³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ

Since the launch of the new-look weather site back in February, we have continued to develop it, and we have moved content from the old site.

Most recently, we added the Monthly Outlook to our . We've also made improvements behind the scenes to make the site quicker to load and even more reliable.

The next release of improvements, coming soon, will be visibly more noticeable than others we've made since February.

These are part of our continuing effort to make the site clearer and easier to use, whether you use the site to get a quick snapshot of the current forecast or want more detailed information about the weather conditions.

Following feedback from our audiences, and ideas from our weather team, we have made it easier to "Find a Forecast" when you arrive and easier to scan the 24-hour and five-day forecasts to see the weather trend over the coming hours or days.

Everything you found on the site before, you'll still find there now - it'll just be easier to get to the forecast information you need.

When you arrive, you will see our Forecast Finder has more prominence and a new UK Summary gives a quick snapshot of the weather across the UK. The full set of UK maps is still available on the UK Forecast page.

Once you've found your local forecast, you will see that the 24-hour and five-day information is arranged on two tabs again. We have put back the temperature and wind symbols rather than displaying them as text. You can also choose to view all the available detail we have for each of the five days.

As I said above, these improvements are building on the work we started in February and we'll continue to add further improvements and new features in the coming weeks and months.

Richard Chapman is editorial manager of .

Our technical teams are doing some fairly major work on the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ's network overnight UK time. We are trying to ensure this doesn't affect what you see on the website, but there may be some delays in publishing. We will update you when we know more.

Update 06:00 GMT: The planned work has now been completed and I'm pleased to say we're publishing normally.

Steve Herrmann is editor of the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ News website

Another day; another political expenses scandal. Six months on from the worst Parliamentary controversy in memory, the political classes are still reeling from the fallout. .

With a general election looming, MPs rarely have been held in lower public esteem. Polling, even before the expenses affair, suggests that an overwhelming majority of the public feel they have "not very much influence" or "no influence" over decision-making locally (73%) and nationally (85%).

The most commonly cited reason is a belief that politicians overlook the public's views:
• "Nobody listens to what I have to say" (29%)
• "Decisions are made without talking to the people" (20%)
(Electoral Commission Hansard Society / Ipsos Mori 2006)

This might be one reason why 17 million citizens who could have voted at the last general election chose not to.

Today, the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ is helping to launch an new experiment to try and re-invigorate the link between MPs and their constituents - using what's known as "direct democracy" to test how far politicians are willing to do what local people want.

Does the electorate even want the power to influence its MPs' decisions on a daily basis? Do people have time? Do they care? Could this be a long-term way of rehabilitating politics and engaging those who've given up on it? Or will it be seen as just a reaction to this year's scandals?

Two long-serving MPs - both standing down at the next election and from very different constituencies - have agreed to take part: Ann Widdecombe (Con - Maidstone and the Weald) and Richard Caborn (Lab - Sheffield Central).

Ann starts today with an announcement in her constituency and . Richard Caborn will do the same early in the new year.

For three weeks, they'll try to become as accessible as possible to their constituents - using online tools, social networks and text messaging. They'll aim to find out what issues their constituents want them to champion and turn into real action - whether in Parliament or elsewhere.

The process will be supported by a ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ-commissioned local poll, and online voting on local and national issues - and a vote for the right to petition the MPs directly on those issues.

There'll also be a chance for constituents to comment on the kind of MPs they want. For example, will they want the right to vote out their MP mid-term - ?

At a public meeting, the MPs will then explain what they intend to do. This could mean them sponsoring a bill, even voting against the party line. But they'll have to justify in public any decision to go against their constituents' views.

Take a burning national issue like the war in Afghanistan. Would voters want their MPs to urge that troops be pulled out as soon as possible - regardless of the situation in that country? Do they feel that their MPs should champion a "proper" debate and vote in Parliament on our UK involvement, ?

An important part of the project is to test the way technology could change how people think about politics. Both MPs will be given a blog, the ability to vidcast and a Twitter account to post updates ().

