Twitter on BBC News

Twitter was on the BBC Breakfast News this morning, Mr Stephen Fry aside it wasn’t (in my opinion) a very good item. See for yourself.

So are we seeing the death throes of blogging?

So is blogging dead, is it no more?

Will Facebook, Twitter, Jaiku mean that people will no longer blog.

A Wired article says

Thinking about launching your own blog? Here’s some friendly advice: Don’t. And if you’ve already got one, pull the plug.

Following on from the article in Wired on the death of blogging, there has been much discussion on Twitter about the article and the subsequent piece on the Today programme on Radio 4 and Rory Cellan-Jones’ blog entry.

So here I am blogging about the death of blogging?

What do you think?

Personally I think that Facebook, Twitter, Jaiku and other services have in many ways supplanted and replaced the personal blog, you know the kind that talk about family gatherings, taking the dog for a walk, going to the pub, what I did on my holiday kind of thing.

Where I think there is still room for blogging is the more in-depth articles, technical, reflective, opinion pieces.

In the same way that radio did not kill newspapers, and television did not kill radio, and the internet did not kill television. Blogging will not be killed by Twitter, Twitter won’t kill blogging in the same way it won’t kill e-mail or instant messaging.

It’s just another tool that allows you to communicate and learn in ways in which it isn’t possible via blogging and e-mail.

I see e-mail as one to one communication, blogging as one to many, whilst Twitter and Jaiku is much more a many to many form of communication.

I still read newspapers, I still listen to the Today programme on Radio 4, I watch BBC News on the TV, I look at the websites of traditional broadcast media for news, I read and subscribe to blogs, and I also find out about news via Twitter.

Twitter is just an additional tool or medium in which to communicate, share, collaborate and learn. Twitter hasn’t killed blogging it’s just another way of doing things.

What do you think?

Can I legally download a movie trailer?

Disclaimer: ALL information containing in my post is for informational purposes only and should never be construed as legal advice. For proper legal advice you should consult a lawyer.

Imagine the scenario if you can, you are a Media Studies teacher. You wish to use some movie trailers in a classroom session, so that the learners can analyse the content and structure of the trailers and compare the features and similarities between each one.

Now you could use a computer suite and each learner could access the relevant movie site and view the trailer online. However this doesn’t really help as the video plays once and sometimes you want to see part of the trailer again and again. Now if only the learners could download the trailer, or even better could the teacher download the trailers and make them available to all the learners via a local network server, so enabling fast and easy access.

Well technically this is possible, however is it legal?

There are many tools available online which allow you to download videos from sites such as YouTube (usually through a Firefox extension or similar). They basically “scrape” the code for the video link from the website and then download the video file, providing you with a Flash based FLV file, some tools will convert this on the fly into an AVI or WMV if required.

However this article makes for interesting reading on the legality of doing this.The website in question (which is quite a respected tech blog) had given instructions on how to use video downloading tools to download streaming video from a site such as YouTube.

From the article YouTube states quite clearly that:

Currently, YouTube is a streaming-only service. We do not permit users to download the videos we host on our site. We believe our Terms of Use are clear on this point, but in light of the confusion which came to our attention today we are considering revisions to our Terms of Use to avoid any further confusion. It is important to many of our users who have uploaded and licensed content to YouTube that their content is authorized for streaming-only.

If a site streams a video to you, generally you don’t have the right to download that video as they are only making the video available as a stream.

Media-Convert.com which I have mentioned before, use to do this via it’s web based video conversion service, enter the YouTube URL and before you could say “is this legal” you would have a video in the format of your choice. They were soon stopped from doing this.

So downloading a streamed Flash based video is not an option, what about Quicktime based trailers from the Apple website?

For personal use, I can use Quicktime Pro on a Mac (and on Windows as well). What Quicktime Pro allows you to do is to save a Quicktime video to your hard drive. Once the trailer has loaded onto my computer in the browser I can save a copy to my hard disk for later viewing. I can even download the 1080p HD versions which look very nice even if they don’t fit on my computer screen as it’s too BIG.

