/aside...
The Surrealist's Evening Standard Headline Generator.
This has kept me amused for literally minutes now.
It sticks together parts of real headlines to create fake ones that probably aren't half as silly as the stuff the London papers really publish sometimes.
The best one I've generated is "Queen's wasps stolen at gunpoint". There are a couple of these headline boards near my house. The best real headline I've seen out in the wild was, "Gypsy and Immigrant in Fight to the Death". It would have been sacrilegious to actually read the story.
I'm hoping someone else can create a Daily Mail centrefold feature generator soon: Hitler/Kylie/Bush/Husband is secretly an Egyptian/Alien/Mormon/KGB Colonel.
I also remembered Not The BBC News, a site that lets you replace words from BBC News stories to create new stories. If you're clever it's very convincing. But remember to do no evil.
Showing posts with label BBC. Show all posts
Showing posts with label BBC. Show all posts
Headlines spin news shocker!
Monday, 7 January 2008
One of the nicest things about the BBC News website is that it links off to rival news coverage on each story. This provides a great snapshot of how the news is being treated across the English language media.
You can also get this service from news aggregators such as Google News, but the BBC, presumably thanks to the unique way it's funded, is the only news publisher to do this, highlighting their competition.
It's a seemingly selfless act, but probably only increases the BBC's reputation rather than loosing them audience. Now the world has switched to tabbed browsing, linking out doesn't automatically take your audience away like it used to when we only had one page open per browser.
The news aggregator shows how different media outlets choose to spin the same stories. A great example is today’s story about a confrontation between US and Iranian naval forces.
As the story was initially sourced only from a US Navy press briefing, we can assume that all media outlets were reporting the exact same details. Clearly the story will rapidly develop as the media starts to make it's own inquiries, but for the first hour of such a story, everyone is working from the same information, and nobody can afford not to rush a report online. The BBC sidebar then provides an overview of the latest headlines used to describe these events.
There are some neat little variations on the story appearing.
The Guardian initially ran with "US 'almost opened fire' on Iranian ships". Having just read the story on the BBC, this headline seemed a little twisted against the US. It ignores the provocation crucial to the events, and 'Iranian ships' is a poor, potentially misleading, description of military speedboats.
An hour later they had re-run the story with "US ships 'threatened' by Iranian boats", presumably after having now taken the time to read the details off CNN a little more closely.
I guess the nice thing is that the Guardian leave the old version online, for transparencies sake, even if they don't actually link to it anymore. Also, re-publishing rather than editing the first story pushes them back to the top of the news aggregator feeds, which probably helps draw audience.
If you go to the Fox News homepage (They report, you decide!), you get the headline, "U.S. to Iran: Don't Mess With Us". Clearly those who head straight to Fox for their news like an agressive take on events. I took a picture for posterity - they don't archive the front page.
The headline actually on the story, and the one linked to by the BBC and the outside world, reads "U.S. Warns Iran Against 'Provocative Actions' Following Incident in Strait of Hormuz". It's a more reasonable headline to send out to the rest of the world.
Would it be cynical to suggest that most of their audience has no idea where the Strait of Hormuz is, but that it makes FOX sound knowledgeable and serious? I suspect so, especially given that since I started writing, they edited the story to include a huge map at the top pointing out the strait in big letters. Unlike the Guardian, Fox News doesn't seem to keep older versions of a story online.
Naming the straights in the headline is a detail which isn't needed for the benefit of the story, but for the benefit of the media organisation publishing. Scanning the news aggregators, only The Times, Murdoch's local outlet, also bothers to put this geographical detail in the headline.
The gulf between the political ideologies of the Guardian and Fox News won't surprise anyone, but the presence of such differently weighted headlines side by side does a great deal to foster impartiality. Aggregating the headlines helps us see exactly how news is being reported and spun, reminds us of the varied interpretations of facts possible, and shows us a spectrum of opinion. It's very useful.
Edit: You can watch the Iranian boat barney here.
Edit 2: Zany Iranians now claim the video is a 'clumsy fake'.
