Re: [backstage] Your ideas are now finally welcomed
On Wed, Dec 24, 2008 at 1:11 PM, Gareth Davis gareth.da...@bbc.co.ukwrote: It still still being made, just not for the tellybox :) http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/programmes/top_of_the_pops.shtml So, why doesn't it appear in http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00704hg/upcoming Surely it should - it's the same brand (owned by BBC ONE, but you still broadcast a radio version) -- http://james.cridland.net/ | http://notatallbad.ltd.uk/legal_info/
Re: [backstage] not quite in the Backstage spirit?
On Sat, Dec 20, 2008 at 2:50 PM, Martin Deutsch martin.deut...@gmail.comwrote: Just spotted this in the newest Private Eye (dated 26th Dec)... Being fair... use of the logo means official. No use of the logo means unofficial. That's what the Backstage licence basically says. Do a quick iTunes search for BBCReader - that app really concerns me, since it's rubbish and people think it's the BBC's. -- http://james.cridland.net/ | http://notatallbad.ltd.uk/legal_info/
Re: [backstage] Media Selector query
I'll look at what the media selector is doing: we'll be adding Windows Media files in there shortly (for wifi radios). It's not my team that does it, but I need to work on making it easier to understand! On Mon, Dec 8, 2008 at 5:48 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED][EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: You never know how technical to go before people start falling asleep at their desks.. The latter idea (a separate feed) would probably be easier to implement in the short term - perhaps an international version of the mediaselector with a similar URL pattern to the current one (hypothetical example : http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/international/stream/p001hlts ) that just has media items that are available overseas? Longer term an attribute on the media item would make sense and would probably be a good move for future-proofing, as I'm sure long term much more audio and video content will end up being available internationally and it's bound to be useful in the future to distinguish between UK and overseas availability. Out of curiousity how is it done at the moment on bbc.co.uk/iplayer ? I presume there must be some code that chooses which media item to use, based on the geolocation data and preferred player settings? Andrew -- *From:* [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *On Behalf Of *Ian Forrester *Sent:* 08 December 2008 17:06 *To:* backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk *Subject:* RE: [backstage] Media Selector query never feel sorry for being too geeky! Ah see what you mean, so some kind of attribute would be useful but currently the spec doesn't support it. Or maybe we should be producing two different types of feeds? One international and the other UK? -- http://james.cridland.net/ | http://notatallbad.ltd.uk/legal_info/
Re: [backstage] New Internet Radio
Pure are making a new DAB and Internet Radio. I have one of these (in a box just there, look). Next tonight, I'll be opening it and blogging the results on http://james.cridland.net/blog/ And this interesting bit: Crawford also said that there would be additional services coming online by the end of the year such as the ability to purchase a track direct from the radio as it was being played, and 'tagging', whereby additional information about an artist or track could be pushed to the online portal. Tagging is, in fact, part of the project that I and GCap Media are working on. I'll circulate the complete spec once it's updated in the next week or so. Eager Googlers might find an earlier version available on the web, but I'd like to keep my powder dry 'till the new version; it's changed quite a lot. Oh and this may keep Dave happy: We may later choose to expose the Linux platform fully, enabling others to add widgets and other extras. We didn't want to go with a closed, proprietary system. In fact, I spoke to someone from Pure during the launch. The processor is dual-threaded (at least); one thread runs the Linux platform (kernel 2.6 by the way), one thread runs a Pure proprietary OS. The Linux portion will be open source (i.e. you can download the source code). I've no idea how to do a firmware upgrade yourself, mind; it gets its firmware upgrades via wifi, so the opportunity for fiddling might be limited. But it's not quite as open as you might think; and I'm unclear which bit does what. (Apparently the interesting bit is proprietary). My little team in the BBC will shortly publish a recipe for making your own internet radio, by the way, which is totally open source; watch the Radio Labs blog. It's considerably more expensive than the Pure one though, at over £350. Now, let me open the box and start playing. ;) -- http://james.cridland.net/ Media UK - http://www.mediauk.com/ - the UK's independent media directory http://www.mediauk.com/advertise | http://notatallbad.ltd.uk/legal_info/
[backstage] BBC News iGoogle gadget
If you like iGoogle gadgets, then there's the rather nice BBC Weather unofficial gadget, which you can add by going to http://bit.ly/bbcweather_ig (and I've summarily broken the old one, since you can't simply forward it on). There's also now a nice new BBC News unofficial iGoogle gadget, which you can add by going to http://bit.ly/bbcnews_ig You can use edit this gadget to change from the UK news to the World news if you so wish. All feedback gratefully received. -- http://james.cridland.net/ Media UK - http://www.mediauk.com/ - the UK's independent media directory http://www.mediauk.com/advertise | http://notatallbad.ltd.uk/legal_info/
Re: [backstage] Radio now playing feeds
On Fri, Aug 1, 2008 at 2:48 PM, Chris Riley [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: So, I guess question number 1 is how supported is the publishing of now playing data to last.fm? Is it something that the BBC will provide their own supported feed for as part of the new music site (especially as you are showing playcount data as part of artist pages now?) or is it to remain something you push to last.fm only. Hi, Chris, last.fm (and hackday) are not supported services, simply best endeavours (i.e. if it falls over, sorry). However, this is a good bug report, and I'll make enquiries. Both /music and /programmes are/will-be replete with feeds. You may have spotted that tracklistings appeared then disappeared in /programmes this week - we aim to get them back there shortly, within a few weeks, once a few niggles have been sorted out. I might point you to www.getsatisfaction.com/bbc to give us further ideas about the feeds you might want. While getsatisfaction.com isn't an official BBC support channel (a few of us are just playing with it), it might be a good way to suggest new features and feeds you'd like to see. j
[backstage] BBC weather iGoogle gadget - v2
So, I did a BBC Weather iGoogle gadget last year. It was kind of nice, but sadly people are actually, um, using it - with over 20,000 impressions a day. Yikes. Think of the bandwidth and hassle that's causing my little server. So I've totally rewritten it, to sit on Google's own servers and work entirely through JavaScript. So, I'd appreciate feedback on... http://hosting.gmodules.com/ig/gadgets/file/114911897911800307567/bbc-weather.xml (add this to your iGoogle by hitting add gadgets (top right), then Add feed or gadget at the bottom of the left-hand menu, and finally pasting that in). Use the change settings button to choose a town near you. If people don't see any hideous bugs (I can't test this in MSIE yet), then I'll do some redirection shortly to the many users of my current gadget. And add a BBC News one. And possibly even a BBC Music one! ;) -- http://james.cridland.net/ Media UK - http://www.mediauk.com/ - the UK's independent media directory Advertise on Media UK in ten minutes: http://www.mediauk.com/advertise A Not At All Bad Ltd production - http://notatallbad.ltd.uk/legal_info/
Re: [backstage] So was *this* what Mr. Cridland was referring to recently?
On Sun, Jun 29, 2008 at 4:52 PM, Christopher Woods [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Christopher Woods wrote: Tech question - what encoder(s) are you using? If it's software in realtime or close-to-realtime, please (please please) say it's Lame 3.97. If the backend is using the Fraunhofer FhG codec, I think I might contemplate going and banging my head against a wall for a little while. Currently we're using old servers held together by string and sealing wax, run on our behalf by Siemens, and being waited on hand and foot by trained engineers to eke the very last amount of life out of their tired motherboards. They use software from Digital Rapids: http://www.digital-rapids.com/ Coyopa goes live shortly (actually, shhh, it's live now, we're just not publishing the files yet) and it will be using software from twofour: http://www.twofourgroup.com/ - I don't know the actual codec we're using; it's a choice for our contractor. MP3 is not our longterm codec choice. I think many are of the opinion that Lame is a higher quality and more efficient software codec than the FhG codec. It certainly excels at VBR encoding and quality at lower bitrates (circa 128kbps, which is where the BBC is initially encoding their stuff). In fact, it's (from memory) 80k for 5live and 5livese, 128k for everything else, except 192k for Radio 3. Again, this is not our longterm bitrate choice neither. I refuse to be drawn! ;) A question / request to BBC techies who have sorted this out: VBR is widely supported across PC, portable and handheld devices. Is VBR encoding on the cards for the future / could it be? No, it's not; VBR is not a good solution for streaming files, which requires CBR to work effectively as I recall. While Coyopa will be creating files to download, given those same files will be used for streaming, we'll be using CBR for those. We're currently prohibited from using, say, progressive download techniques for our streams, due to rights reasons. The BBC Embedded Media Player buffers approx five seconds of audio as a result (which also enables us to offer full navigation throughout audio and video files). Hope all that's interesting to people.
Re: [backstage] BBC iPlayer - why the missing TV channel?
On Thu, Jul 10, 2008 at 10:09 AM, Brian Butterworth [EMAIL PROTECTED]wrote: I'm still wondering why you can't download the radio podcasts from the new iPlayer... Coming soon. Some tech challenges, but also a UI challenge of how on earth do we signal that yes, you CAN download The Now Show, but no you CAN'T download the Chris Moyles Breakfast Show though you CAN download a highlights package. Rest assured, we're on it.
[backstage] BBC Music Beta launches
My team have produced another corker... http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/beta is a lovely looking site, and contains lots and lots of lovely APIs... more details at http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/developers#RESTful How splendid. Well done, chaps and chapesses. j
Re: [backstage] iPlayer 2 - wow!
On Wed, Jul 2, 2008 at 3:47 PM, Brian Butterworth [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The new iPlayer looks great and seems to work exceptionally well http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayerbeta/ ...and it's now at www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer too. With one important addition: RSS FEEDS. Yes. Mmm. They auto-detect too, and there are lots of them. Links from BBC Radio will link to the older player (shortly to be renamed the 'BBC player' - catchy, huh?) for the weekend, and we're shifting them over gradually next week for reasons too boring to go into now. So. Good. Let's play. j
Re: [backstage] RealPlayer banished Toady!
On Sun, Jun 15, 2008 at 4:28 PM, Andy [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 2008/6/13 James Cridland [EMAIL PROTECTED]: As the man in charge of the Coyopa project, which'll be fiddling with a lot of our streams, You mean this: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/radiolabs/2008/03/coyopa_takes_shape.shtml ? Yep. It's in BH now. I saw it last week, warming up one of the apparatus rooms. And it's even working. Hopefully we'll switch stuff on within the next month. Some niggles to sort out still though. 2. Flash streaming just works for most people, and as the TV iPlayer has shown, a tremendously popular way of consuming content. Not on mobiles. How about an Ogg stream with Cortado[1] for mobiles (or other people who dislike Flash). Agreed. We have plans on mobile also, though any solution must just work. Yes, we're providing a ton of extra streams in different formats for wifi radios and the like to use; no, Ogg Vorbis is not one of them. I refer the gentleman to the answers I gave here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/radiolabs/2008/03/streaming_radio_online_your_co_1.shtml Not sure whether our streaming will work on Gnash or not, incidentally. I'd think, for a while at least, it will. 3. HTTP downloads are not possible I think the idea was to stream over HTTP. (or something that is similar enough to streaming that no one notices). RTMP or RTSP is streaming. Nobody (using Flash) will notice it's any different to any other experience they have. Again, it must just work. HTTP streaming is less good for Content Restriction And Protection. (Again, sorry we have to put crp in our streams in this way, but we do.) (Yes, the abbreviation is intentional). I'm sorry we have to use it. But we have to use it. Is there no a more open streaming protocol one could use? Again, back to the Content Restriction And Protection issue; but also coupled with the knowledge that a typical user wants something that just works. 5. A pop-up player will continue to be available in iPlayer when radio moves in. Unfortunately there is not much the BBC can really do about stay on top however. If the OS/Browser don't provide it then you're out of luck. Some OSes let any window stay on top. Yep, agreed. We can't provide stay on top with anything internet, without a software product, which people don't, generally, download. (Sweeping generalisation, but my experience). If only browsers supported video[2] and audio tags, and if there was actually some base codecs defined that would work on any browser. (chicken/egg?) Ye... to a point. There are some base codecs defined that work on any browser with Flash installed (ie virtually all of them); and that's the way that the world is going. Beer, anyone? Are you buying? ;) Nope. You? Mine's the guest ale. //j
Re: [backstage] More good news .. BBC to build web page for every TV show, says Jana Bennett
On Sat, Jun 14, 2008 at 10:33 AM, Brian Butterworth [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes (a page for every programme, tv or radio) The bit I was really interested in is a page for every programme already shown. What a brilliant idea that is. Shame so many will have the word wiped on them. Agree. Of course, /programmes contains this info back to August-ish last year. Does much (or all or some) of this information already exist in a database already? It does, in a different structure. Wouldn't it be nice to import it into /programmes, though? j
[backstage] BBC blog RSS feeds go... full text! Yay!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2008/06/full_articletext_feeds_for_bbc.html I've been asking for months. No, years. Finally. Hurray! Well done Jem, Aaron, and the others.
