The BBC seems to be rather busy at the moment, launching various beta releases of new concepts, often with little talk of their development previous to launch.

First up - and most revolutionary - is the BBC Sound Index, which trawls through a number of online music services and stores various data to help see "what's hot" right now, giving a list of top 1000 songs and artists. Although not much of this project code / data has been released to the public, it is still an interesting development and one which is well worth watching - lots of potential here.



It's all part of getting towards 'Web 3.0 / The Semantic Web', which is seen as the next big thing for the internet as a service. For more information on this, check out: The Semantic Web.


Next up is a new Climate Change service called BBC Bloom. This is a nice interactive application showing practical ways to help individuals combat climate change. It has an element of user control and you can log in to save your 'climate task list'. It's another great looking flash application from the BBC and really does make this subject more engaging.



I'd be interested int ehir budget for such projects, but these days having 'climate change' in your project name always helps bring in more funding :p. However, the BBC has obviously upped its budget for new web services, possibly on the back of the success of iPlayer - watch this space for more interesting applications soon!

Just a small round up of nice things I've seen recently. First up, a BBC radio programme that won the Sony Award for Multi-platform Radio at the 2008 bash. Now, I didn't catch any of this programme but i can see that the 'multi platform' nature of the show is stitched together using an interactive google map on the main page - the show was called Bangladesh River Journey.



This map is nothing particularly special, although I like the way separate pages can be scrolled within each map marker, allowing a lot o0f content to be added without too much clutter. However, there is nothing particularly groundbreaking here. I think what it highlights is that relatively simple maps can really help bring a diverse set of media into a coherent web of content.

BBC Blog Post about the Award
Bangladesh River Journey Homepage


Another nice site I found was a high-res flash site for Sparks (an energy drink company). I particularly liked the high quality and large image (much bigger than a computer screen) that had to be explored to find the content. Obviously, this would only work well for a website with little meaningful content (a BBC site like this would be disastrous!), but it's great for a high-impact design site and fits in with the "fun" image of an energy drink.



It also adds a bit of 'real-life' into the web as it's basically just a large photo of a wall with things pinned to it using flash. Normally, when a document is much bigger than the screen, scrolling around it causes disorientation, but here that doesn't really matter - it's fun trying!

I was reading up on a few design agencies, following on from an article about the London 2012 Olympic Logo.

This took me to the (highly-praised) website of the designers, Wolff Olins. I browsed through some of their work and found a recent campaign on behalf of Sony Ericsson, of which I had seen a number of the adverts in the past months. However, I found one slighly bizarre; not only because I initially didn't 'get it' but when i did 'get it' i still didn't 'get it'!



"I love sheep?", I thought. OK, it was then spelled out to me that it was "I love you" - but still, I'm none the wiser as to how that sells phones...oh well, each to their own!

Wolff Olins website
Wolff Olins on Wikipedia (with 2012 logo info)

I was recently traveling on a train and saw an advert for free wireless on all National Express train services. The advert conveyed the point simply whilst using the photographic background to get across the slogan.

A low-res version of this image is below - the advert used this with the National Express Logo and the slogan "Free Wireless - Your Gateway to the World":



This got me thinking about the possibilities of using a similar technique for a simple advertising campaign. So...I got Photoshop open and made a fake ad for a made=up company, 'Fauxcorp'.



The premise was of a lady "sitting on the fence", which paints the picture of why you may need Fauxcorp: Decision-making. It was just a 5 minute job, but it shows what can be achieved when the picture tells most of the story.

I was recently browsing through the results of a photography competition for night shots (found via Digg) and as you would imagine, there were a number of good photos in there.

However, one stuck out for me for the way it had an 'atmosphere' - sounds a bit cliched, I admit, but it really is a great shot.



Click here to see the competition results.

I recently stumbled across a new BBC project: World On The Move which uses a Google Map to track animal migrations across the globe, showing predicted and actual routes as well as user comments - all on a nicely integrated map that can be changed along a timeline:



The nice thing about this map is how seamlessly it is integrated with the content and the webpage itself. The BBC aren't often ones to make new ground with their services, but they often take the 'old ground' and use it in a professional and interesting way.

Recently, I was looking at a site in Edinburgh that was being regenerated (in fact, at the moment a lot of our open spaces are being 'redeveloped') and it made me think about how the public can get involved in such schemes.

Let's be honest, generally these things seem to occur with only the smallest amount of public involvement. Of course, I'm sure the council would disagree, but that's generally how the public feel.

The main problem is that Joe Public is unlikely to be a trained architect, so submitting ideas is difficult. Now, with the aid of Google Earth as a base map and Google SketchUp as an urban design tool, the public could submit ideas and changes to planned schemes, with relative ease.

Google SketchUp is a free program that allows design in a 3D environment, with simple links to Google Earth, allowing designs to be placed in the current built reality of any city.



The image above shows my creation of a simple skyscraper that has been placed in a city (Boulder, USA) and a few snapshots taken. Every element of this building is editable and this was a VERY simple example to show you what can be done.

Now, go and practice and give the council a shock at the publics urban design skills!