You can also get this service from news aggregators such as Google News, but the BBC, presumably thanks to the unique way it's funded, is the only news publisher to do this, highlighting their competition.
It's a seemingly selfless act, but probably only increases the BBC's reputation rather than loosing them audience. Now the world has switched to tabbed browsing, linking out doesn't automatically take your audience away like it used to when we only had one page open per browser.
The news aggregator shows how different media outlets choose to spin the same stories. A great example is today’s story about a confrontation between US and Iranian naval forces.
As the story was initially sourced only from a US Navy press briefing, we can assume that all media outlets were reporting the exact same details. Clearly the story will rapidly develop as the media starts to make it's own inquiries, but for the first hour of such a story, everyone is working from the same information, and nobody can afford not to rush a report online. The BBC sidebar then provides an overview of the latest headlines used to describe these events.There are some neat little variations on the story appearing.
The Guardian initially ran with "US 'almost opened fire' on Iranian ships". Having just read the story on the BBC, this headline seemed a little twisted against the US. It ignores the provocation crucial to the events, and 'Iranian ships' is a poor, potentially misleading, description of military speedboats.
An hour later they had re-run the story with "US ships 'threatened' by Iranian boats", presumably after having now taken the time to read the details off CNN a little more closely.
I guess the nice thing is that the Guardian leave the old version online, for transparencies sake, even if they don't actually link to it anymore. Also, re-publishing rather than editing the first story pushes them back to the top of the news aggregator feeds, which probably helps draw audience.
If you go to the Fox News homepage (They report, you decide!), you get the headline, "U.S. to Iran: Don't Mess With Us". Clearly those who head straight to Fox for their news like an agressive take on events. I took a picture for posterity - they don't archive the front page.The headline actually on the story, and the one linked to by the BBC and the outside world, reads "U.S. Warns Iran Against 'Provocative Actions' Following Incident in Strait of Hormuz". It's a more reasonable headline to send out to the rest of the world.
Would it be cynical to suggest that most of their audience has no idea where the Strait of Hormuz is, but that it makes FOX sound knowledgeable and serious? I suspect so, especially given that since I started writing, they edited the story to include a huge map at the top pointing out the strait in big letters. Unlike the Guardian, Fox News doesn't seem to keep older versions of a story online.
Naming the straights in the headline is a detail which isn't needed for the benefit of the story, but for the benefit of the media organisation publishing. Scanning the news aggregators, only The Times, Murdoch's local outlet, also bothers to put this geographical detail in the headline.
The gulf between the political ideologies of the Guardian and Fox News won't surprise anyone, but the presence of such differently weighted headlines side by side does a great deal to foster impartiality. Aggregating the headlines helps us see exactly how news is being reported and spun, reminds us of the varied interpretations of facts possible, and shows us a spectrum of opinion. It's very useful.
Edit: You can watch the Iranian boat barney here.
Edit 2: Zany Iranians now claim the video is a 'clumsy fake'.
BBC Homepage review
Sunday, 6 January 2008
Before Christmas I promised a brief review of the new BBC homepage beta, and now I deliver.
Review in a word: Overweight.
The BBC homepage is the page you find at bbc.co.uk, and it'll be the main entranceway to over 2 million pages of content on one of the biggest websites on the planet. You can take a look at the trial version of the new homepage here.
I'm going to be focusing mainly on the design and role of the page rather than the content. As far as I can tell little has been added, and I'm assuming that what we're seeing during the beta test is just a new layout for the old content. New content may follow when the design is finalised.
On the whole I like the new look. The header is fresh, it's clean and the varied colours are all good. The fonts are crisp, and the weightings are well chosen. Text is perfectly spaced. It feels slick and modern, almost a demonstration of what they can achieve. It's hugely important for organisations like the BBC to appear cutting edge, and this brings them into the present era of rounded shapes and shaded colours. The search bar has been strongly highlighted, and for a site as large as the BBC, searching is always going to be vastly more efficient than hunting for links. The directory at the bottom and the footer are similarly neat and well designed. Packed with links, but well spaced and helpfully organised. So far so good.
It's the middle that annoys me.