Re: [backstage] RealPlayer banished Toady!
Enjoying this thread so far. As the man in charge of the Coyopa project, which'll be fiddling with a lot of our streams, could I pop in and make the following points (given you know we're making changes later this year)... 1. We are not removing internet-radio-compatible streams. Panic not. 2. Flash streaming just works for most people, and as the TV iPlayer has shown, a tremendously popular way of consuming content. 3. HTTP downloads are not possible: we don't own most of the content. That's why you've spotted RTMP being used - it's a form of non-invasive Content Restriction And Protection. I'm sorry we have to use it. But we have to use it. 4. In the minority of cases where HTTP downloads are possible, I would like to make those available for more programmes than just the podcasts. 5. A pop-up player will continue to be available in iPlayer when radio moves in. I love the idea of segmenting stories within the Today programme, and I've ensured that the right people see that idea. Good. (grin) Beer, anyone?
Re: [backstage] More good news .. BBC to build web page for every TV show, says Jana Bennett
On Tue, Jun 10, 2008 at 3:18 PM, Brian Butterworth [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/jun/10/bbc.digitalmedia BBC to build web page for every TV show, says Jana Bennett A brilliant idea by the sounds of things. Cough http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes (a page for every programme, tv or radio) On Tue, Jun 10, 2008 at 3:28 PM, Matt Barber [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Yeh, this way it will also be easier (if they implement it, which I hope they do) to find iPlayer episodes via the programme page rather than iplayer interface. Cough http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/genres/childrens/entertainmentandcomedy/player(a page showing, for example, all childrens entertainment on the iPlayer, tv or radio) I must get this cough seen to
Re: [backstage] Radio 4 on Realplayer
@christopher: Ooo ooo oo oo oo oo oo oo, *FLAC streaming*? Lossless WMA? If you'd be happy trebling your licence fee, and explaining why everyone else has to... (grin)... but I've plenty of experience adding odd formats to radio stations which don't have many listeners, thanks. @briantist: Obviously I'm hoping that everything that's on the iPlayer Radio will come as MP3s and the existing podcasts will be better quality (I would personally prefer a VBR stereo In Our Time than the current mono one). VBR is something we've not actually looked at, as far as I'm aware. That's a good and interesting thought - I'll consult with the clever people to see if there are benefits for downloads. We are, though, not encoding everything that the same rate; it depends on what the content is; there are four different encoding profiles that we've identified. More though will need to wait for the blog - and don't read this into saying that we're making everything available as MP3 downloads; naturally, we're not. We can't. It's probably way, way too late to ask for this, but how about having pre-compression (audio compression that is) versions of BBC Radio 3 and 1Xtra as, at least, an option. I can listen to my classical and drum n bass at home with their piano to forte range, would be great to have the same range from BBC radio. I understand why DAB and FM need to have the analogue audio compression, but a clear version online would be cheap and satisfy the audiophiles. In fact, there are separate audio-processing techniques for all outputs - so FM is treated differently to DAB and to DTV. But, as you ask, we'll use the least-processed output for our higher bitrate streams. And honestly, you wouldn't want studio levels; they're a very unpleasant listen (says an ex radio presenter who used to monitor levels by ensuring that the red light didn't flash too much). Radio programmes are produced with the audio-processing in mind; indeed, that's what the presenters hear in their headphones. Also I'm pleased to hear that the word open is being used in BBC circles - and without being an expletive (I presume). I discussed part of the FMT (future media and technology) core values a few times with different colleagues - and always, without fail, open has been the most well-received word. j
Re: [backstage] An alternative iPlayer interface for the Wii
Possibly worth mentioning that the reason why iPlayer (and RadioPlayer) are not great on other platforms is that both product infrastructures currently force us to produce static pages rather than sensibly database-derived products. iPlayer v2.0 is less than a month away; the backend redesign means dynamically-generated niceness for Wii, iPhone, and other platforms will be much easier. J On 30 May 2008, at 10:20, Matt Barber [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I don't have a Wii so can't test, but great seeing this stuff happen, when platforms grow around 'open' content. (Not starting an open content thread here, you know what I mean) - I have a 360, and I wonder how difficult it would be to stream to that. It supports UPnP servers, so you'd need a PC with a server app and transcoder, not as efficient as the Wii. If they opened a web browser up on it, then that would be something. On Fri, May 30, 2008 at 10:01 AM, Andy [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Now that is awesome! On Thu, May 29, 2008 at 7:48 PM, Chris Johnson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I've been using the iPlayer on the Wii quite a lot recently and felt the interface could be improved to make navigation easier on the Wii's low resolution. Because of this, I've created an alternative interface that integrates better with the Wii UI and hopefully improves usability. To use it just point your Wii browser at: http://defaced.co.uk/wiiplayer/ More information and screenshots can be found here: http://defaced.co.uk/blog/index.php/2008/05/28/wiiplayer-the-better-way-to-view-the-bbc-iplayer/ There are still a few rough edges here and there but I think it works well overall. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. Cheers, Chris - 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] Film Reviews
I have forwarded this good idea on. I've also commented that associated RSS feeds should return a 404 for sites we no longer maintain. On 30 May 2008, at 08:22, Brian Butterworth [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Just a quick idea. How about a page on bbc.co.uk noting sections that have closed? 2008/5/29 Andrew Bowden [EMAIL PROTECTED]: I see the film reviews are nolonger being updated on the BBC site. Does anyone know why and will this mean that the film reviews xml feeds will no longer be updated. The Movies site (and it's associated section on BBCi) formally closed on 6 May 2008 - they've left the archive online, however there won't be any new reviews. As such, the feeds won't get updated. - 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/ -- Please email me back if you need any more help. Brian Butterworth http://www.ukfree.tv - independent digital television and switchover advice, since 2002
Re: [backstage] Radio 4 on Realplayer
And to feed back to you (it's your BBC)... The issue here was a peculiar glitch in the signal received by the satellite receiving units at Maidenhead. (At present, all our national network online streams are re-encoded from satellite receivers by our technology partner Siemens). For a while, we switched over to DAB as a backup source of audio, which cured the issue on most stations. (I say 'most' - one of the DAB receivers developed a fault, but that was soon overpatched. Marvel at the detail I'm giving you here). This was successful, though made BBC Radio 1 slightly distorted (since DAB processing is slightly 'louder' than that via satellite); Radio 1 was switched back to satellite delivery on Monday morning and others have since followed suit. Currently scheduled for next month, we'll switch to encoding national radio (live, and on-demand) straight from the transmission chain within Broadcasting House (using the same processing as the digital satellite feed, which is the best-suited for the internet environment). You'll notice a slew of changes to our audio online over the next few months - and, we hope, a set of new, developer-friendly, formats. (I can reveal that our choices of audio codec does not include Ogg Vorbis. Yes, I was the man who installed it at another national station. No, it is not good value for money to attempt the same at the BBC.) The BBC's FMT team are committed to being as open as we can - indeed, earlier today I escaped from an exciting conference which used the word Open more times than is healthy - so I hope this is interesting to some. However, I'd reiterate that our web form, as linked to by my friend and colleague Alan Ogilvie, is the quickest way to alert us to an issue and get it fixed - little mutes in audio may not get picked up by automated checking systems, and we don't generally sit and watch Backstage (indeed, as you've spotted, I rarely pop in here but am very vocal once I do). j (on behalf of his employer just this once) On Fri, May 30, 2008 at 6:48 PM, Alan Ogilvie [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Brian - I have alerted our teams. Thank you. We are experiencing on-going problems with a few of our streams, you may notice issues on some listen again programmes (although I think we are down to the last few with a problem at the moment). In future the best way to contact us about streaming issues is via the contact pages: http://www.bbc.co.uk/feedback/ (there is a direct email address, but it's worth going through the web form as it will capture useful things like your IP address and things) Alan -- Alan Ogilvie [EMAIL PROTECTED] (IP) Interactive Platforms Producer Distribution Technologies | Audio Music Interactive Room 818, BBC Henry Wood House, 3-6 Langham Place, London, W1B 3DF From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Brian Butterworth Sent: 30 May 2008 18:26 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: [backstage] Radio 4 on Realplayer Is it just me getting audio mutes every few seconds on the Real Audio stream of BBC Radio 4 FM. The LW feed is OK though... Who do you tell these days? -- 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/ -- http://james.cridland.net/ | http://www.mediauk.com/ Media UK is a Not At All Bad Ltd production. http://notatallbad.ltd.uk/legal_info/
Re: [backstage] Is Freesat going to be HD only?
Further to all the discussion in this thread about HD, it would occur to me that what would be really cool is to see an 'Also in HD' overlay on an SD channel when the programme is being simulcast in HD. Hitting that colour (hey, use blue) and it'll pop over to the BBC HD channel. Neat. I don't think Sky allow you to switch TV channels using MHEG, which is a shame, so I guess I'll never get to see that on my box... J
Re: [backstage] 502 error
On Thu, Apr 10, 2008 at 9:24 AM, Andrew Bowden [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi guys, does anyone else get a 502 error when trying to post to Justin Web's blog: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/justinwebb/2008/04/letting_it_al l_out.html#commentsanchorhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/justinwebb/2008/04/letting_it_all_out.html#commentsanchor There's a known issue with the BBC blog comments where this unfortunately happens sometimes. There's more about it here - including what is being done to solve the problem http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2008/02/leaving_comments_on_bbc_b logs.htmlhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2008/02/leaving_comments_on_bbc_blogs.html Without breaking too many confidences, as a man who posts to BBC blogs occasionally, I saw an exciting looking email recently with details in the next few weeks of a short period of don't post anything while we work on things, after which we'll see a new commenting system. So, that's good. j
Re: [backstage] Embracing the torrent of online video
On Thu, Mar 27, 2008 at 3:17 PM, Andy [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Anyone else find it odd *ALL* the BBC rights holders are demanding exactly the same thing? Sounds a lot like a Cartel to me. (I Am Not a Lawyer) They're not; we have a complicated rights situation which make things rather more difficult. Just in radio, there are different rules with live versus pre-recorded music as an example, which makes getting the rights correct for the Radio Player quite difficult. Indeed, we normally try to attempt to get all the rights holders to accept the same thing, to offer as uniform a service as we can (both how it looks to the user and how we do it internally). Normally this means compromise on both sides. 2. For those larger files that we do have rights to (like podcasts), the leading podcatchers, like iTunes, don't come with Torrent support That's iTunes problem isn't it. People with a lot less money than the BBC seem to have grasped how to provide multiple formats, it's not that difficult. What you need is some kind of script (you could even use make, apt-get build-essential on your eeePC should do the trick). People with a lot less content, yes. But we're not talking about formats here; we're talking about server infrastructure; and there is nobody with more content than the BBC. (Yes, Youtube, but that's different). Thanks for the info on tracking stuff; interesting. 5. We'd really not want to push people through hoops to download new software just to consume our content*, especially given that we've a lot of less tech-savvy users than an average site iPlayer, Kontiki, RealPlayer, Flash, WMP? iPlayer is not a download. Kontiki is, and yes, I don't understand that one. RealPlayer - agreed Flash is almost universally installed by every user; I think we're happy with that. Windows Media Player is pre-installed on every Windows machine (nearly). The future is something that just works with as few downloads as possible; which is what I'm aiming for. Visit virginradio.co.uk/listen, and the player will use Windows (if you're using MSIE and Windows) or Flash otherwise, just as an example - for most users it just works. It won't come as a surprise that I want something similar here. Give me time, I've got more content to deal with, and systems and processes that are a tad slower.
Re: [backstage] DVB-H finally gets formal adoption by the EC (oh and vista SP1!)
On Mon, Mar 24, 2008 at 9:49 PM, Christopher Woods [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: If you're interested in this stuff, then November should bring a really interesting day from The Radio Academy, called 'Radio at the Edge'. I'll be mentioning it ad nauseam later in the year, but thought I'd not turn down this opportunity. Is that going to be a lecture or something at a particular venue? What's the cost going to be? Could only find scant information about last year's event (I'd be very interested in attending that but the cost for these things is usually prohibitive for students). It'll be a day's conference. It's a paid-for event (but normally a couple of hundred instead of the more usual couple of thousand), but I like the idea of doing something special for students. More details on its blog - yes, it's got one (currently with one post!) - shortly. -- http://james.cridland.net/ | http://www.mediauk.com/
Re: [backstage] DVB-H finally gets formal adoption by the EC (oh and vista SP1!)
