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• [Backstage Blog] Edinburgh Interactive Festival 08
  

  I was with Rain at EIF08 and thought I’d pick up on a few of the other talks given while we were there.

  In this post I've pulled together my notes from the presentations from Margaret Robertson of Gamecity and lead economist on Eve, Eyjolfur Gudmundsson. There's an interview with Eyo online as well as Graham Brown Martin from handheldlearning. I'll be posting my impressions from the Dare to be Digital competition in part 2 as soon as I can as well as my notes from Graham's presentation.

  Overall I really enjoyed the festival. There was tons to play with and some excellent talks on subjects that you maybe wouldn’t find at other games festivals. Here’s my take on it all...

• [Backstage Blog] Edinburgh Interactive Festival 08
  

  I was lucky enough to attend the Edinburgh Interactive Festival, it was an awesome 3 days and I heard some great presentations.

  Much of what I heard was about innovation and what is changing in the games/interactive industry and communities – such as new ideas & audiences that are turning traditional attitudes on their heads – I certainly came back suffering from information overload, but in a good way! It was a very busy conference, but I managed to grab a few video interviews with some of the attendees.

  The festival also encompassed the Dare to be Digital video games competition for student games designers and developers, where I saw some interesting and varied demos from the University of Abertay Dundee. Teams had 10 weeks to develop a game prototype. There are three winners and each wins a cash prize and a BAFTA nomination for the BAFTA ‘Ones to Watch’ award which will be announced in March next year.

  My colleague Brendan will be following up this post with some of his highlights from EIF08. Anyway, to be getting on with, below are notes from a few of the presentations…
  

• [Backstage Blog] GeekDinner with the BBC iPlayer Team - 14th Aug
  

  Join the BBC iplayer team on Thursday August 14th for some food, drinks, and anything you want to know. Anthony Rose (Head of Digital Media Technology) and Matthew Browning (Senior Software Engineer) will be the special guests at the London Geekdinners. From the site...

  We are going to meet up in the same nice Thai restaurant that we went to last time, and have been able to arrange a nice variety of food again, costs will be £8. Although the event starts at 6:30pm, the food won’t arrive until 7:30pm and the talk won’t start before 8pm, so no need to hurry too much to make it on time to our venue. So go to http://signup.geekdinner.co.uk/event/iplayer/ to sign up and maybe even pay in advance. Don’t forget to mention any special messages like whether or not you’re vegetarian.

• [Backstage Blog] New data feeds for /programmes
  

  The /programmes team have been progressing well with further developments to the /programmes site and now have a useful set of feeds (XML, JSON, YAML and even some txt) - including ones for schedule views and genre aggregations, as well as some iCal views. There are still more features coming - so keep checking back to see what else has been added.

  For information on the feeds available, please visit the /programmes site developers page.

  
  For more information it is worth reading Tom Scott's "Interesting BBC Data to Hack With" post and Duncan Robertson's in-depth post about the iCal views.

  For people who have already found the Schedule feeds, it is worth noting that the structure of the existing schedules feeds will change soon (by the end of July if all goes to plan). This move is to a future-proofed and better structure, based on the feedback received. There is a hybrid format available to allow you to transition your apps to the new format - we will remove support for the old structure on 30th July.

  Feedback is welcomed through the backstage mailing list.
  
  Steve

• [Backstage Blog] Backstage at Manchester Free Software - Tonight
  

  Tonight BBC Backstage will be leading a discussion on the changing state of the industry and what changes its making to make sure it stays relevant into the unknown future.

  BBC Backstage is a developer network for the public in which the BBC opens its doors to as much data and content as possible. Now in its third year, Backstage is changing to reflect the changes in the landscape and placement in industry.

  Ian Forrester, the head of Backstage, will explain some of the changes and outline some the big topics which Backstage are tackling ahead of the rest of the BBC and its unclear future in its new home of Salford Quays.

  More details can be found here.

  The videos from the talk are now available on blip.tv in Flash, Mpeg4 and Theora (MKV)

• [Backstage Blog] Harnessing user-led innovation, NESTA – 16/07/08
  

  Hello, I’m Rain and I’ve just joined the backstage team. For my first blog post I’d like to tell you about an interesting talk I went to last week...

  It’s really great that user-led innovation is being taken seriously these days and I was really pleased
  when I got an invite to NESTA to hear some presentations and discussion on the subject. This is an area that I’ll be following closely as it’ll be interesting to see how policy develops around this stuff, especially in IP and copyright.

