BBC Launches APIs 249
Stefan Magdalinski writes "The BBC is opening up a slew of APIs to its content and applications via a new site, backstage.bbc.co.uk, and actively encouraging users to remix, mashup, and otherwise play with their content to create new applications.
Already there's a few cool featured apps, my own BBC News wikipedizing proxy, and a del.icio.us-enabled version of BBC News
"Use our stuff to create your stuff" is their slogan. Could a commercial broadcaster ever take a step like this?"
Missing Link (Score:4, Insightful)
2. ???
3. Profit!!!!
Terms & Conditions:
4. The BBC may edit, amend or change the BBC Content that appears on the backstage.bbc.co.uk site at any time at its discretion. The BBC also reserves the right to modify or discontinue the backstage.bbc.co.uk site at any time.
Re:Missing Link (Score:2, Funny)
Define profit (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Define profit (Score:2)
Re:Define profit (Score:2)
Re:Define profit (Score:2)
Contrast with PBS in the United States, which is paid for (and therefore largely controlled by) a combin
Re:Define profit (Score:2)
When I lived in the UK I didn't know one single person (apart from my parents - which doesn't count) who paid the license fee!
The BBC even had vans with detection gear that would prowl the streets like Daleks looking for people like me and my friends who were watching Monty Python for free!
Re:Missing Link (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Missing Link (Score:2, Informative)
Still, the main goal in the BBC Charter is to distribute information rather than to make money, so Step 3 still doesn't apply.
Re:Missing Link (Score:4, Insightful)
If they were government funded there wouldn't have been all the fuss over BBC vs Government during the whole Iraq thing.
Not so. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) is funded from consolidated revenue, and they still had a spat with the government apropos Iraq (though not as big a spat was the BBC did).
Their independence results instead, it from the fact that each of these broadcasters is formally an independent corporation. Of course the question of funding, whether out of consolidated revenue or via a licensing 'fee,' given governments some leverage over these organisations. Additionally, at least in the case of the ABC, appointments to the board (as with judges to the bench) are made by government. In Australia at least, the government, as a matter of convention and honour, has tradtionally resisted making overtly politcal appointments or using funding cuts as a punishment for criticism. Unfortunately given the international Retreat of Democracy this seems no longer to be the case.
Re:Missing Link (Score:4, Insightful)
Some people are never happy...
What is wrong with them wanting con (Score:2)
Not exactly. It's fairly natural to want to defend this, but you have to look at it from all sides. They're giving you components to make stuff with, but then saying that, no matter what you build or how important it is, we may simply change our minds at any time, ruining everything you've done.
It may seem like their perogative to do so, but the BBC is a publ
Re:Missing Link (Score:2)
1- socially skilled people, people who spend more time on their look, attitude and meeting skillz than their thinking, will be able to profit from people who spend most of their time trying to find solutions to problem but are bad at selling them?
2- you have an idea that will solve energy problems around the world, onto which you spent years thinking and sorting your ideas out and evaluate them to finally come up with the right solution but since
Re:Missing Link (Score:2, Insightful)
4. The BBC may edit, amend or change the BBC Content that appears on the backstage.bbc.co.uk site at any time at its discretion. The BBC also reserves the right to modify or discontinue the backstage.bbc.co.uk site at any time.
and what web service, especially free ones, don't have a similar clause in them?
Re:Missing Link (Score:4, Interesting)
Now, what's to prevent script kiddies, or heaven forbid, more knowledgeable malware writers, from coming up with new means to zombify your computer to add to the growing pool of spam gateways, ddos relays, or simply an all out porn repository?
I propose the domain, mal.icio.us for exactly such acitivities.
Solomon Chang
Re:Missing Link (Score:2)
1. Use our stuff to create your stuff
2. Sell to Google
3. Profit!!!
Re:Missing Link (Score:2)
Re:Missing Link (Score:2)
Universal Streamer (Score:5, Insightful)
Will content trump market penetration?
Re:Universal Streamer (Score:2)
I think that is the case with all information related products and services. There is a saying - "content is the king" and for very good reason. A good example could be Xbox vs Playstation earlier on. Most people were not eager to jump on Xbox bandwagon util they saw games like Halo, Doom start rolling out. So I think it is safe to say that content will determine market penetration.
Re:Universal Streamer (Score:2)
I for one won't touch streaming content produced by that pair of bastards
Re:Universal Streamer (Score:3, Interesting)
If this codec gets wide enough use in Europe, it could make Microsoft and Real take a more open approach to their codecs.
