Day: 15 May 2005

Backstage.BBC.co.uk launches into public beta

BBC Logo

So many things happen when you go away on Holiday for one week. Yep this is kinda of late news, but that secret project which I was not really able to talk about on my blog has gone live now.

backstage.bbc.co.uk is the BBC's new developer network, providing content feeds for anyone to build with. Alternatively, share your ideas on new ways to use BBC content. This is your BBC. We want to help you play.

Taken from the about page.

Backstage is part of the BBC’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 BBC Governors response to the Graf report of BBC online makes clear:

“The BBC will support social innovation by encouraging users’ efforts to build sites and projects that meet their needs and those of their communities … The BBC will also be committed to using open standards that will enable users to find and repurpose BBC 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.

I have been aware of backstage bbc.co.uk for quite some time, but didnt take part in the closed beta due to work load. I urge everyone else to check it out and join the email discussion list which should be a friendly place for developers and designers to suggest ideas and team up with like minded people. I certainly will be on there with my designer/developer hats on.

I have to give a lot of credit to the backstage team. WELL DONE! Ben Metcalfe, James Boardwell and Tom Loosemore. Who all worked really hard to make this happen and without the concerns and conditions which could have been plagued the whole project and idea. I know lots more people were involved but these guys lived and died by this project.

Looking around so far, backstage got metioned on Channel9, Guardian Unlimited online Blog, The Oreilly Radar (cool!), Boingboing (double cool!), P2Pweblog (odd?) and even BBC News. The question still remains if they are ready for a slashdotting? Too late they already were via Stefan Magdalinski of course.

It time to crank out my Cocoon book and get working with the tons of open APIs and RSS feeds which now cover the web 2.0 landscape.

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…I come back and some torrents sites are gone?

MPAA - you can click but you cant hide properganda

So yes, I come back from a nice holiday away expecting all my TV programmes to be downloaded ready to watch through-out the rest of the week but oh no, the bloody MPAA have targeted TV torrent sites. Damm you! I use to use ShunTV and BTefnet for all my American Television fixes now I'm going to gave to look elsewhere. Some good news is that PQRT has changed to http://www.rokanova.com and http://www.seedler.org has just launched. Shame there trying to be jack of all suprnova trades, and seedler does not have rss feeds. Oh well, as Sarah says, there will be others and there are other ways to get TV shows that just these sites. It also seems BTefnet was sued according to the IRC channel. Someone left a comment, saying BT Website is currently down. Releases are on hold until we have a better understanding of the current situation. We have NOT been sued or been contacted by the MPAA! More information about the closures can be found here at Slyck or the P2P website. It looks like either http://www.demonoid.com, http://www.torrentspy.com or http://www.zonatracker.com are the places to go for TV torrents now.

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How would you feel if someone stole your IP?

Thought Thieves - short film competition

Thought Thieves is about people stealing and profiting from your creation or innovation. Think about it: how would you feel if you saw your hard work being passed off as the property of someone else? What would you do?

As I said to Dave and Miles over email a while ago, I swear, I am so tempted to enter this competition just so I can make a film which expresses the advantages of the opening your ideas to the world. IP is not a black and white issue, I very much douht many of the videos will speak in favour of opening thoughts. I could be wrong though… Honestly if I won, I would get myself a decent DV camera and then give away the rest to my previous college.
Were not the only one who noticed the thought thieves competition, NTK.net are running there own competition off the back off thought police, umm I mean thieves.

The 1400-word terms and conditions for MSN.CO.UK's strong-IP “Thought Thieves” film competition are quite the read, even if you're not the 14-17 year-old they're intended to be read and understood by and complied with in their therein bywhich entirety. Entries must be the “sole work and creation of the person submitting the film” (no sharing your precious intellectual property fluids with your cameraman, Mr Auteur); must not “use third party intellectual property rights” (no furniture, no architecture, only clouds as background); the entry form additionally specifies “Should I be selected as a finalist […] I will formally licence on terms acceptable to Microsoft, all intellectual property rights in my film and agree to waive all moral rights in relation to my film if requested to do so”. But what we made us wonder was: where exactly did Microsoft get this “Thought Thieves” idea from?
The idea that people can “steal your thoughts” is surely not original. We're hoping for a class-action by paranoid schizophrenics, who we think came up with the idea that others are stealing the very THOUGHTS FROM YOUR MIND a good few years before Microsoft started losing theirs.

http://www.msn.co.uk/thoughtthieves/
– send us a copy of your entry. We'll do prizes.
http://www.the-future-of-ideas.com/excerpts/index.shtm
– Lessig's book starts at the exact point the T&C gets ridiculous

Are you shitting me? Indeed, I love the category Copyfight put the competition under, yep IP Abuse. P2P weblog suggests the winner will end up on Bit torrent, which would be poetic justice in some odd way. There was or is some discussion on Channel 9 but its not exactly saying much we didnt know. It also seems it was slashdotted along with boingboing'ed (is that the right name for it?) at some point in the past according to Loren.
I'm sure this will not be the end of the thought police thievies.

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xbox 360 baby!

Being away on holiday without a decent connection had its disadvantages. I knew and saw the MTV preview trailer for xbox 360 online a few days before I left london and knew sometime friday all would be reveled. But it wasn't till I got back on the road and enter Devon again that i could get a decent 3g connection and get my email again. Tony sent me a email titled xbox 360 baby!

Xbox 360,

Boy oh boy!, Roll on November…………

Xenon 3.2Ghz with 3 Cores WHAT!!!!! and 512 Ram this will surely piss on the PS3 or PS4 or PS9999.

I can't wait to pre-order one.

Cheers Tony

Well well, triple core 3.2ghz cpu and 512 meg of system memory for the next xbox which is going to launch late this year. What is triple core? Well I guess its 3 xeon (my mistake from when the details were still a little short in cornwall) IBM G5 type processors sharing the same level 1, 2 and 3 cache across the whole processor board. Certainty in any case the cpu sounds quite amazing. After some time I was able to get online and check out Full coverage of everything xbox 360 at team xbox

  • Xbox 360 Watercooled
  • Microsoft's Official press release
  • Fact sheets, online specs and Peripherals details for the xbox 360
  • Nice selection of xbox 360 screenshots
  • Poster for xbox 360
  • Lots of links surrounding the launch of xbox 360
  • Microsoft's disruptive marketing researched and papered by Forrester
  • Yuk! The official website of Xbox 360
  • Engadget covers the MTV launch

    • Some under played news around the xbox 360 launch. Neon the light synthesiser by Llamasoft will be built directly in the rom of the xbox 360. Wicked stuff which I'll look forward to playing with. I actually bought some earlier light synthesisers (Trip a Tron and Colourspace) for my Atari ST all that time ago, the Atari Jaguar was the last console to see a decent light synthesiser.
    Sony Reaction to Xbox360 Unveiling could mean Playstation 3 or Playstation Cell will be released sooner that later.

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