Travel Data On Google Maps
Takes the xml data for travel warnings and plots it onto google maps.
Archives for May 2005
Sport Mapping
This prototype allows a user to centre the map on their home town, or anywhere else in the UK, and find out which local team and which premier league team is closest.
³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ feeds for both teams will then be shown (unless a premiership club is closest, in which case only the one team is shown).
JavaScript RSS
This is basically a way to make it easier to put content on a website from RSS feeds, without vast amounts of technical knowledge.
It uses a PHP backend to output the first items from an RSS feed in JavaScript format.
Photo Mapping
I have built a mapping/photo project, in which the intent is; Users will browse the map to an exact point at highest zoom level, then get the coordinates. They will then post a photo of theirs for those coordinates, which will then be made public, linked to the location. This will allow any visitor to see places at a glance to find out if they are worth visiting, or just for a browse of some nice photos.
Less RSS
My idea: less generic RSS, more domain-specific XML (as with the travel feeds). This would open up worlds of potential for more impressive apps.
Travel OPML
We are now linking through to OPML files of the Travel data in both Tpeg and RSS formats. See more in .
Tpeg: /travelnews/tpeg/tpeg.opml
RSS: /travelnews/tpeg/rss.opml
There is stacks of fantastic content there. Have a route around [pun intended].
³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ News Archive Explorer
This prototype allows you to browse news headlines from the past. You can navigate to different days, the news articles for which are then listed in the order that they were published throughout the day. This might be useful for someone who has missed a day's worth of news, or who wants to research the events of a particular time period.
The prototype works by storing the contents of the last 50 published articles RSS feed in a database, the web page then allows you to navigate to a particular day, and view the articles.
Local news by county
Shows the local news on a Google map, split up into each county (the news is obtained using the feeds for each county).
The data is cached on the server, so it may be slightly out of date (especially as it has to be updated manually at the moment).
Travel map
This uses as Google map to show where the traffic problems and other public transport (trains at least) problems are.
The road data and other data can be viewed either on the same map or on seperate maps, and the pointers can be changed(!).
Map of ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ London Jam Cams
An interactive map showing the locations of Central London traffic cameras. You can pan and zoom the Google Map, and click on a camera marker to see the live AV feed.
Uses Gmaptrack (which uses Google Maps) to position the camera locations, and give the popup overlays showing the current camera images.
Wider pages
Not as high-tech as most of the other ideas on here, but how about utilising the white space down the right of my monitor? I can't be the only one running at 1280x1024, and using it for more content, as I mocked up, or even an integrated video player would be great!
Map of the News
A map of the news. Well that was the plan but it's not as easy as I'd have hoped to work out where a news item comes from.
The system grabs the local feeds and tries to work out where the story came from. It does this by checking for nouns in the description tag of the RSS and scanning its database of places (that map to longitude and latitude).
Uses myGmaps (which uses Google Maps) to draw the news onto the map.
Note, it tends to fail miserably at working out where a news item is from, done as a proof of concept.
Traffic Maps
Having the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ traffic information displayed on a interactive map really gives you a great feel for what's going on around the country. I think it would be especially useful if you were planning a long trip.
As a test, I hacked together a simple page which injects live traffic data supplied from the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ into Google Maps.
Obviously this prototype is lacking many features, but it's a start.
Ajax RSS News Reader
I've developed a ticker style RSS News reader that allows users to load ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ News feeds, without refreshing the current web page.
My browser based web application has been built using Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript And XML) and requires no additional plugin. RSS news feeds are downloaded, parsed and fed to the web page's DOM using built in JavaScript functions. It can be embedded as a widget on an existing web page or restyled to fill the browser window.
When I have the time, I would like to add an alternate-style-sheet menu to allow users to change the application's look-and-feel.
Freshness Highlighting
It would be nice if fresh stories could be highlighted. The effect would be subtle and possibly fade out after one or two seconds.
