Bringing Better Content
When I first checked out BBC Backstage the other day, my reaction was: “Big deal, so the Beeb is publishing a bunch of RSS feeds. What’s so new and revolutionary about that?” This feeling was reinforced when I checked out the list of prototypes that use the new BBC content. I didn’t really see anything that hasn’t been possible for ages using any old RSS feed. In fact, when I spoke to Stef Magdalinski the other day, he confirmed that his Wikiproxy, one of the most celebrated BBC Backstage apps, processes HTML and doesn’t use the new XML feeds at all.
I’ve sinced changed my mind. First of all, with all my whinging about how there isn’t enough XML on the web, I can hardly complain if one of the biggest news organizations in the world commits to making their entire library of content available as XML. From this perspective it’s scale, not innovation, that is the real story. Also, the BBC has a very permissive license and is actually encouraging people to reuse and redistribute its content (for non-commercial use only). My “Open Source Lessons for Digital Media” essay was essentially about how content producers should do exactly that, so I can only applaud their decision and hope that others will follow their lead.
Today I noticed a third wrinkle: the travel feeds use a traffic-specific format called TPEG, not RSS, and there are already Backstage prototypes that use this data to do things like overly traffic info on top of online maps. Very, very cool. The moral of the story is that RSS is easily the most likely candidate to drag the web, kicking and screaming, into the world of XML. But it’s too darn generic to make good on a lot of XML’s potential. Imagine that the Beeb also had domain-specific feeds for weather (apparently they’re coming), sports (so you can easily extract who’s playing, the score and so forth), TV schedules, etc., etc. The BBC is impressively forward-thinking already, but a stronger move away from “RSS Everywhere” would make Backstage truly revolutionary.
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gTraffic.info, backstage
I must admit to being a little underwhelmed by BBC Backstage initially. After all, what had changed? They had RSS feeds, now they said we could use actually them? [Someone else thinks so too.]
Whatever. Something in the water seems to have prompted s…
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