Re: [backstage] Browser Stats
On 3/27/07, Andy [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 26/03/07, Jeremy Stone [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 0.4% of users at the time used a Linux operating system ;) That's not entirely true is it? Please do not try to mislead people. What is more likely is: 0.4% of users WHERE DETECTED AS using a Linux operating system AT THE TIME THEY VISITED THE BBC SITE. This number can be wrong for a multitude of reasons. 1) the BBC stats are biased, the site is target at Windows users and on certain pages blocks users of other OSes (bbc.co.uk uses ActiveX for instance) * Snips most of foaming-at-the-mouth-conspiricy-theory-style-rant trying to claim that Linux distros account for a vast percentage of desktop users and the BBC is complicit in covering this up. * Andy - ordinary people do not generally use Linux as a desktop OS. I'm not going to argue the toss about whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, but it's fact. I really do dislike statistics, especially when people try to claim that they prove something without accounting for the method of gathering. No - you really dislike statistics when they prove something that doesn't meet with your approval. Here, for example, you find a figure you wish was a lot higher, and then come up with a load of reasons why it might be inaccurate, without providing any evidence for a single one of them. I'm not going to say that they're all *wrong*, but on such an large size sample, none of your possible reasons is going to account for a significant difference. Now, put the gun down, and step away... Cheers, Rich. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
RE: [backstage] Browser Stats
I'll ignore your rant about the stats - but add that these numbers are probably generated by some pretty sophisticated 3rd part software that the BBC employs. I highly doubt they just look for Linux in the UA string. I'm sure Jem will be replying. the site is target at Windows users Completely incorrect. We target certain browsers when testing, sure, but why would we ever target the OS? bbc.co.uk uses ActiveX Where? On the subject of whether to support IE 5, is it supported by Microsoft or has it been end of lifed? If it's been end of lifed then maybe you don't need to support it. I'd argue that it doesn't matter if MS support it or not. Choices of browser support should be based on if the users are using it. Why do you need to 'support' specific browsers anyway? This is what standards are ofr, I don't need to check the compatibility with every piece of software on every switch between here and my destination node, they are using a standard I just make sure I follow that standard. Why should the HTML content be any different? I suspect you already know this, and perhaps your question is rhetorical. I'll answer it anyhow :-). Some browsers had different interpretations of the standards and render pages radically differently from each other. Testing to the standards is pointless, and will result in thousands of emails asking why IE, and it's box model, has messed up the pretty design. J -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Andy Sent: 27 March 2007 17:19 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: Re: [backstage] Browser Stats On 26/03/07, Jeremy Stone [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 0.4% of users at the time used a Linux operating system ;) That's not entirely true is it? Please do not try to mislead people. What is more likely is: 0.4% of users WHERE DETECTED AS using a Linux operating system AT THE TIME THEY VISITED THE BBC SITE. This number can be wrong for a multitude of reasons. 1) the BBC stats are biased, the site is target at Windows users and on certain pages blocks users of other OSes (bbc.co.uk uses ActiveX for instance) 2) Detection software may not have been as tuned to recognize a Linux OS, after all many distros don't call them selves 'Linux', it may not be in the user agent string. (simply looking for the word Linux is not good enough). 3) A Linux user may have been misreporting the Operating System (commonly used to cater for sites that do user agent sniffing badly, also used to blend in with the crowd for anonymity). 4) Someone may have a dual boot (or triple or more), and may only be using Windows to view bbc.co.ku, possibly due to being locked out by previously mentioned technological practices of the BBC. 5) Some 'users' may not be real people, they may be robots spoofing there user agent. 