Re: [backstage] The Final Digital Britain report
The most interesting piece to me is the bit about infringements of copyright. I totally agree that rightsholders need to protect their work, as covered in the report, but considering some law firms are already completely abusing the legal system as is to go after people on very flimsy evidence and no warning (see www.beingthreatened.com ), i'm worried that people are going to get court action when totally innocent. Especially going by the pornographic titles discussed around the web, such action appears to be profiteering through speculative invoicing, and the digital britain report does little to counter this kind of action. Indeed for alleged repeat offenders it'd encourage and aide it. Quite frankly the report seems very short sighted to me, there are a few encouraging bits about companies needing to look at new business models, but it all seems rather unbalanced towards business rather than individual consumers. It seems mostly to be a current situation report mostly encouraging the status quo for a lot of people in the UK. And as for 2mbits for a target... perhaps for the most rural areas, and I can understand not wanting to create a two tier net (although... hyprocrisy on the net neutrality front!), but surely for built up areas a target of 50-100 mbps would be a lot more ambitious an aim?! On the phone tax report I'm guessing people are likely to be polarised, either not wanting to pay extra, or happy to pay but not happy with the targets. Need to have a bit of a reread to get some of the finer points, but my current opinion would probably rate as 'could do better'! Stephen Ian Forrester wrote: The Final Digital Britain Report http://www.culture.gov.uk/what_we_do/broadcasting/6216.aspx So what do people think? Time to leave the country or dig a hole and stick our heads into it? Cheers, Ian Forrester This e-mail is: []secret; []private; [x]public Senior Producer, BBC Backstage, BBC RD Room 1044, BBC Manchester BH, Oxford Road, M60 1SJ email: ian.forres...@bbc.co.uk work: +44 (0)1612444063 | mob: +44 (0)7711913293 - 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] Two questions: Comment Blogs and EU proposals
There is a way to get the comments to output in an xml format to make them easier to scrape off of each blog post and parse. But it is per blog post and not a central feed of all comments. It appears they are driven by the h2g2 software, so someone involved in that section of the bbc site might be able to point you to a raw feed of all comments within a forum. http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/blogs/ -- posting/accessing directly is restricted to invite only, i suspect it only works when added to a blog by SSI. I'm sure Ian can find out if it is possible to open up some form of official comment feeds to backstage. - Original Message From: Paul Doyle [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Sent: Saturday, 22 November, 2008 8:55:43 Subject: Re: [backstage] Two questions: Comment Blogs and EU proposals 1. Is there any way to access the blog comments that users make in response to some articles/opinions that appear in the BBC news or other sites? I am some colleagues are interested to develop some applications for such comments. Not sure the blog system has an RSS feed of comments. If you need data to prove a proof of concept then Have Your Say has an RSS feed of comments http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/rss/rssmessages.jspa?forumID=5700 You can get more than the standard 20 or so messages it throws out by adding numItems=500 to the URL. There's a hard coded upper limit of how many messages which is something like 200 or 500. Best Paul BBC Future Media Technology (Journalism) 2008/11/21 [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Hi All, I'm new on this list. Two questions. 1. Is there any way to access the blog comments that users make in response to some articles/opinions that appear in the BBC news or other sites? I am some colleagues are interested to develop some applications for such comments. 2. Does anyone know how I can successfully contact members of the Innovation Culture team at BBC Research and Innovation? I am writing an EU Framework Programme 7 proposal which I would like to pitch to the Innovation Team, the BBC being a use case for which we would gather data, requirements, and test a prototype system. I've tried calling and emailing, but had no success so far. I think the BBC would be very keen to participate in this project and find it very useful. If you want to know more about the proposal, you can check out a workshop I co-organised. It is on legal language, but the FP7 proposal is more general. See the conference site - Workshops - Natural Language Engineering of Legal Argumentation: http://www.ittig.cnr.it/Jurix08/ Cheers, Adam Wyner - 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-developer] BBC predicts the sun will not rise on Monday, which is now to be known as None day
There was also astonishing precision in the forecast on the bbc homepage earlier, with tomorrows min and max temperature quoted to 2 decimal places (albeit zeros)! Jonathan Chetwynd wrote: BBC predicts the sun will not rise on Monday, which is now to be known as None day http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/5day.shtml?id=0008 my logo http://www.openicon.org Jonathan Chetwynd [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.openicon.org/ +44 (0) 20 7978 1764 for those who see the glass as half full, there's no pollution either ~: - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk developer discussion group. To unsubscribe, please send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe backstage-developer [your email] as the message.