  There are some companies/industries who have been on the ball for a couple of years, who embrace and engage with their user communities and of course there are still a few stalwarts who feel this kind of innovation is their enemy and must be stamped out at all costs - but they’ll just have to adapt or die.

  NESTA commissioned a piece of research from CENTRIM (Centre for Research in Innovation Management) University of Brighton investigating the power of user-led innovation. They held a morning of talks and discussion about their findings at Plough Place and also invited some representatives of companies and online communities to talk about their experiences.

  

• [Backstage Blog] Mashroc - loving the video
  

  Just posted by CustardCat over at Metacafe

  
  MashRoc - Rocket Launch at Mashed08 - The best bloopers are a click away
  

• [Backstage Blog] RSS feeds make it into iplayer 2.0
  

  

  For months you guys have been scraping pages to get unique IDs to compare with iplayer ids, and generally its been too painful for some. However thats about to go away with the iplayer 2.0. Anthony Rose has a complete in-depth review on the internet blog but the bit your most interested in is this...

  One thing conspicuously missing from the current iPlayer site is the provision of RSS feeds. For those who want to consume our content via their RSS reader, or who want to create mashups of the iPlayer site - good news - every page has an RSS feed.

  You can even subscribe to a feed of an arbitrary search query, allowing you to use third party feed readers to alert you when your favourite programmes arrive
  

• [Backstage Blog] Mashed - it's all over
  

  That's it, another year, another massive event at Alexandra Palace. I spent yesterday mainly sleeping, one and half hours sleep is not conducive to maximum brain power - and may explain why I genuinely jumped out of my skin when the explosion (which I had organised) went off just three feet behind me during the presentations.

  It's fair to say that I'm really happy with the way things went - I have some thoughts about how we can make it better next year - but by a long way the feedback we've been getting is extremely positive. The Guardian spent all weekend there, and blogged like crazy over at PDA, Ewan Spence wrote a nice piece about it over at BBC News and the O'Reilly GMT guys went video crazy.

  Alan Connor from the BBC Internet blog has put together a pageflakes page - well worth a look. The photos are all over on flickr - tagged mashed08 - just over 1000 at last count

  The thing that's made it worthwhile for me though is the quality of the hacks that were presented on the Sunday afternoon - we had just under 50 in total - and I can honestly say there wasn't one I thought was a bit lame, and I know the judges felt the same.

  The winners this year:

  • O'Reilly - Team Bob - Subterranean Homesick News
  • Multimap - Twitter on TV
  • Lonely Planet - Michael Stillwell - Fire Eagle and the Lonely Planet API
  • Guardian - CurrentCostLive - Creating a competition out of home user electiricyt usage
  • Channel 4 - Scripting Enabled - Easy BBC Audio Search and Slideshare
  • Microsoft - Northenders - bablefish + voice synth freeview
  
  
  
  • Overall BBC Best Hack award went to Northenders, bablfish hack
  • BBC Best Effort award went to Social Flight Simulator

  I was also going to list all the entries - but Mr Bobbie Johnson has done a much better job than me - so go read them over there.

  Whilst I remember we had some lost property handed in.... if it's yours, drop me a note and I'll get it returned.

  • Green bag/satchel with badges - clothes and a pink pencil case inside
  • Black jacket with a red and black Algarve wallet inside
  • Black Vango: Exodus 100 Lite L sleeping bag

  Finally, thank you, if you came along and built something cool, if you came along and helped us lug bean bags around and build stages, if you came along, ate the free ice-cream and then gave away a prize - without all of you working together we could never have done this. I feel we're on the edge of something special here, and if we can start to bring together the astoundingly amazing people in the UK and across Europe, we'll leave the rest of the world astounded by the coolness of what we do.

  
  

• [Backstage Blog] Mashed - Talks now confirmed
  

  The final list of speakers is now live over on the backnetwork

  http://mashed08.backnetwork.com/schedule/

  Some amazing people, from the BBC (of course), NASA (yes, the people who put a man on the moon), Yahoo!, Lonely Planet, Microsoft, and The Guardian.

  Talking about Robots, Social responsibility on the web, Hacking live TV, building your own iPlayer and nanotechnology.

  I've just put the final batch of tickets live - so if you're not already signed up - go and grab a ticket whilst they're still there.

• [Backstage Blog] Monster Mashed Competiton
  

  Fantastic competition this is.

