TV listings competition extended
We’ve decided to extend the deadline for the to Monday 3rd October 2005. If you aren’t a member of the (and haven’t been following the discussion), read on to find out more:
Extended entry date
It sounds like many of you have (quite understandably) been enjoying the sunny weather and taking a break away from your screens... which has made Monday’s deadline for the competition pretty difficult to meet.
I’m therefore pleased to announce that we will be extending the competition to Monday 3rd October 2005.
TV-Anytime format
A number of people have also told us that they have found the TV-Anytime feeds we have been providing a wee bit too difficult to parse and include into their competition entries.
There is an open source Java parser for TV-Anytime but I’m aware many of you are not building your prototypes in Java. With this in mind, I'd like to extend the competition to include any other third-party UK TV listings data you would like to use in your prototype, not just our ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ TV-Anytime feed.
Competition scope
Don’t forget your entry can present TV programme data in any way you like. We're aware that the value to you of the traditional TV schedule is rapidly decreasing in an ever more "on demand" world - and part of the his competition is to begin to think about how individual programme information can be presented and promoted in a schedule-less environment.
We really do want to see all of the ideas have. And just to reiterate here some (but not all) of the areas of innovation you might want to look at:
Combine schedules with web services:
- Such as del.icio.us, technorati, etc
- Open up each programme to external annotation
Focus on genres:
- Such as all films, comedies, etc
- Signed or subtitled programming
- Vertical searching by genre
Introduce a social element to a schedule or channel:
- Bookmark programmes
- Rating/voting
- Collaborative filtering
Alert, client-push, etc:
- SMS
- Email broadcasts
- Desktop reminders
Integrate the data with existing ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ feeds or external sources:
- Such as IMDB
- Wikipedia
- Google Video, Yahoo Video
Create new ways of tagging programmes:
- Align with existing tagged web-based content
So to confirm: you've now got until Monday 3rd October 2005, you can use any TV listings source you like and we are interested in any ideas you have - not just EPGs!
Finally, we'd be happy to send the winner a desktop computer of same value instead of a rackmount server, if that's what they want (we'll ask the winner). And don't forget we've also still have a couple of USB MP3 players for two runners up.
Good luck with your entries
Ben
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