Brian, meet Ananova

Norfolk’s morning paper, the Eastern Daily Press likes to think of itself as pretty smart when it comes to innovation. They’re making a big fuss today of ‘Brian’ – which stands for Believable RSS Interactive Avatar Newscaster. In fact, it doesn’t seem to be much more than Ananova, who/which was launched back in April 2000. Whatever happened to her? Orange bought the Ananova website from PA later that year, and Ana herself hasn’t been seen in a couple of years, despite promises that she is ‘under development’. (And my memory may be playing tricks, but I seem to remember Ananova being better animated.) Sadly, she never did ‘transform the delivery of news’ – and I don’t imagine Brian will either.