O'ReillyGMT - Tech News from 4 timezones either side of the Greenwich Meridian

Video Report on BBC R&D Move from Kingswood Warren to London

The BBC are moving their R&D facilities from Kingswood Warren in leafy Surrey to Centre House in West London. This film, narrated by Ant Miller, shows how the relocation has progress so far:

BBC Glow

This is nice. The BBC have released a Javascript library called Glow:

What is Glow?
Glow aims to make working with JavaScript and the DOM easier by providing shortcuts for common functions while ironing out the differences between browsers.
Browsers are the #1 cause of gentle sobbing and even screaming in a web developer's life. From that, I guess you could say Glow's goal is to "minimise screaming and sobbing".
I'm sure you're already aware that Glow isn't the first JavaScript library to do this, which begs the question...

Jake Archibald explains more on the BBC Internet Blog.

R&DTV - Tech Interviews from the BBC R&D

The BBC R&D have just launched R&DTV. George Wright says:

Today we launch a new trial aimed at exploring new ways to create, edit and distribute online video. It's called R&DTV. We've done this in collaboration with colleagues in BBC Backstage, part of BBC R&D.

 It's a pilot show, designed to be sharable, remixable and redistributable. It's released under a Creative Commons Attribution (Non-Commercial) licence, and looks at interesting tech stories inside and outside the BBC. The first episode features Nicholas Negroponte (talking about the OLPC project), Kevin Rose from digg.com, Graham Thomas from BBC Research and Ant Miller / George Auckland from the BBC discussing the BBC Micro. Hemmy Cho and Rain Ashford were the producers

To quote from the FTP site -'R&DTV is a monthly technology programme made up of interviews from knowledgeable BBC developers, project experts and experts from around the world.

Ignite UK North Video - Michael Sparks - Embracing Concurrency

Next up in the Ignite UK North video series we have Michael Sparks of the BBC. Michael is a Senior Research Engineer on the Kamaelia project, and spoke on the evening about Embracing Concurrency:

The Most Important Person at the BBC

According to Steve Bowbrick, (and I'm not going to argue with Steve Bowbrick), Matt McDonnell is the ‘most important person at the BBC’ right now, which is some serious claim. Matt is in charge of search at the BBC, and Steve just interviewed him for the BBC's Common Platform site:

As the old ways into BBC content fade, search becomes more important. It’s a reasonable assumption that search will be the primary gateway to all BBC content within a few years, including the stuff that goes out on the linear channels (BBC1, BBC2, Radio 1, Radio 2 etc.). The channels themselves are already losing their gateway function. Viewers and listeners are much less likely to use a channel as a way into an evening’s viewing than they were in the pre-digital era. Themes, personalities, strong programme brands: all are becoming more important than channels. This, for instance, is one of the reasons for the BBC’s growing investment in top talent: Jonathan Ross may be an expensive presenter but he’s pretty economical when considered as a gateway to BBC content (at least when he’s not on suspension for being an arse).

Steve Bowbrick - Blogger in Residence - BBC Internet Blog

For some reason, our Delicious blog post facility has packed in. So, in the meantime, here  is the latest link about Friend of O'ReillyGMT, Steve Bowbrick, copied over by hand. Talking about going the extra mile:

Steve Bowbrick - Blogger in Residence - BBC Internet Blog

I've been blogger-in-residence at BBC FM&T for a few days. I realise I've made it to 45 years old without ever working at the BBC, and it's genuinely exciting: I find a big, breezy rather optimistic place full of brainy people (lots of them quite young) doing a huge variety of interesting things, many of which are aimed in one way or another at answering those big questions. And the word that's on more or less everybody's lips is "openness".

• How open can we be?
• Should we share this insight with outsiders?
• Should we be opening our banks of content and code to licence fee payers, entrepreneurs and organisations?

And for the BBC, these questions are given an extra urgency by the context: by the chaotic decline of commercial broadcast TV, by Ofcom's apparently unending review of public service media, by the troubled birth of the Kangaroo JV and even by Channel 4's bid for the social media high ground with 4iP.

Subterranean Homesick News - Team Bob

I interviewed two-thirds of Team Bob in a Pizza Express on the South Bank, London. The parties present were James Adams and James Andrews. Ben Griffiths was absent, but sent a note from his mum.

Team Bob were the winners of the O'ReillyGMT Hack of the Weekend at Mashed, with their magnificent splicing of BBC News sub-titles and the Bob Dylan 'Subterranean Homesick Blues' video. Their prize is 10 O'Reilly books of their choice! Congratulations, Chaps!

Team Bob from oreillygmt on Vimeo.

And this is the thing itself:

BBC Dylan - News 24 Revisited (Full Version) from James Adam on Vimeo.

And for a quick rundown on how they did it.

Matthew Cashmore Talks to O'ReillyGMT at Mashed08

And now for a word with the man himself!

All hail, Matthew Cashmore, the man who made Mashed08 happen, (not forgetting his glorious team, who worked like crazy all through the weekend and in the weeks leading up to it. And a special mention for John, who looked after us at O'Reilly GMT. Thanks, John).

Though Matthew was run off his feet after months of preparation and two full days of fixing, trouble-shooting and cajoling, he still found time to sit with me for a recap of how it had all come together:

Rocket Launch - Ant Miller at Mashed08

I've known Ant Miller for almost ten years from his days as a bookseller for Waterstones in Brighton. I kind of lost touch with him since he left the book trade, the odd email excepted, and I was thrilled to see him at Hack Day last year in his new guise as a BBC man. This year, he got in touch to suggest we could build upon last year's Make presense by contributing videos to the Mashed TV station, and he put Josette and Alia Sheikh in touch with each other to make it happen. He's always there making something happen, so it was of no surprise to see him with a hard hat on, putting a light to the modern day equivalent of the blue touchpaper in order to send a rocket 500 feet into the June sky.

Milverton Wallace talks to O'ReillyGMT at Mashed08

Milverton Wallace talked to O'ReillyGMT at Mashed08. He's not essential an out-and-out geek, just a guy with an interest in what technology can achieve and an eye for the positive things it can offer. He's working toward the creation of a social website for parents and kids that will list events and facilities in their area to help them make the most of their leisure time, and he wants to meet hackers of any technical persuasion to help him build it.