Lab UK teamed up with BBC One's Child of Our Time and leading Cambridge academics to deliver a survey that aims to answer the question: do our personalities shape our lives or do our lives shape our personalities? The findings will be revealed in a special series of CoOT in spring/summer 2010.

The Big Personality Test is the second in a trilogy of experiments being delivered by the Lab UK team between September 2009 and February 2010. The first was Brain Test Britain, a full-scale clinical trial that will hopefully tell us whether or not brain training actually works. This is still underway. The third experiment is still being defined, but will be looking at what the internet is doing to our brains.

Despite the development of Lab UK taking place at a truly break-neck speed over the last eight months, we've had to make very few adjustments to our ambitions for the project. And as the Big Personality Test has shown, even where we've not yet delivered the full package to the users, the users are showing a great willingness to fill in the blanks.

For example, we've yet to formally 'socialise' Lab UK with the likes of Facebook, Twitter et al, but this hasn't been a barrier to users who have been furiously tweeting their Big Five personality traits ("Just took the BBC Big Personality Test and scored high on neuroticism! I wonder if this is common across wedding planners...?!") and screengrabbing their results graphs for blogs and profiles.

Needless to say, we have plans to actively facilitate the viral spread of future Lab UK experiments through social networks, as well as delivering experiments for under 18s and looking at some interesting data visualisation ideas for user feedback and experiment results. Then there's the rack of exciting experiment ideas we're developing for 2010 onwards, looking at everything from risky business to the science of sound.

Lab UK started out with two big ideas about how to engage the public in mass-participation experiments online. First, we wanted to use science to tell people something meaningful about themselves. Second, we wanted to tap into a more altruistic motive, by asking people to contribute to the greater good by participating in groundbreaking experiments. As any scientist will tell you, nothing is ever proved beyond all doubt, but the initial results are very encouraging.

Richard Cable is part of the BBC Lab UK team.

What the data shows is as many men as women use iPlayer, with the typical iPlayer user younger than the typical TV viewer or radio listener. As you might expect, the vast majority of people access it via computer, but mobile and games console usage is growing.

We'll be publishing figures for TV and radio first but views of shorter clips will follow later and within the pack there's a technical note on how we collect the data.

Jo Hamilton is the Head Of Audience Measurement, BBC.

• Download the the iPlayer data pack (2.4MB, Powerpoint)

I'll pull together any blogs, reports and pictures on today's sessions in a round up next week. In the meantime read about BeebCamp 2 and the first BeebCamp (and follow #bc3 on twitter - NR).
Paul Murphy is the Editor of the Internet blog.

Most recently, we added the Monthly Outlook to our UK Forecast page. 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.

To read the full post of Changes to BBC Weather site and to leave a comment visit The Editors website.

The bad news though, as laid out by The Guardian is that the roll-out starts as:

"... a limited, closed 'beta' version of the iPlayer set to launch on 7 December for "a few hundred" selected users."

"Freesat said it was aiming to launch an open beta version of the iPlayer, accessible to around 230,000 Freesat households with compatible set-top boxes, by Christmas."

Digital Spy reported that the popularity of iPlayer on TV platforms was seen as justifying the latest moves. In a detailed report Digital Spy quoted blog regular (and head of TV platforms at the BBC) Rahul Chakkara who:

"...revealed that iPlayer registered 97.2 million programme views during October, with 26% coming via TV platforms rather than the web. He said that the figure gives 'validity' to the BBC's efforts to bring the service to Freesat and other suitable TV platforms."

The Digital Spy piece also pointed out that not all Freesat viewers will be able to access the service:

"When it fully launches, the on-demand platform will be available on all Freesat HD equipment, including integrated TVs, but standard definition receivers will not be able to access it."

And while it's on HD receivers it won't start out as HD:

"Despite the platform only being available on HD receivers, it will not support any HD programming. Chakkara said that the team is adopting a 'crawl first' approach to getting the SD service right before looking into HD. He said that any HD launch would also be dependent on available capacity on the UK's broadband networks due to the much greater bandwidth required for HD streams."

Paul Murphy is the Editor of the Internet blog.

More about Freesat and iPlayer on the web:

• FAQs on the Freesat website
• BBC iPlayer coming to Freesat: Telegraph.co.uk
• BBC iPlayer on Freesat - starts soon: UKFreeTV
• Freesat iPlayer beta to start 7th December: T3.com

Today, the BBC 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.