  If you've ever fancied yourself as the next creator of a Dalek - this is the place to start. The cool people at ARM are going to be at Mashed, and as you'll have seen from the last post, there'll be loads of electronic gear on hand - so what's stopping you actually building a full size, fully working, Mashed Monster?

  Here's the comp' - before next Wednesday (18th - midnight) email me - matthew.cashmore@bbc.co.uk - your idea for the next BBC Sci-Fi Monster that you could build over 24 hours actually at Alexandra Palace - and then present for the audience on the Sunday. We'll choose two ideas and fund (up to £500) you to build them.

  That's it - we'll pay you to build a full size, fully working sci-fi monster to present at Mashed.

  How cool is that?

  We're going to fund two monsters and we'll ask the audience to vote on which is best at Mashed itself - no prize there - it's just for the fun of it - and the glory of course!

  We'll be looking for ultimate killing potential, how well it can deal with stairs, and how scary the over-all effect is. Extra credit for not breaking copyright on existing monsters and not mentioning Dr Who at all.

  The legal bit.....

  Competition Terms & Conditions

  • You will receive the money after the Mashed event.
  • You must provide receipts in order to claim the money.
  • The competition closes on Wednesday 18th June, no entries will be accepted after midnight 18th June.
  • BBC Staff are not able to enter the competition
  • Only entries received via email to matthew.cashmore@bbc.co.uk will be considered.
  • Entrants must be UK residents.
  • The minimum age to enter is 18.
  • The winners will be chosen based on the decision of the Judging panel.
  • Prize winners must present their monsters on stage at Mashed 2008 during the presentations
  • Prize winners must attend Mashed 2008 to build their monsters
  • The Promoter's decision is final in every situation, including any not covered above, and no correspondence will be entered into.
  • The Promoter reserves the right, in the event of circumstances arising outside of its control which in its opinion makes it necessary, to cancel or change the competition at any stage.
  • Entrants will be deemed to have accepted these rules and to agree to be bound by them when entering this competition. This agreement is covered by the laws of England and Wales.
• [Backstage Blog] Mashed - electronic gear
  

  Last year quite a few people asked for some electronic stuff to play with - so as well as ARM coming along with some cool gear we're also making a bunch of kit available for you to mess with / borrow as you need.

  I thought it may be helpful to let you know what that stuff was before you came... so here's the list

  • 2 Soldering,station,WTCP50
  • 1 Solder,colophony free,95.5% tin,3.8% silver,0.7% copper alloy,96SC,0.5mm,250g
  • 2 kinetic,strippers,10-18 AWG,solid
  • 10 Eye protection,spectacles,safety,coverspec Eye protections,clear
  • 6 BREADBOARD WITH 70 PIECE WIRE KIT
  • 6 BREADBOARD, SOLDERLESS
  • 12 PCB,Matrix Board,breadboard,SRBP,104x65x1.6mm
  • 6 PCB,Matrix Board,breadboard,SRBP,149x114x1.6mm
  • 5 IC,transceiver,bus,serial,RS-232,MAX202ECSE+
  • 5 IC,Sensor,Hall Effect,proportional output,SS495A1
  • 20 Battery,connector,clip,press stud,twin,min,PP3
  • 3 AWD,piezo,buzzer,leads,1.5-20V
  • 15 IC,op amp,dual,1MHz,low-power,DIP8,LM358N/NOPB
  • 8 IC,regulator,voltage,linear,fixed,3.3V,2%,1500mA,LDO,TO220,LM1086CT-3.3/NOPB
  • 8 IC,regulator,voltage,linear,fixed,5V,4%,1000mA,TO220,MC7805CT 2.461 Kit,resistor,0.33W,CCR-02
  • 1 Magnet,disc,14mm
  • 2 Tool,handheld,stripboard,Veroboard,PCB track cutter
  • 4 Switch,keypad,EAO,16 key,hex
  • 1 Wire,equipment,BS4808 pt2,7/0.2mm,100m,PVC sheath,red/black
  • 10 Switch,micro,sub min,SPCO,commercial,roller lever
  • 1 Wire,equipment,BS4808 pt2,7/0.2mm,100m,PVC sheath,white/black
  • 1 Wire,equipment,BS4808 pt2,7/0.2mm,100m,PVC sheath,yellow/black
  • 1 Wire,equipment,BS4808 pt2,7/0.2mm,100m,PVC sheath,pink/black
  • 5 Connector,rectangular,multipole,D,straight,tin,plug,9 way
• [Backstage Blog] Mashed - more details
  

  As you would imagine, a mere two weeks before Mashed everything is getting a little crazy around here!