90% of email is spam. How have you accounted for web robots browsing your site looking for email addresses or trying to post spam comments (they would not hit robots.txt or say robot in the user agent, that would give them away)? I am thinking most spam bots would impersonate IE on Windows as it probably has the highest market share so much harder o filter. (by how high we are unsure). Additionally you could argue you would get the less knowledgable users in this sampling, I rarely hit the BBC home page, why bother? I know where I want to go and I get the news feeds in a handy RSS so I probably don't hit news.bbc.co.uk's homepage either. I have the pages I need on bookmarks, (Favourites for you IE users). This is the great thing about statistics people like you claim they show something and try to cover up the failings of how the sampling was done. It shows only as much as it records. The number of recognized User Agent strings for hits on the BBC website. (Quick question, is this per IP or per page hit? page hit would be bad as it would allow robots to skew the results badly as they would hit far more pages). I really do dislike statistics, especially when people try to claim that they prove something without accounting for the method of gathering. And now a quote: There are three kinds of commonly recognised untruths: Lies, damn lies and statistics. - Mark Twain This quote from Mark Twain is accurate; statistics are often used to lie to the public because most people do not understand how statistics work. And this quote is from where you ask? Why it is from the BBC of course! (well I had to use the BBC quote didn't I? especially it is the first result on Google for: lies damn lies statistics) Maybe you should improve your stats? 1.Group each unique header together and have a Skilled Human with knowledge of all operating system classify them according to OS. 2. Make each visitor pass a Turing Test prior to using there User Agent. 3. Verify details of OS using other methods, i.e. Javascript could check, or use OS fingerprinting (hopefully it wouldn't hit NAT routers, otherwise you'd probably get the OS of a
RE: [backstage] Browser Stats
1) the BBC stats are biased, the site is target at Windows users and on certain pages blocks users of other OSes That's not my experience of it; my usual browser is Firefox on Gentoo Linux, and I can't recall the last time I was blocked from content on bbc.co.uk. Ubuntu user with FirefoxOpera at home - can't remember the last time I had to spoof for any site. About five years ago I abandoned one bank because they didn't support Linux, but since then I haven't had one problem. And of course, spoofing (or lack of!) is not just a Linux thing :) I do recall in the past browser spoofing to be rather unreliable - one electricity supplier site I used years ago was determined that I had Mozilla despite what I tried to do to persuade it otherwise. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Browser Stats
On 28/03/07, Jason Cartwright [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: and will result in thousands of emails asking why IE, and it's box model, has messed up the pretty design. I wish this happened were I work! If only users would blame the IE rendering engine (rather than the site or designers) everything would be right with the world :-) J -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Andy Sent: 27 March 2007 17:19 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: Re: [backstage] Browser Stats On 26/03/07, Jeremy Stone [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 0.4% of users at the time used a Linux operating system ;) That's not entirely true is it? Please do not try to mislead people. What is more likely is: 0.4% of users WHERE DETECTED AS using a Linux operating system AT THE TIME THEY VISITED THE BBC SITE. This number can be wrong for a multitude of reasons. 1) the BBC stats are biased, the site is target at Windows users and on certain pages blocks users of other OSes (bbc.co.uk uses ActiveX for instance) 2) Detection software may not have been as tuned to recognize a Linux OS, after all many distros don't call them selves 'Linux', it may not be in the user agent string. (simply looking for the word Linux is not good enough). 3) A Linux user may have been misreporting the Operating System (commonly used to cater for sites that do user agent sniffing badly, also used to blend in with the crowd for anonymity). 4) Someone may have a dual boot (or triple or more), and may only be using Windows to view bbc.co.ku, possibly due to being locked out by previously mentioned technological practices of the BBC. 5) Some 'users' may not be real people, they may be robots spoofing there user agent. 90% of email is spam. How have you accounted for web robots browsing your site looking for email addresses or trying to post spam comments (they would not hit robots.txt or say robot in the user agent, that would give them away)? I am thinking most spam bots would impersonate IE on Windows as it probably has the highest market share so much harder o filter. (by how high we are unsure). Additionally you could argue you would get the less knowledgable users in this sampling, I rarely hit the BBC home page, why bother? I know where I want to go and I get the news feeds in a handy RSS so I probably don't hit news.bbc.co.uk's homepage either. I have the pages I need on bookmarks, (Favourites for you IE users). This is the great thing about statistics people like you claim they show something and try to cover up the failings of how the sampling was done. It shows only as much as it records. The number of recognized User Agent strings for hits on the BBC website. (Quick question, is this per IP or per page hit? page hit would be bad as it would allow robots to skew the results badly as they would hit far more pages). I really do dislike statistics, especially when people try to claim that they prove something without accounting for the method of gathering. And now a quote: There are three kinds of commonly recognised untruths: Lies, damn lies and statistics. - Mark Twain This quote from Mark Twain is accurate; statistics are often used to lie to the public because most people do not understand how statistics work. And this quote is from where you ask? Why it is from the BBC of course! (well I had to use the BBC quote didn't I? especially it is the first result on Google for: lies damn lies statistics) Maybe you should improve your stats? 