Gareth Moore wrote in to let us know that, as foretold in the forums, the "Brits Who Made the Modern World" series is a big rip-off of the book "The Backroom Boys". No, wait, that wasn't it.
 
The final episode airs on August 22nd at 7:30pm on Five. Go on, guess what it's about.
 
  12 comments in the forums

Yeah, that whole "updating a website" thing. We're quite shit at it, aren't we?
 
We do have some good stuff coming up, though. In the meantime, if you've not seen it, I recommend watching Hyperland - a 1990 Douglas Adams documentary. To say much more would spoil it, but it's fascinating stuff, especially considering when it was made.
 
Pity about the snipe at Filthy, Rich & Catflap at the start, mind you. (Indeed, the snipes at telly are pretty misjudged as a whole.) It's utterly wonderful, and I recommend you buy the DVD if you haven't seen it. At £6.99, what is there to lose? Well, apart from £6.99, of course.
 

Each week we hold up a mirror to the people of RISC OS and reflect the current topics of debate.
 
In this, the third exciting installment:

• Demo versions of software
• BBC iPlayer protests won't aid RISC OS
• Another user says goodbye

 

I've been excited about the Helvetica movie ever since I read about it on NoiseToSignal last August. According to the blurb, "Helvetica is a feature-length independent film about typography, graphic design and global visual culture. It looks at the proliferation of one typeface (which is celebrating its 50th birthday this year) as part of a larger conversation about the way type affects our lives."
 
It finally premiered on the 13th at SXSW and, judging from the reviews, it seems it's everything I hoped for...

Thanks to Hustwit's clean lines of narrative and intellectually playful style, we get a great look at the universality of Helvetica as a typeface and how, after it was unveiled in 1957 and hailed as a miracle of modernism, it became the unofficial font of official activities. Hustwit's camera noses through a variety of urban landscapes and shows you just how omnipresent Helvetica is -- traffic signs, logos, official notices, storefronts.
 
At its best, Helvetica makes us actually look at the world around us, and actually think about how the medium is the message, how much art is in the things our eyes gloss over every day.
 
One of the most intellectually exciting, stimulating, warm-hearted and best-made independent documentaries I've seen in a long time, Helvetica turns 26 letters into a whole new perspective on the world.
 
Cinematical

This is not really a movie about a typeface. Helvetica is just a character in this wonderfully-made film, which just might be the best history of graphic design we've ever seen ... Designer or not, you will never, ever see the world the same again.
 
MediaBistro

Hopefully the UK screenings will be announced soon. I need to see this film.
 

The BBC's online education service, BBC Jam, is to be suspended after commercial online companies made complaints to the European Commission.
 
BBC Jam costs each licence fee contributor 14p per month, with the BBC pledging to invest £150m over five years.
 
Acting BBC Trust Chairman Chitra Bharucha said in a statement: "Despite a rigorous approval process involving the BBC Governors, the Department for Culture Media and Sport, and the European Commission resulting in extensive conditions on the service, BBC Jam has continued to attract complaints from the commercial sector about the parameters of its activities."
 
I find it ridiculous that the BBC is prevented from fulfulling its public service remit EDUCATING OUR NATION'S CHILDREN because it's deemed anti-competitive, yet it's perfectly OK for them to hand the TV-over-IP market to Microsoft.
 

Slightly outside our usual remit, this, but I thought I'd just pass on this message from the Doctor Who Restoration Team:

"We are keen to hear from anyone who has material recorded off-air that may not exist in official archives that would be of interest to Doctor Who fans and posterity, which we could include in future DVDs. Without help from a few fans in the past, we would not have had items on the DVDs such as any of the 'Swap Shop', 'Pebble Mill' or 'Nationwide' interviews, BSB interview segments, trailers and continuity announcements. Although we have access to a large number of items, coverage remains patchy. We are sure that there are many clips out there which we do not have, or which are in better quality than our current holdings. We want to avoid the situation where, after a DVD is released, someone approaches us with a better copy of something, or extra material which could have improved the release."

The Who DVD releases are some of the best archive telly releases ever produced; so if you think you have anything that could make them even better, then why not have a rummage and get in touch with them?