With BBC director general Mark Thompson taking the fight to Sky (Digital Spy), arguing against News Corp’s intended takeover of Sky, debates are again erupting about the nature of the BBC itself. Again, people who happily spend £70+ per month on Sky are bitching about the rip-off licence fee, so let’s, briefly, imagine an EXCITING PRESS RELEASE from NewTVCo.

NewTVCo has a stupid name, but it’s just announced an audacious attack on the UK TV market. It’s going to provide four mainstream TV stations that will be ad-free, and unlike Sky it’s going to spend a huge wodge of cash commissioning local shows, rather than dipping into a diminishing pool of decent (or even half-decent) US shows. It’s going to provide —by default—major sporting events, top-quality drama, children’s programming, reasonably impartial news, sci-fi, comedy, and more. In addition to this, it’ll roll out an inevitable rolling news channel and a couple of stations to glue wee kids to the screen.

But there’s more! In a pincer movement, NewTVCo also has radio ambitions, and is to provide over half-a-dozen ad-free stations. Some will be mainstream, one will concentrate on indie music, another will be more highbrow. Everyone will be catered for (ad-free, remember) and a bunch of local stations will also be set-up to provide local news coverage.

But there’s still more! Online’s important, and so NewTVCo is going to turn NewTVCo.co.uk into a first-rate website. Again, it’s going to be ad-free, and it’ll provide some of the best news coverage around, along with background and communities for popular shows.

Of course, this won’t all come for free, but it’s going to be staggeringly cheap: £145.50 per year, to be precise, or about 40p per day. (By comparison, News Corp’s Times website charges £2 per week to access thetimes.co.uk and thesundaytimes.co.uk.)

Sounds good, right? You’d bite someone’s arm off for that kind of a deal, yeah? Well, then stop bloody well bitching about the BBC, because it’s already doing all of the above.

Police have arrested the operator of Mulve. Mulve is an app designed to help users download music, via a 10-million-strong database. According to the linked article, the smackdown largely came courtesy of the RIAA.

The thing is, Mulve was just a search engine, albeit one for a very specific purpose. If we get to the point where enabling access to naughty downloads makes operators liable, that’s a pretty worrying prospect—and you can bet the likes of Google and Bing (often the easiest, fastest way to source such download) won’t ever be affected.

The moral of the story appears to be: don’t specialise, stupid, or become so big that the RIAA won’t risk attacking you.

Two articles from me on the fragrant TechRadar website, detailing the very best games (according to me, at least) for the iPhone and iPod touch:

• 20 best free iPhone games on the planet
• 20 best iPhone games – paid apps

The paid-games piece was particularly interesting to write, given that I had a shortlist of over 60 games that I had to brutally and mercilessly hack down. Needless to say that some of those games will make ‘the list’ when these articles are expanded over the coming months.

Last week, I bitched about iOS games, notably the general poor quality. Now I’m going to moan about websites. If you’ve created an app, I’ll visit your website in one of two capacities: as a consumer or as a journalist. Often, I’ll be a consumer and a journalist, just to confuse you.

As a consumer, here’s what I want to know:

1. What does your product do? Describe it to me in under 50 words. Don’t say you can’t do that; and if you genuinely can’t write those words, hire a copywriter. They’ll likely bash out 50 words for a tin of beans. (And, yes, I know you want to say more than 50 words, but you can do that elsewhere. Think of your intro like a book jacket: publishers don’t print the entire story of a novel on the cover.)
2. How much does your product cost? Don’t make me guess! Don’t make me launch iTunes. I hate iTunes. Just put a very obvious price sticker on the web page, even if it’s just in US dollars and you’re pretending the Euro and other currencies don’t exist.
3. What does your app look like? Don’t compress your images to tiny thumbnails—it’s not 1995. If you’re not showing full-size iPhone grabs, you’re an idiot. iPad grabs should be at least half size. And don’t bung all kinds of junk over the grabs—ensure your app or game shines through, not your marketing drivel.
4. Why do you hate me? This is specifically aimed at you if you’re using video instead of a screen grab. I don’t have time for that. I don’t have time for your dissolves and your ‘funny’ edits. Don’t fob me off with a video from YouTube that will take ages to load or boot an instance of Flash that will subsequently kick Safari in the nuts, or I will have to come round there and smack you.
5. Where can I buy it? Provide a link to your App Store page, in case I want to buy your app. Don’t make me go to iTunes and type this in myself. I am lazy, and so is everyone else. Also, do you really want me to go to the App Store with the full intention of buying your product and then bump into NanoStudio or Dark Nebula 2 on the home page? That’s a battle you cannot win. Also, make your direct link big. Don’t hide it at the bottom of the page, in dark grey on a slightly darker grey background. You’re not a web-design agency from 1998.
6. Where can I moan to you about your app? Yeah, you’re just a team of three and you don’t have time to deal with loads of email. Tough. If I’ve bought your product and it’s not working, I want to tell you. ‘Get Satisfaction’ does not count, because it doesn’t enable you to get satisfaction—you just get annoyed about the vague replies to a billion existing topics. A forum does not count, unless you are on there every day and answer every question (which you won’t), and, besides, I might not want to put my comment out there for everyone to see. So just put a form online or an email address—and when that message comes in, respond to it.

As a journalist, here’s what I want to know:

1. All of the above six points. Seriously. If you don’t provide that information right from the start, the chances of me wanting to review your product drop by about eleven billion percent.
2. Where can I download full-quality and full-size PNG images of your app that aren’t covered in garbage? I don’t care how you do this. A ZIP of PNG files is fine. 36 bonus points if you bundle them with a quick review guide. Just don’t make me beg. And if you’re a games dev, don’t tell me to take the grabs myself. For the record, I do try to do this for every review I write, but when you’re already using two thumbs to hurl your virtual car around a virtual corner at a virtual 100 miles per hour, it’s not exactly simple to also hit ‘home’ plus ‘lock’.
3. How do I get in touch with you? No, ‘Get Sodding Satisfaction’ still doesn’t count. Give me an email address, such as press@coolandfunkyiosstuff.com. Or give me a contact form—I don’t care. But here’s the thing: answer my email. Really. By not answering emails from frazzled, stressed-out journos, you’re reducing your chances of coverage by so many percent that a number doesn’t even exist to say how big the reduction actually is. It’s that big.

Usefully, if you’re not an iOS developer, these rules all still apply, so don’t think you’re off the hook, Mac- or Windows-dev person.

Next in this stunning series: helpful hints about why your iTunes App Store page sucks, and what you can do about it.

After a longer gestation than that of a blue whale, Podgamer finally emerged blinking into the daylight today.

It’s a co-production between yours truly, Stu Campbell and J Nash. The content: game reviews and features for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad, except not rubbish. The idea: a fun, irreverent games mag (like the old days, when Amiga Power, Crash and Your Sinclair reigned supreme) that helps you find games that aren’t rubbish on the App Store. Or helps you find rubbish stuff, so you can point and laugh at it. Anyway, podgamer.com—bookmark it.

UPDATE: And, in case anyone pops across this article and wonders what’s going on, Stuart Campbell ragequit Podgamer and has now disabled (possibly deleted) the entire site without warning and locked Nash and myself out of the FTP, despite stating via email on April 7:

I’ve temporarily disabled PG until the proper morning

Maybe ‘the proper morning’ meant the dawn of 2051 or something.