The BBC homepage is getting what Richard Titus, the man leading the project, humbly describes as a “lick of paint”. In a post on the BBC Internet blog, he outlines the thinking behind the “cleaner, more open and more easily readable” site.

The page is up in beta already, and looks and feels like a massive improvement over the existing homepage. As Titus explains, it draws heavily from the “ongoing trend and evolution of the Internet towards dynamically generated and syndicable content through technologies like RSS, Atom and XML”. In other words, allowing people to customise the page to meet their interests and needs.

As a news perspective, there is an ability to choose headlines from different sections of the BBC News website. In a way, this means you could create your own version of the news site on the BBC homepage. By comparison, the existing news website design appears very Web 1.0.

There is even a touch of nostalgia in the new look, with the reincarnation of the BBC 1 analogue clock.

One element missing is the ability to add in content from non-BBC sources. This is understandable given the it is the BBC homepage, but it would be good to have an option for a hybrid home that incorporates key BBC material as well as, say, Flickr photos or a Technorati feed.