Interesting Stuff 18.01.08
Post categories: round up
| 15:34 UK time, Friday, 18 January 2008
In the podcast/download we published just before Christmas Rory Cellan-Jones made a crafty reference to a new BBC blog on technology. Well now it's here, it's called dot.life and Rory and Darren Waters are blogging away like fury. Here Rory can't recall the clause in his contract which says he has to be nice to Bill Gates.
Mark Thompson and Zarin Patel (the BBC's Director of Finance) faced the Public Accounts Committee last week in the House of Commons, including some tough questions about the costs of the iPlayer. You can see the whole committee session here (iPlayer questioning starts about 12 minutes in). Open Rights Group blog and Boycott Novell have their take on what happened.
As a result of the Commitee the figure of £20 million has been quoted by some people (including me!) as the cost of the iPlayer. In fact I've been told that £5.7 million has been spent on iPlayer development to date (not including rights, operational and other technical costs). The BBC is forecasting 131 million as the total cost for its on-demand proposals (including the iPlayer) over five years (starting in 2006/07). This forecast includes rights costs and other operational and technical costs.
We should have made more of Peter Horrock's post about the value (or otherwise) of citizen journalism on the Editors Blog. There's some fascinating dilemmas for the BBC which are reflected in the comments. Charlie Beckett reacts to Peter's post here. And this BBC R&D project blogged by nodalpoints is relevant too.
Update 21.01.08. Groklaw have just blogged about the Select Committee meeting here. Also here's a link to the BBC Festival of Technology which is happening tommorow.
Nick Reynolds is editor, BBC Internet Blog.
Comments
Its "Boycott Novell", not Nouvelle as your spell checker probably insists ;)
Now corrected. Thanks.
Hi Nick
Do you know what percentage of iplayer hits are:
1. Downloads to XP
2. Streamed to Windows
3. Streamed to Mac
4. Streamed to Linux?
Hi Willis - I don't know these numbers but I'm hoping they will be revealed on this blog in February.