May 2005 Archive

The BBC wakes up to the "mass amaturisation" trend, with its Backstage project. The trend is probably the biggest shaping force on the internet today, brought about by the second wave of internet technology (1st FTP & HTML "website & search engine" 2nd: Wiki & Blog "content & aggregator").

2nd wave isn't big tech-news stuff. It hasn't been caused by broadband, Microsofts market share or Apples PC design, but by peoples willingness to adapt and use standards, and see the potential in finding new ways to communicate ideas.

The BBC's non-commercial status gives it much greater power in being able to do this kind of thing. Compare BBC terms of use with CNNs. BBC lets you have much more freedom to play with its content.

Not only does the BBC potentially extend the reach of its content, by allowing others to re-form and re-distibute it, it also extends its own usefullness and refirms its status as originator through backlinks

All I need now is Eastenders scripts (updated from the BBC), a web-host that allows http requests from the server, a point-and-click adventure engine, et voila, free-form interactive soap opera.

I've been quoted talking about web-design in article about small business websites. Unfortunately it doesn't really reflect my views, or particually what I said. The original promotional piece I was working on is here. Compare and contrast.

Not only does my "quote" not make much sense, the author completely misunderstood the language/translator metaphor as literal fact and then goes on to attribute to me some fundementally wrong ideas about search engine technology (although they are common "folk-theories") .

I now know why politicians get so worked up with journalists.