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16 July 2008: Food, glorious BBC food

By chance I noticed the an interesting case of BBC related database overload. And it’s in the form of recipe databases. Boy, is there a lot…

23 April 2008: Doctor Who and Dilbert feeds

As I mentioned recently, the BBC’s Doctor Who website recently redesigned and moved their XML feed, without putting a redirect or message in the old feed to point people to the new one.

20 April 2008: So long beeb.net

Launched in 1999 as freebeeb.net, and later renamed beeb.net, BBC Worldwide’s ISP slowly and quietly kept chugging along. By 2001 it had entered profitability with 140,000 users. And it’s been around ever since. But this year will be its last - on the 30 June 2008, Beeb will close down and be no more.

7 April 2008: When you move house, you tell people where you’re moving to. Now why don’t websites do the same?

One of the wonders of having XML feeds is that you can keep up to date with what’s going on quite nicely from one place instead of having to go through hundreds of different bookmarks, remembering what you’ve seen and what you’ve not. And it’s something more and more sites are now realising that they should provide, and which will bring them traffic.

21 March 2008: Return of the lost BBC code

Recently finding the BBC mailing list subscription page I coded in 2001, reminded me of another blog post I’ve been meaning to write. Some time ago, I telneted in to one of the internal web servers at work where I had my own webspace years ago and which I occasionally still use for various bits and pieces. A lot of my old code is still there, mostly templates for long defunct CGI scripts. However one particular page caught my eye.

18 March 2008: Lost BBC coding found

It’s coming up for five years since I coded my last web page for the BBC, and very little of my work remains. This is probably a good thing given the code isn’t exactly what people these days would be impressed by.

2 March 2008: Eurovision 2008 - good grief, the UK’s picked a decent song!

Whilst sitting down to a nice, homemade green Thai curry last night, we happened to catch the second half of “Eurovision: Your Decision” last night which meant I got to see a strange woman in a corset and an extremely short skirt, Michelle Gayle and Andy Abraham battle it out in front of Terry Wogan sat on a throne in a programme format which was clearly designed to try and stop the UK public from voting for some diabolical crap again.

26 February 2008: Bespoke vs Off-the-shelf - watching the BBC blogs comment problems

Blogs for me are a great way for the BBC to communicate with the people who use, and pay for, its services and it’s great that they’ve been a success. Indeed, probably too much of a success if the continuing comment problems are anything to go by. The problems in trying to put up a single comment are, frankly, terrible. Timeouts… Server problems… You’re not even sure if your comment has even got through to the server backend half the time.

11 February 2008: Someone give the Daily Mirror a calculator

There’s a piece in the Daily Mirror today, in outrage about the fact that apparently (and there’s no source quoted, so who knows how true this is)…

19 December 2007: Rambling reminiscences of building the BBC’s website

Anyone reading the BBC Internet Blog will have noticed a flurry of posts celebrating the 10th aniversary of bbc.co.uk. All the reminiscing has, to be honest, got me reminising about my old memories of working on the BBC website

19 December 2007: All aboard the gravy train to Salford!

On Tuesday, the front page of the BBC staff newspaper, Ariel, was devoted to the relocation package on offer for staff affected by the BBC’s move to Salford. Basically it’s quite a good package in some respects, mainly because the one thing the BBC is not going to want to do is start several departments completely from scratch when they move them from the glamorous world of London’s W12.

11 December 2007: The new BBC Homepage - a bit like myBBC then

Lots of people have blogged about it - with comments ranging from celebrating about the lack of the bbc.co.uk logo, and celebrating that lovely retro clock. So here’s my bit.

30 November 2007: Salford

It was June 2004 when the BBC’s move of several departments from London to the north west was first announced. The department I worked for (and still work for) was one of those highlighted.

27 November 2007: Everything Comes Up Rose’s

With the latest series of Doctor Who getting ever closer, news is creeping out about cast and enemies. Like this little one today - according to BBC News, Billie Pipper is popping back for three more episodes.

6 November 2007: iPlayer is streaming! And cable! And more!

I’m probably paying far more attention to the whole iPlayer saga than my sanity allows, but I do find some of the comments interesting.

5 November 2007: Foie Gras? In the BBC canteen? You’ll be lucky!

There’s an interesting article about complaints in the BBC staff canteens, in the Sunday Telegraph.

2 November 2007: BBC Internet Blog

Many many many many years ago (well okay two and a half years ago), I wrote something on this blog about the whole work/blog thing and how it would be nice to be able to talk about work projects on a proper, BBC hosted work blog. A proper engagement between the BBC and its audience on all sorts of things. To discuss why certain things were done the way they were. To talk about how it all fits together. To say “Whoops!” when things went wrong.

29 October 2007: BBC iPlayer - why DRM?

Ever since the BBC’s iPlayer’s TV programme download service launched in beta format a few months ago, its use of digital rights management has been a hot topic across various parts of the internet for all sorts of reasons.

31 January 2007: BBC’s iPlayer to go beyond Microsoft XP?

As a GNU/Linux user myself, the thought of the BBC’s iPlayer being Windows XP only, wasn’t one I particularly relished. So I was particularly interested in the reports that the BBC Trust have told the BBC management that iPlayer must take a more platform agnostic approach.

