs to be clearly and well enunciated. When dealing with life-and-death matters, there's no room for error.

Text to speech is - for some very specific use-cases - indistinguishable from organic speech. Although, amusingly, Amazon's system was unable to correctly pronounce "Utsire" - so a little manual intervention was needed on that!

The Amazon 4K Fire Stick is a pretty cool bit of kit. It's an Android device which can push 4K HDR video with surround sound to your TV. But, like any technology, it's buggy. Here's the bug report I've tried to send to Amazon and the BBC. They haven't answered - so I'm publishing it here as well.

BBC iPlayer supplies 4K video - but the app doesn't switch to 4K mode, it stays at 1080p.

Amazon debug

To turn on the Fire stick's debug mode - and get access to X-Ray - follow these instructions.

This lets you see the bandwidth being used, HDCP information, and audio/video information. Here's a 4K presentation via Amazon's own video player. In the top left is the HDMI output information and bandwidth stats. On the right is the video codec data.

iPlayer

Within iPlayer you can opt-in to the beta programme, this gives you access to 4K content. But let's take a look at the debug information. 4K video is being streamed at 25fps. But if we look in the top left corner, the app hasn't switched out of 1080p @ 60fps.

The end result is a juddering rescaled mess.

So, if you or a friend works for either Amazon or the BBC, please ask them to take a look, eh?

In a recent article, the BBC described Christine Lagarde thusly:

The role is likely to test the silver-haired 63-year-old, who has admitted before that she lacks economic experience.

The commentator was disgusted that she'd be described as "silver-haired". He wondered out loud "I bet the BBC don't refer to men in this way!"

Luckily, we can test that claim by searching BBC news for that phrase. Here's what I found (restricting myself to stories where the reporter described the subject as "silver-haired", and where the subject was a prominent figure.)

As you can see - the majority of the first 20 results are male. Lagarde is unique in being mentioned twice.

But don't just take my word for it! Run the search yourself and see.

Now, there are some obvious caveats. The BBC (probably) runs more stories about men than women - so the small number of women may be disproportionately targetted. The BBC's search engine doesn't let you specify the order of results - so I may have missed some stories.

I also didn't check whether it was male or female reporters who used the term. Feel free to explore that yourself.

The commentator quickly apologised and deleted his Tweet before it had hit peak virality in its outrage.

All that said, there are lots of outdated and weird sexist tropes that infect the media. Women are often described in a way that a man wouldn't me. Men are rarely "leggy blonds" or "ditzy". They never have "ample curves" or "flawless skin and dazzling eyes".

Language matters. When we reduce people to their mere looks, we do them a disservice. Reporters should avoid these cliches like the plague.

But... We live online. It's up to you to fact check your own assumptions.

You can watch it on iPlayer starting about 7m 30s in.

Community battery technology is here. It is feasible. And it just works. The solar panels on our roof generate more power than we can use - so we store it and share the rest. Yes, even in rainy England, solar panels work!

Storage is expensive now - but it won't be long before it is as common as loft insulation or energy efficient light-bulbs.

It's always fascinating to see the hard work that goes in to making 30 seconds of TV. Impressively, the BBC crew was the presenter and a single camera operator who also did lights and sound. Different from the old days when it seemed like it took a dozen people to film a segment.

Phil Archer

@philarcher1

Watching @edent on BBC Click on the Heathrow Express

---

Zoe

@Z303

Can't escape @edent even on the Heathrow Express pic.x.com/uikop1bglo

---

Sharon O'Dea

@sharonodea

Replying to @edent@edent You were just on the telly here in Japan talking about your solar power!

---

BBC Radio 2

@BBCRadio2
BBC

We discuss controlling all the devices in your home with your mobile phone. #r2vine pic.x.com/O9hx7aTFpp

---

But! There was a twist. Could I demo some of my tech on the radio?

Most IOT kit is portable - but is usually tied to a specific WiFi network. I wondered about the logistics of reconfiguring several bits of kit to work with the BBC's guest WiFi network. Setting up the gadgets can be a laborious task even under optimal conditions. And I'd only have a few minutes to get into the studio to prepare.

