I missed this announcement towards the end of last year. Not sure yet of the significance for Spoken Word but an interesting step, especially the news that Tony will ‘develop common standards and policies which can be used across all BBC archive activities’.

‘The BBC’s Director of Archive Content Roly Keating has made his first appointment, with former BBC Controller, Internet Tony Ageh joining his team as Controller of Archive Development.

The BBC’s Archive Content team has been set up to maximise on-demand access to the world’s largest audiovisual archive on public service and commercial platforms and through external partners.

Working with Roly and colleagues across the whole of the BBC, Tony will play a key role in developing the BBC’s archive strategy, with specific responsibility for developing ways of making the archive easily understandable and accessible to users………’

Full Press Release from the BBC

Stephen Fry has recently released a set of ‘podgrammes’ available from both his blog and iTunes. They have become very popular with the podcast audience and on release will typically reach a high spot within the ‘Top Podcasts’ chart on iTunes.

Thus far the subject matter of the podgrammes has revolved around Stephen’s travels around the United States, his hatred of all types of dancing and the suffering he experienced after breaking his arm whilst attempting to board a boat in the Amazon.

The fourth podgramme in the series, though still delivered with the same wit and humour, tackles an altogether more universal and profound subject matter and one that is linked with the work of the Spoken Word Project. This subject matter is the continual struggle that the BBC faces in justifying the amount of funding that they recieve.
The podgramme outlines a speech that Stephen Fry made to a collection of broadcasting officials and politicians at Millbank in London. The BBC asked Mr Fry to speak about whether or not the licence fee should be ‘top sliced’ and share some of its funding with other television channels such as channel 4 who are percieved to be in financial trouble due to lower viewing figures brought on by such things as an increase in the number of television channels available and decreased advertising revenue.

Stephen Fry is in oppostition to this top slicing of the BBC’s funding. He does want to ensure that channel four is in a stable condition but does not believe that this stability should be at the expense of the BBC. The podgramme contains an interesting discussion of the BBC’s practices and the political and social changes that have changed and transformed the corporation into the being that we are now served by today. The podgrame is clearly presented by someone for whom the BBC is ‘deeply stitched into their being’ but regardless of this it is still gets to the root of where the BBC has been and where it is going.

The BBC Archive Trial (also sometimes called the Open Archive Project) has recently launched. The BBC will put approximately 1000 hours of selected content online as part of the full trial.

The first stage of the trial provides access to a wide range of programmes about the anniversary of independence for India and Pakistan. Many of these programmes will be of interest to our collaborators at Columbia University.

The site also contains some very interesting talking head video interviews:-

- Contributor rights - Simon Hayward-Tapp outlines why re-showing programmes is so complex.
- Why we’ve included difficult programmes - Natalie Christian explains why we have included programmes in the trial that are challenging to watch.
- The BBC television archive - Adam Lee talks about the the BBC’s changing attitude towards programme preservation.
- The BBC sound archive - Hear the “reel” story of radio with Simon Rooks

I suggest that we all at Spoken Word sign up for the trial so we are kept informed of new programmes as they go online.

The BBC has launched it’s online video service, iPlayer, that allows people to download a wide range of television programs for free from the last week. Viewers can choose from 400 hours of programs, between 60 and 70 percent of the total TV output, including hit shows as Planet Earth. The service, at www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer, is free.

A step by step guide to using the service can be found here.

The programs are stored on the computer to the BBC iPlayer Library, files will then be deleted after viewing or after 30 days. Copyright protection software prevents the copying of shows. This player only works with Windows XP, Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player 10 (or later).

Sign up for this free service here.

The BBC will launch its on-demand TV service BBC iPlayer this Friday (27th July 2007), making the software available as an open public beta for the very first time.

The iPlayer allows Windows users to stream programmes for seven days after broadcast, or download them for viewing for up to 30 days. The corporation said today it is working on distribution deals with MSN, Telegraph.co.uk, AOL, Tiscali, Yahoo!, Myspace, Bebo and Blinkx. The development of iPlayer has been beset by controversy over strategy and delays and since it was first announced three years ago, however.

The broadcaster has faced harsh criticism of the service, because it is initially only available for Windows systems, though it doesn’t yet work with Windows Vista. However, the BBC has been ordered to prioritise developing a version of the service which will work with non-Windows systems, principally Mac OS X.

Under instruction from the broadcaster’s governing body, the BBC Trust, the company must develop the service to be “platform-agnostic”, though no time-scale for such development has yet been announced. But the move to support Macs is seen as essential, the BBC confirmed.