The new homepage is designed to be fully and intuitively customisable. Where before the homepage tried to include a link to nearly every area of the BBC site, you can now select which areas of interest you'd like to be displayed. You can then move these information boxes around and alter the level of detail displayed. The customisation options work well. Movement is a simple drag and drop method, identical to Facebook, and the customisation options are relatively easy to use. You just indicate what you want to see and put it where you want it.
Well, almost where you want it. The one box you can't move is the biggest - the cross-promotional advert box. Ooooh, advert is a strong word, but it is, even if it's 'cross promotional', and it's every bit as irritating as adverts on any other site. Admittedly it's now showing a large image of Keira Knightly which isn't so bad, but not all the rotating adverts are as pretty and some are rather crude stock images. In my view, if you're going to have giant images dominating a page you should ensure that they're always great. I hope they make a real effort here.
I understand the need for cross-promotion. The BBC isn't trying to sell us anything but inform us about developments we've already paid for. However, this giant box on the new site is invasive and overshadows the rest of the page. I'd really prefer to see it scaled back a little.
The International version of the page doesn't show the big advert, replacing it with an additional expanded but mostly empty 'Top News' box. I'm aware that with the launch of BBC.com there will be commercial advertising on the BBC site visible only to international viewers, but I'm pretty sure that this space won't be turned over to adverts for international users. This means that the first piece of customisation I did was to switch by view across to the international version. I then immediately wondered why I wasn't just looking at BBC News.
When I first saw the new homepage I briefly wondered if it might replace BBC News as my homepage. It won't. In fact, like the existing homepage, I can't really see any reason why I'd ever go there. The homepage is a portal to the BBC, and a very shiny, modern, welcoming one. But it's not especially useful. The BBC site is so rich in information that each box barely does the area justice. If I have any interest in the History section or the Weather, I'll probably go straight there, or end up there from a search engine. Customisation then feels like a novelty because I doubt I'll be going back there often enough for it to be worthwhile.
A homepage should offer to take you to new places on the site. This one lets you limit your view to only those places you already know. And chances are you'll soon be going straight to those places, bypassing the homepage. By customising your view the first time you visit, you may remove a lot of the options. You can bring them back easily, but they'll never be there at a glance, to visit on a whim. By making some things so big, and potentially hiding so much, it doesn't allow users to explore as easily as the old site.
The new customisable homepage lets choices become restrictions, and surely that's a crime on the internet. I understand that the old site could overwhelm with choices; it was cluttered and I agree it needed to be tidied up. I understand that it looked dated; it was bland and I agree it needed a lick of gradient fill. But did it need all this? Is it wise to let users cut away anything that doesn't immediately interest them? I feel I'm being led around on the new homepage, not allowed to explore.
A homepage is essentially a giant menu. This menu needed a tidy. They've opted to let us remove choices in order to tidy up. I'd rather they'd gone with a system of expanding sub-menus, keeping everything tidy but available.
My next concern is that the whole site is too wide. It used to be a convention not to build sites wider than 800 pixels. If you did they went off the side of the page for users with older computers, forcing users to scroll sideways. The whole of the BBC site is currently restricted to this limit.
At around 960 pixels wide the new BBC homepage is well within the size of most modern PC monitors. However, PC's are no longer the only devices going online. Powerful mobiles, ultra-mobile and educational laptops and specialist tablet browsers are all growing in popularity and many of these struggle with sites wider than 800 pixels. Just at the time we can be sure that PCs will all cope with wider web designs, a wave of new devices have arrived designed for the existing internet, and may not be able to cope with wider sites. When dealing with small screens, a horizontal scroll-bar only further reduces the screen space. It's a shame they've expanded sideways and I don't think it adds anything to the page. I really hope this isn't a template for an expansion of the whole BBC site. The Beeb is hardly the first to burst out of the 800 width barrier; the Guardian, Times and Telegraph homepages already have, but they at least ensure it's the adverts that get shunted off-screen, and the stories remain at 800. By using columns the newspaper websites ensure that you only loose whole blocks off the side of small screens. The BBC homepage lets content fall half off the page and is thus a constant irritation on a small screen.
