Re: [backstage-developer] RSS Sliders
On 09/01/2008, Matthew Cashmore <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > As this is the developer list I'd like to keep it quite technical here > before we open it out to the main list for general feedback... However... > In this instance I was really interested in this work (which came out of > the last labs) because it solves a specific problem for N&R – that being if > you live on the border between say Cornwall and Devon how can we quickly and > easily allow people to balance their content? There are much bigger > plans afoot for a proper solution to that and I don't want to get into that > at the moment and certainly not on the developer list – but this struck me > as a very easy and quick way to offer functionality on the WIL sites... > IMHO, the problem of location would be probably be better computed by having a geocode or postcode in each of the stories relating to the location, as it would then be possible to work out which stories are the most "local" to you using a radial distance calculation. But as you say... It would be very interesting to see how many people would > actually use them. > > That's an interesting point actually – should 'useability' be part of the > developer list or is that something that should be kept to the main list? > > m > > > On 9/1/08 15:08, "James Cridland" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > 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! :) > > > > ___ > *Matthew Cashmore > *Development Producer > * > **BBC Future Media & Technology, Research and Innovation > *BC5C3, Broadcast Centre, Media Village, W12 7TP > > *T:*020 8008 3959(02 83959) > *M:*07711 913241(072 83959) > -- Please email me back if you need any more help. Brian Butterworth http://www.ukfree.tv
Re: [backstage-developer] RSS Sliders
Hi Paul, The granularity of the slider is determined by the number of elements in the lists - hence feeds with few numbers of items [e.g. Cornish Features] will only change with a greater movement of the slider. Currently the slider itself returns values between 0 and 100, which allows for up to 100 items in each feed - some of these RSS feeds have only 8 items in. Cheers Neil On 10 Jan 2008, at 20:19, Paul Daniel wrote: I'm not seeing a replacement of items when I move the slider just a reduction. Firefox 2.0.0.11 and Maxthon 1.6.3 -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ]On Behalf Of neil Sent: 08 January 2008 15:17 To: backstage-developer@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: [backstage-developer] RSS Sliders We've been developing a prototype interface element for the BBC which we'd like to release to the Backstage developer community for feedback and improvements. http://projects.hinterland.nu/bbc/sliders It's a simple slider widget which allows for four RSS feeds to be mixed down into a single list. Two sliders are used, the first to mix two pairs of feeds into two lists, and the second to mix the two lists together. .. The focus is on the BBC website's 'Where I Live' section, and the aim is to allow users to easily choose a balance of News and Local Features, as well as balancing the mix between two counties. Stories are given a value based on their order within the feed, and as the slider moves across, low value stories from one list drop off, to be replaced by high value stories from the new list. 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? .. The application is in two parts, a Perl script which consumes RSS feeds (using XML::FeedPP) and generates an embedded JSON array containing the stories from all four sources and their rank. Secondly there is a Javascript function to combine and generate the list(s) visible on the page. Since the time course of 'News' and 'Local Features' differ so widely [news changing by the minute, features dating back weeks] it was not possible to elegantly rank the lists strictly on their publication date - instead we chose to simply score them according to their rank position in the original feed. In this prototype the source feeds are hard-coded into the script - however this could easily be changed to use an external list. Unfortunately the BBC does not have a very RESTful interface to their local features XML, with no consistency in the URL format there is no simple programatic way to access all the BBC regions. No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.516 / Virus Database: 269.17.13/1213 - Release Date: 07/01/2008 09:14 No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.516 / Virus Database: 269.19.0/1216 - Release Date: 09/01/2008 10:16
RE: [backstage-developer] RSS Sliders
