Comments on: How can we make the Live Blogs better?

By: Scootin159

Scootin159 — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 19:55:53 +0000

Aw crap… with the new URL… they’re actually enforcing the UK-only restriction on the swf file. I used to be able to watch by just directly opening the swf file, but now it’s giving me a "UK only" error.

By: Christopher

Christopher — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 19:37:46 +0000

Keith: for this race, ITV have moved the URL to http://www.itv.com/utils/simulcastPlayer.swf

I just run that in a new browser window and turn off all the toolbars, status bar etc..

By: Arun

Arun — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 20:55:05 +0000

Hey Keith. Thanks for the pic man, I was really taken aback when I saw my name featured in a great site for f1. as ever, I am willing to help in moderating any time you need (damn, so much happened in F1 world in just a week). But the friday practice thing is giong to be tough since I too am in USA (central time zone), and working. We’ll put up a request, whoever can handle for that particular race (and reliable for you) can hold the mantle for that race. As far as comments on improving the live blog, I am late, but think I’ll be latest (a tamil movie dialogue!)We often comment on anything interesting that happens on the race, not to a level of high knowledgeable f1 pundit (one who can shoot instant statistics and history), but for the help of people who can’t watch the race (like speed tv’s ads that seem to be never ending during a race) to know as it happens when something does. People like you, Ollie, Vee, Milos… can do the pundit like commenting, while me and others can put up ‘as it happens’ comment. So, this will prevail.* To improve, what we can do is – more polls (I thing there were only 3 last time ) , and other media (probably old ones!) pertaining to the race, when I was talking about DC, I showed his ’superman’ pose in podium 2 years ago to my friend. * Is there a way we can embed the f1-vision animation on the blog, imagine it buddy, the live blog will be awesome then..

By: F1Punter

F1Punter — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 18:34:41 +0000

The only feedback that I have is that the different font sizes for Mods and regular users distracts me. I know you guys are good, but with so much going on my eyes are drawn solely to your comments.

Probably my problem not yours!

By: Keith Collantine

Keith Collantine — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 17:09:11 +0000

That is basically what we do, Kris, unfortuntely there’s a limit to how many people can be allowed to post without moderation.

By: Kris

Kris — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 16:28:08 +0000

Im quite fond of the coveritlive widget, and note that during australia mods were doing the equivalent of an irc +v to allow trusted users to bypass moderation… Perhaps users who’ve shown a reasonable level of decorum for 5-10 minutes should be allowed to comment freely, with privaleges being revoked in the event of naughtiness.

By: Keith Collantine

Keith Collantine — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 14:27:21 +0000

Thanks for that Christopher. How do you get to the SWF it would be useful to be able to resize it and not have it in a browser window?

And yes, the moderators did find it a bit hard to keep up at times (disabling moderation is not an option yet) but the more people who can volunteer to help, the better that should get.

By: Christopher

Christopher — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 14:07:28 +0000

Cyanide: Which live telemetry do you mean? From the Renault site?

I use IRC and IM etc, but I think the CoverItLive thing is very good as it doesn’t require people to install anything whether it’s an IRC client or Java or anything. Plus you get the polls and integrated replay thing that you don’t get as easily with IRC.

The one slight issue I had was quite a noticeable delay in some cases due to the moderators presumably being overwhelmed. Are there many comments that don’t get published? I would have thought the majority of users could be trusted as sensible enough to not abuse the system, allowing moderation to be disabled.

As for my setup, I prefer having separate windows for live timing/live blog/ITV feed. I created myself a link direct to the .swf of the ITV feed so I can resize the window to whatever size I like.

As for live timing, doctorvee is correct in that there’s code checking that it only runs on the official site. I figured out the protocol live timing used ages ago but I’ve still not done anything useful with the information yet…

An FAQ is definitely a good idea for the blogs though, especially for people looking for live TV coverage.

By: cyanide

cyanide — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 03:18:05 +0000

A wide resolution would really shine. If I can get it going, I’ll probably be watching Live timing, the Live Blog, the race and live telemetry on my 26" monitor . Would fit in perfectly for a 4 window splitscreen layout.

By: Keith Collantine

Keith Collantine — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 23:07:22 +0000

Glad to see you’re all enjoying it! The CoverItLive team have been keeping an eye on this thread and offered some useful tips:

* Anyone who’s commenting (mods included) can use Ctrl+Enter to submit comments without having to click Submit
* They’re working on the Firefox 3 Beta glitch and have made some changes that may remedy the fault (remember that browser is Beta)
* Can anyone who’s had problems with Firefox 2 send me any more details?
* I will be offering some different-sized viewing windows next time as well. Can you give me an idea what sort of sizes you’d like?

