Internet blog feed

What's on BBC Red Button - 25 May - 1 Jun

2013-05-25T06:00:18+01:00

It's a very special Red Button weekend with coverage from Radio 1's Big Weekend, highlights of the F1 Monaco race and qualifying and final tours of the show gardens of the 2013 Chelsea Flower Show. From Monday, look out for the return of Springwatch's live webcams.

Radio 1 Big Weekend

Bruno Mars

The biggest party of the year has kicked off in Derry-Londonderry. You can follow Radio 1's Big Weekend on the Red Button and also on BBC Three, Radio 1, Radio 1Xtra and on the Radio 1 website.

The festival always attracts the big names and this year features the likes of The Saturdays, Bruno Mars (pictured), The 1975, Everything Everything, Wretch 32, Disclosure and Vampire Weekend. Press the Red Button for 'as live' Big Weekend performances on Saturday and Sunday evening (times below). Follow our #bigweekend tweets from @BBCRedButton.

Available on Freesat/Sky/Virgin Media/Freeview

Saturday 25 May: 3.30pm-6pm, 8pm-2am
Sunday 26 May: 5pm-1am

Springwatch 2013 – Live webcams

Blue Tit

With the coldest start to spring in 50 years, the UK's plants and animals are facing a real challenge. Join the Springwatch 2013 team as they capture the most dramatic events in nature and celebrate our wildlife. The series returns on BBC Two Monday 27 May and we’re featuring the live webcams from 3.40pm.

Available on Freesat/Sky/Virgin Media/Freeview

Monday 27 May: 3.40pm-11.45pm
Tuesday 28 May: 3.15pm-6am
Wednesday 29 May: 6am-5.50pm, 7.55pm-6am
Thursday 30 May: 6am-11am, 12pm-10.25pm
Friday 31 May: 4am-Saturday 26 May 6am

Sport Highlights

It’s time for the most glamorous race of the F1 season – watch highlights of the Monaco Grand Prix on the Red Button with qualifying highlights on Saturday and Sunday and replays of the race itself on Monday and Tuesday. There’s also Diamond League athletics from New York, Scrum V rugby, Women’s FA Cup replay,and the ever popular Final Score and Football League Show.

For information on timings see the BBC Sport website. Note times are subject to change.

Continuing on the Red Button

RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2013

It’s the final weekend of the Chelsea Flower Show. Take tours of some of this year's larger show gardens – the Red Button coverage includes detailed commentary from the designers on the inspiration and motivation behind their spectacular designs.

Available on Freesat/Sky/Virgin Media/Freeview

Saturday 25 May: 6am-3.30pm
Sunday 26 May: 2.30pm-5pm

Watson and Oliver

Available on Freesat/Sky/Virgin Media/Freeview

Thursday 30 May: 10.25pm-4am

Strange Hill Extra

Available on Freesat/Sky/Virgin Media/Freeview

Wednesday 29 May: 5.50pm-7.55pm

BBC Trust Review of Red Button

The BBC Trust has completed its review of BBC Online and BBC Red Button. Read more about the conclusions and findings here.

Don't forget you can follow us on Twitter at @BBCRedButton. Answers to frequently asked questions about BBC Red Button can be found here.

Online Briefing: The day in Tweets

2013-05-24T16:33:13+01:00

Hi everyone. Today was the BBC Online Briefing, a chance for the BBC to share what it’s doing in all things digital with the wider industry.

Over the next couple of weeks we will be making videos from the day available on the blog so you’ll be able to check out what speakers from different departments of BBC Future Media presented.

I was in the Radio Theatre tweeting key quotes and pictures from the talks and sessions as well as collating others tweets and activity from participants on our Live blog.

Below are some of the highlights from the different sessions.

From director of Future Media Ralph Rivera’s Keynote speech:

From the Connected Studio session hosted by director Adrian Woolard and project manager Robin Cramp:

From the session CBBC & CBeebies and the Evolution of Games with product lead Patrick Healy and senior product manager Simon Lumb:

From Delivering Connected TV: The TV Application Layer session with technical product manager Peter Lasko and senior technical architect Paul Caporn: From TV, PC, Mobile and Tablet: Reaching Viewers in the Four-Screen World of 2016 presentation with Julian Dickens:

From the Q&A with Ralph Rivera and director of Business Development Jane Weedon:

You can see more tweets from the day on the Live blog or the Internet blog twitter feed @bbcinternetblog and check back next week for the first of the videos.

Eliza Kessler is the content producer on the BBC Internet blog.

Live blog for Online Briefing

2013-05-24T08:30:16+01:00

Hi everyone, today is the BBC Online Briefing in New Broadcasting House, London. This is a chance for the BBC to share the work it’s doing with partners and suppliers in the digital arena.

Host Kirsty Wark will have the opportunity to ask Future Media director Ralph Rivera some of your questions so if you have something you would like her to ask then leave a comment below, in Kirsty’s blog post or tweet us using the hashtag #BBCOnline.

Live blog for the BBC Online Briefing

We’ll be collating the news, discussions and opinions from the day using our Live blog so check it out, tweet your views and don’t forget to follow us on @bbcinternetblog.

Eliza Kessler is the content producer for the BBC Internet blog.

BBC Online Briefing: Work plan

2013-05-23T15:52:30+01:00

It’s spring (at last) and BBC Online is gearing up for another BBC Online Briefing, the fourth in the series. As last year, we are in London in Radio Theatre, right next to the BBC’s new HQ in New Broadcasting House. The Briefing is being held tomorrow, Friday May 24.

A view of BBC Broadcasting House

The idea behind the Briefings is to share with a broad cross section of the UK digital media industry service and product plans as well as latest thinking on significant topics.

After feedback from delegates we are trying a few new things this year. As well as a round-up of what the Connected Studio has achieved, delegates will go into smaller groups so we can cover more topics in more detail and increase the opportunities for face to face encounters.

As always we are publishing BBC Online’s Workplan for the coming year. I hope this will give you a better idea about what we hope to achieve in the next twelve months.

We’re pleased to have secured Kirsty Wark of Newsnight as presenter and host. If you have a specific question you’d like to be asked at the Briefing, please leave a comment on Kirsty’s blog post.

The Briefing is by invitation only and we’ve filled up the Radio Theatre. If you want to follow events on the day then look for hashtag #BBCOnline and at the Internet blog’s live page. And, as last year, all the presentations and sessions will be videoed and published on the BBC Internet blog next week.