1.Group each unique header together and have a Skilled Human with knowledge of all operating system classify them according to OS. 2. Make each visitor pass a Turing Test prior to using there User Agent. 3. Verify details of OS using other methods, i.e. Javascript could check, or use OS fingerprinting (hopefully it wouldn't hit NAT routers, otherwise you'd probably get the OS of a router,. which although interesting is not what we are looking for is it?). On the subject of whether to support IE 5, is it supported by Microsoft or has it been end of lifed? If it's been end of lifed then maybe you don't need to support it. Why do you need to 'support' specific browsers anyway? This is what standards are ofr, I don't need to check the compatibility with every piece of software on every switch between here and my destination node, they are using a standard I just make sure I follow that standard. Why should the HTML content be any different? The underlying TCP/IP and HTTP system seem to work much more compatibly than all these websites, many of which display poorly if you stray so slightly of the most common browser and settings, does this not show that standards work better? Andy -- First they ignore you then they laugh at you then they fight you then you win. - Mohandas Gandhi - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive:
Re: [backstage] BBC site statistics - actually subtitling
For more info on this live subtitling system, have a look at this paper: http://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/pubs/whp/whp065.shtml The live re-speaking subtitling system was developed at BBC Research ( Development) down at Kingswood Warren. Cheers, Andrew BBC Research On Mon, Mar 26, 2007 at 06:25:49PM +0100, Brendan Quinn wrote: [just saw jase's post, but dammit I've typed this out now, so I'm posting!] Red Bee Media (née BBC Broadcast) does all our subtitling. I was having a beer with someone who used to work in their subtitling area the other day, and got an interesting explanation of how it works. They actually do use voice recognition systems, but the systems are trained to recognise only one voice reliably, so the subtitlers spend months and months in front of the computer saying strange words until the system is trained to their voice. Then they take short shifts listening to the live broadcast and repeating any voices they hear into the system, which then magically converts their speech into text. They can pre-load the system with the types of words they are likely to hear given the type of show, but with some shows the subject range can be so diverse that they have to leave the domain filter wide open and thus have less accuracy on word matching. Pre-recorded subtitling works differently, obviously -- they can take time to pause the playout and get it right. Most of these subtitlers are ex-courtroom steganographers. There are a few case studies etc here: http://www.redbeemedia.com/access/subtitling.shtml Someone from RBM might like to chip in here with more explanations, in the spirit of information sharing... Of course, Other Subtitling Providers Are Available (er... I think?!) Brendan. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Christopher Woods Sent: 26 March 2007 17:53 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: RE: [backstage] BBC site statistics Here's a thought regarding subtitling - I know that manual subtitling or on-the-fly subtitling of live programmes has come along leaps and bounds, with voice recognition technology (which sometimes kicks up amusing misunderstandings, but seems to work very well) - how long do you think it'll be before it's all fully automatic, with the software performing voice recognition on the actual soundtrack in realtime? After seeing the lip reading segment on the last Click, it got me thinking... Who does the Beeb's subs now? -Original Message- From: Jason Cartwright [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: 26 March 2007 17:41 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: RE: [backstage] BBC site statistics The annual report designers like big numbers too.. http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/assets/files/pdf/review_report_r esearch/bb cannualreport.pdf Lots of boxes saying interesting things like: 56% of children in Great Britain aged 7-15 accessed bbc.co.uk/CBBC in December 2005 91.6% of programming on BBC One was subtitled in 2005/2006 etc etc J -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Christopher Woods Sent: 26 March 2007 17:26 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: RE: [backstage] BBC site statistics Something I noticed earlier today - the BBC News pages show how many pages have been served in the past minute, and that cycles round with other facts about the site... When