Re: [backstage] New BBC customisable homepage
Another quick bug report. The character set on the page appears not to support £ signs, this story http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/beds/bucks/herts/7149616.stm appears with the ? black diamond replacement character in firefox. - 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] www.FreeTheBBC.info
Just a small point on the buying out of all the rights. Merely because
programmes would be available free would not totally kill off other
forms of money raising based on the product. After all, a significant
portion of worldwide broadcasters would still be after syndication
rights. DVD sales are probably also workable, at least on a small scale,
as there is some added value in a physical collection, with properly
printed menus, perhaps accompanied by a small book or some other value
increasing items. Whilst the DVD sales aren't going to be the revenue
stream they once were if the material is freely available, I think some
small amount of the market will still be there.
Also some of the BBCs material is useful educationally, which may make
the DVDs profitable in some places abroad without the internet
infrastructure necessary to obtain the free materials. Additionally,
DVDs may still be saleable outside the UK due to a lack of awareness of
the material being available for free on the BBC site. Lastly, if there
were to be communities established to help benefit individual producers
(I'm thinking specifically of the natural history unit etc.), then you
may find people are willing to either donate extra money, or buy
specific DVDs to aid in the content of that department.
Just because something may be available for free does not entirely mean
you kill the market for selling the same thing. I agree it makes it more
difficult, especially on non-commercial terms.
If the BBC were to think more strongly about going down the route of
free online downloads of all material, I'm sure that a public
consultation, perhaps on a wiki based format may come up with some
revenue generating ideas which have not been considered already.
With regards to the sport aspect, I'm not so sure the BBC would lose
coverage of the Olympics etc. After all, the olympics is supposed to
encompass the world, and hence a freely available catalogue of the games
might well add value to the bid to get the games rather than reduce.
BBCi is already making strides in showing perhaps less popular sports
such as snooker online. Whilst the most highly commercial sports,
specifically football are likely to object to free online distribution,
many sports are likely to care a lot less. Especially with some if some
GeoIP provision is put in place (and this is a slightly lesser evil than
DRM - though perhaps could be extended to include somehow those abroad
who have valid TV licenses).
Perhaps a bit rambling, but just wanted to say that free content may not
kill the commerciality of programmes entirely.
Tom Loosemore wrote:
Apparently today's rights-holder production companies believe that
DRMcan stop the mass market from sharing works. Probably not;
simplymaking the works All Rights Reserved does enough damage to
thepotential for the mass market, by criminalizing businesses that
findways to monetise the Internet.
One might also say criminalising businesses who get rich off the
creativity of others :)
The point, to me, is simple: DRM doesn't work. It doesn't stop anyone
taking your content for free. Therefore, work out business models which
don't rely on DRM.
and, yes, the licence fee could be one of them - see Creative Archive
passim, or OFCOM's ideas for a new Public Service Publisher using a
Creative Commons commercial sharealike licencing model.
however, if the BBC were to adopt such a 'buy all rights in
perpetuity' model, it would mean making far, far fewer programmes,
since each programme would have to cost more (*much* more in many
cases) to compensate rights holders for the reduction in secondary
income from repeats, DVDs, overseas sales etc. We'd also probably lose
any stars the moment we made them (Gervais, etc) cos they could make
more than we could afford upfront commercially. And we'd lose all
sport. And the Olympics.
But hey, making far fewer programmes may not seem the end of the
world, since everyone only really likes a few programmes, and it's all
going on demand anyway so why worry about filling linear schedules,
right?
Then you realise that everyone != people like us, both in terms of the
programmes they like, and more importantly, in terms of their
likelihood to use the internet.
Everyone pays for the licence fee, and so everyone deserves to get
value from it.
So you need a wide range of programmes to cater for people's
increasingly fragmented tastes, and a variety of delivery methods to
cater for a range of tech capabilities.
41% of the UK population didn't use the Internet last month. We reckon
up to 20% of them *never* will. They'll pop their clogs before they
ever do anything on demand.
