Puffbox

Bigger, bolder, blacker. Sky News responds to News 24’s toning-down of its on-screen graphics by making yellow its colour for breaking news, and loading up a new fatter font for its big headlines. Blue has more or less disappeared from the colour palette – replaced by heavy use of black. Yes folks – red, white and black, same as News 24, same as a tabloid newspaper (in the old sense of the word).

The SKY NEWS logo is now a rotating cube, presumably a deliberate reference to Fox News, their much-derided cousin across the Atlantic – and, frankly, I’m surprised they would do anything to invite comparison. The time rotates too, to be replaced by the date, which is surely an enhancement nobody ever wanted. And I suspect there are still some glitches, since the morning weather symbols are disappearing off the edge of my widescreen TV, which has never happened before. (And apparently I’m not the only one.)

Overall, the response on viewers’ editor Paul Bromley’s blog is not good. Perhaps that’s inevitable in matters creative, especially when you’ve got so many people who take these things so seriously. But in Sky’s defence, fair play to them for leaving all the bad stuff up there, for all to see. Mind you, criticism like ‘worst graphics in the history of television news’, though, is so extreme that you can’t take it seriously.

I’m not going to condemn them, myself: they are functionally successful, and that’s really all that matters, although they aren’t perhaps the choices I would have made – admittedly, coming from a screen design background that is entirely web-based. It’s still basically the same (increasingly tired) formula: clock, logo, ticker. It’s about time someone really re-thought the requirements.

No changes on the website yet… meaning, not for the first time, the web presence is out of step with the on-screen presentation. But I understand a new Sky News website design has long been scheduled for Easter or thereabouts.

Finally got my invite into the Joost beta programme – and the immediate reaction is positive. Full-screen video with very good quality sound, as promised, plus a ‘widget’ platform for things like RSS and live chat. But a very restrictive selection of content in these early stages – unless you’re a big fan of the World’s Strongest Man contests. And frankly, it doesn’t feel right to be watching that stuff on anything other than a Bank Holiday. Encouraging stuff, though, in these early days.

Figures published earlier this week by National Statistics show that the UK broadband audience is continuing to expand, with over 79% of all internet connections now broadband. It’s the first time NatStats have published numbers relating to connection speed: they found that 60.1% of broadband connections were 2 meg or less, with 32.5% between 2 and 8 meg, and just 2% at 8 meg plus. But as it’s the first time the data have been published, they offer a note of caution that it may be corrected later. Full results are published in PDF; there’s more info available from here if you’re interested.

I’m surprised more people haven’t been migrated up to the higher speeds; it sounds a slight note of caution, before we all get too carried away with high-quality online video’s possibilities.

There are times when language in headlines can be far too confrontational, far too polarising. The Sky News website today, for example, carries a headline on its homepage: ‘Road Charging: Blair Defies Petition‘. Have a read of the emailed response… and tell me, is defiance the right word? Hardly. The headline on the story itself is much better – ‘Blair Won’t Give Way’ – with extra marks for the traffic pun.

Of course, minds are probably on other things at Osterley today. They must be quite relieved to have won last night’s RTS award for News Channel Of The Year, following News 24’s success last year… and a particular ‘well done’ to Dominic Waghorn, named TV journalist of the year. (Was Chris Rogers really nominated? Hardly a Premier League reporter: he seems to be doing some very odd freelance shifts these days, including in the wee small hours on Five Live.)

Incidentally – look out for new on-screen graphics on Sky before the end of the month. I hear talk of ‘a new way of alerting you to breaking news’, which sounds ominous.

I was speaking to an accountant this afternoon, and the nasty question arose of VAT payment. There’s a ‘flat rate scheme‘ which is meant to make things easier for small businesses. Basically, instead of calculating VAT on every input or output, you just pay a fixed percentage – which is less than the normal 17.5% VAT rate – of your gross sales. So in theory, it makes life easier, and you make a few quid extra.

Here’s the tricky bit: different ‘trade sectors’ qualify for different fixed percentages, in some cases as low as 2% (eg post offices). And inevitably, these sectors aren’t especially well defined for the ‘new media’ business. So which of the following would a website consultant qualify as?

• Advertising: 9.5%
• Computer and IT consultancy or data processing: 13%
• Entertainment or journalism: 11%
• Film, radio, TV or video production: 10.5%
• Management consultancy: 12.5%
• Publishing: 9.5%
• ‘Anything other activity that is not listed elsewhere’: 10%

I think it’s fair to make a case for almost any of those – and of course, it ultimately comes down to someone else’s discretion. My instinct is to say it’s closest to advertising and/or publishing… but maybe that’s just because it’s the lowest rate. I’d love to hear from anyone who has been through this before, and can advise.

Some intriguing suggestions reported by the BBC today, that ‘Environment Secretary David Miliband has been urged by a senior Labour MP (specifically, Frank Field) to challenge Chancellor Gordon Brown for the party leadership.’