Don't confuse the DAB IP telly stuff from BT Movio with proper telly over DAB. That standard is called T-DMB and it's excellent quality. It's in use in various places, including South Korea. The cold, dead hand of Microsoft goes nowhere near T-DMB. DVB-H is fine, as long as you don't mind waiting ten seconds to change channels (!!!) or waiting until 2011 for the frequencies to be freed up in the UK. Given that DAB is not dying (don't confuse one radio group's short- sighted business problems with a death of the medium), it would make rather more sense to continue investing in its infrastructure. -- http://james.cridland.net/ | http://mediauk.com/ Media UK is a Not At All Bad Ltd production. http://notatallbad.ltd.uk/legal_info On 20 Mar 2008, at 10:26, Brian Butterworth [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 19/03/2008, Sean DALY [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Here's the firsthand info: http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/08/451format=HTMLaged=0language=ENguiLanguage=en Thanks for the links. The speech made me think ... if DVB-H gets adopted and used, which seems likely, it would probably be better to dump the whole DAB (and even DAB+) idea and use DVB-H instead. DVB-H's design has the datastream formatted with information that allows the reciever to turn off for those moments where the data is not required for a particular channel. Computed by the broadcast end, the design allows for the receiver to be powered off for over 95% of the time. This certainly would extend the life of any device that uses it. Comparing the quality of the DVB-H system I saw in London in June 2006 to the awful service on Virgin DAB-TV (why oh why did the BBC take part?), DVB-H seems like a proper service. http://www.ukfree.tv/fullstory.php?storyid=1107051125 http://www.ukfree.tv/fullstory.php?storyid=1107051279 So, can we pull another Freeview style rescue here? BBC+DVB- H=future relevance ! Also, would be a perfect fill-in for people who can't get Freeview after switchover because they have to use a portable set or aerial... Also Commissioner Reding's speech I alluded to in the DRM thread the other day discusses this: http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=SPEECH/08/144format=HTMLaged=0language=ENguiLanguage=en - 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/ -- Please email me back if you need any more help. Brian Butterworth http://www.ukfree.tv
Re: [backstage] BBC Home Page broken
Those pages are as designed, incidentally: nobody will link to them that way (unlike a relocation). On Fri, Mar 14, 2008 at 6:16 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Also, www.bbcnews.co.uk Chris -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Fox Tucker Sent: 14 March 2008 13:01 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: RE: [backstage] BBC Home Page broken Seems fine now, but they should sort http://www.bbciplayer.co.uk -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Richard Lockwood Sent: 13 March 2008 12:06 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: [backstage] BBC Home Page broken 12.05 GMT - it's looking a little, shall we say, untidy. :-) http://www.bbc.co.uk/ Cheers, Rich. - 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://james.cridland.net/ | http://www.mediauk.com/ Media UK is a Not At All Bad Ltd production. http://notatallbad.ltd.uk/legal_info/
Re: [backstage] iPlayer DRM is over?
On Thu, Mar 13, 2008 at 9:41 PM, Iain Wallace [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: You basically have to send the exact same headers that an iPhone does, along with the BBC-UID. Fortunately someone emailed me a plain-text log of successful requests sniffed from his iPhone. I've used curl instead of wget this time as it gives you finer granularity of control over headers. [snip] Hello. I'm a BBC senior manager; but posting personally as a fan of Backstage. It puts us (those that care about Backstage) in a really difficult position if it's used to share information on ways to get around content-restrictions on a BBC service. I don't want to see the end of the Backstage unmoderated mailing list. Posting this type of information threatens its future. Please don't. Anywhere else. Just not here. Thanks.
[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. This is in addition to our initial support for the iPhone/iPod Touch. And don't forget, access via The Cloud (in many rail stations) is entirely free. Now, I need to go and write a blog post. -- James Cridland | Head of Future Media Technology, BBC Audio Music Interactive Room 718 | Henry Wood House | 3-6 Langham Place | London W1B 3DF MSN/GTalk:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio | http://www.bbc.co.uk/music | http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/radiolabs/
Re: [backstage] BBC Podcasts Programme Guide...
On Thu, Feb 28, 2008 at 4:12 PM, Carlos Roman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Sorry, I don't work on iPlayer team so don't know if there is one or not. Maybe someone else on the list could. It's the desire of the iPlayer team to have an RSS feed on every page of the new UI, which is due end April and which will include both TV and radio programmes. It's all coming together... (grin) j
[backstage] A day in the life of a BBC Backstage widget
I posted here in September, talking about a BBC Weather widget I'd written using BBC Backstage data. If you're interested how it's done, I've just dropped a blog about it. (I believe dropping a blog is the new vernacular.) http://james.cridland.net/blog/2008/03/02/a-day-in-the-life-of-a-widget/ Hope some here find this useful. Geeks may like to see the picture which accompanies it, which shows my Asus Eee desktop. Comments (here or on the blog) are welcome. About the widget, not really about the Asus. (Which is very good, by the way). -- http://james.cridland.net/ | http://www.mediauk.com/ Media UK is a Not At All Bad Ltd production. http://notatallbad.ltd.uk/legal_info/
Re: [backstage-developer] RSS Sliders
On Jan 8, 2008 3:16 PM, neil [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Questions include: Is this intuitive? Does the data shift as you might expect? Are two sliders too complex? Is a slider appropriate here, or should something else be used? Is the sorting algorithm right? What should we do about duplicate entries? A little bit of feedback from my previous team (with their permission): There were nice sliders on some of the pages on Virgin Radio's website (on http://www.virginradio.co.uk/vip/lounge/ , which you need to be logged in for) - allowing you to see something akin to Facebook's river of news, but enable you to tweak it. Similar to this, in fact. All usage of these sliders were logged (my team logged everything, I made a point of it). After monitoring it, only 2% of people actually ever bothered to use them. They've since been removed. So: very pretty and all, but I'm not sure they'll be used. Please go ahead and prove me wrong! :) -- http://james.cridland.net | http://www.mediauk.com Media UK is a Not At All Bad Ltd production. http://notatallbad.ltd.uk/legal_info
Re: [backstage] Fwd: [Gnash] Adobe EULA
On 08/01/2008, Martin Belam [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I think 10% or 20% time is a great thing to allow not just developers, but many areas of the BBC, and I wished it had happened whilst I was there. Just a shame that if people get to know more widely about it you can be sure that the press will be asking that everyone gets a 10% or 20% rebate on their licence fee! http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/radiolabs/2008/01/ten_percent_time.shtml might be worth a read... //j
Re: [backstage] Fwd: [Gnash] Adobe EULA
On Jan 7, 2008 1:50 PM, Michael Sparks [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Responding to just one point in this: like a BBC software engineer spending his 20% time (supposing engineers at the BBC get that, I'm speculating there) on No, we don't get that, or any other fraction for that matter. All my team get 10% time. It's not taken up by everyone, but the iPhone podcast service is just one of the outputs of this so far (and the attendant framework to enable other devices to also have a similar decent podcast experience on a small screen). My own 10% time will be revealed shortly; it's something to help my team who work on podcasts. -- James Cridland | Head of Future Media Technology, BBC Audio Music Interactive Room 718 | Henry Wood House | 3-6 Langham Place | London W1B 3DF http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio | http://www.bbc.co.uk/music | http://www.bbc.co.uk/digitalradio
Re: [backstage] BBC iplayer on exotic devices
On Jan 4, 2008 4:59 PM, Andy [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 04/01/2008, Ian Forrester [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: So if your building a iplayer for an exotic device platform, do get in touch. Quick questions: Adobe Flash is prohibited on non-PC systems, is the BBC suggesting we violate Adobe's EULA or just not use the streaming version? Andy, I'm awfully confused. Flash plays on a Wii (albeit not the iPlayer video content, since the codec used isn't in that version), on mobile phones (from Nokia to Windoze phones but not the iPhone yet), I think it's also on the PSP as well. (Oh, and naturally it's available on the Mac and Linux). Apart form the BBCs we hate people knowing how this works attitude I see no reason why it can't be done. Although others have also said this: this list (and this thread in particular) is precisely because we -do- want people knowing how as much of this works as possible: the Backstage team battle through some quite difficult beaurocracy to enable this to happen. I admire your negativity towards everything posted here, but do cut us some slack: we're trying to help as much as we can. If you want to bash the BBC, please do just drop me an email and let's keep that stuff off-list. j
Re: [backstage] Broadcasters to launch joint VoD service
On Dec 30, 2007 2:37 PM, Dave Crossland [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Here's the full comment: It's sad to see that Linus Torvalds, one of the leading figures in the Free Software movement, doesn't really care for freedom. And it's even sadder that he resorts to insults, saying that those who *do* care about freedom are frothing-at-the-mouth. I suspect this poster is conflating two things: ideology, and the way it's promoted. This sentence of Linus's quote: I dislike the frothing-at-the-mouth ideology (to me, ideology should be something personal, not something you push on other people) ... is quite valid. To me, this chapter of the revered sayings of Linus says that people shoudn't push the freedom idea onto others in a frothing-at-the-mouth way - not that people shouldn't care about freedom, nor that it's not a valid point. But then, you can read his scriptures in a number of different ways... - 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] Broadcasters to launch joint VoD service
On Jan 2, 2008 12:07 AM, Dave Crossland [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 01/01/2008, James Cridland [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: To me, this ... says that people shoudn't push the freedom idea onto others in a frothing-at-the-mouth way - not that people shouldn't care about freedom, nor that it's not a valid point. Should people care about software freedom? Is the issue of software freedom a valid one? I think you're being deliberately argumentative now. I shall desist from feeding the troll further. - 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] Broadcasters to launch joint VoD service
And more importantly, why did you just send a suspicious file in you email? What are you doing sending .dat files anyway? For the record, Google Mail (or Gmail, if you're in the US) automatically threads every message in Backstage correctly; you can also use its excellent filters to sort mails into a particular folder; and you can hit the m button, which mutes any conversation, whenever the conversation descends into DRM (rights) and open source licences. Highly recommended - it's what I use all the time. The thing that reminded me to have a quick read through Backstage was this interesting quote from Linus Torvalds, held within http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/2007/12/linus-torvalds.html ... I dislike the frothing-at-the-mouth ideology (to me, ideology should be something personal, not something you push on other people) and I think it's much more interesting to see how Open Source actually generates a better process for doing complex technology, than push the freedom angle and push an ideology. An excellent quote which I will endeavour to use in 2008 every time the zealots start drowning out the conversation. (Curiously, it's also applicable, with a few word changes, to religion too). //j - 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] Please release Perl on Rails as Free Software
On Dec 6, 2007 2:23 PM, Dave Crossland [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 06/12/2007, Deirdre Harvey [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hurray for freedom. I'm sure you'll appreciate that that kind of disdain for users is not something the BBC is likely to go along with. Sadly the BBC has disdain for users when it goes along with DRM. HOUSE!! Licences, open-source, and now DRM, all in one thread! How splendid... ly tiresome
Re: [backstage] Please release Perl on Rails as Free Software
On Dec 6, 2007 12:16 PM, Andy [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 05/12/2007, Matthew Wood [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The delay is just a small-team-working-on-/programmes-and-trying-to-fit-it-all-in thing. Any chance of explaining what the BBC actually have to do when someone says let's open source Y? It's normally a relatively simple for a small individual project (simply adding the appropriate license file and copyright text to each file). However I assume it is somewhat more tricky for a large organisation. Does this have to work it's way up to high management or are individual teams given freedom to make these decisions themselves? Will you be accepting bug reports and patches from people outside the BBC or is this a release and forget kind of thing? (Unfortunately I am not a Perl coder so there isn't much I can do). I was asked, and readily agreed to it being made open-source. (Dunno if I count as high management - http://james.cridland.net/biography ). I trust my team to make the right decision. Chatting today, we think we'll release it quickly as a .tar.gz at /opensource, and then, depending on the reaction we get, put it on a Sourceforge-or-similar site, to allow bug reports, patches, etc etc. Please do give us time to release it; I'd rather this work didn't get in the way of delivering great tools and products. As a note, this will be the second time that a member of my team has released code to /opensource; the first was a bit of Java: http://www.bbc.co.uk/opensource/projects/tv_anytime_api/ Hope that helps. //j
[backstage] Google Charts API
Neat and possibly useful chart API from Google, released today: http://code.google.com/apis/chart/ If it's of any use, I've written a quick PHP encoding script for it, instead of the JavaScript version they offer: http://james.cridland.net/blog/2007/12/06/google-charts-api-using-php/ I've released it under the do whatever you like with my crappy code licence, which I hope is acceptable to those herein. ;) -- http://james.cridland.net | http://www.mediauk.com
Re: [backstage] Google Charts API
On Dec 7, 2007 12:15 AM, Michael Sparks [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: James Cridland wrote: ... As a note, this will be the second time that a member of my team has released code Third actually :-) (that I know of :) http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=122494package_id=176999 (python-dvb3 bindings) Also originated from Audio Music Interactive. (Paul Clifford) You're entirely correct. Apologies to Paul. //j
Re: [backstage] Please release Perl on Rails as Free Software
On Dec 5, 2007 9:06 PM, Matthew Wood [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hello all - a quick word from the infamous Perl on Rails team itself Psst, Matt, nobody's reading these bits. They're too busy arguing about licences. Still, better that than nothing. Which reminds me - have we finished adding that DRM to our podcasts?* //j * the above was a joke. We are not adding DRM to our podcasts.