A brainwave struck! I'd seen Sam Machin present some home automation hacks at #BathCamp - he'd cunningly used a portable MiFi. All his toys connected to its WiFi, and then used the mobile signal to reach the internet. Genius!

So that's what I did. The night before broadcast I reconfigured a Lifx bulb, a WeMo switch, a cheap IP camera, and my Roomba to teather off my mobile phone. Everything worked! Well, after a bit of bodging.

The Lifx needed to be connected to my main WiFi first in order to get a firmware update - then it happily connected to the phone. The Roomba was a bit temperamental - and is quite bulky - so I dropped it from the list.

Of course, that was at home. In the true spirit of Tomorrow's World, I was sure that something would go wrong! The phone signal would crap out? The configs would reset? The power would blow up?

The technology spirits were smiling on me that day! All the bits and bobs worked flawlessly! The lights dimmed, the power toggled, the camera swivelled! Hurrah!

You can listen to the broadcast - it starts at about 1 hour, 41 minutes in.

If you'd like me on your show, podcast, or event - please get in touch.

Listen to me on BBC Radio 4 - about 47 minutes in

Want me on your show or podcast? Give me a call!

You can read more about my IoT adventures, including:

• Singing to my lightbulbs.
• Hacking my vacuum cleaner.
• Hacking my electric car.
• Getting hacked by my light switches.
• Securing my security cameras.

Thanks to Chris Vallance for inviting me to one of the BBC's top secret recording locations.

Terence Eden is on Mastodon

@edent

Replying to @MarcSettle@MarcSettle I can neither confirm nor deny that @radioproducer spent License Fee Payers' money flying me to the Bahamas.

---

Chris Vallance

@radioproducer

Replying to @edent@edent @MarcSettle Bahamas I wish! Just finished editing on a bench before the park attendant threw me out. Glamorous world of radio part VI

---

You can listen again on the BBC iPlayer.

The solar stuff starts at 14m 30s, with my interview at 17 minutes. You can also hear my electric car being charged :-)

Terence Eden is on Mastodon

@edent

Being interviewed by a nice man from the BBC about @Edent_Solar, @OxfordSolarLive and @edent_car!
Thanks @JonDgls! pic.x.com/uvPiXQRM2r

---

Terence Eden is on Mastodon

@edent

Warning! I'll be on @BBCRadio4's You And Yours shortly.
Please tune your wirelesses accordingly. pic.x.com/6f3zsiwuin

---

Several people had contacted the show to say that they had missed calls from the number "08454290015" or "08439800142" - despite not answering the call, nor dialling it themselves, they'd been charged significant sums of money for receiving the call.

In once case, a couple had been charged over £300 for a twelve-hour call!

I did some digging on this. While it is hard to gather solid evidence without access to billing systems, I think I can see what is happening. Sadly, at the moment, there is no way to prevent this scam.

Firstly, I went to the regulator. According to Ofcom's data, the telephone number range is allocated to Red Telecom Solutions Ltd. They're a reseller of telco services - in this case, I think they are blameless. They've just rented the number to the scammers - and it would take a court order or Ofcom investigation to get those details.

Normally, dialling an 0845 number from a mobile is expensive, but answering it shouldn't cost anything.

Based on other complaints I've seen, it looks like people are being stung by a "reverse charges scam". On a normal reverse / collect call, the person answering the phone is asked to press a number on their keypad to accept the charges. In this case, customers are played a message like "You've won an iPad! Press 2 to find out more!" they're then played a longer message while the reverse charges rack up.

Finally, in the case of the couple who supposedly made a 12 hour call (without noticing and without the phone's battery dying) - the only explanation I can come up with is that someone has submitted mistaken or fraudulent call records to the mobile operators.

I spoke to the You and Yours team about this on Monday (17 minutes in):

As I was in the BBC Oxford studios for the interview, the local radio team asked if I could pop on the Nick Piercey afternoon show - where I said more-or-less the same thing.

