Each one of the 3000 entities (people, companies, organisations) that we’ve got at the moment has a profile page and a interactive Flash-based map visualising links between famous figures. The map allows you to explore who a particular person is linked to and what significance of the connection is.

The site currently focuses on David Cameron and Boris Johnson, building on our recent More4 drama-doc ‘When Boris met Dave’ but the C4 News team will shortly add more content and stories focusing topics including Russian oligarchs and the Copenhagen Climate Summit.

The stories page tells you more about the relevance of the connections.

The right-hand side allows you to read the story in the traditional way and the left-hand side makes it easier to explore the people and organisations involved.

We’re really keen on your contributions.

On the story pages you can (see above):

-        Suggest a story.
-        Report a mistake – it’s still in Beta, so you will find some…
-        Tell us how you like the stories by rating them
-        Add a comment.

On the Profile pages you can add more people.

The user contributions are pre-moderated for now but we are keen to explore a more liberal approach in the near future.

The code will be open-source in the next few days and we’re planning to develop this further over the next months. One of the additions will be to integrate more data sources besides the ones we’ve got already (www.theyworkforyou.com,www.mySociety.com and Independent Schools Council).

Please let us know what you think bearing in mind that this is the first step in an ongoing process.

Thanks and enjoy!

A special filter applied by the YouTube player helps filmmakers by doing away with some of the time-consuming editing required to ensure that their
clips will be viewable through 3D glasses. Curious filmmakers can learn about how to produce 3D video by watching a special tutorial at www.youtube.com/3dweekon4 and an additional guide from YouTube here. Channel 4 has also provided some example clips to inspire potential film makers about what is possible in 3D. Find them at www.youtube.com/3DWeekon4.

YouTube viewers will be able to watch the uploaded clips in 3D if they are wearing 3D glasses – which are being distributed free via Sainsbury’s stores in November. Please also respond in the comments here to request a pair of the glasses to be sent to you to use whilst editing the clips.

So if you’re interested in getting involved, you’ve got just 2 more weeks to make your cracking 10 second clip and upload it to YouTube. It’s the perfect weekend project for a creative spirit and their friends! Check out the YouTube site – even Derren Brown’s done a 3D clip for us.

About 3D Week on Channel 4

3D seems to be everywhere in 2009 – numerous cinema releases, major platform development by Sky and already a few firsts (e.g. Keane live 3D webcast). In celebration of the unique experience 3D can offer, Channel 4 is set to broadcast a week of special shows that celebrate the golden era of 3D footage. The centrepiece of the week will be previously unseen footage, shot in 3D, of the Queen during her coronation year.  The Queen in 3D is a unique historical October 15th 2009 record of Britain in 1953 giving viewers a chance to step into the past and experience this amazing film in three dimensions.

Other highlights include Derren Brown’s 3D Magic Spectacular in which Derren will play host to some of the world’s greatest, funniest and most shocking magicians performing magic specially shot in stunning 3D.  And The Greatest Ever 3D Moments reveals the top ten 3D moments of all time from movies, television and pop videos.

Enjoy!

One thing is certain: a lot more programmes are being watched by a lot more people than when 4oD was an Application. Nearly three times as many programmes are being watched every month as were last year. That’s obviously pleasing.

But it’s certainly not time to rest on our laurels. People on this blog and elsewhere have been helpful in suggesting what could be improved. Also a few people are still having tecnnical problems. We are listening – here, through the support service, on other people’s blogs and on Twitter. Wherever possible, we’re doing or planning to do the things people are asking for. The simple list of everything on 4oD is a case in point. Following the relaunch, lots of people asked for the old drop-down list of programmes to return. It wasn’t practical because it would have been extremely long now that the Archive shows on 4oD. But the simple list of everything came about as a direct result of this feedback.

As we look ahead, here are some of the major things we’d like to get done:

• Being able to see just the programmes available on 4oD by Category. Right now there are good tag-driven category pages ( e.g. Comedy) but they contain programmes that aren’t on 4oD. That’s because Channel4.com contains information about all Channel 4 programmes – including ones that haven’t been on-air yet and ones we don’t have the on-demand rights for. But we agree it would be helpful to be able to filter by just 4oD.
• Automatically showing when something’s not on 4oD and why. Right now people get very frustrated when something’s not available immediately after transmission. There’s usually a good reason (i.e. we don’t have the rights or it needs a re-edit) but there’s currently no good way to show what that reason is in time to prevent people from feeling disappointed.
• Simplifying the user-journey between programme-related web sites that don’t use the standard programme pages (e.g. Derren Brown’s Events, One Tree Hill (on E4.com) and all the TV show sites inside Food and 4Homes) and their 4oD pages. We’re painfully aware that some people are getting disorientated when finding themselves outside of the standard /programmes area of the site. We may either embed the 4oD player in these sites or else just link more consistently back from them to the right part of the 4oD service. It’s being thought through. In fact we’re spending most of next Tuesday afternoon with flipcharts, marker pens and the results of some recent user testing ringing in our ears.

