Today, it was announced that the BBC has signed a deal with Adobe to provide Flash versions of their video content, including the iPlayer. This will allow users of other operating systems to access the last week’s programmes, but only to watch it as live streams. It still won’t be possible to download the content to watch later. The BBC Trust quickly responded to say that the BBC must still provide the full download service on other platforms.

Flash on websites used to be nothing but a nuisance. Sites would have annoying intros, or even worse, the whole site navigation would be slow and virtually unusable. Happily, with the coming of Web 2.0, far more sites use standard HTML and realise the importance of search engine optimisation. Flash has been given a new lease of life as the technology behind sites such as YouTube. Flash is ideal for this. In the past, streaming video embedded in news sites often didn’t work on people’s computers as they would be lacking a plug-in or codec. But where a Flash player is used, all people need is the Flash plugin. It’s only since the invention of Flash-based video players that watching streamed video online has really taken off.

As some people will know, Flash-based video players actually play video that is streamed in FLV format. There are numerous websites and downloadable tools that allow users to download the FLV content, meaning the content can be watched while offline and kept for posterity. If the BBC use Flash on their website, this will most probably mean that the content can be downloaded – without Digital Rights Management to delete it after a month. Some video sites attempt to obfuscate the actual URL of the stream using multiple Javascript calls, but this is quickly figured out by hackers. A site as popular as the BBC will soon be cracked. But then, we are often told the BBC aren’t he ones who want the restrictive DRM: they don’t own most of the content, so are forced to add DRM by the programme makers.

The announcement suggests that Flash is to be offered for all video content in the future, including video clips on the BBC website. At present, these are offered in either RealPlayer or Windows Media format. There were nasty rumours a while ago that the BBC were planning to scrap RealPlayer, and move over to Windows Media-only. The addition of Flash will mean that, even if RealPlayer disappears, the content will be available to everyone. (Hopefully it won’t be too much harder to download the clips, should you want to, than it is at the moment.) In fact, Flash video on the BBC website isn’t a new thing. They have been trialling it on their technology pages for a while. If you watched the clip about the iPlayer above, you’ve already tried it! If you click through to the BBC website, there is a link to “Watch in the News Player”, which shows the same video in RealPlayer or Windows Media Player. This is the shape of things to come! From this clip about the $100 laptop, is also seems the quality isn’t bad. Now all we need is a decent size for the video…

P.S. You can download the video about the iPlayer in FLV format (yes, the streaming-only Flash video!)

In some ways, the world wide web has moved on a lot since I first started using it. Web 2.0, blogs, RSS, etc. simply didn’t exist back then; internet shopping was seen as a risky business, limited to a few specialist retailers. But other aspects of the web are still the same: it’s still possible to find plenty of weird and wonderful websites on whatever subject interests you, and to access information in a way that simply wasn’t possible for the average person in the offline world.

How will the internet evolve in the next 10 years? Both e-mail and the world wide web have remained popular because they are free to the end user, and are based on open standards. The challenges that will face the internet in the future are issues such as net neutrality, digital rights management, and attempts to introduce proprietary standards – all things that could damage the internet as we know it, and hamper its future development. As the internet completes its transition from an academic network to a global medium, let’s hope it continues to be enhanced by the best practices of the commercial world, without gaining the worst.