Re: [backstage] Please release Perl on Rails as Free Software
On Dec 3, 2007 12:48 PM, Noah Slater [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
On 03/12/2007, Dave Cross [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
You don't need the BBC to release it.
Yeah, a lot of the comments on that blog post said similar things -
that notwithstanding it would be very helpful for the community if the
BBC shared the source.
Delighted to let you know that after discussion with my team, we *will* be
making Perl on Rails (we'll call it something different) open-source.
It'll be licenced as openly as possible. You asked for it, so we'll give you
it.
Please watch the BBC Radio Labs blog for more information; we'll post when
we're ready.
In terms of the posting linked-to by Tom Loosemore, I've a blog post waiting
to go up on the BBC Internet Blog (which may appear tomorrow); the gag from
the bottom is...
sub job_requirement {
my $target = shift;
$target = 'this' unless defined $target;
return You don't need to understand $target to work at the BBC\n;
}
print job_requirement(perl);
... so hasten yourself to www.bbc.co.uk/jobs now.
--
James Cridland | Head of Future Media Technology, BBC Audio Music
Interactive
Room 718 | Henry Wood House | 3-6 Langham Place | London W1B 3DF
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio | http://www.bbc.co.uk/music |
http://www.bbc.co.uk/digitalradio
Re: [backstage] BBC Podcasts Including Music
On Nov 23, 2007 12:20 PM, Dave Crossland [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [quoting me in April] It's possible for all our podcasts to be produced in Ogg Vorbis automatically, too. Indeed, all our on-demand audio is already encoded into Ogg Vorbis, for when it becomes a popular codec (and we're still waiting). It will become a popular codec by influential people publishing audio in it, like Virgin and the BBC, and by people learning to value software freedom and requesting audio publishers to use the format. Chicken, meet egg. Given that Virgin's been broadcasting Ogg Vorbis for five years without (until I left, at any rate) any real user takeup, it's less likely that anyone else is going to start broadcasting it. Given, too, that the best-selling portable audio players don't support it, it's unlikely that broadcasters will add Ogg Vorbis versions of podcasts. It shouldn't be forgotten that, for Virgin's streaming, use of Ogg Vorbis was even in the minority among Linux users. [quoting me later] My Ubuntu box copes quite happily with an open source version of Real Player; This isn't true; to play RealAudio format audio, you need proprietary software that integrates with a piece of free software. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helix_project has the details. Apologies, if this is the case. https://player.helixcommunity.org/2005/downloads/ is not clear on this point. presumably this Puppy Linux box would too if I bothered to download it; and the Mac under the telly copes with both Real and Windows, thanks to a free plugin to Quicktime. So, free-to-the-user alternatives to Ogg Vorbis exist on all major platforms. Sadly free-to-the-user is not the issue; free-as-in-freedom is the issue. To you, it is. However, to most people the only issue is does it work on my platform, is it simple, and do I have to pay anything?. My experience supporting the Ogg Vorbis platform would rather tend to prove that point; Virgin's Ogg Vorbis stream was even the highest quality (at an average 160k). And, given that you acknowledge a need for people to learn to value software-freedom in this same message, above, I sense you agree with the reality. I do love a good mailing list troll, Dave. Don't let it border onto obsessiveness, will you? J -- http://james.cridland.net | http://www.mediauk.com Media UK is a Not At All Bad Ltd production. Company info: http://www.notatallbad.ltd.uk/
Re: [backstage] DRM duration?
On Nov 8, 2007 10:42 AM, David Greaves [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Of course this is a blog so not exactly a reference source: http://joyofsox.blogspot.com/2007/11/mlb-game-downloads-still-inaccessible.html So this DRM system seems to have lasted 2003-2006. Then a year later you lose any downloads. Yep, this is the kind of thing that makes honest consumers want to stay within the law. As a note: the (public service) BBC produces no DRM'd content which lasts longer than one month. This isn't a risk that those of us using iPlayer downloads need concern ourselves with, therefore. You might also enjoy http://james.cridland.net/blog/2007/08/11/when-content-restriction-and-protection-goes-bad/- the MLB aren't the first, nor will they be the last. -- http://james.cridland.net | http://www.mediauk.com Media UK is a Not At All Bad Ltd production. Company info: http://www.notatallbad.ltd.uk/
Re: [backstage] Wii News Channel
On 10/16/07, Barry Carlyon [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I had heard that one of the student radio stations was building a flash player for their radio stream for the wii….. Cough http://www.playthree.net/2007/04/virgin-radio-available-on-ps3-and-wii.html Yes, April. //j
[backstage] iPod touch // iPhone development
Those of you who might be keeping an eye on the next big thing, and who are in London, might want to know that the Apple Store in Regent Street has a slew of iPod Touch units available to play with. There are developer kits available on the web, but if you want to give your new app a quick test on a real iPod Touch, they are all connected to the instore open wifi. You might have to queue to have a quick play. They're really *very* nice. The screen is incredibly good, and the user interface is stunning. (They're sold out, mind, until early next week. They'll be in all Apple UK stores on September 28th, and available online for then.) http://www.flickr.com/photos/jamescridland/1413260855/ shows my first, blurry, test of a media website near you. It almost displayed perfectly. Worth mentioning that many companies have a corporate deal with Apple allowing you money off. For those within the BBC, a flash of your ID card when purchasing will suffice; I believe the government have similar, as do bona-fide Virgin employees. There are also discounts for students. -- http://james.cridland.net | http://www.mediauk.com Media UK is a Not At All Bad Ltd production. Company info: http://www.notatallbad.ltd.uk/
Re: [backstage] Can't cannot to BBC radio streams
Thanks for this bug report. It's very interesting, and my team are looking at it as we speak. We are aware of some issues with the BBC Radio streams on Windows Media Player. Yours has possibly been the most useful bug report we've seen so far! //j On 9/17/07, Mark Hingston [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi, I'm in the process of creating a linux-based, lightweight RTSP client for listening to internet radio and have run into problems with connecting to the BBC's radio stations. I am using live555 libraries (www.live555.com) to provide RTSP support and have done a fair amount of work getting my client to receive mms streams via RTSP. My RTSP client can connect to most mms urls if you change the mms:// to rtsp://, but has problems downloading BBC radio stations in this way. So I was wondering if anyone can shed any light on the problems that I'm having. For eg. when i try to connect to: rtsp://wmlive.bbc.co.uk/wms/bbc7/hi_s1 the RTSP conversation that fails is attached in the file named MarksPlayer-rtsp-to-bbc.txt. The problem seems to be that whenever I issue a SETUP command, I receive a response of 400 Bad Request Other streams that show the same problem include: mms://wmlive.bbc.net.uk/wms/radio5/5Live_int_s1 mms://wmlive.bbc.co.uk/wms/1xtra/hi_s1 where simply replacing the mms:// with rtsp:// creates a stream that I can not connect to. The version string shows that the BBC is using WMServer/9.1.1.3814, and in the past, I have successfully connected via RTSP to other servers running that version. (eg. mms://media.hostdepot.com/334479-02). What is especially confusing for me is the fact that Windows Media Player 11, running on Windows XP successfully connects to the server, using a very similar pattern of RTSP commands (the messages sent during the WMP11 exchange are attached in the file named wmp11-rtsp-to-bbc.txt). I have tried altering my own RTSP client (which runs on Linux) so that it uses an identical sequence of commands to WMP11, but this still results in a failure to connect - I can successfully issue the OPTIONS and DESCRIBE requests and get meaningful responses, yet every time i try to issue a GET_PARAMETER or SETUP request after this, I receive a response of RTSP/1.0 400 Bad Request. My own rtsp client is not able to download mms streams, as I haven't and don't plan to implement mms as it's a deprecated (and proprietary) protocol. I can connect to other WM Servers via RTSP, so I'm curious, is the BBC's Windows Server special in some way? Are the BBC's internet radio broadcasts DRM encrypted or something? Or is there any reason that anyone knows of that would be preventing me from connecting to the server via RTSP? If I'm asking these questions in the wrong place, please let me know where would be more appropriate to ask (N.B. I've already asked these questions to the live555 developers, who told me to ask the BBC or Microsoft). Thanks in advance, Mark Hingston.
Re: [backstage] Amazon EC2
It is in use within the BBC, I believe; though the hack day stuff used a different virtualisation thing. I use S3 personally and at mediauk.com, incidentally. -- http://james.cridland.net | http://www.mediauk.com Media UK is a Not At All Bad Ltd production. Company info: http://www.notatallbad.ltd.uk/ On 9/11/07, Jason Cartwright [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I've not used it, but I read an interesting article comparing it with a product called Flexiscale (http://www.flexiscale.com/) over here... http://uk.blognation.com/2007/09/11/fowa-expo-exhibitors-announced/ J On 9/11/07, Sean Dillon [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Afternoon. Anyone here using this at the moment? I've only started to venture into it after having been mightily pleased with their S3 stroage system. Seán - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Fwd: Government response to petition 'iplayer'
On 9/6/07, Gordon Joly [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: At 19:48 +0100 6/9/07, vijay chopra wrote: I saw that as well. though I signed the petition, I'm not really bothered any more. I just use my windows partition and just strip all my iPlayer downloads of their DRM with the help of the guys over at doom 9: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=127943 http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=127943 . That way I can watch them wherever I like. Is that legal? My viewpoint: yes, provided it's for personal use (UK law); no, regardless of if it's for personal use (US law). //j
Re: [backstage] BBC Radio Icon on MediaBank DAB
Reported; thank you. Any more these web pages aren't updated type emails, please feel free to forward these to [EMAIL PROTECTED] where I will prod the people responsible. I have a collection of quite large res logos, on white, which I've used for www.mediauk.com ; shout if you need them. On 9/4/07, Brian Butterworth [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Good morning... OK, so we have the new BBC Radio icons on the website http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/ But they are not on DAB yet ... can someone please sort them. If you need them cropping and resizing, just let me know - I know Auntie short of cash these days... Any chance the Media Bank people could get the high-resolution version too. Some of like promoting BBC services online for free, you know ;-) http://www.bbc.co.uk/cgi-perl/mediabank/ap.cgi?action=recently_added Brian Butterworth www.ukfree.tv
Re: [backstage] Release: BBC Weather iGoogle gadget
Sorry, have replied offlist to this. Any chance you could make it provide the old weather symbols (as stilled used on bbc.co.uk homepage) as an option? Every chance, but I'm unclear of whether we're allowed to. -- http://james.cridland.net | http://www.mediauk.com Media UK is a Not At All Bad Ltd production. Company info: http://www.notatallbad.ltd.uk/ On 9/2/07, Brian Butterworth [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: James, Very nice - simple to use too. Any chance you could make it provide the old weather symbols (as stilled used on bbc.co.uk homepage) as an option? On 01/09/07, James Cridland [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: A little bit of relaxation coding, and I'm proud to bring you my very first BBC Backstage iGoogle gadget. http://ig4bbcweather.notlong.com Edit the settings to choose your UK placename - it's nice and small, and uses the official BBC weather feed. Clicking the name of the place you've chosen will bring up the full page from the BBC Weather website. Coded in PHP, using the SimplePie library for RSS feeds. -- http://james.cridland.net | http://www.mediauk.com Media UK is a Not At All Bad Ltd production. Company info: http://www.notatallbad.ltd.uk/ -- Please email me back if you need any more help. Brian Butterworth www.ukfree.tv
Re: [backstage] Release: BBC Weather iGoogle gadget
Well, as a thought... if you add-by-URL http://james.cridland.net/code/bbcnews.php then you'll get a BBC News iGoogle gadget. It's quite pretty, I think. It scrapes http://news.bbc.co.uk/text_only.stm and rewrites the linking URLs, so you get the natty pictures. Now - I think this is against the news copyright message, which states... you are not permitted to ... adapt or change in any way the content of these BBC web pages for any other purpose whatsoever without the prior written permission of the BBC. Similarly, the main site's copyright message states You may not ... use bbc.co.uk content in any way except for your own personal, non-commercial use. You also agree not to adapt, alter or create a derivative work from any bbc.co.uk content except for your own personal, non-commercial use. I don't think I can use the nicer graphics for the weather map; and that my iGoogle BBC News gadget can't be released for others to use, therefore. Anyone disagree? -- http://james.cridland.net | http://www.mediauk.com Media UK is a Not At All Bad Ltd production. Company info: http://www.notatallbad.ltd.uk/ On 9/2/07, Brian Butterworth [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I would have thought it would be fine you use the BBC URLs rather than copy them and rehost them. On 02/09/07, James Cridland [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Sorry, have replied offlist to this. Any chance you could make it provide the old weather symbols (as stilled used on bbc.co.uk homepage) as an option? Every chance, but I'm unclear of whether we're allowed to. -- http://james.cridland.net | http://www.mediauk.com Media UK is a Not At All Bad Ltd production. Company info: http://www.notatallbad.ltd.uk/ On 9/2/07, Brian Butterworth [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: James, Very nice - simple to use too. Any chance you could make it provide the old weather symbols (as stilled used on bbc.co.uk homepage) as an option? On 01/09/07, James Cridland [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: A little bit of relaxation coding, and I'm proud to bring you my very first BBC Backstage iGoogle gadget. http://ig4bbcweather.notlong.com Edit the settings to choose your UK placename - it's nice and small, and uses the official BBC weather feed. Clicking the name of the place you've chosen will bring up the full page from the BBC Weather website. Coded in PHP, using the SimplePie library for RSS feeds. -- http://james.cridland.net | http://www.mediauk.com Media UK is a Not At All Bad Ltd production. Company info: http://www.notatallbad.ltd.uk/ -- Please email me back if you need any more help. Brian Butterworth www.ukfree.tv -- Please email me back if you need any more help. Brian Butterworth www.ukfree.tv
Re: [backstage] Later data
http://bbc-hackday.dyndns.org:2825/ - the whole thing's stitched together with MusicBrainz artist ids Theoretically, it should be possible to stitch www.bbc.co.uk/music/ into this, too. That uses Musicbrainz data, but I've no idea where the odd IDs come from. The Coral, for example, is http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/artist/m3qv/ but if you Google m3qv and Coral, it just returns that page, so it looks like an ID arbitrarily made up by the BBC. I shall endeavour to find the relationship out if you'd be interested; benefits are that /music links to all music content throughout the BBC, which is therefore a Good Thing. -- http://james.cridland.net | http://www.mediauk.com Media UK is a Not At All Bad Ltd production. Company info: http://www.notatallbad.ltd.uk/
Re: [backstage] iPlayer Today?