Andy Conroy is chief operating officer, BBC Future Media and Online.

New Sport Pilots from Connected Studio

2013-05-23T09:00:28+01:00

Hi I’m the senior technology architect for BBC Sport Online. Regular readers of this blog will know that Connected Studio has been a hot topic over the past year with most areas of BBC Online having a turn.

It’s gone particularly well for my team, Sport, where 40 ideas from the initial sessions have been whittled down to the four strongest to take through to pilot stage. This blog summarises each of these projects and gives you the chance to let us know what you think.

Pilot phase means these projects have been prototyped for testing. This means, with the exception of Virtual Crowd at the Champions League final, we’re unable to offer them on the BBC Sport site. Hopefully, the descriptions of the pilots here provide enough to whet your appetite though.

Pilot One: Virtual Crowd by MadeByPi (indie)

Share your views using the 'happy', 'shocked', 'sad' and 'angry' buttons against each live text entry

The Virtual Crowd pilot allows users to interact when live football matches are underway.

If you use the BBC Sport website or apps on a Saturday to access the latest football scores you’re probably not aware that you’re one of about a million doing so.

Virtual Crowd provides opportunities to share your feelings on a match or sport related incident with others on the site.

Users can pick answers to questions such as ‘Who do you think will win the Arsenal vs Manchester United match today’ by simply clicking a button. It’s simple and just takes a few moments to do.

See online attendance and choose your preferred team and outcome

The web pages then show the combined (aggregate) view of all who’ve taken part - the ‘virtual crowd’ - demonstrating the overall split of allegiances and support levels of fellow site visitors and fans.

Information gathered will also be delivered as data visualisations as part of the event coverage to provide a unique and playful archive of the nation’s sporting reactions.

BONUS: On the evening of Saturday 25 May this pilot will be available for use during the Champions League final. There’ll be two pages that replicate pages on the BBC Sport site, but with extra ‘Virtual Crowd’ features. You will be able to access the pilot on this link.

Pilot Two: Pocket Pundit by Aerian Studios (indie)

Add game analysis to BBC Sport video clips

Pocket Pundit adds analysis features to the Sport sites video player. Users can express their opinions on a sporting event by bookmarking, clipping and annotating selected video clips.

The concept provides a simple tool set similar to that used by pundits on TV. Users can then record and share their analysis with friends and other interested users via social media and on the BBC Sport site with an aim to generate debate and encourage interaction.

Pocket Pundit can work with any sport and can be used whilst the game is live or after in ‘catch-up’ mode.

Pilot Three: Sport Companion by Pobl Creative (indie)

Delve deeper into a football match or other sport event using a responsive, interactive page

A big question in the broadcast world is how to make use of the ‘second screen’ – the smartphone, tablet, or laptop that many have in their hands whilst watching TV.

The BBC Sport Companion provides a second screen experience to accompany live football matches you may be watching on TV. It also works when listening on the radio or on its own.

The companion provides a moment-by-moment view of the action offering rich stats and highlighting key events. The companion achieves this through clever use of data increasingly available at football matches, pinpointing the key action points in an event and in turn giving users a fuller, more entertaining experience as and when they want it.

BBC Sport Companion works across mobiles, tablets and computers and could also be expanded to sports other than football.

Pilot Four: Death of the Robot (BBC team)

Carefully selected tweets can provide great coverage of a football match or other sport

If you’ve been to a sporting event recently you may have noticed someone tweeting whenever something happened. Twitter has become an incredible source of coverage and opinion on sporting events big and small.

The Death of the Robot pilot brings the best sports coverage from Twitter to the BBC Sport website to enrich the live event experience, adding colour and vigour to the page to bring the stats to life.

The system has the ability to learn which tweets are most relevant and interesting for a particular football match or other sporting event. It then automatically provides the best tweets for every event.

These appear on every football match page alongside existing content such as the score, team information and match statistics. It adds an extra level of reporting, analysis, and opinion to these pages.

Performance is key for this project. WebSockets (powered by Node.js) are used to show tweets within seconds of them being made.

Penny for your thoughts?

So, over to you, which of these ideas appeal the most? The pilots have proved that all these ideas are achievable from a technology perspective. We’ll now start assessing whether they are of interest and relevance to the audience and while these are not the sole considerations we’d still be very interested to hear which ones you like via the comments.

Matthew Clark is the senior technology architect for BBC Sport Online.

You can read about the latest set of CBBC pilots on project manager Robin Cramps blog post.

Building the Knowledge & Learning Beta

2013-05-22T08:00:33+01:00

Hi I'm Rob Lee, senior technical architect for Knowledge & Learning (K&L) at the BBC.

I'm part of the team building the new Knowledge & Learning product. In this post I'm going to describe the technical work we've undertaken so far, some of which you can see in the new Beta release that my colleague Chris Sizemore recently blogged about.

Video content on the Knowledge & Learning Beta

The Knowledge & Learning product aims to bring together the variety of factual and learning content we have on the BBC into a coherent proposition. In the formal learning space we currently have a number of sites including Bitesize, Skillswise and Class Clips amongst others.

There are tens of thousands of content items across these sites with each site having different mechanisms for publishing, discovering and describing the content it serves.

Rather than approach the development of the new product as a 'big-bang' exercise trying to incorporate everything at once, we've adopted an incremental approach to adding content and building out new functionality using short form audio and video clips as the first content type to surface in the Beta.

This meant the team had a well-defined problem to solve but still had to consider some key challenges inherent in building the new product:

Multi-device consumption: Many of the existing sites were built before smartphones and tablets became commonplace so a method of delivering content in a multi-device world was required.
Content management and migration: Existing sites use a collection of content production systems to author content. We needed to rationalise these and define a content migration process.
Information architecture and content modelling: Each of the existing sites have similar but different ways of describing and navigating to their content. We needed a consistent approach to describe content in the new product.

In each of these areas we tried to build on existing successes and key systems at the BBC, allowing the team to focus on delivering new product features.

Technical Overview

Architecture overview

The overview diagram above shows the components involved in the initial Beta release. The BBC has a standard platform for dynamic content rendering that follows a multi-tier approach, keeping a clear separation of concerns.

The rendering layer is built on a standard PHP framework (Zend) with BBC extensions for common capabilities and components. Access to the data layer is via Java service components with rendering components never communicating directly with the data layer.