  What I can say so far is that the speakers on the Saturday morning are looking fantastic -

  • Andy Smith - iPlayer
  • Nick Gallon - how to hack the BBC's TV services
  • Audio & Music Interactive - /programmes
  • Robotics with Microsoft

  There are nine talks in total and I'll release more details as the speakers confirm - there's one very special talk we're just sorting flights out for now - so fingers crossed.

  Buses - filling up fast - there's only about 10 seats left on each coach now - although the Newcastle and Sheffield bus is filling up the slowest.... come on guys! I'll announce details on times and locations for pick up as soon as they're confirmed by the bus company - but suffice to say - it'll be EARLY and from the centre of each location.

  I'm hoping to send out the first 400 invites for the backnetwork site later today / first thing tomorrow - that site contains all the information you need on everything to do with Mashed - from the speaker list to details of how to get there.

  Remember - if you're blogging about mashed - use the tag - mashed08 - and it'll automatically appear in the backnetwork site.

  That's about if for now - any questions drop me a line.

  PS - Just released another 50 tickets - the last bunch will go live next week.

• [Backstage Blog] Mashed - get the bus
  

  It's always a pain getting to and from London - and because we know that London isn't the home of every developer and designer in the UK - we're going to run some buses to help get more non-London people at the gig.

  We're running three buses - one from Newcastle and Sheffield, one from Manchester and Liverpool and one from Cardiff and Bristol. It's not as extensive as I'd like, and I've concentrated on locations where we have an existing relationship with the developer community.

  The tickets are now ready for you to register - the bus ticket is also your entry ticket for Mashed. I would ask however, as I'm expecting the buses to be heavily used, that if you do register for a bus ticket - but then can't make it - that you let me know so I can make it available to somebody else.

  If you've already registered, but still want to come on the bus - no problem - grab a bus ticket and tick the 'already registered' box - this will combine your registrations.

  On Wednesday evening I'll be at the Cardiff Web Scene Meet at 10 feet tall in, yeap you guessed it, Cardiff. Talking about backstage and Mashed, and hopefully answering any questions you may have about either. There's a facebook group to sign up on if you'd like to come along.

  More news later in the week - just signed a massively cool speaker for the Saturday morning.....

• [Backstage Blog] Mashed - got a ticket? Get the badge
  

  I'm really happy with this years logo for Mashed - I asked design to make up some badges for our sites - and they've done us proud - so if you want to let people know you've managed to get one of those elusive tickets (some available right now) - then feel free to copy and paste the code below for the design you like.

  Due to these templates not working properly I've had to post them on my own blog - copy and paste to your hearts delight from

  http://www.thelondonbiker.com/blog/?p=173
  

• [Prototypes] Recommend me
  
  • Submitted by: Adam Lindsay
  • Link: http://twitter.com/recomme

  

  Following from the previous prototype Adam has launched his twitter bot which will recommend you other artists based on one you send it. It was first demoed at Mashed 08 but has now gone live for anyone using twitter to use. Just send a message using @recomme or direct message recomme with a single artist name and it will search through last.fm and other sources like /programmes for other artists it thinks you might like. Simple but clever.

• [Prototypes] Tracking playing
  
  • Submitted by: Chris Riley
  • Link: http://www.trackplaying.com/

  

  A new Mashup from Chris Riley, this time it shows as much information about a playing track as it can on one screen and updates in real time with the last.fm feed. The interesting part is, where you can put in your last.fm username and it will look and see if you will like the current track. Awesome stuff
  

  
  I've written a new mashup - http://www.trackplaying.com - it displays information about the track currently playing on the radio. It takes data from BBC Music (beta), Last.fm and Amazon, and is hosted on Google App Engine. Mashup heaven! It is based on my previous attempt that some of you may recall.

  
  

• [Prototypes] Dailysnooze
  
  • Submitted by: Fraser
  • Link: http://www.dailysnooze.com

  A beautifully done start page by Fraser,

  For the past 6 or 7 years I have run http://www.dailysnooze.com - mainly because I wanted a quick loading simple homepage for my browser, which included the BBC headlines and weather. Long gone are the days of screen scraping the bbc news pages and now luckily we have access to some nice feeds!

