It's the Internet's essential openness which confuses those who've more used to forms of media whose boundaries could be clearly discerned and thus labeled, if not policed. In the 21st century, media literacy means teaching people the skills to navigate without a map, let alone roadsigns. ]]>
Stephen Dunn and I were lucky enough to win the 'Best Cruise' award for our annotated Flickr photo story of our East Coast cruise in June 2007. Not sure how many at the Wanderer Class Association AGM knew what Flickr was, but they seemed enthusiastic nonetheless... ]]>
In a lengthy comment below, Michael Sparks answers my question by making a compelling case that you'll only need a TV licence if you actually watch a broadcast TV over the net.Over on the BBC Internet blog, Ashley Highfield (Director of BBC Future Media and Technology) says that using the BBC's iPlayer on demand Internet TV service does not in itself mean you are liable to pay the TV Licence Fee. However, he continues, if you watch a live BBC broadcast via the Internet (BBC News 24 and BBC Parliament are both available) then you will need a licence. This begs a question:
I've thought for a while that the equivalent would be for Google to give you not your own PageRank as a score, but the PageRank of your next closest "competitor", or web site. You could then SEO all you like, it won't affect your PageRank, except in so far as it affects your closest competitors'. The trick in this scheme will be implementing who your "nearest neighbour" is for any web page.Auction design is hard, and things can go badly wrong when faced with cunning and potentially collusive players. Both black and white hat SEOs are cunning, and increasingly collusive. No wonder Google is stocking up on game theorists.]]>
13. Let people paste your content on the walls of their virtual homes.However, come next week the video will no longer work (I hope it breaks gracefully) since the BBC removes programmes from the Web 7 days after broadcast - even debates from the House of Commons, where there are zero rights issues. This breaks BBC Web Principle Number 8, which states:
8. Make sure all your content can be linked to, forever.This is a shame, but I suppose justifies the Principle's implicit order of importance, since being able to embed something from the BBC is moot if said something then gets deleted by the BBC after a few days. This is the Web. Stuff should persist. Ah well, it's progress nonetheless. As is the quietly-revolutionary-if-about-5-years-late bbc.co.uk/programmes, offering a permanent page for every episode of every BBC programme, and which now also embeds iPlayer media for as long as its available after broadcast. (Thanks Tom!) ]]>