How To Prevent This

Sadly, as a consumer, there's not much you can do to prevent this sort of scam. It is up to mobile phone companies and the regulator to crack down on it.

That said, here are my top-tips to reduce the likelihood of falling prey to these sorts of scams.

• Don't answer phone calls from numbers you don't recognise. That's not always practical, I grant you.
• If you do answer a call and it asks you to press a number on your keypad, just hang up.
• Don't dial back missed calls unless you recognise the number.
• Use the PhonePayPlus Number Checker to see how much the call will cost you.
• Register your mobile with the Telephone Preference Service. This will prevent reputable companies from phoning you with marketing drivel. Doesn't stop the disreputable ones though.
• Run anti-virus on your phone to make sure that you don't have any malicious apps on there which could dial phone numbers without your knowledge.
• Use an ad-blocker. Some adverts can trick your phone into dialling premium rate numbers. Typically they require the user to manually hit the dial button, so such scams aren't too successful.
• If you're really worried, consider switching to a pre-pay / PAYG service. You won't be able to lose more money than you currently have in your account.
• You can see if your phone has been set to divert calls to a premium rate number. Most phones will have a menu in the dialer for this. If you can't find it, dial *#21# to see if you have diverts set up.
• It is possible to check whether your voicemail has been redirected to a premium rate number. Again, check your phone's menus or dial *#61# and *#62# and *#67#. Check with your mobile operator to make sure the details are correct.
• Finally, always check your bills! If there's something suspicious on there, contact your operator straight away. If they refuse to help, complain to Ofcom.

At the moment, most UK operators won't place a cap on how much of a bill you can rack up. My personal opinion is that needs to change. A cap exists for roaming charges and stolen phones, so it is technically feasible.

In the mean time, stay sceptical and keep checking your bills!

I created that gif manually, but I wondered if it was possible to create such an animation in an automated fashion. Turns out, it's pretty easy! This relies on ImageMagick - which is a powerful image manipulation tool. All of these scripts work on Ubuntu - and they should work on any GNU/Linux disto as well as Windows and Mac.

Get Your Image

I just pressed "Print Screen" while watching a Half-Side-by-Side (HSBS) movie in full screen. You can use mplayer or VLC to capture the image if you wish.

For mplayer, you can run this simple command to grab a single frame at the 20 minute and 5 seconds mark

mplayer video.avi -frames 1 -vo jpeg -nosound -ss 20:05

You should end up with an image like this - which we'll call "2D.jpg".

Split the Image

We want the left and right image separated.

mogrify -crop 50%x100% 2D.jpg

This will result in two files: 2D-0.jpg and 2D-1.jpg.

Warning: this will destroy your original image. Make sure you have a backup.

Stretch

HSBS means that the aspect ratio of each image is squashed. We want to stretch each one back to full width.

mogrify -resize 200%x100% 2D-0.jpg
mogrify -resize 200%x100% 2D-1.jpg

The two JPGs files are replaced by images with the correct aspect ratio.

The split and stretch commands can be amalgamated into:

mogrify -resize 200%x100% -crop 50%x100% 2D.jpg

Animated It!

ImageMagick makes it really easy to create gifs - in this case, we want a 250ms delay between each frame.

convert -delay 25x100 -loop 0 2D-0.jpg 2D-1.jpg movie.gif

Or, if there are only the two JPGs in the directory:

convert -delay 25x100 -loop 0 *.jpg movie.gif

You can knock the file size down by about a quarter using dithering. Although the resulting image won't look so good.

convert +dither +map -delay 25x100 -loop 0 *.jpg movie.gif

Examples

A few interesting examples.

Here, again from Doctor Who, it's possible to see a marked difference between foreground and background.

In this example, I've take two sequential frames from The Great Gatsby, The shot is a slow zoom in. By combining the left and right of both frames, we get an interesting 3D effect.

Reconstructing Depth Information

How easy is it, I wonder, to turn a stereoscopic image into a 3D model. I used Stereoscan from AgiSoft (Linux, Mac, Windows) to turn this: Into:

Doctor Who Geek Side Note

Interestingly (well... to geeks like me) the shot of Capaldi's eyes is not in 3D. I can only assume they filmed his cameo separately. There are a few other shots which aren't in 3D - those of the old Doctors (including Eccleston) and the original title sequence.