They pay for the BBC too.
Right now I find it hard to justify reducing the range of programmes
that 41% enjoy, just so the 5% of the population who regularly share
TV programmes over the internet can get *even more* value from the BBC
And incidentally, that 5% ('geeks like us') already
[backstage] Weather annoyance
This is almost entirely irrelevant to the list purpose, but I thought I'd air a personal annoyance with the BBC Weather site. If I put in my postcode I end up with the weather for my town (Rayleigh) which is correct, but I only get a 5 day and not a 24h forecast. As both are taken from the same weather station at Shoebury, by manually searching for Shoebury I can get the 24h forecast there. Why does the system not pick up a 24h forecast for my postcode from Shoebury? I note on the FAQ for weather they state they extrapolate the 5 day from nearby weather stations, why not do the 24h too, or is this a question of additional load? If this is not possible, how about linking to the local weather station as opposed to just giving its long/lat (After all the postcoder must store long/lat to town name, and could be extended to link to those with 24h weather)? Any further explanation as to whether or not some form of simple solution is possible would be appreciated. Cheers, Stephen - 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] Google Gears
From what I've used of Joost it seems to keep some degree of data cached.. initial plays can result in the usual buffering issues etc, but subsequent replays seem to play a lot smoother and allow better seeking. Would be nice if it precached more though specifically after play and then pausing. James Cridland wrote: On 6/1/07, *Ian Forrester* [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: But I also wanted to get people views on Google Gears - Google Gears is an open source browser extension that lets developers create web applications that can run offline. http://code.google.com/apis/gears http://code.google.com/apis/gears I've played with it for Google Reader. It's nice, and works pretty well (even though the initial sync, which you have to do manually, seems to take forever on my ADSL line at home). I might try it properly this evening on the tube home, in the vain hope that a thief steals my hateful Dell before I have to give it back. My Google Reader is always on 100+, so it would be good to cut it down a little. On a similar note, perhaps this is the benefit of the BBC's iPlayer, in that it works offline once you've downloaded the programmes. (If I've understood the literature correctly.) That would put it ahead of the likes of Joost / ITV / C4, for example, which requires a fast and reliable internet connection. James - 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] Web 2.0 'neglecting good Accessible design'
Well you can scroll around with the arrow keys and zoom in and out with + and -. Not sure how you change to satellite using keys, but I'm sure its in there. ~:'' ありがとうございました。 wrote: Richard, how does one use http://maps.google.com/ via the keyboard? cheers Jonathan Chetwynd On 15 May 2007, at 13:22, Richard Lockwood wrote: This particular rant seems to be about useability rather than accessibility (although I appreciate the two are often closely related). Much as I often loathe Nielsen's writing - Jason's right, it's often all about Nielsen more than it is about any actual problems - in this case he's got a point. Web 2.0 sites are often completely unuseable - MySpace being a prime example, and Flickr (although it's been a while since I tried to use it to post a few pics and it may well have improved) another. Google Maps however, I'd hold up as a prime example of excellent intuitive design and useability. Just as the phrase Web 2.0 means different things to all people (I avoid it if at all possible as I feel it just makes the user sound like a buzzword spouting bandwagon-jumper who hasn't a clue what he's actually saying ;-) ), you can't tar all Web 2.0 sites with the same brush. Anyway, I've banged on far too long now, and this is what Nielsen wants - people to discuss HIM HIM HIM!!! Frankly, the less I hear of and from this tedious old bore, the happier I am. Cheers, Rich. On 5/15/07, ~:'' ありがとうございました。 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Jason Gordon any good Accessible Web 2.0 websites you'd care to plug? or are you in a rush? cheers Jonathan Chetwynd On 15 May 2007, at 10:18, Jason Cartwright wrote: This is all my personal opinion, and I entirely disagree. Mr Nielsen has a history of spouting contrary opinions to court controversy and gain publicity for himself and his company. Web 2.0[1] (for me at least) incorporates best practice methodologies of developing to standards (and the consequences of this, such as progressive enhancement etc) and trusting users as co-developers [2]. These core principals of Web 2.0 encourage good design. As with any technology, Web 2.0 will be misused - it's not the technology's fault that this happens, it's the designer/developer that fouled it up's problem. That doesn't look as good when you're goading mainstream journos into writing about you though, does it? J [1] I've stuck all these in quotes, as I think Web 2.0 means different things to different people. [2] Tim O'Reilly -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of ~:'' Sent: 15 May 2007 08:48 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: [backstage] Jakob Nielsen: Web 2.0 'neglecting good design' Jakob Nielsen: Web 2.0 'neglecting good design' http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6653119.stm seems to have copied my pitch for hackday ~: has he been invited? was I? did anyone else have ideas or requirements for an accessible SVG front end? cheers Jonathan Chetwynd Accessibility Consultant on Learning Disabilities and the Internet http://www.eas-i.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/ - 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] £1.2 billion question ( or RE: [backstage] BBC Bias??? C lick and Torrents)
