Brilliant Web Tools

Secret tips for the Beeb sites & apps you love

The BBC has come a long way since the days of sending photocopied typed letters to Blue Peter badge winners (including yours truly for being a runner-up in a stamp-designing competition in 1981 – pictured). The BBC is no longer just a British broadcasting corporation. It’s now a global technology innovator, leading the way in streaming TV, virtual reality and smart news apps.

But what’s special about the Beeb is that it embraces the old as well as the new. Its incredible website – a Beeb-wide-web of hundreds of websites – is packed with classic shows, historical documents and archived sites from the earliest days of the BBC online, as well as innovative interactive tools.

Perhaps that’s why peoplepl love the Beeb so much. It doesn’t’t force change on us, unlike Microsoft and Google often seem to. That said, the BBC has too evolve, which is why we’ll explain how recentnt upgrades, like iplayer’s new mandatory sign-in,n, are useful and even essential. But it’s never change for change’s sake. The BBC iplayer is UK consumers’ second-most trusted brand, according to a recent Yougov survey ( www.snipca. com/25422). Only John Lewis beats it. In fact, with BBC One in fifth place and BBC Two in ninth, the BBC is clearly a service we believe in – Microsoft, Facebook and even Google are nowhere to be seen. For this feature, we’ve spent days immersingg ourselves in the BBC’S inincredible online offering and picked out only the very best bits for you. Wewe’ll explore the iplayer’s bebest new features and rereveal all of the hidden vivintage gems that you’ll wawant to watch right now. Ththen we’ll look at the Bebeeb’s best spin-off sites anand apps – and revereveal our favourite discdiscoveries that you wowon’t want to miss.