Caching is a key feature of the stack with reverse proxy caches (Varnish) proxying requests through to the PHP page assembly (rendering) layer using standard HTTP caching mechanisms to allow caching of pages.

The service layer has a similar caching arrangement and both rendering and service layers have access to memcached which provides a distributed memory object caching system to applications.

Ensuring the Java service components are performing is key as these are aggregated in the page assembly layer, meaning the effects of a slow service component can be amplified when a series of requests are made from the page assembly layer.

Memcached is useful in this scenario however, we use caching carefully, where it will have the biggest impact as it adds another layer of indirection making failure modes more difficult to diagnose.

We've tried to keep the architecture simple in line with our initial goal for the Beta but with the longer term aims still in mind. I'll talk about some of the components involved in the diagram in the sections below.

Serving content in a multi-device world

The Beta site across different devices

One of the emerging patterns in delivering content to the variety of devices people now use is Responsive Design, a way to build a single fluid experience that works across multiple devices rather than a series of separate disconnected designs.

This required a mobile first approach to design and implementation which was a new way of working for the team. One of the benefits that Responsive Design delivers is that when we build a new feature in the product it's available on release to all devices at the same time rather than having to add a feature for each device class.

We followed the responsive BBC News model of delivering a core experience to HTML4 browsers and an enhanced experience to HTML5 capable browsers that 'cut the mustard'. We use CSS3 media queries to support responsive styling for different viewports (screen sizes) and device orientations which, for example, allows font size on a large-screen tablet in landscape mode to be increased when compared to that on a smaller mobile device.

This has given us a framework for delivering all new Knowledge & Learning content in a responsive way which we can continue to improve and build on. This is still a work in progress and we're looking at ways we can improve our initial content footprint and the way we deliver assets.

We are one of the first collection of sites at the BBC to use the new Responsive Barlesque (ostensibly the header and footer used for every BBC page) called ORB. Using ORB made it easy to deliver a single fluid experience as it follows the same responsive principles as our application.

The responsive approach also makes it easier to use standard platform caching technologies to effectively manage increased site hits during busy times, such as exam revision times, as the product can deliver small cacheable HTML pages to clients with appropriate cache control information. This means the load on platform infrastructure can be kept to a minimum.

Content management and migration Diagram showing the content management systems and how they interact with the site

Where appropriate we've used standard content production systems within the BBC allowing the team to concentrate on building out new functionality in the product.

For short form audio and video clips we use iBroadcast2 which provides a way to publish short form clips in a standard way so the content is available on as wide a selection of devices as possible when used in combination with the BBC media player (known as emp).

Using this system means we're part of the same media ecosystem that powers BBC pages like /programmes and BBC iPlayer meaning the product benefits from ongoing improvements.

For general content management we use iSite which is a standard content management system within the BBC and is also used to content manage the BBC Internet Blog, see Welcome to the new look Internet blog for more information.

With these core systems in place we set about planning the migration of the 10,000+ short form audio and video clips from the existing class clips site. There were a number of challenges we had to address in order to migrate the video and associated content:

Clip format: The clips were originally transcoded using systems primarily intended for content consumed on the desktop. This meant finding a way to re-encode the clips in the same formats produced by iBroadcast2.
Clip content: The existing clips content (e.g. Classroom Ideas) was held in a legacy publishing system and needed to be extracted and placed alongside the clips published in iBroadcast2.
Clip mappings: The curriculum information held against the existing clips (e.g. its subject or topic) needed to be mapped in the curriculum data model.

A simplified process flow for the clip migration is shown in the figure below:

Simplified clip migration process flow

The migration has three key steps:

Transcode clips and push into the media playout platform.
Generate and validate learning metadata and content for clips.
Transform learning metadata and content inputs and push into the content management system.

The clip transcoding was carried out by the Media Publishing System (MPS) team who ingested the source clips, bulk processed them and added them to the same systems that iBroadcast2 publishes to, with clips transcoded to the same formats. This means in the future all clips (both migrated and newly added) can be editorially managed using iBroadcast2.

The K&L editorial teams then produced a series of controlled vocabularies which were mapped to each clip. The teams also validated the associated content for each clip, amending and rewriting where needed to ensure the content was suitable for the new product.

Finally, a transformation component was produced that took these inputs, generated XML documents, ready for addition to iSite so they could be rendered in the new Beta site.

Describing content

The curriculum ontology

Following on from the work on Dynamic Semantic Publishing we've adopted a similar approach, moving away from a relational publishing model to one that separates semantics from content and allows for easier re-use.

The existing learning sites have no single model to describe content that could be reused in the new product. The team therefore produced a model of the UK national curricula that allows description of all learning (and other) content in context. This model will contain over 2000 curriculum topics across the various key stages and levels.

The key classes in the model are:

Level: A stage of education e.g. KS3.
Field of Study: A subject discipline of a curriculum e.g. Science.
Topic: A more specific description of a learning resource in the context of a field of study e.g. Energy.
Programme of Study: A combination of an educational Level and the Field of Study e.g. KS3 Science.
Topic of Study: A Topic in the context of a Programme of Study e.g. KS3 Physics Energy.

As demonstrated in the diagram above, the model allows for modelling of complex relationships where both KS3 Physics and KS3 Geography share a common Topic 'Energy'.

We've released this model for others to use which you can find at the curriculum ontology page. The model is licensed under an open license meaning others can reuse and adapt it for their own purposes.

We'd be interested in any feedback or comments from anyone who adopts this model.

This curriculum data is held in the BBC's Linked Data Platform (LDP) expressed as Resource Description Framework (RDF) which will allow a learning context to be applied to many content items produced by the BBC in the future.

We've created an LDP-powered domain-specific API for the curriculum domain model, that powers each of the curriculum pages (e.g. the KS3 Geography Environment page) and the curriculum navigation on the site.

We're also aiming to expose this domain model as structured data in the content. In our next release we'll be adding in-page mark-up from the educational vocabulary in Schema.org which is contributed from the LRMI project.

Schema.org is a "collection of schemas, i.e. HTML tags, that webmasters can use to mark-up their pages in ways recognized by major search providers". LRMI is an education-specific vocabulary, providing a way to consistently describe educational content.

Practically this means that machines (such as search engines) will be able to index and understand more about the content from the structure, aiding it's discovery. We've created mappings between Schema.org and the curriculum ontology allowing us to expose the data in the curriculum ontology in a way that search engines (and others) can easily consume.