I agree this is perhaps the main factor against such a proposal. However, the main targets for sales are still Europe and the US for much of the content produced in those markets. As such, distribution systems are likely (rightly or wrongly) to be established for these areas first. Much of my email mentioned how video may be funded almost solely by advertising in any case. As it would be possible to try and price adverts per download, a token price of $0.10 or something worldwide should not be a barrier to acquiring the programmes for all but the very poorest areas (which are unlikely to have the bandwidth requirements for online distribution anyway, at least at any scale). The advertising would cover the majority of the production costs, with much of the distribution costs minimised by using p2p to obtain bandwidth from the population at large... the more popular a programme, the more likely it is to reduce bandwidth costs through sharing in this way. I realise the asian markets in particular are beginning to become larger consumers of western programmes, and the target audiences are huge. However, again, much/most of the cost should be obtainable through advertising, which should make the actual cost of obtaining the show negligible. I guess a system would need to be set up that would be kind of adsense-ish for online television distribution, perhaps so advertising can be targeted (maybe on the fly?) at the consumer in the market that is downloading the programme. As such, advertising could be bought per area and paid per download in that area. Of course, it all depends on how future shows end up being paid for, I just feel that it could be economical to fund a lot of programmes in this way given the advertising market potential available on a worldwide scale, without the need for variable (or high) pricing depending on the GDP/capita of the areas. As such, individual sites per market would not be required, and a single site could scale with on the fly advertising to cope with any new area on the same system. J.P.Knight wrote: On Thu, 1 Feb 2007, Stephen Miller wrote: [...] If content is available at a fair price globally and simultaneously, the advertising markets and audiences should greatly expand. That could be a sticking point, until we have a single global currency and economy. What might be a fair price in, say, Russia, might be ridiculously cheap here and unbearaby expensive in Vietnam. And as its a global market place for digital media, the consumer can buy from where ever they like. Should the content producers target the average (mode? mean? median?) price point and hope that they get loads of takers from the rich countries, some from the middle ranks and not much from the poor areas (where copyright infringement will no doubt be rife as the media is priced out of a normal person's reach?). Or should they price according to local market needs and hope most folk don't buy from out side their area. The trouble with the global market is that it isn't really. Its just a load of really well connected local markets. - 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/ ___ The all-new Yahoo! Mail goes wherever you go - free your email address from your Internet provider. http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html - 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] £1.2 billion question ( or RE: [backstage] BBC Bias??? C lick and Torrents)
This I feel is one of the main sticking points which leads to the current trends in litigation. Media groups tend to equate a download with a (potential) lost sale. This is just not the case. Many people who download, especially cross borders may discover television from other countries to which they had no access. If they are sufficiently impressed, this may actually result in INCREASED sales as they find a way to import the DVD. It is also easier to download something which you may have missed airing in the previous week, or became talked about among friends. Again, this may result in potential extra DVD sales if the rest of the series is out on DVD. Many other people who download are of course unable to afford the vast majority of what they download due to sheer quantity. They may therefore buy DVD's of their favourite shows but be unable to buy much else of what they download. This group is also not equating with lost sales, as the money would not be there in the first place. They may be getting something for free, but still are not lost sales. Another point to consider is that the vast majority of downloads are related to programmes aired on television, either as free to air services, or subscription. In both models you are not paying for content directly, and indeed can record the