I know Real has already made some moves and they are to congratulated. But something that would make video streaming available across all platforms seems like a long way off.
wait, hold up, what? (Score:5, Funny)
-truth
Would this ever happen without the licence fee? (Score:5, Interesting)
Jolyon
Re:Would this ever happen without the licence fee? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, I'm sure the founding fathers are turning over in their graves at the idea of an American volunteering to pay a British tax, but then the founding fathers would understand if they had to watch the WB...
Re:Would this ever happen without the licence fee? (Score:2)
Get cable. Then you'll have (a) more than the network programming, such as the quality original series' on HBO, Discovery channel, History, channel, etc., and (b) the BBC channels (in many areas).
Yeah, I'm sure the founding fathers are turning over in their graves at the idea of an American volunteering to pay a British tax, but th
Re:Would this ever happen without the licence fee? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Would this ever happen without the licence fee? (Score:2)
Re:Would this ever happen without the licence fee? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Would this ever happen without the licence fee? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Would this ever happen without the licence fee? (Score:2)
no, it's a licence (Score:2)
Re:Would this ever happen without the licence fee? (Score:4, Interesting)
I barely watch TV at all, but I'm happy to pay the TV license to fund the BBC. For all the (naive) /. belief in the "free market", and sniggering about the silly "socialist" "tax" on TV in the UK, I seriously challenge anyone to convince me that the BBC would do as much cool stuff as it does if it had to be fully commercial. Want proof? Look at ITV and Channel 5. Terrible. The BBC is bad enough due to even having to compete in the commercial marketplace - daytime/primetime schedules on BBC1 and BBC2 TV have been dragged down into the same wall-to-wall "reality TV" / soap-opera shite and are barely better than the garbage on the commercial stations. But even if the TV gems like Alan Partridge and The Office dry up, at least they still do stuff like amazing David Attenborough documentaries, a fantastic online resource, some truly great stuff on their radio, developing free (Free?) codecs. I don't think any of that would happen, at least not to the same extent, if they were "just another commercial TV station".
Re:Would this ever happen without the licence fee? (Score:2)
Re:Would this ever happen without the licence fee? (Score:2)
It seems to be implicit in your comment from its absense that if you want counter-proof, you need only look at Channel 4. BBC these days (especially BBC1 and BBC3) is full of tired old Property development and child rearing reality shows. While Channel 4 isn't much better in prime time, they do tend to be the ones who take the risks in new drama, documentaries later on at night and my favorite, the 3 minute slot for amateur short films/mini-documentaries after the new
Re:Would this ever happen without the licence fee? (Score:2)
Re:Would this ever happen without the licence fee? (Score:2)
And yet look at Channel 4.
The content is as good, if not better, than the BBC. There are only a couple of soaps, the news is presented in more depth and with less bias. The Science strands are not as dumbed down as Horizon (and do check out Dr Tatiana).
They are also alot more pioneering, reality TV came first to C4, they have a welsh station, they showed Anatomy for Beginners.
I dont know why C4 are so good, but I thinks its probably mostly that they have to have a b
Re:Would this ever happen without the licence fee? (Score:2)
The moral dubiousness of coercive TV/radio funding (Score:2)
Some claim [kpftradio.com] that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting has been a homogenizing force, squashing diversity in true grassroots broadcasting. How is it any better for the CPB to use its federal funding to monopolize community broadcasting th
Re:Would this ever happen without the licence fee? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Would this ever happen without the licence fee? (Score:3, Insightful)
Saying the TV license is a pretty good deal implies that you have a choice whether to pay it or not. It's fundamentally anti-freedom to be FORCED, by LAW to pay for programming that you don't even watch just because you own a TV.
No one else sees this? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills...
Re:Would this ever happen without the licence fee? (Score:3, Insightful)
But you want to say they're slightly higher, and you compare this to a government imposed tax that no one has a choice not to pay because you personally feel that the tax is a good deal for you, since you happen to like what the government does with the money they take fr
Where's the Monty Pythonizer? (Score:5, Funny)
Customer: Excuse me, I would like to complain about this Windows Security Update what I downloaded just yesterday.
Shopkeeper: Oh yes, a great Windows Update! Beautiful plummage.
Customer: The plummage don't enter into it! The problem is that this Windows Security Update is dead.
Shopkeeper: No, it's just resting! It will hop up any minute and dance around destroying viruses.
Customer: This Windows Security Update would not dance around even if Linus Torvalds himself gave it CPR!
