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Once again Facebook is mentioned in connection with a violent story, further engendering distrust in online social networks.

A BBC report today led with the headline “Man killed wife in Facebook row”. I’m sure it helps attract readers - he said sardonically - but as you have to read half-way down the article before you get to the bit about the assailant being drunk and high on cocaine, I can’t help thinking that yet again someone is looking at this the wrong way.

Obviously the Beeb are hardly saying that Facebook is to blame, but I certainly can’t help but wonder whether the incident would have happened over something else equally trivial that was not Internet-related.

So is it necessary to point out the site? Considering that the BBC doesn’t have to sell papers, can we not get passed the finger-pointing?

I don’t listen to Radio 1 very much now (not live at least, although I download a few of their podcasts) but I’m not so sure they’ve got the hang of this Facebook thing yet...

If I’m honest I’m not entirely sure why the Webbists at Radio 1 feel it’s necessary to pick an arbitrary gig to promote on Facebook: surely that’s the Kings of Leon’s responsibility? But the biggest irritant is their apparent need to notify me for every Radio 1 page I become a “fan” of.

What’s more irritating (which is Facebook’s problem) is that I can’t mark a specific update as spam. I don’t mind receiving updates Chris Moyles’ or Scott Mills’ shows as I quite like them, but I don’t want to receive the same thing three (or more) times.

It gets worse though, as both shows have had events in the past two weeks that should have, but weren’t broadcast as updates.

It’s not a big thing I know, but what is the point of having a presence on a social network you don’t understand if you’re not going to engage with it.

I’ve been listening to BBC Radio 1 today, specifically Jo Whiley’s show (for my sins).

She has a regular slot on her daily show in which she answers questions texted or emailed in by listeners. Questions such as “what was the music on that advert that was on last week?” or “where does the expression ’fishwife’ come from?”

The BBC engage reasonably heavily in Twitter (although as pointed out in a tweet by Paul Henderson this engagement is fairly one-sided) and have accounts for each of their major services, one of them being Radio 1.

Interestingly enough however that account is lying dormant, the last post being 10 months old. Now to me this looks to be something of a missed trick.

I know from past experience that BBC policy prohibits its own online actions, rendering its broadcasters unable (certainly without receiving flack) to read out URLs for other social networks in which they are involved. Chris Moyles has previously complained that he can’t direct listeners to his show’s Facebook page without those responsible for the station’s official Website complaining that he is driving traffic away from the site.

With this in mind I can see why saying twitter.com/bbcradio1 on air would obviously cause civil war to break out within Broadcasting House, but think how much more interesting their shows could be if people could communicate with the station hassle and cost free.

Plus think how many more casual listeners they could gain if they tweeted that Bloc Party or some other “worthy” band were to play an impromptu set at Maida Vale and it was due to start in 15 minutes, or that a guest on Chris’ show has just said something outrageous that must be heard with a link to the iPlayer.

I don’t listen to Radio 1 that often but I think I would if the message I received from Twitter was more interesting than “Radio 1 has received 1905 texts in the last hour”.

In fairness, inhabitants of the Twittersphere are probably more likely to be 6 Music listeners, so what’s stopping that station from engaging in this growing platform? 6 Music doesn’t (don’t?) even have a Twitter account, let alone an out of date onr (or in the case of Radio 4, an account that has yet to be updated).

When I was at uni I imagined a TV system where no channels existed, and you simply picked a program to watch without having to wait for it to start. A couple of years later, NTL:Telewest made this a reality when they launched their Teleport service (now called On-Demand), and now three years later you can get it on your phone, but for real this time, not in a “isn’t it nice but no-one will use it” kind of way.

While I was at uni, not going to clubs, getting slaughtered or missing lectures, I learned a lot about the Big British Castle (as Adam & Joe call it) and really grew to respect this massive corporation. Yes I’m concerned by the ongoing threat of service cuts and yes it would be nice it their podcasts contained more original content rather than just “best of the week” stuff, but when it comes to online media they’re streets ahead of any other broadcaster in the world.

In mid-to-late 2007 the BBC unveiled the iPlayer in all its shiny pink and black glory. I took part in the test run back in 2005 and my, hasn’t our baby grown? Then in early ’08 they announced they were to make many of their shows available from the iTunes store (spit, spit).

Obviously this is all ”because of the unique way the BBC is funded” and its erstwhile public service remit, but that doesn’t stop them being jolly good at web stuff! Take for example the iPlayer: at the moment you need a PC and a decent Internet connection to catch up on the week’s TV and radio, but the Beeb are changing that, not only by bringing the iPlayer to Virgin Media (what? no Sky? boo hoo) but by making it available on the iPhone and iPod Touch, and on other devices like the PlayStation and Xbox in the coming months.

If I weren’t a Virgin Media customer I’d be quite excited by the prospect of having UK TV content on my Xbox (and I don’t mean the stuff that winds up on Dave), as it’s already a great platform for downloadable video, but am more anxious to be able to download and watch BBC stuff on the move with my iPod Classic without having to use iTunes (I like Winamp: it works with an iPod and isn’t evil).

Nitpicking aside, this news coupled with rumours of a merger of on-demand services between the BBC, ITV and Channel 4, makes for exciting times. The only question is, in a few years’ time, will the Beeb have much content to distribute via their fancy new services except reruns of Dog Borstal and Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps?

The other thing to mention of course is that, if Murdock can lift his fat arse out of his money-counting sofa and put a rocket up Sky’s overpriced and overhyped rump, we can kiss goodbye to TV recorders because it’ll all be available whenever we want it. Super, smashing [pause, rewind], smashing [fast-forward], great.

The venerable BBC are trialling a new design for their gargantuan website. At the moment it’s confined strictly to the homepage, but it looks as though this is to be the new preferred layout for the entire site.

Aswell as ditching the 750 pixel wide, left-aligned layout that has come to be known as the ‘BBC style’, they are also making a strong push towards valid HTML, something that is surprisingly not a feature of the current site. The new design now has the site centred on-screen and stretching to 960 pixels in width with a 10 pixel gutter, thereby reflecting the majority resolution of 1024x768 (the display setting that is most common, especially for PCs).

It also makes use of some fancy new AJAX, with each block of content being customisable: allowing the user to move blocks around, expand or collapse them or add in extra blocks. What’s great to see is that this has all been achieved in full compliance with the W3C’s HTML standards. Also most of the functionality (bar the movement of blocks) is available to users who don’t have Javascript enabled on their browsers. The page is fully CSS-driven and should work well in text-only browsers.

I’m quite looking forward to seeing this new, non-stuffy layout go live across the entire site, but I think we could be waiting a considerable time for that to happen. Good work so far though!