RE: [backstage] Enabling NVIDIA GPU acceleration on iPlayer videos...
On Mon, 2011-01-10 at 14:00 +, Christopher Woods wrote: ... and I specifically download using the --raw flag to avoid any transcoding. The test files themselves remain as-is as .flv files and I can just drop them into MPC, VLC or smplayer (etc) for playback. get_iplayer doesn't attempt any transcoding of video - it just remuxes the flv into mp4. - Phil - 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] regional news - footage available online?
Yes, just noticed that 'Points West' hasn't made it into iPlayer yet. I believe that even the national news @1/6/10 lives only 24hrs. The ones I did look at: Look North, South Today, BBC London News and North West Tonight seem all to be coming out daily on weekdays since 6th/7th Sept (except BBC London News which has been on iPlayer since 21st April). - Phil On Mon, 2010-09-13 at 16:05 +0100, Gavin Johnson wrote: Thanks for noticing, have passed your comments on. It seems that they’re not all live yet, but more are on the way. There is a different schedule for regional news, i.e. they only seem to get 24 hours to live and aren’t published daily. Anyone know any more than that? Gavin On 11/09/2010 18:38, Phil Lewis backst...@linuxcentre.net wrote: Well it would seem that my local news, 'South Today', has started being available in iPlayer since 7th September :-) Thanks to whoever made that happen! BTW: Seems that other weekday regional news programmes have also started appearing. Best Regards Phil On Wed, 2010-09-01 at 15:17 +0100, Gavin Johnson wrote: On 01/09/2010 12:01, Mo McRoberts m...@nevali.net wrote: On Tue, Aug 31, 2010 at 15:25, Gavin Johnson gavin.john...@bbc.co.uk wrote: Hi Phil, Jim et al You be already aware of this but the BBC proposed a local video service last year. The proposal was rejected by the Trust following public consultation. One of the key concerns was about the Œadverse impact on the market¹. You can read a full explanation from the Trust here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/our_work/pvt/local_video_proposal.shtml So while there would be (minor) technical issues involved in delivering local video on bbc.co.uk, they haven¹t been explored because there isn¹t a remit to provide the service. It's worth stressing that the PVT referred to above covered a new £68m service which goes somewhat over and above the existing output from the regions (though I suspect extended versions of material which is edited down for broadcast would fall under that remit). As the Trust says: Within the bounds of existing service licences, the BBC offers regional news on television, local radio and local websites. Programming from the BBC's television services can be shown on the internet. Hunting through /programmes, it seems as hit and miss as suggested earlier. e.g., Points West: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006pft9 versus Reporting Scotland: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006mj3s That's correct, the PVT was a new content proposal. Actually it seems as simple as Nations TV bulletins are on iplayer but the (English) Regions aren't. I think we probably need someone who has greater involvement with iplayer to be certain. Gavin - 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] regional news - footage available online?
Well it would seem that my local news, 'South Today', has started being available in iPlayer since 7th September :-) Thanks to whoever made that happen! BTW: Seems that other weekday regional news programmes have also started appearing. Best Regards Phil On Wed, 2010-09-01 at 15:17 +0100, Gavin Johnson wrote: On 01/09/2010 12:01, Mo McRoberts m...@nevali.net wrote: On Tue, Aug 31, 2010 at 15:25, Gavin Johnson gavin.john...@bbc.co.uk wrote: Hi Phil, Jim et al You be already aware of this but the BBC proposed a local video service last year. The proposal was rejected by the Trust following public consultation. One of the key concerns was about the Œadverse impact on the market¹. You can read a full explanation from the Trust here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/our_work/pvt/local_video_proposal.shtml So while there would be (minor) technical issues involved in delivering local video on bbc.co.uk, they haven¹t been explored because there isn¹t a remit to provide the service. It's worth stressing that the PVT referred to above covered a new £68m service which goes somewhat over and above the existing output from the regions (though I suspect extended versions of material which is edited down for broadcast would fall under that remit). As the Trust says: Within the bounds of existing service licences, the BBC offers regional news on television, local radio and local websites. Programming from the BBC's television services can be shown on the internet. Hunting through /programmes, it seems as hit and miss as suggested earlier. e.g., Points West: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006pft9 versus Reporting Scotland: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006mj3s That's correct, the PVT was a new content proposal. Actually it seems as simple as Nations TV bulletins are on iplayer but the (English) Regions aren't. I think we probably need someone who has greater involvement with iplayer to be certain. Gavin - 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] regional news - footage available online?
Actually I am just downloading BBC London news now. However I cannot see any other regions available on iPlayer. The usual London bias I suppose ;-) On Tue, 2010-08-24 at 18:29 +0100, Christopher Woods wrote: Regions output online is somewhat hit and miss. For example an album launch I was involved with was covered on BBC London evening news - a 3/4 minute VT segment which I finally managed to beg a copy of on DVD and it was completely different from the accompanying video which ended up in a Flash player accompanying the Online articles about the album launch. (Interestingly the audio was dual mono - ambient sound on L channel and overdubbed narrator on R channel? Not sure if that was a snafu by the offline editor, but it was a very deliberate thing to do - be interested to know if that's how News archives ENG material for the double whammy of preserving a clean ambient track for B Roll or just so they can readjust the narration...) However I've seen local articles reproduced in full on the site - perhaps ours was different because there was so much footage taken live at the launch they had enough to do several videos, but I don't often see entire VTs transcoded to the web for inline players. Shame, because I quite like watching the Regions stuff (still tune in to BBC1 South sometimes for the regional news from where I used to live for a long time). I bet it'd be a workflow nightmare trying to get it all ingested properly though. Shame the BBC London news isn't encoded after the main national news broadcasts any more though, it was nice being able to watch after the main broadcast ended on the iPlayer. -Original Message- From: owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk [mailto:owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk] On Behalf Of Anthony McKale Sent: 23 August 2010 10:27 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: Re: [backstage] regional news - footage available online? Locla radio should be on iplayer -http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/radio Enjoy the link while you can Ant On 22/08/2010 12:10, Phil Lewis backst...@linuxcentre.net wrote: Hi Jim, I believe you can often find the local news for up to one day after on the local BBC site for that region. Last time I checked (incidentally for exactly the same reason as you) it was some awful wmv or real stream in very low or extremely low quality. Local news doesn't appear on iPlayer AFAIK. No idea about redux. I personally would love to see local news on iPlayer. best Regards Phil Lewis On Fri, 2010-08-20 at 12:29 +, jim tonge wrote: Hi all. As the Blast tour moves around the UK, myself and my colleagues are frequently interviewed on local TV news and radio. There was a very funny appearance by a colleague yesterday I'd love to get the broadcast of... I'm pretty sure local news isn't accessible through Redux, right? Anyone got any idea how I can get access to this footage either internally or externally? Ta, Jim - 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/ -- Anthony Mckale, Senior CSD Mob : 07912981657 Internal Phone : (02 776) 64470 BBC FMT Children's, TVC East Tower, Floor 1, Room E164 - 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] regional news - footage available online?
Hi Jim, I believe you can often find the local news for up to one day after on the local BBC site for that region. Last time I checked (incidentally for exactly the same reason as you) it was some awful wmv or real stream in very low or extremely low quality. Local news doesn't appear on iPlayer AFAIK. No idea about redux. I personally would love to see local news on iPlayer. best Regards Phil Lewis On Fri, 2010-08-20 at 12:29 +, jim tonge wrote: Hi all. As the Blast tour moves around the UK, myself and my colleagues are frequently interviewed on local TV news and radio. There was a very funny appearance by a colleague yesterday I'd love to get the broadcast of... I'm pretty sure local news isn't accessible through Redux, right? Anyone got any idea how I can get access to this footage either internally or externally? Ta, Jim - 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] Freeview HD Content Management
So is this just going to be another region-coding like affair where 'people' release cracked firmware or just press a few magic button sequences on their remote to remove this protection? And what about those vendors who sell DVRs that have community contributed plugins (e.g. like Topfield did/does); that's just going to make a mockery of this mockworthy content protection. - Phil On Mon, 2010-06-14 at 18:21 +0100, Mo McRoberts wrote: On 14-Jun-2010, at 18:14, Alex Cockell wrote: So i'll have to buy box after box to watch content? doubtful. those which have been sold for FVHD already will have in-built support for the mechanism (it's specced by the ETSI DVB standards), but will likely need an update to get the decoding table. that is, unless they're going to use the same decoding table as Freesat (given the fact that it was claimed to have been generated from a large sample set in order to ensure optimal compression rates, it _should_ be)… M. - 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] A Five year retrospective
I managed to get into a private corporate champagne buffet at InfoSec Europe/London a couple of years ago by just speaking on my mobile while I walked past the security reception. Wouldn't be quite so funny except that the reception was for invited CISSP members only and I wasn't a member or invited. The champagne always tastes better this way. - Phil Lewis On Thu, 2010-05-06 at 13:14 +0100, Soulla Stylianou wrote: fantastic story. Made me giggle. Great. How long ago was that? What did you come to see? Wonder if anyone can better it. Soulla On 6 May 2010 12:59, Jon Knight j.p.kni...@lboro.ac.uk wrote: On Tue, 4 May 2010, Soulla Stylianou wrote: hmm. I could see a challenge in the offing if it wasn't likely to cause security breaches. How far can one person go on either a) a bbc backstage lanyard b) a bbc backstage t-shirt. No BBC connection but a mate and I once blagged our way into a show at the NEC with a walkie talkie, a large cable crimping tool and a reel of old thick Ethernet cable. He walked ahead looking official and chatting on the walkie talkie whilst I plodded along behind with the tool in hand and the cable slung over my shoulder. Security held the barrier open for us and we just smiled and nodded as we walked through... :-) The best bit was the look one the face of one of the barcode wander who frequent such shows when he realised we had no barcodes for him to scan and thus no way for him to send us pointless spam. :-) :-) - 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/
[backstage] Open Source Show And Tell
Apologies for the mass mailing, but I'm organising a (free) event next week that might well interest some of the readers on this list. It's the Open Source Show And Tell, takes place at our offices near Borough Market in London, and everyone is welcome. You can find out more here: http://www.ossat.org http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/5393063/ Cheers, Phil -- http://philwhitehouse.blogspot.com
RE: [backstage] Any more DEB reading footage from today on iPlayer?