It reflects a growing debate (for example, and ) about the role of representative democracy (where MPs make their own judgements or follow those of their parties) as opposed to direct democracy (where policy is dictated by popular opinion via, for example, referendums).

Some of this debate is around devolving power away from the centre. For example, could we have People's Bills, as well the government's, at the next Queen's Speech?

A ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ2 documentary provisionally titled The People's Politician will be broadcast next year. Before that, we will be posting footage and analysis at the project's blog.

Is the internet really the voice of democracy or an easily-gamed opportunity for those most motivated to make their voice heard?

Both MPs are former ministers. Both have agreed not to seek any personal or party-political gain from the experiment. They won't be paid for taking part and the decisions they take won't be binding on their successors.

Let us know what you think by commenting below or at our blog.

Tom Giles is executive producer, ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Current Affairs.

Users of the international edition of the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ News website will notice some changes to the front page today.

We have increased the number of headlines under each of the section headings in the bottom half of the page, made the popular Business and Technology sections more prominent by adding pictures, and we have increased the number of featured items in the video area.

Internationally, advertisements appear on the right hand side of the page alongside editorial content and this has resulted, some of the time, in that side of the page becoming much longer than the rest of it. The modified layout should allow us to balance the two sides of the page better, and provide more headlines at the same time.

Steve Herrmann is editor of the .

From today users of the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ News website will start to see a slight change in some of our headlines on stories.

In some cases these will be longer than they are now, to allow us to spell out in more detail what and who the story is about. This is so that people using search engines to look for the story can find it more easily.

That's probably enough detail for anyone who's read this far. But if not, and you'd like to know more about why we are doing this, please read on...

The practice of "search engine optimisation" - making content in such a way that it is easily retrieved via search engines - is an important area for us and for others across the web.

A growing number of users come to stories on the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ site from places other than our own front page - for example search engines, other sites, personal recommendations, Twitter or RSS feeds.

So our developers have done a bit of work to allow journalists the scope to create two headlines for a story if they want to - a short one which appears on the front page and our other website indexes, and a longer one which will appear on the story page itself and in search engine results.

The front page headlines will remain limited to between 31 and 33 characters and will continue to appear on Ceefax and Digital Text, as they do now, along with the top four paragraphs of each story.

The space constraints on those platforms mean that on the website the headlines have always been short - which, it has to be said, also has its merits, making them easy to scan and fit into lists. They will also continue to appear on mobiles.

The new longer headlines will be up to 55 characters (with spaces) and will aim to include any key words which we might expect a search engine user to type in when searching for news about that particular topic.

So, for example, the difference between a longer and shorter headline version might be as simple as: "Queen's speech: Brown draws election battle lines" instead of "Brown draws election battle lines". Or "Possible counter-bid for Cadbury" might become "Ferrero and Hershey in possible counter-bid for Cadbury".

It'll also be easier for journalists to include full names eg "Janet Jackson blames doctor for Michael's death" instead of "Doctor 'responsible' says Jackson".

None of this should affect the way you can use the site once you are here, but hopefully it will make it easier to find our stories if you are somewhere else.

Steve Herrmann is editor of the .

³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ News has today appointed its first social media editor, to develop the way we gather news from our audiences, and make more of our journalism available on social networks.

Audiences have always contributed directly to the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ's newsgathering, especially on breaking stories. But the technology allowing people to share and send photos, video, and eyewitness accounts is developing all the time.

Important developments in , , and even New York, have been reported for the first time using services such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ News is always working to keep across new sources of information, assessing and verifying them as it would any other potential source of news-making content, and this new role will help to develop that.

Many internet users are also changing the way they consume news, by sharing and commenting on stories on social networks.

In common with other media organisations the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ wants to ensure it is as simple as possible for audiences to interact with us, and deepen our relationship with them in the interests of strengthening our journalism.