  Things have moved on a little and we now have a few extras based on backstage feeds:

  • dailysnooze.com browser homepage (BBC News and Weather)
  • BBC News Vista Sidebar Gadget
  • BBC Weather Vista Sidebar Gadget

  I only just released the gadgets so thought I should share them a bit further. They are also available from the website itself.For the homepage the brief I have always stuck to is "quick loading and simple", and I like to think I have a good balance in my slightly biased opinion.

  From the tech side of things the gadgets/homepage get their data from my
  hosted DB and associated web services. I have an app running at home which
  updates the server DB regularly with the feed information.
  

• [Prototypes] News Mash Up
  
  • Submitted by: Richard Askew
  • Link: http://www.richardaskew.co.uk/infusednews

  Infused news was created as part of an Internet Computing degree at the University of Hull, Scarborough Campus named "An investigation into the need for user-submitted, multimedia content when delivering news". The aim was to integrate user-submitted, multimedia elements into existing news stories and evaluate whether or not this augmented version of the news not only makes the story more compelling, action provoking and understandable for the user, but to investigate whether the use of multiple sources gives the news story a more balanced, honest and up-to-date view of the news story.

  The application takes an rss feed of BBC data provided at http://dev.barnesdmd.co.uk/ff/?ffid=2. Keywords are extracted using the Yahoo Term extractor and these are used to retrive data from YouTube and Flickr, the phpFlickr classes were used to acheive this (http://phpflickr.com/).

  The mix of media (Imagery, Sound and Video) often enhanced the story being presented. The keywords used often return media isn't relevant due to keywords not being given enough context, or media being tagged incorrectly. If more time or the funding was made available I would look further into utilising Ambient Interface technology so that the application could deliver the information in an engaing way.

• [Prototypes] BBC News Algorithmic Sorter
  
  • Submitted by: daniel nethersole
  • Link: http://mugamail.com/bbc/

  BBC News Algorithmic Sorter an attempt to try and work out what the British public are finding important. The main BBC News website offers a glimpse of what’s popular, but as with all things that’s limited to the audience of the BBC. While this gives a somewhat true to form view of what people are interested in, I wanted to expand it, and thus came up with the BNAS site. The main site isn’t that impressive as the main focus was on the backend.

  The script uses several external APIs from blogging communities, search engines and social networking sites to work out what people are talking about. Then using the last 50 Data from the BBC it compiles a list in order of the interest the British public has on the subject. At the time of writing this Lock keepers' cottage sale halted is the least interesting story, and Oil price up despite Saudi pledge the most. It’s not 100%, and sometimes odd results show. The system works like a automated Digg.com.
  

• [Prototypes] Programme Ontology over XMPP
  
  • Submitted by: Tom Scott
  • Link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/radiolabs/2008/05/helping_machines_play_with_pro.shtml#comments

  
  BBC Programmes RDF over XMPP pubsub at XTech 2008 from Patrick Sinclair on Vimeo.
  

  The guys at the BBC Radio Labs have been up late again. This time while at Xtech, they have transformed the BBC Radio's programme schedule into RDF and many other types of data. Of course this is all RESTful using a API but they have taken it one step further and decided to play with XMPP (jabber) so they can create notifications of things your interested in complete with data from DBpedia.

• [Prototypes] Radio 1: Now Playing vs. Web Data
  
  • Submitted by: Simon Cross
  • Link: http://www.simoncross.com/music/radio1/

  
  

  
  A new prototype based on Radio 1's now playing data but this time from a BBC member of staff working in their 10% project. Simon goes into details.

  
  

  We're working on a new 10% time project over here at FM&T Audio and Music - and we thought we'd give you guys a super sneak preview. There's a few of us involved here, including Yasser Rashid, Cathy Bartlet and Ramon Dodd.Its around visualizing now playing information by pulling in data from across the web.
  

  
  The plan for this is to eventually build a flash version which is full-screenable to provide a visual companion while listening in the office, or on the web etc. Future data sources we hope to build on include Musicbrainz, Wikipedia, YouTube, song lyrics,Yahoo Music and loads more. At the moment, we've just got as far as last.fm, flickr and the webcam, but its a start!

• [Prototypes] Now playing
  
  • Submitted by:

  

  New Prototype from Chris Riley, instead of rating how in touch is the BBC, he's scratching his own itch about the music playing over Radio 1, Radio 2, 1Xtra and 6 Music.

  I've coded a hopefully useful, if not idea stimulating web page. It is called Now Playing http://cgriley.com/nowplaying/ and shows you information about the artist currently being played on BBC Radio 1, BBC 1xtra, BBC Radio 2 and BBC 6 Music. It is based on some BBC data released at hack day, with Yahoo Pipes and JQuery thrown in.

