I was considering entering a hack for Hack Day around that very thing. But then they went and made me one of the judges ;-)
Wanna help? A simple set of scripts that scrape the archive (er I mean "call that big RESTful API") and post entries/updates to the freebase sandbox server would be an interesting experiment. I agree that freebase is an amazing resource, especially when the programme data is curated properly: compare http://www.freebase.com/view/?id=%239202a8c04000641f8000000000012406 with http://open.bbc.co.uk/catalogue/infax/series/DOCTOR+WHO ! There may be some rights issues around what would basically amount to opening up the programme catalogue under the creative commons attribution license, where the attribution wouldn't go to the BBC but to Freebase... Brendan. -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Oliver Cole Sent: 09 July 2007 20:51 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: [backstage] Programme Catalogue vs. Freebase (was: BBC Programme Catalogue -any APIs yet?) I've been following the Programme Catalogue since it was announced, and its pretty interesting. I do however have a question for the BBC people on the list - have you considered simply uploading all the information to Freebase[1]? I can understand that you might want to keep it in house, but if you merged it with the wealth of information on Freebase you can do exponentially more. For example, if it was properly integrated you could run a query that would tell me how many of the contributors to Spooks series 2 were born in London. Regards, Oli [1] http://www.freebase.com - A very cool structured database, currently handling 2.3 million instances of 870 'types' - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