18 January 2007: Your granny won’t ever use ‘Second Life’

The BBC’s Fifteen Web Principles

26 July 2006: Out and about in W12

As my job doesn’t allow me to get out of the Broadcast Centre in W12 very much, I usually take whatever opportunity I can to leave the building and visit people in their own offices.

23 July 2006: What’s the point of BBC New Media?

Tom Coates’s post, ‘Who’s afraid of Ashley Highfield’, has resulted in some comments which for me, are rather depressing reading. There’s quite a few people out there who don’t know what the department I work for, actually does!

19 July 2006: What’s one word between friends?

So it appears the department I work for will be changed from “New Media and Technology” to “Future Media and Technology”.

10 May 2006: myBBC Returns?

There I was looking through some of the entries submitted to the BBC’s homepage redesign competition thinking that many of them shared a common theme - customisation along the lines of the old myBBC which I worked on back in 2000 when I first started working for Auntie (three month contract… still there six and a half years later…. hmmm). And lo, whilst I was at a barbeque in the pooring rain, there was Martin doing a post on the reboot:bbc.co.uk blog talking about exactly the same thing.

6 May 2006: Work-Blog-Thing

In accordance with the the new BBC ‘Guidelines on Employees Personal Weblogs and Webspaces’, I am hereby informing you that I, Andrew Paul Bowden, have a personal website that includes a weblog.

30 April 2006: reboot or not to reboot

I’ve been watching reboot:bbc.co.uk (a competition launched last week for people to submit their ideas of how they’d redesign the bbc.co.uk homepage) - especially as I had (a rather small) contribution to the homepage myself.

6 December 2005: BBC and blogs

So BBC News’s first ever proper mainstream blog launched today, as Nick Robinson’s Newslog appeared, cunningly hosted on on blogs.bbc.co.uk.

18 October 2005: Success Criteria

A month ago I blogged about a project we’d launched on BBCi on Satellite where the result would be that the average user wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference between what was there before, and what was there now.

5 September 2005: Death of the Big Red Button

I’m rather saddened to hear via the old currybet.net, of the death of the bbc.co.uk Big Red Button.

30 July 2005: Button Envy

Okay I’ll admit it. I have big red button envy. I want a big red button of my own that will rush BBCi into breaking news mode too.

25 July 2005: Push The Button

What with one thing and another, Friday turned out to be a pretty hectic day at work and as such, I completely forgot about asking if the big red button, is actually big and red.

21 July 2005: A Tale Of Two Services.

The bbc.co.uk homepage has an option of a ‘big red button’ which BBC News can use to publish a news story into the main promo slot. One press of the button and it all happens in a flash. Over on BBCi, we do things a bit more manually.

12 July 2005: Auntie Goes Open Source

The BBC’s new Open Source portal went live today, giving the public a single site to look at for all the software projects that the BBC has released under various open source projects.

2 June 2005: BBC New Media brands

Having had a few similar conversations on this recently…

23 May 2005: Random BBC Strike Quotes

With todays strike at the BBC naturally being a story I’m interested in, I thought I’d keep an eye on the press and websites for some interesting quotes.

11 May 2005: backstage.bbc.co.uk has arrived

Well you didn’t have to wait long. Backstage.bbc.co.uk went into public beta today. Pretty much everything I said about opening up the News and Sport feeds to do cool things with, applies also for the plethora of feeds listed on backstage.bbc.co.uk - be it the extensive travel information available, or the Doctor Who RSS feed.

10 May 2005: Go… Do Things with RSS

A press release about RSS feeds isn’t going to set the world alight. One that starts off telling you to go off and reuse the feed in exciting ways might just.

7 March 2005: Searching The Memories

Was it really 2001 that I spent months working away on the new, amazing BBCi web search?

11 February 2005: BBC, Wedding and Complaints

One thing has to be said - the internet can be a very powerful tool for finding information. But you’ve got to exploit the medium - make the most of it. The BBC until recently has been a bit, well… traditional in its approach, but times are changing especially with the arrival of two more websites from the organisation dealing with complaints.

12 January 2005: Work and blogging

On the day that we found out about the first UK blogger to be sacked by his employer (well that we know about anyway) it’s fittingly appropiate that the hot topic on part of the BBC’s internal message boards was guidelines for BBC staff who blog about work stuff.

7 December 2004: BBC New Media and Manchester

Oh course you can never say never. Who knows what the future may hold - especially in five years time. But there are times you have to think about that future. And right now, it doesn’t matter what the BBC says or does. I don’t want to go back to Manchester.

25 October 2004: Bush House - a life in broadcasting

I love Bush House and I will miss it when we leave.

2 April 2004: Top Grades.

The news that Michael Grade will be the next chairman of the BBC was (as has been reported by the media) welcomed by most of the staff at the BBC.

1 February 2004: Advert from the staff of the BBC.

It was perhaps the biggest example of the BBC staff ‘making it happen’. A full page advert in the Daily Telegraph yesterday paying tribute to the work done by Greg Dyke, and asserting their belief that the BBC should continue to be independent, and continue to be an independent organisation that best serves the public who pay for it.

30 January 2004: Greg.

Many people will have seen the staff response to the resignation of Greg Dyke as Director General of the BBC. I like many people were completely gutted by his decision, but he made it and I respect that and his reasons for doing so

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