Very cool.
News have a desktop alert application you can download (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/help/3533099.stm)
but it would be good to translate the breaking news emails (http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/email/breakingnews)
into IM alerts.
These contain a short sentence that would be very well
suited to an IM msg. They arn't sent out very often, you generally only get
a few a week. For example, the last one I got was on
Saturday....
"Iran sent to Security Council
The UN's nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, votes to report Iran to the UN Security Council over concerns about its nuclear programme."
The UN's nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, votes to report Iran to the UN Security Council over concerns about its nuclear programme."
Breaking stories (without a full story page) are also often
posted to the ticker, it seems...
J
________________________________________________
Jason Cartwright
Client Side Developer - Content
Management Culture - New Media & Technology
T: 0208 00
85151
M: 0797 65 00729
A: BC4 C5 29, Broadcast Centre, 201
Wood Lane, London, W12 7TP
Personal site: www.jasoncartwright.com
"Don't worry, don't be afraid,
ever, because, this is just a ride" - Bill Hicks
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Mario Menti
Sent: 09 February 2006 11:40
To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk
Subject: [backstage] Hourly news flashes via IM
Someone suggested off-line it would be nice to have an IM bot that pushes news to them automatically, without you having to request it. So I sat down last night and implemented something like this (pretty raw in its current state):
- you contact the bot to register you interest
- the bot sends out the latest 5 headlines from the BBC news page every hour (on the hour) to all those registered
- and of course, you can contact the bot again to remove yourself from the list
If anyone wants to try it out and let me know what they think, here's the details:
Google Talk and Jabber users, contact "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
MSN users contact " [EMAIL PROTECTED]"
AIM users contact "bbcnewsflash"
As I said, this is still very experimental, so don't be too surprised if it doesn't always work... but I'd be interested in people's feelings in general, whether something like this is useful (or just annoying..).
One obivous next step would be to be able to select the type of news you want (currently it's just the 5 items most recently updated in UK version of the news feed) by registering keywords, or being able to pick news by category.
Cheers,
Mario.
