cloudsoup

I discovered that Flight 447 was reported missing from trending topics on Twitter.  I then read more breaking news and followed expert in-depth discussion on the pprune forum (the Professional Pilots’ Rumour Network), which described the composite materials of the Airbus body, posted links to detailed weather maps of the area, and debated possible causes of the crash.

I tried the BBC several times throughout the day but the story posted there hardly developed and had very little explanation.

Recently the MSM has been making noises about attempting to charge for content. Let them. They’ll just die more quickly.

The iPlayer is a back-to-the-future business model. It’s a total subversion of Reithian values in favour of trying to create what had been an accidental monopoly as a kind of robust business model. The idea that the old geographical segmenting of terrestrial broadcasts is recreatable is a fantasy and a waste of time.

Clay Shirky, The shape of things to come, The Guardian

After coming across a problem when the new design went online I thought I ought to mention, just to be fair, it seems much faster now and I am using it more than I did before.

Still one or two problems, though.

For example, the front news page site failed validation with 109 errors when I tried it – it looks very much as if someone didn’t graps the difference between STRICT and TRANSITIONAL in the DocType.

Then again, I seem to have a few problems here, largely to do with not putting <p> immedately after my <blockquote> and not escaping my &’s.

Then the markup, even though they’ve bust a gut to use CSS, is hardly what you’d call semantic:

<div class="puff-top clear"></div><div class="padding-top-10">&lt/div>

Eh?

It’s not an easy job…but they could do better.

The one o’clock news

So, this is the one o’clock news from the BBC on the 21st February. Now I imagine that in the original tv broadcast, this wasn’t the message broadcast to the nation.

Perhaps that’s the problem – the streaming version is available for free all over the world and maybe the Beeb didn’t have clearence for whatever the hell this was.

Still, they need to get this sort of thing sorted, don’t they.

At the mo I’m watching Stephen Pollard and Chris Mounsey (Devil’s Kitchen) and Ian Dale and two others I don’t recognise [update - rachelnorthlondon and Ben Sherrard] on a stream from 18 Doughty Street, talking about the blogosphere.

IPTV – 18 Doughty Street

At the same time I’m downloading my podcasts to listen to, this evening and tomorrow, in place of my old listening habit which was solid BBC Radio 4, good and bad (and the bad was very, very bad). Updated podcasts to look forward to include Penn Jillette’s Free FM show Brian Dunning’s calmly intelligent Skeptoidshow, a new Glenn and Helen podcast from Instapundit and an old one from the ever patient Reginald Finley (The Infidel Guy).

I have a few outstanding to listen to from KCRW’s Left, Right and Centre and I’m sure there must be something too from Leo Laporte.

I gave up buying a newspaper several years ago.

So why am I paying for the BBC? I download one podcast – the invariably excellent In Our Time from Melvyn Bragg. I watch the 10 O’Clock news usually and some BBC 4 stuff, and Newsnight. The rest of the crap the BBC puts out, they can keep.

This is how it’ll be – choosing what to listen to or to watch, at your own convenience, with democratisation of media production offering low-cost niche interest shows and then one or two big, high traffic numbers. For those who care to make active choices that is, and for the rest, well, why must i pay for their Dancing On Ice nonsense?

The MSM in the UK has been slavering over the video showing two US planes accidentally attacking a British convoy, killing one British soldier.

I ‘ve seen quite a bit of the video now and I don’t understand at all the US reluctance to share the footage. The pilots, who were not responsible for the mistake, when they realised what happened, were beside themselves with recriminations, guilt, disgust and regret. As far as I can see their response shows them in the best possible light and I feel great sympathy for them.

The UK Press and TV is having a very hard time making mileage of it.

Everyone’s complaining about it. Here’s my moan.

I’m trying to read the story about the US friendy fire incident involving a US aircraft attack on a British convoy. For some bizarre reason the online editors have chopped the transcript up into 24 pages each containing containing 12 lines of text, ot thereabouts.

I’m guessing that some halfwit at The Times has insisted the story shouldn’t disappear below the fold (on a 1025×768 screen resolution, without magnifying the text, without applying my own stylesheets, etc).

From a usability perspective this is disastrous