Last week, the BBC introduced a trial of a new web page linking technology, which enables links to be placed in the text of the article (like this one), but unlike their regular behaviour of taking you to a new page, or opening a new tab, the new method displays a summary of the article in an attractive pop-up region.

You can see a few examples in this story about NASA's Orion ship - at least until the trial finishes.

The BBC's primary reasoning for this, as far as I can tell, is to give the user relevant links in the text, without the possible distraction of finding yourself flying off to an external site in the middle of reading a sentence (possibly unlike Orion, which has been delayed.)

The technology the BBC are using (called Apture) is somewhat interesting: for example, Wikipedia articles are summarised into pages, and files such as PDFs are converted (to Flash in the case of PDFs) to retain the same look and feel as the regular links.

Whilst the overall appearance is quite "whizzy", some people have been complaining that there's nothing wrong with the traditional way of hyperlinking and that the Apture method causes (or may cause) problems with the site's accessibility, and/or older or more obscure web browsers.

The trial was announced on a blog article by Steve Herrmann last week, many people have commented, and Steve has replied, promising they will take all comments into account at the end of trial.

Whatever you may think of the technology itself, I applaud the BBC for the openness of the trial process, listening to the comments of the public, and for getting stuck into trialing new web technologies.

For the record, the links in this blog article are the good "old-fashioned" method!

Interesting reading..

According to The Central Office of Information, all public sector websites will need to comply with strict web accessibility standards by next December, or risk losing their .gov status.

Minimum standards can be viewed here.

Can I just say how amazing it is to be British right now?!

Chris Hoy - sir, we love you

Christine Ohuruogu - you're amazing!

Becky Adlington - they should make you a dame!

Ok, so we've seen the most stunning performances from Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt but the Brits have brought it home.  Team GB - we are all so proud of you!!!!

How about...

best-cakes-in.theworld?

restaurant-at.theendoftheuniverse?

my-dad-is-better-than.yours?!

or, more applicably:

focusnewmedia.bristol?

These are just some of the potential urls that may come out of ICANN's latest announcement regarding top level domains.

Caving into stakeholder pressure, ICANN have agreed to open up the virtual real estate of the web by making it possible for people to select their own domain names.

Currently, internet users have a limited choice of 21 domain extensions, such as .com, .org, and .uk.  By this time next year people may be able to apply for whatever they like.

A major factor behind this change was the pressure and influence exerted by non-English users of the web. 

"One of the most exciting prospect before us is that the expanding system is also being planned to support extensions in the languages of the world," said Peter Dengate Thrush, ICANN's Chairman. "This is going to be very important for the future of the Internet in Asia, the Middle East, Eastern Europe and Russia." The present system only supports 37 Roman characters.

Many pundits see this move as an act of appeasement to the Chinese, who have made many moves to implement a separate internet (going further, even than their Great Firewall).  Others see it as an inevitable solution to increasing web usage, much like the periodic extension of local telephone codes.

I'm personally hanging on to get first dibs at my own name extension - hands off all you other amy wilson's!

Well, clever perhaps isn't the word but effective sounds a bit dull.

Creating a buzz around Firefox 3.0's launch day by attempting to make a World Record for the number of software downloads has worked rather well.  Over 8.3 million users grabbed the software within the 24-hour window, a figure that is being impartially scrutinised before submission to the Guinness Book of Records.

The fact that no other software company has previously attempted this record will no doubt leave some well-paid marketing execs kicking themselves. 

In terms of web development, Firefox 3.0 promises a "leaner, speedier experience", with access to sites like gmail being up to 6 times faster.  It certainly has our own developers smiling!