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The irrepressible Fake Steve Jobs has a neat post on the we-haven’t-seen-one-but-we-have-to-cover-it-anyway-so-let’s-be-snarky iPhone stories that are cropping up all over the place, but mostly at Zdnet. The bit I really like is where he posits assessing press coverage using Fourier techniques. Much under-used for gags, Fourier analysis is.

For reference: I’ve been buying blank miniDV tapes from APR Media in Somerset. Nice people on the phone, their know their stock well, and I can’t argue with their prices – £1.53/tape for standard Sony miniDV, including VAT, and with reasonable delivery costs.

Today marks the third occasion on which I’ve remembered to call them only at about half past three in the afternoon. They’ve always said ‘the tapes will be with you tomorrow,’ and they’ve not been wrong yet. Yeah, I know, I’ve jinxed it now.

Recommended, anyway. They do everything from DigiBeta stock through blank DVDs, to hard drives and odd bits of digital camera gear.

[Update 20/06: predictably, within minutes of placing my order (which did indeed arrive promptly, hurrah), John emailed to tell me of a place in Bradford that’s selling JVC miniDV stock for 99p/roll +VAT. If you can stomach the minimum order of 50 rolls: yow, that’s cheap.]

Most Blockbuster stores in the US will offer high-def films on Blu-Ray but not HD-DVD. Remember, folks, that the Beta vs. VHS war was decided largely by which format the rental shops supported.

One could argue that in the next few years Blockbuster will matter less, as people increasingly download high-def movies. But that doesn’t end well for HD-DVD either, since once the physical medium is out of the loop, who cares about formats?

As for Blockbuster’s move being rushed: remember that a bricks-and-mortar store has a vested interest in there being just one successful format. Two formats take up more shelf space and/or cost more to acquire and manage. In fact, I’d be fascinated to know the deals that were put on the table by the respective industry groups – who was able to move further on pricing? The conventional wisdom has it that Blu-Ray discs are more expensive to manufacture, but I guess we don’t really know.

This blog hardly has the largest readership going, but hey, it’s worth a punt…

Right now, I’m in the last month (ish) of my confirmed time on SciCast. The project continues, but my direct involvement winds down. That means I’m looking for work, most likely from August.

I’m a writer and editor, and I produce video for broadcast and the web. My background is in science television: communicating complex subjects to large audiences is, hence, something of a speciality. Doing so with levity and a degree of panache is a personal preference, but I can be serious when needed. And I’m really very good with websites. I’ll roll my sleeves up and delve into databases and CSS if I have to, but I mean more on an organisational, ‘what’s possible?/what’s desirable?/what’s worthwhile?’ level. Oh, and I do schedules and budgets and all that jazz too.

If your organisation is looking for advice, assistance, or opinions on web media, particularly in that cusp where technically challenging stuff meets the public, I might be able to help. My consultancy rates are, of course, exorbitant. I’m also available for longer-term work: got a big new engineering or science project that needs documenting along the way? I’m your guy. Think the public should know what goes on inside your building? Let’s talk. Want to share your successes with your customers in an entertaining manner? That too.

Contact me via email, as jonathan[at]quernstone.com.

There are times when the BBC looks like a blundering behemoth, not so much intent on world domination as accidentally trampling the rest of the industry as it fails to see beyond its own nose. Then there are times when it demonstrates that it really is the global centre of excellence one would hope and expect. There’s no dichotomy here, of course: the BBC is vast, it has many heads, and at any given time a statistically significant number of them will be facing precisely the wrong way. So it’s pleasing – and not a little scary – to come across a situation where the BBC isn’t merely looking in the right general direction, but is striding onward, leading a charge into the bold new (media) future.

Thanks to Tom Loosemore, here are the BBC’s Fifteen Web Principles, as signed off by the BBC board. There are several things to note:

1. None of the things listed will come as a surprise to people who’ve read the Cluetrain Manifesto, follow Euan Semple, chuckle at Hugh MacLeod, marvel at the talented Mr Hammersley, and generally hang around getting excited about blog-type stuff.
2. It’s nevertheless nice to see a concise summary that’s also practical.
3. This was, apparently, signed off by the BBC board.
4. I’ll repeat that, for the hard of nuance:
5. This was signed off by the BBC board.

I’m currently working with a small handful of fairly sizable public bodies, and last week I was talking to a whole bunch of visitor centres and museums. And you know… the BBC gives every impression of being waaaay ahead of pretty much everyone else on this stuff. There are occasional flickers that suggest other institutions’ interest is piqued, but there are serious language and conceptual hurdles.

As Euan says, it’s not really about people who ‘get it’ vs. people who don’t. It’s about those of us who think we see something – glimmering in the light, just out of reach – managing to express that clearly enough for others to catch a glimpse of our perspective. Then it’s about holding onto that vision for long enough to define and build something around it, so the real decisions can be made.

After all, it’s not clear that the BBC is right. As it strides boldly on it could well be flattening perfectly good alternatives underfoot, or leading us all over a precipice. And then we’d look proper silly.

But until then, documents like the Fifteen Web Principles are tremendously valuable. They’re pragmatic, straightforward, plain-speaking, and reasonable. What’s clever is that implementing them requires a fairly radical approach to engineering, organisation, and editorial management. If you accept these principles, doing something about them – doing it properly – is challenging.

Case in point: with SciCast, I reckon we get a partial score on less than half of the principles. Which is better than it might have been, but not as good as it needs to be.

The unlikely-named Steve Spangler is big in the world of Diet Coke and Mentos explosions – I believe he was doing it before the Eepybird boys – and he managed to persuade the company to spring for a high-speed camera. The result? Mentos in a fizzy drink, filmed rather artfully and at 2,000 frames/second. Nice. Video here.

[hat tip to Paul for the link]

Stewart Copeland writes about the second night of The Police’s new tour. Well worth a read; anyone who’s been on a stage will recognise and understand.

Given that YouTube is stuffed to the gunnels with lip-syncing videos, I probably shouldn’t have found this one quite so entertaining. I think it’s the way-better-than-average production values, and the clever use of props. Besides, how many lip-sync videos include catapult take-offs?

Sheep racing, duck trials, and shearing exhibitions compete with the delights of ‘ewetopia,’ at The Big Sheep. It’s big in Devon. Apparently.

Tee-hee. I’d completely forgotten the run of drafts in which the lecture about food allergies and hazards was based entirely around the different ways in which a Christmas Pudding could kill you. The very opening of the lecture involved us dropping a giant Christmas Pudding to land SPLAT! right where Krebs had been standing a split-second earlier.

Cartoon violence rocks.