Quicktime Pro is not the free video viewer but the paid for upgrade, which is about £12 per license for educational users (it’s £20 for “normal” individuals). There are other things you can do with it as well, I use it for making video and audio recordings on my Mac for example. I have also used it to trim audio recordings and some of the export functionality does make life easier…

Note the term “personal use”, most film trailers online are only available for personal use only. I would be surprised by any movie site which would allow a teacher to download movies for use in the classroom.

Apple in their terms of use for example make it quite clear what you can and can not do with any trailer you download from their website:

…no Content may be copied, reproduced, republished, uploaded, posted, publicly displayed, encoded, translated, transmitted or distributed in any way (including “mirroring”) to any other computer, server, Web site or other medium for publication or distribution or for any commercial enterprise, without Apple’s express prior written consent.

This would mean downloading and distributing it to students in a classroom situation would be viewed as illegal unless you had the permission of the movie trailer copyright owner.

Similar guidance is available on most other movie sites I checked. For example on Warner Brothers website is says:

You may access and display Material and all other content displayed on this Site for non-commercial, personal, entertainment use on a single computer only. The Material and all other content on this Site may not otherwise be copied, reproduced, republished, uploaded, posted, transmitted, distributed or used in any way unless specifically authorized by WB Online.

You could write and ask for authorisation and permission, sometimes this may be given, more often than not it won’t.

Legally students could download their own individual copy for their own analysis. However this may not always be possible, especially if you have network congestion or a slow internet connection.

So is there a solution, well yes, if you go for an alternative solution which is forgot online and go back to broadcasting.

Now an easier way would be to digitally record the trailers from the TV and use digital copies of them. You won’t even need an ERA licence, as the ERA does not cover adverts from the TV. Though if the trailers are part of say a film programme then these programmes probably are covered by the ERA licensing scheme and appropriate action should be taken accordingly.

However if it is an advert, under the Copyright Act you have a statutory right (therefore can not be taken away from you) to show recordings of TV broadcasts for educational purposes.

From the ERA website.

Are there broadcasts I can’t record under the ERA Licence?

Yes, only broadcast material owned or represented by ERA Members is licensed through the ERA Scheme for off-air recording. This means that some contents of certain broadcasts and material included in them, such as advertisements, are not covered by the Licence because ERA Members do not own or control the rights in them.

However, if you record these broadcasts for non-commercial educational purposes, your recordings in the ways relevant to the ERA Licence will not infringe copyright, unless a certified Section 35 licence applies. This is because Section 35 (1) states that where works are not covered by a certified scheme, then educational establishments may reproduce and communicate them electronically on-site without infringing copyright. You will need to adequately acknowledge, i.e. label, any broadcast recordings you make under Section 35 (1).

Also worth look at the ERA restrictions as well.

I have made recording just like this using an EyeTV device on a Mac (I have also used a Windows Media Centre as well, but never again…) I just set the video to record for a few hours (takes GB of space mind you) and then go through the adverts until I find the one I want (or one that’s similar). For movie trailers I would recommend recording the adverts during film programes on ITV or Channel 4, or during films.

If you do have an ERA licence then recording film programmes will help, as some of these will have trailers in them.

My Elgato EyeTV device captures from Freeview so I get a really good quality digital video file, it’s roughly the same quality as DVD. The editing tools make life really easy well to trim and edit the video you need. There are Windows TV Capture devices, some of them are just small USB sticks which slot into any USB port.

Though there are legal barriers that are getting in the way of the learning here, there are also solutions as well.

Photo source.

iPlayer on the Wii

Though the BBC may be having (heated) discussions with certain ISPs over the BBC iPlayer and has had issues with the iPlayer on the iPhone; it now appears that you will be able to use BBC iPlayer on your Nintendo Wii.

The BBC’s iPlayer video service will soon be available via the Nintendo Wii.

The video download and streaming service that lets people catch up with BBC programmes will soon be a channel on the hugely popular game console.

Early versions of the service will be available from 9 April but more polished software will be released as the service is developed.

You can already use the Wii with an internet service to access the internet, but certain sites such as BBC’s iPlayer have been unavailable until now.

This now means that you can watch some of the last seven days of BBC TV through your console. Yes you will need an internet connection (and a wireless connection at that) but you can use it to watch old TV.

So…

Well it does provide another reason why it might be purchased (instead of a “real” computer). If our learners are using consoles such as these not just for gaming, but also for watching video, viewing photographs, listening to music, even surfing the web; shouldn’t we try and ensure that we take this into account when we plan and develop e-learning and mobile learning activities and scenarios.

It might not be the “perfect” computer for e-learning or as mobile as a PDA, however for some learners it is the only device which they have substantial access to and therefore can not be ignored.

BBC launches iPlayer for iPod touch and iPhone

The BBC launches a version of its iPlayer video on demand service for the Apple iPhone and iPod touch.

The BBC has launched a version of its iPlayer video on demand service for the Apple iPhone and iPod touch. It is the first time the software has been available on portable devices. The software, which allows users to download programmes from the last seven days, will work over a wi-fi connection but not over the mobile network.

Read more.

I am really pleased to see this happen. I do use the (flash version) of the iPlayer on my Macs now and again to catch up with the odd BBC TV programme either I miss or my EyeTV misses.

This will allow me to catch up either at home or say over lunch at work (on our new learner wireless network).

Obviously from a licensing perspective we can’t use this within the college to show BBC programmes to learners, but this does now allow learners who have an iPhone or an iPod touch to watch the useful or interesting BBC programme on the iPlayer.

How will technology change teaching?

I really enjoyed reading Bill Thompson’s column on the BBC News website this week, where he wonders about how technology will change teaching.

If every student has a powerful network device that plugs them into the network, and work on digitising every book and other forms of knowledge has been successful, then what is the point of teaching “facts”?

He makes the very valid point.

Just as we try to encourage kids today to learn enough mental arithmetic to decide whether to believe the calculator’s answer, so we need those using tomorrow’s vast supercomputers to have a sense of what is going on that will allow them to judge the validity of the answers they get.

Overall an interesting column, well worth a read.

Facebook on decline

The BBC reports on how the number of Facebook users in the UK declined by 5% in January.

Social networking site Facebook has seen its first drop in UK users in January, new industry data indicates.

Users fell 5% to 8.5 million in January from 8.9 million in December, according to data from Nielsen Online.

To be honest this doesn’t surprise me, my use of Facebook has declined. I use Facebookin order to engage with other e-learning colleagues and friends. There are various groups to which I belong and like to discuss work related issues with people I have met at conferences, events or have known for some time.

However the explosion of zombies, vampires, pointless quizzes, doughnuts, etc… has really put me off the whole Facebook experience. I guess some people find that aspect fun and enjoy and fair play to them, but in terms of social networking and engaging with others it I don’t want that. I have fun elsewhere.

Having said that 8.5 million users is a huge user base. So I won’t delete my account (partly because that can be difficult if nigh on impossible) and will pop in now and again.

For the moment I will stick to Jaiku and Twitter.

Mobile Internet

BBC’s Click has a nice article on the mobile internet.

It is estimated that just one in five people with phones that are able to connect to the net actually do. But the iPhone, however, is having a profound effect on the willingness of its users to go online.

BBC, ITV and Channel 4 form on-demand service

There is Channel 4’s 4oD service, BBC’s iPlayer, now we have plans for a new on-demand service for television.

The BBC is reporting how the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 are going to work together to provide a new on-demand service for viewers.

The BBC, ITV and Channel 4 are to launch a joint on-demand service, which will bring together hundreds of hours of television programmes in one place.

The service is set to go live in 2008 and will offer viewers access to current shows and archive material.

Read more and photo source.

Happy Birthday BBC News Website

The BBC News website is ten years old.

Happy Birthday.

I have been using the site for that long now, so it’s nice to see that not only is it still around and still very popular, more importantly, all the stories I was reading and using for learning back in the late 1990s are still available as well. For example this story about Sainsburys from 1999 is still online and the links still work!

Too often on the web sites will rebrand or rename and all their old links die or change or become redundant. At least with the BBC News it is possible to link stories from nearly ten years ago.