I'm mainly moaning about this because the site looks rubbish on my tiny new eeePC.
I might be more forgiving if they'd used the space a little better. As already mentioned, I like the header and footer. But the customisable boxes seem desperately wasteful. We see giant fonts with large blocks of empty space around them, and then more wasted space around the boxes. It's all very chunky, like it's been built for a fat fingered child.
If the new BBC homepage was a person it'd be David Cameron: Slick but unoriginal, slightly chubby, wants to be everyone’s friend. Not quite sure what it's for. Soon to be the public face of the UK.
Now a question to the readers: What's your homepage and why?
Review in a word: Overweight.
The BBC homepage is the page you find at bbc.co.uk, and it'll be the main entranceway to over 2 million pages of content on one of the biggest websites on the planet. You can take a look at the trial version of the new homepage here.I'm going to be focusing mainly on the design and role of the page rather than the content. As far as I can tell little has been added, and I'm assuming that what we're seeing during the beta test is just a new layout for the old content. New content may follow when the design is finalised.
On the whole I like the new look. The header is fresh, it's clean and the varied colours are all good. The fonts are crisp, and the weightings are well chosen. Text is perfectly spaced. It feels slick and modern, almost a demonstration of what they can achieve. It's hugely important for organisations like the BBC to appear cutting edge, and this brings them into the present era of rounded shapes and shaded colours. The search bar has been strongly highlighted, and for a site as large as the BBC, searching is always going to be vastly more efficient than hunting for links. The directory at the bottom and the footer are similarly neat and well designed. Packed with links, but well spaced and helpfully organised. So far so good.
It's the middle that annoys me.
The new homepage is designed to be fully and intuitively customisable. Where before the homepage tried to include a link to nearly every area of the BBC site, you can now select which areas of interest you'd like to be displayed. You can then move these information boxes around and alter the level of detail displayed. The customisation options work well. Movement is a simple drag and drop method, identical to Facebook, and the customisation options are relatively easy to use. You just indicate what you want to see and put it where you want it.
Well, almost where you want it. The one box you can't move is the biggest - the cross-promotional advert box. Ooooh, advert is a strong word, but it is, even if it's 'cross promotional', and it's every bit as irritating as adverts on any other site. Admittedly it's now showing a large image of Keira Knightly which isn't so bad, but not all the rotating adverts are as pretty and some are rather crude stock images. In my view, if you're going to have giant images dominating a page you should ensure that they're always great. I hope they make a real effort here.I understand the need for cross-promotion. The BBC isn't trying to sell us anything but inform us about developments we've already paid for. However, this giant box on the new site is invasive and overshadows the rest of the page. I'd really prefer to see it scaled back a little.
The International version of the page doesn't show the big advert, replacing it with an additional expanded but mostly empty 'Top News' box. I'm aware that with the launch of BBC.com there will be commercial advertising on the BBC site visible only to international viewers, but I'm pretty sure that this space won't be turned over to adverts for international users. This means that the first piece of customisation I did was to switch by view across to the international version. I then immediately wondered why I wasn't just looking at BBC News.
When I first saw the new homepage I briefly wondered if it might replace BBC News as my homepage. It won't. In fact, like the existing homepage, I can't really see any reason why I'd ever go there. The homepage is a portal to the BBC, and a very shiny, modern, welcoming one. But it's not especially useful. The BBC site is so rich in information that each box barely does the area justice. If I have any interest in the History section or the Weather, I'll probably go straight there, or end up there from a search engine. Customisation then feels like a novelty because I doubt I'll be going back there often enough for it to be worthwhile.A homepage should offer to take you to new places on the site. This one lets you limit your view to only those places you already know. And chances are you'll soon be going straight to those places, bypassing the homepage. By customising your view the first time you visit, you may remove a lot of the options. You can bring them back easily, but they'll never be there at a glance, to visit on a whim. By making some things so big, and potentially hiding so much, it doesn't allow users to explore as easily as the old site.