There’s a list as long as your arm of extra features and services like Resume, RSS feeds, APIs, personalisation, playlists, improved social features and so on and so on. We’re trying hard to get the resources to do as much as we can.

In addition we are – one by one – working hard to resolve any outstanding technical issues still being suffered by a few people.

So – 6 months in – not a bad start. Lots still to do. Thanks for your help and for using the product.

Notably there is now a list of all programmes that are available on 4oD.  On the 4oD Programme Finder module there is a link to SEE ALL and this takes you to a 4oD List page showing all the available programmes in a single list.  You can navigate this page using the A-Z.

Thanks to the list, the 4oD page no longer needs the A-Z module, so this has been replaced with the full List of Categories. This list is not yet filtered to only show the programmes that are available on 4oD. Instead it will take you to the relevant Category page. Hopefully you will find an improved experience on the category page:

• Each page now contains 25 programmes. Before you had to paginate through more pages.
• You can now toggle the sort on the page and display programmes based on when they are on TV or alphabetically.

Please let us know if you are finding it easier to find out programmes on 4oD.

A few of you have mentioned you’re having difficulty watching 4oD. We have been working on some diagnostic tools which will allow us to gather more information about your viewing experience. There’s no guarantee that we will be able to instantly resolve technical issues for you, but hopefully it will help us build a profile of the types of problems you are experiencing.

The Football Italia website was part of Channel4.com for 10 very successful years, starting when we had the rights to broadcast Italian football in the UK, and continuing long after the TV coverage had begun its peripatetic journey through several different UK broadcasters.

And now the company that had provided the content for us all that time, JDT Sports Productions, has taken over the running of the site and moved it to a new, dedicated website outside of Channel 4.

The site remains the foremost English-language source of all news, rumours and match reports on Italian football. It is made by the same journalistic team, to the same editorial standards, but it now has the freedom to grow and develop in its own direction outside of the Channel 4 platform.

We wish the whole Football Italia family well and trust the site will go from strength to strength in its new home.

Arrivederci e forza Football Italia!

[this comment edited 30th July 2009 to reflect the closure of the C4 site]

[Update 18th August 2009:]

Thanks for all the kind words from Football Italia’s many fans. Hopefully everyone has found their way to the new site now – this blog post is now closed for comments.

Re-sizable pop-out player
Now you can choose between 4 different sizes of player – from mini to full-screen.  Select an icon or drag the browser window.

Video Finder on every video brand page

We’ve had some feedback about the demise of the drop-down, which used to be a feature of the previous 4oD catch-up site, but would now be much too long! So once you’ve watched a programme, the Video Finder – now in the RH column of every video page – lets you easily find more programmes to watch.  Meantime we’re also working on a simple list of everything on 4oD.

Video promo panel
Video brand pages now contain a promo panel at the top, showcasing the most recent episode for programmes available in catch-up, and the last episode for archive-only programmes.

4oD promo panel
If you don’t mouseover the promo panel at the top of the 4oD landing page you can watch it refresh automatically and display each of the sets of programmes being promoted.

Music
Some of our programmes will include music information at the episode level.  Look at the episode specific pages for this information.  Word of warning though – not all programmes will have music information.  Here’s an example of it in action.

News and Articles
There’s improved navigation here – if you select to browse certain types of articles, e.g. features, interviews, etc., the box on the right-hand side will highlight the type, and this will also be appended to the title on the page.

Ads
There are also more sophisticated advertising formats available. I know that is probably of less interest to you, but it’s how the 4oD service is funded.

You’ve been letting Jen know which programmes you’d like to see on the service; please keep sharing your thoughts.

However, adding thousands of programmes to 4oD also made us realise we’d created a nice, new problem. How do you find the programmes you didn’t know you would like?