I was looking earlier this morning (around middayish) it showed over 73,000 pages served THAT MINUTE - that's insane! Right now it's saying 82,357 people are reading stories on the site right now. ! Sometimes I forget just how massive the audience is for the beebnews pages... -Original Message- From: Richard Lockwood [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: 26 March 2007 11:22 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: Re: [backstage] BBC site statistics I've always found that the more technical or geeky a site is, the higher %age of non-IE users you'll find. For a consumer website - IE all the way. Which goes to prove my point that real people use IE, geeks use Firefox. :-) Yesterday's stats from a (very much consumer-orientated) site that I manage: IE (total) 87.3% made up of: IE 5.5 - 0.1% IE 6 - 40.1% IE 7 - 47.1% Safari - 0.8% Opera - 0.6% FF (all flavours) - 11.3% Not a single hit from anything else. Cheers, R. On 3/26/07, Brian Butterworth [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Just for the record, I have a UK-focused site, so I have these figures for March 2007: www.ukfree.tv Internet explorer is 66% of all traffic. of which 7.0 52% (34.63% of total); 6.0 47% (31.4% of total), 5.0 (0.8% of total) (Firefox is 28.78% of total, Opera 1% of total) On the OS front, I get Windows NT/XP/Vista: 88%,
RE: [backstage] Browser Stats
If you read Martin Belam (hello Martin!) on the methods he used to derive these figures, you'll note that he's extremely thorough in his data analysis. http://www.currybet.net/articles/user_agents/index.php I think you should read a little levity in to Jem's use of a grin after the Linux comment! Below are the stats, taken from our Sage Analyst system (http://www.sagemetrics.com/content/sageanalyst/overview.html - about the system, currently very slow!), from the 24th of march - the most recent 24h period available. We tend to run a bit late, as, IIRC, the daily server logs run to around 5gigabytes of data, which needs to be warehoused and processed. These figures are for all visits, to all pages of the whole of bbc.co.uk, not just the homepage. Automated requests (from bots, spiders etc) are stripped from our data; as far as I know we comply with JICWEBS and IFABC standards that require this. This is done using browser string filtering, against an industry standard set of strings supplied by IFABC. I provide these OS breakdowns both as % of Total Page Views, and % of users. Unique users are deduplicated, based on Cookie data - so you should caveat that with the usual cookie churn stuff*. However, as we're looking at percentage shares in a very large (6.5million+) user sample, I think it should be considered a good indicative slice. By Page Impression Operating Systems for Mar 24, 2007 for Entire Site from Entire World OS Type % of Total Page Views Windows 88.37 Macintosh 4.51 Liberate3.32 Nokia 1.09 SonyEricsson0.67 BlackBerry 0.43 Motorola0.36 Samsung 0.23 LG 0.17 NEC 0.08 Orange 0.04 Sagem 0.03 O2 0.02 TMobile 0.01 Sharp 0.01 Linux 0.01 DOS 0 Panasonic 0 BenQ0 Sprint 0 ZTE 0 Philips 0 Unix0 VK 0 Siemens 0 Toshiba 0 Sun 0 Sanyo 0 IRIX0 OSF10 Unidentified0.65 By User Operating Systems for Mar 24, 2007 for Entire Site from Entire World OS Type % of Total Users Windows 85.39 Macintosh 6.51 Nokia 2.26 Liberate1.66 SonyEricsson1.5 Motorola0.84 BlackBerry 0.76 Samsung 0.55 LG 0.18 Sagem 0.08 Orange 0.06 Sharp 0.04 O2 0.03 TMobile 0.03 Linux 0.02 Panasonic 0.02 NEC 0.02 BenQ0.01 DOS 0.01 Philips 0.01 ZTE 0 Sprint 0 Toshiba 0 VK 0 Unix0 Siemens 0 Sanyo 0 Sun 0 IRIX0 OSF10 - - - Breakdown of WINDOWS operating systems Operating Systems for Mar 24, 2007 for Entire Site from Entire World OS Type % of Total Page Views Windows XP 53.71 Windows XP SP2 31.96 Windows 20006.94 Windows NT 2.65 Windows Vista 2.25 Windows 98 1.23 Windows ME 0.72 Windows CE 0.35 Windows 32 0.13 Windows 95 0.06 Windows 64 0.01 Windows 31 0 Breakdown of MAC os'es Operating Systems for Mar 24, 2007 for Entire Site from Entire World OS Type % of Total Page Views Macintosh X 97.21 Macintosh PowerPC 2.53 Macintosh 0.26 Macintosh OS8 0 Breakdown of LINUX oses Operating Systems for Mar 24, 2007 for Entire Site from Entire World OS Type % of Total Page Views Linux 2443.17 Linux 2236.4 Linux 2020.43 *From our guidance notes, internally: Figures for unique users are based on the BBCUID. This is a unique identifier - known as a cookie - which is sent to a user's computer the first time they request a page from a BBC web site. Provided the cookie is accepted by the requesting computer then it will be saved to that computer's memory and will be returned to the web server with all subsequent requests. The returned cookies are included in the log records for each request and because each cookie is unique it is then possible to track the activity of each user across time. The total number of unique users is really a count of the number of unique BBCUID values seen in the logs. Note that although each cookie may appear many times in the log it must only be counted once. It is this de-duplication that makes unique user figures difficult to calculate. Some important points to note about unique users: * Users are not people. Cookies attach to browsers, to user logins or possibly to a combination of these. If 2 people share the same machine and the same user login they would share the same BBCUID and appear as the same person. Equally if the same person were to use two different machines then they would be counted as two users. * Some browsers do not accept cookies. When this happens a new cookie will be sent out for every request that browser makes. If we counted these cookies as users it would push the number of users up. So we don't count cookies we send out, only those that we get back. * There may be a number of situations where cookies, including the BBCUID, will get deleted from a computer. Some companies wipe