programmes you yourself have access to. It is my opinion therefore that a lot of the counted 'sales lost' or 'potential sales lost' are based upon estimations that just do not hold water. I would estimate less than 10% of potential lost sales are indeed lost. I also believe that sharing within friends or private recording makes little difference. Of course, the easiest solution is to make all programmes available to download directly from the programme maker or distributor, for a price of £4 or less, with adverts at the start, the end (and possibly the middle). The combination of advert funding and the small takings from sales to a global audience should be sufficient to fund the media. This has the added advantage of being able to provide funding more directly to programme makers. Sadly, it is rare that media institutions are forward looking, nor wish to reconsider their current policies to take into account recent technological developments. What makes this worse is that a large number of people within their companies are likely to be 'illegal' downloaders, and there will be some that also know distribution protocols such as bittorrent, and the necessary economics to distribute in this way. I doubt however, any such people would find it advantageous to reveal this to their employer, unless they already held a large amount of influence in the company. James Cridland wrote: On 1/31/07, *Dave Crossland* [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: If you make furniture, the fact that furniture-duplication wands are invented does not give you the right to restrict people from duplicating chairs. No, but I should have the rights to restrict people from duplicating MY chairs. I'm sorry I wasn't clear, because that's what I meant. Restated: If you make furniture, the fact that furniture-duplication wands are invented does not give you the right to restrict people from duplicating the chairs you made. Restricing commercial duplication might be okay, but not non-commercial in-the-public-view duplication, and certainly not private between-friends duplication. Don't agree. No duplication is truly non-commercial; every act of duplication still results in the loss of a potential sale (assuming that I am selling these chairs). Given that, I am well within my rights to, if I choose, wish to prevent duplication - whether it's private-between-friends, or private-between-anyone on the internet, or anything else. If you don't like that, you don't have to buy my chairs! -- http://james.cridland.net/ ___ All new Yahoo! Mail The new Interface is stunning in its simplicity and ease of use. - PC Magazine http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html - 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] *new* Backstage supremo
Congratulations to Ian, Looking forward to see how the project moves forward with a new leader :) ___ The all-new Yahoo! Mail goes wherever you go - free your email address from your Internet provider. http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html - 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] RE: Reboot winners: 30 June 2006
The winner has been announced on the blog at http://open.bbc.co.uk/reboot/blog/ Congratulations to all the runners up and the winner, if any of them are on the list! :) -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Gordon Joly Sent: 07 July 2006 11:55 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: Re: [backstage] RE: Reboot winners: 30 June 2006 At 11:52 +0100 6/7/06, Jem Stone wrote: The runners up for the competition have been announced here: http://open.bbc.co.uk/reboot/blog/2006/07/reboot_the_runners_up.html Winner to be announced in about an hour. thanks Jem - And the winner is? :-) Gordo -- Think Feynman/ http://pobox.com/~gordo/ [EMAIL PROTECTED]/// - 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/ ___ Inbox full of spam? Get leading spam protection and 1GB storage with All New Yahoo! Mail. http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html - 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] It's good night from him... (+ IMPORTANT INFO!)
Ben, Thanks a lot for all the time you have been put into the project, the inspiration it has provided, and introductions to both yourself and others at the BBC. I think you can consider what you have achieved a great success, and hopefully the project can be taken onwards and upwards in the future. Thanks again :) Stephen Miller -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Ben Metcalfe Sent: 09 June 2006 12:28 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: [backstage] It's good night from him... (+ IMPORTANT INFO!) Dear all, Today is my last day working for the BBC, and therefore working as Project Lead on backstage.bbc.co.uk. It's been an honour to have been given the opportunity to not only work on such an amazing project, but also to interactive with all of you guys in the backstage community. You are, after all, what makes the project - without you guys backstage is nothing! Looking back on my 18 months since we set this up, I have mixed emotions. At times it's been a real battle to get the rest of the BBC to understand what we - the remixers, hackers, makers and innovators - are trying to achieve AND what the BBC has to gain from embracing it all. But there have been highs too - getting many of you into the BBC to meet people, to