[backstage] Re: BBC breaking news XML feed broken?
Copying the main backstage list... This just happened again, and what seems to happen is... - ID 33755 (swine flu) seems to be the current item in the alert data XML - every now and then, this switches to ID 33637 (Obama rescue package), only to change back to 33755 a few minutes later So seems something strange going on with this alert data. Have you stopped supporting this? If so, is there an alternative? The bbcbreaking twitter bot is the most popular of my BBC twitter bots (nearly 100,000 followers), so would be a shame to abandon it. Mario. On Thu, May 14, 2009 at 7:46 PM, Mario Menti mme...@gmail.com wrote: Hi there, I'm using the breaking news XML at http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/bsp/hi/services/desktop_alerts/xml/ukfs/alert_data.xmlfor the http://twitter.com/bbcbreaking twitter bot. Over the last few days some odd things appear to have happened - it either changed the breaking news item back and forth a few times, and/or changed the ID of the news items. The way the bot works is that it posts an item as soon as the ID in the XML feed is different from what it was previously. Should I change this logic? It's been working perfectly for at least 2 years, the issues only seem to have appeared over the last few days. Cheers, Mario.
[backstage-developer] BBC breaking news XML feed broken?
Hi there, I'm using the breaking news XML at http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/bsp/hi/services/desktop_alerts/xml/ukfs/alert_data.xmlfor the http://twitter.com/bbcbreaking twitter bot. Over the last few days some odd things appear to have happened - it either changed the breaking news item back and forth a few times, and/or changed the ID of the news items. The way the bot works is that it posts an item as soon as the ID in the XML feed is different from what it was previously. Should I change this logic? It's been working perfectly for at least 2 years, the issues only seem to have appeared over the last few days. Cheers, Mario.
Re: [backstage] Lol
See also this... http://lolinator.com/lol/news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/uk/default.stm On Jan 24, 2008 10:45 AM, Brian Butterworth [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: David, That's the best mashup since the last 2Many DJs set I heard. On 23/01/2008, David Greaves [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Probably posted before - http://lol.ianloic.com/bbc - 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] Re: Sshhh... I've added a bit to my Backstage project...
Hi Rich, nice one.. just a couple of points I found when playing around with it: - adding a programme to Google Calendar doesn't seem to work in FF (on Win and OSX), I just get the autorization required alert, but the rest of the page is blank. IE7 shows the login to google calendar button, and work ok. - if selecting a series, the RSS feed contains all programmes of that series. It would be nice if I could add the entire series to google calendar as well, rather than having to add the individual programmes (as I think I have to do at the moment) Cheers, Mario. On 9/25/07, Richard Lockwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Sorry, sorry... me again... That's www.tvplanner.co.uk - the www is important. Cheers, Rich. On 9/25/07, Richard Lockwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I know we don't talk about mashups (VILE word), or development or anything here anymore (when's the development list coming???), but I thought I'd quietly mention the first draft of a new feature on TVPlanner.co.uk - you can now add programmes to your Google calendar (if you use it). You don't need to register with the site to use this. That's it really, nothing very exciting. Nothing to see here, move along... Now, who's next to slag off / fellate an iPhone / iPlayer? 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/
Re: [backstage] Amazon EC2
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. I've been running an instance for a couple of months, mainly running IronPython via Mono, and haven't had any issues..
Re: [backstage] BBC TV and Radio 7-day listing
On 7/5/07, Flynn, Terry [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Sorry if I missed any announcement - will Backstage be continuing the TV and Radio schedules in TVAnyTime XML format? Last update was June 21... As screen scraping the web site is illegal, this is the only option available to many of us to get BBC schedules for whatever purpose... Terry I don't know about the plans for the TV-Anytime files, but the best way to get BBC schedule information is probably through the BBC Web API: http://www0.rdthdo.bbc.co.uk/services/api/index.html The API can give you query results in both TV-Anytime or a slightly simpler XML format. HTH, Mario.
Re: [backstage] Davy M - Mood News?
On 6/13/07, Kim Plowright [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: http://www.latedecember.com/sites/moodnews/ Davy - was trying to show someone mood news - has it gone? Kim - try .co.uk ..
Re: [backstage] openID on the BBC
I think the original point of this thread has been lost a bit, which was about the fact that there aren't enough sites using OpenID as a consumer ( i.e. offering log in using your OpenID), rather than ways to run your own OpenID server (of which there are countless). I think I like the idea of the BBC offering an OpenID login option, rather than the BBC turning into yet another OpenID provider. In response to James - I don't use PHP, but have been using OpenID (purely as a consumer) on the rails-powered twitterfeed.com. It actually saved me some hassles, since I don't have to worry about anyone's usernames and passwords. For php, this may be worth a look: http://www.openidenabled.com/openid/libraries/php Cheers, Mario. On 6/10/07, Christopher Woods [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I use a very simplified version of an OpenID server for my OpenID requirements - just one flat-file PHP script in which you define your variables such as password, username etc. That script's running on christopher.woods.name and you can download it from http://siege.org/projects/phpMyID - the simplest way is to have a domain and run it in the root (because of course OpenID uses whatever address the script is located at, so if you ran it on james.cridland.net/openid that's what would show up). OpenID also seemingly doesn't like mod_rewritten domain names, and will always use the original url (I tried to run it on my kerblam.co.uk domain but it always showed blog.infinitus.co.uk, which could be a limitation of the PHP-only implementation or the way the version I'm using is scripted, but I had that .name domain which I purchased for no reason but subsequently found its use :) There's also more comprehensive OpenID solutions which use SQL databases, support multiple users etc... More info http://openid.net/wiki/index.php/Run_your_own_identity_server and http://gentoo-wiki.com/Host_your_own_OpenID_server are two good places to start. -- *From:* James Cridland [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] *Sent:* 10 June 2007 11:58 *To:* backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk *Subject:* 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/ http://pobox.com/%7Egordo/ [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] A decent editorially-ordered BBC News feed?
Just in case it's of interest, bitty browser (http://www.bitty.com) is handy for embedding cut-down web sites in personal homepages like iGoogle. E.g. you could make it open the mobile version of the BBC news ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/nolpda/ukfs_news/hi/default.stm), and have a nice BBC news gadget you can embed in most homepages, without the need to create a gadget yourself. Mario.
Re: [backstage] A decent editorially-ordered BBC News feed?
It seems that iGoogle sorts the feed by pubDate, so the editorial order in the original feed is lost. Incidentally, for me http://newsrss.bbc.co.uk/rss/newsonline_uk_edition/front_page/rss.xml and http://news.bbc.co.uk/nolpda/ukfs_news/hi/default.stm show exactly the same order, it's only when added to iGoogle that the order is different (by pubDate). Mario. On 5/21/07, James Cridland [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 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/
[backstage] Cridland heads to Beeb
http://tbites.com/2007/05/cridland-heads-to-beeb Congrats James!
Re: [backstage] Radio 1 on Twitter
On 3/29/07, Brian Butterworth [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I've looked at Twitter and I can see the usefulness, but I can't find a Google/Vista gadget for it... Have I missed it, or do I need to get coding? I think you'll find what you want here: http://twitter.pbwiki.com Lists both a Vista sidebar and a Google gadget.. Mario.
Re: [backstage] Radio 1 on Twitter
On 3/28/07, Andy Roberts [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 21/02/07, Tristan Ferne [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Glad you like it the idea. What Radio 4 updates would you find interesting? I hope you don't mind a little self-promotion, but I recently set up http://twitterfeed.com - a service that lets you take any RSS feed and post its updates to twitter. So if anyone here wants specific BBC twitter updates, as long as there's a feed for it, you should be able to create a twitter bot for it all on your own :-) A little experimental still, but working so far.. Mario.
Re: [backstage] Radio 1 on Twitter
On 3/28/07, Kirk Northrop [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Mario Menti wrote: I hope you don't mind a little self-promotion, but I recently set up http://twitterfeed.com - a service that lets you take any RSS feed and post its updates to twitter. So if anyone here wants specific BBC twitter updates, as long as there's a feed for it, you should be able to create a twitter bot for it all on your own :-) So I can now have any feed text messaged to me for free :) Yes, that's the idea (well, one of many...) Mario.