  I made it because when I'm listening to the radio I like to know a bit more about the artist. Have I heard some of their tracks or albums before? If I've no idea who they are what have they done in the past? How much can I buy their albums for, what has been released? What is on their website, do they have a website? Which artists are they like?

  All those questions are answered by this new page. It is designed to update itself in real time with the current artist being played, and seems to work quite well. As always the best way to see what it does is to give it a go, and if you want more info about how it works, data sources, known issues etc. then there is an obligatory about page. http://cgriley.com/nowplaying/about.aspx

• [Prototypes] BBC Friends On TV
  
  • Submitted by: Ben Smith
  • Link: http://apps.facebook.com/bbcfriendsontv/

  
  Facebook applications are hot at the moment and this one is even on my very tight list of application. Great work Ben Smith, but I'm sure the entries above are certainly not for me. Anyway Ben has more details...
  

  
  Find friends (or, currently, name-sakes of your friends) that have been on BBC TV, what programmes and when they were aired. Currently, this finds the first TV programme's 'contributor' to match your friend's name, through the BBC Programme Catalogue (http://catalogue.bbc.co.uk).Future developments will involve giving you the choice of all possible matches to identify from and integration with IMDB (http://www.imdb.com).

• [Prototypes] Anomalous
  
  • Submitted by: Dan Read
  • Link: http://www.danread.net/anomalous

  

  Anomalous uses the BBC's news feeds to create a metaverse or stories arranged in a 3D space according to the time they were released and their relevance to the user.

  By applying aspects of time and space the stories take on a representational structure creating a spiral of news and information.

• [Prototypes] Travel News Search
  
  • Submitted by: Robin Wilson
  • Link: http://robinwilson.homelinux.com/travel/

  Allows searching of the BBC Travel News RSS feeds for certain roads (using a special way of searching to ensure you only get, for example, problems on the M5, as opposed to problems on the M6 near the junction with the M5) or certain places. Is rather crude at the moment, but works - and I use it at work before starting the journey home. As for improvements - well see the todo page on the site - but the UI could do with a lot of improvements, and a way to select which feed to search would be good.

  Basically I wrote this to deal with a personal niggle (that of having to use the IE search function to search for traffic problems that might affect me) and thought others might find it useful too.

  If anyone's interested, then it's written using eRuby and runs on my apache webserver, which sits in my bedroom (that's why it's slow!).

• [Prototypes] search bbc news with yahoo pipes
  
  • Submitted by: pelado
  • Link: http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=WJNifOT62xGYi1HvyjUFzw

  A very simple yahoo pipe to track your favourite sports team (or any sports news)

  You can get your own rss feed to paste into your news reader by entering a query and then subscribing to that feed. My default is Cardiff City (its all bad news at the moment), but you can enter any term to search the bbc sports section.
  

• [Prototypes] Multi-Search
  
  • Submitted by: Kent Brewster
  • Link: http://kentbrewster.com/multi-search

  Starting with the BBC's lovely, tightly-written and edited news headlines and descriptions, Multi-Search uses Yahoo!'s term extraction API, Google's blog search, and Yahoo!'s Web search--run through Pipes when necessary--to retrieve current stories plus the associated buzz from the blogosphere.

• [Prototypes] WatchtheRoad
  
  • Submitted by: James Howat
  • Link: http://widgets.opera.com/widget/6902

  

  An Opera widget that overlays the BBC Traffic tpegML files onto Google Maps, and sits on the desktop. An entry into the current Opera Software widgets competition (http://widgets.opera.com).

  It features a continuous news ticker, a browseable list and a details view, all of which link into the interactive map.

  I hope to improve the display of the details, perhaps a useful icon and colour scheme for quick reference.

• [Prototypes] Mojiti.com: online video annotation tool
  
  • Submitted by: Christina Lee
  • Link: http://mojiti.com/kan/3937/10619

  

  Mojiti.com is a free online video annotation service that allows users to add comments and information directly onto online video via our overlay technology. Without changing the underlying video content, users can now add text, shapes, flash art and multimedia onto the video screen.

  With more and more video content becoming available online, our goal is to continue to make online video a more interactive and engaging experience. Using Mojiti's RSS feed annotation, I have very easily taken an online BBC news clip and a BBC weather report and added the relevant live RSS feed to the screen. Now as users watch the video, the latest news can also stream across via the RSS feed.
  News clip: http://mojiti.com/kan/3937/10619 (On this video, I also happen to add a BBC logo and made it clickable so that viewers can get redirected to the BBC website.) Weather clip: http://mojiti.com/kan/3930/10597 (These videos can also be directly embedded onto backstage.bbc.co.uk if you think viewers would be interested to see these examples.)