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 a new website. 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.

Paul Murphy is the Editor of the Internet blog.

• Read the rest of Tom's post The People's Politician and have a look at the project blog.
• Follow Ann Widdecombe on Twitter
• Follow the People's Politician on Twitter
• The image is from MP Kerry McCarthy's Twitter feed.
• Read Ann Widdecombe takes on People's Politician role on Kentnews.co.uk.

This time we just pulled in people from within the BBC who have been working independently on projects, technologies or systems that touch the archive in some way.

The BBC 'Archive' as managed by the Information and Archives dept is a massive and varied collection- it includes video and film, radio broadcasts and recordings from the very earliest days of the corporation, and written archives and sheet music from well before. Add to that hundreds of thousands of photographs, and you begin to get a picture of the vast collections we hold. Beyond that though is the 'metadata'! This is the crucial cataloguing information; the production notes, the cast lists, running orders, music notes, accounts even. Today every moment of broadcasting is planned, coordinated and tracked by using millions of pieces of information about the programmes, their content, and event the way we deliver it to you, the audiences.

Read the rest of ArcHak Archive Development Hack Day and leave your comments on the R&D blog.

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.

To read the rest of International front page changes and to leave comments visit the Editors blog.

"I was, however, even more surprised to come in this morning and find that the same post had been referenced on the BBC website! I suspect they've not seen my update though, where I had constant problems with bandwidth problems and the resultant pausing of playback."

Regular readers will already know we're all about the links (and not just to the postive stuff). My favourite Wii iPlayer quote so far (from the Scottish Genealogy News and Events blog):

"It's all great news, but since I installed it yesterday, my four year old has made me watch at least four episodes of Peppa Pig, and he's taken a real shine to the Gaelic version of Postman Pat (Padraig Post) from BBC Alba...!"

Last week Erik Huggers admitted that the launch of Canvas may be delayed until 2011 if the BBC Trust don't publish their interim conclusions by the end of the year. C21 have also released their video interview with Erik Huggers about Project Canvas.

For burgeoning video editors out there we have two opportunities for you to show what you can do. Episode three of R&DTV, the TEDxManchester special, is available for downloading and mashing or if that sounds too energetic you can watch streams of the speakers including R&D's Head Matthew Postgate on "What is Broadcasting?". The Digital Revolution team who are putting together a TV doc on the web have been making lots of their rushes available under a special licence and will shortly be launching a competition to cut a trailer or short film. (See the work of one enterprising individual on Vimeo.) Interestingly the Internet blog notes that of the 25 interview packages available to download so far for mashing there's only one featuring a female interviewee - albeit the indomitable Arianna Huffington.

In case you missed it, there are two new BBC blogs worth checking out: Web Developer and a new R&D blog. Ant Miller explains the background to the latter on his blog.

And finally, the winner of this week's most interesting concatenation award is Tom Scott for his post: Lego, Wombles and Linked Data.

Paul Murphy is the Editor of the Internet blog.

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 BBC 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....

Steve Herrmann is editor of the BBC News website

Read more and comment at the Editors at BBC News

Many people are also interested in the technical details of what we've done and how the BBC iPlayer service will develop on TV-connected devices. So here goes....

First, the video: we're using the H.264 codec at a rate in the region of 700kbit/sec. The quality is probably as good as H.264 can get on this device. We've worked closely with Nintendo and our encoding partner Red Bee Media to squeeze every last drop of video goodness out of the Wii. It's been a balancing act: too much resolution or data and the CPU struggles and drops frames.

Compare this to BBC iPlayer on the PC, where most boxes deal happily with our 1500kbit/sec for regular TV and even 3200kbit/sec for HD (assuming they can get data fast enough).

Needless to say you won't be seeing HD on the current Wii, I'm afraid. But with a more efficient codec and higher bitrate, our new version of BBC iPlayer is doing a lot better. The Flash plug-in available in the browser on the Wii, on which we used to rely, could only support the Sorenson Spark codec at around 500kbit/sec.

BBC Radio content - well over 2000 hours every week - is delivered in the AAC format at 128kbit/sec, the same as on the PC and better quality than DAB. And our Radio Station animations, delivered at the same time, give a hint of what visualised radio could be on IPTV platforms.