Alex Gubbay, who is currently news editor for ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Sport Interactive will take on this new role in January, co-ordinating the work of correspondents and reporters using social media tools, and ensuring best practice is developed and shared within the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ.

He will manage the existing user generated content hub within ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Newswire, making the most of news stories suggested by users, as well as their case studies, photographs, videos and comments, across our website, and on TV and radio. The new role is being funded by redistributing money within ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Newsroom.

Alex will have a particular focus on developing new ways for audiences to have their say on stories being covered by ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ News, and he will be blogging here frequently in the New Year.

Sam Taylor is the editor of Newswire.

Will the Copenhagen climate conference next month get a global deal on measures to control the rise in global temperatures?

That was one of the questions discussed this week when The World Tonight, co-hosted with the journal and looking at the challenges governments all over the world face with climate change and the potential scarcity of natural resources.

We also discussed how measures to deal with climate change could make food, energy and water shortages worse. .

Most of the people at the conference were climate experts, technology specialists, politicians, lobbyists and activists, but there were also journalists ie us.

At one point, the discussion turned to concerns that many climate scientists have that public scepticism about climate change may be growing just as the models these scientists use to project the rise in global temperatures and the impact that will have on ice melt in places like the Himalayas, are suggesting a worse scenario in the next few decades.

They expressed surprise that this should be so.

One explanation offered was that the counter-message from climate change sceptics and lobby groups, especially in the US, that climate change is part of a natural cycle and nothing to worry about is a much simpler message to convey than the arguments for taking action which are based on a precautionary principle and complex climate modelling.

Others asked if the problem was a decline in public trust in scientists generally, because they are often asked to make projections which may not be subsequently borne out by experience.

Still others asked whether the media was responsible for the apparent rise in scepticism, arguing that the media in the interests of balance give airtime too much prominence to climate change sceptics, given the overwhelming majority of climate scientists agree climate change is happening and it is man-made and measures need to be taken to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

From the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ's perspective, the answer to this question is that our journalistic role is not to campaign for anything. Impartiality means not taking sides in a debate, while accurately representing the balance of argument.

So, in the case of climate change we need proportionately to reflect the sceptical view but also, for example, reflect the debate among climate scientists about the most effective way of dealing with global warming.

On our programme, for instance, one of our panellists argued an all-encompassing global conference like Copenhagen is not the way to make progress as it is trying to deal with too many issues at once.

Another of the panellists argued that capping emissions and developing a market to trade in carbon is too slow and uncertain a way of dealing with the problem and we should invest in technical solutions to reducing the amount of CO2.

On the wider issue of reporting risk which is often what reporting what scientists are saying involves, the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ has specific guidelines which you may be interested in reading.

Anyway, take a listen to the programme and let us know what you think.

Alistair Burnett is the editor of The World Tonight.

Some people will have had trouble accessing the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ website in the past few hours. We've had a network failure that has resulted in access to the site being slow and at some points inaccessible. Our network provider's engineers are working on restoring normal service as soon as possible. We're sorry for the inconvenience.

Update, 11:07: I'm pleased to say the problems should now be fixed - we're not aware of any remaining issues.

Steve Herrmann is editor of the .

If you're a user of Twitter, you may have spotted the quiet arrival of the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ's new website called at the end of last week.

The site is officially launched today but for technical reasons, we lifted the barriers to the outside world on Thursday evening. Although we didn't announce its availability, such is the power of social media that people were quick to find us and start tweeting about the site.

even reviewed Democracy Live on Friday and concluded by saying: "It brings a decidedly 21st century edge to watching parliamentary discussion."

"DL", as it's become known in the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ, is the result of about 18 months of development work.

It brings together for the first time in the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ, live and on demand video coverage of proceedings in our national political institutions and the European Parliament. Democracy Live builds on previously available content in the form of video streams, guides and biographies.

But the real magic lies in the site's search function, which is unlike anything the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ has done before.

Read the rest of this post and leave your comments on the About the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ blog.