The iPlayer, no don't do a runner, seriously, it's taken over the mailing list, dominated our discussions and is something that many members of the backstage community care an awful lot about. So do we.
We all know the questions. Why don't we stand up to the rights holders? Why do we insist on using DRM? Why did we sign a secret deal in blood with Microsoft?
So we finally decided that these questions needed answers, and the only person to talk to was the boss.
We present 26 minutes of questions and answers about iPlayer, DRM and cross platform support with Ashley Highfield, Director Future Media & Technology.
In this frank discussion we cover the DRM issues, explain that iPlayer isn't a Microsoft only party and ask why didn't we use a non propriety solution.
Listen to the file here
Or get the file directly from BlipTV under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike licence in , or .
As some of you may know we sponsor MiniBar – a fantastic event run by Christian Ahlert which happens every month out in East London.
From the -
MiniBar is a social evening in East London which offers people a chance to snaffle some free beer while discussing p2p, Creative Commons, web applications, social networking and general Web 2.0 (3.0) mayhem & fandango.
This month I went along with the recorder and we made a podcast.
You can download it from here
The direct link to the MP3 is here
Feel free to grab the file, re-encode and make available to your hearts desire.
We're really pleased to announce the 2008 Â鶹Éç Innovation Labs.
This year sees some changes to the way the process works, but also widens the geographical area to include Wales and the West Midlands. The Innovation Labs will run in;
Scotland
North West England
North East England
Wales & West Midlands
The biggest change you'll see is that at the end of each lab, those companies who win commissions will know how much they are being commissioned for before they leave, within one week of the lab they'll have agreed milestones for delivery with their commissioner, and within two weeks the PO will be raised.
We're really lucky this year to have some fantastic briefs; for the first time as well as reading about the them on this site and coming to the - you can also watch a short video of each commissioner talking about their area of responsibility and what they want to get from labs this year.
So what's next? The most important thing to do right now is to make sure you register and come along to the These one day events will make sure that you know exactly what's going on where, and will give you the edge you need to make sure your application is successful.
If you have any questions about the process at all, or you want to chat through your idea then please feel free to
Facebook applications are hot at the moment and this one is even on my very tight list of application. Great work Ben Smith, but I'm sure the entries above are certainly not for me. Anyway Ben has more details...
Find friends (or, currently, name-sakes of your friends) that have been on Â鶹Éç TV, what programmes and when they were aired. Currently, this finds the first TV programme's 'contributor' to match your friend's name, through the Â鶹Éç Programme Catalogue (https://catalogue.bbc.co.uk).Future developments will involve giving you the choice of all possible matches to identify from and integration with IMDB (https://www.imdb.com).
This is a presentation summing up the two conferences I went to recently. There's nothing secret in the presentation so I posted it to slideshare for sharing with the community. Hopfully it will be useful to others, along with the general internet.
The future of webapps this year was a giant affair, not only had it out grown the Kesinginton town hall but it had also moved across town to the state of the art Excel conference centre. The Excel located in East London would be the new home for the 1000+ people conference now. THe Carson's have really stepped up the conference game and rolled out a conference with 3 official tracks (developer, business and sponsor), unconference room and this was contained within a large Expo.
I'm really pleased to announce the new totally developer focused mailing list.
For the moment you need to interact with it via email, but the new site will enable you to subscribe and un-subscribe via a GUI – similar to the main list now.
The new list is called backstage-developer you subscribe by sending an email to
With either (in the body of the message leave the subject blank)
subscribe backstage-developer [your email]
Or
unsubscribe backstage-developer [your email]
It works in exactly the same way as the main backstage list but we’re going to take a much firmer view on what is discussed there – the developer list will be completely developer focused, and by that I mean messages along the lines of ‘Where’s the Weather API stuff?’ or ‘I’ve just built X give it a go’.
As I’m sure you all know majordomo is a little, well, old, and set in its ways – when you send your email send it in plain text only and avoid using any sig lines.
Once you’ve sent your mail you’ll get a confirmation email back from with a link to confirm that you wish to join. (you may want to check your spam folders for this email).
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