discuss your projects and to work with you to take them to the next level. That bit has been fantastic. But I'm also aware that whilst I've been fighting fires internally and working on some other equally important things (blogs.bbc.co.uk, reboot competition, etc) I've at times been too distant from the community - and I'm very sorry for that. The BBC has many cool projects going on at the moment - the iPlayer (formally MyBBCPlayer, formally iMP) and the new BBC2.0 project. It's an interesting movement for the BBC away from being just a content provider to being a service (mainly aggregation) provider too. And of course, in this weird world of developer networks and Web2.0, its service orientated API's that have really been successful. Just offering pure content - which lets face it is what the BBC does best (at least for now!) - is not an API in itself and never will be. Until the BBC is ready to leverage API's against these new services it is creating around it's content, I hope backstage can become more community orientated - a place where the commons can gather to innovate together and cross-pollinate ideas about APIs, feeds and web services from ALL providers. That, ultimately, is what the BBC can offer above and beyond its rivals in this space. Lots need to happen for that to occur - there are all sorts to policy reasons why we've never had a forum or any other social-media platform for backstage to really occur. Maybe it's time the community created on? Which brings me onto the final, perhaps most important part, of this email (sorry it's been a long one!). I will continue to participate in the community - I'm not going anywhere. But from tomorrow (Saturday 10th June) I will no longer work for the BBC and as such anything I say on the backstage mailing list, put out as backstage prototypes, etc will not be on behalf of the BBC nor will it necessarily represent the views of the BBC. Sadly I also won't be able to help you with any BBC-related issues or questions either. There will also be a period of hiatus here at the BBC-end of backstage as there won't be any staff working full-time on it for a while. This is a real opportunity for the BBC to really decide what direction it wants to take backstage, and so in the long run it's probably worth a period of delay whilst that all gets agreed. In the meantime I ask you to be patient with Jem and everyone else here at the BBC whilst the period of change occurs. Many thanks for everything! Ben PS: Please continue to email the backstage email address ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) if you have any queries, questions, etc and someone will get back to you. - 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/ ___ All new Yahoo! Mail The new Interface is stunning in its simplicity and ease of use. - PC Magazine http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html - 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] Now/next on pageflakes.com
Pageflakes looks fairly complete, well developed and a nice app. The only thing that annoys me slightly, is that I have personally been working on and off on a very similar idea for several years, but never got round to finishing it off due to time constraints. The progress of my own project up to this point can be seen on http://www.backstage.min-data.co.uk/customtests/test.php As such, I will look forward to their site launching out of beta, as the aims specified in their about section are precisely what I was aiming to do myself! Oh well, maybe I will develop mine further for personal interest, but they have certainly done a far better job! :D Well done for getting your flake added Mario :) -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Mario Menti Sent: 21 January 2006 16:41 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: [backstage] Now/next on pageflakes.com Hi all, I'm pleased to say that the guys at pageflakes.com (currently in pre-alpha) have added a so-called flake with the BBC now/next info to their site. This is a port of the live.com gadget/ google modules I posted previously. For those interested, go to http://www.pageflakes.com and click on Add Content. The BBC now/next flake is towards the bottom of the menu, under Community flakes. Thanks, Mario. - 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/ ___ To help you stay safe and secure online, we've developed the all new Yahoo! Security Centre. http://uk.security.yahoo.com - 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] Invite to the first backstage.bbc.co.uk meet-up
Title: Invite to the first backstage.bbc.co.uk meet-up Will try to make it straight from work in Reading, should be fun at rush hour! Well see! :D Hope to see a good turn out. Stephen Miller From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Ben Metcalfe Sent: 24 November 2005 17:43 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: [backstage] Invite to the first backstage.bbc.co.uk meet-up Dear list, The backstage.bbc.co.uk team would like to invite you to the first backstage.bbc.co.uk meet-up. When: 6:30pm Monday 12th December 2005 Where: Yorkshire Grey Pub in Langham Street, London Weve been simply blown away by the spectacular work youve been producing so please allow us to toast your efforts and hopefully get to know you all a little better! Its also an opportunity for you to meet your fellow backstage.bbc.co.uk