I watched the episode live at home on my Panasonic TX-L37ET5B.

After the broadcast, I wanted to watch it again. That's where the problems started.

First, a quick lesson on how 3D TV broadcasts work. Generally speaking, most 3D TV is Half-Side-By-Side. That means the left and right image are horizontally compressed and combined into a single image.

The TV automatically detects that the image is split-screen and then turns the image into 3D. It displays the left image so it can only be seen by the left eye, and the right by the right. If we apply that to the above image, we get this 3D effect.

So far, so good! The BBC have the 3D version of Day of the Doctor on iPlayer - and my TV has an iPlayer app. The only problem is that the iPlayer app on the Panasonic doesn't trigger the TV's automatic 3D detection. Even when I force the TV to 3D mode, it persists in showing the original picture. I've no idea if this is a fault with Panasonic's coding, or with the BBC's.

Well, my phone can access the iPlayer - and it can output its screen over HDMI. How well would it work? The answer, not well!

Here's a screenshot from my Android phone from the same scene.

You'll notice two things with it. Firstly the image quality is dreadful. The image resolution is 832*468 and the bitrate appears to be very poor.

Secondly, there's a bloody great BBC logo in the top left! The BBC have known for ages that Digital Onscreen Graphics (DOGs) are annoying for their viewers - but still they persist!

The problem with this on 3D content becomes readily apparent. The DOG is stretched and appears to flicker in and out to the viewer.

In addition, all iPlayer audio content is only in stereo - not the lovely surround sound of the original broadcast.

So, I can have iPlayer through the TV which won't display in 3D, I can have it through my phone in low quality with a ridiculous DOG, or I can find a kindly soul on the Internet offering Doctor Who in 1080p 3D with surround sound via a dodgy download.

I bet they don't have these problems on Inspector Spacetime!

I said:

The BBC's mobile site is fairly responsive. If you view it on different sized phones and tablets it adapts quite well. But it is an entirely separate site from the main BBC news site. The BBC are doing device detection and redirecting mobile users. It's not a bad strategy per se - but it is not best practice

Clicking on a link on the BBC's front page today, lead to this "responsive" experience.

A completely blank page. The full-fat site contains a clever chart.

Ideally, your mobile site should contain the same content as your main site. It's not a huge sin if it can't (for technical reasons) but you need to ensure that your CMS detects pages which are unsuitable for mobile and ensures that links towards them are removed.

Otherwise, you end up in this silly situation where mobile users are served content which you simply can't show them.

Of course, the reverse can be just as bad.

Come on BBC, sort it out!

We argued loudly, passionately, deployed logic and reason, and provided specific technical details.

Naturally, we were ignored.

Sure, Flash was only on a few high end devices now, but the BBC were confident that Flash would be soon be available on all Android devices and our perceived problems would evaporate.

Naturally, reality decided to ignore their wishful thinking.

Two years and one week after the BBC announced its Flash for Android strategy, Adobe announced it was killing Flash for Android.

High end Android devices like the Nexus - and any device running Android 4.1 would be incapable of running Flash. So there was no way to use iPlayer.

BBC iPlayer

@BBCiPlayer

For those asking about Nexus 7 / Jelly Bean 4.1 - we are testing the app and will be releasing an update soon. Thanks for your patience.

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This failure is exactly what happens when you choose vendor driven proprietary "solutions" rather than established and open standards.

This embarrassing turn of events is exactly what happens when you refuse to listen to the geeks making logical arguments.

This monumental cock-up over the Olympics is exactly what happens when you refuse to engage with reality and let prejudice drive your decision making process.

Here are the facts:

• Most Android devices cannot use the Flash based iPlayer app.
• Mobile Flash is now dead for future phones and tablets.
• Android devices can play exactly the same files as those served to the iPhone via iPlayer.

So why not just serve up the iPhone's MP4 files to any device which can play them? The BBC refuse to answer that simple question.