Crow T. Trollbot
Re:Where's the Monty Pythonizer? (Score:3, Funny)
Don't you mean Crówt, son of Trollbot, son of Thorgard, son of Geernon, son of Erik from Valdalesc, son of Arval Gristlebeard, son of Harken, who killed
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I want the Dalek controller... (Score:2)
if (target)
Dalek_exterminate(target);
Re:Where's the Monty Pythonizer? (Score:2, Funny)
Further Proof... (Score:5, Interesting)
Sorry, but that is just plain wrong. (Score:2)
Now, I watch my share of telly including a lot of American shows, Friends, ER, Simpsons, StarTrek.
We get some good stuff from the BBC. But a lot of guff too.
Why-o-why did the BBC have to pay millions, for example, to get a sports show (Saturday night footie) when the same footie was already on TV on a commercial station.
Tell me how that sparks creativity - other than some £10 million footballer having to find cre
Re:Sorry, but that is just plain wrong. (Score:2)
Re:Further Proof... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Further Proof... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Further Proof... (Score:2)
Hell, I still do it, and I've been out of the military a while.
Re:Further Proof... (Score:3, Informative)
Long term however, the biggest problem I see is the R&D move to Manchester. They'll lose a lot of R&D engineers, which would be bad, maybe even fatal for the department. TBH the BBC could pay Murdoch for a studio and aupport to run a ne
Re:Further Proof... (Score:2)
Re:Further Proof... (Score:2)
Re:Further Proof... (Score:2)
PBS next? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not likely, but what about PBS doing something similar to what the Beeb is doing? There are other non-commecial broadcasting entities around the world which could do similar things.
Re:PBS next? Never! (Score:2)
Extract from the Api (Score:5, Funny)
getMovie returns a stream of data, if a movie called movieName exists, null otherwise.
Stream getAd()
getAd must be called before every call to getMovie. Otherwise, your computer explodes.
From time to time, a call to getMovie is forwarded to a call to getAd.
Re:Extract from the Api (Score:4, Funny)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Extract from the Api (Score:2)
Funny, but it's worth mentioning that the BBC have no ads on their TV channels, radio stations or website
Last time I checked, there were ads on BBC World.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Extract from the Api (Score:2)
Re:Extract from the Api (Score:2)
How about programs like Johnathon Ross
Oh, and does anyone know who gets all the money from BBC m
Re:Ads on the BBC (Score:2)
Re:Extract from the Api (Score:2)
Re:Extract from the Api (Score:2)
World (theoretically) doesnt get a penny from the license fee. In practice it's hard to see how that works as it's supported as an intergral part of the news facilities in TVC, and sky have complained about sharin
Re:Extract from the Api (Score:2)
Sadly BBC TV has started to show lots and lots of advertising. Admittedly this is for its own programs but it's being done in the manner of all advertising and it's still really irritating (not on the scale of Sky irritating I'll grant you but still irritating.)
And yes it is me who complains weekly to the regulator about it
Sorry but if I'm paying for a TV service I expect it to be shown without advertising. If you're advertising at me I'm not going to pay for it.
Th
Re:Extract from the Api (Score:2)
I'm in a biting mood tonight.
Wouldn't a communist regime require equal treatment of the workers. So, no £100k execs, but all the workers - down to the toilet cleaners - getting equal.
If that was the case, I'd be alot happier about paying my license fee. Last I heard, the DirGen gets about £400,000/$750,000 (Greg Dyke got about a half-million just for leaving!) whilst the lowest paid get about £12k/$23k.
That most certainly is
Wonder if more will follow (Score:2)
Automatic slashdot stories (Score:4, Funny)
Ofcourse, generated stories will be rejected if it does not contain certain keywords or dupes. So I propose combining this with Slashdot random story generator [bbspot.com]
Hmm (Score:3, Interesting)
Doesn't this violate wikipedia's trademark?
Re:Hmm (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, wiki seems to becoming a verb like google at this rate.
I see so many wiki-ish links all over the place nowadays it's hard to tell which are actually using wiki, and which are just wiki-like.
Coding style... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Coding style... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Coding style... (Score:2)
Oh the irony... (Score:2, Informative)
It's all well and good being standing up for these sorts of things, just so long as you adhere to those standards too.
Checking out the authors' website shows an abundance of links that are not underlined. Ah, the irony.
