Backstage with Aunty

I was browsing through my various list of favourite bloggers when I came across something I probably should have known about on Tom Coats Plastic Bag.

Apparently the BBC have launched Backstage, a developer network that gives people access to xml/rss feeds of BBC content and gives help and advice in developing new ways of using the content.

This is all part of the BBC response to the Graf report about how it should use its website effectively to make it stand out from the commercial sector - taking a look around backstage.bbc.co.uk there are already some stunning ideas coming out.

A paragraph on the site says it all:

backstage.bbc.co.uk is the BBC's new developer network, providing content feeds for anyone to build with. Alternatively, share your ideas on new ways to use BBC content. This is your BBC. We want to help you play.

Some of the feeds on the site, in addition to news and sport, include Top of the Pops, Doctor Who news, Radio and Music as well as travel news.

I'm thinking of creating a mobile version of Up Your Ego using my RSS feed - maybe I will use some of the BBC feeds to enhance it.

Or maybe I will ressurect the news and blog reader I was working on a while ago that looks at the content of a news article from an rss feed strips out key tags and looks at technorati to find related blogs to give you a view on the article - but then again maybe not as someone has already done it much better than me.

In the meantime some of the better apps include a WikiProxy version of BBC News online that links out to blogs talking about a specific news story and to wikipedia entries relating to specific keywords in an article.

A brilliant interactive weather viewer and Ben Metcalfs News and Sport digest that gives you a printable version of the most popular stories from selected catagories that you can print and read on the way to work.

Another great example of the BBC moving in directions a commercial company couldn't afford to - and maximising the licence fee in doing so - is the creative archive - a joint partnership with BFI, Channel 4 and the Open University.

The goal of the Creative Archive is to make video content free for non-commercial use. It also includes the Brilliant Ideas Factory from Channel 4 that provides a huge amount of information for aspiring creatives.

Related Tags [Technorati]
BBC RSS XML News Feed BBC Backstage Blog