Puffbox

I dropped by the Apple Store in Regent Street this afternoon, for my first play with an iPhone / iPod Touch. Basically, the reviews are right: it redefines the mobile internet device. I can easily see where Antony Mayfield is coming from: the iPod Touch is equally cool, and an excellent substitute if you aren’t in the market for a phone. But I can’t help feeling that if I do ultimately buy one, I’ll only end up wondering why I didn’t go the whole hog, and get the iPod-with-built-in-phone. The second device in my pocket will feel twice as heavy. Still v-e-r-y tempting though.

Interestingly, the one aspect of both devices which impressed me most was the YouTube integration. Full screen video playback via what seemed like a stand-alone app. All the fun of YouTube, without the (frankly) ugly-verging-on-unusable website. And if I’m not mistaken, no superimposed YouTube logo on the clips. It really makes YouTube a dream to use… and reinforces its position as the undisputed no1 in online video.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: if you’ve got any video content, get it on YouTube now and ask questions later.

Opera Mini is a revelation: proof that the internet really can work on a tiny screen after all. Opera already has a reputation for great ‘small-screen rendering’, stripping out all the HTML that just wouldn’t work on a mobile phone screen anyway. But the new v4 release of this Java mobile app also includes the ability to see the full web page , and zoom in/out/about as you desire. Not to mention the fact that it reduces your data downloading by about 70% – crucial if you’re paying by the megabyte. It’s absolutely brilliant. It’s a tiny download. And it’s free. Try the demo if you need any further convincing.

Reports in Media Guardian today that David Cameron is signing up to post regularly on Friction.TV – ‘in addition to the video blogs he already posts on his own www.webcameron.co.uk site.’ The company has ‘also approached both the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties about setting up their own channels, but said it has so far not received a response.’

Great move by Sky News to have an iPhone-optimised version of their website ready for iPhone launch day tomorrow. Not rocket science, of course: just a restricted width HTML/CSS layout, and some iPhone-style boxy buttons. Easy enough to knock together in a few hours, for most people in a content management context. But a great move in PR terms nonetheless.

In fact, it’s a really nice way to browse the lead items on their website, whether or not you have an iPhone, and not just because of the lack of adverts. It could easily be repurposed as a desktop sidebar or widget.

Update: Sky’s James Weeks officially announces the new site on Sky’s editors’ blog. But you read it here first, didn’t you. 🙂

A nutshell I picked up from comments on Adrian Monck’s blog, courtesy of Tom Whitwell:

Ed (Gorman) started a F1 blog at Times Online in March, and he’s been astonishing – 60-100 comments on plenty of posts, 30k visitors a day during the peak of the season, getting about 35% + 35% UK and Spanish readers, teaching me a lot about how blogs can work. He’s having a rest until the new season, but the blog is at http://timesonline.typepad.com/formula_one/ Plenty of other good Times bloggers (Ruth Gledhill, Charles Bremner, Danny Finkelstein) but Ed has gone from a standing start to huge success very fast.

Very impressive numbers. But yes, on reflection, Formula One was crying out for the blog treatment. Hardcore fan base, slow-burning weekday stories culminating in weekend global mass-audience events (the races), conspiracy theories a-plenty – but perhaps most importantly, bunches of blokes spending too much time together. The perfect recipe, really.

I went along to last night’s political blogging event at the Telegraph, hoping to come away with ‘the answer’. And whilst it was a very enjoyable evening, I didn’t get my answer – but then again, I’m not sure we actually asked ‘the question’.

There was a lot of consensus. It’s influential rather than powerful (per se). The UK political parties are hopeless at it all. US politicians are more driven on this stuff, because their livelihoods depend on the cash it generates. There’s widespread paranoia about legal action (more than I expected). It’s good to give the grassroots a say. An election would have been fun. Etc etc.

But to put it bluntly, so what? I was struck by the number of people I spoke to afterwards who considered themselves ‘political’, and clearly put a lot of time and effort into their political blogging, but weren’t actively involved in party politics. There’s a large and currently untapped resource of energy and motivation. But the parties (certainly the Big Two) don’t seem too bothered about tapping it. There’s no sense that a new political force is set to emerge from the blogosphere… despite the fact that some – the BNP, the Greens, the LibDems even – clearly need the boost it could/would bring.

So all that really leaves is ‘marketing’. For individuals, broader name recognition, broader influence and ultimately, you have to assume, the offer of a safe seat. For the media, an acceptance that politics has gone bloggy, and they have to be active in it to maintain their brands. All of which is fairly selfish and short-term. If there’s a long-term revolution on the cards, I didn’t get the sense that anyone knew what it would be, or when we’d see it.

Media Guardian reckons the BBC is ‘planning changes to the way it presents its news output’. On the face of it, the TV changes recognise the collapse in the status of the flagship bulletins as they currently stand. The One will be more News24-y: more live two-ways, fewer recorded packages. The Six will ‘concentrate on fewer stories but cover them in more depth’.

Yes, these are clearly going to trim costs, but I think they make sense in the world of rolling news. Lunchtime isn’t a natural pause in the news cycle, quite the opposite in fact. So we’re kidding ourselves if we think we can take a reflective step back. By 6pm, the breaking stories have generally played themselves out, and it’s the right time to linger a bit longer.

Online, they say ‘resources are expected to be focused on the most popular stories, while it is thought there will be 20% less audio-visual content’. On the former: good, the BBC site has always tended to do too much written stuff, per story and per day. (I don’t know about you, but I very rarely read to the end of a story.) On the latter: a cut in A/V volume is probably justifiable, but it’s impossible to decide whilst they persist in their pre-YouTube approach to video. Hiding the video behind text links, popup windows and helper apps doesn’t encourage me to watch. A one-click-to-play Flash movie (with a preview) just might.

I’d never thought to look at the number of subscribers I have in Google Reader, until I saw Adrian Monck’s list of Britain’s most popular ‘news business’ bloggers. I didn’t realise quite how easy it was: just click on the ‘Add subscription’ button, and search for the blog/person’s name – not the URL (otherwise it’ll assume you wanted to subscribe, and will cut out the intermediary step). You can do more or less the same thing with Bloglines too, incidentally – and if you put the two figures togther, that should cover the vast majority of RSS readership, by the look of it.

Personally, I’m a little surprised how low everyone’s numbers actually are. I’m hereby laying claim to a ‘top five’ position, assuming my occasional pieces on the ‘news business’ are enough to get me into the club? And interestingly, I see my readers are more than three times more likely to use Google Reader than Bloglines. I wonder what that says?

Worth keeping an eye on LiberalConspiracy.org – the new ‘liberal-left‘ ‘hub‘/’super-blog‘ launched today by pickled politician Sunny Hundal. It sets out to be a ‘political magazine and discussion forum in the form of a multi-user blog’, and brings together quite a long list of left-of-centre bloggers and writers. Although if I’m honest, I only recognise a handful of them, and there’s really only two blogosphere ‘household names’ (if you know what I mean). Not much up there on day one, obviously – but having met Sunny (at the BBC Trust thing), he strikes me as the kind of passionate guy who will make things happen. Full marks for using WordPress too, naturally.

I’m indebted to Martin Stabe (and indeed, Matt Mullenweg) for spotting that the Black Country Express and Star website is built in WordPress. Further evidence, if it were needed (and I’m not sure it were), that there’s very little you can’t do with WordPress. I’d be interested in a write-up of the plugins and hacks they’ve implemented to get it looking so newspaper-y, if anyone’s reading this…