Kicking the BBC is too easy - you really don't come across as all that revolutionary by laughing and pointing at the mistakes they make. So let's give a huge *well done* t
OT, but closely related question (Score:2)
Re:OT, but closely related question (Score:2)
OGG/Vorbus (Score:3, Interesting)
(I recall stories about them developing one)
Sexy (Score:2, Funny)
Want to grab a market (Score:3, Insightful)
Commercial problems... (Score:5, Interesting)
As one who work in a commercial news website; nope. We offer simple feeds to private non-commercial sites that wants to have out 10 latest news headlines. But other than that, it would be like handing out gold over to the competition. Besies, we want people to visit our site. Not get all the goodies on other sites.
Now, a state-run actor can do this, because their mraginal loss is approx. zero. We have a state rune broadcaster in Norway and they SUCK. I hate them with a passion, because thei charge the license fee and give us crap back. If there was an option to pay to the BBC and only get BBC programming to my TV, I'd do it in a heartbeat. NRK (the state broadcaster) has so much crap, I don't have the concistence to pay for it. So I don't have a TV.
BBC is cool. they plan to make most of their archives available for the public free. Here we have out of copyright works DRMed in Windows Media DRM and published for a fee by the film board. How retarded is that? Do you want to see a clip from your state broadcaster produced comedy show that YOU financed through license fees? Cough up 5 dollars pr 1/2 hour, scumbag, and take this Media Player DRMed file.
God, I hate them. No wonder they fail misreably in the internet sector, even while having the HUGE advantage f bein a state broadcaster.
Re:Commercial problems... (Score:2)
If they're puttin out shows in runic, it's no bloody wonder they're no good.
Wiki (Score:2)
Appreciation of the BBC (Score:3, Interesting)
We do get a lot of American programs here and you start to think that the grass is greener. Then you actually watch an American channel and realise that most of the 40 minute program is made up of adverts. I was amazed the first time I saw an American channel. The titles started and then we went straight into an advert break. What!!. Talk about teasing you. You then watch 10 minutes of the actual program, which isn't bad, then you get the next ad break. You finally watch the last part of the program, which doesn't end with the titles but with another ad break. The titles then come after the ad break!?!
Any hoo. The BBC website is always my first port of call for news, sport etc...; after Slashdot of course
What is next after RSS? (Score:2, Insightful)
Do you ever get the feeling that when a site finally puts up an RSS feed, they are saying 'Look, we now have a feed. Have at it folks. That's it on our end. No need to innovate further." In contrast, the BBC is not just giving out more feeds for RSS readers: they are giving components for creating applications.
I work at Serence, a company that for the last th
Collaborative Tagging (Score:4, Funny)
For example, the tags for Malcolm Glazer's takeover of Manchester United football club [headshift.com] are currently given as:
"utd wanker wanker asshat asshat utd beard"
It's actually a great idea, but perhaps a little more tweaking may be in order.
Re:*Free* (Score:2)
Parent is troll (Score:4, Funny)
plus it's not just a TV license, it's for radio too.
plus if you were really an "English man" you'd probably realise that it's one word.
Re:*Free* (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:*Free* (Score:2)
I now consider it a bargain.
Re:*Free* (Score:5, Insightful)
The BBC license fee is one of the best investments you'll ever make. Where else can you be ensured of an impartial independent information channel with consistently high quality output imparted through channels so diverse you probably haven't heard of half of them. I'm sure you'll be ecstatic when the entire gamut of television in the United Kingdom runs from the Celebrity Wrestling to Footballer's Wives. Personally I'd prefer to keep programs such as the Power of Nightmares [bbc.co.uk] and The Office [bbc.co.uk] while supporting high quality radio and fantastic web services. All for £10, or $20 a month.
People like you amaze me.
Ho ho ho (Score:2)
Re:commercial stations are already on the band wag (Score:2)
Actually, they do get a share of the TV licence.
Would be interesting to see outside of England though.
It's available in all parts of Britain, not just England.
TWW
Re:commercial stations are already on the band wag (Score:2)
Actually, they do get a share of the TV licence.
Umm, no C4 don't get any money from the license fee. While they're a public organization like the BBC and unlike ITV and C5, they have to survive solely on commercial revenue.
This wasn't always the case however - in the past C4 was subsidized by ITV - if C4 made losses then the ITV companies would make up for the losses, but that link was severed several years ago. But at no time did C4 ever recieve license fe
Re:BBC vs Commercial (Score:2)
Come on! BBC news is excellent. Name me a better news provider.
Re:BBC vs Commercial (Score:2)
I'm sure there are people who'd spring to the Beeb's defense with lots of "j00 sUck"-type comments, however, I do know several people who ask why they should continue funding an allegedly public service that unf
Re:BBC vs Commercial (Score:2)