BBC moves ahead with TV downloads

Around 190 hours of TV shows and 310 hours of radio programmes are to be made available for legal downloading to selected individuals across the UK.

It marks the second stage in the development of the BBC’s interactive Media Player (iMP).

The iMP will allow viewers to catch up with programmes up to seven days after they are broadcast, using the internet to download shows to home computers.

Later: Cory Doctorow sings the praises of the Beeb in Wired News - The Beeb Shall Inherit the Earth

From a BusinessWeek blog: Web-based Self-Publishing Explodes [pdf]

Turns out, the book printing business is becoming remarkably similar to printing money. Consider: The way Lulu.com works is, prospective authors pick a layout out of a bunch available on the site. They then place their text into the layout and hit publish. Voila! The book is available for purchase via Lola.com or, as the case may be, through Amazon.com. Whenever a customer buys a book, Lola.com’s software automatically takes care of fulfillment (the printing, the mailing), so the book is never touched by a human hand. Then, Lola.com — which also publishes music and movies — takes a 20% cut of the profit.

Not bad, huh? Particularly considering that Lola.com already offers more than 30,000 books, and it publishes about 1,000 new titles each month. Young says he hopes the company’s sales to reach $10 million by 2006.