This mapping is still a work in progress and will evolve as Schema.org and LRMI evolve but we believe it's a useful way to begin exposing the semantics for learning content at the BBC

What's next?

We're currently working on adding more clips to the Beta site to give further coverage across the UK curricula. We're aiming to add localisation support for UK indigenous languages as well as adding new content formats to the site.

If you have any thoughts or queries that you’d like to feedback then please leave a comment below or email us at knowledgeandlearningfeedback@bbc.co.uk.

Robert Lee is senior technical architect for BBC Knowledge & Learning.

Now Pilot Technical Architecture

2013-05-21T08:00:18+01:00

Hello there my name is David Wynne and I’m a technical architect and founder of Red Badger, a creative software workshop that has been working with the BBC to develop features such as BBC Now.

Through BBC Connected Studio we’ve been working closely with Eleni Sharp, BBC Homepage product manager and her team to design, test and develop the BBC Now pilot and you can read more about the feature in Eleni’s recent blog post.

The Challenge

Our challenge with BBC Now was to capture all the content being published both on bbc.co.uk and on other platforms and to bring it all together into a single unified stream of real-time push updates that are instantly delivered live to the BBC Homepage.

Broadly speaking this broke down into four technical challenges:

Monitoring for new content.
Contextualising new content against a BBC brand (such as Top Gear).
Pushing content out to the BBC Homepage in real-time.
Aggregating common terms within the content to establish trending topics.

The Solution

Each type of datasource (RSS, Twitter, BBC iPlayer content etc) is monitored by a separate Content Processor. Each Content Processor identifies new content, transforms it into a standard structure, associates it to a BBC brand and publishes it to the Firehose.

The Firehose is an unadulterated, unified stream of all new content from every Content Processor. The Firehose allows for multiple subscribers who can use or transform the data and produce their own streams of content.

The primary subscriber to the Firehose is the BBC Homepage which surfaces each item of content as an update in the Fast Lane. The Fast Lane is a column on the Homepage that receives push updates, from the Firehose and displays them in chronological order.

The Trend Analysis module also subscribes to the Firehose and receives the same set of content. The Trend Analysis module extracts common terms from the published content and aggregates that content using those terms, creating categorised ‘buckets’ of content.

When the buckets are sorted the Trend Analysis Module produces a list of the most common terms appearing in content over a given period and facilitates content filtering.

Flow diagram of BBC Now

The Tech

The heart of BBC Now is built using Node.js, a relatively new technology but one which has picked up huge momentum and for good reason. Node.js is a technology born of the web, for the web. It uses Google's V8 JavaScript engine on the server and an event loop to drive code execution. It allows scalable, real-time web applications, quickly.

BBC Now is built out of flat, independent modules making it easy to maintain and scale out. The thin layer of glue that holds them together is Redis. Redis is an advanced key-value store that, like Node, uses an event loop to drive execution and is both fast and scalable.

Redis also offers a fast and scalable implementation of the Publish/Subscribe (or pub/sub) messaging pattern. A pub/sub implementation allows publishers (in this case our Content Processors) to publish data without needing to know how it is delivered to other parts of the application.

Conversely the subscribers (in this case the BBC Homepage & Trend Analysis module) can subscribe to topics of data without needing to know which other part of the application produced it. They simply react to new data as it’s published.

This separation of concerns encourages each part of the application to concentrate on their single responsibility, which in turn means the system as a whole becomes easier to scale and reconfigure.

In essence, BBC Now is all about subscribing to data and publishing it elsewhere making Redis a perfect partner.

In designing the real-time push updates to the BBC homepage we had a few options.

This most traditional method of polling, whereby the client (your browser) periodically asks to the server (the BBC homepage) for updates, seemed like a poor choice. Most of the work we had put in was to convert passive data sources into active ones, returning them to a passive data source seemed to be heading in the wrong direction.

WebSockets, a relatively new technology that allows a constant two-way conversation between client and server (think of an instant message conversation), seemed like an obvious choice. But would have perhaps been a bit overkill given we only needed one-way communication.

Server-sent Events (SSE) provided the perfect lightweight middle ground. SSE are expressly designed for providing push notifications from a server to a browser client and have wide browser support (apart from IETM). SSE operate over HTTP (unlike Websockets) which means that JavaScript polyfills can be employed to bridge the gap for older browsers which don’t natively support the mechanism.

The Future

Besides further feature development (more data sources, personalisation, mobile) we’d love to dovetail our work with that of the BBC Linked Data Platform team which would provide a wealth of contextualised data that would really push us onto the next level.

I’d love to chat more about BBC Now – please leave a comment below or you can catch me on Twitter @dwynne or via the #bbcnow hashtag.

David Wynne is a technical architect and founder of Red Badger.

BBC Online Briefing: Your questions

2013-05-20T08:01:12+01:00

Last year I hosted an internal BBC staff event for the BBC’s Future Media division.

There was a great atmosphere in the studio theatre and I hope everyone felt it was a valuable and relaxed day. Obviously there’s been a regime change since then, but if I’m reading the mood music correctly the BBC wants more conversation, more sharing and more candour! So....

I’m pleased to say that on the 24 May I will be hosting the fourth BBC Online Briefing at the Radio Theatre in Broadcasting House in London.

Radio Theatre at BBC Broadcasting House

If you’re a regular reader of the Internet blog you’ll know that this is an annual event for BBC Online and BBC Red Button. It’s where the BBC gives something back by sharing the work it’s doing with partners and suppliers in the world of digital. For example on Friday there’ll be a showcase for some of the work done by Connected Studio in the past year.

You can read blog posts and watch videos of last year’s event on the BBC Commissioning website.

The event is invite only and is fully booked, but there will be livetweeting (please use the hashtag #BBCOnline if you want to tweet) and a live page where if you’re not attending you can watch a selection of tweets and photos on the day.

And please contribute! At the end of the day I’ll be asking Ralph Rivera, director of BBC Future Media and Jane Weedon, controller of Business Development, for questions from the floor. If you have a question you’d like me to ask Ralph and James please comment on this blog post and I’ll add your questions into the mix.

So if you’re coming I’ll see you there and if not and you want to ask a question, please do leave a comment.

Kirsty Wark is a presenter and journalist.