By: alan

alan — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 20:46:16 +0000

ps well done to the moderators as well

By: alan

alan — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 20:45:29 +0000

I enjoyed the blog experience and it was fast and furious the way that comments were coming in – I had trouble watching and reading and adding small comments – but great idea and well done Keith again

By: Alianora La Canta

Alianora La Canta — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 19:19:52 +0000

I might be able to start doing the Friday sessions from Bahrain onwards, but it would have to be on a race-by-race basis because my job situation is currently in flux.

By: doctorvee

doctorvee — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 17:53:23 +0000

Clive:

I had the ITV feed and Live Timing open in other windows and found that everything fitted pretty well, not requiring me to constantly switch from one to the other. What might be an idea for the future (I know it’s not possible now because of jealously-guarded copyright) would be to have these feeds embedded into the chat window so that we only need to have one window open.

I almost managed it! F1.com doesn’t work – they must have code on their site to prevent this sort of thing. TBH I’d imagine ITV would take a dim view of this sort of thing as well, but it’s nice to think about. Click here to see, but I’ll take it down soon in case it annoys anyone! Maybe we could keep the frame on the right though – embed the Coveritlive window in a bigger page with all the FAQ etc in it?

By: Journeyer

Journeyer — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 17:22:21 +0000

It works great, but I couldn’t moderate on Sunday because my Net was not fast enough and the site kept timing out. But that’s out of your control, Keith. What I would suggest is that we have special guest moderators and/or chatters from race to race. It would be great if we could get some F1 people past or present to join us. Otherwise, you’re doing perfect, Keith.

By: Ollie

Ollie — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 16:22:36 +0000

Duncan, the enter key thing is annoying. Interestingly, people who aren’t mods are able to do this because they don’t have the tinymce (?) text box thingy. But mods do. It annoyed me as well.

I’m with Clive and impressed about the whole ‘being thrown straight into the action’ thing. Generally speaking, I think it is fine, but I do agree that there needs to be a way of showing information about the race or viewing options without the need for users to persistently ask "How can I watch F1?" A sort of FAQ that is always around.

Given the popularity of all this I have a few ideas that I’ve been mulling over, but I won’t waste space on the site with a overly long message. I’ll shoot you over an email at some point in the next few days.

By: Scootin159

Scootin159 — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 16:10:14 +0000

I used the live blog for Australia practice (not the race however as I watched it DVR time-delayed), and really enjoyed it. I tried it again in Malaysia, but it kept crashing my computer (fresh WinXP install w/ FF2.0.latest). After a little messing around, I gave up.

Generally though I will not be watching the races live however, as most of the European races run at about 7am Sunday morning here (at which point I’m at church).

By: KB

KB — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 15:55:53 +0000

I did go onto the live blog, but when the race started ny eyes were on the live timing screen at f1.com and the TV, I would have loved to join in but just too much going on for me
Even I cant do that amount of multitasking!
Gr8 idea though

By: Scott Joslin

Scott Joslin — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 15:51:36 +0000

Great idea about having people track individual drivers, I would be well up for taking 2 or 3 drivers to cover over a weekend. One thing I think we might need to consider in time is as the number of people increase, we are going to get a lot of people saying the same thing during the session. To ensure everyone gets a quality experience, perhaps we should consider having more than one live comments session – Maybe one where regulars go – they would be invited or have to respond to a RSVP to a session reminder and would gain access to a session limited to say 50 people, where as the occasional users can come and go freely in a public session. I say this as sometimes when a piece of action happens we will get 5 or 6 people saying the same thing and this might dilute the impact of the comments in the session. Other than that I think it is a great feature.

By: Clive

Clive — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 15:47:55 +0000

The CoverItLive gizmo worked just fine for me – I was actually quite impressed with the way I just had to click on the link in your post, Keith, and was immediately thrown into the action.

I had the ITV feed and Live Timing open in other windows and found that everything fitted pretty well, not requiring me to constantly switch from one to the other. What might be an idea for the future (I know it’s not possible now because of jealously-guarded copyright) would be to have these feeds embedded into the chat window so that we only need to have one window open.

At this rate, we will be able to throw away our TVs – wouldn’t that be nice?