On 7/29/07, Andy [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: (boring DRM invective deleted) Also why does the BBC trust's report not mention the fact that not only is iPlayer Windows only, it is IE only? Did the BBC not tell them they where doing this? Why can't it work with Firefox? iplayer:// can be made to run iPlayer from Firefox it's not exactly tricky is it? Or do you use some dodgy way of invoking iPlayer from IE? (or is it no longer IE only?) I asked just this question; and the answer is the invocation of the iPlayer is some kind of ActiveX nastiness. Everything else works just fine with Firefox, but the team made the sensible decision to make the entire site not work, rather than allow you to get all the way to choosing a programme and then be told you can't. It *is* on the roadmap to be sorted, though; as is the Mac/Linux issue. On 7/30/07, Nico Morrison [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: But for heavens sake BBC - put a proper forum up, not this manky 'messageboard'. The manky messageboard is the BBC's DNA system, which talks correctly to the single sign-on service, and does other useful fancy things. There's a lot of work going on behind the scenes; much of what I see of the BBC's current web infrastructure (now I'm inside) is very Web0.5, but that's being sorted. Don't panic. (That previous sentence was, I note, an unintended pun, given that 'DNA' is actually based on the H2G2 engine.) //j http://james.cridland.net/
Re: [backstage] Can we have a developer mailing list?
On 7/29/07, Adam Leach [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Is there any chance of a separate developer list for discussion of APIs, services, Geek events, etc. The BBC with the encouragement from Ian Matthew are providing some great sources of information for doing mashups and organising some great events like Hackday, but this mailing list is just becoming a BBC Bashing list. Good plan! Might I recommend (having run many a mailing list in my time) that we, the users of this list, do not accept wildly off-topic conversation and mail people, off list, to enforce this? //j
Re: [backstage] About our API
On 7/17/07, Jonathan Tweed [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It's a shame it's internal only. I'd love it to be on Backstage. I second your thoughts... //j
Re: [backstage] feeds with icons or pictures?
On 7/23/07, Brian Butterworth [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: If you want BBC images to use on other websites (from Wikipedia onwards) just visit http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediabank/ Register, download and use to your hearts desires. Gosh. A search for all images related to BBC Radio (ten national networks, another 50 nations/regions stations, a tremendous choice of talent, an unrivalled amount of content) gives me... ...some pictures of Russell Brand. From June last year. And, um, that's it. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've a chocolate teapot to buy, which might be of more use. //j
Re: [backstage] Links to video/audio for specific shows
On 7/16/07, Tom Coates [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hey - as the person who developed the URL stuff for the programme information pages project (PIPs - hence pip in the URL), I can assure you that the one you're proposing is not generally better. That's me told! Though thank you... ;) In terms of music artists (I rediscovered the great band Bliss this weekend, and found three different Bliss's within the same last.fm page, of which I was only interested in one, and the pictures and everything is all really very messed-up) then perhaps disambiguation pages work like wikis. www.bbc.co.uk/music/artist/bliss/ is a disambiguation page, leading to www.bbc.co.uk/music/artist/bliss_1/ www.bbc.co.uk/music/artist/bliss_2/ ...etc This also has the benefit that you don't need a database call to link to an artist page on /music - just call *str_replace( ,_,strtolower($artist)); * instead. Not that it's quite that easy, of course. On 7/16/07, Kim Plowright [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: James - an aside - you need to talk to the programme info people in FMT, and maybe the person in VMPS who is looking after the work done for drama/comedy TV on this kind of stuff. There's a good four year history on this one! I don't doubt it. The nice thing about being in a new job is that you can ask damn stupid questions, and then be told the sane and sensible reasons for why things have been done the way they've been done. Generally - though not always - there are sensible reasons why, and that's cool. -- http://james.cridland.net/
Re: [backstage] Tivo StopWatch beginner questions...
On 7/16/07, James Ockenden [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: more interesting i thought was how StopWatch managed the 20,000 CRID/URI-style info streaming in every second for two months (that's a lot of data no?) and how it measured and identified each program, and, since this was primarliy for advertisers, how they identified each advert? by the station's output listing/time - surely unreliable? So do adverts have URIs? what about the promo snippets on BBC? If you know an accurate time (broadcast on all DTV/DAB systems, and analogue with teletext at least); and you know the channel being watched, you can look-up what was on. No need to broadcast any URLs or CRIDs or anything.
Re: [backstage] Links to video/audio for specific shows
On 7/13/07, Jakob Fix [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 7/13/07, Steve Jolly [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: There's some confusion over CRIDs IMO - even in RFC 4078 they get referred to as URLs. I think it's best to think of them as URIs, designed to be unique and location-independent. TV-Anytime defines the concept of a CRI service that (amongst other things) provides mappings between CRIDs and locators, which could include http, rtsp etc *URLs*. This gives you the benefits of both time-invariant identifiers and time-varying locators, at the cost of an extra lookup. welcome to CRIDland! Wha? Huh? Eh? But now you've woken me up - I (as others are in here) am a big fan of human-readable URLs. http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/breakfast/pip/jrjen/ - good. http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/breakfast/archive/07/07/10/ - better. The 'jrjen' in this URL (no idea, but I suspect it's an internal ID for the PIP system) isn't easily guessable. A date (in this case, a backwards one) is more guessable. Another example (from the same area): http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/artist/x9qv/ - good http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/artist/elton_john/ - better Of course, other benefits are that Google will love these URLs more. Having said that, after five days I'm understanding the reasons for why the URLs currently work the way they do. And I think it might be partially my job to fix that. Just hoping nobody notices quite yet. (In other news, on Friday I found Matt Cashmore's desk. But he wasn't in. I left him a bizarre sticky note on his monitor, though.) j -- http://james.cridland.net/
Re: [backstage] openID on the BBC
On 6/11/07, Mario Menti [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:I think I like the idea of the BBC offering an OpenID login option, rather than the BBC turning into yet another OpenID provider. You say yet another OpenID provider - yet the only 'real world' one I'm aware of right now is AOL... I think there's a good reason for the BBC to embrace both... j
Re: [backstage] openID on the BBC
I really want to understand how OpenID works from a login point of view. If anyone can easily point me to some PHP code that allows a user to log in via an OpenID, I'd dearly like to have a play with it for mediauk.com - I've failed, so far, to find anything that my little brain understands quite yet. (OpenID was on the Virgin Radio milestone map as a 'would be nice' - as a consumer, rather than a provider). -- http://james.cridland.net/ On 6/5/07, Gordon Joly [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: At 14:25 +0100 5/6/07, Brendan Quinn wrote: Thanks Christopher, that's interesting. We've been thinking along similar lines in some initial brainstorming (although I'm not au fait with Simon W's latest work) -- if you think of OpenID as an identification framework rather than an authentication framework then some possibilities open up. Keep the ideas coming, please :-) Brendan. PS to be clear, Simon has been commissioned to write a report on how the BBC might use OpenID in the future. We're not necessarily committing to it or endorsing it as a technology, though. Swiftly followed by a report on the BBC's use of open source software, open protocols, open formats, etc. Gordo -- Think Feynman/ http://pobox.com/~gordo/ [EMAIL PROTECTED]/// - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Facebook Apps
I got one of our crack developers on the case, and the result is http://apps.facebook.com/virginradio/ in case anyone wants to take a look. We're quite pleased with it, but it's certainly a work in progress. Works best if you're already registered at virginradio.co.uk but still works fine if not. Three days' development, I think. (Naturally, I am in Facebook - but apologies to those who try to add me as a friend, I have a must have met at least twice rule.) -- http://james.cridland.net/ On 6/4/07, Jason Cartwright [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I've not made an app yet, but I've become a pretty avid user of Facebook recently and have tried out a few apps. The problem at the moment seems to be that some of the popular apps (the Flickr one for instance) are developed by part timers and run off cheap shared hosting accounts. Not usually a problem for a mashup, but with the ridicious popularity of Facebook these limitations seem to be the cause errors and malfunctioning all over the show. Not very good. Seems they need to get with thier developer relations. Last.fm were a bit hacked (pun intended) off at not being in the early dev program... http://blog.last.fm/2007/05/31/lastfm-on-facebook J -- *From:* [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *On Behalf Of *Barry Carlyon (Webmaster LSRfm.com/LSweb.org.uk) *Sent:* 04 June 2007 10:30 *To:* backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk *Subject:* [backstage] Facebook Apps Hey everyone I'm surprised no one has commented on this yet but I imagine I'm one of the younger members of this list, hence Facebook…. Anywho I was wondering what everyone thought about the sudden explosion of facebook applications, and whether anyone had written one, who is a member of this list. In light of the face we have just been talking about Google developer day, which I could not attend… Yours, --- Barry Carlyon Student Radio Association Regional Rep. North East/Yorkshire LUU Media Rep Webmaster LSRfm.com, Leeds Student, LUUBackstage, Action, BurnFM http://www.barrycarlyon.co.uk http://www.lsrfm.com http://www.lsweb.org.uk *http://www.wbmfproductions.co.uk* *http://www.airebornetheatre.co.uk* mobile: 07729048443 skype: barrycarlyon email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] live help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] This Message Has Been Scanned by Norton And Contains the Views of Barry Carlyon ONLY
[backstage] Google Gears
On 6/1/07, Ian Forrester [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: But I also wanted to get people views on Google Gears - Google Gears is an open source browser extension that lets developers create web applications that can run offline. http://code.google.com/apis/gears I've played with it for Google Reader. It's nice, and works pretty well (even though the initial sync, which you have to do manually, seems to take forever on my ADSL line at home). I might try it properly this evening on the tube home, in the vain hope that a thief steals my hateful Dell before I have to give it back. My Google Reader is always on 100+, so it would be good to cut it down a little. On a similar note, perhaps this is the benefit of the BBC's iPlayer, in that it works offline once you've downloaded the programmes. (If I've understood the literature correctly.) That would put it ahead of the likes of Joost / ITV / C4, for example, which requires a fast and reliable internet connection. James
Re: [backstage] Joost backend revealed
If anyone wants any Joost invites, please mail me privately - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - and I'll get an invitin' when I'm next near wifi. Which will be tomorrow, probably in Oslo airport. Any Joost user gets unlimited invites, so no special favours with the Joost lot need be procured. -- http://james.cridland.net/ On 5/29/07, Ian Forrester [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'll have a word with my friends at Joost, see if we can get a bunch of invites. Ian Forrester This e-mail is: [ x ] private; [ ] ask first; [ ] bloggable Senior Producer, BBC Backstage BC5 C3, Media Village, 201 Wood Lane, London W12 7TP e: [EMAIL PROTECTED] p: +44 (0)2080083965 -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Ian Smith (Irascian Ltd) Sent: 29 May 2007 15:19 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: RE: [backstage] Joost backend revealed I was going to ask the same thing myself, but rather than have this list deluged with requests can those who have invites instead volunteer the fact they have invites (and how many) to help maintain the signal-to-noise level of this newsgroup? Thanks, Ian Smith -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Barry Carlyon (Webmaster LSRfm.com/LSweb.org.uk) Sent: 29 May 2007 15:07 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: RE: [backstage] Joost backend revealed Can someone send me an invite to joost as well please? --- Barry Carlyon Student Radio Association Regional Rep. North East/Yorkshire LUU Media Rep Webmaster LSRfm.com, Leeds Student, LUUBackstage, Action, BurnFM http://www.barrycarlyon.co.uk http://www.lsrfm.com http://www.lsweb.org.uk http://www.wbmfproductions.co.uk http://www.airebornetheatre.co.uk mobile: 07729048443 skype: barrycarlyon email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] live help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] This Message Has Been Scanned by Norton And Contains the Views of Barry Carlyon ONLY -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of David Sent: 29 May 2007 13:46 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: RE: [backstage] Joost backend revealed Does anyone have a spare joost invite they can send my way? Would be most grateful. Cheers! David -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Ian Forrester Sent: 29 May 2007 13:37 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: [backstage] Joost backend revealed Hi All, Joost have just published pretty much everything about the Joost client to there development area. There's even an introduction to creating Joost Widgets. http://dev.joost.com Enjoy! Ian Forrester This e-mail is: [ ] private; [ ] ask first; [ x ] bloggable Senior Producer, BBC Backstage BC5 C3, Media Village, 201 Wood Lane, London W12 7TP e: [EMAIL PROTECTED] p: +44 (0)2080083965 - 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] This one's for Cridland... BBC A/V interface ideas
On 5/25/07, Christopher Woods [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: He's at the BBC now... *No mercy!* (As my housemate vehemently argues, he works for us license-payers now ;) Sorry to disappoint you and your housemate, but as an employee of Virgin Radio Ltd, as I still am, I am still beholden to the lovely shareholders of SMG plc. Hurray, commercial radio! Yay, capitalism! (grin) I start being your humble public servant on 9 July; however, I'd suggest not to use Backstage as a feedback mechanism: let's not get in the way of the real purpose of this mailing list. -- http://james.cridland.net/
Re: [backstage] This one's for Cridland... BBC A/V interface ideas
On 5/22/07, Chris Sizemore [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: (golly, mr cridland, looks like you've got the expectations of a whole darn mailing list on your shoulders?!? frankly, tho, first things first: i've got a whole stack of holiday leave forms waiting for you to sign when you're able? Oh... great. ;) Christopher: thanks for the feedback. I totally understand the need for easier discovery of content. -- http://james.cridland.net/
Re: [backstage] A decent editorially-ordered BBC News feed?