On Thu, 2010-04-08 at 15:04 +0100, Christopher Woods wrote: Cheers. Also, on the HoC footage from last night - http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00rzk4b - the programme won't actually start streaming (just looks like it begins to buffer, fails, then retries immediately ad nauseum). Maybe it's just your connection or the CDN flash server the your browser is directed to? It seems to work perfectly fine on iplayer and my usual iplayer recording utility. - Phil - 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] TODAY: Digital Economy Bill Flashmob, 5pm [Manchester]
On Tue, 2010-04-06 at 22:20 +0100, Mo McRoberts wrote: On 6-Apr-2010, at 22:13, Alex Cockell wrote: On Tue, 2010-04-06 at 22:00 +0100, Fearghas McKay wrote: Nope - just voted to send it to the committee stage tomorrow. Umm - does that mean we've lost? I *think* so. not really sure. According to this (below) it would appear that we haven't lost yet. But then again, maybe I'm misunderstanding the due process in parliament. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8605648.stm Controversial elements of the Digital Economy Bill will face further scrutiny even if the bill is passed later, Commons Leader Harriet Harman has said. - Phil Lewis - 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] Programmes with audio description
Hi Jamie, I gues you specifically want /programmes to do this but (and you probably know this already) you can get this current iPlayer list from: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/categories/audiodescribed or http://feeds.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/categories/audiodescribed/list I have an iPlayer search page which can also do 'audio described' format searching by entering 'audiodescribed' into the 'Programme Version' advanced search box OR by 'Audio Described' into the 'Categories Containing' advanced search box: http://linuxcentre.net/iplayersearch Best Regards Phil Lewis On Thu, 2010-03-11 at 19:13 +, Robert (Jamie) Munro wrote: Is it possible to filter /programmes for upcoming programmes with Audio description? I'd like to try downloading the audio from recordings on my Myth TV box for listening in the car. Of course, some programmes probably work well as audio only without being specifically described, so a list of programmes recommended for blind people might be a nice alternative. http://www.bbc.co.uk/aboutthebbc/policies/audiodescription/index.shtml says From spring 2009 you will be able to check the Programmes website to see whether a programme has audio description, but I can't see it anywhere, and I certainly can't see how to filter by it. Thanks, Robert (Jamie) Munro - 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] Video on Demand Dissertation Survey
It seems to works in Chrome, which uses WebKit - so maybe just a Safari issue? Phil On Tue, Mar 2, 2010 at 1:15 PM, Simon Stirrat streetma...@gmail.com wrote: In hindsight it would have been better to ask someone before spamming it out to everyone. I'm sorry Ian, I'll do things differently next time. Thank you everyone for there responses, I really appreciate it. And I'm very surprised that SurveyMonkey doesn't support WebKit, something else I'll remember next time. On 2 March 2010 12:46, Ian Forrester ian.forres...@bbc.co.uk wrote: p.s. I hope this doesn't break any of the house rules. There are house rules? Cripes. - So there are not exactly house rules, but its always good to run stuff like this pass me first just to make sure. Cheers, Ian - 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/ -- Simon Stirrat streetma...@gmail.com s.stir...@rave.ac.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/ -- http://philwhitehouse.blogspot.com
Re: [backstage] BBC iPlayer for Apple TV
Has anyone tried this alongside aTV Flash on the Apple TV? My woeful tech skills don't extend to the command line, but I've been very happy with aTV Flash so far. The only thing missing has been iPlayer. So maybe I'll ask the aTV Flash people to bundle this together with their product, they've done this with other open source tools, and you get the option to deselect stuff you don't want. (Tried Boxee on aTV Flash, didn't like it - but that was in beta. Interested in others' views!) Cheers, Phil On Wed, Feb 3, 2010 at 11:04 AM, Jeremy Stone jem.st...@bbc.co.uk wrote: . - Original Message - From: owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Sent: Wed Feb 03 10:22:11 2010 Subject: Re: [backstage] BBC iPlayer for Apple TV On 2 Feb 2010, at 22:14, Jonathan Tweed wrote: Thanks, it's been a fun project. Do feel free to fork and improve :) Nifty! At last, a use for the Apple TV? ;-) S - 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/ -- http://philwhitehouse.blogspot.com
Re: [backstage] iPad
Some useful context on the Apple / Flash debate: daringfireball.net/2010/01/apple_adobe_flash Phil On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 12:20 PM, Michael Kraskin michael.kras...@bbc.comwrote: I think the no-Flash means that it a seriously crippled web browser. Hardly the best way to browse the internet, and thus will be a serious disappointment, not only to power users, but to casual internet surfers as well. The no-camera thing just screams wait for the second generation before you buy one - Original Message - From: owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Sent: Thu Jan 28 07:03:32 2010 Subject: Re: [backstage] iPad On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 11:49, Dave Crossland d...@lab6.com wrote: 2010/1/28 Daniel Morris daniel.mor...@bbc.co.uk: Sorry, I didn't realise we were back in the 1970s where the software that runs on the iPhone can be called an operating system. Am I missing something - how is it not an OS? :) Apple actively oppose you installing whatever you want to, and running applications in the background, on the iPhone and now on the iPad. These are features of any respectable operating system since the 70s. No, these are features of any operating system designed for use by computer users. If you own your computer, it ought to be under your control. Apple computers are not. The ultimate answer is 100% free software. The same applies to your car, central heating system, ADSL router, Freeview box, TV and most mobile phones... and while a laudable goal, the people who won't buy one of those things for this reason is in the minority, principally because a) you need to find someone to actually make the thing and sell it at a reasonable price, and b) the alternatives often aren't that good (in other words, the freedom is a great big trade-off). Point of note, though, it's a computer in the technical sense, in the same way that all mobile phones are computers. Really, though, it's CE. Adjust expectations accordingly. What it isn't, and specifically isn't claimed to be (though lots of people would certainly like one) is a tablet-form-factor Mac. M. - 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/ This e-mail (and any attachments) is confidential and may contain personal views which are not the views of the BBC unless specifically stated. If you have received it in error, please delete it from your system. Do not use, copy or disclose the information in any way nor act in reliance on it and notify the sender immediately. Please note that the BBC monitors e-mails sent or received. Further communication will signify your consent to this -- http://philwhitehouse.blogspot.com
Re: [backstage] Youtube rolls out Html5 video support
I (maybe mistakenly) seem to remeber the original youtube HTML5 test page I saw somewhere supported Firefox 3.5. This youtube page doesn't seem to. Must be that they are using the h.264 codec which I believe Mozilla wouldn't/couldn't put into their browser. - P On Thu, 2010-01-21 at 11:38 +, Tim Dobson wrote: http://news.cnet.com/8301-27076_3-10438578-248.html http://youtube-global.blogspot.com/2010/01/introducing-youtube-html5-supported.html http://www.youtube.com/html5 The pressure's on! - 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] The browser wars, reloaded?
It isn't a case of designers meekly deferring to their clients - more a case of designers recognising that a large chunk of their audience (~15%) uses ie6 and has no choice in the matter. I strongly dislike ie6, but it isn't going anywhere. Blogged about it here: http://philwhitehouse.blogspot.com/2009/08/ie6-isnt-going-anywhere.html I'm sure some would respond that IT departments should upgrade, and we can put pressure on them through the users, but the reality is that this isn't going to happen until the cost of upgrade (including upgrading all the old systems designed for ie6 i.e. very, very expensive) are outweighed by the cost of not upgrading (pretty low, actually). So it really doesn't make sense to alienate potential users or customers in the meantime. Phil On Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 3:13 PM, Christopher Woods chris...@infinitus.co.uk wrote: There's no need to support IE6. I don't even consider IE6 backward competibility when I design web sites, nor do I care if people don't like that. You wouldn't win any points round here for that attitude, I'm afraid. There isn't anyone here who *wants* to be supporting IE6, I assure you... Of course :) However imho as long as designers continue to meekly defer to clients and their requests to support completely obsolete browsers, the longer it takes to design a good web site, the more costly it becomes and the more complicated it is to maintain - it's really in nobody's best interests. We've collectively been far too wet behind the ears about it for a long time. The customer is not always right. (and this comes from someone who's both a web designer and, wearing his other hat, a (frustrated) client of 'professional' web designers!) - 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/ -- http://philwhitehouse.blogspot.com
Re: [backstage] Changes to the list
Isn't there a flash-based forum somewhere that uses those open protocol standards like rtmpe? That way we could embed H.264 video if we wanted without fear of anyone pirating it. I would also suggest Huffman lookup tables to prevent the message index being read by non-members. We must always consider the copyright ownership and redistribution rights of the content in posts. On Tue, 2009-10-20 at 15:11 +0100, Tim Dobson wrote: Matt Hammond wrote: Lets not forget to include a mandatory signup for an MSN Passport or Google account or Yahoo ID ... even just to be able to browse ;-) I think we should move all of Backstage to Facebook!!!11 Everyone uses Facebook right!??!!?!1 - 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] Changes to the list
I should have added that you are granted 7 days to view the message and after which it will become unreadable. You also must always obtain an auth token before reading (it only lasts 30 seconds) - unless of course I choose to take my authorisation server down. I believe that this will stop undue proliferation of my message and therefore increase future message popularity and revenue. On Tue, 2009-10-20 at 15:35 +0100, Mo McRoberts wrote: On 20-Oct-2009, at 15:26, Phil Lewis wrote: [REDACTED] I’m sorry, I would have replied to your message, but it required quoting it, and I’m not sure I was granted the appropriate redistribution rights. M. Produced for the BBC Backstage Mailing List by Mo McRoberts’ fingers. © MM MMIX . All rights reserved. - 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] ziplayer = 3x iplayer?
On Wed, 2009-10-14 at 12:49 +0100, ~:'' ありがとうございました wrote: ziplayer = 3x iplayer? a control to listen and view iplayer content at 3x speed** has anyone seen a demo? I'd like to save time reviewing occasional content before presenting it. I use get_iplayer to stream the iplayer flash content to vlc directly as follows: get_iplayer --modes=flash --player=vlc - --stream 123 then just increase the playback speed on vlc while it streams. 3x is a little too fast t comprehend IMHO - 2x is really quite good though. BTW: vlc doesn't increase the pitch of the audio, just the speed. - P regards ~: **TV Raman http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/04/business/04blind.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/ - 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 NEWS | Technology | Flash moves on to smart phones
In case you're interested, I'm organising a free event where javascript legend Jeremy Ruston is giving a talk on HTML5 and the slow death of Flash. Plenty of time for QA afterwards! Details here: http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/4516026/ Cheers, Phil On Mon, Oct 5, 2009 at 5:42 PM, cisnky cis...@gmail.com wrote: Mate, Dream on about HTML 5 killing off Flash. HTML5 is a standards time bomb waiting to go off. 2009/10/5 Zen zen16...@zen.co.uk Hopefully. HTML5 will kill off flash once and for all. Some hope! On 5 Oct 2009, at 14:19, Dan Brickley wrote: Great news, phone fans! http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8287239.stm One of the most common technologies for watching video on a computer will soon be available for most smartphones. Flash software is used to deliver around 75% of online video and is the key technology that underpins websites such as YouTube and Google Video. Until now, many smartphones and netbooks have used a light version of the program, because of the limited processing power of the devices. The new software is intended to work as well on a smartphone as a desktop PC. Adobe, the maker of Flash, said it should be available on most higher-end handsets by 2010, although Apple's iPhone would continue not to use the software. The sort of rich apps we now see being delivered on PCs will now be coming to the phone, Ben Wood, director of mobile research at analyst firm CCS Insight, told BBC News. You'll be able to access a lot of the cool stuff that web designers are coming up with. ... Apple anomaly ... The new software will be available for Windows Mobile, Palm webOS and desktop operating systems including Windows, Macintosh and Linux later this year. Trial software for Google Android and the popular Symbian operating systems are expected to be available in early 2010. However, it will not be available for the Apple iPhone, according to Mr Muraka. We're going to need Apple's cooperation, he told BBC News. At the moment Safari (Apple's web browser) doesn't support any kind of plug-in [on the iPhone]. But we'd love to see it on there. Mr Wood said he thought that time would come soon. As momentum builds, I think Apple will have little choice but to embrace it [Flash], he said. Watch this space. Apple did not respond to requests for comment. - 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/ -- --- Anthony Onumonu - Blog www.cisnky.com Twitter www.twitter.com/cisnky - Mobile: +44 (0) 7920 10 25 35 - -- http://philwhitehouse.blogspot.com
Re: [backstage] Re: Freeview HD vs existing HDMI upscaling freeview boxes (was RE: [backstage] License to Kill Innovation: the Broadcast Flag for UK Digital TV?)
On Fri, 2009-09-18 at 09:54 +0100, Frankie Roberto wrote: ... If only I could stream BBC iPlayer direct to my TV via my Apple TV box, I wouldn't really ever need a Freeview HD box. I have created an iPlayer streaming proxy for Unix/Linux/OSX/Win32 to do just this. Not actually tried it with an Apple TV box (I don't own one) but it does stream mov, flv, mp3, aac from iPlayer flash programmes, local files and BBC live TV/radio streams. google for 'Web PVR Manager'. Specifically look at the README for examples of how to create dynamic M3U iPlayer playlists and streaming URLs based on programme names/episodes etc. I also use it to browse and stream the flash AAC live radio and listen-again (mp3,aac,real) streams to my Squeezebox and it works a treat :-) - P Frankie -- Frankie Roberto Experience Designer, Rattle 0114 2706977 http://www.rattlecentral.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] BBC iPlayer - encoding from broadcast rather than master tapes
If you ever watch the iPhone iPlayer streams they are not the same edits as the flash based iPlayer, they always appear to be from broadcast - you sometimes even get completely the wrong programme if the broadcast schedule changed at the last minute! - Phil On Thu, 2009-09-10 at 13:53 +0100, Andrew Bowden wrote: I thought most TV programmes that can be taken from master tapes are. I've never seen anything recorded off air on iPlayer, and no credit squeezes myself - even for programmes broadcast live. I just had a look at last nights Lottery draw for example and there was nothing on that, nor on Sunday's THe Big Questions. __ From: owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk [mailto:owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk] On Behalf Of Frankie Roberto Sent: 10 September 2009 13:19 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: [backstage] BBC iPlayer - encoding from broadcast rather than master tapes Hi all, Apologies if this has been answered before, but is there any reason why the BBC iPlayer seems to only encode programmes from the live broadcast stream, rather than, say, using the actual master tapes/digital files? Sure, it might be simpler, but long-term it'd be great to use the original source. Some reasons for doing so: * occasionally the live broadcast has errors (eg loss of signal, or playout error) * you could trim the programmes more precisely - no more having to skip the last few minutes of previous programme * no more credit squeezes and continuity announcements trailing programmes that you can't actually watch * you could even produce a slightly different edit of a TV show - for example, with dramas like Doctor Who you wouldn't have text at the end saying Next week... Are there any plans for this? Seems like it'd be the obvious next step in improving the user experience of iPlayer... Frankie -- Frankie Roberto Experience Designer, Rattle 0114 2706977 http://www.rattlecentral.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] BBC iPlayer - encoding from broadcast rather than master tapes
On Thu, 2009-09-10 at 17:48 +0100, Frankie Roberto wrote: snip... you could even do things like cut down the amount of trailing ahead - which surely is less required on iPlayer where people have chosen to watch something specific and are in less danger of changing channel... (You could probably shave a good few minutes off from Dragons Den in this way, which trails ahead constantly in a really annoying way). Surely a bad idea, that would just make the 'BBC News at Six' just 10 minutes long ;-) - 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 iPlayer - encoding from broadcast rather than master tapes
On Thu, 2009-09-10 at 20:28 +0100, Richard Smedley wrote: Phil Lewis wrote: If you ever watch the iPhone iPlayer streams they are not the same edits as the flash based iPlayer, they always appear to be from broadcast - Ah - that explains it. I use get_iplayer, which grabs the iPhone offerings :) you sometimes even get completely the wrong programme if the broadcast schedule changed at the last minute! Too true - numbers allocated to downloads seem to change by the minute :-/ I was actually referring to the BBC actually putting out an incorrect programme on the iphone - e.g. a couple of weeks ago 'Click' on the iPhone was just some news 24 coverage of an important news story - it completely missed the programme because they moved it! I think they just slice up the broadcast output according to the schedule that their software has cached. - P - 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] RealAudio for local radio - gone missing?
