Re: [backstage] User story: finding a radio show
Nice story Tom! I love these little tales... shame Mother = fail :-( Good to see that some of the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle (including BBC Search, with it's recentness/keyword weighting) are starting to come together. Not sure if there's any intention to build a 'fuzzy' programme finder round these parts but in /programmes we're certainly working on making it more browsable so that the 'language' scenario will be easier to find. If you tie this with Radio 4 looking to integrate /programmes more closely with their website in the coming months, although quite a radical departure, all change for the good. (having said all that trying to parse such an information rich space as Radio 4 will always be a bit of a challenge) If we continue to make more and more data available in the way we are then i'd hope, that if the need is great enough, someone else will build a 'fuzzy' search before we do ;-) cheers, Jamie. ___ Jamie Tetlow Designer BBC Future Media Technology for Audio Music Interactive Working on: DynPub APS - Dynamic Publishing - Automated Programme Support http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes On 22/2/09 15:49, Tom Morris bbtommor...@gmail.com wrote: My mother is a chronic Radio 4 listener and heard a little bit of a programme the other day when in the car that she thought a friend would be interested in. All she remembered was it was about language and culture. She had the mistaken idea that it was on in the morning. She told me that she had been on the Radio 4 website looking to find it but had no luck. Admittedly, it was quite broad search criteria. I had a go at doing something about it today. First thing I did was make a directory on my Mac, then ran the following command: curl -O http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/programmes/schedules/fm/2009/02/[01-28].xml Then I tried grepping that data, but it wasn't pretty-printed and so gave me the whole day's worth of programming for each result. So I ran the following: xmllint --format *.xml combined.txt This pretty-printed all the XML and wrote it out to a text file. I then opened the resulting file up in MacVim. Here I had a metadata-rich 33250-line text file containing details of all the programmes broadcast on Radio 4 in the last month. I tapped / to start a search and typed in language. It took me to the short_synopsis element of a programme element. I looked at the id, and appended the relevant namespace on the front to give me http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00hlcr2 - I loaded the page in my browser, read the long description to my mother, who said something along the lines of Ooh, yes, that's right!. She then forwarded that link and the link to the show page to her friend by e-mail. Total time for me was about ten minutes. But the point was that she wasn't able to do it herself - she had, as I said, gone through the listings pages and the Radio 4 website and couldn't find it. All this makes me very happy about the BBC's provision of excellent metadata as XML, RDF, ASCII and HTML, without doing any silly API or Web Services nonsense. It's great not only because people can build applications on top of it, but just because nerdy people can find stuff easier. A suggestion for making this better: a sort of 'fuzzy' programme finder - a very user-friendly search page linked to from iPlayer and Listen Again (etc.) that would let you do natural-language searching of programmes, sorted by recentness. So you could go on and select that you saw something on TV or heard something on radio, maybe specify a channel, maybe specify roughly when and throw it a few keywords. (I have to say, I did then just type 'language' into the BBC search, and the first result in the TV Radio Programmes box was the right one. Having spent the last decade or so getting frustrated by the *ahem* less-than-optimal search on bbc.co.uk, that's not the first place I thought to look.)