I check the news a couple times during the day. If a new story is added in the afternoon - drawing attention to it would be good. Link color changes already let me know which stories I have seen. This highlighting method would direct my eye to things that are fresh. The very reason I am visitng a second time during the day.
Page View Popularity
To enhance the sense of community, and allow ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ News readers to guage story quality and relevance before they even click the link - you might want to track unique page views and make the information visible.
You could show popularity by highlighting the story links. If a story is more popular, it is more intensely marked. These highlight marks...
Like Minded Linking
The first stage of this process would allow users to make a story, topic, writer, or celebrity a favorite. This favored status would be tracked to allow a reader to find the story again (boring). In the future, stories that relate to the users favorites would be highlighted for just a few seconds when a page is loaded. If a second related story is given the favorite status, a more active form of highlighting is used for future related stories.
If the user wants to share their favorites with the community great things begin to happen. At the end of an article...
News Photo Networking
This idea mixes in a little and functionality.
News images within a series of stories are related. Either the images were taken by a single photographer over the course of several days, or several different photographers take images of a single event. This idea is about the viewpoint of image takers and how the user/reader decides to classify images.
Calendar of Events
Can bbc.co.uk make a calendar of upcoming news events, sports events, State events, government & parliamentary events e.t.c. for online users to see what to look forward to on the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳. This should include events as far into the future as possible.
Streaming radio to 3G phones
Nokia smartphones now ship with a Real Audio player and 3G is easily fast enough to support audio streaming but currently no bbc .ram files play on these phones. So currently I can't catch up on my favourite shows on my way home from work which would be fantastic.
Bayesian News by Email
I'm the author of a reasonable popular open source app called phplist. My app is capable of handling RSS sources and sending out regular emails. But there's no point setting it up to send ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ news emails, because your email service is already doing that and probably even better. But then I thought, inspired by the Bayesian spam filters of Mozilla mail (that I use) why not have a go at Bayesian news filtering. I am rather impressed with the success rate of my spam filter and all of that only based on a reasonably simple algorithm. So I rather quickly whacked up a prototype site of my system, with some advanced configuration in the emails that allows tagging news stories to be "interesting" or "not interesting" which can then be fed back to the system to update the Bayesian filters, and could be used to personalise the news stories from the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳. After all, aren't we all receiving too much information anyway.
³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ News maps
We use rss feeds of the bbc to display news on maps.
We match names of countries to match the feed with locations. We will refine this so that we can do the same on a city level and can produce detailed maps (Britain, Europe Whatever we want.) The cool thing is that you can insert the map you have made on your own site by copy/pasting some HTML/javascript (try this link: https://worldmap66again.notlong.com)
Traffic News
This page let's you choose one of the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ travel feeds and shows a simplified display of the content. Now, just before you leave work, you can check the area you travel through. This is a first stab at this, just for fun! Comments, ideas etc welcome.
Language Feeds
The language feeds for Croatian and Portugueseafrica are now back up:
/croatian/index.rdf
/portugueseafrica/index.rdf
Plus we have added [or actually Ian has added - thanks Ian] Brazilian [Portuguese] to the list:
Searchable RSS Feeds
Very simple RSS search. Brings together mutiple feeds into one file, searches for keyword and stores new stories (no repeats) ready for customised feed.
Technically, the feed is read in via java.net and processed as a DOM object. I do think however it would be quicker to process this using an XSLT transform as opposed to DOM iteration.. will test and see.
Customized RSS/News Page
I think we should develop a way for people to customize the pages and rss feeds with search strings. The page/feed displays only what the user has selected.
I suppose we could store the search queries in a cookie instead of on a server. This is a very simple project which I might try to do. If you have seen the Google News customization you will see what I mean... but this is a little different.
Keyword RSS Feeds
I'd like to see ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ offer keyword-enabled RSS feeds for the best customization, which is the same thing that Yahoo already does for their news aggregate, but I'd like to get content from just ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ news feeds based on keywords.
For example, a RSS feed for "cricket" would show only those stories that relate to that keyword.