We've really been breaking new ground here. This is the very first application built on an all-new rich media solution from Nintendo. So, you will understand that we can't achieve all we want to right away. Subtitles, for instance, are not immediately available as the platform can't ingest and parse the feeds we have while playing video. As part of our development programme we are seeking other ways to deliver subtitles.

In response to JonathanExplorer's question about chapterisation, I'd like to say yes, absolutely - many of the exciting functions you are seeing introduced to BBC iPlayer on the PC will come to the TV, where they add value to the lean-back experience. Likewise we expect to add new functions on TV that enhance the 10ft experience that might not make sense on the PC.

And be assured - we're not stopping with the Wii. As Rahul said, this launch is just part of the "challenging programme to expand the reach of BBC iPlayer in the living room."

Gideon Summerfield is Product Manager, TV iPlayer

The Web Developer blog rather self-effacingly and modestly describes itself as

"A blog about the web and the BBC, from the people who build the BBC website."

"This new blog will be from people who spend their days up to their eyeballs in the nitty-gritty of building bbc.co.uk. It'll be less about the grand scheme of things, and more about the details of how things work - and often don't work - down on the front line. If the Internet Blog is the view from General Melchett, this is Blackadder. And, inevitably, Baldrick."

I like what they're doing and what they're saying (even if I don't understand all of it) and hope you will too.

A more recent arrival is the Research & Development blog which is the place

"...where researchers, scientists and engineers from BBC R&D share their work in developing the media technologies of the future."

"This blog will form a part of the way we show you how we are working, developing and growing, and will of course offer a place where you can ask us about our work.

"...a PC-based audio/video recording system that can be used in multi-camera studios instead of video tape recorders."

Paul Murphy is the editor of the Internet blog.

Tim Davie writes:

Today I have been at the Media Festival in Manchester talking about 'The Future of Audio'. My speech followed the announcement this morning of the industry-wide UK Radioplayer and I was delighted to show the audience this mocked-up demo of how the player might look and work...

To view the UK Radioplayer demo and leave comments head over to the About the BBC blog.

David Artiss, writing on his blog Artiss.co.uk:

Last night, or rather at midnight, the BBC iPlayer channel was released for the Nintendo Wii.
The iPlayer has been usable in the past using the Opera-powered browser channel, but has been of limited quality and, well, not very easy to use. Now we have a very specific channel just for iPlayer. And it's been a long time coming - the BBC have been talking about it for a year and a half.
However, I can only assume they've spent this time on development and testing because the end result is superb...

Earlier this week on the blog Rahul Chakkara, Controller TV platforms previewed some screens of the upgraded iPlayer on the Wii. The service went live last night and we're starting to see and hear what you think about it. So far, like David Artiss's blog post above, they've mostly been positive as have the comments on Rahul's post. One of this blog's commenters Andrew Oakley has written a neat summary of features in his post BBC iPlayer for Ninetendo Wii: First Impressions . But if you are having problems then do check out the iPlayer messageboards.

It looks like a good job all round so many thanks to everyone concerned and keep the feedback rolling in.

Paul Murphy is the Editor of the Internet blog.

• Picture at the top of the post is taken by Dan Taylor and is from his Flickr set iPlayer on the Wii, some rights reserved.
• Wii and iPlayer on Twitter
• Robert Andrews' BBC iPlayer Wii Launch Day set on Flickr

Today the BBC has confirmed the timetable that will make HD services on Freeview available to 50% of the population in time for next June's World Cup, and to 98.5% of the population by the end of digital switchover in three years' time.

New DVB-T2 technology will deliver an increase in capacity of 67% to the BBC's Multiplex B, efficiently creating the space needed for UK public service broadcasters' HD transmissions. The UK will be the first country in the world to launch this new standard, and its successful implementation is the result of pioneering work by the BBC in collaboration with partners including Ofcom, Arqiva, Siemens and receiver manufacturers. To view Freeview HD, audiences will need equipment containing this new technology. Freeview HD receivers (set-top boxes, digital television recorders and integrated televisions) will be available from early 2010.

Paul Murphy is the Editor of the Internet blog.

Some coverage so far:

• CNET: BBC HD on Freeview: Rolling out across UK in 2010
• TechRadar: BBC confirms Freeview HD 2010 details
• Computer Shopper: BBC announces timetable for Freeview HD
• Digital Spy: BBC unveils Freeview HD rollout timetable