The BBC is inviting you to ‘remix’ interviews with technology innovators, including Maholo’s Jason Calacanis, as the second edition of their R&D TV show goes live.
Created by BBC Backstage, the Corporation’s developer network, R&D TV is the first step in allowing viewers to legally re-edit professionally-produced footage into new forms.
BBC Backstage are hoping that this episode will prove more popular than the previous one, which resulted in only one video mashup from the public. The problem here is that while the video may be interesting to some people (readers of TheNextWeb will probably enjoy it without re-editing it) it’s not something that cries out to be reworked.
R&D TV is an innovative idea, but one that comes from a department at the BBC that’s a little like Morgan Freeman’s character in Batman Begins. They’re working on great projects, but not always with a great deal of support from the wider corporation.
Speaking at the June meeting of Manchester’s Social Media Cafe on Tuesday, BBC Backstage Senior Producer Ian Forrester discussed the project in detail. Many attendees asked why they hadn’t put a popular show like The Apprentice online for remixing. Sadly, there’s little chance of that as licensing deals mean that everything from music to many of the staff on the show would need to be paid for again.
Part of the problem is that some of the BBC’s TV producers and management aren’t keen on the idea of throwing footage out to the public to use as they please. Until there’s a culture shift within mainstream media, projects like R&D TV will remain nothing more than quirky side-projects.
This is a shame. Artists like Cassette Boy are showing that people will remix TV footage whether you let them or not; just see his Apprentice reworking for proof of that. The sooner the TV industry embraces this idea the better. This kind of cut-up TV art would make great promotional material for the show itself, not to mention brilliant training material for rookie video editors.
In the meantime, you can get hold of R&D TVhere. The footage is available in a variety of formats and can be used in any non-commercial project.
The UK has the dubious honour of being one of the most watched places in the world thanks to the vast number of CCTV cameras that keep an eye on public spaces 24 hours a day. In 2002 it was estimated that there were 4.2 million of these cameras nationwide and a member of the public could expect to be recorded up to 300 times in one day.
While many of these cameras are privately owned, some offer public online feeds. Now the BBC is crowdsourcing a directory of publicly viewable CCTV.
The producers of current BBC2 series Who’s Watching You? have created a map that aims to link to every CCTV camera in the country with an online feed. The public is being encouraged to submit details of any that are currently missing.
The map is still quite sparsely populated at present, with the BBC’s own webcams making up the bulk of submissions. As an almost-live view of everyday British life there are a few gems though. One camera is trained on the famous zebra crossing on London’s Abbey Road, updating every second. It’s frequent enough to get flavour for life in an upmarket part of the capital. Mountaintop views and the Brighton seafront are also just a click away.
What’s clear from the map as it stands though is that public camera feeds are generally useless as a surveilance tool. Most of them refesh every few minutes and aren’t close enough to street level to identify individuals. It’s the ones that don’t have online feeds that the British public should be concerned about.
As Mike Rubin, Series Producer for Who’s Watching You?says “The official figures suggest that there are around 30,000 CCTV cameras operated by public authorities. Beyond that, there are hundreds of thousands – and almost certainly millions – of private CCTV cameras”.
Written on 20th March 2009
6 COMMENTS Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
Popular Video on Demand site Hulu and the company behind it NBC/News Corp are in talks with “all the partners you’d expect” to bring Hulu to the UK.
In an interview with PaidContent, NBCU International President said
The UK is more complicated than anywhere else to have this dialogue at the moment – we just had the Kangaroo dialogue, now Canvas, and a whole set of political issues which make conversation slow. But still keen, the guys are really keen.”
The Kangaroo dialogue was an inquiry by the Competition Commission that was preventing a company called Kangaroo, an iTV project, from launching a similar service in the UK in collaboration with other major TV networks. The outcome has however has not been positive for the companies involved as the Competition Commission put a stop to the Kangaroo project.
This is however good news for Hulu in some respects as it leaves a strong market opportunity open to being targeted.
iPlayer International
Hulu aren’t the open only video on demand company looking to expand growth abroad. During the MediaGuardian Changing Media Summit, BBC’s Director General Mark Thompson said the BBC is now
“talking to all the public service broadcasters and others about the practicalities of sharing the iPlayer.”
Chris Dobson, BBC Worldwide ad sales director told the conference:
A sort of iPlayer-like device that was made available outside the UK might well have to have a subscription feature to it in order to make the economics work.”
So a pay for “iPlayer International” is on the cards and there’s even stronger potential of a Hulu UK too. Unfortunately it does seem some time away and there are likely to be costs involved for the consumer – aside from advertising – particular for the iPlayer.
Written on 12th March 2009
12 COMMENTS Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
To prove the power of ‘Botnets’, the BBC News Technology program ‘Click‘ deliberately hacked into 22,000 PC’s. With the help of security firm Prevx, they took over thousands the computers in an effort to highlight the increasingly serious security vulnerabilities of standard computers.
What are Botnets?
Botnets are compromised computers with parasites that lie dormant awaiting on commands to reproduce themselves, send get-rich-quick spam to the gullible, and launch DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attacks.
The tv program managed to prove their point by accessing the computers via users in chat rooms.
The BBC have said,
“the programme did not access any personal information on the infected PCs and its botnet was destroyed after finishing the experiment”
A Fix?
Unfortunately, though there are tools out there to detect botnet attacks and can shut them down – it really isn’t straight forward. The ideal long term solution would be to remove the money companies can earn from the business. Fine anyone who advertises their products in spam, malware, emails etc..Make them pay extortionate amounts for it, lose any profits they could have made or potentially make and eventually the problem will go away.
Written on 11th March 2009
10 COMMENTS Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
We let you know last month that the BBC would soon be enabling embedding for videos on the BBC News site, today they have (finally) made that officially possible beginning with videos from their Technology section.
