News: More orkut trends

In our first column, we reported how orkut users rated their beauty by continent. In a poll in the orkut trends community, 69% of you said that you'd like to see the per-country ratings (while 21% said they already know their country has the most beauties). Interestingly, almost all of the comments about beauty were by men commenting on women. We aim to please, so here are the results.

Women from Mexico are most likely (29%) to describe themselves as "beauty contest winners" and the least likely (2%) to describe themselves as "mirror-cracking material". Men from Tonga tend to extremes, with the most (23%) claiming to be pageant winners and an equal number (23%) claiming to be mirror crackers. Uruguayan women are most likely (58%) to consider themselves average, as are 58% of Paraguayan men.

If we assign a numerical weight to each rating (1 for beauty contest winner, 2 for very attractive, etc.), we can get a single "beauty index" for each country's women or men, with lower scores meaning greater (self-rated) beauty, and female Mexicans and male Equatorial Guineans taking the lead. Here are how orkut's leading countries stack up:

country	female beauty index	male beauty index
Brazil	2.95	3.13
United States	2.82	3.15
United Kingdom	3	3.29
Pakistan	3.05	3.25
India	3.23	3.38

The complete data is available here.

Of course, anyone can claim to be beautiful, especially online, so the above rankings may say more about conceit and humility than about looks. As one user wrote, "Orkut can make a lot of money if they put tax on how beautiful people declare themselves to be."

What if you want to judge people's beauty yourself? Just a week after we announced that you can store up to 100 photos in your orkut album, more than 10,000 of you had already gone to the limit. Iranians averaged the fewest photos per person: only 4.1. At the other extreme were Myanmar (12.8) and the island nations of the Cook Islands (12.6), Jamaica (12.7), the Northern Mariana Islands (13.6), and Madagascar (13.8). Of the most popular orkut countries, Indians averaged 6.5 photos each, Pakistanis 6.7, Americans 7.9, Brits 9.3, and Brazilians 9.4, so most of you can increase your albums tenfold! Of course, as Cesar JB expressed, "The concept of beauty varies from one country [to] another". In any case, statistics can give us information but not wisdom, such as that expressed 2500 years ago by Confucius: "Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it."

Until next time, stay beautiful, each in your own wonderful way.

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News: TV rivals form on-demand service

Channel 4's Ugly Betty is one of the shows likely to be on the service

The BBC, ITV and Channel 4 are to launch a joint on-demand service, which will bring together thousands of hours of television programmes in one place.

The service is set to go live in 2008 and will offer viewers access to current shows and archive material.

Plans will have to be approved by the BBC Trust and the other broadcasters' boards, and a name for the service will be unveiled ahead of its launch.

The three broadcasters currently offer their own separate on-demand services.

The BBC's iPlayer and ITV's catch-up service will continue to exist along the new online "aggregator", which will provide a complement to the established providers.

However, Channel 4's 4oD will no longer be a standalone service once it is incorporated within the project.

Programming from all three broadcasters will be available for free download, streaming, rental and purchase via the internet, with expansion on to other platforms planned.

The joint service has the potential to become an important shop window for UK broadcaster content and a great destination for viewers Michael Grade, ITV executive chairman

John Smith, the chief executive of BBC Worldwide, said the venture was a "historic partnership" between the BBC, ITV and Channel 4.

"The new service will contain some of the very best of the UK's content for consumers to view in one place, which will be both easy to use and great fun," he added.

Michael Grade, ITV's executive chairman, described the project as having the potential to become "an important shop window for UK broadcaster content and a great destination for viewers".

For Channel 4, chief executive Andy Duncan said further innovation in the area of on-demand would "give viewers ultimate control over what they watch and when they watch it".

"Partnering and sharing expertise is the best way of doing this," he added.

The BBC and ITV's on-demand services launched earlier this year, with the commerical broadcaster initially concentrating on soap opera catch-ups.

Channel 4's service offers hundreds of hours of programming from current series such as Ugly Betty to classic shows including Father Ted.

Other on-demand services are offered by other providers including Five, Sky, BT Vision and Tiscali.

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