Re: [backstage] Your ideas are now finally welcomed
Getting down to the nitty-gritty of our internal data structure we'd probably say that the International World Service 'Top of the Pops' and the BBC One 'Top of the Pops' http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00704hg ARE different programme 'brands' but belonging to the uber 'franchise' of 'Top of the Pops'... although we don't have 'franchise' in our data structure yet. It would be the same for the 'franchise' Doctor Who and it's various incarnations: BBC One's 'Doctor Who': http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006q2x0 Radio 7's 'Doctor Who': http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b009szrh BBC Three's 'Doctor Who Confidential': http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006q2xb etc, etc... ___ Jamie Tetlow Designer BBC Future Media Technology for Audio Music Interactive 718, Henry Wood House, W1B 3DF T:020 776 54671 M:07989 987239 Working on: DynPub APS - Dynamic Publishing - Automated Programme Support http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes On 5/1/09 10:47, Gareth Davis gareth.da...@bbc.co.uk wrote: From: owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk [mailto:owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk] On Behalf Of James Cridland Sent: 31 December 2008 22:15 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: Re: [backstage] Your ideas are now finally welcomed On Wed, Dec 24, 2008 at 1:11 PM, Gareth Davis gareth.da...@bbc.co.uk wrote: It still still being made, just not for the tellybox :) http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/programmes/top_of_the_pops.shtml So, why doesn't it appear in http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00704hg/upcoming Surely it should - it's the same brand (owned by BBC ONE, but you still broadcast a radio version) -- http://james.cridland.net/ | http://notatallbad.ltd.uk/legal_info/ Technical answer is: We have quite a few English programmes that are not broadcast on the World Service English for UK network, and as all international networks are currently out of scope for /programmes, they do not appear in /programmes or iPlayer. -- Gareth Davis | Production Systems Specialist World Service Future Media, Digital Delivery Team - Part of BBC Global News Division 8 http://www.bbcworldservice.com/ http://www.bbcworldservice.com/ + 702NE Bush House, Strand, London, WC2B 4PH ( 02 71285 (internal) ( +44 (0)20 7557 1285 (external) : gareth.da...@bbc.co.uk
Re: [backstage] Your ideas are now finally welcomed
well exactly, if you don't want to care about it, but equally you may only be interested in the World Service TOTP and so making sure we get the modelling and structure right (and then expose it nicely - which I guess is the main point here ;-) means you'll be able to slice and dice our programming whichever way you want, Jamie. On 5/1/09 14:44, Michael m...@cerenity.org wrote: On Monday 05 January 2009 11:26:25 Jamie Tetlow wrote: Getting down to the nitty-gritty of our internal data structure we'd probably say that the International World Service 'Top of the Pops' and the BBC One 'Top of the Pops' Which of course the audience simply do not, and should not have to, care about, ever. Michael. - 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/ - 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/
Re: [backstage] Use of Tinyurl in Emails
Beyond the debate about security in following email links, redirects and then the discussion of poorly designed urls the weirdest thing about the use of tinyurl in the BBC Archive email is that the urls they were substituting weren't that long in the first place: http://tinyurl.com/2fkqes goes to: http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/trial/forgotton_password.shtml and... http://tinyurl.com/29t4o5 goes to: http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/trial/ ...then to compound the confusion the email signs off with the real url: Regards, The BBC archive trial team bbc.co.uk/archive/trial/ sometimes things just don't make sense ~:-\ J. On 5/11/07 17:52, Tom Loosemore [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Using TinyUrl is a symptom of poorly designed urls... On 05/11/2007, Sean Dillon [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Adam wrote: Tinyurl is a great service and i can understand why it is used, but i feel that using this type of service in a wider audience is a bad idea. We're having this exact same argument at the moment here, and I would agree that ideally this service should be located under the main publisher's domain. The Guardian uses tinyurl extensively, as do many other publications. We have decided to build our own system instead, as at least this way we are able to track who's clicking the links and where they're coming from as well. Seán - 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/ - 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/ - 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/
Re: [backstage] BBC Radio 7
Hi Gary, I'm not that close to the DAB side of things but I asked a few questions for you and so here are some answers: The main aim was to ensure all of our services are lumped together on DAB radios. Some radios default to listing by multiplex but the majority list stations in alphabetical order. So, the old Radio 1, 6 Music and 1 Xtra short names left these networks stranded away from the rest of the BBC family. By putting BBC and, in most cases, BBC R in front of everything we can ensure that all radios list our networks in one lump. The significance is that if your network is close to a popular (BBC) network (e.g. Radio 2) you can benefit from the audience wealth of your neighbour when people decide to browse around. It's a case of a few crumbs from the table but this could develop in to future loyal listening. Also, many people did not recognise some of our stations as BBC networks ... we weren't getting credit and they weren't getting the credibility associated with this. Being in consecutive order was not a major consideration just a logical by-product. ...to back that up I've heard mention of a recent study or two showing that our listeners do hold BBC Radio in high esteem as a brand so perhaps you can expect to see this kind of consistency rolling out elsewhere, hope that helps, Jamie. --- Jamie Tetlow Designer, Audio Music BBC Future Media Technology 718, Henry Wood House, W1B 3DF On 29/5/07 14:25, Gary Kirk [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Last night I noticed my digital radio (The Bug) displayed BBC Radio 7 instead of the usual BBC 7. The shortcut also displayed as BBC R7, like Radio 4 does. I investigated and found 6music had also changed - BBC Radio 6 music. Why is this? Obviously it's a radio broadcast - it's a digital radio... BBC Radio 1 - 4 Five Five I understand, as, broadcast on traditional radio, have always been called this; 7 never has. - 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/
