back at work
I’m a week into a new year of work. The weather has been sodden all week and the London transport system seems to have had one too many sherries over the festive system. None of this helps fill me with the joys of returning to work, particularly since I took an unusually indulgent two & half weeks off.
That said, things are looking rosy. 2007 saw a few changes around bbc.co.uk:
A new homepage. Only a beta in 2007 though and it needs more interesting boxes (recipe search!). Pink is still my least favourite colour. The black is surprisingly nice, particularly with the Signs of Life promo (I can’t link to the combo – there’s no archive yet but it is on the list).
iPlayer is kicking off its nappy and wandering around. “Perhaps television’s multimedia future has arrived” is the Guardian Media Diary‘s response; both non-commital and grandiose at the same time . Anyway I love the instant gratification of streaming (and that works in Firefox).
/programmes/ – the basic architecture is there but it needs elevators, some more furniture, and a lick of paint. This unassuming product is a huge step forward for us. For years, vast quantities of BBC programmes had no presence on the website at all and pretty much everything that was there had to be hand-cranked by dedicated web teams.
Identity (login, member pages, recommendations even) looks set to be the thing for 2008. It’s been the thing before (2004 and 2006, I believe) but every idea has it’s time. If we can resurrect MyBBC then why not?
Metadata should finally cease to be a management buzzword and so I reckon we should see some really interesting metadata work happening.
But I’m still glad it is Friday