Â鶹Éç

Flash & Â鶹Éç RSS XML feeds....

I decided to experiment with using RSS feeds going into Flash, basically to extend my portfolio (i'm a recent graduate of BA (Hons) Interactive Multimedia). I wanted to make a simple web based and downloadable application that gives a 'roundup' of the Â鶹Éç news in different categories. (It was only recently I was told about the Â鶹Éç backstage site).

I wanted to make it look 'pretty' as Flash is obviously useful for this, but at the same time to keep it simple and quick to load, something that will appeal to a large cross section of people.

For further developments I would allow a 'save' function to let the user save their feed preference. Image feature to show images from the news items. And a lot more feeds, with the option to perhaps allows feeds from other news sources. A multi language section, and so on. Well there are many future developments which could be incorporated if I had the time!!!

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• - What's this?

My idea is so simple that it does not need a long description. Though, when implemented it might give you valuable information about your viewers' watching habits.

Simply make a Java or Flash applet looking like an ordinary program chart of a TV channel. But, let the viewer drag 'n drop different programmes to different time slots to create their most optimal programming - suited to their lifestyle and personal schedule. It should just be made simple enough so that it would be simple drag 'n drops - few minutes and you're done.

Viewers could be motivated to use the applet by making it as 'game-like' as possible or by offering prizes. Also the sole fact that giving out their opinion might affect how the programming is made in the future might be enough of a motivator. