The new BBC Podcasts website – lovely!
Posted on Wednesday, April 15th, 2009 at 8:38pm. #
It’s been quite a few weeks at the office.
The new BBC Radio 4 website launched a few weeks ago; then the quite marvellously illustrated BBC Radio 2 website (which’ll be the subject of a longer blog entry at some stage shortly). Today, we were treated to two launches – a private internal rather lovely alpha of “Something Exciting” from an ex member of the team, now working in “Somewhere Exciting”; and the launch of the new BBC Podcasts directory.
I think I grumpily said, when this project was first mooted, that the website shouldn’t live under “/radio/” any more (the actual address was /radio/podcasts, even though we never said that on-air), noting that podcasts these days quite often include, you know, video, and it might be future-proofing if ever the BBC decided to start to do video podcasts (no plans yet). My good-natured colleagues complied; but created a splendid, dynamic website – always changing, and showing a really excellent choice of podcast enjoyment.
Click on a podcast’s page, like this for Richard Bacon, and you can finally simply listen on the page using the BBC’s nice Flash-based player; as well as subscribe in your favourite podcatcher software, and lots more. (I’d listen to that, by the way – it’s very funny, and Richard Bacon is rather good.)
It’s particularly good for my team, because it’s the first project completely on “Forge”, the new hosting infrastructure in use at the BBC which means, er, lots of good things. But you probably don’t care about that bit.
Anyway. It’s lovely. Lots of Ajaxy goodness and loveliness. I recommend it. Go visit.
