It's now confirmed: The Television is in Intensive Care

The television is dying, some say it is already dead. In yesterday's post there was mention of the the prospect of DVDs being displaced by download and streaming services, today the Beeb announced that they would start streaming BBC1 live on to the internet. This is not the first recently where the BBC has managed to stray into hot waters; the BBC iPlayer - the "watch later" service - has got it's fair share of attention with Internet Service Providers (ISP) whining how much bandwidth drain the iPlayer has caused lately. I think the iPlayer is a great service which allows you to watch progammes that you have missed on television.

ISPs should now brace themselves, and get a move on with upgading their networks; yesterday Apple announced full-length movie downloads via iTunes to iPods in the UK at competitive rates to DVD's. What next? Live stage performances on the Internet too?!

BBC Radio 4 Analysis programme

I don't know whether anybody listened to the latest edition of Analysis last night but I found it to be of interest. The programme looked at social networking, particularly the rise of Facebook and Myspace. It probably didn't uncover any new ground but did manage to sum up the current state of play fairly well I thought.
You can download the programme as a podcast or use the BBC's "Listen again" facility. All relevant links are on this webpage as is a transcript of the programme which might prove useful: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/analysis/7081638.stm

Nick

BBC - Facebook

...and as if by magic here are 15 reasons why Facebook is worth $15 billion (apparently).