• [Ideas] Music in TV Programmes
  
  • Submitted by: Phil Wilson

  From the Mailing list,

  Personally I'm waiting for the time when we can pause a program and scroll over the items on-screen and it'll tell us what they are and where we can buy them, like when Ed Norton describes his apartment at the beginning of Fight Club.

• [Ideas] Ideas/prototypes repository
  
  • Submitted by: Will Sheppard

  Is there some kind of organisational structure of prototypes and ideas similar to sourceforge or 43things.com that can create more of a group around specific projects? Could there be?

• [Ideas] BBC clocks as a widget or gadget
  
  • Submitted by: Ian Forrester

  Following the Clock which was created by the guys at NHK. I thought it would be a really good idea if we did some kind of clock based on the old BBC school clocks which most of remember. Jem actually found a site which has a load of old BBC clocks in Flash form. I'm sure it wouldn't be too difficult to repurpose one of the clocks or build one using SVG or something else.

  Anyone interested in building one?

• [Ideas] A new witty slogan and design for Backstage T-shirts
  
  • Submitted by: Ian Forrester
  • Link: http://backstage.bbc.co.uk

  

  We're considering changing the Fabulous but somewhat bland Backstage T-shirts. Yes they're great schwag but we can certainly do better.

  So we thought it would be great if we'd ask you guys what you think is the best T-shirt schwag you've seen or owned and what witty slogan or design should be included to make a even better backstage T-shirt?

  Let us know what you think...

• [Ideas] PDA RSS
  
  • Submitted by: Kev Swindells

  What would be really handy for people like myself with newish mobile phones (or PDAs) that have RSS readers onboard (Sony Ericsson K800i in my case) if for there to be RSS feeds linking to the PDA and Low Resolution pages as well as the "Hi" ones. Ideally these would be included in the regular pages as the normal application/rss links. In the meantime there is a quick demo at http://kswindells.34sp.com/bbc.php/X/Y Where X is "n" for UK News or "s" for Sport and Y is the category - e.g. rugby_league or motorsport__formula_one (the / between motorsport and formula_one is replaced by two underscores) This simply takes the BBC RSS feeds and reparses them for the low res versions. Ideally this would also work for the PDA version but the URLs are structured differently. Source Code: http://kswindells.34sp.com/bbc.phpi

• [Ideas] Weather report on your mobile in the morning
  
  • Submitted by: Caterina

  Hello, It would be great to have the day's weather (temperature and forecast) sent to my mobile early in the morning as I'm getting ready for work. At the moment I tend to look outside of my 6th floor flat window to see how I should dress for the day (rain, snow, sun, etc). Unfortunately I leave rather early and it's already dark out, so I can't see what the weather is like until I walk out the door and it's too late to change on days when it's raining, for example! Or sometimes it looks nice and sunny, but it's actually rather breezy as well and then I'm cold all day! With this idea, if I received my text message in the morning when I woke up, I could be better prepared for the day.

• [Ideas] what's in radio 4's 8pm slot this week?
  
  • Submitted by: Donal Mountain
  • Link: http://www.dmountain.com/misc/radioschedule.html

  A page that tells people what's on in their favourite radio slots this week.

  Problem
  ------------------
  My favourite programs are broadcast in BBC Radio 4's Monday-Friday 8pm slot. When I lived in Europe, all I had to do was tune in to Radio 4 at 8pm and chances are I'd hear something good. Super-easy. Now I live in a different time zone that doesn't let me tune in to Radio 4 at 8pm GMT. So I listen via the Radio 4 website. But the concept of 'slots' isn't reflected in the organisation of BBC Radio websites; nowhere on the Radio 4 website is there a link to "listen to the 8pm slot". The audio file is on the website somewhere, but I have to dig around to find it.

  Solution
  ------------------
  It envisage a simple search interface where you define your slots and are given a (bookmarkable) search results page that lists this week's programing for those slots, with links to the audio file when available. This would make me happy! I think it would make other people happy too, because radio stations have this concept of 'slots' that isn't replicated in the online world. It would make it easier for people to "tune in" to their favourite slot, at the time that suits them.