Re: [backstage] Percentage of License fee going towards DRM?
On 2/28/07, Dave Crossland [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The claim is partly misleading because the word loss suggests events of a very different nature--events in which something they have is taken away from them. For example, if the store's stock of DVDs were burned, or if the money in the till got torn up, that would really be a loss. I'm sorry, but this sentence is patent bollocks. To define loss in these narrow terms is utter nonsense. In just about every definition, loss can mean being deprived of something, regardless of whether you physically possessed that thing in the first place. By all means keep arguing about the pros and cons of DRM, but spare us stupidities like this please. Cheers, Mario.
Re: [backstage] bbc offline?
On 2/8/07, Tom Loosemore [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: excess traffic = a very nice problem to have, obviously! Well, at least _some_ traffic flowing today :-)
Re: [backstage] Get BBC news on Twitter
On 1/8/07, Ian Forrester [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Mario you are a god of IM hacking! Very cool! Ian Forrester || backstage.bbc.co.uk || x83965 For those who think the BBC frontpage feed is a little chatty (to put it mildly) for twitter, I just added a number of individual twitter bots for some of the more specific BBC news feeds: http://menti.net/?p=89 Cheers, Mario.
Re: [backstage] Get BBC news on Twitter
On 1/10/07, Mario Menti [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote For those who think the BBC frontpage feed is a little chatty (to put it mildly) for twitter, I just added a number of individual twitter bots for some of the more specific BBC news feeds: http://menti.net/?p=89 Cheers, Mario. Just noticed that the bbc backstage twitter bots have been mentioned on the twitter blog: http://twitter.com/blog/2007/01/british-are-coming.html Mario.
[backstage] Get BBC news on Twitter
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! Cheers, Mario.
Re: [backstage] Second Life Event - London 13th Dec
On 12/1/06, Ian Forrester [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I have a confirmed place, but can't make it. Mario would you like my space? Sure I can email them and ask them to switch in someone else. Thanks Ian, but I've got a confirmed place as well (the confirmation message is how I know it was full up now). S
Re: [backstage] Second Life Event - London 13th Dec
On 12/1/06, Ian Forrester [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I have a confirmed place, but can't make it. Mario would you like my space? Sure I can email them and ask them to switch in someone else. Thanks Ian, but I've got a confirmed place as well (the confirmation message is how I know it was full up now). S Oops gmail keyboard shortcuts somehow got the better of me.. sent the message before finished typing.. Just wanted to add that there may be other people on the list interested/going, if so, let's try and hook up afterwards maybe? Mario.
Re: [backstage] Second Life Event - London 13th Dec
Fyi, this event is now full (but i think you may still be able to get on the waiting list). m. On 11/30/06, Mr I Forrester [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: A friend sent me this... Second life are running a workshop in London on the 13th of December This three hour workshop will help you understand the potential and value of Second Life as an interactive media platform, where you can construct buildings, create clothing, host events, stream media, and create highly interactive and compelling environments. This workshop will help you identify and position the value of Second Life to your clients -- before they come to you asking about Second Life. http://secondlife.com/landing/sldevu/ - 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] Psiphon
I agree with Tom, too much can be read into data like this. Just to add some more data to the mix, and for a different slant: Consumers cool on video downloads: http://www.mrweb.com/drno/frmemail/article6175.htm (what have I started here... this has moved into a direction I wasn't thinking of when first posting about Psiphon :-)) On 11/28/06, Tom Loosemore [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 28/11/06, Kim Plowright [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I see your 'written by a Torrent site' and raise you a 'written by a broadcaster' http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6168950.stm Some 43% of Britons who watch video from the internet or on a mobile device at least once a week said they watched less normal TV as a result. Sigh. devil in the detail... same article But online video viewers are still in the minority, with just 9% of the population saying they do it regularly. Another 13% said they watched occasionally, while a further 10% said they expected to start in the coming year. and it's claimed data, which is notoriously unreliable when you ask people if they do something they perceive as being aspirational (which is why you get those surveys saying a third of the UK has a blog...)
[backstage] Psiphon
Just stumbled upon this, and thought it may be of interest to some folks on the list: http://psiphon.civisec.org According to the front page, psiphon is a human rights software project developed by the Citizen Lab http://www.citizenlab.org/ at the Munk Centre for International Studies that allows citizens in uncensored countries to provide unfettered access to the Net through their home computers to friends and family members who live behind firewalls of states that censor. Mario.
[backstage] Web API issue with BBC Parliament
Looks like we have the same issue I reported for Radio 4 a few weeks ago, this time with BBC Parliament: http://www0.rdthdo.bbc.co.uk/cgi-perl/api/query.pl?method=bbc.schedule.getProgrammesformat=simpledetail=schedulechannel_id=BBCParl ... has been returning Error: Code 152 No matches found for the last couple of days at least. Cheers, Mario.
Re: Take Scag: [backstage] Witty slogan and design for Backstage T-shirts
On 10/31/06, Ian Forrester [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I like this idea a lot!I can imagine we could run the mail archives through a tag cloud maker and generate pretty much everything we need. How cool would it be if peoples names came up? :) If you want to see what the current tag cloud may look like (based on the subject lines in the unofficial mail archive), see here: http://menti.net/?p=40Cheers,Mario.
Re: Take Scag: [backstage] Witty slogan and design for Backstage T-shirts
On 11/1/06, Paul Makepeace [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Here's an implementation of the subject line tag cloud which otherpeople are welcome to copy, mash-up, hack, use on their own mailinglists, etc.
http://paulm.com/inchoate/2006/11/backstage_get_with_the_program.htmlWhat do you do when you want to open source, but there is no code? You create your own scripting language! So, in the open source spirit, here's how I created my tag cloud:
[code]maintab = webbrowser.opentab(http://www.tagcrowd.com);newtab = webbrowser.opentab(
http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/);subjects = newtab.copy(subjectlines);maintab.paste(editext[0], subjects);maintab.blacklist({re,mr,hi,hello});
result = maintab.button[Visualize!].press();tagcloud = result.copy(edittext[0]);myblog = webbrowser.opentab(http://menti.net);mynewpost = myblog.createnewpost
(bbc backstage tag cloud t-shirt, tagcloud);mynewpost.save();mynewpost.mailto(backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk);[/code]Cheers,Mario.
Re: [backstage] BBC weather IM bots
On 10/26/06, Jason Cartwright [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Superb. It seems to be having some difficulties with the degree symbol though (rendering it as a zero?)... The forecast for London, United Kingdom on Thursday: sunny intervals. Max Temp: 190C (660F), Min Temp: 80C (460F) I think the aircon must be onin this office :-) JHi Jason - what protocol and client are you using? I just made a change to the MSN bot to explicitly encode as UTF-8. Jabber looks ok to me, at least with the clients I've tested. There does seem to be a slight problem with AIM, even after explicitly encoding as UTF-8, it prints an odd character befrore the degree symbol.. Mario.
Re: [backstage] BBC weather IM bots
Laurence,they are IM bots, so depending on the IM provider(s) you're using, you can add one of the below contacts to your buddy list, and then say hello (or whatever) to it. It will then ask you for the city you're interested in, and give you the weather forecast for that location. HTH,Mario.On 10/26/06, Laurence Samuels [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi MarioI didnt get your point here. What do I need to do to run these demos? I'll like to have a run of them. LaurenceOn 25/10/06, Mario Menti [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Using Mike's location OPML (see http://mike260.dyndns.org/~mikef/countries.opml) and the BBC weather feeds, the following experimental IM bots should now be running: MSN: [EMAIL PROTECTED]AIM: bbcweatherJabber/GTalk: [EMAIL PROTECTED]They're very simple - add them as a new contact and say hello, and take it from there... Cheers,Mario.
Re: [backstage] BBC weather IM bots
On 10/26/06, Robert Kerry [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: BBC weather feeds, the following experimental IM bots should now be running:That's very cool Mario, what language/app do you use to interface with the IMs?It's done in Perl, using an open-source framework ( http://www.duncanlamb.com/sdba/) and the various CPAN modules that provide connectivity to the individual IM protocols.Mario.
