Interesting Stuff 2008-06-02

Matt Cashmore of BBC Backstage and Innovation Labs shows us the planning wall for Mashed08, prepares the backnetwork and launches the badges.

The BBC's Dan Taylor writes about the difficulties of archiving dynamic online content - exemplified by the new BBC homepage - and gives other Beeb-related examples:

I was hoping to link to the BBC's 'Book of the Future' in my previous post on collaborative storytelling, but was alarmed to discover that not only had the site been taken down, but the URL which had been used to promote the site (bbc.co.uk/future) was now redirecting to a page on the future role of public service broadcasting.

Andrew Bowden of the BBC's interactive TV team relates the launch of the Freesat weather service, his team's "unnervingly accurate" estimates of delivery dates and BBCi's new service offering comments from Question Time. That done, a certain summer sporting event is approaching:

With Weather out of the door, there's just the simple matter of the Olympics. For BBCi, the Olympics are huge - back in 2004, nearly 9m people used the BBCi Olympics service on Sky alone - and this year it's expected to be even bigger. And on Freesat too.

David Hansen has put in a Freedom Of Information request at WhatDoTheyKnow to the BBC which begins:

I write concerning the entering of whole post codes into Freesat receivers. This has to be done before the receiver will display programmes. Freesat is a joint venture between yourselves and ITV.

Robin Hamman gives this presentation to the Embracing New Media conference in Amsterdam and asks "Why do I do this to myself?!":

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Finally, Chris Williams writes at The Register about the closure of the Today programme's message boards, followed by some comments sceptical about user-generated content, including this from David Wilson:

The BBC may also tend to attract not only people with a feeling of entitlement, but a significant number of people who actively dislike the organisation and don't really care if the forums do suffer.
The "community" to "random-whiner" ratio seems pretty low.
The name "BBC" is particularly attractive to the kind of person with time to kill and an ego that thinks everyone else is in desperate need of the enlightenment only they can bring, as well as to regular trolls.

Alan Connor is co-editor, BBC Internet Blog.