I'm not seeing a replacement of items when I move the slider just a reduction. Firefox 2.0.0.11 and Maxthon 1.6.3 -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of neil Sent: 08 January 2008 15:17 To: backstage-developer@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: [backstage-developer] RSS Sliders We've been developing a prototype interface element for the BBC which we'd like to release to the Backstage developer community for feedback and improvements. HYPERLINK "http://projects.hinterland.nu/bbc/sliders"http://projects.hinterland.nu/bbc /sliders It's a simple slider widget which allows for four RSS feeds to be mixed down into a single list. Two sliders are used, the first to mix two pairs of feeds into two lists, and the second to mix the two lists together. .. The focus is on the BBC website's 'Where I Live' section, and the aim is to allow users to easily choose a balance of News and Local Features, as well as balancing the mix between two counties. Stories are given a value based on their order within the feed, and as the slider moves across, low value stories from one list drop off, to be replaced by high value stories from the new list. 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? .. The application is in two parts, a Perl script which consumes RSS feeds (using XML::FeedPP) and generates an embedded JSON array containing the stories from all four sources and their rank. Secondly there is a Javascript function to combine and generate the list(s) visible on the page. Since the time course of 'News' and 'Local Features' differ so widely [news changing by the minute, features dating back weeks] it was not possible to elegantly rank the lists strictly on their publication date - instead we chose to simply score them according to their rank position in the original feed. In this prototype the source feeds are hard-coded into the script - however this could easily be changed to use an external list. Unfortunately the BBC does not have a very RESTful interface to their local features XML, with no consistency in the URL format there is no simple programatic way to access all the BBC regions. No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.516 / Virus Database: 269.17.13/1213 - Release Date: 07/01/2008 09:14 No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.516 / Virus Database: 269.19.0/1216 - Release Date: 09/01/2008 10:16
Re: [backstage-developer] RSS Sliders
>Would that be useful? Yes, much much more so. If I can't use Google Reader to read something, I don't read it, and I suspect I'd not that abnormal.
Re: [backstage-developer] RSS Sliders
Just had a thought - what if you could use the sliders to create your page and then that generated a custom RSS feed based on those settings? Would that be useful? m On 10/1/08 11:09, "neil" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi Davy [and all others who have posted comments]. > > We're going to tweak it based on this round of feedback, and hopefully > then build a production version for Nations and Regions. At that point > the code should be ironed-out and ready for general release. Word from > the BBC is that they plan to open source this code in the next couple > of months. > > Re: comments about 'usability' etc. I totally agree - there's no > guarantee as to whether users will choose to use such a system, and an > awful lot depends on how and where it's embedded in the site. > > However, in terms of presentation, it's worth noting that there is no > strict limit on the width of the sliders, and they could theoretically > occupy much less horizontal space than they do in this demo. As Matt > pointed out, this is a proposed solution to a particular problem > raised in the in Innovation Labs - how to offer sensible news and > features to people who live on the border between regions - so we'd > expect it to live there initially, but we think it does offer an > interesting way to 'mash up' feeds offered by the BBC, and may well > find a home elsewhere, if users respond positively. > > We'll be keeping you posted on how things develop, and once again, > thanks for all the feedback :) > > Cheers > > Neil & Chris > > On 9 Jan 2008, at 13:51, Davy Mitchell wrote: > >> I like it! >> >> Pretty cool stuff - might use it on Mood News! When /how are you >> planning a release? >> >> Davy >> >> -- >> Davy Mitchell >> Blog - http://www.latedecember.co.uk/sites/personal/davy/ >> Twitter - http://twitter.com/daftspaniel >> Skype - daftspaniel >> needgod.com >> - >> Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk developer discussion group. To >> unsubscribe, please send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with >> unsubscribe backstage-developer [your email] as the message. > > - > Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk developer discussion group. To unsubscribe, > please send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe > backstage-developer [your email] as the message. ___ Matthew Cashmore Development Producer BBC Future Media & Technology, Research and Innovation BC5C3, Broadcast Centre, Media Village, W12 7TP T:020 8008 3959(02 83959) M:07711 913241(072 83959) - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk developer discussion group. To unsubscribe, please send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe backstage-developer [your email] as the message.
