Links
- History of text
- BBC
- Paramount text mailbox
- Armenian teletext viewer
- Digiester stuff
- Live ceefax and Artel
- Early teletext
- Global teletext viewer
- Technical stuff, America and the rest
- http://homepage.mac.com/william.gallagher/wg.htm
- 30 facts about ceefax
Archives
The news on ther of lost art of teletext. Youtube teletext advert has ceased to work and seemingly can't be removed. Teletext related products should be able to viewed via the below ads if your desperate.
Monday, December 24, 2007
teleteXtmas
Managed to find the teletext advent calender this year, but neglected to mention it here until to Christmas Eve, apologies. It's page 696 on channel four-I think- for anyone who wants a quick last look. Not too much other festive teletext news, other than to say poor weather has moved my aerial and made it difficult to actually read the thing. The curious advertisement for "a letter from Santa" that I've only ever seen on teletext has reappeared this year, which pleases me. Along with big, colourful, blocky Santa of course.
Slightly creepy fat men aside, there has been a few other noteworthy, if not seasonal, happenings in the expansive yet inexpensive world of teletext since my last post. One that popped up through my Google alerts system informs me of RTE's Artel winning a technology award!Sort of. RTE actually won the award for its mobile WAP services which reproduce teletext on your mobile. This can also be done through a link on the ceefax.tv site, which also offers Ceefax funny enough. While it may be more deserving of the award, however, RTE's offering is on safer legal ground so was always the more likely recipient of the no doubt prestigious Irish Internet Association Net Visionary 2007 Award for Mobile Internet. Well if prestigious means long it certainly is. It has 300'000 impressions a month, which doesn't sound too impressive. Its far less than actual Artel or Ceefax usage and when you consider how many impressions one user is likely to make a month (probably quite a few as its a useful service used right) you have to wonder how many users there are. But Ireland is a small country and not too many people are au fait with their mobiles to the degree they can access teletext via the bleepy device.
It is interesting RTE have simply decided to use their teletext service for their WAP services. For all the fuss made of WAP when it first came out, it has far, far more in common with teletext than the internet. It has improved over the last few years, but its largely been usurped by (at least near) actual internet on mobiles. I remember the first time I used WAP services on a phone around 2002, it was like a very slow proto-type teletext. Colourless with very little information and a fidgety control system, entirely devoid of graphics.
If you can drag yourself away from the presumably annul IIANVAMIes (eye-ian-famies), there was another surprising new fangled addition to the bloated Teletext franchise this month. Teletext Extra is Teletext Ltd's EPG( Electronic Programme Guide). That may have been a sentence with lot of capitals but its not actually all that interesting a story. An EPG is essentially an onscreen TV book, telling you whats on when, what its about, when its on again and probably allowing you to set reminders. If you have SKY or Virgin TV or something, you'll be familiar with the one they gave you most likely. In fact I'm not sure how or what you would install Teletext's offering. But anyway, why does it deserve the hallowed moniker Teletext, you may ask. Well, alot of things do these days according to the owner of that particular upper-case word, but there is some logic behind it. Teletext EPG combines the traditional role of an EPG (as outlined above) with the traditional role of classic teletext, providing information on a range of subjects. I'm afraid this was quite a long paragraph on an innovation that probably doesn't deserve even that increasingly worthless moniker. Did we really have that much trouble switching between the EPG and teletext previously? Maybe we did and I've forgotten, must be it. Before we get too cynical and Orwellian , though, we should acknowledge it will be nice to see teletext survive in some form in the digital age.
A quick charitible note, you can find the Christmas Family Appeal on page 178. Probably over by now actually but if your feeling guilty about your Christmas spending there's all sorts of charitable organizations lurking around teletext. Anyway, a Merry Christmas to all appreciate the quaint majesty of teletext, oh and gosh darn it, even those who don't.
Slightly creepy fat men aside, there has been a few other noteworthy, if not seasonal, happenings in the expansive yet inexpensive world of teletext since my last post. One that popped up through my Google alerts system informs me of RTE's Artel winning a technology award!Sort of. RTE actually won the award for its mobile WAP services which reproduce teletext on your mobile. This can also be done through a link on the ceefax.tv site, which also offers Ceefax funny enough. While it may be more deserving of the award, however, RTE's offering is on safer legal ground so was always the more likely recipient of the no doubt prestigious Irish Internet Association Net Visionary 2007 Award for Mobile Internet. Well if prestigious means long it certainly is. It has 300'000 impressions a month, which doesn't sound too impressive. Its far less than actual Artel or Ceefax usage and when you consider how many impressions one user is likely to make a month (probably quite a few as its a useful service used right) you have to wonder how many users there are. But Ireland is a small country and not too many people are au fait with their mobiles to the degree they can access teletext via the bleepy device.
It is interesting RTE have simply decided to use their teletext service for their WAP services. For all the fuss made of WAP when it first came out, it has far, far more in common with teletext than the internet. It has improved over the last few years, but its largely been usurped by (at least near) actual internet on mobiles. I remember the first time I used WAP services on a phone around 2002, it was like a very slow proto-type teletext. Colourless with very little information and a fidgety control system, entirely devoid of graphics.
If you can drag yourself away from the presumably annul IIANVAMIes (eye-ian-famies), there was another surprising new fangled addition to the bloated Teletext franchise this month. Teletext Extra is Teletext Ltd's EPG( Electronic Programme Guide). That may have been a sentence with lot of capitals but its not actually all that interesting a story. An EPG is essentially an onscreen TV book, telling you whats on when, what its about, when its on again and probably allowing you to set reminders. If you have SKY or Virgin TV or something, you'll be familiar with the one they gave you most likely. In fact I'm not sure how or what you would install Teletext's offering. But anyway, why does it deserve the hallowed moniker Teletext, you may ask. Well, alot of things do these days according to the owner of that particular upper-case word, but there is some logic behind it. Teletext EPG combines the traditional role of an EPG (as outlined above) with the traditional role of classic teletext, providing information on a range of subjects. I'm afraid this was quite a long paragraph on an innovation that probably doesn't deserve even that increasingly worthless moniker. Did we really have that much trouble switching between the EPG and teletext previously? Maybe we did and I've forgotten, must be it. Before we get too cynical and Orwellian , though, we should acknowledge it will be nice to see teletext survive in some form in the digital age.
A quick charitible note, you can find the Christmas Family Appeal on page 178. Probably over by now actually but if your feeling guilty about your Christmas spending there's all sorts of charitable organizations lurking around teletext. Anyway, a Merry Christmas to all appreciate the quaint majesty of teletext, oh and gosh darn it, even those who don't.