RE: [backstage] Browser Stats
These stats are very interesting (especially BlackBerry 0.43%), and the use of a cookie (with the provisos listed at the bottom of the page) to track 'users' provides a good insight. Is it possible that these stats could be provided automatically, say on a daily basis so it can be used to track the use of browsers and platforms. The BBC, as a public service, would be doing a great service for the rest of the industry to have these stats available as a 'live page', perhaps with some nice graphs and things. Having it a resource would, IMHO, help UK web developers. Please email me back if you need any more help. Brian Butterworth www.ukfree.tv -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Kim Plowright Sent: 28 March 2007 11:04 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: RE: [backstage] Browser Stats If you read Martin Belam (hello Martin!) on the methods he used to derive these figures, you'll note that he's extremely thorough in his data analysis. http://www.currybet.net/articles/user_agents/index.php I think you should read a little levity in to Jem's use of a grin after the Linux comment! Below are the stats, taken from our Sage Analyst system (http://www.sagemetrics.com/content/sageanalyst/overview.html - about the system, currently very slow!), from the 24th of march - the most recent 24h period available. We tend to run a bit late, as, IIRC, the daily server logs run to around 5gigabytes of data, which needs to be warehoused and processed. These figures are for all visits, to all pages of the whole of bbc.co.uk, not just the homepage. Automated requests (from bots, spiders etc) are stripped from our data; as far as I know we comply with JICWEBS and IFABC standards that require this. This is done using browser string filtering, against an industry standard set of strings supplied by IFABC. I provide these OS breakdowns both as % of Total Page Views, and % of users. Unique users are deduplicated, based on Cookie data - so you should caveat that with the usual cookie churn stuff*. However, as we're looking at percentage shares in a very large (6.5million+) user sample, I think it should be considered a good indicative slice. By Page Impression Operating Systems for Mar 24, 2007 for Entire Site from Entire World OS Type % of Total Page Views Windows 88.37 Macintosh 4.51 Liberate 3.32 Nokia 1.09 SonyEricsson 0.67 BlackBerry0.43 Motorola 0.36 Samsung 0.23 LG0.17 NEC 0.08 Orange0.04 Sagem 0.03 O20.02 TMobile 0.01 Sharp 0.01 Linux 0.01 DOS 0 Panasonic 0 BenQ 0 Sprint0 ZTE 0 Philips 0 Unix 0 VK0 Siemens 0 Toshiba 0 Sun 0 Sanyo 0 IRIX 0 OSF1 0 Unidentified 0.65 By User Operating Systems for Mar 24, 2007 for Entire Site from Entire World OS Type % of Total Users Windows 85.39 Macintosh 6.51 Nokia 2.26 Liberate 1.66 SonyEricsson 1.5 Motorola 0.84 BlackBerry0.76 Samsung 0.55 LG0.18 Sagem 0.08 Orange0.06 Sharp 0.04 O20.03 TMobile 0.03 Linux 0.02 Panasonic 0.02 NEC 0.02 BenQ 0.01 DOS 0.01 Philips 0.01 ZTE 0 Sprint0 Toshiba 0 VK0 Unix 0 Siemens 0 Sanyo 0 Sun 0 IRIX 0 OSF1 0 - - - Breakdown of WINDOWS operating systems Operating Systems for Mar 24, 2007 for Entire Site from Entire World OS Type % of Total Page Views Windows XP53.71 Windows XP SP231.96 Windows 2000 6.94 Windows NT2.65 Windows Vista 2.25 Windows 981.23 Windows ME0.72 Windows CE0.35 Windows 320.13 Windows 950.06 Windows 640.01 Windows 310 Breakdown of MAC os'es Operating Systems for Mar 24, 2007 for Entire Site from Entire World OS Type % of Total Page Views Macintosh X 97.21 Macintosh PowerPC 2.53 Macintosh 0.26 Macintosh OS8 0 Breakdown of LINUX oses Operating Systems for Mar 24, 2007 for Entire Site from Entire World OS Type % of Total Page Views Linux 24 43.17 Linux 22 36.4 Linux 20 20.43 *From our guidance notes, internally: Figures for unique users are based on the BBCUID. This is a unique identifier - known as a cookie - which is sent to a user's computer the first time they request a page from a BBC web site. Provided the cookie is accepted by the requesting computer then it will be saved to that computer's memory and will be returned to the web server with all subsequent requests. The returned cookies are included in the log records for each request and because each cookie is unique it is then possible to track the activity of each user across time. The total number of unique users is really a count of the
Re: [backstage] Browser Stats
