Updates to our online video and mobile services
If you use the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Sport website on your PC, or (or hopefully both!), you might have noticed some important changes to the way the sites are presented.
Our mobile site, for people using mid-range phones, is being given a facelift, starting with some of the key sections like its front page and also the football section. Obviously you will need to go to bbc.co.uk/mobile/sport from your mobile if you want to see the changes there, but you can get a feel for what it will look like by looking at .
Anyone who regularly uses our WAP service on mobiles will see that the new look is brighter, taking advantage of modern mobile screens which are often bigger and better able to show colours. It also has content like , and actually on it, whereas previously it was purely a list of sports from which you would have to navigate into the content.
These changes are really a reflection of the fact that mobile is an increasingly important platform for us. Traffic to our mobile site continues to grow (as does traffic to the main website, which still attracts a much bigger audience) and this weekend, for example, if you are out and about while the Six Nations and football are on, you will be able to get the , , live statistics and analysis from our site on your phone.
If you want to get yourself set up for the weekend's footy now, why not text FOOTBALL to 81010 , and you will receive a link straight to our site, which you can bookmark on your phone and then use whenever you are out and about to keep up with the latest scores and news.
Meanwhile, on the main website (the one you're reading now!) there has been a development around video content. We are now embedding some of our video within pages - which just means the video is not , which tends to buffer a lot. It plays in the page, which is a much better user experience. And it shouldn't buffer any more either.
There's , in the middle of the story, and we'll be looking to step up the use of this embedded video through the year, with a view to and - two events where we have a fantastic rights package on the web.
It's worth saying that we are not the first website in the industry to embed video in this way. A certain, wildly successful site called (you might have heard of it) set the bar here, and as well as us. But what we have been able to do is make sure this project is consistent with iPlayer, which has already proved a fabulously popular way of catching up with TV that's been on the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳.
There's generally a lot of sport to be found in iPlayer, so make sure you have a look there after the weekend, particularly with the reaching its .
We will make sure our iPlayer offerings are consistent with the video we embed on the Sport site, so for example, you will be able to watch the whole of your team's Six Nations match in iPlayer, or just catch .
I hope you enjoy our sporting coverage this weekend, whether on , radio, PC or mobile, and please do let me know what you think about any of it, but particularly the changes I've announced here.