Re: [backstage] BBC news ticker in Second Life
On 10/6/06, Tom Loosemore [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: there's a few news video podcasts in mp4 here (they play on QT7)http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/4977678.stmnone really suited to news SL though (we'd need a News 24 or BBC World QT unicast stream), though the thought of David Dimbleby hisQuestion Time guests warbling on within SL does have a warped appealYeah, I tried the newsnight one myself, and (once it had done downloading) was watching Kirstie Wark on a big screen in SL earlier today :-) Mario.
Re: [backstage] Hi... what news do you want today?
On 10/4/06, Mr I Forrester [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Unlike Matthew, I have a great relationship with my host and I'm being upgraded from aserver in Panama to Canada. Going up in the world! :-) You'll miss the climate though..
[backstage] Re: BBC news ticker in Second Life
On 10/3/06, Mario Menti [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: In case there's any Second Lifers on this list, I thought I'd mention a little experiment I did last night - created a very simple BBC news ticker that cycles through the latest/newest 10 news items and displays the headlines. For details and teleport/location see http://menti.net/?p=13It really is incredibly basic, but more features could of course be added (initially thinking of hooks to launch web browser, and the facility to select which flavour of the BBC news feed the screen should display. For those interested, I've added the above-mentioned hook to the web browser, so if you touch the news ticker in-world, it will open the BBC news page corresponding to the headline (the one displayed at the time you touch the ticker). Mario.
[backstage] BBC news ticker in Second Life
In case there's any Second Lifers on this list, I thought I'd mention a little experiment I did last night - created a very simple BBC news ticker that cycles through the latest/newest 10 news items and displays the headlines. For details and teleport/location see http://menti.net/?p=13It really is incredibly basic, but more features could of course be added (initially thinking of hooks to launch web browser, and the facility to select which flavour of the BBC news feed the screen should display. Cheers,Mario.
Re: [backstage] BBC news ticker in Second Life
On 10/3/06, Tom Loosemore [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: cool - got a screengrab handy?Hi Tom - there's one linked from the post I mentioned, but here's a direct link: http://menti.net/bbcnewsticker.jpg What you can't see of course is the (currently a bit ugly) switching of the headlines every 10 seconds...
Re: [backstage] BBC news ticker in Second Life
On 10/3/06, Ian Forrester [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Nice stuff Mario, I will check it out next time I'm in second life. Can you add some detail how you did it? I've only looked at the scripting language insecond life briefly. Just a thought, if you used the AV News RSS feeds, you could link to the stream which would actually stream into Second life? Or maybe not?Hi Ian,as I said, it's very basic... as there is still no way to display HTML as textures on a prim (a Second Life object), I use my own server (outside Second Life) to get the newest 10 headlines and create a .jpg for each headline. The object in Second Life uses the LSL (Linden scripting language) to make the http requests, and replace its texture with the updated media resource. Simple eh?Re. the AV stream, for streaming in Second Life it would have to be a format supported by Quicktime, which (unless I'm mistaken) the BBC feeds aren't?Mario.
Re: [backstage] BBC news ticker in Second Life
On 10/3/06, Tom Loosemore [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 03/10/06, Mario Menti [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Re. the AV stream, for streaming in Second Life it would have to be a format supported by Quicktime, which (unless I'm mistaken) the BBC feeds aren't? Only on the multicast trial (recent versions of QT support H264)http://support.bbc.co.uk/multicast/streams.htmlHow does live video streaming work in Second life? Do you need to go via a proxy?I guess the multicast is out of reach of mere mortals... :-)Streaming in SL streams directly to the Second Life client, no proxy involved. H264 would probably work, since SL pretty much uses the Quicktime Media Player. I'll volunteer to try it if I get access to the multicast.. Cheers,Mario.
Re: [backstage] World Service Schedules
On 9/29/06, Ian Forrester [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Ah thanks Mario, So I'm wondering which you prefer?Hi Ian,hard to say... I started with the live.com gadget, then ported that to the other platforms. If I started elsewhere I may have addressed things differently, but as it stood, it was all really quite straightforward. One thing I found useful was the Google NXSL API (their Xpath implementation) - once I used it in the google module, to keep the code as similar as possible I included it in all the other modules as well. Mario.
Re: [backstage] World Service Schedules
On 9/28/06, Mr I Forrester [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Has anyone had experience of any of the other widget engines out there?Google, Netvibes, Opera, Vista?I'm wondering which path they went down. XML or HTML?I've done widgets for Google, live.com, pageflakes.com and mac dashboard.They all provide their own API to make http calls through their proxy, with xml/html as markup, and _javascript_ client script. Google and live.com are based on XML (although in the case of live.com, it's only the gadget manifest that's xml, all the rest is implemented in _javascript_), while pageflakes.com and mac use HTML.Netvibes didn't have the facility for developers to create their own widgets at the time I developed the above, but this has changed since then, so if I get some time I may take a look at their API and port my existing gadgets. Mario.
Re: [backstage] World Service Schedules
On 9/24/06, Matthew Somerville [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Keith wrote: The problem 've run into is that WS schedules don't seem to provide a feed of any sort. Does anyone have any ideas of how I could get around this?The BBC Web API - http://www0.rdthdo.bbc.co.uk/services/api/ - should provevery useful to you, the links you want are probably something like: http://www0.rdthdo.bbc.co.uk/cgi-perl/api/query.pl?method=bbc.channel.getLocationschannel_id=BBCWrldformat=simple http://www0.rdthdo.bbc.co.uk/cgi-perl/api/query.pl?method=bbc.channel.getInfochannel_id=BBCWrldformat=simple http://www0.rdthdo.bbc.co.uk/cgi-perl/api/query.pl?method=bbc.schedule.getProgrammeschannel_id=BBCWrldlimit=2detail=schedule(the last giving you the schedule, I'm not sure how far in advance) Hope that's helpful. :)--ATB,| http://www.dracos.co.uk/ | http://www.bbc.co.uk/homearchive/Matthew | http://www.traintimes.org.uk/map/Hi Keith,you may also be interested in my what's on now/next modules at http://bbcmodules.co.uk. They're based on the Web API mentioned by Matthew. The modules don't show anything beyond now/next though, so won't show you what's on later today.. BTW, Matthew's example of the API schedule call above, without the limit parameter, will show you the schedule for the current day (i.e. up to midnight today GMT): http://www0.rdthdo.bbc.co.uk/cgi-perl/api/query.pl?method=bbc.schedule.getProgrammeschannel_id=BBCWrlddetail=scheduleCheers,Mario.
[backstage] Re: *new* Backstage supremo
Well done ian and best of luck! Mario (keeping it brief - currently on the lovely ile de re, and typing on mobile tedious..) On 8/24/06, Jeremy Stone [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Dear all Obviously its already been blogged but I'd just like to let the list know that Backstage finally has a new Senior Producer. We're ummed and aahed for what seemed like forever but I'm now delighted that veteran of the list, Mr Geek Dinner and UK Barcamp co-organiser: Ian Forrester has taken up our offer to run the project. http://www.cubicgarden.com/blojsom/blog/cubicgarden/ He's not due to start for a few weeks but as he blogged this morning is really looking forward to knocking it into shape: I already have plans in my head for increasing the profile of backstage and of course providing more public feeds and apis. There's also lots of areas where backstage could go which hasn't been visited yet. So don't worry folks I'm on the case with fresh thoughts and enthusiasm like you've never seen before. http://www.cubicgarden.com/blojsom/blog/cubicgarden/socialsoftware/offli ne/2006/08/23/Senior-Producer-at-backstage-bbc-co-uk.html There's a lot more the BBC could and should be doing with Backstage and I hope you'd join me in wishing Ian good luck in joining the team. He's exactly the right fella for the role. Thanks for your patience whilst we've been sorting this out. Btw: If you're going you'll be able to say hi to Ian and Backstage (well some BBC staffers and t shirts) at British Barcamp - http://barcamp.org/BarCampLondon And D Construct - http://2006.dconstruct.org/ Thanks Jem - 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] Feeds APIs page down again - fixed
On 8/4/06, Andrew McParland [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Fixed.AndrewSince we're talking about that page, I think a link to http://www0.rdthdo.bbc.co.uk/services/api/ would be in order? Cheers,Mario.