Want to know something funny? I was blogging about how to deliver iPlayer's iPhone streams to other models of mobile in March 2008!

Plus ça change.

We can only guess what shenanigans were involved with the BBC's original decision to bet the Android farm on Flash.

Perhaps now our BBC will pay more attention to the geeks who care so much about it.

It's a really great series, and I encourage you to listen to it.

At one point in episode 4, Stephen sings the Nokia ringtone.

So, here it is for your edification, and delight.

Feel free to set it as your iPhone's ringtone :-)

All together now, "Derr-nerr-nerr-nerr Derr-nerr-nerr-nerr Derr-nerr-nerr-nerr Nerr!"

Laura Kuenssberg

@ITVLauraK

As you've discovered I will become @ITVLauraK in September! Thanks for all the lovely tweets - Back in Westminster tomorrow

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Which got me wondering.

Terence Eden is on Mastodon

@edent

Why doesn't @bbclaurak simply rename her account to @ITVLauraK in September? Or are her followers the BBC's property?

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Twitter allows any user to change their name and keep all their followers. All of Laura's followers, friends, favourites, tweets, retweets, and lists will dissapear when she swaps to a new account.

Or will they? Is @BBCLauraK the twitter account for the BBC's Chief Political Correspondent? Or is it Laura's account? If the former, I'd expect it to be taken over by her successor and renamed @BBCgordonGopher (or whoever). If the latter, it makes sense for her to rename the account to @ITVlauraK (or whatever).

Looking at her feed, it's broadcast only with almost no "personal" tweets. Certainly no "Urgh, hungover" or "Trains late again!" tweets.

So, it probably makes sense for Laura to hand over control of the account when she leaves.

Impact On You

How much work tweeting do you do from your Twitter account? If you left your job, would your bosses be able to demand you surrender the account to them?

Sure, if you're tweeting from @NameOfYourCompany - it's their account. But if you're @CompanyName_Bob - do you get to keep it when you go? What if you're just @You - and you tweet about the company you work for - what happens to all that good-will when you go?

Work Phone vs Work Email

When I first joined Vodafone nearly a decade ago, I was given a mobile phone number. Our office was quite revolutionary because there we no desk phones! Of course not; we were in the mobile phone business.

This confused some people greatly. I'd give them my number and they'd say "yes, but how can I reach you at your desk?" And I'd say "Errrr.... I always have my mobile with me. Assuming it's me you want to reach, ring that number. Why would you want to talk to someone who happened to be sitting near where I work?"

Since then, I've kept the same mobile number. If you want to reach me - that's the number you call. No matter who I end up working for, that's my number. When I move roles, I take my number with me. When I leave a job, I take my number with me.

Yet I don't take my email address with me. Mails to terence.eden@vodafone.com will go unanswered - I hope! I can understand that - I don't want confidential documents forwarded to me. The domain name would make it look like I was still affiliated with an old employer.

But my phone number comes to me, Terence Eden. Wherever I am. Whoever I work for.

My Twitter account - @edent - is personal. It's mine. No boss can take it away from me.

What about yours?

As part of the Wikimedia Derby Backstage Pass a group of participants were invited around the mothballed Silk Mill Museum.

You can hear the full interview on the BBC iPlayer

As the iPlayer removes shows after a week, I've liberated the clip of me chatting away.

Thanks to Mark Ansell for performing the interview.

A couple of pictures of odd signs hidden away in the museum. More photos available on Richard Mackney's blog.

This leads us in to the amusing territory of "hiding" human readable data in the code.  I say "hiding" because we are hiding it from the scanner - not from the human.

One of the more famous examples of this is Duncan Robertson's BBC logo.

What works particularly well is the fact that the BBC logo is already black and white, and fairly blocky.

Aliens!

After my sojourn alien hunting in Paris, I realised that there is another blocky character which most people will recognise - the humble Space Invader!

In this first code, I've made the Invader small and hidden her in some blank space. Because she's around the same size as the surrounding pixels, any error she generates is cancelled out.

We can also use Duncan's technique and obscure part of the code.