', 'bbc_radio_kent'= 'BBC Kent', 'bbc_southern_counties_radio' = 'BBC Southern Counties', 'bbc_radio_oxford' = 'BBC Oxford', 'bbc_radio_berkshire' = 'BBC Berkshire', 'bbc_radio_solent' = 'BBC Solent', 'bbc_radio_gloucestershire' = 'BBC Gloucestershire', 'bbc_radio_swindon' = 'BBC Swindon', 'bbc_radio_wiltshire' = 'BBC Wiltshire', 'bbc_radio_bristol' = 'BBC Bristol', 'bbc_radio_somerset_sound' = 'BBC Somerset', 'bbc_radio_devon' = 'BBC Devon', 'bbc_radio_cornwall'= 'BBC Cornwall', 'bbc_radio_guernsey'= 'BBC Guernsey', 'bbc_radio_jersey' = 'BBC Jersey', Best Regards Phil On Sat, 2009-09-05 at 10:14 +0100, Paul Webster wrote: Closely related question ... and one that was asked back in October last year. Do we now have XML feed for the BBC local radio station listen again content? If yes - what is the syntax - and is there a page that lists the links? i.e. an equivalent of http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/availability/radio4.xml Paul On Fri, 04 Sep 2009 15:00:33 +0100, you wrote: So - I presume that this means that we lose the ability to pause/ff On Demand content on Reciva-based radios (because it was using a URL facility of the streaming server that has presumably been turned off). Annoying if true because of prior discussions with Alan Ogilvie (back in December) about this. I can't verify until Reciva move to the WMA streams ... Paul On Fri, 04 Sep 2009 14:41:32 +0100, you wrote: Ok so it turns out that a dual bitrate option will continue to be available, but in Windows rather than Real. So that link is temporarily broken while things are being moved around. There¹s some useful background here. http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2009/08/improvements_to_bbc_local_rad i.html On 04/09/2009 13:50, Gavin Johnson gavin.john...@bbc.co.uk wrote: As of Tuesday there is no longer a dual bitrate option. It looks like iplayer haven¹t caught up. Thanks for noticing, I¹ll give someone a nudge about getting the link removed. Gavin On 04/09/2009 12:43, Paul Webster p...@dabdig.com wrote: What has happened to the RealAudio feeds of the local radio (BBC London in particular) Listen Again content? As an example http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0046fbf/Danny_Baker_03_09_2009/ choose the pop-out player - and then low bandwidth ... Danny Baker: 03/09/2009 is unavailable at this time. Paul Webster - 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] RealAudio for local radio - gone missing?
This link from James Cridland also seems to confirm there was no plan to remove these streams... http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/radiolabs/2008/12/bbc_radio_in_iplayer_-_sounds.shtml On Fri, 2009-09-04 at 14:41 +0100, Gavin Johnson wrote: Ok so it turns out that a dual bitrate option will continue to be available, but in Windows rather than Real. So that link is temporarily broken while things are being moved around. There’s some useful background here. http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2009/08/improvements_to_bbc_local_radi.html On 04/09/2009 13:50, Gavin Johnson gavin.john...@bbc.co.uk wrote: As of Tuesday there is no longer a dual bitrate option. It looks like iplayer haven’t caught up. Thanks for noticing, I’ll give someone a nudge about getting the link removed. Gavin On 04/09/2009 12:43, Paul Webster p...@dabdig.com wrote: What has happened to the RealAudio feeds of the local radio (BBC London in particular) Listen Again content? As an example http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0046fbf/Danny_Baker_03_09_2009/ choose the pop-out player - and then low bandwidth ... Danny Baker: 03/09/2009 is unavailable at this time. Paul Webster - 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] Site check
Down for me too. On Fri, 2009-08-21 at 16:06 +0100, Ant Miller wrote: is www.welcomebackstage.com down for all you guys too? a - 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] very simple re-imaging of a ubuntu build from a USB stick for schools
Here is a follow-up: After some banging my head against a brick wall I managed to get 'Clonezilla Live' to do this automated rebuild using partclone/partimage. You just boot the USB stick and confirm 'y' twice (to be sure). It even managed to restore onto a completely dissimilar piece of hardware successfully :-) Process summary: I had to: * create a bootable Clonezilla Live USB stick (well documented) * backup all partitions to it (using 'skip' option) * boot the USB stick again and tell it to create a 'restore-zip-iso' with the image I just created * made a note of the command it says it runs to do this zip restore * rebooted same USB stick again before actually telling it to proceed (it takes ages then starts overwriting its own data etc otherwise!), * edited the syslinux.cfg file to boot-up using those command options (passed as kernel parameters). I'll post the detailed how-to to the clonezilla people because it works well nut the process isn't documented and not 'out of the box'. Thanks for all of your suggestions and advice :-) Best Regards Phil Lewis On Mon, 2009-08-10 at 10:57 +0100, Phil Lewis wrote: Hi Tim, I'll certainly post on how it goes when I have a satisfactory solution. The hardware is identical - which is why the re-imaging option looks better than an automated rebuild. A rebuild could typically take a lot longer to run than a re-image (assuming I don't do a byte-for-byte copy of the whole disk but use partimage or similar). Best Regards Phil On Fri, 2009-08-07 at 18:27 +0100, Tim Dobson wrote: Umm yeah I can probably sort of help. One of the projects I'm working on is a customised version of Ubuntu 8.04 (LTS is a good idea!) that in theory you can use to easily install Ubuntu server with an asterisk voip server and a web UI for configuring it. There's some quite good wiki page on this subject: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/InstallCDCustomization (that's the page for desktop installations - what I'm doing wiki ubuntu server is a bit different) Essentially there are two steps: * create a customised ISO * put the customised ISO on a usb stick and make it work. As we've been finding the second step quite difficult, we've been concentrating on the first step and testing the first bit on CDs - there's no need to complicate things further at this stage. Customising the install process is in theory fairly easy, unfortunately, I had quite a few issues getting the Ubuntu-keyring package to function correctly so at the moment I'm using a non-ideal solution whereby the preseed late_command runs a script to install some packages. It's still a very bad way of doing things and I'll have to go back and see what it is that wasn't quite going right to start off with. What you need is to preseed most of the Ubuntu installer (Alan linked to some good documentation here), modify the image or do something to install those extra packages and modifications, work out how to get the customised image to boot from usb correctly. Just to emphasise, I'm NOT an expert in this area, it just so happens I've been banging my head about this sort of thing for the past few weeks, so I know a little. :) Would love to hear how you get on! Tim Phil Lewis wrote: Hi, Does anyone here know of any open source software solution that will allow me to image an Ubuntu laptop on to a USB stick so that it can be used by a technophobic teacher to rebuild a laptop when one goes bad? The reimaging has got to be REALLY SIMPLE - e.g.: 1) Plug in usb stick 2) Power up netbook 3) Click or type 'yes' to confirm 4) Wait for a while 5) Plug out usb stick 6) Repower netbook Some background: a primary school has asked me to design and rollout a 30-60 netbook solution for their classrooms. I am planning on an Ubuntu 9.04 build with specific educational extras. It will be somewhat customised such that the kids/teachers will find it easy to use and start apps etc (more concerned about teachers here of course). Since I'm trying to get a basic third-party commercial support contract for the setup, I want the support people to be able to tell the teachers to just insert a USB stick to reimage a laptop if required. I could go with a scripted PXE-boot based install system but given that all these netbooks will we wireless I think this would make it harder for staff if they have to find an ethernet cable before re-imaging if/when required. Also with all the (documented) tweaks to the desktop etc, PXE would be quite a tedious scripting task and probably not the best solution given that the build will be almost static. Any ideas/solutions welcome... -- Phil Lewis - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk
Re: [backstage] very simple re-imaging of a ubuntu build from a USB stick for schools
Full details at: https://sourceforge.net/forum/message.php?msg_id=7557331 On Wed, 2009-08-12 at 11:09 +0100, Phil Lewis wrote: Here is a follow-up: After some banging my head against a brick wall I managed to get 'Clonezilla Live' to do this automated rebuild using partclone/partimage. You just boot the USB stick and confirm 'y' twice (to be sure). It even managed to restore onto a completely dissimilar piece of hardware successfully :-) Process summary: I had to: * create a bootable Clonezilla Live USB stick (well documented) * backup all partitions to it (using 'skip' option) * boot the USB stick again and tell it to create a 'restore-zip-iso' with the image I just created * made a note of the command it says it runs to do this zip restore * rebooted same USB stick again before actually telling it to proceed (it takes ages then starts overwriting its own data etc otherwise!), * edited the syslinux.cfg file to boot-up using those command options (passed as kernel parameters). I'll post the detailed how-to to the clonezilla people because it works well nut the process isn't documented and not 'out of the box'. Thanks for all of your suggestions and advice :-) Best Regards Phil Lewis On Mon, 2009-08-10 at 10:57 +0100, Phil Lewis wrote: Hi Tim, I'll certainly post on how it goes when I have a satisfactory solution. The hardware is identical - which is why the re-imaging option looks better than an automated rebuild. A rebuild could typically take a lot longer to run than a re-image (assuming I don't do a byte-for-byte copy of the whole disk but use partimage or similar). Best Regards Phil On Fri, 2009-08-07 at 18:27 +0100, Tim Dobson wrote: Umm yeah I can probably sort of help. One of the projects I'm working on is a customised version of Ubuntu 8.04 (LTS is a good idea!) that in theory you can use to easily install Ubuntu server with an asterisk voip server and a web UI for configuring it. There's some quite good wiki page on this subject: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/InstallCDCustomization (that's the page for desktop installations - what I'm doing wiki ubuntu server is a bit different) Essentially there are two steps: * create a customised ISO * put the customised ISO on a usb stick and make it work. As we've been finding the second step quite difficult, we've been concentrating on the first step and testing the first bit on CDs - there's no need to complicate things further at this stage. Customising the install process is in theory fairly easy, unfortunately, I had quite a few issues getting the Ubuntu-keyring package to function correctly so at the moment I'm using a non-ideal solution whereby the preseed late_command runs a script to install some packages. It's still a very bad way of doing things and I'll have to go back and see what it is that wasn't quite going right to start off with. What you need is to preseed most of the Ubuntu installer (Alan linked to some good documentation here), modify the image or do something to install those extra packages and modifications, work out how to get the customised image to boot from usb correctly. Just to emphasise, I'm NOT an expert in this area, it just so happens I've been banging my head about this sort of thing for the past few weeks, so I know a little. :) Would love to hear how you get on! Tim Phil Lewis wrote: Hi, Does anyone here know of any open source software solution that will allow me to image an Ubuntu laptop on to a USB stick so that it can be used by a technophobic teacher to rebuild a laptop when one goes bad? The reimaging has got to be REALLY SIMPLE - e.g.: 1) Plug in usb stick 2) Power up netbook 3) Click or type 'yes' to confirm 4) Wait for a while 5) Plug out usb stick 6) Repower netbook Some background: a primary school has asked me to design and rollout a 30-60 netbook solution for their classrooms. I am planning on an Ubuntu 9.04 build with specific educational extras. It will be somewhat customised such that the kids/teachers will find it easy to use and start apps etc (more concerned about teachers here of course). Since I'm trying to get a basic third-party commercial support contract for the setup, I want the support people to be able to tell the teachers to just insert a USB stick to reimage a laptop if required. I could go with a scripted PXE-boot based install system but given that all these netbooks will we wireless I think this would make it harder for staff if they have to find an ethernet cable before re-imaging if/when required. Also with all the (documented) tweaks to the desktop etc, PXE would be quite a tedious scripting task and probably not the best
