Interesting Stuff 2008-06-19

.net interviews BBC Backstage's Matt Cashmore about why the BBC does Hack Days, streaming BBC1, and what to expect from Mashed08:

The biggest star of all, though, is Alexandra Palace itself. For the first time since 1956 it'll actually be broadcasting TV again! The signal is only live for the weekend, and it's there to allow developers, for the first time, to be able to hack the interactive services around live TV. We're rebroadcasting BBC One, so you can hack Country File on Sunday morning, but there'll be two other channels, both of which will be throwing out tutorials and other content from people like O'Reilly.

Matt's also interviewed on this week's Pods & Blogs from BBC Radio Five Live and on the Guardian's Tech Podcast[mp3] and Ewan Spence offers Top Ten Tips To Survive The BBC Mashed Experience:

* Non Programmers Can Have Fun Too
While Mashed is billed as a programmers event, and there will certainly be a lot of code hacking going along, you don't need to be a hacker to actually enjoy yourself.

We mentioned below a presentation by BBC iPlayer big kahuna Anthony Rose; Anthony has now given us the slides, which you can see below.

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Bobbie Johnson blogs Danny Cohen (Controller, BBC THREE) at the Future Of Journalism: Chasing Ratings debate on Tuesday:

Combining the way TV producers and online producers work is hard, and can cause problems. One example is that they just move at different speeds; TV producers move quicker. The web world has a way of thinking that it'll just happen when it happens...

A WhatDoTheyKnow user called Chris has received a reply to his Freedom Of Information request concerning BBC iPlayer.

Finally, the Firefox team seems to like BBC News.

Alan Connor is co-editor, BBC Internet blog