The New Interface

There's a neat little bar at the bottom of Channel4's coverage of the Paralympics that allows you to jump to significant events on a timeline (totally destroyed by a pink background that renders the interface incomprehensible - good coding, bad design...).


Still, it got me thinking about alternatives to the 'EPG' (electronic programme guide) and 'VoDlist' i.e. a list of videos.

One alternative is a map - mashup Google Maps and video - a surprisingly rare approach which is reasonably easy to achieve.

The timeline is obviously another approach, denigrating the mainstay of broadcast television - the schedule.

But there are also others: search, hierarchies, random, suggested, social. my list.

The schedule is far from dead, but one of the most significant developments in television over the next five years will be the different ways in which we discover the huge amount of programming available out there.