• [Ideas] Radio Now and Next in Yahoo Widgets
  
  • Submitted by: Neil Good
  • Link: http://widgets.yahoo.com/gallery/view.php?widget=38008

  It is beyond me but could someone do a Yahoo widget for BBC Radio Now and Next.
  The URL points to a widget for the five terrestrial TV Channels using puretelly.com data which is perfect.

  I have tried various RSS feeds in some RSS readers but it does not seem to work for me.

  Some sort of ability to select the radio stations displayed would be a good feature.....

• [Ideas] Global Weather Collection
  
  • Submitted by: Marco van Beek

  Instead of the BBC sharing its information, how about doing it the other way around. Create an application that will save local weather conditions back to the BBC centre, based on data gathering equipment at the users home/office. For example Maplin used to do a small kit that had a wind speed, wind direction and temperature sensors, that connected to a standard PC, and there are other companies that produce similar hardware. It could become a BBC school project and given that many people now have broadband and computers that stay on for much of the day (eg Media Centre PC's), it could become a really massive & worldwide project, as the only input a local user would need to provide would be a location. Enough sensors within a given location would allow for errors & mistakes.
  

• [Ideas] Flowers
  
  • Submitted by: G. Wilkinson

  I'm an ICT Coordinator without the time to develop many ideas. Heres my main ones:
  Link up - countryfile - bbc local websites - google maps - gardeners world and add photos of local wild flowers to a google map, with flower information such as name, flowering date, herbal uses e.t.c have a sub group of experts to check details and build up a national database of wildflowers and their distribution. Link up with wildflower charities for the experts - should all be driven by ease of use for public
  to add their own photos.

  Idea 2 - i'm sure there's been plenty of suggestions like this. But i would like radio shows available as podcasts across the board. i.e any show on any bbc network, The podcast would be signed up rss, bbc can promote email feedback on program as part of the package. This gives you detailed information about your programs and thier reception and the listeners and license payers : accessability to your archived radio content away from a computer! yes why not let the rest of the world have it too, for free?, it would promote your brand in all the right ways!
  G.Wilkinson@Valence.kent.sch.uk
  ICT Coordinator Valence school
  

• [Ideas] UK Singles Chart RSS Feed
  
  • Submitted by: Simon Croak

  Any body else think it would be a good idea for the bbc to have an RSS feed for the UK Singles chart (Top 40) or if any body wants to build an aggregator for the radio 1 webpage to produce a feed???
  

• [Ideas] Local content for local people
  
  • Submitted by: Ryan Morrison
  • Link: http://www.upyourego.com/wordpress/

  I haven't actually got any firm details on this idea yet but just wanted to [git mode] put it in the bath and see if it floats [/end git mode].

  In principle every section of every BBC Where I Live site (specifically the England ones) could output an rss feed.

  With masses of content on everything from faith events to band profiles would it be possible to combine this with geo positioning to create some kind of rich app giving you information on all sorts of things happening in your location on a map?

  Or something along those lines?

  Forgot to add (and improved on the idea within seconds of clicking submit).

  I mentioned band profiles - one of the biggest parts of a Where I Live site is the Unsigned Band section.

  If you could take an RSS feed of the band profiles, the gig reviews and gig previews you could create a really sexy rich app that takes a google map, overlays it with flickr images, the data from the unsigned bands section on the Where I Live site and info on gigs in the area from sites like Radio 1, 6music and other music services - could even take in audio clips of gigs recorded by radio one or the local station.

• [Ideas] Feed of football fixtures by league
  
  • Submitted by: Rich Sage

  It would be nice if a feed was available to see all the current football fixtures for eg. the upcoming week but based on leagues rather than individual clubs. Currently there doesn't seem to be a feed available for this from the fixtures page, but rather you have to go on a per-club basis...
  

• [Ideas] good news
  
  • Submitted by: hyke weir

  i'm pretty fed up with constant BAD NEWS! however there is a simple solution, "GOOD NEWS".
  i think that the bbc should dedicate 5 minutes at least to a short news feed at an appropriate time for max audience, showing the days good news. Its very simple and could easily be done on a lopw budget. I'm sure it would givew everyone a lift. please contact me for the full concept.
  thankyou.
  

• [Ideas] News on instant message with Chatbot
  
  • Submitted by: Enrico
  • Link: msnbot@hotmail-ppe.com

  I integrated Wordnet, AIML, openNLP parser to write a simple Chatbot at MSN. But the Chatbot just wait for conversation, if I can automatic send some News title when one news happen. This will be more interesting!