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Top Twenty Posts of 2007

Published on 30 December 2007 in , , ,

Well everyone else is doing it, so why shouldn’t I? (And no, if Martin and James jumped off a cliff, I wouldn’t)

Actually I’m a bit of a stats junkie, and I’ve done this sort of post before, in the trend-setting month of August. For some reason, this concept didn’t really take off in the blogosphere…

Err, anyway. So here it is. Fresh from Google Analytics… the top 20 posts from 2007, as determined by you. And some random people who popped up from Search Engines and then disappeared off again forever.

So in reverse order…

20 – Congratulations. We’ve lost Eurovision again!
If you ever want a popular post, just write one about Eurovision is all I’ll say. My Eurovision Song Contest posts always do very well in the hits counts. Goodness knows why. Anyway, in this case, the post was from 18 March 2007 where I confidently predicted that choosing Scooch would mean we’d lose the 2007 Eurovision Song Contest. The following “Told You So” post didn’t do quite as well, which just goes to show that no one likes a gloater.
19 – Whitehaven loses Ceefax
Relatively recent – on 14 November I wrote about Whitehaven losing analogue television – and by default, Ceefax. Whilst 85% of the UK now have at least one digital TV in their home, the loss of Ceefax is bound to be controversial with some. In that article I commented that I’d be watching the feedback from Whitehaven carefully. Got to be said, I’ve barely seen any come in… Actually that’s a lie. I haven’t seen any specifically on the loss of Ceefax. Which rather surprised me.
18 – The new BBC Homepage – a bit like myBBC then
I suspect partially helped by some linkage from the kind people of the BBC Internet Blog here. A chance to reminisce anyway. Amusingly, Martin Belam had written a similar piece for the Internet Blog about the same time!
17 – Cakes, Stars and Specifications
When I saw the url of this in Google Analytics (it’s bbcicakes.live), I confess to being a bit confused as to what it was! We don’t get to do much baking in BBCi. This post however is about me trying to define a specification document for the re-coding of the BBCi CBeebies pages. Whilst it’s great that some many work based posts have appeared so far, I was surprised this one appears so high up to be honest.
16 – France 2007 Day 1: Travelling… Oh So Much Travelling…
Tales of a very long train journey… Personally I thought the tales of sitting on trains for hours and hours and hours on end, wouldn’t exactly make the most popular reading…
15 – Three closures, one opening and some snow
More BBCi related gubbins – some service closures, a service launch and a bloke in Television Centre yanking a cable out of a big piece of graphics equipment…
14 – Broadband going slow
First moaning post – and it’s about everyone’s favourite topic. Slow broadband. And coupled here with that other bug-bearer – naff service. Still, count the blessings, count the blessings… Anything beats a 56k modem connection…
13 – GE Money: Ditching me before I ditch them
Judging by some of the emails and comments I’ve had, GE Money aren’t that popular a credit card company when it comes to customer service. As it happened, they weren’t that keen to have me as a customer any more either…
12 – 100% Increase In Video Choice! (a.k.a BBCi News Multiscreen on Freeview gets a bit bigger)
What it says on the tin. Nice bit of backslapping about the News Multiscreen getting bigger on digital terrestrial television.
11 – Weather and Sport joins the BBCi News Multiscreen
And from two weeks before – the announcement that the BBCi News Multiscreen was about to get bigger.
10 – Freesat Website
Into the top 10 and a very small post about a website launching… Quite why this one comes in at number 10, I guess I’ll never quite understand…
9 – BBC iPlayer – why DRM?
I had a feeling this one might feature highly. I was rather surprised by the lack of negative feedback on this one to be honest. Not that I’m complaining – far from it!
8 – BBCi plans for 2007/2008
Analysis of the BBCi plans as defined in the BBC’s 2007/2008 Statements of Programme Policy
7 – The Joys of Train Travel Planning in France
Ah, you just can’t beat a good point pointing out the flaws in someone elses website! My inbox was positively bulging with more than a few people agreeing with me on the appalling state of SNCF‘s website. Out of interest, I just loaded up their homepage again and I’m very pleased to say that, on a casual glance, they’ve made it even worse than it was before! Well done guys!
6 – Ditching the VHS tapes (or, getting a new Humax PVR)
Nine months on and I still love my my PVR, although the current software on it doesn’t cope very well with consecutive programmes on different channels (there’s a tendency for the last minute of the first programme to get lost). I’m hoping a software update in January will solve that one as my attempts to load it on manually didn’t work…
5 – Changes to the BBCi Weather service
Am really surprised how many work related posts have made it up here. Still, if it pushes out the angry-ranty posts, that’s probably no bad thing.
4 – GE Money – incompetence and downright lies
Speaking of angry-ranty posts… It’s that credit card company again. Actually I never followed this up. I did write and complain, to which they apologised and gave me a good will payment of (if I remember correctly) £20. So they did manage some good customer service in the end.
3 – Latest BBCi goings on
Yet more work stuff – this time the relaunch of the CBBC service on BBCi with that… delightful… green. Worth looking at because you get to see the delightful range of 188 colours our designers get to work with on Freeview. Thankfully Freesat’s getting a graphics upgrade – we get a huge 4000 colours to chose from!
2 – BBC’s iPlayer to go beyond Microsoft XP?
iPlayer again – this time an early one from January, and a personal viewpoint on the whole lack of Linux support. Of course iPlayer now has streaming which works on all PCs with the latest Flash plugin. Can’t say I’ve used it properly – I always plan my viewing very carefully and make sure my PVR is set for everything I want to watch. So I never need it.
1 – Your Granny Won’t Ever Use ‘Second Life’
And at number 1, a surprising post from the January collection. A brief post about the BBC’s 15 Web Principles. Depressingly the popularity doesn’t come at all from anything I’ve written, but getting almost all its views from the search term “granny planet”, as well as several other permutations of a similar theme… Having just put “granny planet” into Google, and subsequently raised by eyebrows at the title and description which appeared, lets just say it’s one for the over 18s only….

So there you are. That’s the hot posts from this year. Coming soon, a look at what posts from the archives continued to tickle your fancy.