If you'd like to go one up on Yahoo, you could offer simple parameters to modify the RSS feed to make it even more personal.
For example, you could enable users to get just those stories that mention the keyword in the title, or x times in content, or have the keyword in title + content, and so on and so forth.
Also, there could be something like a "~" parameter, which could give feeds on related fields, if there would be no news stories based on the original keyword.
³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ OpenSearch Feed
How about an Opensearch compatible query and results API from the Beeb, so I can add a ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ news tab to my A9 (or alternative) syndicated/federated search page?
My Way Home
Using the travel feeds, give it a route to/from home/work (or use two postcodes and maps.google.co.uk) and it gives you RSS/SMS/email alerts when there are traffic issues on the route at specified times of day.
Finance Almanac Blog
This is an auto-updating blog that automatically posts an entry each day comprised of:
1. historical metals & ftse data from a back-end database, plus a single "on this day" entry again from a back end database.
2. RSS feeds of Yahoo Business and ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ "On This Day"
3. Autogenerated Wikipedia URL
TagSoup
My blog entry explains and points to 2 prototypes - a tech news tag soup page and a business news tag page.
Both use ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ feeds (amongst others) in combination with the Yahoo Content Analysis service which generates keywords against the content of the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ feeds.
I then use a bit of php/mysql jiggery-pokery to rank the popularity of certain phrases/keywords in order to present these two tagsoup pages:
https://www.justinflavin.com/tagsoup/tagsouprss.php
https://www.justinflavin.com/tagsoup/tagsoupfinance.php
Both pages are updated every 2 hours with some back-end cronjobs.
I've found that its a different way to browse the news headlines - rather than the headline , you're drawn to keywords.
RSS feed for Today Prog
Today Programme Listen Again page as an RSS feed - shortened titles ("Jack Straw on Attorney General's memo"?) linking to clip. Is that technically doable?
Interest Specific Feed
I myself find that the bbc news website has a mass of information and stories available - but this is a common theme where we are being overloaded with information.
I do not know about other people, but I tend to just read the news in a few specific narrow areas - but sifting through what interests me and what I find is irrelevant is time consuming.
News Radar
I would like to use the increasing integration of SatNav technologies, linked to ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ News to enable people to find the latest news about places they were travelling to or through. Imagine, you go away for the weekend to a town in the country and you get a news story about the places you pass; or you walk past Parliament and pick up the latest politics news, or walk through Leicester Square and get the latest film reviews. The best way to do this would be to have a tag on news stories that identified the GPS co-ordinates of the area they should cover, plus the distance they should 'radiate' from that point. In city centres, news wouldn't radiate far (to avoid overload) but in villages, it could cover 5 or 10 square miles.
I'd love to enrich my experiences of travelling (worldwide) by getting the latest football news when I went into a stadium or Spanish news when I went to Madrid for the weekend.
RDS for the Web
I have RDS in my car that knows the stations which maybe broadcasting useful information to my locallity, I'm suggesting RDS for the Web updating every set amount of minutes.
³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Learning: Subject Classification
It used to be the practise, at least during the eighties when I worked at one of the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳s Newspaper Cuttings Libraries, to classify all stories according to subject. Is there any attempt to classify ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ web content in this way?
If someone comes to our site (coursefinder.org.uk) looking for a GCSE in German on Tyneside, I would like to point them at all the '³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Learning' resources pertaining to GCSEs and German. I spend a lot of time looking for links :) If content were classified or tagged...
One idea would be that you could use the learndirect subject classification system, which has a fairly long pedigree, to classify ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Learning Content. So content on German Language would be coded "FK.335" German Language or just 'FK" Language
Course Subject Classifications can be found at :- https://www.learndirect-advice.co.uk/provider/standardsandclassifications/classpage/
³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ News 24 style News Reader
Build a fully customisable RSS news reader - similar to the idea by Charlie Pinder that allows a constantly updating set of news, weather, sport, business, travel, etc. This could be done by content specific devices - or by using a postcode style search for regional news and weather.