Gruß Gott - if I wasn't being worked like a dog on the last three days of my contract here in Austria I would have responded at some length already, but most of the points I would have made appear to have been covered already... ;-) I can give you off hand the user agent figures for all the Sony services I work on though (well, the web ones anyway) - Internet Explorer 100%, Microsoft Windows 100% - everything else gets chucked off. Not through lack of trying on my part, I should add, I have trained a parrot to sit on my shoulder chipping in with And the reason we don't support Firefox is? every five minutes during meetings here. cheers, martin On 28/03/07, Kim Plowright [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: If you read Martin Belam (hello Martin!) on the methods he used to derive these figures, you'll note that he's extremely thorough in his data analysis. http://www.currybet.net/articles/user_agents/index.php I think you should read a little levity in to Jem's use of a grin after the Linux comment! Below are the stats, taken from our Sage Analyst system (http://www.sagemetrics.com/content/sageanalyst/overview.html - about the system, currently very slow!), from the 24th of march - the most recent 24h period available. We tend to run a bit late, as, IIRC, the daily server logs run to around 5gigabytes of data, which needs to be warehoused and processed. These figures are for all visits, to all pages of the whole of bbc.co.uk, not just the homepage. Automated requests (from bots, spiders etc) are stripped from our data; as far as I know we comply with JICWEBS and IFABC standards that require this. This is done using browser string filtering, against an industry standard set of strings supplied by IFABC. I provide these OS breakdowns both as % of Total Page Views, and % of users. Unique users are deduplicated, based on Cookie data - so you should caveat that with the usual cookie churn stuff*. However, as we're looking at percentage shares in a very large (6.5million+) user sample, I think it should be considered a good indicative slice. By Page Impression Operating Systems for Mar 24, 2007 for Entire Site from Entire World OS Type % of Total Page Views Windows 88.37 Macintosh 4.51 Liberate3.32 Nokia 1.09 SonyEricsson0.67 BlackBerry 0.43 Motorola0.36 Samsung 0.23 LG 0.17 NEC 0.08 Orange 0.04 Sagem 0.03 O2 0.02 TMobile 0.01 Sharp 0.01 Linux 0.01 DOS 0 Panasonic 0 BenQ0 Sprint 0 ZTE 0 Philips 0 Unix0 VK 0 Siemens 0 Toshiba 0 Sun 0 Sanyo 0 IRIX0 OSF10 Unidentified0.65 By User Operating Systems for Mar 24, 2007 for Entire Site from Entire World OS Type % of Total Users Windows 85.39 Macintosh 6.51 Nokia 2.26 Liberate1.66 SonyEricsson1.5 Motorola0.84 BlackBerry 0.76 Samsung 0.55 LG 0.18 Sagem 0.08 Orange 0.06 Sharp 0.04 O2 0.03 TMobile 0.03 Linux 0.02 Panasonic 0.02 NEC 0.02 BenQ0.01 DOS 0.01 Philips 0.01 ZTE 0 Sprint 0 Toshiba 0 VK 0 Unix0 Siemens 0 Sanyo 0 Sun 0 IRIX0 OSF10 - - - Breakdown of WINDOWS operating systems Operating Systems for Mar 24, 2007 for Entire Site from Entire World OS Type % of Total Page Views Windows XP 53.71 Windows XP SP2 31.96 Windows 20006.94 Windows NT 2.65 Windows Vista 2.25 Windows 98 1.23 Windows ME 0.72 Windows CE 0.35 Windows 32 0.13 Windows 95 0.06 Windows 64 0.01 Windows 31 0 Breakdown of MAC os'es Operating Systems for Mar 24, 2007 for Entire Site from Entire World OS Type % of Total Page Views Macintosh X 97.21 Macintosh PowerPC 2.53 Macintosh 0.26 Macintosh OS8 0 Breakdown of LINUX oses Operating Systems for Mar 24, 2007 for Entire Site from Entire World OS Type % of Total Page Views Linux 2443.17 Linux 2236.4 Linux 2020.43 *From our guidance notes, internally: Figures for unique users are based on the BBCUID. This is a unique identifier - known as a cookie - which is sent to a user's computer the first time they request a page from a BBC web site. Provided the cookie is accepted by the requesting computer then it will be saved to that computer's memory and will be returned to the web server with all subsequent requests. The returned cookies are included in the log records for each request and because each cookie is unique it is then possible to track the activity of each user across time. The total number of unique users is really a count of the number of unique BBCUID values seen in the logs. Note that although each cookie may appear many times in the log it must only be counted once. It is this de-duplication that makes unique user figures difficult to calculate. Some important points to note about unique users: * Users are not people. Cookies attach to browsers, to user logins or possibly to a
Re: [backstage] Browser Stats
On 28/03/07, Jason Cartwright [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I suspect you already know this, and perhaps your question is rhetorical. I'll answer it anyhow :-). Some browsers had different interpretations of the standards and render pages radically differently from each other. Testing to the standards is pointless, and will result in thousands of emails asking why IE, and it's box model, has messed up the pretty design. J Actually as far as I can tell, everyone execpt MSIE is aiming to meet the ACID 2 test: http://www.webstandards.org/action/acid2/ Admittedly firefox isn't there yet, but has it as a milestone; but IIRC Opera, Safri and Konquer all meet the test. So it's no some browsers it's a browser. Unfortunately, that browser just happens to be the most widely used one, so it has to be supported.