“We are committed to making it as easy as possible to use BBC iPlayer. Developing a version for Apple Macs and Microsoft Vista is absolutely on our critical path,” said BBC director of future media and technology, Ashley Highfield.

More on the BBC iPlayer - it’s hard to argue with the Open Source viewpoint on this.

‘More than 10,000 people have signed an e-petition on the 10 Downing Street website urging the BBC to make its iPlayer available to non-Windows users.’

Full story from ZDNet

The BBC has been on the receiving end of some complaints from users of their iPlayer service, the online services that allows users watch and listen to BBC TV & Radio programmes up to 20 days after their original broadcast.

Users have complained to the European Comission that the BBC are in breach of EU anti-trust regulations because the system is currently only compatible with Microsoft technologies, the accusations against the BBC have been made by advocacy group the Open Source Consortium (OSC)

They argue that the iPlayer will force people to use and purchase Microsoft products because it will initially only work on Microsoft Windows computers. This would give the software company an unfair advantage and would be uncompetitive, they say.

The iPlayer makes use of Microsoft’s off-the-shelf Digital Rights Management (DRM) system that means the programmes are deleted after 30 days. All programmes, once downloaded, are only playable within iPlayer or using Window’s Media Player 10 or 11. The DRM also prevents them being copied to other mediums such as DVD.

A statement from the BBC read: “Our ability to deliver this open approach will be influenced by the availability of alternative DRM systems on the market. “In order to maximise public value, the BBC must balance extending access to content with the need to maintain the interests of rights holders and the value of secondary rights in BBC programming. Without a time-based DRM framework the BBC would not be able to meet the terms of the trust’s PVT (Public Value Test) decision.”

However, the OSC argue that DRM-free downloads would be in the “public interest”. “In an ideal world all DRM would be removed,” said Mr Taylor.

Read the full article here.

Thought these images of BBC World advertising their launch in the states were pretty interesting.

A trip down to Oxford awaits David and Iain at the end of May. They will be attending two meetings during the visit. The first is with representatives from Oxford University and the second may prove to be very exciting indeed.

It is with a company from Virginia named Visionary Technology in Library Solutions (VTLS) who are currently working with both Google and the University of Oxford libraries. VTLS are supplying the University of Oxford with software for the use of Fedora in a library context and in turn the Oxford library is being given a virtual makeover with the help of books digitised by Google. The partnership between Oxford and Google is of such considerable significance that Google now have offices based on the Oxford University campus.

The advent of World Book Day on March 1st of this year provided the perfect opportunity for VTLS, Oxford and Google to provide an example of the kind of work they have been carrying out. To celebrate the day the Bodleian Library displayed original letters as well as manuscripts and special illustrated editions of the classic children’s book ‘The Wind in the Willows’. However for those that couldn’t physically visit the manuscripts it was and is still possible to explore the classic story through Google Book Search where the first 1908 edition and other in-print versions have been digitised and are available to look at online.

This partnership also opens up significant possibilities for the work that the Spoken Word is involved in. Our user licence agreement with the BBC would mean that the manuscripts of work could be supplemented with rich audio and video resources. In the case of ‘The Wind in the Willows’ a user could read the manuscript and then watch or listen to various BBC adaptations ensuring that the following of the adventures of Mr Toad, Ratty and Mole become all the more vivid for future generations.

Photo Courtesy of: ConnieG

LinuxJournal has an excellent article discussing why the BBC shouldn’t adopt Windows Media as their preffered methods of audio and video delivery.

The BBC has a long and glorious past as a technological innovator. Throughout the history of broadcasting, it has often been the first to develop and promote new technologies. Sadly, it seems now to be teetering on the brink of making technical choices that will not only damage its own reputation as a world-class institution, but which will also have serious knock-on consequences for free software.

The article then goes on to look at the background of the BBC’s streaming audio and video content. The article then goes on to discuss why they shouldn’t adopt Windows Media and indeed Windows Media DRM.

If it adopts only a Windows-based system, the BBC becomes beholden to Microsoft, and loses any possibility of independent action in the future, as the example of Korea shows only too painfully. Similarly, DRM is anything but open and transparent. And with rumours that even the music industry is recognising how counter-productive DRM is, now is precisely the moment to fight and beat DRM, not foist it on even more people.

There is even a e-petition for UK users to sign which urges the Prime Minister not to let the BBC trust implement a player which only Windows users can access and to open the streaming platform up to all users including Open Source. To Read the full article here.