enthusiasts, and of course get a chance to chat to BBC folk too. The Yorkshire Grey Pub (http://www.beerintheevening.com/pubs/s/91/916/Yorkshire_Grey/Fitzrovia) is located behind BBC Broadcasting House, and is a short walk from Oxford Circus, Goodge Street and Great Portland Street underground stations. The Yorkshire Grey Pub 46 Langham Street London W1W 7AX http://www.multimap.com/map/browse.cgi?lat=51.5189lon=-0.1413scale=1icon=x Please find the full invite, maps, and the signup list at http://benmetcalfe.com/wiki/backstage.bbc.co.uk_meet-up:London We realise that not everyone is located in London, and were sorry that not everyone will be able to make this event this time round. However, this is only the first backstage.bbc.co.uk meet up, and we hope to hold more in other parts of the country where there is demand. (You are also more than welcome to organise your own regional backstage.bbc.co.uk meet-ups - please contact us if we can be of any assistance with this!). Finally - a special plea: The venue has a maximum capacity of 60-75 people. We would really like you, the 'hard core' backstage.bbc.co.uk community on this list, to get top priority. So we ask you, please, not to blog this invite for the time being. We will open up the invitation in a day or so - once you've all had a chance to sign up first! We hope you will be able to make it! Ben Metcalfe Project Lead, backstage.bbc.co.uk
RE: [backstage] Ben/Backstage at D Construct
Ppt = powerpoint (presentation).., a lovely MS product. If you are on windows, you can get the viewer here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=428d5727-43ab-4f24- 90b7-a94784af71a4displaylang=en if you dont have office. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Gordon Joly Sent: 15 November 2005 22:50 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: Re: [backstage] Ben/Backstage at D Construct At 15:37 + 11/11/05, Jeremy Stone wrote: For some reason we've allowed Ben Metcalfe, our lovely colleague, out in public again to speak at a Web 2.0 conference in Brighton. http://www.clearleft.com/training/dconstruct.php When Ben has recovered from seeing the sea again: http://benmetcalfe.com/blog/index.php/2005/11/11/i-can-see-the-sea/ he pledged to cover it over at the Backstage blog. However there's already a write up of Ben's speech here: http://www.timandkathy.co.uk/journal/2005/11/11/ben-metcalfe-bbc-backsta ge/ And you can download Ben's presentation from the site here: http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/misc/dconstruct.ppt The notes and the ppt are really good round ups of what Backstage is about, offer some sneak previews of our future plans and some references to some of the great work you've already shared with each other and the BBC. Thanks Jem Stone, backstage team. ben blogs: ** So, I'm sat in a dis-used church waiting for the event to begin. There's a nice group of Web2.0Ååy people, say 50-60, and there's free WiFi. What more could a geek want? ** Well Ben Gordo. P.S. What is ppt? -- Think Feynman/ http://pobox.com/~gordo/ [EMAIL PROTECTED]/// - 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/ ___ To help you stay safe and secure online, we've developed the all new Yahoo! Security Centre. http://uk.security.yahoo.com - 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] Google Maps API
Title: Message Hi Kim, If Melvyn was to add on address or postcode information it would certainly be doable. Better still if you were to take a GPS device with you, or find the location on an OS map, these can all be converted to degrees of longitude and latitude which can then be easily plotted onto a google map. As far as adding a link to the content, again as long as the content is mapped to coordinates somehow, this is very easy. The points on google maps have bubbles that accept normal HTML. If you want more detailed info or a point clarified, dont hesitate to email me or just the list and Im sure someone can help you more! Any other ideas are also appreciated by programmers on this list too! :) Cheers, Steve From: owner-backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk [mailto:owner-backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk] On Behalf Of Kim Plowright Sent: 06 July 2005 16:31 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: RE: [backstage] Google Maps API Probably even more off topic, and hello list, sorry, I lurk as I'm *so* not techy enough for most of the conversations... But has everyone seen this flickr / google earth mix? Appols if it has done the rounds... http://www.flickr.com/groups/topic/50193/ And a slightly unrelated note, and a tad off topic could anyone shed any light on how easy this would be to achieve... In Our Time - Melvyn's weekly newsletter. He tends to dictate it whilst walking around London - cue much merriment about getting rained on, etc. How easy would it be to strip out location / placename data from the emails, and map 'Where's Melvyn?' on to google maps? Possibly with a link to download/listen again to the episode he talks about? A very silly idea, I know, but quite cute... I'm interested in ideas that spatially locate programming and content. You could imagine being stood on waterloo bridge and your mobile suddenly going off, delivering you that week's podcast... Kim (BBC type, project manager in Interactive Drama and Entertainment, can't code for toffee...)
