Like most industries, the web design industry is affected by fashions and trends. As soon as one website tries something and coincidentally happens to be successful, people instantly presume the design was the key factor and update their websites accordingly.

Google introduced the minimalist website at a time when most websites were cluttered and suddenly everyone wanted to pull in the Digital Feng Shui experts and de-clutter their websites.

Blogs looked like the future once, and big corporate websites not only needed blogs written in a casual way by the Managing Director Press Office, but this expanded to making the whole website look like a blog, and in some cases putting out key financial information in in blog postings rather than in the investors or financial news section.

Now there is a new trend – the analogue clock.

I am not sure where it started, but the first version of it I saw was on the relaunched UK Parliament website, which apart from being full of bugs had suddenly acquired an animated clock at the top of the page. Despite being fairly universally disliked in the comments section, the website designer was adamant that it would remain.

Recently,  the BBC website received one of its periodic evolutions and gained a clock at the top of the page. Semi-tolerable in that it is in the style of the BBC clock from about two-decades ago, so old people will like it, but I still wonder what functionality it adds to the website.

Recently I noted that the Chinese website, Xinhua had gained a clock – although it looks suspiciously like the BBC clock and even had the same animated seconds hand. The file name is different though, so they have at least tried to cover their tracks if plagiarism has occurred.

This morning, my attention was drawn to a website promoting a course about tea tasting (nice idea, ouch price tag) and it has a clock on the top of the website. Are people timing their tea making process by website clocks I wondered?

These are just the websites I could recall this morning – I’ve seen clocks sprouting up all over the place over the past couple of months.

The clocks are taking over!

As quite a fan of both the art and the science of Horology, and at one time had about a dozen different clocks in my living room, I love clocks – but not on websites.

If I want to see clocks, I’ll go here. I don’t need to be reminded of the time every time I visit a website though.

Please, let the fashion for putting analogue clocks on the tops of websites be a short-lived one.

Update:

It’s been drawn to my attention that the beta version of the new BBC website has dropped the clock. It seems the era of website clocks may indeed be a short-lived one. Hurruh!

My attention has been drawn to a newish feature on the BBC website that aims to review blogs from around the world “for a special BBC season about the power of the internet”.

…well, at least they will until the cutbacks in the BBC’s website start to take effect.

Starting on March 8th the BBC will be airing short TV and radio slots in English, Arabic and Farsi, talking with some of the bloggers they feature. That probably gives you a feel for the sort of blogs they want to review, which for me at least makes the project more interesting as I do like to keep up to date with international news and opinion.

They are seeking recommendations, either via email on super.power@bbc.co.uk, comment on their website, or via twitter @bbc_blogworld.

There is a bit of a rant by John Dugdale over at The Guardian complaining about an increasing trend for semi-serious TV shows being fronted by a (diminishing) pool of respected and serious news journalists. Situations such as Jeremy Paxman presenting a recent documentary series on Victorian Art, David Dimbleby on the British Art and Andrew Marr on, well – almost anything.

Some of the complaints have merit, as sometimes the presenter and the programme topic make me wonder if the producers just “rented a head” to get in the ratings. I do however find this more prevalent in the more tabloid end of the documentary market. The sort of shows that can be found lingering at the upper end of the Sky TV menu with titles that invariably include “mega” in the topic title.

The issue I have with the more serious documentaries that The Guardian is complaining about is that – in general – they are presented very well, by very good presenters and if that is what is needed to pull in the viewers, then shouldn’t the complaint be aimed at the viewers for their lack of curiosity?

Jeremy Paxman was genuinely brilliant when presenting the series on Victorian art and engineering last year. Andrew Marr does spread himself a bit thin, but his two series on Modern History has been a real eye opener at times, and even his attempts to ape Rory Bremner in impersonating the way a long-dead politician spoke are mildly amusing.

The one area where I will agree, in part, with the newspaper though is the current series on the Seven Ages of Britain hosted by David Dimbleby. I don’t say that he is a bad presenter, as his recently repeated series on Russia was fantastic. Opps, google tells me that was his brother, Jonathan! OK, he is an average presenter then, but still not that bad.

My main gripe with the programme lays with the editor and production team.

What does a wide angle shot of David walking through a snow covered field tell us about art? Nothing!

What does a helicopter flying over a shoreline tell us about the Bayeux Tapestry? Nothing!

What does the a shot of the corridor in a train as David travels between locations tell us about medieval art? Nothing!

Finally, and most egregiously, what was so special about carrying a large book up a flight of stairs that it warranted as much screen time as was devoted to the actual contents of the book? And the less said about his handling of 900 year old books without wearing gloves the better!

This is a 30 minute show that has been padded out to a full hour with pointless landscape scenes – most of which seem to involve a helicopter – or panning shots over buildings which leave you slightly dizzy as the camera dances around the place.

I’m not sure if they filmed 30 minutes worth of footage per show and then realised they had an hour to fill and raided the stock-footage library, or if the producer has a friend who wanted to hire out a helicopter. Whichever it is – the programme, while better than most of the stuff that the BBC puts out, is a pale shadow of what it could have been.

In that regard, it is a pity that a serious news presenter rented out his head to front it.

After Nick Griffin’s comments on the BBC’s Question Time about homosexuals being creepy, I thought I’d play around with the iconic “hope” poster used during the US Presidential Elections.

Fortunately, there is a website that – with a bit of post-production editing – can generate the Obamicon posters automatically for you from a source image.

After thinking about it in some depth, I have decided not to watch the Last Night of the Proms this evening when it is broadcast on the BBC.

Ordinarily, I try to arrange my evening around being available for the event and tune in with great excitement, but over the past few years I have become increasingly disenchanted with how it is presented on television.

What was once a grand party event inside the Albert Hall for the Promenaders and which we the mere public were graciously permitted to vicariously attend, has mutated into a gigantic festival of events dotted all around the country.

Not to say that this is a bad thing – I think it is brilliant, but the television side of covering the event has changed as well, as various celeb presenters are scattered around the place and the television viewing public are lurched from Hyde Park to Cardiff to Edinburgh and back around again with such speed that it leaves me dizzy with disorientation.

The Last Night of the Proms has become a mirror of another Last Night – the one that occurs on the last day of the year, as the various televison channels compete to show the most parties, the most people screaming and pull in the most guest celebs.

I would love to be able to sit at home, and simply watch the events inside the Royal Albert Hall, without being asked to endure – for endure it is – various episodes of Irish jigs, Welsh singing and Scottish music when I would much rather be watching the events in the Hall.

Maybe the BBC will give us a “hall only” option on the Red Button next year?