Alex Harries's diary

(Caution: shameless geekiness ahead): These are, apparently, the BBC's 15 Web Principles which underpin everything they do online. The list comes fresh-ish from the BBC via. TomSki.com, a personal blog written by a member of the BBC. They make a lot of sense (well, to pixel-pushing geeks like me, anyway...):

1. Build web products that meet audience needs: anticipate needs not yet fully articulated by audiences, then meet them with products that set new standards. (nicked from Google)
2. The very best websites do one thing really, really well: do less, but execute perfectly. (again, nicked from Google, with a tip of the hat to Jason Fried)
3. Do not attempt to do everything yourselves: link to other high-quality sites instead. Your users will thank you. Use other people's content and tools to enhance your site, and vice versa.
4. Fall forward, fast: make many small bets, iterate wildly, back successes, kill failures, fast.
5. Treat the entire web as a creative canvas: don't restrict your creativity to your own site.
6. The web is a conversation. Join in: Adopt a relaxed, conversational tone. Admit your mistakes.
7. Any website is only as good as its worst page: Ensure best practice editorial processes are adopted and adhered to.
8. Make sure all your content can be linked to, forever.
9. Remember your granny won't ever use “Second Life”: She may come online soon, with very different needs from early-adopters.
10. Maximise routes to content: Develop as many aggregations of content about people, places, topics, channels, networks & time as possible. Optimise your site to rank high in Google.
11. Consistent design and navigation needn't mean one-size-fits-all: Users should always know they're on one of your websites, even if they all look very different. Most importantly of all, they know they won't ever get lost.
12. Accessibility is not an optional extra: Sites designed that way from the ground up work better for all users
13. Let people paste your content on the walls of their virtual homes: Encourage users to take nuggets of content away with them, with links back to your site
14. Link to discussions on the web, don't host them: Only host web-based discussions where there is a clear rationale
    
15. Personalisation should be unobtrusive, elegant and transparent: After all, it's your users' data. Best respect it.

p.s. Re. copyright: the list (probably) belongs to the BBC, while the content is lifted from this page on www.tomski.com

This article from BBC News claims to prove what many people already suspected was true - that as gregarious humans, we base our assessments - especially our initial assessments - of whether a person is attractive and/or worth getting to know better on how other people act towards them.

There's a fiver in it for anyone who wants to be my groupie. Hours are flexible and I make a great cuppa tea... ;o)

(Update: I've changed the entry requirements. I've decided I'm not fussy whether you're male or female; you just need to be good at being groupies. And willing to clean the house. And you have to know how to use a hoover. And you shouldn't have a fear of heights...)