The new customisable homepage lets choices become restrictions, and surely that's a crime on the internet. I understand that the old site could overwhelm with choices; it was cluttered and I agree it needed to be tidied up. I understand that it looked dated; it was bland and I agree it needed a lick of gradient fill. But did it need all this? Is it wise to let users cut away anything that doesn't immediately interest them? I feel I'm being led around on the new homepage, not allowed to explore.
A homepage is essentially a giant menu. This menu needed a tidy. They've opted to let us remove choices in order to tidy up. I'd rather they'd gone with a system of expanding sub-menus, keeping everything tidy but available.
My next concern is that the whole site is too wide. It used to be a convention not to build sites wider than 800 pixels. If you did they went off the side of the page for users with older computers, forcing users to scroll sideways. The whole of the BBC site is currently restricted to this limit.
At around 960 pixels wide the new BBC homepage is well within the size of most modern PC monitors. However, PC's are no longer the only devices going online. Powerful mobiles, ultra-mobile and educational laptops and specialist tablet browsers are all growing in popularity and many of these struggle with sites wider than 800 pixels. Just at the time we can be sure that PCs will all cope with wider web designs, a wave of new devices have arrived designed for the existing internet, and may not be able to cope with wider sites. When dealing with small screens, a horizontal scroll-bar only further reduces the screen space. It's a shame they've expanded sideways and I don't think it adds anything to the page. I really hope this isn't a template for an expansion of the whole BBC site. The Beeb is hardly the first to burst out of the 800 width barrier; the Guardian, Times and Telegraph homepages already have, but they at least ensure it's the adverts that get shunted off-screen, and the stories remain at 800. By using columns the newspaper websites ensure that you only loose whole blocks off the side of small screens. The BBC homepage lets content fall half off the page and is thus a constant irritation on a small screen.
I'm mainly moaning about this because the site looks rubbish on my tiny new eeePC.
I might be more forgiving if they'd used the space a little better. As already mentioned, I like the header and footer. But the customisable boxes seem desperately wasteful. We see giant fonts with large blocks of empty space around them, and then more wasted space around the boxes. It's all very chunky, like it's been built for a fat fingered child.
If the new BBC homepage was a person it'd be David Cameron: Slick but unoriginal, slightly chubby, wants to be everyone’s friend. Not quite sure what it's for. Soon to be the public face of the UK.
Now a question to the readers: What's your homepage and why?
New BBC Homepage
Sunday, 16 December 2007
Wait, there's a new BBC homepage?!
It's much shinier. I'd be tempted to call it the Vista edition. And fully customisable.
Full review when I've had the chance to mess with it.
Initial impression - I love that the second hand on the clock on the top right wobbles slightly as it ticks... Like a real clock!
Check it out here: NEW BBC!!!!1
Edit: 5 mins of messing about, I now can't get back to the international version after having set my location for weather reports. Maybe I want weather from elsewhere? Or maybe I just like world news...
Edit 2: Strike that. I can localise the weather to anywhere. But I still can't get back to the international version. This is important because I just can't shift the dude with dreads. Huge image dominating the page. Go away!
Edit 3: Problem solved. Used the old website to change the settings of the new site. Now my view is unobscured by giant cross-promotional banners. Super.
It's much shinier. I'd be tempted to call it the Vista edition. And fully customisable.
- Could a customised BBC homepage push BBC News off my homepage?
- Did they nick all their ideas off Facebook?
- Is blue the new red?
- Have they stopped using tables?
- Whatever will those trust-fund madmen think of next?
Full review when I've had the chance to mess with it.
Initial impression - I love that the second hand on the clock on the top right wobbles slightly as it ticks... Like a real clock!
Check it out here: NEW BBC!!!!1
Edit: 5 mins of messing about, I now can't get back to the international version after having set my location for weather reports. Maybe I want weather from elsewhere? Or maybe I just like world news...
Edit 2: Strike that. I can localise the weather to anywhere. But I still can't get back to the international version. This is important because I just can't shift the dude with dreads. Huge image dominating the page. Go away!
Edit 3: Problem solved. Used the old website to change the settings of the new site. Now my view is unobscured by giant cross-promotional banners. Super.
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