Re: [backstage-developer] RSS Sliders
Hi Davy [and all others who have posted comments]. We're going to tweak it based on this round of feedback, and hopefully then build a production version for Nations and Regions. At that point the code should be ironed-out and ready for general release. Word from the BBC is that they plan to open source this code in the next couple of months. Re: comments about 'usability' etc. I totally agree - there's no guarantee as to whether users will choose to use such a system, and an awful lot depends on how and where it's embedded in the site. However, in terms of presentation, it's worth noting that there is no strict limit on the width of the sliders, and they could theoretically occupy much less horizontal space than they do in this demo. As Matt pointed out, this is a proposed solution to a particular problem raised in the in Innovation Labs - how to offer sensible news and features to people who live on the border between regions - so we'd expect it to live there initially, but we think it does offer an interesting way to 'mash up' feeds offered by the BBC, and may well find a home elsewhere, if users respond positively. We'll be keeping you posted on how things develop, and once again, thanks for all the feedback :) Cheers Neil & Chris On 9 Jan 2008, at 13:51, Davy Mitchell wrote: I like it! Pretty cool stuff - might use it on Mood News! When /how are you planning a release? Davy -- Davy Mitchell Blog - http://www.latedecember.co.uk/sites/personal/davy/ Twitter - http://twitter.com/daftspaniel Skype - daftspaniel needgod.com - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk developer discussion group. To unsubscribe, please send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe backstage-developer [your email] as the message. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk developer discussion group. To unsubscribe, please send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe backstage-developer [your email] as the message.
Re: [backstage-developer] RSS Sliders
On Wednesday 09 January 2008 15:37:41 Matthew Cashmore wrote: > That's an interesting point actually should 'useability' be part of the > developer list or is that something that should be kept to the main list? In my opinion, yes, absolutely - usability is a major part of any software system. Be it in terms of the most obvious form - the human user interface, or be it in terms of discussion of an API or even "just" the name of a thing. I could wax lyrical on this point, but I think I won't unless prompted and make 2 brief points instead:-) For example, I've been approached before at conferences about Kamaelia who've said "but this is all just concurrency - what are you doing that's new?" to which my reply has been "I'm trying to make it usable", which rather surprisingly to me surprises them. It'd probably surprise them more if I mentioned I was trying to expose the inherent fun in such systems too :-) As a result, usability of Kamaelia systems - be it the website, the documentation, the code, the approach itself, a subsystem, *is* something I view as inherently relevant. I don't think that differs for others. Michael. -- Michael Sparks, Snr Research Engineer, BBC Future Media Research & Innovation [EMAIL PROTECTED], Kamaelia Project Lead, http://kamaelia.sf.net/ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk developer discussion group. To unsubscribe, please send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe backstage-developer [your email] as the message.
Re: [backstage-developer] RSS Sliders
On 9 Jan 2008, at 15:37, Matthew Cashmore wrote: But as you say... It would be very interesting to see how many people would actually use them. I think they are great idea - but they are quite bulky, so would probably need most/all of a page of their own rather than fitting into a regular page as a feature. Whether needing to jump the extra page is going to increase or decrease the usage I don't know, as opposed to being an ignored feature .cf Virgin Radio. That’s an interesting point actually – should ‘useability’ be part of the developer list or is that something that should be kept to the main list? I think it should be part of this list - focussed feedback is probably more useful prior to a wider review on the main list. f - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk developer discussion group. To unsubscribe, please send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe backstage-developer [your email] as the message.