[backstage] very simple re-imaging of a ubuntu build from a USB stick for schools
Hi, Does anyone here know of any open source software solution that will allow me to image an Ubuntu laptop on to a USB stick so that it can be used by a technophobic teacher to rebuild a laptop when one goes bad? The reimaging has got to be REALLY SIMPLE - e.g.: 1) Plug in usb stick 2) Power up netbook 3) Click or type 'yes' to confirm 4) Wait for a while 5) Plug out usb stick 6) Repower netbook Some background: a primary school has asked me to design and rollout a 30-60 netbook solution for their classrooms. I am planning on an Ubuntu 9.04 build with specific educational extras. It will be somewhat customised such that the kids/teachers will find it easy to use and start apps etc (more concerned about teachers here of course). Since I'm trying to get a basic third-party commercial support contract for the setup, I want the support people to be able to tell the teachers to just insert a USB stick to reimage a laptop if required. I could go with a scripted PXE-boot based install system but given that all these netbooks will we wireless I think this would make it harder for staff if they have to find an ethernet cable before re-imaging if/when required. Also with all the (documented) tweaks to the desktop etc, PXE would be quite a tedious scripting task and probably not the best solution given that the build will be almost static. Any ideas/solutions welcome... -- Phil Lewis - 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] very simple re-imaging of a ubuntu build from a USB stick for schools
Thnaks - I'll look into this further, but I think this and Alan's suggestion both require installation scripting of any customisations. Neither solutions allow you to image an actual hard disk image and restore it with ease. Best Regards Phil On Fri, 2009-08-07 at 12:16 +0100, Kevin Anderson wrote: Phil, I've just been playing with the Netbook remix via USB on an EEE 1000. Ubuntu has the Edbuntu distribution. Might be worth looking into remixing the remix, adding the Edbuntu software package with the Netbook remix. As for transferring the image, there is a USB image creator for Ubuntu that I think ships with recent versions but is available via PPA: It's explained here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/FromImgFiles With a link from the download page: http://www.ubuntu.com/GetUbuntu/download-netbook I've also done it from the command line on a Mac, and it's relatively straightforward using dd. hope that helps. k On Fri, Aug 7, 2009 at 12:01 PM, Phil Lewis backst...@linuxcentre.net wrote: Hi, Does anyone here know of any open source software solution that will allow me to image an Ubuntu laptop on to a USB stick so that it can be used by a technophobic teacher to rebuild a laptop when one goes bad? The reimaging has got to be REALLY SIMPLE - e.g.: 1) Plug in usb stick 2) Power up netbook 3) Click or type 'yes' to confirm 4) Wait for a while 5) Plug out usb stick 6) Repower netbook Some background: a primary school has asked me to design and rollout a 30-60 netbook solution for their classrooms. I am planning on an Ubuntu 9.04 build with specific educational extras. It will be somewhat customised such that the kids/teachers will find it easy to use and start apps etc (more concerned about teachers here of course). Since I'm trying to get a basic third-party commercial support contract for the setup, I want the support people to be able to tell the teachers to just insert a USB stick to reimage a laptop if required. I could go with a scripted PXE-boot based install system but given that all these netbooks will we wireless I think this would make it harder for staff if they have to find an ethernet cable before re-imaging if/when required. Also with all the (documented) tweaks to the desktop etc, PXE would be quite a tedious scripting task and probably not the best solution given that the build will be almost static. Any ideas/solutions welcome... -- Phil Lewis - 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] very simple re-imaging of a ubuntu build from a USB stick for schools
Hi Rich, I had a go at that - Clonezilla, although very capable, as far as I could work out, still requires quite a few user menu selections to be performed before it can restore an image - this unfortunately needs to be *completely* dummy proof - i.e. one 'yes' and then to re-image the disk. Let me know if I'm missing something here with the Clonezilla Live stuff Thanks Phil On Fri, 2009-08-07 at 17:47 +0100, Richard wrote: I've used Clonezilla to clone and restore machines over networks, to a central server - it really is very good. I just had a look and noticed they now have a USB boot option- and I'm thinking it probably possible to make an image of a netbook , create a bootable USB clonezilla drive, add the clone image, run a script at boot and restore the image , subject to a prompt (and then make an image of this, complete solution, to be rolled out to many usb sticks). Anyway - here's the clonezilla linky: http://clonezilla.org/clonezilla-live/liveusb.php Rich 2009/8/7 Phil Lewis backst...@linuxcentre.net Ah yes, did actually use that back in 2002 - will have another look at it - thx On Fri, 2009-08-07 at 16:57 +0100, Alan Pope wrote: Hi Phil, 2009/8/7 Phil Lewis backst...@linuxcentre.net Thnaks - I'll look into this further, but I think this and Alan's suggestion both require installation scripting of any customisations. Neither solutions allow you to image an actual hard disk image and restore it with ease. Ah, in that case you might want to look at:- http://www.mondorescue.org/ It backs up your GNU/Linux server or workstation to tape, CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-R[W], DVD+R[W], NFS or hard disk partition. In the event of catastrophic data loss, you will be able to restore all of your data [or as much as you want], from bare metal if necessary. Not tried it but heard good things about it. Cheers, Al. - 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] Fwd: [Autonomo.us] Skype, out?
I used to work for the open source innovation arm of BT, during which time I wrote this blog post on the subject: http://philwhitehouse.blogspot.com/2008/06/how-to-make-money-from-open-source.html Your email brings to mind the joke where someone was asked for directions, and the response was You shouldn't start from here. Essentially open source is viable in some cases and less so in others - but it depends on many factors. Cheers, Phil On Tue, Aug 4, 2009 at 11:07 AM, Alun Rowe alun.r...@pentangle.co.ukwrote: Yes I have but it is fairly unique. How would you obtain funding for an idea which had no IP of it own? “Do you own the patent on this?” - er no it’s open source. “Can anyone arrive in the marketplace tomorrow and replicate what you do?” - er yes. Like I say I love the utopian model but I can’t see it happening for a long long time. Companies NEED to be able to maintain their own technology without simply passing it to their competitors on a plate. Anyway it’s no surprise people pay Red Hat for support. Mere users don’t stand a chance with anything Linux based. It’s far too geeky to use still. Alun On 04/08/2009 08:13, Dave Crossland d...@lab6.com wrote: Have you heard of Red Hat? On 4 Aug 2009, 7:02 AM, Alun Rowe alun.r...@pentangle.co.uk wrote: The problem with a 'free digital society' is that people need salaries. Ask the music/film industry what they think. I love the idea of utopia but we all know that unicorns don't exist, right? On 3 Aug 2009, at 20:14, Dave Crossland d...@lab6.com wrote: Hi, What about the case fo... Alun Rowe Pentangle Internet Limited 2 Buttermarket Thame Oxfordshire OX9 3EW Tel: +44 8700 33... This message (and any associated files) is intended only for the use of the individual or entity to which it is addressed and may contain information that is confidential, subject to copyright or constitutes a trade secret. If you are not the intended recipient you are hereby notified that any dissemination, copying or distribution of this message, or files associated with this message, is strictly prohibited. If you have received this message in error, please notify us immediately by replying to the message and deleting it from your computer. Messages sent to and from us may be monitored. Internet communications cannot be guaranteed to be secure or error-free as information could be intercepted, corrupted, lost, destroyed, arrive late or incomplete, or contain viruses. Therefore, we do not accept responsibility for any errors or omissions that are present in this message, or any attachment, that have arisen as a result of e-mail transmission. If verification is required, please request a hard-copy version. Any views or opinions presented are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the company. *Alun Rowe* *Pentangle Internet Limited* 2 Buttermarket Thame Oxfordshire OX9 3EW Tel: +44 8700 339905 Fax: +44 8700 339906 *Please direct all support requests to **it-supp...@pentangle.co.uk*it-supp...@pentangle.co.uk Pentangle Internet Limited is a limited company registered in England and Wales. Registered number: 3960918. Registered office: 1 Lauras Close, Great Staughton, Cambridgeshire PE19 5DP -- http://philwhitehouse.blogspot.com
Re: [backstage] Fwd: [Autonomo.us] Skype, out?
My father (who I refuse to give any tech support to) failed to install windows XP well enough to get online or have it usable for several years of attempting it several times. Every time he buys a new PC with windows pre-installed. He's been using windows heavily for 10yrs. What I'm saying is that the average user sometimes finds almost all OSes difficult if not impossible to install without some sort of tech support. On the other hand, my 6yr old son fully installed and uses Fedora 11 and is on the internet. I just gave him the DVD and told him how to get the laptop to boot from DVD. OK, I did have to install some non-default packages a few days after for him but none that were crucial. It all depends on the end user. On Tue, 2009-08-04 at 12:35 +0100, Alun Rowe wrote: Ask a genuine user to install some software on it. I know it’s a LOT better than it used to be but my dad still couldn’t do it. Alun On 04/08/2009 11:31, Brian Butterworth briant...@freeview.tv wrote: 2009/8/4 Alun Rowe alun.r...@pentangle.co.uk ... Mere users don’t stand a chance with anything Linux based. It’s far too geeky to use still. Your final pronouncement is interesting. How can you justify it? Alun On 04/08/2009 08:13, Dave Crossland d...@lab6.com http://d...@lab6.com wrote: Have you heard of Red Hat? On 4 Aug 2009, 7:02 AM, Alun Rowe alun.r...@pentangle.co.uk http://alun.r...@pentangle.co.uk wrote: The problem with a 'free digital society' is that people need salaries. Ask the music/film industry what they think. I love the idea of utopia but we all know that unicorns don't exist, right? On 3 Aug 2009, at 20:14, Dave Crossland d...@lab6.com http://d...@lab6.com wrote: Hi, What about the case fo... Alun Rowe Pentangle Internet Limited 2 Buttermarket Thame Oxfordshire OX9 3EW Tel: +44 8700 33... This message (and any associated files) is intended only for the use of the individual or entity to which it is addressed and may contain information that is confidential, subject to copyright or constitutes a trade secret. If you are not the intended recipient you are hereby notified that any dissemination, copying or distribution of this message, or files associated with this message, is strictly prohibited. If you have received this message in error, please notify us immediately by replying to the message and deleting it from your computer. Messages sent to and from us may be monitored. Internet communications cannot be guaranteed to be secure or error-free as information could be intercepted,
Re: [backstage] What's the calendar app?
