Sky launches its ownbrand YouTube

The product of Sky’s engagement with Google Video is now live, at skycast.com. But despite the site’s claims, it’ll only be ‘a new kind of entertainment experience’ if you’ve never seen YouTube. Frankly, if YouTube weren’t owned by Google, I bet they’d be considering a lawsuit. Your best starting points for now are the areas owned by various Sky channels, like News or Travel. (An eclectic choice of highlights from the News library, incidentally!)

The unique selling point, such as it is, is that ‘we will showcase our favourite ‘Clips of the Week’ on the Sky interactive TV platform and the very best home-grown entertainment will be hand picked to appear on national television.’ (The report in Media Guardian talks specifically about Soccer AM and Sky News.)

We’re in tricky territory here. Is it better to build your own community, or join an existing one? My inclination remains the latter, based principally on volumes of traffic, cost of development and maintenance, and the proven successes coming from YouTube and Myspace. Why bother… unless you’ve got something new, innovative and really substantial to offer? Granted, it’s early days for Skycast… but I don’t immediately see that compelling reason to upload my stuff to them, rather than the clear market leader.

Lewis Bankes-Hughes is back!

I felt a bit guilty about my post earlier this week about kid entrepreneur Lewis Bankes-Hughes and his appalling website. It’s only fair, then, for me to report that Lewis has completely redesigned his company website, FluffyDuster.co.uk. On the bright side, it’s prettier. But it’s a single (non-scaling) Flash movie, with no meaningful title (only ‘FD website’), and even less in the way of search-friendly text. Please Lewis, read up on accessibility and search optimisation. This page is a good starting point.

Is Miliband making his move?

I’m really starting to wish I’d put a few quid on David Miliband becoming the next Labour leader. I see he’s on the front cover of this week’s New Statesman, offering ‘My Vision‘. A nice photo of the chap knocking on the door of No10, too. (Shame about the Robert Mugabe photo alongside, though.)

The Miliband piece revolves around the notion of ‘the politics of “I can” ‘: ‘I am convinced that a fourth election victory, and fundamental changes to the landscape of Britain, are possible precisely because a more demanding, educated, savvy population want the power and control that modern progressive politics can offer. I believe the opportunity is as great as at any time in the past 60 years.

‘In the “I can” era, people want to be players, not just spectators. They want to be contributors, not just consumers. Technology is enabling these aspirations to be fulfilled and new institutional models to emerge. Politics cannot stand apart from these changes. A generation is coming to political maturity that expects not just high standards of provision, delivered quickly to specification, but also real control.’

Does that or does that not sound like leadership talk? It’s a clear statement of what Milibandism is all about… and for those of us engaged in the ‘blogsphere’ (to quote Michael White), it doesn’t come as any surprise. He’s only preaching now what he has been practising for a while.

Previously on these pages, I wondered openly if it was too early for him. I’m beginning to wonder again. It’s almost certainly not the timing he would choose, but you don’t often get to make a choice. And Gordon Brown’s appearance with a bunch of kids on Channel Five this Friday is a little cringey, judging by the clips shown so far.

PS: I didn’t realise it was also in today’s Telegraph. I wonder why?

At least he admits he looked daft

Yes, the Guido Fawkes interview on Newsnight was an embarrassment. But at least Paul admits it on his own blog: ‘the live interview was definitely a mistake and against my better judgement, as was the in-the-shadows idea of the editor.’ What amuses me most, though, is the comment thread beneath the mea culpa posting on the Guido blog. Half the comments are saying that Guido/Paul came across as a bit of a prat – correct, he did. The other half are having a go at fellow interviewee Michael White of The Guardian, for being arrogant / smug / petty / inaccurate with an ultimately trivial allegation. The irony is apparently lost on them.

Isn’t hiding in shadow a bit hypocritical, Guido?

No doubt Guido Fawkes’s piece on tonight’s Newsnight will attract much interest. I’ve been critical of Guido in the past, but he does have a point about ‘press release news’. I’ve seen this up close, and it’s true: some of the most respected hacks reduced to transcribing Alastair Campbell’s words at a briefing. Hardly journalism. But I’d take Guido/Paul’s point about politicians failing to offer themselves up for interview a little more seriously if he put his own name (or indeed, face) on his own material. Hiding in the shadows isn’t any different to hiding behind a written statement.