On 5/21/07, Davy Mitchell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Interesting idea - look forward to seeing your gadget :-) I did try to write a prototype which flattened out the front page of news.bbc.co.uk into a big Google News style page. Perhaps I could dig that out and modify the output. If you have not tried yet, Google gadgets are pretty easy to write. Don't forget the Mood News google gadgets (plug, plug, plug) http://www.latedecember.co.uk/sites/personal/davy/arch_d7_2007_03_24.html#e159 Google gadgets are very easy: http://virginradiogadget.notlong.com is one of mine! I've a BBC News gadget working exactly the way I want it; it's currently screen-scraping, though, and therefore not, I understand, for publishing to this list. (You might argue that there's no difference in screen-scraping and doing an RSS feed, I guess.) -- http://james.cridland.net/
[backstage] A decent editorially-ordered BBC News feed?
Since I'm at home tending a cold, I thought I'd do some reconfiguring of my iGoogle page (that's what they insist on calling the Google personalised homepage these days - Steve Jobs has a lot to answer for). I thought I might look at the current BBC News gadgets, and write a nicer one (which gives the text as well as just the headline). But - am I alone in finding the BBC News RSS feeds slightly wanting? The three big items on the BBC News (UK) front page right now are: - Blaze ravages Cutty Sark - Fresh clashes in Northern Lebanon - No 10 defends Hodge housing call However, the top three items on the BBC News UK front page RSS feed right now are: - Lebanon clashes 'kill civilians' - Cameron attacks grammar 'fantasy' - Jail term for Khaleda Zia adviser Essentially, that RSS feed is useless as a feed for the top three stories right now. Is there a way I can get an RSS feed sorted in editorial order, rather than just time-added order? The top three stories exist on http://www.bbc.co.uk/fivelive/ and the top story lives on the Radio 4 website, so it's presumably possible. Indeed, http://news.bbc.co.uk/nolpda/ukfs_news/hi/default.stm contains, with the HRs, exactly what I'd like in my Google Gadget. So is this available for mere mortals to use? -- http://james.cridland.net/
Re: [backstage] A decent editorially-ordered BBC News feed?
It's not ordered editorially; it's ordered by time of last update of that story. So, right now: http://newsrss.bbc.co.uk/rss/newsonline_uk_edition/front_page/rss.xml - Blaze ravages historic Cutty Sark - Terror charge man freed on bail - High marks for six forms But http://news.bbc.co.uk/nolpda/ukfs_news/hi/default.stm - Blaze ravages historic Cutty Sark - Lebanon clashes 'kill civilians' - No 10 defends Hodge housing call ... and these are the top three stories, too, on http://news.bbc.co.uk/ Latest news != most important news. On 5/21/07, Jason Cartwright [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: http://newsrss.bbc.co.uk/rss/newsonline_uk_edition/front_page/rss.xml This is ordered editorially. Is the widget messing with it? Am I missing something? J -- *From:* [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *On Behalf Of *James Cridland *Sent:* 21 May 2007 12:47 *To:* backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk *Subject:* [backstage] A decent editorially-ordered BBC News feed? Since I'm at home tending a cold, I thought I'd do some reconfiguring of my iGoogle page (that's what they insist on calling the Google personalised homepage these days - Steve Jobs has a lot to answer for). I thought I might look at the current BBC News gadgets, and write a nicer one (which gives the text as well as just the headline). But - am I alone in finding the BBC News RSS feeds slightly wanting? The three big items on the BBC News (UK) front page right now are: - Blaze ravages Cutty Sark - Fresh clashes in Northern Lebanon - No 10 defends Hodge housing call However, the top three items on the BBC News UK front page RSS feed right now are: - Lebanon clashes 'kill civilians' - Cameron attacks grammar 'fantasy' - Jail term for Khaleda Zia adviser Essentially, that RSS feed is useless as a feed for the top three stories right now. Is there a way I can get an RSS feed sorted in editorial order, rather than just time-added order? The top three stories exist on http://www.bbc.co.uk/fivelive/ and the top story lives on the Radio 4 website, so it's presumably possible. Indeed, http://news.bbc.co.uk/nolpda/ukfs_news/hi/default.stm contains, with the HRs, exactly what I'd like in my Google Gadget. So is this available for mere mortals to use? -- http://james.cridland.net/ -- http://james.cridland.net/
Re: [backstage] The Proms
On 5/9/07, Sam Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Since the bbc don't provide an ical feed of the proms Odd. They do, though, provide some quite nifty SMS reminders (at least, they did last year). Your iCal feeds don't import correctly into Google Calendar - though I notice that someone has created a BBC Radio 3 schedule public calendar (just search for 'BBC Proms' in the public calendars). It would strike me that a pan-BBC tell me when this is on iCal feed would be a very useful thing: perhaps configurable like... ...schedule.ics?programme=bbc+promschannel=bbcr3 ...schedule.ics?keywords=royal+albert+hall Those of you with iPods can even pull in these feeds directly into your iPod, too. Nice. -- http://james.cridland.net/ (My own views, not those of employers)
Re: [backstage] Get BBC news on Twitter
On 1/8/07, Mario Menti [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: One of the Twitterati amongst us: just add/follow bbcnews to get BBC news updates in Twitter More info here: http://menti.net/?p=85 Experimental as usual... feedback welcome! If I might steal this idea... FOLLOW MEDIAUKRADIO FOLLOW MEDIAUKTV FOLLOW MEDIAUKPRESS ...does what you expect it to: the latest news from our industry, updated 24-hours a day, from a variety of sources. Not, yet, BBC News - but Media Guardian, Radio Today, Digital Spy, et al. Hope someone finds this interesting. -- http://james.cridland.net/
Re: [backstage] Cridland heads to Beeb
On 5/3/07, Christopher Woods [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Oo blimey - looks like we have a man inside now! How useful... Not inside yet! http://james.cridland.net/blog/2007/05/03/to-the-bbc/ But thanks, all. I'm a big fan of Backstage. I only hope that Virgin Radio can launch its own (which I can reveal will be called The Amp, no idea why) before I leave. That'll contain a CC-licenced JavaScript animation library - much smaller and neater that prototype - as a nice gift. -- http://james.cridland.net/
Re: [backstage] The real backstage story?
