Blog for Monday, 7th January 2008

07/01/2008: New BBC Home Page

So the BBC has redesigned its home page. OK, so normally I’m against the “let’s be a portal” philosophy, but for the Beeb, I think it works. They produce such a colossal volume of content — and in areas that make sense for a portal site (news, weather, sports, listings info) — that they can get away with it. It sports togglable, movable widgets a la iGoogle, thus allowing the user to customise their “BBC experience” to their own tastes.

Overall, I’d say it’s an improvement. There’s still work to be done, but it’s only in beta, so that is to be expected.

But why the animated clock in the upper right-hand corner? (No, unlike most of the content on the page, it can’t be removed.) Virtually every operating system includes a clock somewhere on the screen by default — which the user can generally customise to their heart’s content — not only in terms of fonts and colours, but also more important stuff like whether to use 24-hour or…

07/01/2008: Click, click, click…

OK, so I was minding my own business, cleaning the stove and suddenly it starts making this regular clicking sound. Click, click, click, click, click… like a bomb or something. I remove the rings above the gas hobs and every time there’s a click, a little spark flies out from the igniter. So I think to myself, I wonder what caused that…