Combine the functionality of the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Road News with a route planner to get the traffic problems along your specific route.
³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ reader for Windows Media Center
A reader for digital TV on Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005.
(see https://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/mediacenter/default.mspx)
The interface works with the remote control input of XPMCE to read ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ News stories. It needs more work to correctly show the full text of the story. It would be great if there were RSS feeds to ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ radio player and ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ news video feeds so they could be selected from MCE directly. A Radio interface would be very useful as XPMCE doesn't support DAB or DTT radio.
Access to Live Cricket Scores
Whilst it is possible to view the score of cricket matches in real time, it is very difficult to get at this data programatically.
Providing a customisable RSS feed, or XML-RPC server access to real-time scores would allow us to write small apps to display the data in customised ways.
It would be great with OS X widgets!
Google UK Map with ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ News
I would like to see a ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ News overlay for Google Maps. This would also interact with the directions facility so tha tyou could see various events, problems etc in the area you intend to visit. The possibilities are endless.
Search API
For the search API, I would encourage the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ to consider the SRW/U information retrieval standard, as a way of making their service as interoperable as possible.
Have your say 'live'
Create a 'live forum', discussing the days news events, like the web equivalent of a radio phone in. Here's how you could do it: Have a page where the news is updated by RSS. Each story could then have a link to its own discussion page.
In which create a SQL database submission form (in Ruby or PHP
for example) this would mean you could delete any offensive messages. The submission form would use SAJAX to automatically post to, and update the discussion page, giving the appearance of a live discussion, and the postings will be saved.
League Tables
There are hundreds of football related websites, many of which have copies of results and/or league tables.
RSS Discussion in IPB
We have developed a system for the IPB discussion software that will automatically check selected RSS feeds and post them in a specified forum for public discussion. The link above is demonstrating this with ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ feeds on our own site.
In our community forums we found people often posted links/snippets of ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ articles for discussion, so we took this as inspiration and created a system that does it automatically.
The system will work with any valid RSS feed; we have chosen to use several ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ feeds on our own site.
³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ NEWS in Cinemas
I think it would be a fabulous idea to make the 3 minute ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ NEWS update available to project onto cinema screens so that people at the cinema (especially youngsters) who dont normally consume news & information will get the latest News from the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳.
Football Text Commentary via RSS / XML
As a football fanatic I often find myself constantly refreshing the Premiership scores on my WAP mobile desperately trying to get an update. Often it will be several minutes before the WAP page refreshes. Even the live text commentary lags a few minutes behind real time.
widget ticker
How about a widget on mac that based on an a set of user preferences can display topics of interest - weather/ stocks / news stories on a widget. If there is a pointer to how to gain acess to the API that the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ exposes I reckon I could probably write it in a weekend. Afterall widgets are just hml and css pages.
³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Ticker
I know you used to have a bbc ticker that fell out of fashion because it had a few problems and does not work well on XP ? How is this project going - surely this is a project that would fit perfectly in this model. I also think you could expand this concept to use screensavers as the bbc ticker and display stories and pictures. The screensaver bit is not too hard to write but would probably need your help to test it on xp as most of my dev is NT2K or Mac these days.
Subscribe to ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ News Stories
The ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ News RSS feeds have made it much easier to keep track of areas of the news that you're interested in. But it would be good if you could keep track of individual news stories, that is, news items which form part of a story (such as a trial, or controversy, or election).
This could be done by just having even more specific RSS feeds, and then using a news-reader to keep track of them.
³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ multi-lingual News
Currently ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ NEWS provides news in over 40 languages. Why not make that news available in all 3000+ languages around the world on the internet for any person anywhere to be able to learn any language by trying to read the news from the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳.
PodCast News
I think it would be really interesting if people were able to attach short (i.e. 30s or thereabouts) MP3s to news items, which could then get farmed into a podcast. For example, someone who is present at the location of a event, or someone who is an authority on the topic.