What's on BBC Red Button - May 18-25

2013-05-18T06:00:59+01:00

A varied and exciting smorgasbord of musical delights on the Red Button this week. Yes, it’s Eurovision in all its glory with Radio 2’s Ken Bruce giving his take on the proceedings.

Radio 1’s Big Weekend begins on Friday in Derry-Londonderry, this year’s City of Culture and lovers of all things gardening-related can tune into the Chelsea Flower Show for commentary from designers and a tour of the show gardens.

Eurovision Song Contest

Bonnie Tyler

It’s that time of year and once again viewers can press the red button during Eurovision for an interactive experience including sing-along onscreen lyrics in both English and the native language and an optional alternative commentary from Ken Bruce on BBC Radio 2. We’ll also be displaying some of your comments and Eurovision party photos from Facebook, Twitter and SMS*. Please use #bbceurovision and visit bbc.co.uk/eurovision for more.

*See bottom of blog for terms & conditions

Available on Freesat/Sky/Virgin Media/Freeview

Sat 18 May, 7.55pm-11.:15pm

RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2013

RHS Chelsea Flower Show

Toby Buckland hosts the BBC’s Red Button giving tours of some of this year's larger show gardens,including detailed commentary from the designers on the inspiration and motivation behind their spectacular designs.
In addition, horticultural haymakers Tom Hart Dyke and Christine Walkden will be sharing tales from the vast treasure trove that is the Great Pavilion, speaking to the passionate exhibitors who have been working for weeks, months and sometimes years in preparation for the week-long floral extravaganza.

Available on Freesat/Sky/Virgin Media/Freeview

Mon 20 May, 12.00pm-6.00am
Tue 21 May, 6.00am-2.15pm, 5.50pm-6.00am
Wed 22 May, 6.00am-6.00am
Thu 23 May, 6.00am-10:.5pm
Fri 24 May, 4.00am-6.00am, 6.00am-11.00am, 12.00pm-8.00pm
Sat 25 May, 2.15am-6:00am

Radio 2 In Concert - Rod Stewart

Available on Freesat/Sky/Virgin Media/Freeview

Sat 18 May, 6.00am-11.20am, 7.00pm-7.55pm
Sun 19 May, 10.30pm-1.00am

Dr Who

Available on Freesat/Sky/Virgin Media/Freeview

Sat 18 May, 5.00pm-7.00pm

Antiques Play Along Quiz

Sun 19 May, 7.25pm-8.30pm

R1 Big Weekend 2013

Rita Ora to play Radio 1's Big Weekend in Derry-Londonderry

Radio 1’s Big Weekend is live from Derry-Londonderry. On Friday 24 May, press the red button between 8pm and 2am – to watch bands from the Main Stage and 1Xtra Arena. You’ll see Maverick Sabre, Aluna George, Rudimental, Dizzee Rascal, Angel Haze, Katy B, Chase & Status, Rita Ora, J. Cole, Wiley and A$AP Rocky - and the Main Stage Headliner is Calvin Harris.

Available on Freesat/Sky/Virgin Media/Freeview

Fri 24 May, 8.00pm-2.15am

Sport

Football Focus – Last day of the season. (Who will take 4th spot?)
Diamond League action from Shanghai – Team GB medalists Greg Rutherford and Robbie Grabarz are in action.
MotoGP – MotoGP qualfying session and the Moto2 and Moto3 races live on the Red Button from Le Mans.

For the latest information, refer to the BBC Sport website
Please note all Red Button times are subject to change at short notice.

Eurovision Song Contest Terms & Conditions

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College of Production Roundup: Sound of 2013 and writing for online

2013-05-17T14:02:49+01:00

I’m Ben Toone, assistant content producer at the BBC College of Production (CoP) website.

Our site is a free online learning resource for the radio, television and online production community offering videos, podcasts and articles from broadcasting innovators and experts.

Laura Mvula, Chvurches, Haim – sound familiar? If not, you’ve probably heard of Dizzee Rascal, Jessie J, Adele and 50 Cent. All have featured in the BBC’s Sound of Poll, an annual multi-platform project bringing the next big thing in music to those in the know in the music industry.

BBC Sound of 2013

The producer of this year’s Sound of 2013 Kate Holder took us through how she pushed the project further onto as many platforms and channels as she could, from the website itself and BBC Red Button to BBC News radio, TV and online and almost every BBC radio network from Radio 1 through to Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour. The bar is certainly set high for next year!

I’m being very careful what I write here because our next #CoPWorkshop, a live Twitter Q&A, is on writing online next Tuesday (1-2pm).

TV and radio producers and researchers are increasingly finding themselves having to write copy for online audiences, which certainly is a different kettle of fish to writing for television or radio. Whether it’s writing for a programme website, a Tweet or Facebook post or even a blog post (like this!), getting noticed and putting the right message across is more important than ever.

So I’ll be taking note of Mike Kibblewhite’s tips. Mike is currently a producer for the BBC Academy’s Fusion project and has to write engaging copy every day, but he’s also an experienced online producer for BBC Lab UK, BBC History and the BBC Food websites. Like all of our #CoPWorkshops, he’ll be personally answering questions directly on Twitter during the course of the hour as well as giving his tips and useful links.

So if you have any questions, from setting the right tone to structuring your copy, do join us by tweeting @BBCCoP #CoPWorkshop. As ever, we’ll Storify the workshop and keep a record on our website.

New CBBC pilots from BBC Connected Studio

2013-05-17T08:00:28+01:00

Hello BBC Internet blog! I’m Robin Cramp, the project manager for BBC Connected Studio and welcome to the first of many blogs providing insight into the pilots we’ve taken forward as part of the year one of the programme.

My colleague (my way of saying boss without actually saying it) Adrian Woolard set the scene in his recent blog post suggesting that my next series of posts will be "rather entertaining as well as informative".

I can manage the well informed bit but the entertaining element is slightly more subjective. Let’s give it a bash.

Whilst the ‘day job’ sees me as the PM for Connected Studio I have picked up the additional role of event MC along the way.

If you’ve been involved you’ll understand how I endeavour to keep the pace up throughout the day by throwing sweets in an unorthodox fashion, garnering support through raised hands and shouting yeah, yeah, c’mon all too often. All in the vain hope that we can make the Connected Studio events as informative and fun as possible, especially during those potentially nerve racking pitching session that teams go through.