On Tue, 2009-07-14 at 04:23 +0100, Nico Morrison wrote: Realised that about 30 secs after emailing, thanks for no sarcasm. I think I am surprised that Backstage is using a proprietary embedded closed-source program for this. I thought it would be an open-source app. I do not trust Google, nor Facebook, nor Microsoft, etc, etc .. I use them all - to the minimum that enables my work. For example my Gmail fowards to other accounts that I hold locally. It's always a Don't you think that they might retain your emails anyhow even when forwarded? compromise between trust, security usability. I try to spread closed-source risks. We have only to look at Geocities to see the long-term risks. They also ruled the world once. I suppose you at BBC Backstage are forced by time money constraints to employ closed-source, it is a shame. I'd still like tips on any calendar/database apps that fit into Drupal as I'm a Drupal neophyte with a real need. Regards, Nico Morrison - 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] Ogg Theora/Vorbis and HTML5
On Thu, 2009-06-18 at 01:47 +0100, Tom Fitzhenry wrote: Hey guys, Are there any plans on supporting HTML 5's video tag for iPlayer? I realise there are rights issues with some programmes and that rights holders might have problems with non-DRM solutions, but presumably there are some programmes which the BBC have full rights to. This shouldn't be a problem from a rights perspective AFAIK. Currently all web based iPlayer content (including the 3200 kbps HD streams) is delivered without any DRM. RTMP is not DRM or content protection. Supporting the video tag raises the question of which codec to use, which is difficult to answer because there is no codec that every vaguely popular browser (IE, Firefox, Safari, Opera, Chrome) supports or plans to support in the near future. IE has been silent so far (though there are DirectShow filters for Ogg Theora/Vorbis.[0]). Firefox 3.5 will support Ogg Theora/Vorbis (and cannot support H.264/AAC because of patent issues).[1] Safari will support H.264/AAC (Ogg Theora/Vorbis plugins for Quicktime exist[2]).[3] Opera will support Ogg Theora/Vorbis (I don't know if they plan to purchase licenses for its users.)[4] Chrome will support Ogg Theora/Vorbis and H.264/AAC.[5] I think users of alternative browsers (Firefox, Opera, Chrome), rather than non-alternative browsers would most appreciate video to Flash. Also, H.264/AAC cannot be supported in browsers without huge financial backing (because of patent issues), where as Ogg Theora/Vorbis is believed to be patent-free. As such, to benefit most people, I think using Ogg Theora/Vorbis would be the best choice. +1 for this. Come on beeb - at least come up with a demo page so we can give it a test! Also, why didn't Dirac make it into these browsers? It would seem like a great missed opportunity... Regards, Tom Fitzhenry Regards Phil - 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] Ogg Theora/Vorbis and HTML5
On Thu, 2009-06-18 at 10:29 +0100, David Johnston wrote: 2009/6/18 Phil Lewis backst...@linuxcentre.net This shouldn't be a problem from a rights perspective AFAIK. Currently all web based iPlayer content (including the 3200 kbps HD streams) is delivered without any DRM. RTMP is not DRM or content protection. RTMP may not be DRM, but I it's close enough to serve that purpose, and it does so rather well! IMHO, RTMP is not DRM at all. With RTMP there is no rights management, encryption, crypto signing, registration of players, conditional access, etc. OK, it is 'Digital' but that is about as close as it gets! The only purpose it seems to serve is its proprietary nature making it harder to interoperate with unless you are adobe who have not yet published the specs. However, adobe have aanounced in January that they will be releasing the RTMP specs this year some time. Maybe they are just running scared after all this HTML5/canvas threat to their dominance of the video streaming market. Maybe they see it as a threat also to their wanting to also dominate the digital TV market with flash et. al. ? Embedded ogg would lower that barrier quite significantly, something I imagine the rights-holders would not be best pleased with. The same rights holders probably didn't like VCRs either - or digital terrestrial tv broadcasting. :Phil -dave - 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] Ogg Theora/Vorbis and HTML5
Thanks - I hadn't noticed they'd released it. If you read the licensing agreement first ( http://www.adobe.com/devnet/rtmp/pdf/rtmp_specification_license_1.0.pdf ) then you'll probably not want to go and download the specs. There are plenty of reasons why you'd not want to download and use this adobe spec as it allegedly makes you party to their *very* restrictive license/terms of use of their patented and proprietary protocol. I thought it sounded too good to be true - i.e. unencumbered openness! I suggest reading the other reverse engineered RTMP specs out there in the net if you are interested in implementing any rtmp client or server. Will they be less trigger happy - I guess not - now they'll just claim that you broke their licensing agreement by implementing their specs even if you never read them! ~Phil On Thu, 2009-06-18 at 12:05 +0100, Alan Pope wrote: 2009/6/18 Steve Carpenter steven.carpen...@warwick.ac.uk: They released the specs earlier this week. :) http://www.adobe.com/devnet/rtmp/ Is this going to make the Adobe hounds less DMCA trigger happy against tools such as rtmpdump ? Cheers, Al. - 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] RDTV launched
Don't know about the costs but they use the Akamai content delivery network for the HD (and other) stuff. They use a number of other CDNs for the other flash streams also. This allows them to push the content out to caches 'nearer' the end-user so the beeb only have to upload it once. BBC HD streaming bandwidth costs must be astronomical, even with p2p support, anyone know what their useage is? Or % bandwidth they have to supply? Probably closely guarded secrets an FOI request would be needed to prise the info out heh heh. Not like the old days when the bbc real protocol mrtg stats were on a public server ;) Nico M 2009/4/18 Phil Lewis backst...@linuxcentre.net: I actually downloaded the file and checked the size. I guess you could take a peak at the ethernet interface statistics on the PC using iplayer - no idea how you do that on windows though... There must be a free tool somewhere to measure network volume usage. - 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] RDTV launched
You had also better watch out with the new HD (720p) BBC iPlayer streams I noticed the 1hr Doctor Who special notched up 1.3GB when I streamed it! Looked fantastic though :-) On Sat, 2009-04-18 at 12:13 +0100, Nico Morrison wrote: mp4 when badly setup glitches horribly on slower machines. and it isn't easy to setup well has to be checked (on a slower machine ;) this 'format competition' is boring, especially as my dongle got caught inadvertently dloading a 5min 500mB file which really annoyed me, I only get 3GB/month on it. we don't all have permanent megapipes seems to be forgotten in the techie oneupmanship stakes. public service broadcaster remember. .mkv/xvid public domain software - standardise - finito - spend time instead putting out some archive material on bbc r d would be great. There must be something on blumlein or baird heh heh. now that would be interesting. Nico M 2009/4/16 Adam Sampson a...@offog.org: Mr I Forrester mail...@cubicgarden.com writes: So if Mpeg4 isn't to your taste, you should hold out for the Ogg Theora, Xvid and WMV versions once I crank up my Quad Processor PIII Xeon box :) Looks good! It'd be nice to have a Dirac version too, if you've got some CPU time spare -- Dirac started as a BBC RD project and is supported by several free video players now, but there's not a lot of content out there using it yet... - 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] RDTV launched
I actually downloaded the file and checked the size. I guess you could take a peak at the ethernet interface statistics on the PC using iplayer - no idea how you do that on windows though... There must be a free tool somewhere to measure network volume usage. On Sat, 2009-04-18 at 20:28 +0100, Andy wrote: 2009/4/18 Phil Lewis backst...@linuxcentre.net: You had also better watch out with the new HD (720p) BBC iPlayer streams I noticed the 1hr Doctor Who special notched up 1.3GB when I streamed it! Looked fantastic though :-) At the risk of going off topic, what did you use to measure how much bandwidth iPlayer was taking up? I only ask because a member of my family was worried about using iPlayer because they have quite a low bandwidth cap and where worried about hitting it. Their ISP doesn't to display how much bandwidth has been used, so has to guess what their remaining bandwidth allocation is then guess how much bandwidth a single iPlayer episode is going to use up. This is why we need to scrap bandwidth caps, the average person does not understand them!!! Back on topic, could anyone explain what the 3 different .mov files for the 5 min version on the FTP server are for? I can guess what uncompressed is but I haven't got a clue what the _2.mov file is. Perhaps a README[.txt] file with details of the encoding parameters of each file would be useful. And just because I'm curious could you tell us what software you use for transcoding and whether you have to do each format by hand or whether you have auto build scripts? Cheers Andy - 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 Blog in beta
Looks great in elinks also. On Tue, 2009-04-07 at 14:36 +0100, Ian Forrester wrote: Any more feedback on the beta BBC Backstage site? http://www.welcomebackstage.com Don't forget you can now finally comment and ping the new site, even the RSS works as expected. Ian Forrester This e-mail is: [] private; [x] ask first; [] bloggable Senior Producer, BBC Backstage Room 1044, BBC Manchester BH, Oxford Road, M60 1SJ email: ian.forres...@bbc.co.uk work: +44 (0)1612444063 mob: +44 (0)7711913293 -Original Message- From: owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk [mailto:owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk] On Behalf Of Ian Forrester Sent: 01 April 2009 15:38 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: RE: [backstage] New Blog in beta Its back up :) Be gentle you ruff lot :) Ian Forrester This e-mail is: [x] private; [] ask first; [] bloggable Senior Producer, BBC Backstage Room 1044, BBC Manchester BH, Oxford Road, M60 1SJ email: ian.forres...@bbc.co.uk work: +44 (0)1612444063 mob: +44 (0)7711913293 -Original Message- From: owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk [mailto:owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk] On Behalf Of Ian Forrester Sent: 31 March 2009 17:43 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: RE: [backstage] New Blog in beta Ok it went down, but it will be back up soon. Cheers, Ian Forrester This e-mail is: [x] private; [] ask first; [] bloggable Senior Producer, BBC Backstage Room 1044, BBC Manchester BH, Oxford Road, M60 1SJ email: ian.forres...@bbc.co.uk work: +44 (0)1612444063 mob: +44 (0)7711913293 -Original Message- From: owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk [mailto:owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk] On Behalf Of Ian Forrester Sent: 30 March 2009 22:25 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: [backstage] New Blog in beta We wanted to share it with the community first... http://welcomebackstage.com/ Its still in beta and there will be links which point to the old site. But its live and running. We are publishing to both places but that will change once we change the backstage.bbc.co.uk domain. We decided to drop the dusty platform of Moveable type for many reasons but one of top reasons is that you can all now comment and ping on the blog entries like you do for the rest of the blogs on the planet. Don't forget if you have any suggestions for improvements = http://ideas.welcomebackstage.com which will be tied more closely into the blog soon. Otherwise lets us know what you think in the list. By the way thanks to everyone who emailed me to say they heard my question on stack overflow - http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail4044.html (question 7). Cheers Ian - 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/ - 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] Clay Shirky: Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable
On pictures I agree of course that consumer technology is making the equipment better and more accessible, but I would say this has been happening for years and so maybe you underestimate the value of the professional photographer or photo journalist. Most of us can't take photos as well as a talented or trained photographer and there are places I would not go, or be able to go, to get the photograph. Yes, and I think there's a differences between a photographer and a photo journalist - in particular, as you say, ones sent to dangerous areas to record events. On the other hand, although I recognise that there absolutely is a great deal of skill in professional photography there is also a great deal of luck. You only have to look at proof sheets to see this. There may be a hundred photos for the one print. Maybe I'm optimistic, but I think amateur photographers can make this hit rate, in particular, as I said earlier, with basic photo editing knowledge (certainly phones already have the necessary functionality). This is, of course, assuming that you don't have just the one person taking pictures on their phone but, as with most events even now, more than half of the crowd. Personally I think the technology is making it faster and easier for those who do this work to deliver it to wider audiences while the value of their role continues with a lower barrier to entry. I think there is value in the role, and perhaps what hasn't really come up, a value in the newsroom itself (or more specifically in a network of experienced, well-connected reporters and journalists) that is hard to replace. I do think there is an almost guaranteed role for visible, well-known political and financial correspondents (and possibly others) with whom politicians and companies can actually strike up a relationship. I also think newspapers have done themselves a severe disservice over the past decade in particular by becoming longer ([citation needed]) whilst lowering relative price to increase perceived value, whilst actually demeaning the good journalism that they actually do, and I think it's resulted in the opposite of what they intended by lowering the perceived value since their content now seems to massively overlap with that of the Metro. I think there's a quote from Andrew Neil here about John Witherow's achievements with The Sunday Times about this, if someone can remember it for me :) Obviously this has peaked recently with Flat Earth News, and I don't really know what can be done about it without someone willing to try actually cutting the length of the paper. With the recent bankruptcies in the US, how many newspapers do you think we'll have in twelve months' time? If the Kindle makes it to the UK should one of the papers just buy us all one? http://www.businessinsider.com/2009/1/printing-the-nyt-costs-twice-as-much-as-sending-every-subscriber-a-free-kindle Anyway, this all just rambling from me now, so I'll end :) Cheers, Phil - 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] Clay Shirky: Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable
Hi, There's just two bits in John's last message I'd like to pick up: If you want a (quality) picture of an event, someone has to be there and some poor pictures from a phone camera are not a replacement. I think this is a false dilemma. Guys in my office have phones with 8MP cameras. My 18-month old phone has a 5MP camera. I suspect a good lens and skill with photoshop is vastly more important than the photographer being professional. If you feel that the Journalistic community is full of people trying to subvert the truth, espousing mis-information, I dread the day that a billion unaccountable blogs replace them. This is also a false dilemma. Some in the journalistic community do espouse mis-information. Some blogs are accountable. We are already, to a certain extent, in that middle ground. Isn't that the point of Clay's essay? Cheers, Phil - 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] The BBC as sheep... and irresponsible ones too