How Not To Be Seen

While the boys of Monty Python can tell you how not to be seen, for computer vision, it's rather different.

Essentially, what most QR scanners do is look at a greyscale view of the image in front of them.  The lighter the colour, the more likely the optical recognition algorithm is to see it as "white".  This allows you to put dark coloured QR codes on to a light coloured background and still have them read.

So, in theory, we could fill up every pixel of white space with a different light colour and still be perfectly readable.

In this example, I've filled in some of the white space with light green. When seen in greyscale, the green is discarded and no extra error is introduced.

Other Examples

Optiscan have gone a whole lot further and coloured in the entire code

They claim that their app will quite happily read this code. As it's iPhone only, I wasn't able to verify - but as a rule, increasing the colour complexity will reduce the chances of a phone being able to successfully read your code. It's a fine balance between readability and aesthetic improvement.

The excellent QR Monkey has a blog post detailing several different techniques for prettifying your QR Codes.

Another example of how far you can go is this QR Quilt from Rubi Studios.

In short - you can go pretty wild with your QR designs. Just remember to up the error correction and make sure that contrast between the colours you use is sufficiently high for most scanners. When in doubt - test!

Here's a typical example.

BBC Advert

Intercontinental are a premium brand. No doubt their mobile advertising is really good. Right?

First Impression

Intercontinental Advert Page 1

We start off with a mobile friendly page.  Almost.  There are five flaws here.

1. Large image.  While visually appealing, consider that not everyone has a fast mobile Internet connection.  They may also have to pay per KB.  Is there a way to use multiple, smaller images to make things just as appealing as well as being quick and cheap?
2. Exposing a hyperlink.  It's rarely a good idea to show the http:// and other inner workings of your systems.  It breaks the understood convention of the web and exposes your URL structure.  In this case it also shows that the website you're sending people to neither belongs to Intercontinental nor the BBC.
3. Hyperlink colouring.  Convention is that links are in blue - or at the very least a different colour from the rest of the text - and underlined.  This allows customers to quickly and easily see where the clickable parts of the site are.
4. This is a mobile advert - where is the mobile mindset? Why am I signing up for an email newsletter?  Why not a monthly SMS or MMS?  Why not a mobile video showing how wonderful the Intercontinental is? Why not a mobile voucher to present at my next visit?  What a missed opportunity.
5. Bearing numbers 2 and 3 in mind, is "The Real" clickable? If so, where does it lead?  A consistent style helps with navigation.  Clearly explaining what lies behind a link encourages clickthrough.

Speaking of clickthrough - let's go and sign up for this e-newsletter.

Disaster!

Regular readers of this blog know what's coming next.

Not exactly mobile friendly

Yup. It's a desktop web page which is totally unsuitable for mobiles.  Poorly formatted, hard to use and generally a disaster.  How much did they spend on mobile advertising?  Could they not have spared a few € for a mobile friendly sign up page?

Back a Step

Let's go back to that first page and click on "The Real".  Maybe it's the real link to the mobile sign up form?

The Real

Ah! Now we see why InterContinental were advertising on the BBC - they have a tie in show.  The link right at the bottom goes back to the first page, what about www.bbc.com/thereal ?

Notice that, yet again, we have a different style of URL.  It isn't underlined, it isn't a different colour, but it is clickable.  This is the third style of URL on this site - totally confusing.

Let's click (you all know where this is going, right?)

Calamity!

Non-Mobile BBC Site

To be sure, this is a lovely site - but it's not exactly what you'd call mobile friendly.  What is the point of putting a link to a slow to download, expensive and poorly rendered desktop page within a mobile advert?

It doesn't have to be this way!

The BBC excels at producing mobile tie in content.  Take a look at the mobile friendly Doctor Who page.

Doctor Who Mobile

Mobile formatted, downloads, videos, loads of interesting and engaging content.  Just the way it should be.

Conclusions

There is one important lesson to be learned here.

Make sure all of your site is mobile friendly.  That doesn't just mean all pages are suitable for mobiles - it also means that the offer is suitable for mobile.