RE: [backstage] Browser Stats
They are working on it... http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/07/29/445242.aspx (last 3 paras). Molly (a visitor around here every so often [1]) is on the case from the inside... http://weblogs.asp.net/molly/ J [1] http://www.flickr.com/photos/jasoncartwright/tags/molly/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/jasoncartwright/377686574/ From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of vijay chopra Sent: 28 March 2007 12:35 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: Re: [backstage] Browser Stats On 28/03/07, Jason Cartwright [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I suspect you already know this, and perhaps your question is rhetorical. I'll answer it anyhow :-). Some browsers had different interpretations of the standards and render pages radically differently from each other. Testing to the standards is pointless, and will result in thousands of emails asking why IE, and it's box model, has messed up the pretty design. J Actually as far as I can tell, everyone execpt MSIE is aiming to meet the ACID 2 test: http://www.webstandards.org/action/acid2/ Admittedly firefox isn't there yet, but has it as a milestone; but IIRC Opera, Safri and Konquer all meet the test. So it's no some browsers it's a browser. Unfortunately, that browser just happens to be the most widely used one, so it has to be supported.
[backstage] Newcastle Speakers Club - Wall of Video
Two points I want to make 1) Still impossible to find video content that the BBC produces, there have been lots irrespective of copyright. How to find this http://www.bbc.co.uk/kent/videonation/videos/public_speaking.shtml So I can add it to this http://tapnortheast.typepad.com/speakers_club/2007/03/some_public_spe.html 2) How about a blinkx type widget from the BBC If there is one or there are better ones than this please let me know Richard
RE: [backstage] Newcastle Speakers Club - Wall of Video
Some video search stuff was announced the other day. Apparently its going to be used on CBBC CBeebies to start with... http://www.google.com/search?q=ibm+video+search+cbeebies J From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Richard Hyett Sent: 28 March 2007 13:42 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: [backstage] Newcastle Speakers Club - Wall of Video Two points I want to make 1) Still impossible to find video content that the BBC produces, there have been lots irrespective of copyright. How to find this http://www.bbc.co.uk/kent/videonation/videos/public_speaking.shtml So I can add it to this http://tapnortheast.typepad.com/speakers_club/2007/03/some_public_spe.ht ml 2) How about a blinkx type widget from the BBC If there is one or there are better ones than this please let me know Richard
Re: [backstage] Radio 1 on Twitter
On 21/02/07, Tristan Ferne [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Glad you like it the idea. What Radio 4 updates would you find interesting? The Shipping Forecast -- Andy Roberts http://distributedresearch.net/blog/ http://pajamanation.co.uk - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Radio 1 on Twitter
On 3/28/07, Andy Roberts [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 21/02/07, Tristan Ferne [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Glad you like it the idea. What Radio 4 updates would you find interesting? I hope you don't mind a little self-promotion, but I recently set up http://twitterfeed.com - a service that lets you take any RSS feed and post its updates to twitter. So if anyone here wants specific BBC twitter updates, as long as there's a feed for it, you should be able to create a twitter bot for it all on your own :-) A little experimental still, but working so far.. Mario.
RE: [backstage] Browser Stats
Is it possible that these stats could be provided automatically, say on a daily basis so it can be used to track the use of browsers and platforms. No. Slightly longer answer - the stats system is problematic, and doesn't provide easy ways to route this kind of thing externally. It's under strain from the ammount of data it has to process already, and it's supported by a hugely overworked bloke called Danny. I could ask him, but he'd give me a look like I'd strangled his puppy. I don't like making Danny sad. I'll try and remember to send browser / OS updates once a month when I prepare (lovingly, by hand, at great personal pain and grief) our internal stats reports. Not really the kind of thing I can divert resource to automating, even to make my life easier, sorry :( - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
[backstage] Hack Day 2007! Get your diaries / ical / outlook / ipod / phone / wall chart out
As many of you may have already heard through the geek grape vine (GGV 2.0) ;-) The BBC and Yahoo! are planning to get together to hold 48 hours of hacking madness this summer. Over the weekend of June 16th and 17th we plan to see over 400 developers and designers from all over Europe heading to Alexandra Palace in London to hack the hell out of our APIs and various feeds and systems. Plenty of help will be on hand if you're new to the scene, or if you just want to push the envelope with your ideas and prototypes. We plan to finish the event with a huge concert (band is top secret - more details via GGV I'm sure) and party open to over 1000 people we hope. The formal announcement and sign up will go live soon - so block the dates out of your diary and get those laptops charging. -- Matthew Cashmore Development Producer Future Media Technology, Research Development Technology 07711 913241 [EMAIL PROTECTED] BC4B5, Broadcast Centre, 201 Wood Lane, London. W12 7TS
RE: [backstage] Hack Day 2007! Get your diaries / ical / outlook / ipod / phone / wall chart out