RE: [backstage] RSS at night.
titleBBC News | News Front Page | UK Edition/title linkhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/1/hi/default.stm/link descriptionUpdated every minute of every day/description languageen-gb/language lastBuildDateSat, 28 May 05 19:55:54 GMT/lastBuildDate copyrightCopyright: (C) British Broadcasting Corporation, see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/help/rss/4498287.stm for terms and conditions of reuse/copyright docshttp://www.bbc.co.uk/syndication//docs ttl15/ttl ^^^ They do have the ttl tag, at least in the main page, although as you say, it is probably updated more regularly at times. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Matthew Hurst Sent: 28 May 2005 21:06 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: Re: [backstage] RSS at night. Some rss feeds provide a ttl tag (time to live) which indicates how long you can go without rescanning the feed. Would it be possible for bbc news to add this or would it be irrelevant given that the news could potentially update every minute? Matt ___ Yahoo! Messenger - NEW crystal clear PC to PC calling worldwide with voicemail http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com
RE: [backstage] World Coordinates - Finally Available.
That data is almost certainly freely available. Most of the US government departments have to make their materials freely available to Americans, NASA footage etc is also public domain. Although you are probably not an American citizen in any shape or form, I suspect you would have no problem using the data. The CIA world factbook is also public domain if you wished to provide some info per country. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Matthew Hurst Sent: 27 May 2005 23:01 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: Re: [backstage] World Coordinates - Finally Available. I'm curious about the availability of this data. I have been using what I guess is siimlar data found from starting out at http://geonames.usgs.gov/ and to save you all the navigation (though it is worth it as there is lots of data here), grab the file from http://earth-info.nga.mil/gns/html/cntry_files.html (i.e. the single compressed file) which as far as I can tell is still freely available and what is more, maintained. It is some effort to deal with as there are many locations with multiple names (you need to test for equality of coordinates to determine that Tokyo is another name for Edo for example). It has 5MM lines in it, of which about 3MM are populated places (PPL designations). Is this basically the same data? I've been working on an in memory representation of this data with the goal of being able to serve as a knowledge resource for location understanding in text as well as for the general task of looking up places near to some position. Anyway - if anyone has clarification of the 'freeness' of this data, I'd be interested to hear about it. Matt Hurst Senior Research Scientist Intelliseek, Inc, BlogPulse: www.blogpulse.com On 5/25/05, David Tattersall [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi, This looks like a very good find - a possible future idea could be getting bbc's forecasts and placing the appropriate weather symbols on a google map (for those who can't quite get the new 3d maps!) If the bbc's RSS feed doesn't include lat/long (although the weather web site does so perhaps the database isn't needed) then this set of figures could come in useful. ps - new here :) I love the idea behind this. Keep up the good work. From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Kosso Sent: 25 May 2005 4:09 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: Re: [backstage] World Coordinates - Finally Available. i'll get this lot into a MySqldb later;) good find!! On 5/25/05, Therion Ware [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi - Finally there. The database of all world cities can be found at: http://video.s-vid.com/~admin/geog/world.zip The file is in CSV format, of the form: iName cName CityNameAdminDistrict LatLong Africa / Middle EastTanzaniaMusasa Tanzania (General) 003:21:00S031:33:00E About 24Mb. Unzips to about 193Mb. And includes the United States, which after much looking around, I found - would that it were so easy to loose in real life...! There's 2,410,343 entries, and it's only population centres. There's another 2 million or so sea mounts, geographical features and so on omitted. If you really need these, let me know, and I'll see. I was thinking of setting up a MySQL backend that allows an HTTP request where you specify a lat and long, and get back the nearest place. If that'd be of use let me know here. As I originally said, I got the data free from the US geographical survey back when they didn't charge for these things. What's amusing is that Vietnam constitutes a unique region (Col 1). Presumably that reflects the spirit of the them times to us today through inertia! Oh - another thing: projecting these coordinates on to a graphic map is *not* a trivial thing for lots of different reasons. Spherical coordinates in relation to your map image and all that... Anyway, have fun, and sniff, if you use them, think about crediting me as in www.video2cd.co.uk as the source seeing as these days it'd cost you money to get them! Best, TW -- www.video2cd.co.uk --- blatant self publicity and unsubtle effort to flog stuff... ___ How much free photo storage do you get? Store your holiday snaps for FREE with Yahoo! Photos http://uk.photos.yahoo.com