Re: [backstage-developer] RSS Sliders
As this is the developer list I¹d like to keep it quite technical here before we open it out to the main list for general feedback... However... In this instance I was really interested in this work (which came out of the last labs) because it solves a specific problem for N&R that being if you live on the border between say Cornwall and Devon how can we quickly and easily allow people to balance their content? There are much bigger plans afoot for a proper solution to that and I don¹t want to get into that at the moment and certainly not on the developer list but this struck me as a very easy and quick way to offer functionality on the WIL sites... But as you say... It would be very interesting to see how many people would actually use them. That¹s an interesting point actually should useability¹ be part of the developer list or is that something that should be kept to the main list? m On 9/1/08 15:08, "James Cridland" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > 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! :) ___ Matthew Cashmore Development Producer BBC Future Media & Technology, Research and Innovation BC5C3, Broadcast Centre, Media Village, W12 7TP T:020 8008 3959(02 83959) M:07711 913241(072 83959)
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-developer] RSS Sliders
I like it! Pretty cool stuff - might use it on Mood News! When /how are you planning a release? Davy -- Davy Mitchell Blog - http://www.latedecember.co.uk/sites/personal/davy/ Twitter - http://twitter.com/daftspaniel Skype - daftspaniel needgod.com - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk developer discussion group. To unsubscribe, please send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe backstage-developer [your email] as the message.
RE: [backstage-developer] RSS Sliders
That's rather handy. :D Seems to work just fine in Opera Kestrel too. My only suggestion for (a minute) improvement would be a toggle to progressively display WIL and News as opposed to interleaving them WIL/News/WIL/News (some strange people - like me - prefer grouped, even if you can already adjust the amount display from each category). Good job guys! _ From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of neil Sent: 08 January 2008 15:17 To: backstage-developer@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: [backstage-developer] RSS Sliders We've been developing a prototype interface element for the BBC which we'd like to release to the Backstage developer community for feedback and improvements. http://projects.hinterland.nu/bbc/sliders It's a simple slider widget which allows for four RSS feeds to be mixed down into a single list. Two sliders are used, the first to mix two pairs of feeds into two lists, and the second to mix the two lists together. .. The focus is on the BBC website's 'Where I Live' section, and the aim is to allow users to easily choose a balance of News and Local Features, as well as balancing the mix between two counties. Stories are given a value based on their order within the feed, and as the slider moves across, low value stories from one list drop off, to be replaced by high value stories from the new list. 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? .. The application is in two parts, a Perl script which consumes RSS feeds (using XML::FeedPP) and generates an embedded JSON array containing the stories from all four sources and their rank. Secondly there is a Javascript function to combine and generate the list(s) visible on the page. Since the time course of 'News' and 'Local Features' differ so widely [news changing by the minute, features dating back weeks] it was not possible to elegantly rank the lists strictly on their publication date - instead we chose to simply score them according to their rank position in the original feed. In this prototype the source feeds are hard-coded into the script - however this could easily be changed to use an external list. Unfortunately the BBC does not have a very RESTful interface to their local features XML, with no consistency in the URL format there is no simple programatic way to access all the BBC regions.
[backstage-developer] RSS Sliders
We've been developing a prototype interface element for the BBC which we'd like to release to the Backstage developer community for feedback and improvements. http://projects.hinterland.nu/bbc/sliders It's a simple slider widget which allows for four RSS feeds to be mixed down into a single list. Two sliders are used, the first to mix two pairs of feeds into two lists, and the second to mix the two lists together. .. The focus is on the BBC website's 'Where I Live' section, and the aim is to allow users to easily choose a balance of News and Local Features, as well as balancing the mix between two counties. Stories are given a value based on their order within the feed, and as the slider moves across, low value stories from one list drop off, to be replaced by high value stories from the new list. 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? .. The application is in two parts, a Perl script which consumes RSS feeds (using XML::FeedPP) and generates an embedded JSON array containing the stories from all four sources and their rank. Secondly there is a Javascript function to combine and generate the list(s) visible on the page. Since the time course of 'News' and 'Local Features' differ so widely [news changing by the minute, features dating back weeks] it was not possible to elegantly rank the lists strictly on their publication date - instead we chose to simply score them according to their rank position in the original feed. In this prototype the source feeds are hard-coded into the script - however this could easily be changed to use an external list. Unfortunately the BBC does not have a very RESTful interface to their local features XML, with no consistency in the URL format there is no simple programatic way to access all the BBC regions.