yes! for some of us this has been a very hard secret to keep over the last few months... Its going to be a fantastic event, in a fantastic venue, so huge thanks to Matt for working to make it happen. looking forward to seeing lots of you there... matt ___ Matt Locke Head of Innovation BBC Future Media Technology BC5 C3, Broadcast Centre Media Village, London W12 7TP T: 0208 008 5266 (02 85266) From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Matthew Cashmore Sent: Wednesday, March 28, 2007 4:51 PM To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: [backstage] Hack Day 2007! Get your diaries / ical / outlook / ipod / phone / wall chart out As many of you may have already heard through the geek grape vine (GGV 2.0) ;-) The BBC and Yahoo! are planning to get together to hold 48 hours of hacking madness this summer. Over the weekend of June 16th and 17th we plan to see over 400 developers and designers from all over Europe heading to Alexandra Palace in London to hack the hell out of our APIs and various feeds and systems. Plenty of help will be on hand if you're new to the scene, or if you just want to push the envelope with your ideas and prototypes. We plan to finish the event with a huge concert (band is top secret - more details via GGV I'm sure) and party open to over 1000 people we hope. The formal announcement and sign up will go live soon - so block the dates out of your diary and get those laptops charging. -- Matthew Cashmore Development Producer Future Media Technology, Research Development Technology 07711 913241 [EMAIL PROTECTED] BC4B5, Broadcast Centre, 201 Wood Lane, London. W12 7TS
Re: [backstage] Hack Day 2007! Get your diaries / ical / outlook / ipod / phone / wall chart out
Is now going to have to avidly watch this list like a hawk for mention of tickets becoming available in order to pounce. Good job Matt and everyone else involved if it turns out as good as it sounds. G On 28/03/07, Matt Locke [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: yes! for some of us this has been a very hard secret to keep over the last few months... Its going to be a fantastic event, in a fantastic venue, so huge thanks to Matt for working to make it happen. looking forward to seeing lots of you there... matt ___ Matt Locke Head of Innovation BBC Future Media Technology BC5 C3, Broadcast Centre Media Village, London W12 7TP T: 0208 008 5266 (02 85266) From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Matthew Cashmore Sent: Wednesday, March 28, 2007 4:51 PM To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: [backstage] Hack Day 2007! Get your diaries / ical / outlook / ipod / phone / wall chart out As many of you may have already heard through the geek grape vine (GGV 2.0) ;-) The BBC and Yahoo! are planning to get together to hold 48 hours of hacking madness this summer. Over the weekend of June 16th and 17th we plan to see over 400 developers and designers from all over Europe heading to Alexandra Palace in London to hack the hell out of our APIs and various feeds and systems. Plenty of help will be on hand if you're new to the scene, or if you just want to push the envelope with your ideas and prototypes. We plan to finish the event with a huge concert (band is top secret - more details via GGV I'm sure) and party open to over 1000 people we hope. The formal announcement and sign up will go live soon - so block the dates out of your diary and get those laptops charging. -- Matthew Cashmore Development Producer Future Media Technology, Research Development Technology 07711 913241 [EMAIL PROTECTED] BC4B5, Broadcast Centre, 201 Wood Lane, London. W12 7TS -- Gareth Rushgrove morethanseven.net webdesignbookshelf.com refreshnewcastle.org frontendarchitecture.com - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Radio 1 on Twitter
Mario Menti wrote: I hope you don't mind a little self-promotion, but I recently set up http://twitterfeed.com - a service that lets you take any RSS feed and post its updates to twitter. So if anyone here wants specific BBC twitter updates, as long as there's a feed for it, you should be able to create a twitter bot for it all on your own :-) So I can now have any feed text messaged to me for free :) -- From the North, this is Kirk - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Radio 1 on Twitter
On 3/28/07, Kirk Northrop [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Mario Menti wrote: I hope you don't mind a little self-promotion, but I recently set up http://twitterfeed.com - a service that lets you take any RSS feed and post its updates to twitter. So if anyone here wants specific BBC twitter updates, as long as there's a feed for it, you should be able to create a twitter bot for it all on your own :-) So I can now have any feed text messaged to me for free :) Yes, that's the idea (well, one of many...) Mario.
Re: [backstage] Browser Stats
What is more likely is: 0.4% of users WHERE DETECTED AS using a Linux operating system AT THE TIME THEY VISITED THE BBC SITE. Cam we assume that global stats (of random websites) show a higher number of Linux web clients that this, such as wget and telnet www.example.com 80? YMMV, Gordo -- Think Feynman/ http://pobox.com/~gordo/ [EMAIL PROTECTED]/// - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
[backstage] Weather Feeds
Hello All, I've finally gotten around to having a play with the weather RSS feeds and I notice that one of the feed's trips up my xml parser. http://feeds.bbc.co.uk/weather/feeds/rss/5day/id/3374.xml - has an illegal character in the name the in the Elephant Castle. I'm skipping it for now (sorry anyone who lives in EC). Cheers, James Brook - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