Re: [backstage] Screen Scraping Advice ...
Not .Net, and haven't used it in a while, but I used Perl's WWW-Mechanize (http://search.cpan.org/dist/WWW-Mechanize/) sucessfully in the past, going across multiple pages, form submits etc.. Just in case it helps..Mario.On 7/24/06, Murray, Simon (IED) [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi All Please forgive this off-topic post, but I am working a project which requires screen-scraping a variety of data from several third party websites and, after countless hours on google, am looking to be pointed in the right direction ... and I can't think of a more informed group of individuals to ask for assistance (creep, creep). Some time ago I wrote a simple screen scrape script in classic ASP using the Internet Transfer Protocol (InetCtls.Inet) which had it's limitations. I'm interested in using .Net and the HttpWebRequest class, but would welcome any guidance on the subjectparticularly when accessing data spanning across multiple pages. Thanks in advance Simon This is not an offer (or solicitation of an offer) to buy/sell the securities/instruments mentioned or an official confirmation. Morgan Stanley may deal as principal in or own or act as market maker for securities/instruments mentioned or may advise the issuers. This is not research and is not from MS Research but it may refer to a research analyst/research report. Unless indicated, these views are the author's and may differ from those of Morgan Stanley research or others in the Firm. We do not represent this is accurate or complete and we may not update this. Past performance is not indicative of future returns. For additional information, research reports and important disclosures, contact me or see https://secure.ms.com/servlet/cls . You should not use e-mail to request, authorize or effect the purchase or sale of any security or instrument, to send transfer instructions, or to effect any other transactions. We cannot guarantee that any such requests received via e-mail will be processed in a timely manner. This communication is solely for the addressee(s) and may contain confidential information. We do not waive confidentiality by mistransmission. Contact me if you do not wish to receive these communications. In the UK, this communication is directed in the UK to those persons who are market counterparties or intermediate customers (as defined in the UK Financial Services Authority's rules).
[backstage] Web API down?
The server hosting the BBC Web API (http://www0.rdthdo.bbc.co.uk/services/api/index.html) seems to be unreachable.. at least from where I am. Anyone else can get to it, or is it currently down? Cheers,Mario.
Re: [backstage] BBC News Live Stats XML - come and get it!
On 6/23/06, Matt Rink [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I know this is kind of a late follow up but I got bored a fews daysago and decided to build this module/gadget for Google's personalisedhomepage that used the data Ben provided. I hadn't built one before soI thought it would be a good start. You can select the region and the number of items to display.http://mattrink.co.uk/gadgets/bbcTopStories.xmlThanks to Mario for his now/next module. It is a great example Thanks Matt,so this is based on the LiveMapStats XML files, right?And as a side question, why did you set inlining as required - is it just the variable gadget height? If so, I think you'd be better of living with a fixed height and scrollbars, as forcing inlining may alienate people due to the extra security prompt.. Cheers,Mario.
[backstage] BBC now/next modules using the BBC web API
Hi all,I have updated my BBC now/next modules to use the BBC Web API. They now also include radio (with links to BBC radio player for streaming audio) as well as TV stations.Available for google, live.com, pageflakes, and a Mac OS X dashboard widget.More info, download, etc. at http://bbcmodules.co.ukCheers,Mario.
Re: [backstage] Changes to the TV-Anytime data feed
A little late, but just in case it's still useful to anyone that's using Leon's TV::Anytime CPAN module:I found 2 problems in the module caused by this change, both easy to change:In
Anytime.pm, change the namespace urn to refer to 2005 instead of 2002:$xpc-registerNs('tva', 'urn:tva:metadata:2005');Also, MediaType has changed to MediaTypeCS:before: ServiceGenre href=''after: ServiceGenre href=''^.. so in Anytime/Service.pm refer to MediaTypeCS inside is_television and is_radio:if ($genre-name eq 'MediaTypeCS')
Leon - there may be other things, these are only 2 issues that I noticed in my apps.Cheers,Mario.On 5/2/06, Hywel Williams
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
A brief note to Backstage developers using the TV-Anytime data for TV andradio schedules.This is a quick heads-up to a couple of changes thatwe'll be making to the data, coming into effect on Tuesday 9th's data set.
We're going to be making a couple of changes the data to be fullycompliment to the 1.3.1 schema, which is the latest schema ratified by theTV-Anytime forum.This will have three minor changes in the data:
1) The attributes in the TVAMain will change to point to the appropriate1.3.1 schemas.2) An extra attribute xml:lang='en' will also be added to the TVAMain -this used to be optional but as of the 1.3.1
schema, it's compulsory.3) The 2005 genre set will be used instead of the 2002.Initially, thiswill only mean that the genre's urn will refer to 2005 instead of 2002 asthe 2002 genre set it pretty much a subset of the 2005.
They're all minor and I don't envisage too many problems as a result ofthese modifications.Hywel-Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group.To unsubscribe, please visit
http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html.Unofficial list archive:
http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] An API to our schedules
On 5/3/06, James Cridland [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Mario - how would you like the RSS format to look?I was only thinking of something very simple. Take the Atom now/next feeds I produce myself, e.g. http://backstage.menti.net/atom/bbc1.xmlThe source for this is:?xml version=1.0 encoding=utf-8? feed xmlns=http://purl.org/atom/ns# title xmlns=http://purl.org/atom/ns#BBC One: What's on now/next/ title author xmlns=http://purl.org/atom/ns# name xmlns=http://purl.org/atom/ns#Mario Menti, supported by backstage.bbc.co.uk/nameemail xmlns= http://purl.org/atom/ns#[EMAIL PROTECTED]/email /author entry xmlns=http://purl.org/atom/ns# xmlns:default=http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtmltitle xmlns=http://purl.org/atom/ns#BBC One : Now : 10:00-11:00 City Hospital/title content xmlns=http://purl.org/atom/ns# mode=xml div xmlns= http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtmlAinsley Harriott, Nadia Sawalha and Andi Peters share the trials and triumphs of the staff and patients of one of the busy city hospital complex, Guy's and St Thomas'. Then BBC News and Weather./ div/content created2006-05-04T10:40:04/created/ entry entry xmlns=http://purl.org/atom/ns# xmlns:default=http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtmltitle xmlns=http://purl.org/atom/ns#BBC One : Next : 11:00-11:30 Homes Under the Hammer/title content xmlns=http://purl.org/atom/ns# mode=xml div xmlns= http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtmlMartin Roberts and Lucy Alexander view an Art Deco flat in South London and a house in Norfolk that wouldn't suit any tall occupants. / div/content created2006-05-04T10:40:04/created/ entry/feedAn equivalent query against the API would be http://www0.rdthdo.bbc.co.uk/cgi-perl/api/query.pl?method=bbc.schedule.getProgrammeschannel_id=BBCOnestart=2006-05-04T09:38:00Zend=2006-05-04T23:59:59Zlimit=2detail=schedulewhich returns: ?xml version='1.0' encoding='ISO-8859-9'??xml-stylesheet title=XSL_formatting type=text/xsl href="" href="http://www0.rdthdo.bbc.co.uk/services/api/xsl/bbc.schedule.getProgrammes.xsl"> http://www0.rdthdo.bbc.co.uk/services/api/xsl/bbc.schedule.getProgrammes.xsl?!-- This data is strictly for non-commercial use only. See http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/terms_of_use.html for details of the terms and conditions. --rsp stat= ok schedule programme programme_id=crid://bbc.co.uk/272955881 title=City Hospital synopsisAinsley Harriott, Nadia Sawalha and Andi Peters share the trials and triumphs of the staff and patients of one of the busy city hospital complex, Guy apos;s and St Thomasapos;. [S] Then BBC News and Weather./synopsis channel_idBBCOne/ channel_id start2006-05-04T09:00:00Z/start duration 01:00:00/duration /programme programme programme_id= crid://bbc.co.uk/272955882 title=Homes Under the Hammer synopsisMartin Roberts and Lucy Alexander view an Art Deco flat in South London and a house in Norfolk that wouldn apos;t suit any tall occupants. [S]/synopsis channel_idBBCOne/channel_id start2006-05-04T10:00:00Z/start duration00:30:00/ duration /programme /schedule/rspIn very simplistic terms, the API could support a format=atom querystring, and just output Atom XML, probably pushing the title and time of the programme into the title tag, and the synopsis into the content. As I said, this would be pretty simple for anyone to do themselves, but I still think it'd be a nice addition to the API functionality itself. And you also mention homepage modules: I know it's really simple, but if you search for Virgin Radio Google Module then the top result should be our own Google homepage module, as a simple radio tuner for your iGoogle front page. Nice. I am currently working on BBC now/next modules that include listen now links also. Watch this space.. Let me also say that the Virgin Radio website is undergoing severe internal re-working between now and the end of September, after which I'd like to launch our own backstage area, to, wherever possible, mimic the BBC's APIs to give developers more choice of excellent content with minimal coding effort. Interesting, keep us in the loop :-)Cheers,Mario.