Essentially it would be an add-on to 'have your say', but with the added benefit of being customizable into a personal newscast.
RSS Traits Module
RSS Traits is an 2.0 module that enriches individual feed entries characteristics that can be leveraged by consuming clients and applications. Within a typical channel feed's XML payload, channel providers can define one or more taxonomies and the potential values within each and apply those values to the individual entries within that feed. Optionally, channel providers can describe to consuming clients what those taxonomies mean and how they should be presented to users.
Take a look at the provided URL for potential applications.
³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ News to Accept Trackback Pings
I thought this up a while back, but it's worth repeating in this arena.
Basically, bloggers tend to reference ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ News all the time. It would be good to be able to track all these references, and then be able to see what bloggers are saying about any one ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ news article.
³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Weather Widget
This is a request - can someone please make a weather Widget for Mac OS X Tiger based on the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳'s weather feeds rather than having to rely on the heavily US-centric example that ships?
I have not the skills, time or money to create it myself...
³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Folksonomy
Folksonomy is a grass-roots way of classifying content. It's more accessible than using formal taxonomies but it's not really clear whether it would eventually lead to a standardisation of terms.
It seems to me that the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ might be in an ideal position to assemble tags and create some coherence in all sorts of areas, for example in the categories used for news articles.
languages
Since you have a superb system to help english speakers to learn other languages, could this not be adapted to help foreign language speakers to learn english?. This would be an excellent tool for poor people all over the world. If this could be done for spanish and french speakers, you would already have hundreds of millions of potential customers.
TV Schedule Updates as RSS
The Radio Times already publishes a nice page of TV Schedule Updates :-
https://www.radiotimes.com/tvscheduleupdates/
But no RSS feed :(
Not an innovative or even very interesting suggestion, I admit.
But too useful and easy not to implement, surely?
Yours hopefully,
Delia
(no, not that one)
Image & Headline Screensaver
How about a screensaver that displays one BIG fullscreen picture every minute and the headline of the corresponding news in big letters. For a prototype use the architecture of
Jon Kossman's In-Pix (³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ News picture gallery viewer).
³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Shared tags
We have built a social bookmarking tool just for ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ News that allows logged in users to tag/bookmark stories and view related stories that other users have tagged using similar terms.
Rebotocast of ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ World News Feed
The idea is to turn the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ World New Feed, or any other ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ feed, for that matter, into a "podcast". Podcasts are about audio content, and. in this case, the content is a speech-synthesized rendering of the original text.
I've been playing around with this idea for almost a year, using Creative Commons licensed feeds. But, as I understand your Terms of Use, you guys are saying it's ok for me to do this.
If so, many thanks!
Who's in the News?
Description
This is similar to the wiki proxy, but inside out: first it extracts people, places and things from the latest news stories, (using the Lingua::EN::NamedEntity Perl module) and then tells you which news stories refer to them - the result: which people, places and organisations are making the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ news right now.
Lingua::EN::NamedEntity is far from perfect, and that's pretty much the major weakness in this prototype.
Today programme archive search
So the Today programme make their archive available, but have you ever tried finding anything in there beyond the latest broadcast? No, because you can't search it.
backstage.bbc.co.uk launches
We’re delighted to announce the launch of backstage.bbc.co.uk's public beta. This is a brave new world for the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳, so bear with us we strive to improve what we have to offer over the coming weeks and months.
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³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ News del.icio.us Tags
[Made by ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Staff]
I'd wanted to see the goodness of brought to the mainstream site.
I used a wikiproxy esque approach as displayed on
key feature being
- anyone can add tags to any article
which allows me to:
- find news articles (on bbc.co.uk/news), based on my own tagging
- search by tag, to find what other people (or I) tagged
and allows the bbc to aggregate tags across users for a given article, which can then power
- top tags for any given article (metadata, navigation)
- related articles, based on the above
- related links, via del.icio.us based on top (similar) tags
then make it all time sensitive, which leads to a "user built" edition (vs uk/world)
for extra points, extend to any page
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API Licence
backstage.bbc.co.uk
API Licence - last updated 02/02/2006
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Interactive Weather Viewer
[Made by ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Staff]
This demovelopment takes the xml data from the 'Project Storm' system and will generate a 5 day forecast, split by continent, country and city.
