June 29, 2004
The BBC's Vision for the next 10 years

Well, this has been dominating my life for the past 6 months, and it sure feels good to see it emerge blinking into the daylight.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/thefuture/pdfs/bbc_bpv.pdf

(or, for acrobat-o-phobes
http://www.bbc.co.uk/thefuture/text/bbc_bpv_complete.html )

The official press release is also worth a perusal, not least for its clear message that Creative Archive is a Really Big Deal.

I am particularly proud to work for an organisation whose vision now reads:

"We look forward to a future where the public have access to a treasure-house of digital content, a store of value which spans media and platforms, develops and grows over time, which the public own and can freely use in perpetuity. A future where the historic one-way traffic of content from broadcaster to consumer evolves into a true creative dialogue in which the public are not passive audiences but active, inspired participants."

Wow.

Wow.

Now it's time to try to persuade barney and rosa that my name isn't 'mummy', and to remind Jo that she married a human being...

Posted by tomski at 03:06 PM
June 18, 2004
Awestruck

Cory has published the speech on DRM he recently gave to Microsoft Research.

American film studios didn't want the Japanese electronics companies to get a piece of the movie pie, so they fought the VCR. Today, everyone who makes movies agrees that they don't want to let you guys get between them and their customers.

Sony didn't get permission. Neither should you. Go build the record player that can play everyone's records.

Because if you don't do it, someone else will.

Read it. Then read it again. Then check that you can remember the arguments he illuminates and illustrates using his extraordinary talent for a darn good story.

Then forward the link (http://craphound.com/msftdrm.txt) to world & wife.

Posted by tomski at 10:25 AM
June 17, 2004
Compare and contrast

June 2004: "The way in which Freeserve displays advertisements on its search engine has been criticised by regulators in a ruling that puts 12 other British internet firms in the firing line"
http://media.guardian.co.uk/advertising/story/0,7492,1240739,00.html

vs

May 2002: "You may not realise this - and they certainly don't publicise it - but many engines, including AltaVista, Yahoo!, MSN and Lycos, now feed sponsored links into their hits. This means that companies can pay to appear near the top of the results."
http://www.mirror.co.uk/carolatmirror/carolmirrorhidden/page.cfm?objectid=11840312&method=full&siteid=50143

There's tons of public service value in good, clean, honest search. I think this is what Google means by not being Evil.

Posted by tomski at 11:33 AM
June 16, 2004
Richard Allen is first RSS'd MP

Congratulations to Richard Allen, Lib Dem MP for Sheffield Hallam, who wins the race to be the first MP to feature a list of TheyWorkForYou.com-powered appearances in Parliament on his excellent website.

Oh, the playful joys of RSS...

Update Ding! Ding! Norman Lamb, Lid Dem MP for North Norfolk storms through on the outside to stake his claim as the 2nd MP to put our RSS to good use...

Posted by tomski at 10:40 AM
June 14, 2004
TheyWorkForYou.com Search

We launched TheyWorkForYou.com using the open-source Xapian search engine.

Thanks to Ben and Francis, our search results are getting much better, and I'm very much looking forward to seeing how Google does in comparison. Something tells me that Xapian will surprise us...

However, it seems to take a long time for Google to get around to indexing deep within a new site. Maybe it needs lots of deep links to kick it off.

Plus some time. I very much want Google to index our MP pages.

Posted by tomski at 11:25 PM
June 08, 2004
MP RSS Feed

Looks like Tom Watson MP will be the first member of parliament to feature a TheyWorkForYou.com RSS feed of his Parliamentary contributions on his website.

Posted by tomski at 11:45 AM
June 06, 2004
TheyWorkForYou.com Beta is Live

Well, we rather haphazardly launched the public beta of TheyWorkForYou.com this afternoon at the truly excellent NotCon conference.

Phil has written about it better than I can right now.

Phil, Francis, Julian, Dory, Matthew, Denise, Ben, James and everyone involved deserves a huge thank you. It can't have been easy giving birth to this baby with Stef and me acting up as quarrelsome midwives.

Posted by tomski at 11:15 PM
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