On Thu, 2009-02-26 at 14:59 +, David Greaves wrote: Err, that would be the point... And given that your plot would even work, how many spods on eBay have access to a magnetic force microscope? Obviously the word spods includes BBC reporters (note, not journalist) incapable of entering wiped disc recovery scanning electron paper into Google and getting as the second hit: http://sansforensics.wordpress.com/2009/01/15/overwriting-hard-drive-data/ Which makes a mockery of the whole thing (as do any number of other references that are not obtained from companies making a living from BS). Then there is the paper (read the epilogue especially) which debunks this above linked article by the Author (Peter Gutmann) on who's out-of-date material they based it!! It was published in 1996 and the epilogue was written this year as a strong rebuttal to the sansforensics article. http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/secure_del.html Well worth a read and very insightful... -- Phil Lewis For the lazy: The forensic recovery of data using electron microscopy is infeasible. David - 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] Make the primary OS used in state schools FOSS
I think FOSS can have a huge future but the community need to think about user experience then it will be taken more seriously. FWIW I've just come back from FOSDEM (open source community event in Brussels), and there are plenty of open source projects now putting usability at the top of their requirements list - and are hiring accordingly. These include Ubuntu, Firefox (of course!), Drupal and Mediawiki. Those are just the ones I know about. Hopefully we'll see some positive results in the coming months and years. Phil On Tue, Feb 10, 2009 at 9:13 AM, Alun Rowe alun.r...@pentangle.co.ukwrote: On 09/02/2009 23:15, Christopher Woods chris...@infinitus.co.uk wrote: unless some incredibly well-designed thin client solutions were brought to my attention (and then you're talking equivalent prices for thin clients as you would for regular MiniATX desktops). I'm not sure that a thin client can, as you suggest, handle the requirements of a school's media department, in this instance you would place a desktop/tower instead. We run a mixed client setup for a number of housing associations in the UK where the majority of users (admin/management etc), who do not require huge graphics capability, run with a Wyse terminal and the planning department (for example) will have a well specced Dell machine. As you suggest a decent thin client will cost you as much as a MiniATX machine BUT it has much lower power consumption and have a potential life of 8 years or more. Typically a PC if having to run Windows will be lifed at 3 years. So after 3 years where a typical Windows environment will be replaced in toto we are simply adding more power to our VMWare server pool. I'm still personally very sceptical of thin client solutions, I don't think their capabilities ar sufficient to satisfy all the potential uses for educational machines. And I wouldn't like to have all that total reliance on just a handful of extremely powerful servers; it's bad enough when the Internet proxy server goes down or the network drive can't be accessed because the Active Directory is having a fit, but to have a classful of children sitting in front of dumb terminals when the primary host server for that classroom's client machines goes down? Wuh oh. You can run multiple head servers and backend pool for a TS environment. Maybe my mistrust is misplaced, and thin clients are actually really quite good at most things now... Perhaps my perception of them, like many other peoples', is part of the problem which needs to be addressed. There must be some reason other than bloody-mindedness that makes schools keep on going for full-PC solutions time after time though... Really? In my experience school IT staff are generally beholden to RM or similar and do as they are told. RM would see a MASSIVE drop in hardware sales if they pushed people onto thin client do to the reasons I list above. So I can't see them doing it anytime soon... I do aim to do more work in the educational sector as my own business gets going in the next few years, and I want to offer all kinds of viable solutions as long as they work well for everybody. Do you really think that setups like the LTSP are as competitive as regular networks of fairly powerful x86 machines and central file/print/etc servers for secondary school environments? (not being sarkies here, genuinely interested to know your thoughts and prepared to do a lot of reading if you have suggested starting points). I've unfortunately not had enough experience of a pure FOSS network and would definintely like to see more. My IT company are always looking to improve things! The couple of Ubuntu servers we run for Web Services/SVN etc are wonderfully reliable. But... //personal rant coming up... For any open source software (Linux for example) to really work on the network en mass we need to about user experience. Currently I've yet to see an attractive/user friendly piece of FOSS. Whilst the software (once you've worked out how to use it) is extremely effective IMO user experience is a big part of the software which usually gets overlooked in FOSS scenarios. I think FOSS can have a huge future but the community need to think about user experience then it will be taken more seriously. -- http://philwhitehouse.blogspot.com
Re: [backstage] Make the primary operating system used in state schools free and open source
The cost of school licences is a drop in the ocean compared to the cost of lifetime subscription. Microsoft may be many things, but they aren't stupid..! Phil On Tue, Feb 10, 2009 at 9:44 AM, Fearghas McKay fm-li...@st-kilda.orgwrote: On 10 Feb 2009, at 09:23, Alun Rowe wrote: Microsoft offers the OS and Office at extremely competitive prices to schools. I have heard it quoted as being around £5 per license for Office. It is cheaper but not that cheap... At Glasgow University it used to be nearly that cheap - because there was a site wide licence students could get a set of discs for ~£10. Which probably only just about covered the costs of the admin and the floppies. The current retail price for a 3 user Home/School use only copy is £99, inc VAT, so £33 a user. f - 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/ -- http://philwhitehouse.blogspot.com
Re: [backstage] Make the primary operating system used in state schools free and open source
He isn't advocating making Windows open source, the petition states that the primary OS used in schools should be a free and open source alternative to windows. Not idiotic at all. I've signed up. Phil On Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 4:05 PM, Richard Lockwood richard.lockw...@gmail.com wrote: Mm. Very interesting. If something as simple as a petition will make Windows free and open source, why has no-one thought of it before? Why do the idiots who start these petitions never have any kind of grasp of grammar? Or proof reading? Would you take anyone seriously who turned up on your doorstep dribbling from the mouth, telling you it's all bout the lu1z? No. Nothing to see here - move along now... Cheers, Rich. On Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 2:24 PM, Mr I Forrester mail...@cubicgarden.com wrote: Seen this in my mailbox a few times today, sure you will all find this interesting... We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Make the primary operating system used in state schools free and open source http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/nonMSschools/ - 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/ -- http://philwhitehouse.blogspot.com
Re: [backstage] Make the primary operating system used in state schools free and open source
Maybe I'm a poor deluded misguided fool who needs showing the error of my ways? Lorks, far from it! I think we'd need a lot of people like you if the government does try and introduce open source into schools. These are really important problems that mustn't be overlooked. I'll assume for the purpose of brevity that the readers of this list understand the benefits of open source. We're training our kids to give money to vendors for their entire lives. Windows is an expensive, inherently closed system which, in 2009, offers very little benefit over and above open source alternatives. This gap is closing fast. So let's look at the negatives to see if they can be mitigated and overcome. I definitely recognise the problems you've outlined, but I believe they're not insurmountable. Introducing open source solutions to all schools in a 'big bang' fashion would be a total disaster, no doubt about it. But I can imagine a world where a gentle introduction (pilot projects in a limited number of capable schools) could help define what a subsequent, gradual rollout might look like. Several key issues would need to be addressed. The lack of available software is a big problem, but I believe this can be addressed at the government level by insisting that all commissioned software runs cross-domain. Having recently spent time walking around a primary school (my daughter started there in January) I didn't see any materials that couldn't have been designed to display in a browser. And there were plenty of PowerPoint slides that could run in OpenOffice. So if we start making this a condition of all new software NOW, then in a few years time we'd have a lot less propriertary software to worry about, and there's nothing to lose in the meantime. Support is another key issue, but one which I expect to fall away in 2009. Ubuntu isn't quite there yet, granted, but they're investing huge amounts of money in this area: http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/162 I believe that support issues (especially re 3rd party devices) will be level with Windows in the next 2 years. Maybe sooner. Just looking back over your list: 1) setting it all up - keep it small to start with, then roll into normal upgrade cycle, there's no hurry! 2) testing it - this should be part of the procurement process, push the onus of (cross browser?) testing onto the vendor 3) supporting it - getting easier, and heaven knows Windows has its own problems here, especially re: virii, malware, etc. 4) fixing stuff that doesn't work like it should - same problems at present i.e. no obvious downside, again the browser is the key. If it works in Firefox it'll work everywhere. 5) dealing with problems related to the transition - again, by making it gradual and rolling it into the current upgrade cycle we mitigate the risk All this needs to be judged against the HUGE upside. More time, energy and money invested in open source makes it better for everyone. I'm not a microsoft hater by any means, but spending £millions of public money on vendor lock-in seems daft to me. Time to start planning a gradual and controlled move over to open source. Hey, it could take 5-10 years but the benefits seem worthwhile. And then we'd have an army of youngsters ready-equiped to operate in a world where open source will definitely be a big player. Just my $0.02! Phil On Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 4:12 PM, Christopher Woods chris...@infinitus.co.ukwrote: Seen this in my mailbox a few times today, sure you will all find this interesting... We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Make the primary operating system used in state schools free and open source http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/nonMSschools/ I find this idea appealing but fundamentally flawed. Let me explain why this concept is a non-starter for all but a few schools. I went through this country's education system and am currently in my final year at University, so it wasn't such a long time ago ;) It so happens that my Dad was the deputy head at the school I went to and he was also the only person who managed the school's entire IT infrastructure for a very long time. Yes, the school did eventually become a Technology College (thanks in part due to his hard work over the time he was there), and with that Technology College status they got a lot more money - they eventually got one, then two, then several members of dedicated IT staff - but for the most part it was him steering the boat as such. He did the lion's share of the administrative IT work as well, installing and maintaining SIMS, all the staff machines, equipment, etc. The bloke working in the Reprographics department managed the offset litho printer (yes, they had one!) and the photocopiers I think, but that was about it. So, during the best part of 14 years he was there for, my Dad oversaw and managed installations of, in order, an Acorn network with matching Econet system (remember the DINs and T-bars? :D
RE: [backstage] Yahoo Widget for BBC radio and Listen Again content
Hi, In get_iplayer I've used the following feed for all the channel (and category) names listed below: http://feeds.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/channel/list/limit/400 Regards Phil Lewis Channels: bbc_one bbc_two bbc_three bbc_four cbbc cbeebies bbc_news24 bbc_parliament bbc_one_northern_ireland bbc_one_scotland bbc_one_wales bbc_webonly bbc_hd bbc_alba categories/news/tv categories/sport/tv categories/tv categories/signed bbc_1xtra bbc_radio_one bbc_radio_two bbc_radio_three bbc_radio_four bbc_radio_five_live bbc_radio_five_live_sports_extra bbc_6music bbc_7 bbc_asian_network bbc_radio_foyle bbc_radio_scotland bbc_radio_nan_gaidheal bbc_radio_ulster bbc_radio_wales bbc_radio_cymru bbc_world_service categories/radio bbc_radio_cumbria bbc_radio_newcastle bbc_tees bbc_radio_lancashire bbc_radio_merseyside bbc_radio_manchester bbc_radio_leeds
Re: [backstage] Is DRM on its last throes at last?
And don't forget the 'OMA DRM 2' used by iPlayer mobile. On Mon, 2009-01-12 at 12:25 +, Alan Pope wrote: 2009/1/12 Ian Forrester ian.forres...@bbc.co.uk: Actually I do wonder if the itunes store going non-DRM will finally be enough to convince copyright owners that releasing content under a licence but with no DRM is a good thing for everyone involved? I mean what other popular DRM is there now? Windows media plays for sure? The Adobe nonsense that iPlayer +Air uses :) Cheers, Al. - 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] iPlayer caching
Works on my Fedora 9 i386 system albeit at a rather slow frame rate compared to similar h264 files at full screen on the same system using xine, vlc or mplayer. On Thu, 2008-12-18 at 22:57 +, Adam Leach wrote: On Thu, 2008-12-18 at 21:06 +, Andy wrote: 2008/12/18 Brian Butterworth briant...@freeview.tv: And with Adobe's AIR on Linux. [ducks again] It's NOT on Linux. It's on 3 specific distribution versions of Linux. Fedora Core 8, Ubuntu 7.10, openSUSE 10.3 From http://www.adobe.com/products/air/systemreqs/ Ubuntu 7.10 isn't the newest version, neither is it a Long Term Support version, support for 7.10 will be terminated in April 09[1]. This rules out most Ubuntu users who will not be on this version. The newest version of Ubuntu is 8.10[2] (2 versions newer than 7.10). I don't know about Fedora or OpenSuSE, but iPlayer desktop works on Ubuntu Intepid Ibex (8.10). The BBC iPlayer desktop will probably not install on previous versions of Ubuntu as it requires Flash 10 to be installed and that was only released recently. I'm just watching Never Mind the Buzzcocks (http://tinyurl.com/5stc6v) . Shame there doesn't seem to be many programs available for download yet. I'm really impressed with the AIR client, shame you can't browse an available list of programs in the app. Thanks Adam - 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] Iplayer the best video experience online?