This could be used to feed (with obvious changes in layout / interface / auto settings etc.) plasma or lcd screens anywhere in the world, providing local information.
As long as the Flash can see the data file either FTPed locally, or to a web server (can be password protected), this could update whenever the data file changes.
This is really just an example to show how the data could be extracted/displayed. A smaller version of this could easily work on the a mobile device like a PocketPC, however, some recipients of the data file may want to make it smaller to then make available for a PocketPC/XDA etc. Another potential use could be to parse the data file on the server (with PHP, Perl, etc) and then actually generate the graphics directly on the server to deliver. This could be Flash (swf), Jpegs, Gifs or Pngs.
Data for this project is supplied by the Met Office via ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Weather.
The People's Weather
Harnessing the power of retired complainers everywhere... Why not use weather RSS feeds coupled with a desktop application and a return path to create user-generated, aggregated weather reports that reflect what's coming out of the sky where you live?
Ben Hammersley on backstage.bbc.co.uk
"backstage.bbc.co.uk isn't just a result of the unique way the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ is funded. That it fulfils a requirement of the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ charter is wholly incidental. It's actually a symbol of something much much bigger: it's laying down the gauntlet for the rest of the world. It proves the point that on the internet, hiding your content is suicide. It says that you can either open up, and we can all flourish together; or you can remain closed, and die alone."
The words of - respected technical journalist, author and esteemed evangelist for the semantic web.
Email news gateway
I dont really know if web censorship is such a big issue or not to the beeb. There seems to me to be plenty of ways to get around censorship... and here's another. To allow ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ news into places like China. Email a request to a 3rd party that isnt blocked, that grabs news stories from ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ news RSS and sends it back. Navigation by menu driven commands. A bit like ye olde compuserve but via email. The beauty of this is that you can create disposable email addresses to read the news rather than relying on regular newsletters and finding the thought police at your local cybercafe. Would anyone use it?
News Tycoon Game
Play at being Ed: build your newspaper with articles, weather, recipes, gossip, travel news, and more. Sell ads - or not. Obtain readers - or not. Compete with other paper editors for look, feel, awards, etc. Try to stop your journalists from getting drunk/ banged up. Send out your paparazzi and manage their horrific expense accounts and scoops. Build up your front page and watch it come alive with REAL news, articles and travel information! Do lunch with other players in the news canteen online, poach each others' star talent, beccome the greatest - or worst - Ed of all time.
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Might be a fun way to:
- Play at being a News Editor
- Learn basic economics of running a zine
- Learn basic economics of running accounts and managing talent
- Learn basics of 'self publishing'
- Add in user-generated content and the ability to publish your paper: you build your own (live!) personal zine site (public)
- Break potential feeling of wasting time while playing games (for those puritans out there)
How to get started
The best way to get involved is to join the email discussion list
You can participate in ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Backstage by either building an application or web-based prototype that uses ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ content or, if you have an idea to use ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ content in new ways, then write it up, preferably with some designs as to how it could 'work' and share it.
A quick seven step guide to sharing your idea or work:
1. Make sure you are happy with the terms of use of ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Backstage
2. Think of an idea to use ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ content in new ways (if you intend to build something you could always look at the ideas people have suggested)
3. If making something then find the content you want to use
4. Share your idea or prototype with others on backstage.bbc.co.uk (you'll need to host anything you build)
5. If submitting a prototype or design then please include on the site from where you are hosting a text attribution back to ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ backstage that says "supported by backstage.bbc.co.uk"
6. Tell us about it by submitting your idea or prototype
7. We'll take a look at it and assuming it satisfies all the legal niceties we'll link through to it from backstage.bbc.co.uk
We will be providing a software development kit [SDK] to make your life easier in the near future to coincide with more content coming on stream. In the meantime do let us have your feedback and suggestions on how you would like to see ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Backstage move forward via the discussion list.