Simply roll over the share button on the bottom right corner of the player and you’ll see the “Embed” function available.
As the BBC internet blog point out, there will be some content which won’t be able to be viewable internationally so may be worth double checking with friends abroad before embedding a particular video into a blog post.
As we mentioned previously, there is a concern regarding the terms of conditions behind the new feature which states that embedding is only permitted on personal websites, which would technically make the below illegal?
Written on 9th March 2009
15 COMMENTS Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
You read it right, from Monday at 6pm GMT, YouTube UK will block access to virtually every premium music video on the site after failing in negotiations with the Performing Right Society (PRS).
The PRS exists to ensure songwriters, composers and publishers are rewarded financially for the broadcasting of their music.
YouTube UK are saying that the fees PRS are charging are too expensive and would lead to the site losing money every time a video was played.
In a statement, Steve Porter of PRS said the move ”punishes British consumers and the songwriters whose interests we protect and represent”.
Patrick Walker of YouTube UK has stated
“It [the deal] has to be a rate than can drive a business model. We are in the business for the long run and we want to drive the use of online video…The rate they are applying would mean we would lose significant amounts of money on every stream of a music video. It is not a reasonable rate to ask.”
YouTube has also complained of a lack of transparency by the PRS, complaining (more…)
Written on 20th February 2009
6 COMMENTS Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
BBC News have announced that the site is soon to allow embedding of BBC content onto other sites!
Initially, only technology focused stories and video from the “World” section of the BBC News site will be made available for embedding elsewhere.
Retrieving the embed code is as easy as pie and those of you familiar with the procedure on video sharing sites won’t have a problem. Simply click “share” on the player, select the “embed” option, copy the code and paste it wherever accepts HTML.
One concern however is that the terms and conditions state that you can only use the embedding code on your personal site which leaves presumably leaves commercial blogs/sites (yes, such as this one) out of the picture.
Written on 9th February 2009
19 COMMENTS Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
In case you are unaware, thanks to Jonathan Ross, Stephen Fry and a few other British celebrities, Twitter has seriously taken off in the UK – particularly on the radio where DJ’s like to build up their followers list as well as get feedback from their listeners.
Well it seems like some listeners have had more than enough of Twitter already. Take darls3000 who took the time to post the following:
There’s a list of further comments which are worth reading but frankly Darls3000 does have a point. Whether Twitter is currently free or not, it’s long term goal is to make profit and with the amount of (free) promotion the site is getting, you could easily have assumed Twitter sponsored the BEEB. At some point, presumably when Twitter starts earning revenue, the BBC are going to have to tone down the number of mentions the service receives on air, but at that point – where do they go?
Assuming the majority of devoted listeners are on air, eagerly waiting to tweet in with song requests and feedback…Will DJ’s be forced to simply say “Get onto to your favorite microblog?” or an alternative might be to create a BBC microblog of their own?
Written on 1st February 2009
17 COMMENTS Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
The BBC reported on a UK based company who had created a ‘top secret phone’ which would revolutionize the industry with the worlds first “truly handsfree mobile”.
The company, IA Technology of Hereford England, promised a new mobile phone device which fits in your ear and can be operated solely by voice recognition. The phone, designed by a Dean McEvoy (right), is likely to be such a success that it would bring more jobs and investment into the industry.
Where did the BBC possibly get fooled? Well, a little digging by an Engadget commenter discovered a link between Zumba CEO Dean McEvoy and a group of party promoters. Whether this is true or not is unclear, however it does immediately trigger off alarm bells which lead to a re-examination of the video (below).
What’s immediately odd is that the ’Zumba Phone’ is so secret that the BBC can’t even show us how it works. Not only that, but the entire set up seems fishy, from the odd name/poor design, the extremely well dressed “designer”, the screen behind the designer in the video and through to the extremely poor website for the new “revolutionary” gadget.
Anyway, enough talk, here’s the video…what do you think? Did the BBC get punk’d?
Did you, just like Hunter S. Thompson, end up in bat country somehow? Refer to Twitter for some life-saving help, just like Stephen Fry.
The English actor was one of the first British celebrities who started Twittering, which turned him into some sort of ambassador. My London-based co-editor Zee loves his efforts and often refers to him.
In an interview with the BBC, Fry tells more about his new-found love. He praises the collective wisdom of his 63,634 followers. For example, when he once found a bat in his house, Fry’s followers told him how to get rid of it.
It isn’t all love between the celeb actor and the celeb service. The relationship between Fry and Twitter also seemed to be based on fear, as he didn’t want an impostor stealing his name. Neither doesn’t he want to tweet when he had too much wine. Fry will also stop revealing his location, since he doesn’t like to help out paparazzi.
The video isn’t embeddable, so click on the corny image above to view it.
Written on 5th June 2009
13 COMMENTS 
The BBC is inviting you to ‘remix’ interviews with technology innovators, including Maholo’s Jason Calacanis, as the second edition of their R&D TV show goes live.
The UK has the dubious honour of being one of the most watched places in the world thanks to the vast number of CCTV cameras that keep an eye on public spaces 24 hours a day. In 2002 it was estimated that there were 4.2 million of these cameras nationwide and a member of the public could expect to be recorded up to 300 times in one day.
Written on 20th March 2009
Popular Video on Demand site 
To prove the power of ‘Botnets’, the BBC News Technology program ‘
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You read it right, from Monday at 6pm GMT, YouTube UK will block access to virtually every premium music video on the site after failing in negotiations with the 
The BBC 
Written on 26th January 2009
The Next Web Blog is closely associated with The Next Web Conference which is held annually in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. At this event speakers from all over the world come together to talk about, and show off, the future of the Web. (More info 
