Also: The user-led bad fuel story | Berners-Lee on the future of the web | 50 most important people on the web | Google's click-fraud problem
The BBC has been quietly experimenting with a real-time TV polling tool that projects viewers' responses on screen.
Jamie Donald is editor of live programming including the Daily Politics and This Week. The Daily Politics is broadcast every weekday on BBC2 with its peak audience of 500,000 on Wednesdays with Prime Minister's questions. It's then that the Perception Panel tool is really coming into its own.
Viewers phone a freephone number and answer a few questions on an automated system that establishes their age, gender, location and voting behaviour. They stay on the line while they watch the programme and press different buttons on the keypad according to whether they agree or disagree with what's on the show.
"This allows a relationship with the subject on screen. Instead of shouting at the TV there's a sense that they can actually do something to respond," he said.
Donald said that traditional TV makes people feel they are being told something rather than taking part. During PMQs, viewers can show how they respond to the Blair vs Cameron battles, for example.
"The interesting thing is that you can break down the responses by region, by age or sex, or by people or belong to a political party. The results show the people who are disillusioned with Blair - including Labour supporters in the North."
Behind the scenes, the number of participants is capped at 600 because of budget constraints. There are plenty more people willing to take part, said Donald. The tool costs around £1500 to implement, up to £1000 of which would be call costs.
The Daily Politics audience profile is typically older and male, but the technology also weights the results to reflect nation averages according to ICM standards. The margin of error is put at a maximum of about 6%.
The Perception Panel was developed by BBC staffer Adam Livingstone as an independent project which he then sold to interactive technology firm iTouch. The show first tried the software during the Conservative leadership contest in October 2005, and Donald is also using it for one-off debates on topics including nuclear power.
He acknowledges that senior people in all parties watch Daily Politics and that consequently the results of the panel have an influential audience.
"The live debates are really interesting. We want to take different topics, like trident, embryo research or road pricing, and run our own polls on these big issues to see where the balance lies. It's great for participation and great for public service TV."
He said the tool has advantages over "cumbersome" red-button voting because it is more simple: everyone has a TV and phone line. But the questions themselves are more than just a yes or no, and the keypad voting system allows for that.
The next big test will be the Labour leadership "contest" when the poll will monitor the public reaction to Gordon Brown, should be become leader in May.
He added that it is still early days for the Perception Panel. "This is difficult stuff to get right, and it can be difficult to get people to understand what we're trying to do.
"But this truly marries broadcast TV with individuals at home who can interact directly with the screen."
Donald has made two presentations of the software to the BBC's news board, so we can expect this to be rolled out more widely.
The user-led bad fuel story
The BBC says the dodgy petrol story of last week was driven by information from viewers.
Nothing particularly new in that, other than the volume of information they received. The story started with a large number of calls to BBC Cambridgeshire about car problems which led to a flash on the 2.30 News 24 bulletin. It grew to a national story from there. The BBC had 4,000 emails in 24 hours about the story: I wonder how many of those got read?
Berners-Lee on the future of the web
A few teasers in this piece on Dr Dobb's on Tim Berners-Lee's presentation to Congress last week. The inventor of the world wide web described how your personal information would be carried around with you and could be projected or shared between different devices - like displaying your travel schedule on your work desk, for example.
He said the next big web application is probably being invented right now by someone trying to find a personal solution to something.
"Communication between people is what makes us a society," Berners-Lee said, adding that. "The World Wide Web is, together, technology and society. It is computers and people."
The 50 most important people on the web
Top of the list, according to PCWorld, are Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Eric Schmidt from Google. No surprises there. Steve Jobs is at two, Jimmy Wales at five and Craig Criaglist at seven. BitTorrent co-founder Bram Cohen is at three, so that is arguably a high ranking for him, but I counted only two women in a list of more than 50 people which is more than a little disappointing.
Google's transparency over ad clicks
Advertisers pay per click on Google's AdWords system, and there has been a steady stream of concerns raised over the level of click fraud. Last week Google announced a new feature that would allow advertisers to stop their ads appearing on certain sites. That would mean they could stop their ads being pulled up at their rival's offices - just in case competitors fancy driving up costs by clicking maniacally on their rival's ads.
Google says in this ClickZ piece that click fraud is still very low - an estimated 0.02% of all clicks. Introducing filters to cut down on fraudulent clicks also means less revenue for Google though. Shuman Ghosemajumder, Google's business product manager for trust and safety, said that every one percent of clicks removed translated to $100m in annual revenue.
"When we proactively remove these clicks, we forego a significant amount of revenue. We're providing hundreds of millions of dollars in proactive protection."
More anti-fraud initiatives are planned, including enhanced invalid click reports, educational initiatives and a clearer reporting format.