Incidentally – I found it quite amusing to see ‘<managingEditor>delete-paulds</managingEditor>’ in the source code for the Guido Fawkes site’s RSS feed. There goes the anonymity, Paul mate.

Brian, meet Ananova

Norfolk’s morning paper, the Eastern Daily Press likes to think of itself as pretty smart when it comes to innovation. They’re making a big fuss today of ‘Brian’ – which stands for Believable RSS Interactive Avatar Newscaster. In fact, it doesn’t seem to be much more than Ananova, who/which was launched back in April 2000. Whatever happened to her? Orange bought the Ananova website from PA later that year, and Ana herself hasn’t been seen in a couple of years, despite promises that she is ‘under development’. (And my memory may be playing tricks, but I seem to remember Ananova being better animated.) Sadly, she never did ‘transform the delivery of news’ – and I don’t imagine Brian will either.

Another new Sky News blog – why?

Always good to see someone else having a pop at the Sky News website. This time it’s Kevin Anderson, who happens to be chief blogger at The Guardian. He’s right of course. Sky’s policy as regards blogging is most charitably described as bandwagonesque and unfocused. There’s no attempt to encourage two-way communication. Thus far, I just don’t think they ‘get’ it.

It worries me to see Michael Wilson’s new blog being rolled out like this. This habit of creating ’skynewsX.typepad.com’ with a big, ugly custom template seems to have become an accepted formula… when it clearly isn’t right. And besides, I used to work in the same office as Mr Wilson. Granted this was a few years ago, but he didn’t really buy into the web philosophy. Or more accurately, I don’t think he considered us on the web operation to be proper journalists.

I’m eagerly awaiting the new Sky News site, due next month some time (last I heard). But the fact that they’re still rolling out more random blogs like this does not bode well.

Is the best role model we can find?

Meet Lewis Bankes-Hughes. Lewis is a 14 year old graphic and website designer, who runs a company called Fluffy Duster and is reportedly the youngest member of the UK’s national Federation of Small Businesses. He appeared on stage at the FSB’s annual conference, held in Belfast last week.

The Fluffy Duster website consists almost entirely of GIF files, with the centrepiece of the homepage being an animated GIF weighing in at a whopping 244k. There is virtually no ‘proper’ text on the page, and there are no ALT tags whatsoever. Punctuation is sparse, and the copy clearly hasn’t been properly proof-read. (‘Click the like above’?) What a great example in terms of search optimisation; what a great example in terms of accessibility. It’s like the last ten years never happened, and it’s certainly the single worst example of web design I have seen in a very long time indeed.

I have no desire to pick on a 14 year old kid. Good on him for showing a bit of entrepreneurial spark. But when money is involved, there isn’t much room for sentimentality. It’s frankly a bit of an insult to the industry to be presenting someone as a ‘role model’, when they clearly have a heck of a lot to learn.

Norfolk’s answer to Myspace – write your own punchline

All joking aside, it’s quite an interesting and well-reasoned experiment in social networking:

A ‘Text Pal’ scheme run by Norfolk County Council to give much-needed peer support to young carers has been so successful that it has been extended to include a safe online chat forum. Due to the popularity of the Text Pal scheme, where volunteer ‘Text Pals’ and young carers are both provided with a mobile phone to text and call each other free of charge, Norfolk Blurb – Norfolk County Council’s website for young people – has launched an online version of the service. Sharing a similar format to social networking sites such as Bebo and MySpace, Text Pal online, which will go live at 12pm today (Friday March 23), enables users to hook up and exchange messages within a safe environment, as all messages are moderated prior to being published. It is hoped that more young people will use the Text Pal network to gain vital peer support and to use Text Pal as a safe alternative to the thousands of un-moderated social network sites available.

My first half marathon

I normally try to keep my personal and professional stuff well separated. But I mentioned last week that I was doing the Reading Half Marathon, and if anyone’s interested in how I did… I finished in the top 10%, in a time of 1h 33m 32sec. Gordon Ramsay’s name doesn’t appear on the results sheets, so I don’t think he showed up. (Chicken.)