Hulu notwithstanding, I think iPlayer's easily the best experience for professionally-produced content, and the ease and speed of use makes me choose it over the illegal method mentioned above every time. +1. Using the 4 watch online is just a horrible experience whereas connecting my laptop to my (standard-def) telly and streaming in high quality mode takes seconds and is very very close to broadcast-quality (in my subjective and myopic eyes). I'm not in on Saturdays so I've been enjoying watching Merlin in exactly this way for the last few weeks now. And of course it remembers where you were if you need to stop and start again later. I love iPlayer. For me it's possibly worth the license fee on its own, and would definitely be that level of value if the radio shows were available for non-time-limited download! Cheers, Phil - 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] Public Transport APIs
http://www.naptan.org.uk/ +1 It's the Naptan data you need. Phil - 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] How come more and more of my iPlayer content seems to be being served by Yahoo?
Would be even more cool if you could obfuscate the last octet in the email Received: headers :-) BTW: I like your laptop name On a more technical note: I have access to a systems and switches connected directly to the same Telia backbone/transit network and, although it isn't highly conclusive, I seem to get a small amount of consistent packet loss on that last hop to the Akamai/Yahoo machine. Here is an mtr trace (a traceroute built up over around 5000 x 1500 byte pings sent at 30ms intervals): sudo mtr 213.155.157.140 -i 0.03 1500 Matt's traceroute [v0.54] Mon Nov 3 19:33:10 2008 Packets Pings Hostname %Loss Rcv Snt Last Best Avg Worst 4. ldn-bb1-link.telia.net 0% 4932 4932 111 61 5. ldn-b3-link.telia.net 0% 4932 4932 113 85 6. unknown-213-155-157-140.yahoo.com 1% 4923 4931 212 16 OK, the packet loss is only 0.16% (if you work it out) but that is enough to give a few TCP retries which will manifest itself as slower average download speeds. Regards Phil Lewis On Mon, 2008-11-03 at 17:24 +, Brian Butterworth wrote: 2008/11/3 Christopher Woods [EMAIL PROTECTED] Christopher, Have you checked for a trasparent proxy cache being used? Proxy Test This request appears NOT to have come via a proxy. The request appears to have originated from host 78-105-102-xx.zone3.bethere.co.uk which has ip address 78.105.102.xx Obfuscated the last octet for no real reason other than it seems to be the 'cool' thing to do :P Hmm.. cool seems to have moved into a new place these days. -- Brian Butterworth follow me on twitter: http://twitter.com/briantist web: http://www.ukfree.tv - independent digital television and switchover advice, since 2002 - 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] Zingzing
I came across this site the other day, I don't think anyone has mentioned it before... It's an interactive TV guide, all done without Flash. The search is AJAX and searches after each keypress, and it looks good too. http://www.zingzing.co.uk/ clever, but rather annoying to use for me at least. tvguide.co.uk all the way! ;) - 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 DRM iplayer mobiles etc
Doesn't the BBC also derive some of it's funding from non-license fee activities? If this is the case then C4 and the BBC are both indirectly funded by the tax payer and commercial activities although in different proportions and to a different scale. Since most residents are TV license payers and the vast majority of those will be UK tax payers, I think there should also be a similar campaign for non-DRM-encumbered output on C4 also :-) After all, national DTT muxes and UHF channels don't come cheap - if they were auctioned commercially to C4 I'm sure the gov't would make quite a large amount of money in the order of billions of £s. On Fri, 2008-10-17 at 11:12 +0100, Brian Butterworth wrote: 2008/10/17 Kevin Hinde [EMAIL PROTECTED] Iain Wallace wrote: So it looks like C4 is shareholder-free. Wow, every day is a school day. I never realised that. Even so, none of my money is going towards Channel 4 so I don't feel like it's any of my business how they digitally distribute their programming. In a sense, some of your money goes towards Channel 4 because they get free analogue spectrum in return for their public service responsibilities. Hard to say exactly what the value of that subsidy is. This isn't strictly true. Channel 4 IS a public service broadcaster, has been since the first day.For this reason they were provided with the fourth UHF channel in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland by the Broadcasting Act 1980, and granted half a Freeview multiplex by the 1996 Act. Whatever happened to backstage's OFCOM mole? He got too senior a job there! Kevin. - 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/ -- Brian Butterworth NEW LOOK! http://www.ukfree.tv - independent digital television and switchover advice, since 2002 - 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] subtitles / closed caption data?
I'm not sure about a 'nice clean API' but I wrote up a wiki doc on downloading the iPlayer closed caption data at: http://beebhack.wikia.com/wiki/IPlayer_TV#Subtitles Regards Phil Lewis On Fri, 2008-10-17 at 16:10 +0100, Dan Brickley wrote: Hi folks What's the latest news w.r.t. chances of getting access to BBC subtitle / closed caption data via nice clean API? Particularly for news content... thanks for any pointers, Dan -- http://danbri.org/ - 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 DRM iplayer mobiles etc
I wonder how one can best persuade the relevant people at the BBC to lay out, adopt and embrace a forward thinking strategy to allow end users to access any and all of their services using only free software... I suspect that, for the most part, it isn't the BBC that you need to convince. Phil - 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 DRM iplayer mobiles etc
…on any mobile device, set top box (STB), handheld, phone, web pad, tablet or Tablet PC (other than Windows XP Tablet PCEdition and its successors), game console, TV, DVD player, mediacenter (other than Windows XP Media Center Edition and itssuccessors), electronic billboard or other digital signage,internet appliance or other internet-connected device, PDA,medical device, ATM, telematic device, gaming machine, homeautomation system, kiosk, remote control device, or any otherconsumer electronics device, operator-based mobile, cable,satellite, or television system or other closed system device. So forget using it with any non-licensed Linux set top box or non-MS XBMC, Freevo etc. So blatantly pro-Microsoft :-| Yes, the fact that this will run on all the Linux PCs in both my houseand office is a shockingly pro-Microsoft move and must be stopped! Phil - 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 DRM iplayer mobiles etc
On Tue, 2008-10-14 at 17:51 +0100, Fred Phillips wrote: Basing it on Adobe AIR is just as bad as having a proprietary BBC program running on a native Windows clone (e.g., WINE). AIR still does not support free software[1], and is as far from being platform independent as the current client is. I need to be a) running Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, or GNU/Linux, b) using an x86 compatible processor, c) using a 32‐bit (compatible) operating system. I can tell you I am not using any of the above; when will NetBSD on 64‐bit PowerPC running entirely free software be supported? I take it comes in any colour I like, as long as its black? these programmes are protected with DRM, but in a way that shouldn't affect your enjoyment of our programmes Playing devil’s advocate slightly here, but what if I enjoy watching programmes several years after they have aired? Even worse, AIR has the same restrictive EULA as flash which prohibits the use of AIR on: …on any mobile device, set top box (STB), handheld, phone, web pad, tablet or Tablet PC (other than Windows XP Tablet PC Edition and its successors), game console, TV, DVD player, media center (other than Windows XP Media Center Edition and its successors), electronic billboard or other digital signage, internet appliance or other internet-connected device, PDA, medical device, ATM, telematic device, gaming machine, home automation system, kiosk, remote control device, or any other consumer electronics device, operator-based mobile, cable, satellite, or television system or other closed system device. So forget using it with any non-licensed Linux set top box or non-MS XBMC, Freevo etc. So blatantly pro-Microsoft :-| - 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] Questions for upcoming interviews
If you guy's were asking the questions, what questions would you ask them. If Dopplr's offering isn't compelling enough to non-nerds, in particular with the potential recession, who will buy you out? Alternately, if you don't sell, how will you continue to afford coming to all these conferences? ;) - 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] Questions for upcoming interviews
While slamming down the ones which don't. Putting a mid rule through cloud computing is like putting a mid rule through mobile. More like putting a mid rule through proprietary software. Ian mixed two quotes - one from Stallman, the other from Larry Ellison, the founder of Oracle (hype and gibberish respectively). With this in mind, it was only Stallman putting a mid rule through proprietary software. Ellison was seemingly putting it through *all* cloud computing, which is what Ian went on to declare nonsense. Which seems reasonable. Getting back to the topic, ask Zuckerman what he thinks he could learn from Dopplr's data export and account closure procedures! Phil - 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] Android UK launch set for Tuesday
It can't be a compass directly, but many GPS receivers can show you your direction of travel on a compass-like display. I seem to remember my N95 has a pretty good compass in it. GPS+accelerometer = standing-still compass. Phil - 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] Android UK launch set for Tuesday
On Mon, Sep 22, 2008 at 5:47 PM, Jim Tonge [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: surely the proof of android's pudding will be in the eating? non-geeks i know who used WinMo were utterly flummoxed by it. +1 to both those statements. I don't know any non-geeks who get on well with WinMo (but several geeks who love it). Anecdotal experience, I know, but hey :) Phil - 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] Track Playing (http://www.trackplaying.com)
I've written a new mashup - http://www.trackplaying.com - it displays information about the track currently playing on the radio.* It might actually be nice to have a link to listen live for each of the radio stations in case I visit when not already listening. Cheers, Phil - 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] Inline hypertext links - you're doing it wrong!
I actually like the idea that they are using javascript to insert the links into the page, as it means with noscript it is possible to block apture.com and then all the links disappear. If you click one of the links and open a popup window and click Feedback you can disable the multimedia (i.e. popup) view which then inserts plain a href= links on the page instead (I assume this is also inserted via JS). This is a much better option since it a) does what I expect and b) maintains link accessibility. It might be nice if this was the default rather than the popup window. Cheers, Phil Wilson, happy HackHUD user http://dharmafly.com/projects/hackhud - 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] Date: Thu, 3 Jul 2008 16:40:58 +0100
I've left this list once before, because whilst it's full of interesting people, I've absolutely no interest in watching them bang their heads against each other in the same way over and over again. I still have no interest in that. Whilst it is your right to speak it is also everyone elses right to not to have to listen. If this is going to get religious, then I'm out of here. I have a filter which deletes certain emails automatically for this very reason. ;) I would like to see an RIA competition, restricting it to AIR seems a bit strange though (although it's now bundled with Adobe Reader 9 which I imagine makes it more compelling). Unrelated, but seeing as they're here: many thanks to Alia, Matt, Ian and everyone else who helped make Mashed so great! Phil - 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] Removing microformats from bbc.co.uk/programmes
Michael, I don't use the micro formats myself, though I have been considering the /programmes site in a new Google Gadget I've been trying to find time to write. (I'm going to wait for the new iPlayer 2.0 RSS feeds instead). I'd be interested in what accessibility concerns you had for the microformats. Thanks Phil -- From: Michael Smethurst [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, June 23, 2008 11:15 AM To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: [backstage] Removing microformats from bbc.co.uk/programmes Not wanting to rain on anyone's post-Mashed sunshine suntan (or monitor tan at least) just wanted to let people know that we're removing the hCalendar microformat from bbc.co.uk/programmes. This is currently used to markup all broadcasts on the site and I know that at least some of you were using it to help with screen scraping /programmes. Due to accessibility concerns we'll be taking this feature out when we next deploy (probably Thursday). More details here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/radiolabs/2008/06/removing_microformats_from_bbc. shtml - 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] cool visualisation thing for text
I'm just wondering if people actually use them? For example, they used to appear on sites like CiF, but they have been removed. Probably shortly after Jeffry Zeldman described them as the mullet of web 2.0 ;) - 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] Mashed : Hack Moyles - Audio segmentation with RTMP
We're making that code, some demo apps and some open source applications available that will let you use mp3 tags to enhance audio with images, chapters and descriptive text. We are also providing enhanced versions of the Chris Moyles podcast for you to play around with. This is completely awesome. small bug: the link Our HTML based enhanced MP3 player points at http://mashed08.backnetwork.com/url; which is wrong. Phil - 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] An alternative iPlayer interface for the Wii
I can't find the article I read when I fixed it, but Nintendo mention that channels 1 and 11 are good as they don't overlap with other channel. There's a bunch of other stuff from them on this page as well: http://www.nintendo.com/consumer/systems/wii/en_na/onlineWirelessRouterTroubleshooting.jsp Thanks for that, the wifi on my wii now speeds along - can watch iPlayer no problem! Phil - 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] An alternative iPlayer interface for the Wii
Out of interest, is there a feature on the Wii to connect up an external wifi aerial anywhere? I saw they had capability for the old gamecube controllers, nice touch that. No, there's no way to connect an external aerial. The Wii also takes the Gamecube memory cartridges (it can't store Gamecube saved games on its internal memory), and is 100% backwards compatible (unless the GC game used some peripheral like the Gameboy Player). Cheers, Phil - 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] An alternative iPlayer interface for the Wii
Billy Abbott wrote: I also had a lot of success in getting my Wii to be reliable by playing around with which wireless channel was being used. It sounded unlikely to me but seems to have worked. There's a load of pages out on the web about tweaking the settings to get them to work nicely. Any pointers? Phil - 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] Video recordings of the House of Commons on TheyWorkForYou.com
However, a clear text feed of the data would keep the data pure, surely? Seriously, where would the fun in that be? Phil 'timestamp-tastic' Wilson - 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] Video recordings of the House of Commons on TheyWorkForYou.com
I'm sure one of the first computing acronyms I ever leant was GIGO... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIGO Yes, I know it. Take a look at Etienne's reply for one aspect of the details and why the captions may also count as garbage. Another important point is that the video captioner they've put together matches video to Hansard, rather than just the captions - that is, to the official record of what was said, rather than what was actually said, which is an important distinction. Phil 2008/6/4 Phil Wilson [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]: However, a clear text feed of the data would keep the data pure, surely? Seriously, where would the fun in that be? Phil 'timestamp-tastic' Wilson - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk http://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/ -- Please email me back if you need any more help. Brian Butterworth http://www.ukfree.tv - independent digital television and switchover advice, since 2002 - 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] Stephen Fry: There is this marvellous idea the iPlayer is secure. It's anything but secure
Jeremy Stone wrote: the transcript and audio have just been uploaded. http://www.bbc.co.uk/thefuture/transcript_fry.shtml wot, no mp3? ;) Phil - 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] Stephen Fry: There is this marvellous idea the iPlayer is secure. It's anything but secure
Jeremy Stone wrote: don't shoot the messenger! I initially thought of signing off as Phil 'never satisfied' Wilson, but couldn't bear the thought of causing so much nationwide tittering. Oh, wait... - 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] iPlayer DRM is over?