The events and jumping around is just one facet of my role, with principle responsibility to get the pilots that are successfully chosen from each of the Connected Studios realised.

We’ll be making some of the earlier pilots public very soon for you to test and play with but in the meantime here’s a sneak insight into the three pilots being developed for CBBC.

EEZL

EEZL by Peekabu (indie)

This pilot addresses the desire for increased sign-in to the CBBC website whilst encouraging more children to get involved in online activities.

When registering for an account, users will be prompted to draw a picture, either on the site with a web (or tablet) app or in the real world using paint and paper. In turn they create an account using that image.

To sign-in, they just hold their picture up to their webcam and the EEZL system recognizes the image and signs them in automatically, without the child needing to remember complex passwords or usernames.

Now I hear you saying ‘anyone could just draw a picture and login into my account’ well rest assured that the team over at Peekabu have thought that through and have some fool proof ways to ensure that doesn’t happen, quite cool!

In addition, adding friends is a simple as snapping a photo of their drawing and them doing the same for yours. The resulting process is fast, fun, works on any device with a camera (or upload functionality), avoids tricky mobile keyboards and makes a reliable authentication token out of the art that hangs on the fridge.

Predicto Machino
Predicto Machino by MadeByPi (indie)

Predicto Machino with the help of Hacker, star of CBBC show Hacker Time, makes far-fetched and comedic predictions about the user which they are invited to correct.

By doing this they build an anonymous profile of themselves which is stored in a cookie or optionally against a BBC iD login which then informs recommendations for other CBBC content they may like.

Animation, sound effects and voice-overs are used to entertain and encourage children to continue to interact ( as long as the talent isn’t committed to be in Hollywood during the build, just one of the real life realities presented to pilots teams) whilst a set of freshly generated content is displayed to the user each time they correct a prediction.

At any point the user can click on the suggested content links to visit other pages on the CBBC site. The user can return to the application in the future where they can continue to interact with the questions or view more suggested content.

The pilot provides a fresh way for the audience to find new content through the playful tool that is Predicto Machino.

Music Mashup

Music Mashup by Young (indie)

Now these guys from Manchester based Young have some amazing knitwear, enough to brighten anyone’s day. I’m a sucker for good jumpers and the team didn’t disappoint when they presented their Music Mashup idea.

Music Mashup is a visual and audio sequencer with a library housing 100's of clips from CBBC programmes and unique animations which users can ‘mash-up’.

Once the user has loaded the tool up with content by dragging and dropping in their chosen combination of clips they can change the sequences, swap videos and add effects.

For example, a clip of Tracy Beaker slamming a door could become a 'looping drum beat while a line from Diddy Dick and Dom would be a vocal sample.

When they save their creations it will automatically create a short music video to accompany their Mash Up that users can view, share and 'like' within the Mash Up chart.

The Music Mash Up game caters for both a younger and older demographic, allowing those with a higher ability level to be more creative with their sequencer. The team will ensure that even the most ‘creative’ child can make wonder sounding Music Mashups.

These three projects all came from the CBBC Connected Studio, next week we will take a look at BBC Sport where four ideas were taken into pilot stage.

Robin Cramp is the project manager for BBC Connected Studio.

BBC iPlayer launches on Windows Phone 8

2013-05-15T10:06:15+01:00

A couple of months ago, Cyrus Saihan announced that BBC iPlayer would be coming to Windows Phones . I’m now pleased to announce that that day has arrived and for the first time BBC iPlayer is available on Windows Phone 8 devices.

The application - consisting of a shortcut to the mobile optimized website, live tile and media player - can be downloaded for free from the Window Phone Store.

Search for content by channel, by featured content or save shows to your favourites

The application will enable you to catch up on your favourite BBC shows on the go. We know this is something that is becoming more and more popular as in March this year 30% of overall requests came from mobiles or tablets, with 81 million requests in total.

Following our previous blog post some of you will be wondering what about Windows Phone 7.5? Over the last few months we have been working with Microsoft to launch iPlayer on both Windows Phone 8 and 7.5.

Unfortunately, platform limitations with Windows Phone 7.5 have meant we've been unable to provide the same quality playback experience as on Windows Phone 8. This led to the joint decision not to make BBC iPlayer available on Windows Phone 7.5.

Although this is disappointing, Windows Phone 8 currently make up the majority of all Windows Phones on the market and this number is expected to grow. I therefore hope more of you will get to enjoy BBC programmes on the go with iPlayer with Windows Phone 8 devices.

As with any new launch of BBC iPlayer we are keen to hear your feedback. Let us know what you think by leaving a comment below.

Dave Price is Head of BBC iPlayer, Programmes and On Demand, BBC Future Media.

BBC Now: New ways of viewing content on the BBC Homepage

2013-05-14T10:18:22+01:00

Hello, I'm the product manager of the BBC Homepage.

In November 2012 I wrote a blog post about a project I was working on with an agency called Red Badger as part of the BBC’s Connected Studio initiative.

I’m really excited that we have now been able to put the link to this pilot live on the Connected Studio website.

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Watch a film about the BBC Now pilot

The BBC publishes and broadcasts thousands of pieces of content a day both online and across our stations and channels. BBC Now gives us a new way to share more of this content but in a digestible way.

We know how busy people are and that we all expect the latest most relevant information to be there for us almost instantly.

We have therefore created a time based ‘fast lane’ of content on the right hand side of the BBC Homepage. This tells people what’s happening right now and brings out the personality of our brands.

It not only helps people discover new content they might have otherwise missed, it also uncovers the conversations around that content which happen every day.

A quick look at BBC Now gives you the top four trending or most popular terms. This updates dynamically as soon as another item is published which makes it even easier to follow a news story just as it's breaking or a big event like Glastonbury.

I wanted people to be able to find out what’s happening in the BBC and the world right now without having to move around different areas of the BBC website. You can get your Travel News, see which song was last played on 6 music, read headlines from journalists overseas, see what’s about to start on BBC One and of course get the latest Sports results all in one place.

The stream is made up of a mixture of recently published content and official BBC Twitter accounts including BBC News and Sports journalists, Radio shows and DJ’s, popular TV programmes such as Have I Got News For You, Daily Politics or Strictly Come Dancing and Radio 1’s Newsbeat. These accounts are all used as additional ways to communicate and have conversations directly with audiences.