I have no doubt that Miliband is playing a smart game, almost certainly with an eye on very high (if not the highest) office. He’s the one with a strong personal commitment to the ‘cutting edge’ stuff – blogs, wikis, and all that – as well as plenty of collaboration with the nation’s newsrooms. And I’m inclined to agree with Frank Field on one point, that Gordon Brown will look like the ‘old generation’ when/if he faces a (relatively) fresh-faced David Cameron at the next election. It’s too early for Miliband though… isn’t it? 😕

Picked up the new Argos catalogue at the weekend, and I’m still shocked to see the prices Argos think they can charge for digital memory cards. For example: an unbranded 1GB SD card for £22.99, or cards branded Kodak and Fujifilm for £27.99… ‘less than half price!’ Meanwhile, over at Amazon – a 1GB Kingston Technology SD card for the truly startling price of £1.29 (plus Marketplace postage rates). Or for a direct comparison: this SanDisk Ultra II 1GB SD card. As little as £11.97 from an Amazon marketplacer, but £33.99 from Argos – and that’s even with a £16 discount already applied.

Not for the first time, someone has asked me for a list of good websites for statistics on the UK internet audience and market. So, having pulled a list together, I thought I’d offer it to the wider world. If anyone knows of any sources I’ve missed or forgotten, feel free to comment.

Internet Advertising Bureau

The ‘trade body’ for online advertising in the UK, with lots of numbers about online audience, advertising spend, ecommerce, etc. Probably the best single resource you’ll find.

Heather Hopkins

Heather is the chief UK researcher at a company called Hitwise, which gathers up data from all the big UK internet service providers, and produces some of the most detailed stats anywhere. Hitwise is a paid-for service, but Heather regularly posts some very interesting stuff on her blog.

ABC Electronic

Publish fully audited usage data for various high-profile websites. Very heavy stuff, but often useful for the odd anecdote, as it quotes famous sites like the BBC, Guardian, Yahoo. Click on the link ‘ABCE Data’ at the top of the screen; then ‘Search ABCE Database’; and just press the ‘Search’ button. (If you don’t put anything into the form, it will spit out a complete list of everything it’s got.)

UK Association of Online Publishers

‘Champions the interests of approximately 160 publishing companies.’ Most of their website is members-only, but you’ll find a few interesting (and free) items on this page of ‘research’.

National Statistics

Government stats agency compiles figures on internet use. Especially good to show the growth of broadband.

Statsaholic (formerly Alexaholic)

A great site for generating graphs of the traffic for (almost) any major website in the world. Uses the same data as www.alexa.com, but looks prettier. The Alexa numbers must be treated cautiously, as they are only a snapshot of the overall internet population, and probably not a very representative snapshot. But in my experience, the shape of the graph is usually pretty accurate.

Nominet UK domain names

Monthly numbers on the registration of .uk domains, going right back to August 1996. You might also be interested in Verisign’s equivalent data for .com and .net, published quarterly (ish).

… and my perennial favourite…

Overture Keyword Assistant

How many people searched Yahoo (etc) for a particular keyword last month… and what phrases did they use it in? Granted, Yahoo’s a very distant second to Google, but Google doesn’t publish its numbers, and the proportions are probably the same (ish). This site has been a bit temperamental of late, but it’s still running.

Over a year ago, I wrote something about ‘the scope for Firefox, plus extensions, plus broadband, plus ‘Web 2.0‘ projects to negate the need for an operating system (per se)’. A surprisingly prescient statement, if I say so myself… since one of the key players from Mozilla, Robert O’Callahan, has now revealed something potentially monumental: ‘Firefox3 is going to deliver support for offline applications.’ And that could be the key to it all. There’s already plenty of the analysis of this, and its implications, from Richard MacManus and Rod Drury.

Delighted to see BBC economics editor Evan Davis entering the world of blogging. I’ve long admired his unique down-to-earth approach to what can be an infuriating subject, and he’s already bringing a similar tone to his blog activity. You won’t find Anatole Kaletsky writing something like this:

Does the world really need a new economics blog? Well: no but yeah but yeah but no, as Vicky Pollard would undoubtedly write if she had a blog of her own. For one thing, Evanomics is not quite a blog. I’m not intending to make entries every day, or to update you with my views on every twist and turn in the financial pages. But Evanomics is designed to have some blog-like characteristics. A place where you’ll find a variety of material, frequently updated, and with plenty of opportunity to comment or contribute.

In fact, Evan was the subject of some conversation last night, as my wife and I polished off a bottle of Stormhoek rosé, whilst watching the first episode of the new series of Dragon’s Den. The previous series had become far too predictable, with only the final candidate in each episode getting a deal. (We used to base our guesses purely on ‘how long is left in the show?’)

But even more annoying, Evan was probably the worst exponent of the growing ‘tell them what they’ve just seen’ phenomenon which is gradually doing my head in. You see it a lot on ITV and Channel4: coming out of an ad-break, they’ll remind you (in some detail) what happened barely three minutes earlier, as if we’d forgotten. But Dragon’s Den was always worse. Barely a second after seeing a man make a pitch for £100k to expand his widgets business, Evan’s voiceover would tell you that he was asking for £100k to… etc etc.

To our considerable relief, both problems seem to have been largely cured. Still some repetition, although nowhere near as bad as before. And, without wanting to spoil it for anyone who hasn’t seen it… somebody in the early part of the show strikes a deal. That really only left us discussing how skinny Evan was looking.

(Thanks to Simon Collister for the tipoff.)