Re: [backstage] EasyUtil Recommendations API
On 3/20/06, Tom Loosemore [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Is there a single site which lists all decent APIs?http://www.programmableweb.com/apis is pretty comprehensive..
[backstage] Persian news IM bot now on Jabber (and other updates)
Hi all,here's a brief update on recent conversations and developments on the BBCPersian.com news bot.1. A Jabber version of the bot is online at [EMAIL PROTECTED] .I tried it with a number of different Jabber clients, and proper support for Arabic/Farsi and BiDi rendering seems rather patchy (although I have to admit there is the possibility that my bot is not sending the correct info to make this work, in which case I am grateful for suggestions...). Here's the summary of some tests I did with Windows Jabber clients: - the one client that works beautifully, and handles BiDi correctly even in messages with mixed English/Farsi text (i.e displays English LTR and Farsi RTL): Gaim (I used v2.0 beta2)- clients that render the text ok, but don't orientate the overall message RTL (so the text is OK, but not right-aligned): Psi, Exodus, Google Talk, Gajim, Pandion, meebo- clients that don't even seem to render the Farsi UTF-8 text properly (although maybe there's some settings to fix this, I haven't spent too much time with this): Miranda IM Haven't tried other clients or OSs yet.2. Support for other IM networks: Consensus appears to be that Yahoo IM is popular in Iran, so a Yahoo bot would be useful. My current problem is that I can't find a working Yahoo Messenger Protocol Perl module (the ones on CPAN seem out of date and not functional). If anyone here knows of a working YIM Perl module, please let me know (the bots are implemented in Perl). 3. Push or Pull?When developing the previous (English) newsflash bot, I came across a problem with the MSN switchboard when sending out a large number of newsflash messages. I worked around it by staggering the sending of messages, but the problem may well re-appear if large numbers of users make use of the bot (on MSN at least). This problem is caused by the MSN bot requesting too many active switchboards when it initiates the conversation in order to send the newsflash, so is not an issue in a scenario where the users initiate a chat with the bot (I had around 2000 users over a couple of days on the BBC TV schedules bot after it was posted on Betanews and Microsoft Watch, without any problems). In order to minimise potential issues like these (if there ever are large numbers of users), it may make sense to turn the bot from push to pull - i.e. you contact the bot to get the latest news, rather than the bot sending you the news headlines on a regular basis. I'd be interested to hear other people's opinions on this. Thanks,Mario.
[backstage] Re: IM Persian news bot
I really have to get something better than my cheap VPS seems just minutes after posting this, the server has some DNS issues and can't see the outside world.Sorry about this, will update you when it's solved... On 3/7/06, Mario Menti [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Following a conversation with Dan Brickley, who pointed me to Ian Forrester's post on BBC Persian being filtered in Iran (see http://www.cubicgarden.com/blojsom/blog/cubicgarden/culture/?permalink=BBC-Persian-filtered-out-of-Iran-what-can-we-do.html), I am now running a first version of a Persian (Farsi) news bot, along similar lines as the newsflash bots. As Dan suggested, this could be one additional means of bypassing the Iranian firewall... Currently the bot is only running on MSN, and although I managed to get the right-to-left issue to work using the official MSN client (in my case Windows Live Messenger beta), it seems that not all 3rd party clients support the X-MMS-IM-Format field (where I set the R-to-L orientation), so for example Trillian ignores it and displays the messages incorrectly L-to-R. I haven't tried other clients yet. I don't speak/read Farsi or Arabic, so can't really tell if the content is ok (although I compared it visually to what's on the BBC website to get some idea). I use the nearly-full-text feed at http://feeds.bbc.co.uk/persian/index.xml (I believe Ian set that up?), and have noticed some strange HTML tags in the feeds, all of which (rightly or wrongly) also make it into the bot messages.. in addition, the menu-type texts are all in English for now, and should really be translated. The bot is on MSN as [EMAIL PROTECTED]. Once you join, you'll get the 10 most recent news headlines from http://feeds.bbc.co.uk/persian/index.xml every hour, to which you can respond with a number (1 to 10) to see more details for the news headline you're interested in (I decided to change this from the way the English news flashes work due to the feeds containing much more text, so it wasn't practical to send all news details in one message). No guarantees as to bot uptime etc, but as ever, feedback appreciated!Mario.
[backstage] Re: IM Persian news bot
Back now... touch wood! Some iptables screw-up, hoping it will stay up..Mario.On 3/7/06, Mario Menti [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:I really have to get something better than my cheap VPS seems just minutes after posting this, the server has some DNS issues and can't see the outside world. Sorry about this, will update you when it's solved...
[backstage] Today's TV-Anytime tar is broken
Hi there,looks like today's TV-Anytime tar file (20060306.tar.gz at http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/feeds/tvradio/) is broken - could someone fix and replace it? Thanks,Mario.
Re: [backstage] Google Mashups
On 3/3/06, Dharmesh Raithatha [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hey folksHas anyone got an example of a good googlemasup where you can click onthe map to make a web request with the location clicked on?DharmeshThomas Scott's backstage TVMAP prototype? http://tvmap.thomasscott.net
Re: [backstage] Hourly news flashes via IM
On 3/3/06, Kirk Northrop[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Nick B wrote: You obviously fixed it. I then left as every hour was too annoying. Can I get an update when I want ... e.g I want every 3 hours between 7am and 12am... Just a thought. Other than that, quite okay, it started working the last few days.Indeed, works fine(ish) here too, but hourly is a bit much ;)Thanks for everyone's feedback, sounds like the original problem is now solved/worked around. Re. the frequency of the newsflashes, there are a number of improvements and new features being planned, which will include being able to select frequency of newsflashes in addition to some level of personalisation wrt the types of headlines delivered. I'll keep you posted... Mario.
Re: [backstage] Hourly news flashes via IM
On 2/25/06, Kirk Northrop [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Dan Brickley wrote: I guess the AIM version works then. I also signed up for MSN flavour of the bot, but haven't had any newsflashes...Same here.Probably best to take this off-list. From the sound of it, it seems there is a problem with pushing the messages to some MSN subscribers. I'll have a look at it next week when I get some time. In the meantime, it would be useful if people that have tried the MSN bot could let me know whether or not they are receiving the messages (email me privately please) - I tried it myself with a couple of MSN accounts, and it worked with both, so some more info would be useful to try and narrow it down. Cheers,Mario.
[backstage] Hourly news flashes via IM
Another late night, another IM bot...Someone suggested off-line it would be nice to have an IM bot that pushes news to them automatically, without you having to request it. So I sat down last night and implemented something like this (pretty raw in its current state): - you contact the bot to register you interest- the bot sends out the latest 5 headlines from the BBC news page every hour (on the hour) to all those registered- and of course, you can contact the bot again to remove yourself from the list If anyone wants to try it out and let me know what they think, here's the details:Google Talk and Jabber users, contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]MSN users contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]AIM users contact bbcnewsflashAs I said, this is still very experimental, so don't be too surprised if it doesn't always work... but I'd be interested in people's feelings in general, whether something like this is useful (or just annoying..). One obivous next step would be to be able to select the type of news you want (currently it's just the 5 items most recently updated in UK version of the news feed) by registering keywords, or being able to pick news by category. Cheers,Mario.