Unsure, I am not sure they are breaking the law. The BBC is a public body and their are tight restrictions on what it can and can't do. Thus it is more likely it is committing an offence under the law. wrt content producers we should be less concerned with the law and more concerned with the intent. Erm, I was talking about locking the MP4 stream to iPhone what has this got to do with DRM now? Because they content producers are the ones who have asked for their content to be protected, however you decided to interpret that. We only have the BBC's word that the content providers have forced them to develop iPlayer this way. There is a built-in detection mechanism. We can ask the content producers. Phil - 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] OPML feed available - aggregation of podcast feeds.
Alan Ogilvie wrote: Supported OPML feed now available for use. http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/opml/bbc_podcast_opml.xml This is great. For what it's worth, the N95 podcast client only supports OPML URLs which end in .opml Yes, this is pretty rubbish (and took me quite a while to realise), but it also means that without republishing it myself, I can't use your feed :) Cheers, Phil - 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] OPML feed available - aggregation of podcast feeds.
Could you trick it with a 302/301 redirect or does it check the *destination* URLs name? I don't think so. IIRC it will handle redirects for the actual feed URLs but not the OPML URL. I'll check later. Of course, I'm still happy with my own version http://philwilson.org/blog/2008/02/bbc-podcasts-as-opml ;) Phil - 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] Fun with your mobile
Here's a quick exclusive for the Backstage list. If you own a Nokia N95, or a Playstation PSP, you might wish to visit http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts on your device. Very nice! - 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] iPlayer DRM is over?
OK, here's my guess: I'm reasonably sure this has in fact now been hacked, but with the BBC most likely facing a cat and mouse game with hackers intent on circumventing copy protection. is it worth our exposing how it's done? Phil - 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] iPlayer DRM is over?
--- We've released a fix to prevent unrestricted downloading of streamed TV programmes on BBC iPlayer. Like other broadcasters, the security of rights-protected content online is an issue we take very seriously. It's an ongoing, constant process and one which we will continue to monitor. --- The problem for me is that as far as I understand it, because of the way authentication has been implemented, streaming is practically impossible on anything other than the target platform, in this case the iPhone. This means that almost any hack will result in a downloaded file, rather than a streaming video. Cheers, Phil - 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] iPlayer DRM is over?
If you have the time and the evidence I suggest you contact the EU Commission about it[1]. Has anyone complained direct to the content providers? i.e. have you found a BBC programme you'd like to watch which includes the property of a third-party and written to that third party petitioning them to re-think their stance on DRM? Perhaps they are the ones you should be complaining about. The expected response will be one of but the BBC makes content which they own 100%! Why isn't that free!, and ignores the question. Phil - 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] iPlayer DRM is over?
Here's The Register on the subject, with an offensive title. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/03/12/iplayer_linux_stream_download_hack/ In a statement, a BBC spokeswoman said: This is not unusual or surprising. We are working with our partners to ensure that our content is delivered to users in a secure way. We have made it clear that BBC iPlayer on iPhone and iTouch is currently in beta, which enables us to pick up on such issues and find a solution before we roll the service out in full in due course. Booo. FWIW I still can't get the mp4 to stream rather than download. Anyone? Phil - 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] Undermining iPlayer DRM
With ideas like this being touted by the BBC for people to get content on different devices SANS usage or time restrictions, it seems bizarre that another part of the BBC produces iPlayer which is time limited and device controlled. I'm told that there is now an iPhone version of the iPlayer which streams in h.264 Apparently /iplayer should work natively for iPhone users and there's some more info on http://myijump.com/bbciplayer/ Anyone got any more details about the streaming being used? Or is there some already out there that I've missed? Cheers, Phil - 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/
[backstage] Backstage blog comments off?
I went to http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/prototypes/archives/2007/06/mojiticom_onlin.html#postcomment and was going to add a comment saying that Mojito is no longer online (boo!) but despite the form being there, after you've hit Post it says you are not allowed to post comments. Can you scrap the form if this is a general thing and not some glitch? Cheers, Phil - 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] Undermining iPlayer DRM
Anyone got any more details about the streaming being used? Or is there some already out there that I've missed? http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2008/03/bbc_iplayer_on_iphone_behind_t.html Has some more info. Cheers. Have now switched user-agents and am browsing away ;) - 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] Undermining iPlayer DRM
Have now switched user-agents and am browsing away ;) aaand we're away http://www.flickr.com/photos/pip/2317139476/ Not sure how the tokenisation etc. works just yet, and not all programs are made available as mp4. Phil - 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] What would you love to see coming out of BBC Vision in the near future?
Mr I Forrester wrote: I like the idea of this, hard sell but who knows maybe a prototype could bring this to life. It might be nice to see something like the BBC Annotatable Audio project that the BBC Radio Music Interactive RD team worked on back in 2005, but on the iPlayer stream. e.g. a prototype could see a greasemonkey script which paused the video (if possible) and allowed the viewer to add a text annotation (and UUID reference if available) to what was happening on screen. Tom Coates posted some screenshots and video for how Annotatable Audio worked: http://www.plasticbag.org/archives/2005/10/on_the_bbc_annotatable_audio_project/ I guess I'm talking about something like Annodex, but for iPlayer content. http://www.annodex.net/ Phil - 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] What would you love to see coming out of BBC Vision in the near future?
I knocked up a little unsophisticated something: http://www.dracos.co.uk/play/bbc-iplayer-quick/ :-) This is ace, thanks Matthew. Phil - 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] What would you love to see coming out of BBC Vision in the near future?
- A 31 day schedule in XML - TV schedules as a API with past and future ability - Direct links to iplayer programmes - XML/RSS/ATOM/JSON of upcoming iplayer programmes - XML/RSS/ATOM/JSON of programmes about to drop off iplayer - Links between programmes and their programme catalogue entry - The Programme Catalogue! :) - A reference page or service for all programmes (/programmes in XML) - XMPP pub/sub messages for upcoming programmes in worst case, this could be generated from the other content Anything more? I'd like to be able to tie some of this to my BBC username/password so I can mark favourite TV shows and get notification that a new ep is on iPlayer via email/rss/atom :) Phil - 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] Data Portability?
Will data portability get Web 2.0 companies to allow you to {im,ex}port
some minor aspects of data, like your social graph, from one silo to
the next, in W3C standards like RDF or other, less rigorous but currently
more popular ones?
Does it matter providing the format is transparent and documented?
Or will it get hermetic Web 2.0 companies to
support the semantic web properly and stop being hermetic, by
allowing you to not just {im,ex}port, but query, delete, control the
visibility of, all your data?
How does the semantic web apply here? Unless you are implying upper case 'Semantic' and
SPARQL as a default query language (which I can't see strong evidence for on the DP site).
Reference?
Precisely - or are you under the illusion that Mozilla don't
distribute and promote proprietary software?
No, I'm not. It's possible that some people know about software freedom already
;)
In fact, my reference was to the backing out of RDF from Mozilla (and Gecko 1.9 in
general) in favour of SQLite.
I do not believe that web applications will adopt a standard, RDF-based API for data
export or interrogation/manipulation. I think it much more likely that we will see a
series of XML-based formats (without a unifying data model such as RDF) and a common
XML-based REST API.
Phil
-
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Re: [backstage] What would you love to see coming out of BBC Vision in the near future?
Clearly one or two minor issues to resolve but... lol! :) - 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] Data Portability?
Will data portability get Web 2.0 companies to allow you to export some minor aspects of data, like your social graph, from one silo to the next? Or will it get hermetic Web 2.0 companies to support the semantic web properly? So that you can export your social graph from one silo to another, but in RDF? Phil - 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] Data Portability?
Data Portability is promoting RDF. Amongst other formats, and for particular purposes, yes. What about all the data that isn't in the social graph? I was only quoting you. Perhaps we should amend your original statement. Better to concentrate on the principles, because once a business understands those, they won't have any problem with each area of application of those principles, as they arise. In the same way that, for example, Mozilla have understood these principles? Phil - 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 Podcasts Programme Guide...
It is still an early version but any feed back on the feed would be great (or if you build anything interesting). The feed looks good. Literally five minutes of XSLT gives me this: http://philwilson.org/code/bbc-podcasts.xslt $ xsltproc bbc-podcasts.xslt http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/ppg.xml bbc-podcasts.opml outputs to: http://philwilson.org/code/bbc-podcasts.opml which you can then render to something like this: http://tinyurl.com/2edfvs Obvious improvements are grouping by radio station etc. but this will be very handy as-is for my N95 :) Cheers, Phil - 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] RTMP stream URL resolving script
(for some reason Andy's reply didn't make it to my mail client, but I've read it online here: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/msg07375.html - I'd really appreciate it if the Backstage page about the mailing list would link to the HTML archive!) Apache has the power to serve files over HTTP. You should check it out http://www.apache.org/ . Stick a file in a location it can access and clients can stream from it. As far as I know, Apache cannot stream files. Red5 .. VLC Even if these were OK, do they work on the massive scale required by the BBC? According to http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7187967.stm they'd need to be support streaming 250,000 programmes a day. I'm going to stick my neck out and suggest that neither of these servers are capable of handling this load as-is. I can't answer all your other questions because I don't know all the answers, but here are a few: Does this mean an RTMP client needs to have a full interpreter for some programming language An RTMP client needs to have an execution environment. questions about dates See the JavaScript Date documentation for your favourite implementation, such as http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Core_JavaScript_1.5_Reference:Global_Objects:Date acceptable characters in PID and Token These are generated by the BBC, so you probably don't need to know, other than ensuring you encode as UTF-8 to make sure you can handle a broad character set. Java encodes String objects to UTF-8 internally by default. I would hope that most of your other questions become redundant if an API appears, as has been suggested. Cheers, Phil - 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] RTMP stream URL resolving script
Still doesn't explain how midnight is handled or what the timezone is! At this point, I'm going to bow out of the conversation. Feel free to curse me for being stupid, misleading, insulting or whatever. It seems to me that you have some reasonably fundamental misunderstandings about all the technologies involved, from JavaScript, to FLV, to RTMP and Apache, discussion of which I view as OT for this thread. Good luck. Phil - 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/
