Puffbox

Very interesting to read Nick Robinson’s comments on his ambivalence towards his appearance in last night’s Mrs Pritchard thing. In offering something of a confession, and questioning the editorial judgement of his peers and/or superiors, he demonstrates perfectly the transparency and humanity which makes blogging successful. It’s precisely the sort of thing Robert Scoble used to get praised for whilst at Microsoft. But then again, Nick’s  a virtual nobody in cyberspace; his blog is only the 63rd most important political blog in the country, according to the author of Britain’s second most important political blog (same league table).

It used to really amuse me when you saw ‘real’ news reporters appearing in fiction. Frankly I’m getting a bit bored of it.

Me? I didn’t watch Mrs Pritchard last night. As revealed exclusively here last week, I watched Danny Wallace monkeying around with chimpanzees and bonobos. Much more interesting, and probably more politically valid. If you didn’t see the show, you can watch it on broadband here for the next week.

News today of another new global TV news channel coming our way soon… and this time, it’s the French. France24 is a joint venture between the country’s two main TV broadcasters: the private TF1, and the public France Televisions. Launch is due before the end of 2006, and will include two channels – one entirely in French, the other 75% in English (with plans for an Arabic element from next summer). It will be available as a free channel, via both digital TV networks and broadband.

It’s interesting to see the number of references to CNN, Fox News, the BBC and Al Jazeera in its press-pack. Also on your Sky Digital EPG, you’ll find the Chinese CCTV, the German Deutsche Welle, and so on. The BBC has announced plans for an Iranian-targeted channel as well as an Arabic channel. At some point, one assumes the English-language Al Jazeera will finally launch.

There are an awful lot of broadcasters out there, trading quite happily on their ties to the motherland, but pleading that ‘no, we’re actually fair and balanced.‘ (OK, possibly not CCTV, but you get my point.) But in a world of media plurality, where there are countless sources out there, all basically covering the same stuff, maybe that’s not a problem. Choose the one you personally trust, and nail your colours to their mast. That’s how Fox became America’s no1. Why shouldn’t it work globally?

Regardless, it’ll be great to have a proper French-language news channel out there. (Euronews doesn’t count.) Access to French TV whilst on my ‘year out’ was the single biggest contributor to my fluency in French.

PS: I hope people don’t mind the prevalence of pictures on recent posts; I’m experimenting with WordPress’s image functionality.

If you need a (very) good freeware screen capture utility, including the ability to ‘grab the whole document top-to-bottom’, I can highly recommend FastStone Capture. A cosy 1.2MB download, with all the functions and outputs you’ll be wanting (and more), and there’s even a ‘portable’ version of it. Which is handy if – let’s say – you’re using a PC on a corporate network, and the IT division has blocked installation of new software.

Being honest, there are plenty of reasons to find fault with 18 Doughty Street on its opening night. I’m watching the late-night discussion show as I type, and it’s taking them quite some time to get everyone mic’ed up properly. The 18DS website isn’t what you’d call slick, with too many dead ends for my liking – and having taken the trouble to register for an account on it, I can’t immediately see what benefits it opened up. I’m ‘losing the signal’ a little too frequently for my liking. If this was real telly, the production team could expect a right kicking.

But credit where credit is due: it’s there, and let’s not lose sight of the achievement that represents. We now have a daily ‘TV channel’ featuring credible people you’ve heard of (if you’re into your politics), broadcasting via the internet to the broadbanded masses. Opening night featured a lengthy interview with a major world leader (Aussie PM John Howard), and a couple of hours of live output hosted by Britain’s leading political blogger, Iain Dale. This is a big deal.

I hope they don’t consider the term ‘amateur’ to be an insult; I use the term in its purest sense. You can sense the excitement and passion for politics coming through what they’re doing. The output is rough around the edges… but maybe that’s no bad thing. They clearly aren’t doing this to win any TV production awards. They’re doing it for the love of doing it. And good on them.

If anyone’s interested in the technicals: they’re broadcasting at 320Kbps in WMV format, with a (widescreen) 320×180 picture expanded 2x to fill a branded popup window.

Quite the most extraordinary thing I’ve seen over breakfast in a while…

Tony Blair standing in the pouring rain for a live interview into BBC1’s Breakfast this morning. If the photo was better, you’d spot the BBC mug, which must have been filling up rapidly with rainwater. I don’t think I saw Blair drink out of it once. Mind you, nor would I, frankly. I just can’t work out what the appearance was meant to achieve. Next thing you know, he’ll be on Blue Peter or Songs Of Praise or something.

My main job just now is spec’ing up a Content Management System for a major government organisation. We’re in the unusual position of having bought a particular CMS product, without having a fully articulated, definitive vision for its eventual use. So a lot of my day is spent asking ‘we’d like to do X, can the product do it?’ Invariably the answer is ‘yes it could’; but it’s important to understand that they probably mean ‘no it can’t’.

Think of it like this: can you speak Polish? A developer would probably answer ‘yes’, based on the following.