Re: [backstage] Hourly news flashes via IM
On 2/9/06, Kirk Northrop [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The bot doesn't seem to work for me - always offline?That's odd, they all seem to be online OK.. which network are you trying, and which client? The bots should be set to auto-authorise new contacts, and should automatically show their status. If anyone else can't see them online, please let me know.. Thanks,Mario.
Re: [backstage] Hourly news flashes via IM
On 2/9/06, vijay chopra [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I couldn't see your TV listings bot as online when I used GTalk , however when I tried using it, it worked fine. Hope that helps.Thanks Vijay - I've noticed this a few times with the Talk client, also with human non-GTalk jabber clients. Sometimes even just right-clicking on the contact makes them suddenly appear as online. Conversely, my GTalk account sometime appears as away to my other Jabber account, even when it's actually online. Probably some Jabber s2s issues somewhere..
Re: [backstage] Hourly news flashes via IM
On 2/9/06, Kirk Northrop [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It's the [EMAIL PROTECTED] one that isn't working. The News Flashone does.Strange, that one looks online as well. In general it's certainly possible for the bots to go offline (either by being kicked, or network/connectivity issues), plus they're only running on a little development server of mine that may itself go down once in a while, but usually they should come back online quickly (have some cron jobs that check their status).
Re: [backstage] Hourly news flashes via IM
Thanks for everyone's feedback with this.A summary of suggestions received includes...- only showing headlines once (the current format is showing the news items most recently updated, so the same stories may re-appear if they've been updated, a little like hourly network news I guess) - being able to select news categories/keywords you're interested in- being able to specify the times you want to receive the news flashes, not just hourlyIn addition, I found some weirdnesses with Google Talk, but am not sure if anyone else has. It doesn't always seem to deliver the news, while delivery to a more standard Jabber client/account seems to work as planned. Any more feedback/suggestions/problems, please keep them coming. Not sure how much I'll be able to do about it in the very short term (as a skiing holiday in my native Switzerland is beckoning), but issues and suggestions will certainly be considered/addressed in due time. Cheers,Mario.
[backstage] backstage IM bots
Hi all, I've given my BBC backstage IM bots a little overhaul, so they should now be easier to use (they still do the same thing though: now/next info, searching through BBC 7-day TV schedules, setting SMS programme reminders). Feel free to try them and let me know if you have any suggestions in terms of how to improve them. [EMAIL PROTECTED] for MSN users bbcbackstage for AOL (AIM) users [EMAIL PROTECTED] for Jabber and Google Talk users Cheers, Mario.
Re: [backstage] backstage IM bots
Thanks David. Nice suggestion, and I've just implementeda message along these linesfor the AIM and Jabber bots. It's a little harder for MSN, but will add it to the MSN bot whenever I get the time to figure it out. Re. your football query, it does seem to have returned one match (according to the logs). The way I've implemented the search is that it will search programme titles first, and then(if you're not happy with these results) give you the option to search all the programme synoposes. That way you avoid getting too many hits if you're searching for a programme title (which is what most people appear to search for, so it seemed to make sense to implement in this order - and I tried to simplify the search process and therefore avoid too many options right from the start). Cheers, Mario. On 2/6/06, David Sargeant [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: once again nice stuff mario. since searches take some time it would be nice if the bot replied to search requests with something like: I am off searching for for you. I will be back shortly with some results. otherwise there is a feeling like nothing is happening. In fact after doing a now request. a request for football returned nothing... or was that just me? From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Mario MentiSent: Monday, February 06, 2006 3:03 PMTo: backstage@lists.bbc.co.ukSubject: [backstage] backstage IM bots Hi all, I've given my BBC backstage IM bots a little overhaul, so they should now be easier to use (they still do the same thing though: now/next info, searching through BBC 7-day TV schedules, setting SMS programme reminders). Feel free to try them and let me know if you have any suggestions in terms of how to improve them. [EMAIL PROTECTED] for MSN users bbcbackstage for AOL (AIM) users [EMAIL PROTECTED] for Jabber and Google Talk users Cheers, Mario.
Re: [backstage] backstage IM bots
On 2/6/06, Mario Menti [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Thanks David. Nice suggestion, and I've just implementeda message along these linesfor the AIM and Jabber bots. It's a little harder for MSN, but will add it to the MSN bot whenever I get the time to figure it out. OK, should now work for MSN as well. I agree, it does make it much clearer that there's going to be a little wait while the search takes place. Mario.
Re: [backstage] Would anyone use this?
On 1/23/06, Ian Forrester [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Gavin it sounds like a good idea and I know others who are thinking of doing the same thing. I even think the Digg guys are planning to rollout Digg for general news, cooking recipes, etc. ... and of course, there's Newsvine. Incidentally, I have a few invites to their private beta, if anyone's interested please mail be off-list (first come first served etc...) Cheers, Mario. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
[backstage] Google homepage module
Google have yesterday released their homepage API which lets users create widgets for the Google personalised homepage (google.com/ig). This works very similarly to the way gadgets work on live.com, so last night (with minimal effort) I have ported my existing what's on now/next live.com gadget to become a Google homepage module. If Google accept it, it should eventually appear in their directory (http://www.google.com/ig/directory), in the meantime if you're interested you can install it by adding the developer module from the google.com/ig page (click Add Content Create a Section and enter developer.xml in the text field), then add my module from the url http://backstage.menti.name/google/nownext.xmlThis is a direct port, so functionality-wise it does exactly the same as the live.com gadget (auto-refreshes every 10 minutes, manual refresh button, hover over program title to see synopsis). Comments and feedback welcome as always, cheers,Mario.
Re: [backstage] RSS feeds for what's on now/next
On 11/29/05, Mario Menti [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Re. google/ig, as I just mentioned in the previous post, the feeds work fine with the google rss reader (reader.google.com). I even copied the xml content from a blogger atom feed that works in my personalised home page, copied it into a static xml file on my menti.name server, and tried to add that same file to google.com/ig, and it didn't work. So there must be something server-side (content-type or other headers? etc.) rather than the actual xml format that makes a difference..Even stranger - now that Google have added RSS feeds to Gmail (see https://mail.google.com/mail/help/about_whatsnew.html), my backstage Atom feeds work perfectly fine in Gmail, but still no luck on google.com/ig.
[backstage] Re: now/next via SMS
Brief update on this...On 12/7/05, Mario Menti [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Text the name of a BBC TV station (no radio stations - yet) to 07781 488578.This will send you back a text message with what's on now/next on the TV channel you selected. It also contains a link to a xhtml-basic page that shows you the programme information (synposis), so if your phone supports clickable SMS messages you can click straight through to the programme details. At the moment the pages are xhtml only, so it won't work on old WAP1.0/wml-only phones (but it wouldn't be hard to add this capability, as the pages as ultra-simple..).FYI - I have added support for wml markup, so these pages will now work on older WAP1.0 phones also. It uses the the magic of Wurfl ( http://wurfl.sourceforge.net) to automatically determine the device's preferred type of markup, and then serve wml or xhtml respectively (I currently only distinguish between these two, but more would be possible). The pages now could serve as a sort of simple BBC now/next mobile site, so you could access them directly on your phone/device by going to http://x.menti.name/all - this should give you content (xhtml/wml) appropriate for your type of browser. Or as I said above, send a text message with a BBC TV channel to that number, and the SMS returned will contain a link to the programme synopses of the programmes currently showing on that channel, from which you can browse to the rest of the site if you so wish.. Not tested with too many phones, so feedback welcome as usual..Mario.
Re: [backstage] Is this our Ben..?
