BBC backstage access

12May2005 [webprog]

the BBC is opening up access -- their new Backstage feature allows developers to access a whole lot of BBC information and reincorporate (buzzword:Remix) the info into their own work... There are already some example of how it's being used on the site - one guy linked it in with links to Wikipedia for further info on key concepts.

Why do I care? Because this is a major media organisation (well yeah they're government owned and funded which makes this easier) that's opening up to the web community - making them a content provider rather than a portal...

Between this and RSS we're going to see plenty of rearranging in the ways people consume media... All of which is a good thing

(And on that topic I've just added an RSS feed for little ?bits onto my site -- linky is on the left) For people who don't know what RSS is nor how to use it, your best bet is to use Firefox (another linky on the left!), which has 'Live Bookmarks' -- if you visit my site in Firefox a little icon will appear on the bottom-right, you can click it and select 'Subscribe...', then it adds what looks like a Bookmarks (or Favorites) folder, but inside the folder are links to the 10 latest ?bits entries on my site... This is cool enough cos it lets you check if I've updated without actually visiting my site, and this is only the most simple way you can use RSS...