Enjoy!
Doctor Who in RSS
As is only right and proper, the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ is offering a Doctor Who RSS feed which will keep you up to date with all things Tardis-related. Currently, it includes a link to most entertaining transcript of some kids' reactions to the last episode:
- ...Adam and Samuel go "wow!" when the woman's head opens up.
- Harry is agog
- Frozen puke. Harry grimaces. Amy says 'Yuk!'
Well there you have it. Kids today, etc.
See the for this feed and more.
Frequently Asked Questions
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1. Who is backstage.bbc.co.uk for?
backstage.bbc.co.uk is for individual developers and designers to using ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ content and anyone who has an for how to use ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ content in new ways. It is not for big corporates to play around with. backstage.bbc.co.uk is for non-commercial use by the little people.
2. Why is the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ 'doing' backstage.bbc.co.uk?
backstage.bbc.co.uk is part of the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳’s wider remit to "build public value" by sharing our content for others to use creatively. How do you "build public value"? One of the ways is through supporting innovation as the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Governors response to the Graf report of ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ online makes clear:
"The ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ will support social innovation by encouraging users’ efforts to build sites and projects that meet their needs and those of their communities ... The ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ will also be committed to using open standards that will enable users to find and repurpose ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ content in more flexible ways".
backstage.bbc.co.uk aims to promote innovation amongst the design and developer community: if people are able to do interesting, productive things with the content then we’d like to support them. Finally and as a useful by-product of the above, backstage.bbc.co.uk is an opportunity to identify talent in the online community.
3. What will the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ do with my ideas/prototypes? Will the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ make any claim over my work or 'steal' my idea?
When you submit your idea or prototype we will take a look at it, check it over to make sure it complies with the and/or the and and, if it does, then we'll publish the url on the Backstage website, a description of what you've done and then we will notify you that your idea or prototype is published. If there is a problem then we'll get in touch with you.
You will own the copyright in any prototype you develop and send to the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ for publication on the Backstage website. If we like it and want to use it other than in association with the Backstage website then we would have to come to an agreement with you first.
As a rule of thumb there is no copyright in an idea so it's wise to remember that backstage.bbc.co.uk is a public forum. Please don't submit any ideas you don't want other people to be able to use or build on. For more information on intellectual property rights including copyright a good place to start is .
See the , the and/or the (as applicable) for a proper run down of the legal position.
4. Why would I want to list my idea/prototype on Backstage?
There’s no conspiracy, no uber-digerati with a Grand Plan. We want to share what you do with others. By sharing and discussing your ideas and prototypes with others it hopefully encourages learning and innovation. That is why one of the is that you tell us if you make something using our content via backstage.bbc.co.uk.
5. Can I use these feeds for my own use?
Of course you can. What you can’t do is build something using the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳’s content which aims to make money. See the for backstage.bbc.co.uk
6. Are there any restrictions in what I can do? (both technical and editorial)?
Technically, there are restrictions on your use of the content. For example, we will be managing the number of times you can query the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳'s servers when using one of the APIs.
Editorially, restrictions are limited to "inappropriate use" or placement of ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ content. This would include passing ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ content off as your own, removing any identifying ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ branding, editing or changing ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ content and juxtaposing illicit content (e.g. pornographic material, offensive language, or libellous or defamatory statements)with ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ content [text, images and audio/video content]. If you are not sure if what you are planning will contravene "acceptable use" ask the discussion list before you go public and we’ll tell you what we think. It’s common sense, really.
You may not scrape the site for content - you may only use the to participate in backstage.bbc.co.uk
We need you to be sensible in your use of the content because if you’re not it could threaten your future use of ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ content on backstage and that of your peers - it’s yours so use it wisely!
7. Can I also use feeds from other sources?
Yes, please do. Feel free to 'remix' our stuff with other content to create new and interesting propositions that people will like.