On 4/22/07, Lamptey, Derryck [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: RoR, spring, hibernate Dotnet, java, php, etc, etc. What is the real backstage story? I'd find it very informative for someone to give us non-BBC-backstagers (without violating what's left of the official secrets act) some sort of overview of how the (impressive) Beeb backstage infrastructure is put together. It would be interesting to hear in (episode 1) when it started, and what backstage technologies were used (episode 2) current infrastructure in the context of lessons learned, (episode x) future directions? I think that this would make a riveting series - the program director for click online might even get stuck in on this one! ...Lots of opportunities for us backstagers to engage in constructive and thought-provoking discussion... I am a newbie to the list, I hope that this is not a RTFM type of question!! Derryck, Not your question, but you might like to know how Virgin Radio's websites work (since I know about this a bit, whereas the BBC's infrastructure is totally unknown to me): We have two live Windows streaming servers, two for on-demand, plus a Helix box, and a Shoutcast/Icecast box (both servers run on the same hardware). Lots of encoders feeding in to these. We have around six live webservers, and do fun stuff with Squid for our images server (i.virginradio.co.uk). Our webservers are balanced using a BigIP box, rather than the elegant round-robin DNS that I believe others use. In addition, we have two webservers, a database mirror, and two WM streaming servers in NYC, and routers in most of the major internet hubs (Amsterdam, Manchester, London, Hong Kong, Frankfurt, NYC). The NYC servers are not just for load-balancing but also act as disaster-recovery boxes should anything happen to Golden Square, and act as spurious reasons for our technical services department to go out and upgrade them. We're fully multicast-enabled, and I believe on IPv6 too. In terms of the technology we use: our streaming software is Visual Basic wrapped around Windows Media Encoders: the VB inserts some additional metadata into the stream and also manages all our now-playing functionality. Otherwise virtually every bit of software is PHP, and homegrown - our content management system, all the webstuff we've written, the lot. Key learnings are to minimise live database lookups, and remove them entirely on our high-traffic pages - replacing them with regular cron jobs that output easy-to-parse text files. Other key learnings are writing widgets - small, reusable, pieces of code for use throughout our website network - rather than hulking great bits of code. We stopped using a content-delivery-network for things like images, when we realised that some work with Squid would make that easier to bring back in-house, but we definitely benefit from leaving the simple, static, stuff to be served by simple server instances. We use PHP mainly for ease of finding great developers and designers, but also to be able to use open-source material. We will be contributing back - indeed, our version of the BBC Backstage website goes live very shortly, which will debut with a small and easy-to-use JavaScript animation tool. Our network is nowhere near as complex as the BBC's; but I hope that's a useful start and there's some useful info in here. -- http://james.cridland.net/
Re: [backstage] Multicast Trial
On 4/10/07, Christopher Woods [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: As far as I understand it, it was more a case of the BBC (and ITV) trialing broadcasting via the multicast infrastructure Cough - Virgin Radio has been running multicast trials with the BBC for a long while too. http://www.virginradio.co.uk/about_us/technology_services/multicast/ Our trials are fully open, so please do come along and play. Similarly, GCap Media (Capital Radio, Classic FM, etc) are also multicasting. They do it automatically: if you're on a multicast network, you'll get the multicast version automatically if you visit www.capitalradio.com and listen using their embedded Windows Media Player thing, if you wanted to dissect the ASX file it gives you. We (Virgin) don't do that yet, only because I was unhappy at the delay it added to our tuning process - I may try again shortly. Here's the current issues: 1. The ISPs need to upgrade their stuff - or turn things on. Zen, for example, is a nice, small, clever, internet company so switching multicast on is pretty simple. BT is a huge, complicated, scary internet company, so switching multicast on is hugely complicated. 2. Your company or university needs to upgrade their stuff. Given that the main benefit for multicasting is from the broadcaster right now (there's no content that you couldn't otherwise get) and that multicasting is not vital for business, it's difficult to see why companies would upgrade. For example, Virgin Radio's own network is not multicast-enabled (so I have no way of listening to our swizzy 192k Windows Media streams). 3. You (yes, you) need to upgrade your stuff too. Your router, your wireless network, all of that stuff needs fiddling with to work with multicast. Even your software firewall. This isn't for the faint-of-heart right now. To give an example of how complicated all of this can get, try looking at www.opendns.com which is a (recommended) alternative DNS service for you to use instead of your slow, dull, ISP's version. Changing a DNS server address is pretty easy to do for us techies, but you still need acres of instructions - try http://www.opendns.com/start/home_network.php for one page. It's a nightmare. And remember that DNS is supported by all ISPs - multicast certainly isn't. So why do we care about multicast? Well, as the internet continues to grow, it'll become rapidly difficult if not impossible to serve millions of unicast streams to people - particularly with television. It won't just be bad for us broadcasters, it'll be bad for ISPs, and therefore bad for consumers. We need multicast to succeed: it's vital for the future of broadcasting over the internet. I think we all agree that closed trials are rather pointless; but my view (as an outsider) is that the BBC does have good reasons for that, as well as a wish to change this as soon as they are able. -- http://james.cridland.net/
Re: [backstage] Browser Stats
On 4/8/07, Gordon Joly [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: OpenBSD 1 visit Does that mean the user never came back!!?!??!?! It means that user never came back that month, yes. Possibly they visited on March 31st, and have been visiting every day since! ;) -- http://james.cridland.net/
Re: [backstage] Browser Stats
I'm coming late to this discussion, as always, but if you're interested, here's the information from virginradio.co.uk (sitewide). Visits by operating system in March 2007 (compared with November 2005) Windows: 96.39% (was 97.45%) Macintosh: 2.87% (was 1.75%) Linux: 0.48% (was 0.55%) Unknown: 0.25% (was 0.21%) SunOS: 0.01% (was 0.03%) FreeBSD: 34 visits OS/2: 5 visits OpenBSD 1 visit We used to use Saga Analytics, like the BBC does, but I found it quite poor and unsuitable for our needs; so we switched to Urchin, and paid for a while before it suddenly became a free service branded Google Analytics. Suits my budget line! Two interesting headline figures: our Linux share seems similar, if slightly larger, than the BBC's but it doesn't appear to be growing; and there has been a clear rise in users of the Macintosh platform over the past year. Points to note: Virgin Radio's website is designed without any Windows-specific stuff, and works perfectly with Ubuntu (including our live audio which defaults, on that platform, to a Flash-based MP3 player); Google Analytics will only measure JavaScript-enabled browsers (Ubuntu, at least, has JavaScript switched on by default just like every other system); and naturally GA will only measure systems that aren't lying about who they are (one reason why Opera has done badly in internet stats, to my understanding). Hope this is intersting to everyone. Keep up the good work chaps. -- http://james.cridland.net/
Re: [backstage] Thoughts on DRM podcast.
I'll not reply to all of that, but one thing is worthwhile saying... On 3/19/07, David Woodhouse [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The iPlayer will have crap on it, in part because of this: the content providers do not want their content to be visible where you shouldn't get it; so you should only get EastEnders in Brazil on the TV network that's bought the show (and thus contributed to the BBC's programming fund), not from the BBC iPlayer. I'm aware of this. The BBC already restrict certain content to IP addresses which they believe to be in the UK (strangely not including my home, since despite the RIPE database clearly stating that my networks are in the UK, the BBC at one point believed I was in Sweden.) It's an entirely different form of restriction though. The main substantive difference is in the cost/benefit analysis. It costs little, except for occasional user having their IP address misclassified, which is easily remedied. And it delivers on the benefits to which it aspires -- it successfully prevents users outside the UK from directly receiving the content in question. Without having other unwanted side-effects and preventing other legitimate use. I think we both agree. IP restrictions (generally) work, and they are forms of DRM, however you look at it (it's a rights management tool). However, this only works for streaming media; not for downloadable files. There is no point putting geolocking on a downloadable, otherwise DRM-free, file; since it takes one person to copy it to a non geo-locked host, and the world has it. That's why you can watch Channel 4 and STV live on the internet within the UK; but why individual programmes are still not downloadable; and similarly, that's why Joost offers streaming but no downloads. Incidentally: I'd be delighted to have Joost host all BBC programmes for a 7-day period; and it would seem to be the best option, given that it's (moderately) cross-platform, and presumably possible to geolock too. No Linux yet, mind. -- http://james.cridland.net/
Re: [backstage] BBC site statistics
On 3/23/07, Allan Jardine [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'm wondering if anyone knows any of the site statistics for the BBC web-sites. In particular what the browser market share is, as I am wondering how much longer to support IE5 and 5.5 for certain sites - depending on their application and target market. I thing the BBC site user agent stats would be really interesting in this area, and possibly one of the least skewed se of statistics on the net for typical user agents. Not particularly helpful, but http://www.bbc.co.uk/guidelines/newmedia/technical/browser_support.shtml#support_tableis a useful guide to what the BBC supports and what it doesn't. From the sites I can pull stats from, these are the stats for the last seven days... www.mediauk.com Internet Explorer: 85% of all traffic of which: 6.0: 59.09%; 7.0: 39.9%; rest: 1.01% james.cridland.net Internet Explorer: 44% of all traffic of which: 6.0: 60.91%; 7.0: 38.42%; rest: 0.67% www.virginradio.co.uk Internet Explorer: 85% of all traffic of which: 6.0: 62.28%; 7.0: 37.14%; rest 0.58% Particularly based on the Media UK and Virgin Radio stats, my own thoughts would therefore be to drop any support for MSIE5 and MSIE5.5. Hope that's useful. -- http://james.cridland.net/
Re: [backstage] Thoughts on DRM podcast.
While I know we've done this to death, and that life may be moving on from a DRM discussion on here, could I just clarify the comments attributed to me? On 3/5/07, David Woodhouse [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I was particularly concerned to see that someone (I believe it was James) was allowed to get away with effectively claiming that existing piracy requires the use of VHS, and that the requirement to _physically_ muck around with copying tapes meant that it could be dealt with differently to online content. I think I was trying to say (I'm sometimes not very lucid) that home piracy in the 1980s didn't have a vast effect, mainly because of the physical effort required in buying video cassettes, copying cassettes onto other cassettes and walking about and giving the cassettes to people. Home piracy these days, where one person can sling a file on the interwebs and hundreds of thousands of people can then download said file, is clearly in a different league. James claimed, in his summary, that content owners need to have DRM. That seems to be directly in conflict with the established facts, given the past behaviour of the BBC in getting _rid_ of DRM on their satellite broadcasts. Satellite, DTT, DAB, or even FM all do actually have a form of 'Content Restriction and Protection' (CRaP) on them: they are geographically restricted. You might not see this as a version of DRM, but it is - try to pick up BBC 1 in Brazil on your TV, and you can't. (And you have to work very hard - by getting a larger than normal satellite dish, to 'break the DRM' in places like Cyprus and GIbraltar). The iPlayer will have crap on it, in part because of this: the content providers do not want their content to be visible where you shouldn't get it; so you should only get EastEnders in Brazil on the TV network that's bought the show (and thus contributed to the BBC's programming fund), not from the BBC iPlayer. Finally, you say that because crap's breakable, we shouldn't have crap at all - or, in other words, because I can steal this can of baked beans, you shouldn't be charging for it anyway. It's an ethically bankrupt argument. I'm conscious of the amount of noise about crap on this mailing list, so please do feel free to continue this debate within the comments at http://james.cridland.net/blog/2007/02/22/content-restriction-and-protection/... and I'm sure all of us would prefer that this discussion didn't continue to take over the Backstage mailing list. -- http://james.cridland.net/
Re: [backstage] Want a quick bit of beta-testing fun?
Many thanks to everyone for their help. As David Riddle spots, this came out of beta yesterday at around 11.30am, and is now the live player for all users. On 3/1/07, Richard P Edwards [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Are there any thoughts of making the new player in to a widget James? Widget goodness is coming very shortly! We've pre-release versions for most OS's, but this is 10% time work at present, so no timescale. We are just about to release a clever thing around all our archive material, but don't want to tell Tristan quite yet. ;) On the technical side, Christian O'Connell sounds a lot better this morning. did someone hit the bass button overnight? I have just heard Oasis Live Forever, and it is about 3 dB quieter than a equivalent mp3 copy in iTunes, but sounds about as good. The difference is huge overall, much much better than yesterday. Do you use those sliding multi-band FM compressors? I know that the BBC used to allow each producer to set-up their own for each show, so the same song would sound different depending on which show you heard it on. That led to quite a lot of confusion :-) I know we were doing some work yesterday on the processing, as a result of this mailing list. -- http://james.cridland.net/
[backstage] Something you might find interesting...
If you're a fan of the Radio 1 SMS text thing, then you'll be a fan of this... http://www.flickr.com/photos/jamescridland/407672266/ ...as someone's already commented, it's an electro-cardiograph for the station. (The way we're all feeling today, we could all do with an electro-cardigan for the station: heavy, heavy night last night.) Thought it might spark off some ideas for others, in the spirit of sharing. -- http://james.cridland.net/
Re: [backstage] BBC on YouTube
On 3/2/07, Andrew Bowden [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Might interest some people here. *http://www.youtube.com/BBC* http://www.youtube.com/BBC *http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=bbcworldwide*http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=bbcworldwide Particularly interesting is the announcement that Top Gear, for example, will carry ads on this system: within the UK, too. I think this is the first time that BBC programming has ever carried ads while being part of a BBC-branded 'channel' online. (Do you remember back in 1999, when Yahoo News did a deal to take BBC News content as long as it had no advertising around it? Hum, whatever happened to that?) -- http://james.cridland.net/
[backstage] Want a quick bit of beta-testing fun?