I hear the Yorkshire Grey is hastily installing an IRC backchannel in preparation for our meet-up on Monday. Just think of the PR :-)
Re: [backstage] backstage IM bot posted on BetaNews
On 12/5/05, Andy Hawkins [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi, I happened to look at my IM bot logs this afternoon, and was more than a little surprised that since last night, the MSN bot had been in use non-stop. Between yesterday evening and this afternoon, more than 1,100 individual new users had spoken to it...I haven't seen your bot online for a while...can you confirm theaddress is still [EMAIL PROTECTED] ?Andy, I think you've confused this with a MSN bot that James has created, see his archived post here http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/msg00983.html
[backstage] backstage IM bot posted on BetaNews
You may find this amusing I happened to look at my IM bot logs this afternoon, and was more than a little surprised that since last night, the MSN bot had been in use non-stop. Between yesterday evening and this afternoon, more than 1,100 individual new users had spoken to it... A Technorati search found the likely source of this sudden interest, a rather misleadingly titled post on BetaNews: http://www.betanews.com/article/MSN_Messenger_Adds_Two_New_IM_Bots/1133551249 The good thing (apart from the fact that it actually stayed up without any problems during this relatively - for me - intensive use) is that I now have plenty of logs to comb through, which may encourage me to improve the interface (the logs are interesting now there's sufficient data to see where people tend to trip up), which is something I meant to do for a while, but have always put on the backburner due to having more important things to do.. Cheers, Mario.
Re: [backstage] now/next RSS feeds for radio stations
Thanks Al,interesting ideas.. I have no idea if track listings are available in any feed-like form, someone from the BBC may be able to answer that.But now that you mention 6 Music, I suddenly remembered reading about phonetags on 6 Music a few months ago (see http://rnd.historicalfact.com/phonetags/). This sounded like a very cool idea, letting you bookmark/rate/tag songs by sending a text message while the song is playing. I'm not sure what the current state of it is though (there's a pre-alpha working demo badge on the site). On 12/2/05, Al Petfield [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This is great stuff Mario.On a related note, is there a way to make tracklistings (example:http://www.bbc.co.uk/6music/shows/vic_mcglynn/tracklisting.shtml) available as feeds? It might only be 6 Music that has them (I haven'tresearched extensively) but here are a couple of ideas of what youcould do with them:1) You could extend your now/next to show the last track played. If I was looking for a radio station to listen to then I might make a moreinformed decision if I could see what the last 10 tracks played were.2) If you tie up the tracklisting with the listen again files, then you could have an application that could index listen again files. Ifyou were to provide the application with preferences (using Last.fmdata perhaps) then it could cue up relevant tracks. I've looked at these tracklistings pages whilst listening to the showsand it seems that the tracks are added after they've finished, usuallywithin about 5 minutes. Now if they were added just *before* they were played (and were available for all BBC Radio stations) then you couldhave an application that scans across all the stations and picksbetween different stations according to what they're playing. Youcould set a preferred station (a default that it uses if it can't find anything that you like) and then a list of artists that you like. Ifthe application finds a track about to play on another station thatyou like then it will crossfade to that station. You could extend this further by using something like the 'Similar Artists' part of Last.fm(example: http://www.last.fm/music/Buck+65/+similar) with an 'adventurous' setting - strict (only play the artists I listed), near(uses the top 10 similar artists), go on surprise me (uses the top 50similar artists).Hope I haven't rambled too much/off topic, AlOn 12/2/05, Mario Menti [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:Due to popular demand (ok, there was one request for it), I have started to produce now/next RSS/Atom feeds for all available radio stations. Full list of feeds can be browsed at http://backstage.menti.name/atom/, or (with brief explanations added) at http://backstage.msurveys.com . Now that I've added radio feeds, the naming for the non-channel-specific TV feeds isn't ideal anymore, but since it looks like there are some people actually using these feeds, I haven't changed any existing feed names. Added feeds for all available radio stations:* radionownext.xml what's on now/next on all BBC Radio channels* radionow.xml what's on now on all BBC Radio channels* radionext.xml what's on next on all BBC Radio channels* radio1.xml what's on now/next on Radio 1* radio2.xml what's on now/next on Radio 2* radio3.xml what's on now/next on Radio 3 * radio4.xml what's on now/next on Radio 4* radio5live.xml what's on now/next on Radio 5 Live* radio5extra.xml what's on now/next on Radio 5 Extra* radio6music.xml what's on now/next on Radio 6 Music * 1xtra.xml what's on now/next on 1Xtra* bbc7digital.xml what's on now/next on BBC Seven Digital* bbcasian.xml what's on now/next on BBC AsianAlso, in case anyone wants them, combined TV and Radio feeds: * tvradionownext.xml what's on now/next on BBC TV and Radio* tvradionow.xml what's on now on BBC TV and Radio* tvradionext.xml what's on next on BBC TV and Radio-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] RSS feeds for what's on now/next
On 11/29/05, Michael Pritchard [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'd seen the same thing on the backstage site and submitted a comment to point to my now next feed builder @ http://tv.blueghost.co.uk/nn.php Yes, comment moderation (and prototype submission) on the backstage site seem to be a little on the slow side... hint hint :-) e.g for channels bbc1,bbc2,itv1,c4,five you get http://tv.blueghost.co.uk/feeds/rss/nnp/1+2+32+33+30There is a feed builder at the top of the page, or individual feeds for each channel. I've got mine to work on google.com/ig but occasionally get the same error message but can't get it to work on yahoo or live.com. Again any suggestions welcomed. Cool - now we have rss2 feeds that work on Google, and Atom feeds that work on yahoo and live.com... I'll have a closer look over the next few days, would be nice to get everything to work everywhere. Talking of Google, strangely my Atom feeds work perfectlly well in the Google RSS reader (reader.google.com), but not on the google personalised home page.. Cheers, Mario.
Re: [backstage] RSS feeds for what's on now/next
On 11/29/05, Jem Stone [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Thanks Mario. This is great stuff. In response to someone's Idea posted on the backstage site, I've made some very simple Atom RSS feeds available that show what's on now/next on BBC TV channels. I've got em working in a number of places on live.com etc but you'reright. No luck on google/ig/ Also. The nownext complete feed doesn't seem to be picking up the data for cbbc and cbeebies ?? nice one.Jem, backstage team Thanks Jem, are you sure the last issue (not picking up cbcc/cbeebies) isn't just down to the number of items the aggregator displays? All entries have the same created timestamp (the time the feed xml was generated), so I guess if an aggregator was to display the last 5 items in a feed, it would just pick the top 5 entries in the feed. Re. google/ig, as I just mentioned in the previous post, the feeds work fine with the google rss reader (reader.google.com). I even copied the xml content from a blogger atom feed that works in my personalised home page, copied it into a static xml file on my menti.name server, and tried to add that same file to google.com/ig, and it didn't work. So there must be something server-side (content-type or other headers? etc.) rather than the actual xml format that makes a difference.. Thanks, Mario.
Re: [backstage] combining prototypes?
In response to a couple of previous posts: - a PSP/mobile browsing solution (based on XHTML MP) would definitely be nice, but would presumably be a separate front-end from a more AJAX-y all-singing full web browser interface - SMS costs could be covered by users registering for the service, and paying for bundles of texts to be used. I believe there is an existing service (groupSMS) that does something along these lines already, so I don't think covering SMS costs is considered a commercial application (and would therefore not cause a problem with backstage conditions of use) In a way though I think we're jumping the gun a little - I was first of all wondering who (if anyone) would be interested in combining some efforts. What shape a combined app/service should take is probably the second step. Oh, and before I forget - whoever wins the server has to host the beast :-) On 10/6/05, Adam Leach [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi, I will very happily help in the development of this system. My current VoIP phone system could easily be slightly modified to work in nearly any setup. The only requirement is a connection to an upto date database that contains all the listings and a PC powerful enough to re generate all the sound files when required. Its all developed on mainly opensource software, ie Asterisk, Perl and a few modules. The only other problem is a licence or suitable replacement voice would be required. SMS is another problem as there don't appear to be any free/cheap SMS gateways. I just decided to use a Pay as you go phone with SMS bundles and just pay for all the texts. Regards Adam Quoting Mario Menti [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Looking at the prototypes published on this list and on the backstage site, it occured to me that by combining some of them, we may end up with the ultimate multi-channel multi-purpose web/SMS/IM/VoIP/chatbot tv schedule search/suggestion/comparison/reminder app (ok, the name will need some work...) Is anyone interested in sitting down together and discussing the potential of integrating some of the various ideas and concepts shown in these prototypes? Cheers, Mario. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ - 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] How to enter the competition...