I know people feel passionately about the BBC brands so it was important that every feed includes the appropriate logo. The Twitter Feeds also include the twitter handle for example @BBCFood, we then display the whole tweet.

The internally published content, i.e. content that sits on bbc.co.uk, is slightly different.

We make sure the brand that the content lives under is still prominent then, for example, for music we display the artwork of the song which is currently playing, and there is a prompt to listen live.

BBC iPlayer feeds work in a similar way: we show an image from the show, a brief description and a prompt to watch now in iPlayer.

Why do a prototype?

We do prototypes to test ideas quickly. It also gives us the opportunity to use a range of technology which means we can build as much as possible in the time available, which in this case was just four weeks. So unlike our current Homepage this prototype won’t work on older browsers or devices.

David Wynne, from Red Badger, shares some insight on how they built the prototype

“By combining a variety of data sources and data strategies we created a unified stream of real-time BBC data which is delivered to each user's browser via Server-sent Events. Using our custom BBC Brand database we ensure each update is first associated to a configured brand so by the time it reaches a users browser, the update has been contextualized to a common brand. The stream of data is also passed through our trend analysis module, which uses a natural language query processor to extract common terms and aggregate trends occurring over the last six hours across the BBC.

Node.js is at the core of BBC Now, being suited as it is to real-time web applications. We used MongoDB to power the BBC Brand database and Redis to facilitate inter-application pub/sub. The trend analysis module uses Python and the NLTK (Natural Language Toolkit). We used Vagrant to provide virtualized development environments, provisioned by Chef. We also used Chef to provision production environments.”

What next?

I’ve got several user testing sessions booked in where we will test the prototype with users across the country.

As this is a prototype this is just the start. My vision is that by offering different levels of manual and automatic personalisation each person will get live information on the things that they are most interesting in, be it Wimbledon, Grimmy, MasterChef or Northern Ireland News. This could be an optional piece of functionality, allowing people to chose how they want to see and receive their content from the BBC.

I would love you to give me your feedback by leaving a comment below or tweeting using the hash tag #bbcnow.

Eleni Sharp is the product manager, BBC Homepage.

Raven: File based ingest for BBC News

2013-05-13T08:50:00+01:00

I’m Mike Satterthwaite and I’m product and installation manager for the Broadcast Systems Development Team.

We are one of the teams inside the BBC working on internal technology development. We normally develop products and solutions when there is nothing fit for purpose on the commercial market. This may involve integrating commercial products with internally developed ‘glue ware’.

Raven at Lund Point for HD Olympic broadcasts

As a department our philosophy is to develop everything as reusable components that can be dropped into multiple workflows to fulfil a host of different needs across the organisation.

We try to use open source where possible as we subscribe to the opening and fair-sharing of software and are always keen to save the BBC money. As a whole we gives back to the same community by funding contributions to those open source projects.

Our biggest ‘customers’ are BBC News and Newsgathering both in the UK and also the international news bureaus and our systems are installed across the globe.

One of the products we have been developing over the last few years is Raven.

The original specification for Raven was for a box that would replace a tape deck in news satellite vans allowing news crews to do file based ingest when they are out in the field.

The BBC and other broadcasters have been moving away from tape based delivery to file based working over the last few years and, in my opinion, it’s a much bigger challenge than the move to HD. This is because there are so many different elements which need to work in unity with existing and immovable systems and infrastructures.

As well as the software requirements there were also environmental factors such as the physical need to fit the box into the space left by the removed tape deck.

The box needed to be able to accept different card formats because although the BBC uses a Sony PMW500 camera that records on SxS cards in the XDCAM codec, other news producers will use different types of cameras, cards and codecs. Footage is often shared between camera crews in the field so the box needed to be able to read anything that was required.

Raven was developed as an application stack consisting of:

A Javascript based web UI,utilising a variety of libraries including JQuery and DHTMLX.
A PHP web service layer utilising among other technologies MySQL, SQLite and XCache.
A series of small daemons performing file system monitoring and job management.
'nuget', a C++ daemon utilising Blackmagic Design's Decklink API to control baseband operations.

We put this on commodity hardware, things that anyone can go out and buy from the shops, so it’s effectively just a PC you could have at home with the addition of a baseband video interface card from Blackmagic Design.

The Raven interface

It runs on Ubuntu, a distribution of the Linux operating system and makes a lot of use of FFMBC for media manipulation.

BBC News were keen for the box to act like a tape deck so they could record video into it and also play video out of it onto a pre-existing infrastructure. As there were no longer any tapes Raven itself therefore needed to have some sort of storage element built in.

News also wanted the ability to take files off Raven and edit them quickly in the field then drop the piece back on the box and play it out directly.

It’s this kind of challenge which puts my team in their element because we were expected to develop a solution within a pre-existing problem space without changing anything else around it.

For example, as the satellite trucks were designed around baseband video i.e. real video voltages going down cables as opposed to IP, Raven had to bridge this gap.

After solving the initial problem the next step in the development of Raven was stimulated by the HD broadcast of the Royal Wedding in April 2011. At this point it became obvious we would have to consider more storage to scale with the growing requirements.

How could we join several Raven boxes together and share between them? We started to look at different ways of approaching this and think about a structure beyond a single box.

We solved this issue by developing something called a Raven nest, which is essentially a group of Ravens with a core storage server called a Ravenstore. This allowed all Ravens to access the same material for both recording and play out as well as sharing with editors.

The next challenge for the Raven was the Paris elections in 2012 where we experimented with media tagging.

This is when the clips or video being recorded are viewed and then given an appropriate associated label or ‘tag’. This tag then determines where the clips appear in a folder structure. So someone who’s sat in an edit suit or in front of a laptop in the field can look at a certain folder associated with that tag and edit only the relevant material.

Clips can have any number of tags but Raven doesn’t copy the recording multiple times. Instead by making use of the Linux operating system we are able to symlink the same file in multiple locations without taking up additional space.

Raven 3U

Undoubtedly the biggest challenge for Raven was the 2012 Olympics.

Nine months before the start of the Games we decided on a set of new features that Raven needed to deliver. However, the nature of news planning meant a lot of the final designs for the system were unknown until closer to the event. In some cases the workflows were changing literally the night before.

We installed eight Raven boxes in Lund Point, where the BBC News headlines were broadcast, as well as centralised storage for all the prerecorded packages which were played out during News bulletins.

There was hardware control of each Raven box and individuals doing editing off that shared storage in Final Cut Pro.