He has the ability to pass air over his vocal chords, and can form shapes with his tongue and lips. So there’s no problem with the speaking part. Even if that fails, there are backup options based on his ability to type on a keyboard, or manipulate a pen. Always good to have a Plan B.

Polish uses more or less the same letters as English, so there’s no issue as regards character sets. Plus, you can usually recognise Polish by the number of Zs it uses, so you can try processing it even if there’s no explicit declaration of it being Polish input.

He maybe knows that Polska is the Polish word for Poland, and might even remember from 80s news footage that Solidarnosc means solidarity. So we’ve already proven that his memory can store information in Polish. If necessary, you can buy in mapping tables from Polish to English: they’re more usually referred to as dictionaries.

We’re on a roll now. Remember that union leader who led those shipyard protests, Lech Walesa? Except you pronounce it ‘vowensa’? Hey, we’ve even prototyped our ability to generate accurate Polish phonics from printed output.

And anyway, you meet Polish people all the time these days, and communicate successfully with them, albeit in English. But if we can do it in one direction, it shouldn’t be too much effort to do the opposite direction too.

Can he speak Polish? On the one hand, it can’t be argued that all the elements are there, and with enough time and effort, we could probably do something. So yes, yes he could. On the other hand… of course he bloomin’ can’t.

I hope colleagues will take this in the spirit in which it was intended… 🙂

Good luck to Andrew Hawken, who is moving from MSN to become Sky’s new ‘editorial director’, according to a piece this morning on Media Guardian. I’m interested to see that ‘the relaunch of Sky News next year (is) a top priority’ for the new appointee. Not a moment before time, as I wrote a few weeks ago. Andrew, give me a shout if you need me. 🙂

So Stuart Bruce has swallowed the Microsoft pill then, eh? Well, if anything, I am the Yang to his Ying. I’m finding myself less and less drawn to Microsoft products – and more drawn to web-based and standards-based alternatives, which make the underlying operating system and its software much less important.

I too own a T-Mobile MDA Pro, but even after a year, I can’t decide if I like it or not. It’s great as a mini-laptop, but ridiculous as a phone. The Windows Mobile operating system needs a regular reboot, maybe daily. Microsoft is consciously removing functionality from its otherwise impressive Active Sync software. I feel tied to Outlook (2002) whether I want it or not – and to be honest, I don’t. The twisting screen has never felt entirely robust, and the stylus no longer stays in its hole. In all likelihood, when my current contract is up, I’ll probably look for something new. Maybe a newer, better device running Windows Mobile; maybe something else.

I’m sticking with Firefox, not specifically because it’s a better browser – but because of its extensions. I can set Firefox up to work exactly how I want it, with a more than ample supply of free plugins. The Web Developer toolbar is almost reason enough in itself. (Oh, and I’m using the Deepest Sender extension to write this.)

Gmail is my primary, secondary and tertiary email service of choice. The ‘no folders’ approach is nothing short of revolutionary, but you don’t realise that until you’ve used it for a while. POP access is free, disk space is outrageously generous, and ’email from your domain’ is free too. That’s before you get on to the clever things you can do with your addresses, etc etc etc. No contest.

And yes, I’m sticking happily with OpenOffice. It does everything I need it to do. Why pay more?

My next IT hardware purchase is likely to be a MiniMac, some time after Christmas. I was expecting to shell out for a Vista-based system, but frankly, there’s nothing in it to inspire me. Apple’s copybook has been blotted lately, with issues in iTunes v7, laptops shutting down at random, and so on. But the synchronicity of a Mac running the new Leopard version of OS X, plus an iPod, plus the rumoured iPhone, all using (predominantly) web-based applications, is more than appealing.

Be ready, and be wary. The new version of Internet Explorer v7 is due to be properly released ‘this month’ according to the IE team’s blog… and will be forced on people ‘a few weeks’ later via Microsoft’s automatic update channel. If you haven’t checked your site with IE7 RC1, the final preview release, then you really should. And when the proper release emerges, you’d better check again.

A lot of web managers are going to get nasty shocks if they don’t.

I can’t believe I sat through that Mrs Pritchard thing this evening. When it wasn’t insulting the entire male gender, it was throwing every non-nonsense-Northern-lass cheesy cliché into the pot. That’s before we get onto the factual and procedural errors – Blair standing at the next election? Peter Snow showing exit poll predictions on his big coloured map during daylight hours – ie before the polls closed? (Actually, Peter Snow doing it at all?) But my favourite moment of all was the sight of the ballot paper – with the ‘United Kingdon Independance’ candidate listed above the eponymous heroine. Check it on your Sky+ box… that’s what it said. Ouch.

Oh… and hastily getting back on topic… no online element to her campaign whatsoever. In this day and age? I ask you.

On your TV next Tuesday at 9pm: how about Danny Wallace’s attempts to secure human rights for chimps? Probably more entertaining, more politically relevant, and more entertaining.