Also, is it international or restricted to U.K. residents? It's open to everyone, see http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/news/archives/2005/07/first_backstage.html
[backstage] Example of web API integration of IM bot
Hi all, apologies for posting this here, I tried to add this as a comment to the prototype posting at http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/prototypes/archives/2005/09/search_bbc_sche.html, but for some reason the MT comment policies rejected it. In brief, I've added some additional reminder functionality to my IM bit prototype, to show some basic 3rd party web API functionality: As an example of 3rd party web API integration, I've added a demo feature that lets you create a reminder in your Backpack account (as an alternative to SMS reminders). Since this prototype doesn't know about user management, I am using a generic backstage account at Backpack - if you select to add a reminder to the Backpack account, go to http://backstage.backpackit.com/reminders with username backstage, password bbc (obviously everyone here is allowed to add/delete entries, so don't use it for anything real..) I remember someone talking about iCalendar integration of BBC TV schedules - this may be one route, since Backpack supports iCalendar remote calendars. Credits to Dave Cross (who I believe happens to be on this list!) for creating the Net::Backpack CPAN module I've used for this example.. Thanks, Mario.
Re: [backstage] Free SMS WSDL service
Shame - would have been useful for an EPG. No such thing as a free lunch :-)
Re: [backstage] UPDATE backstage.bbc.co.uk TV Schedule Competition
Hi David, thanks for your suggestion. No, you didn't miss any functionality - as I mentioned, I took Jim's code more or less as it was, only making the changes required to fit it into the IM bot framework. Based on what you're saying, I'm thinking of giving the user a number of search options when they first contact the bot, e.g. 1 - search by keyword(s) 2 - what's on when (requiring the user to specify date/time) 3 - what's on now 4 - (... any other suggested features) what's on now may only work for users in the UK (although given that this relates to the BBC UK schedules, this may not be an unreasonable limitation...) Any other suggestions or feedback gratefully reviewed. I am away until Tuesday, but could start looking into adding some more functionality later this week, as time (and daytime job) permits... Cheers, Mario.On 9/3/05, David Sargeant [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: mario, i like the concept a lot. what would be great also (unless i missed this functionality?) would be some date/time search functionality. i always want to know whats on now and next without having to walk to my TV ;-) cheers david From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Mario MentiSent: Friday, September 02, 2005 8:43 PMTo: backstage@lists.bbc.co.ukSubject: Re: [backstage] UPDATE backstage.bbc.co.uk TV Schedule Competition I guess you're right officially, but I (and many others) have been running IM bots on MSN and AIM for years. It's true that its not officially supported, and these companies every now and then (on purpose?) break their protocols, but it usually takes no longer than a day or two for people to update their software (e.g. Trillian and Gaim never stay out of action for long...).I've quickly set up a couple more bots running the same code, since Jabber users may still be relatively few:On MSN, add [EMAIL PROTECTED] to your buddies, on AIM add bbcbackstageSending any message to them will start them talking.. On 9/2/05, Duncan Barclay [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Officially you couldn't really do it on MSN, as you are only allowed to use the official MSN Messenger client. Unofficially, the protocol is really annoying to use, and documentation is limited, but it is possible. It was something I was considering doing, and may still do depending on if I get the time.I can't comment on services like AIM and the Yahoo! messenger (and now the Google one) as I haven't tried making anything that uses them, but I might have a look into them at some time.What you have there does look like it could be interesting.Duncan Mario Menti wrote: Jim,I took your code and integrated it into some instant messaging bot code I am using. This would enable people to search the 7-day listing through their IM client..There's a demo bot running on my jabber server - if any of you are on Jabber and want to have a peek, start a Jabber conversation with the bot - her/his/its Jabber ID is [EMAIL PROTECTED]. I have literally taken Jim's code with very little changes, so if people think this is worth persuing, there are loads of refinements and additional features I can think of... Also, other IM networks such as AIM and MSN could be supported in the same way.If this is of interest to the competition, then even better (I will just have to find some spare time...)Let me know what you think, cheers,Mario. On 9/2/05, J.P.Knight [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Fri, 2 Sep 2005, Duncan Barclay wrote: I assume you haven't tried doing it in PHP then :)No, and I didn't try doing it in Perl either.That's what CPAN is for...;-) ;-)Anyway, take a squint at URL: http://conduit.lboro.ac.uk/cgi-bin/tva-searchfor a web version of my toy script.I noticed that I forgot to includethe hours in the original command line version so programs lasting a integer number of hours appeared to have a duration of 0 minutes.Ooops... fixed!Jim'll-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] UPDATE backstage.bbc.co.uk TV Schedule Competition
I guess you're right officially, but I (and many others) have been running IM bots on MSN and AIM for years. It's true that its not officially supported, and these companies every now and then (on purpose?) break their protocols, but it usually takes no longer than a day or two for people to update their software (e.g. Trillian and Gaim never stay out of action for long...). I've quickly set up a couple more bots running the same code, since Jabber users may still be relatively few: On MSN, add [EMAIL PROTECTED] to your buddies, on AIM add bbcbackstage Sending any message to them will start them talking.. On 9/2/05, Duncan Barclay [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Officially you couldn't really do it on MSN, as you are only allowed to use the official MSN Messenger client. Unofficially, the protocol is really annoying to use, and documentation is limited, but it is possible. It was something I was considering doing, and may still do depending on if I get the time. I can't comment on services like AIM and the Yahoo! messenger (and now the Google one) as I haven't tried making anything that uses them, but I might have a look into them at some time. What you have there does look like it could be interesting. Duncan Mario Menti wrote: Jim, I took your code and integrated it into some instant messaging bot code I am using. This would enable people to search the 7-day listing through their IM client.. There's a demo bot running on my jabber server - if any of you are on Jabber and want to have a peek, start a Jabber conversation with the bot - her/his/its Jabber ID is [EMAIL PROTECTED]. I have literally taken Jim's code with very little changes, so if people think this is worth persuing, there are loads of refinements and additional features I can think of... Also, other IM networks such as AIM and MSN could be supported in the same way. If this is of interest to the competition, then even better (I will just have to find some spare time...) Let me know what you think, cheers, Mario. On 9/2/05, J.P.Knight [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Fri, 2 Sep 2005, Duncan Barclay wrote: I assume you haven't tried doing it in PHP then :) No, and I didn't try doing it in Perl either.That's what CPAN is for... ;-) ;-) Anyway, take a squint at URL: http://conduit.lboro.ac.uk/cgi-bin/tva-search for a web version of my toy script.I noticed that I forgot to include the hours in the original command line version so programs lasting a integer number of hours appeared to have a duration of 0 minutes. Ooops... fixed! Jim'll - 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] UPDATE backstage.bbc.co.uk TV Schedule Competition
Jim, I took your code and integrated it into some instant messaging bot code I am using. This would enable people to search the 7-day listing through their IM client.. There's a demo bot running on my jabber server - if any of you are on Jabber and want to have a peek, start a Jabber conversation with the bot - her/his/its Jabber ID is [EMAIL PROTECTED]. I have literally taken Jim's code with very little changes, so if people think this is worth persuing, there are loads of refinements and additional features I can think of... Also, other IM networks such as AIM and MSN could be supported in the same way. If this is of interest to the competition, then even better (I will just have to find some spare time...) Let me know what you think, cheers, Mario.On 9/2/05, J.P.Knight [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Fri, 2 Sep 2005, Duncan Barclay wrote: I assume you haven't tried doing it in PHP then :)No, and I didn't try doing it in Perl either.That's what CPAN is for...;-) ;-)Anyway, take a squint at URL: http://conduit.lboro.ac.uk/cgi-bin/tva-searchfor a web version of my toy script.I noticed that I forgot to includethe hours in the original command line version so programs lasting a integer number of hours appeared to have a duration of 0 minutes.Ooops... fixed!Jim'll-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/