8. Who hosts the prototypes and ideas?
You do. If you have no hosting have a look at some [The ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ is not responsible for the content of external internet sites nor are we recommending any from these lists]. You or and we'll list it and link through to it.
9. Can I make money from my prototype?
backstage.bbc.co.uk only supports non-commercial use of ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ content. The for ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Backstage are very clear about this. In submitting a prototype to backstage.bbc.co.uk you agree to the Terms of Use.
More specifically, you cannot charge people for being able to access ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ content through your proposition. That limits what you can do with a prototype using ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ content. So the short answer is no, you can’t make money out of your prototype if it uses ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ content. However, generic advertising such as adwords on your site where you are hosting your idea or prototype is fine, so long as it is not specifically related to your prototype, service, or idea.
However, you own the Intellectual Property rights in and to your application and nothing prevents you being able to sell or commercially licence your application and make money from it. What you can not do is sell access to any ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ content (i.e any commercial use of your application would have to be done without using any ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Content).
10. Where can I discuss my ideas/prototypes with fellow developers?
The discussion list. and you’ll be able to see what other people have said, post questions and reply to queries. Offsite is where the action is.
11. How do I remove my idea/prototype from backstage.bbc.co.uk?
If you wish to remove the link to your prototype from backstage.bbc.co.uk for whatever reason then please inform us at backstage (at) bbc (dot) co (dot) uk.
12.Why is there only a selection of ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ content on backstage.bbc.co.uk?
We only include content that we have permission to use. Much of the content within the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ has rights issues that preclude it being available on backstage.bbc.co.uk at this time. We hope to make more content available under terms that'll allow its reuse via backstage.bbc.co.uk over the coming weeks and months - including a location API and a 'best links' search API. Backstage.bbc.co.uk is constantly growing, so check back often, join and subscribe to the to receive updates.
13.How do I get involved in backstage.bbc.co.uk?
You join the ;-)
See the page on how to get started.
14. Why is backstage.bbc.co.uk a beta?
It is in 'beta' because we are trialing the service. During the trial we will be responding to feedback from users and improving the proposition. Developer networks are a new thing to the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ and as such we want to learn with 'real' live users over time. The best way to do this, we believe, is to launch as beta, so people (you!), can help pioneer the service and help us provide you with the tools, content and services you want. Whilst we're in beta the service will not be as slick, polished or complete as you might otherwise expect from the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳.
During the beta trial we will also be finding more ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ rights cleared content and making a machine readable format of it for you to use.
It's also a fashion thing. Beta seems to be the new black. However, we will be keeping it as short as possible, not for us the trend toward .
15.What should I do if I have a complaint about backstage.bbc.co.uk
Firstly, please let us know if you have a complaint via email at backstage (dot) bbc (dot) co (dot) uk, as we want to know if there is something wrong with the service or if it something we can rectify. If your complaint is more general (eg "you don't think the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ should be providing this service") then please go to the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳'s "Contacting Us" page where there are various options to feedback or complain via official channels.
16. What are the legal points I need to know in plain English?
Take a look at the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Backstage which include a basic summary of the legal position.
17. Can I use content scraped from bbc.co.uk in things I build?
No. It is against the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Terms of Use [point 3.] to scrape content from bbc.co.uk:
You may not copy, reproduce, republish, download, post, broadcast, transmit, make available to the public, or otherwise use bbc.co.uk content in any way except for your own personal, non-commercial use. You also agree not to adapt, alter or create a derivative work from any bbc.co.uk content except for your own personal, non-commercial use. Any other use of bbc.co.uk content requires the prior written permission of the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳.
The above includes scraping the site.
Where did all these prototypes and ideas come from?
There are ten plus and twenty plus already on the site for 'launch'. Most of these were a result of an internal competition we ran amongst a few of the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ developers and designers. You'll see them floating around on the . Comment on the ideas / prototypes - they'd appreciate the feedback.