If you're a Virgin Radio VIP, go to *http://www.virginradio.co.uk/listen/*http://www.virginradio.co.uk/listen/and click the link marked participate in our beta (it's just under the Listen live now link if you're logged in). All feedback is very welcome: please use the link you'll find within the player, so issues all get logged. It goes live tomorrow! ;) If you're not a VIP and really don't want to register, please GTalk me ( james.cridland [EMAIL PROTECTED]) and I'll give you another way in. -- http://james.cridland.net/
[backstage] Bug report: backstage.bbc.co.uk
On http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/ there's a blog, and the main item of the blog is currently 'More Twitter Hacks and BBC Goodness'. Click the headline, to be rewarded by a 404 error. (Or, worse, click the 'see original' link in the RSS feed to be rewarded by a 404 error). And now I can't blog about that posting and how, on reflection, wrong it is. Bah. It's a conspiracy. -- http://james.cridland.net/
Re: [backstage] Ad Blocking (was: HD-DVD how DRM was defeated)
On 2/26/07, Andrew Bowden [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Probably even worse. Your hurting the website even more - lowering the CTR [1] by registering an impression, yet user has no opportunity to click. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_Through_Rate Depends if you ever click ads... Doesn't. Depends whether the ad is good enough for you to click on. Ads are crap so I won't click on them ever is a rubbish argument. You will click on ads if they are relevant. There is a value to the brand owner for you to see the ad even if you don't click on them. And how do you know whether the media owner has a CPM or CPC deal for this particular ad anyway? -- http://james.cridland.net/
Re: [backstage] Ad Blocking
On 2/27/07, vijay chopra [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Take a site like slashdot, I visit, I like the content, so I decide to white-list. However I find the ads over intrusive so I put it back on the black list Ah. Other people might get irritated with the ads and therefore not go back to Slashdot. Instead, you want to get the content, but not want to let them have any chance of earning revenue from it. It's akin to stealing chocolate from the store because you believe the prices are 'over-high'. It's unethical. It's indefensible. It's wrong. You know it - I know it - we all know it. Your only ethical option is to Not Visit. Full-stop. Stop stealing, and stop boasting that you're stealing. Interestingly, we did some experiments on Virgin Radio's website with flash overlayz (you know, those horrid things that get in the way of content). I said to the sales manager: We'll do those, fine. The first complaint we get, we'll remove them from the site. She agreed. I believed that we'd get the first complaint within the first hour of the first day. We're still waiting for that first complaint, nine months later. The moral of the story? Complain, people. Please. If you don't complain, I can't tell the sales manager to take her crappy overlayz and shove them where the sun doesn't shine because our visitors don't want them. However, I should rush to point out - we no longer carry overlayz, because we believe nobody likes them. If only someone had complained, we'd have acted earlier. (Please give feedback about anything you see on that site to www.virginradio.co.uk/contact_us/?to=techies and I or one of my team will reply). -- http://james.cridland.net/
Re: [backstage] A couple of things including Arrington
On 2/27/07, Dave Crossland [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The fact you deliberately linked to a torrent site - thus removing the chance of the oscar winners to earn money from their films Well done, Dave. Don't you owe me a drink? ;) -- http://james.cridland.net/
Re: [backstage] Ad Blocking (was: HD-DVD how DRM was defeated)
On 2/26/07, Jason Cartwright [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Out of interest, how do you stand on hiding ads... (That being an option of Adblock) Probably even worse. Your hurting the website even more - lowering the CTR [1] by registering an impression, yet user has no opportunity to click. For Google AdSense, the website owner (normally) only earns from PPC http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pay_per_clickhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pay_per_click - so hiding the ads is just as bad as blocking them entirely. As a point of interest, larger website owners *do* pay for the serving of the ads (as well, in most cases, as the advertiser). Incidentally, I have written stuff (for one of my websites) which blocks website content if the ads don't load. It's quite easy to do, depending on how your ads are being served. If ad-blockers grow, you'll see a ton of these scripts proliferating on the web. (Given the stats from one of the websites I'm responsible for, I estimate that 5% of pages are served to people with adblockers; which I see as fairly acceptable - 20% might not be, though). J
Re: [backstage] A couple of things including Arrington
On 2/23/07, Sebastian Potter [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [Michael said] you're not a for-profit entity and you're screwing it up for everyone else. He then referenced the recently-announced CBBCWorld: you just launched some stupid kids social network, well you didn't actually launch anything, you just announced it with some screenshots. Apparently CBBCWorld has already disrupted 4-5 startups who will not now receive VC funding. Except CBBCWorld isn't a social network. It's a single-player 3D game. Oops. Well, ignoring the detail and getting on to the charge he makes: ITN and The Guardian would certainly claim that the BBC disrupts the online news marketplace. The BBC's childrens stuff clearly disrupts the childens' market. Similarly, it's certainly true that there are many things the BBC appears to do that harms commercial radio, since it doesn't have to follow the same rules, nor the same funding structure. I'd love to know how much money my employer was getting in next year: the BBC knows until 2012, which is an enviable position to be in. There is some truth in what Arrington says. But this probably isn't the place to have that discussion. However, I do object to people opining without knowledge. On Cranky Geeks this week, one of the studio guests said how splendid oscartorrents.com was, because by running this, the Oscars have finally shown what the power of the internet can do. Sheesh. Hello?! -- http://james.cridland.net/
Re: [backstage] Radio 1 on Twitter
On 2/20/07, Tristan Ferne [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Another hack/prototype: Partly inspired by Martin's (http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/prototypes/archives/2007/02/tv_twitter.html) and Mario's (http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/prototypes/archives/2007/01/bbc_news_just_s. html) experiments we've put Radio 1 up on Twitter - including updates on what track is now playing and what people are texting in about. http://twitter.com/bbcradio1 What amused me is that I mentioned this at the Backstage bash (I can do now-playing on Virgin really easily with this!) - and everyone rolled their eyes and thought I was desperately sad. I now know that everyone was thinking shit, give me three months and we might be able to code something up for Radio 1. Gauntlet? Thrown. -- http://james.cridland.net/
Re: [backstage] Radio 1 on Twitter
On 2/22/07, Tristan Ferne [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: You shouldn't take any notice of people who think you're ideas are desperately sad. I'd never take any notice of anyone then, and where would be the fun in that? Or mention good ideas at a BBC backstage bash! Though, honestly, I wasn't there. ...and more like 3 hours. I've not started yet; and not too convinced I want to clutter up Twitter with 'now-playing' stuff, the more I think about it... maybe *you're* the one who's desperately sad! (grin) j
Re: [backstage] HD-DVD how DRM was defeated
Dave, The fact you deliberately linked to the print version of Vanity Fair - thus removing the chance of the publishers to earn money from your visit from advertising, and/or effectively market the other content on their website, is very telling. I am deeply sorry that you don't want people to earn money from creative work; and disappointed that you object to the idea that content-creators need to control the distribution of their content. You've made your point very clearly on this list a number of times. It's now turning from charmingly naive discussion to something rather more irritating. Perhaps, for the sake of all our sanity, I could leave it with this real-world observation, that I hope even you agree with. - Some content-creators will want to have 'Content Restriction And Protection' on their content. - Some content-creators will choose not to have 'crap' in their content. - It's the content-creators choice to have crap in their content or not. - Some consumers won't want content with crap in it. - But some consumers won't care whether the content has crap in it or not. - Ultimately, the consumer will choose whether they want crap or no crap. - Content-creators may gain more benefit from controlling the use of their crappy content. - But content-creators may gain more benefit from leaving the crap out of their content. - The gamble for the content-creator is whether to put the crap in or leave the crap out. - Content-creators need to make the right individual choice. - Consumers need to make the right individual choice. - We both need to understand and respect each other's right to choose. -- http://james.cridland.net/
Re: [backstage] Music, (meta)data, musicbrainz and the BBC
This might be interesting and/or relevant to this discussion... -Original Message- From: Daniel Harris [*mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: 17 February 2007 19:11 To: IWA-Europe/UK-Webcasting Cc: Philip Haggar; James Cridland; Alex Wolfe Subject: Re: [iwa-europe] Content description, search and discovery: cross-media metadata standards... Hi James, As the IWA are officially backing the Summit (see their recent newsletter)... Those BBC Backstage guys should definitely come along to the Cross-Media Metadata Summit. Please could you let your network know too. It's sure to be a very interesting event... CROSS-MEDIA SUMMIT for CONTENT DISCOVERY The Strategy, Technology and Business Case for Content Description, Visibility, Search and Discovery Friday 9th March 2007, Frontline Club, London, UK Gathering creators, rights holders and technology experts Moderated by Bob Auger, Technology Correspondent, Cue Entertainment Sponsored by Kendra Initiative and Makeni This Summit will bring together business strategy and technical know-how from all media industry sectors to work through the issues, innovate and answer the question: THE UNIVERSAL CATALOGUE - IS THERE THE WILL TO BUILD IT? How do content owners increase the visibility and discovery of their content? Do we need more metadata standards for cross-media description? What's wrong with ones we already have? Does more effort need to be made to implement those that already exist? Should standards groups build more end-user tools? What are the drivers for industry adoption? Can we make the tools simpler and easier to use? What are the requirements of end-users in the media industry? Tools enabling metadata aggregation, searching and publishing could be vastly improved. The lack of support and interoperability is having a profound impact on the ability of all media industry sectors to monetise their products. Bringing together key cross-industry strategists and technologists from standards, search, image, music and film companies shaping the digital media marketplace. Aiming to share experiences, discover synergy and innovate. Identifying areas for further investigation to drive adoption of metadata syndication ecosystems that enable content owners to increase visibility of their content. The day will feature short, sharp business strategy and technology briefings from many experts. Participants will benefit from the experiences of their counterparts in other arts and media sectors. Participants include CEO of ISAN, Head of RD at MCPS-PRS Alliance, Principal Engineer for Pioneer Digital Design and Microsoft's DDEX board member. See: *http://www.kendra.org.uk* http://www.kendra.org.uk/ Kendra Initiative is a media and technology, academic and industry alliance of over 500 participants in 40 plus countries. The mission is to foster an open distributed marketplace for digital media (including films, music, images, games and text). The initiative researches, recommends and develops enhancements to the digital media marketplace that will facilitate interoperability and revenue generation for content owners and service providers. The cross-industry group is currently investigating content description, delivery, visibility, search and discovery.
Re: [backstage] platform-agnostic approach to the iPlayer
On 2/15/07, Dave Crossland [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: What's the point, then? Well, the point of the BBC is that, by informing, educating and entertaining everyone in the UK, the population of the UK gains both individually and collectively to an extent greater than the BBC's negative market impact This is a nice argument against BBC DRM, I think :-D Let's not be un-necessarily emotive. There is no such thing as BBC DRM, and it harms your argument to claim there is. Watch this Lawrence Lessig speech - http://lessig.notlong.com (hosted on Google Video). The coverage is pretty awful, but it's well worth watching. (Notably, you can download this video and watch it on a laptop, or an iPod video). The most interesting part of this discussion is the QA at the end - the last five minutes - where a speaker from the floor recommends massive civil disobedience to break DRM forever. Lessig disagrees. He says (and I paraphrase because I can't type that fast) - I would not doubt the technical ability of hackers to break any DRM that there is out there. However, I would doubt their political ability to understand what happens when they do. I think we lose the opportunity to convince the hearts and minds of the rest of the world. We will lose again and again in the political context if it seems all we're trying to do is to 'get something for free'. We guarantee we will lose every single time. Think about what you're saying - and about whether talking about BBC DRM is going to help you win this battle... or lose it. -- http://james.cridland.net/
Re: [backstage] First BBC Backstage Podcast: DRM and the BBC
On 2/14/07, Dave Crossland [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 14/02/07, David McBride [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Indeed, this seems particularly pointless when I can simply point my desk antenna at the Crystal Palace transmitter and record the 20Mbaud H.2641080p stream being broadcast in clear. This is the kind of thing I think the BBC should be telling rights holders :-) They are only too aware of this: which is why they want to start slapping DRM all over free-to-air broadcasts: http://www.informationweek.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=196901261 Pointing out to rights-holders that we're giving your content away anyway is probably going to be replied-to with well, stop it. -- http://james.cridland.net/
Re: [backstage] First BBC Backstage Podcast: DRM and the BBC
On 2/13/07, Dave Crossland [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I also note that its been published in the free software, open standard, cross platform ogg vorbis format as well as MP3, and hope this demonstrates that such formats do indeed exist - As I said in the show, I think that everything the BBC is publishing as MP3 can also be made available as OGG :-) Yes, it can be. However, nobody's interested. My employer has been making an Ogg Vorbis stream available for years (indeed, if you visit www.virginradio.co.uk/listen from any Linux box, it's the default choice). Currently, less than 0.01% of our online listeners use it. It's possible for all our podcasts to be produced in Ogg Vorbis automatically, too. Indeed, all our on-demand audio is already encoded into Ogg Vorbis, for when it becomes a popular codec (and we're still waiting). Ultimately, no organisation can spend time servicing 0.01% of people without losing focus for the 99.99% of people. -- http://james.cridland.net/
Re: [backstage] RE: [backstage] RE: [backstage] RE: [backstage] RE: [backstage] RE: [backstage] RE: [backstage] RE: [backstage] £1.2 billion question (or RE: [backstage] BBC Bias??? Click and Torrent
On 2/13/07, Jason Cartwright [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This is all my personal opinion. Yes we (me, and it seems most of the list) know DRM is evil. However - in this case DRM is enabling people to view the content and making it MORE accessible. Perhaps the industry will change and we'll see everything released more freely. Until such time we're stuck with it. Hear hear. I would rather have at least some access, DRM-crippled or not, to the iPlayer than nothing at all. However, there are those on this list who would rather that the BBC made its content less accessible by not eschewing all that DRM brings. They're entitled to their point of view - but I'd rather that they didn't make the decision for the rest of the public. -- http://james.cridland.net/
Re: [backstage] DRM and hwardware attitudes
On 2/9/07, vijay chopra [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Where did you get the idea that DRM is a benefit to the computer's owner? If content-owners* require DRM to be able to release content for use on your computer (currently the case in the BBC iPlayer, and/or Channel 4's on-demand plater, and/or XFM's MiXFM personalised radio service), then the additional content you are able to access is a benefit you would not get were your computer unable to deal with DRM. You are, of course, free not to use such services; and if enough people don't and tell the industry why, then the industry will be forced to listen. * content owners in this case is not the BBC, but musicians, actors, scriptwriters, production companies, and others who have a vested interest in Content Restriction And Protection. -- http://james.cridland.net/