In short, how do you supply serendipity amid a vast on-demand TV archive? On linear TV, the schedule of programmes plays a big part – people often just turn on the TV to see what’s on. In on demand, it’s less obvious how you bump into nice surprises.

So we got thinking. On linear TV, people often hear about new programmes from friends or colleagues. If a friend recommends a show, we’re often motivated to check it out the next time it’s on. So we thought we’d see if we could use the same ‘friend recommendation’ thinking to help people find and watch otherwise hidden gems within 4oD.

So, we are hereby launching Test Tube Telly .

In techie terms, Test Tube Telly = 4oD + Facebook Connect. In English, it’s an experimental site that let’s you see what programmes your Facebook friends are themselves watching and discussing.

We’ve built the site very quickly and very cheaply (with help from the fine folk at Meta Broadcast, ) so please do forgive us the rough edges, of which there are many.

The programmes will also only play out if you’re UK-based. Usual story: rights restrictions. Sorry.

We’ll be iterating and adding to the site over the coming weeks (we’re toying with intergating Twitter friends, for example), but we thought we’d get it out there and see what people think. With a fair wind some of the features included in Test Tube Telly may appear elsewhere on channel4.com , but no promises.

We’ll be keeping the site live until the end of September, after which we’ll share what we’ve learned. Fear not, we’re being very careful to collect the very bare minimum if personal data we need to run the prototype. Read more about how we will treat your personal data during this trial.

Please do let us know what you think via the comments below.

Update:

This competition is closed. The lucky winners of the commercial spot products were Vivienne White, Marcia Soares, Martin Taylor, Val Hunt and Lorraine Foster.

You may have noticed a new campaign to promote the 4oD service on channel4.com, which now includes every programme from our archive, as well as the 30-day catch up window that was available previously on the website. The trailer for the campaign was produced in house by our 4Creative team, and managed by Marie Corin in the marketing team. It was a monumental effort, with a supermarket’s worth of products actually  designed and manufactured that promote a range of Channel 4’s programmes in the trail. These include How Clean Is You House detergent sprayers, Desperate Housewives sun tan creme bottle, cans of Shameless lager, and Scrubs scouring pads, to name just a few.

To celebrate its launch, and to give you the chance to win a product from the shoot, I thought we’d start a Twitter hashtag meme competition, which can also be played in the comments of this blog post. It’s simple: just post 140 characters that describe your favourite 4oD programme, with a link to the show in the new 4oD area of channel4.com, plus – if you’re using Twitter – the reference #favourite4od. That way, I’ll be able to track your tweets around the game, and choose the lucky winners. If you’re posting your favourites in the comment below, there’s no need to use the hashtag.

We’ll select a handful of tweeters or commenters to receive a product from the shoot. So to be in with a chance to grab a can of Big Bro baked beans or a stick of Bear Grylls Arctic Cool lip balm, start posting your links to your favourite 4oD gems now!

• Comedy – such as Peep Show, Black Books, Green Wing, Drop the Dead Donkey, Balls of Steel, Smack the Pony, Comic Strip Presents and Spaced
• Groundbreaking documentary – The Boy Whose Skin Fell Off, Richard Dawkins’ The Root of All Evil?, numerous Nick Broomfield films including The Leader, His Driver and the Driver’s Wife and Biggie and Tupac; plus must-see Dispatches from down the years
• Entertaining factual shows – several series of Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares, back to the beginning of Grand Designs, Come Dine with Me, How to Look Good Naked, Supernanny, Jamie’s Kitchen
• Classic drama – from GBH to Porterhouse Blue and The Camomile Lawn; Dennis Potter’s Lipstick on your Collar, Russell T Davies’ Queer as Folk, Julie Burchill’s Sugar Rush, plus all three series of Skins.

I’m trying to avoid starting each sentence with “award winning” and ending it with “and many more”. However it is difficult to list just a few examples of the best of Channel 4’s archive, given the wealth and richness of the programmes on offer. Use the search box on the 4oD landing page or alternatively browsing alphabetically or by genre (both are available on our programmes page) to find classic titles.

We’ll add shows to 4oD on channel4.com throughout the year, so please keep coming back regularly as we’ll be adding new titles each week. As expected, there will be disappointments that shows you’d like to see aren’t currently available (and please be aware that there will always be a set of programmes we can’t put onto 4oD).

If you’ve got a show you’d love to see that isn’t on the site, please let us know below and we’ll try and prioritise the most requested titles, or let you know if there are any availability issues.