This ultimately became the system that played out video live for the One, Six and Ten o’clock news in HD throughout the whole two weeks of the Olympics and didn’t drop a single frame of the one million it broadcast.

When you consider that two and a half years before this Raven was just an idea, to then be finding it driving the HD News bulletins of the Olympics is a significant achievement.

However, when you look at the level of requirements for News over the Olympics I don’t think there was another option. People had become so familiar with using Raven by this point and they expected a lot from the product and weren’t let down.

Ravens are now doing everything from recording audio for logging purposes to live playout in Singapore to being used for archive purposes and they are still used in every satellite vehicle the BBC owns.

There are now around 350 to 400 Ravens used around different parts of the BBC, all built by my department either in the original 3units size or the smaller Raven minis which most people now have. We also have some built around Hewlett Packard hardware.

You can fit two of the minis side by side on a 19 inch rack bay and it also means you can have one with a smaller tape deck next to it. The original, larger version is meant to be mounted on a rack and be a permanent installation unit.

Going back to our departmental philosophy Raven has a full API means that it has the capacity to be reused in multiple different ways by other areas of the BBC.

For example, in Northern Ireland they have written a BNCS driver to control the Raven through the same interface they previously used to remotely control a tape deck. BNCS, now called Colledia Control, is the broadcast network control system used by the BBC to drive a lot of our broadcast devices.

Raven continually has to adapt to the next change in the business workflow. You have to be able to adapt as the broadcast industry is constantly changing at an ever increasing rate.

It would be interesting to hear what you think about Raven and your experiences of the file based transition.

Michael Satterthwaite is product and installation manager for the Broadcast Systems Development Team.

What's on BBC Red Button - May 11-17

2013-05-11T06:00:15+01:00

There's something for everyone on BBC Red Button this week with an eclectic mix of must-see concerts including Rod Stewart live, coverage of the Spanish Grand Prix and athletics in the Diamond League and an exclusive prequel to the Doctor Who series finale.

Doctor Who

Clara and the Doctor discover how little they really know about each other

As we hurtle towards the end of the series, watch an exclusive prequel to the final episode on the Red Button. In She Said, He Said the Doctor and Clara reflect on how little they know about each other, setting the scene for an epic series finale. Catch it straight after Saturday’s episode finishes at 7.40pm or watch it again during the week.

Available on Freesat/Sky/Virgin Media/Freeview

Saturday 11 May, 7.40pm-midnight
Sunday 12 May 6.15pm-8pm
Monday 13 May 5.10pm-5.45pm
Tuesday 14 May 6.30pm-Wednesday 15 May 6am
Thursday 16 May 4am-5.10pm, 7.15pm-7.55pm,9.30pm-10.25pm
Friday 17 May 4am-12pm

Radio 2 in Concert – Rod Stewart

Rod Stewart is live in concert for Radio 2 on Thursday evening

Radio 2 presents Rod Stewart in Concert live from the BBC Radio Theatre. Enjoy the build-up to the gig throughout the day as Rod joins a host of Radio 2 programmes to sound check, answer your questions and preview the performance. Then join Jo Whiley for the very special concert where the music legend will play some of his biggest hits as well as music from his latest album Time.

Available on Freesat/Sky/Virgin Media/Freeview

Thursday 16 May 7.55pm-9.30pm

Friday Night is Music Night

If you missed the climax of Radio 2 Day headlined by Gary Barlow then here’s your chance to watch the brilliant night of music again. Among the other artists who took part were Sinead O’Connor, Jamie Cullum, Elaine Paige and Mick Hucknall – all backed by the 60-piece BBC Concert Orchestra.

A record number of Radio 2 stars hosted, among them Ken Bruce, Jeremy Vine, Anneka Rice and Bob Harris. Plus watch out for a surprise performance from Tony Blackburn as you have never seen him before. Watch the orchestra play the ultimate Friday Night Favourite as voted for by Radio 2 listeners as well as classics from Shostakovich to Sondheim, Leonard Bernstein to the epic film music of John Williams.

The night also features the network's musical award winners including the Radio 2 Young Folk duo, the Radio 2 Young Choisters and the Young Brass award winner. Find out more here.

Available on Freesat/Sky/Virgin Media/Freeview

Wednesday 15 May, 6am – 5.20pm, 5.55pm- Thursday 16 May 4am

This week's Sport highlights

It’s an exciting week of sport on the Red Button as we bring you extensive coverage of the Spanish Grand Prix from Barcelona’s Circuit de Catalunya. Watch replays of the practice sessions and qualifying, before using the F1 driver tracker to make the most of the live race. Catch up on anything you’ve missed with the F1 Forum and plenty of highlights.

Jonny Brownlee makes his first appearance of the triathlon season in Yokohama and you can enjoy repeats of both the women’s and men’s races. Meanwhile the Diamond League continues from Doha, showcasing the world’s best athletes. The Rugby League Forum cheers up Saturday afternoon and football fans can watch Final Score on Sunday as usual.

For the latest information refer to the BBC Sport website.

Please note all Red Button times are subject to change at short notice.

Attenborough Season

For those who prefer the dawn chorus to drum & bass, the Attenborough Season makes its Red Button return. Press Red to watch an interview with the national treasure as he introduces highlights from the BBC Four collection which celebrates his early years.

Available on Freesat/Sky/Virgin Media/Freeview

Monday 13 May, 5.10pm-5.45pm
Thursday 16 May 5.10pm-7.15pm

Strange Hill High

The Red Button is celebrating the new arrival of CBBC’s newest and strangest show Strange Hill High with Strange Hill Extra, packed full of exclusive content. Find out how the show was made, discover more about the characters and watch a sneak peek of the next episode.

Available on Freesat/Sky/Virgin Media/Freeview

Wednesday 15 May 5.20pm-5.55pm

Watson & Oliver

We have exclusive content from popular sketch show Watson & Oliver. Press Red to go ‘backstage’ and have a laugh with the ‘real’ Watson & Oliver. In this week’s clip,discover how Ingrid and Lorna always insist on a number of unusual requirements whenever they are on set...

Available on Freesat/Sky/Virgin Media/Freeview

Thursday 16 May 10.25pm – Friday 17 May 4am

Antiques Roadshow

Please note there’s no Antiques Roadshow Play Along on the Red Button this week, but you can still play using the app (here’s how).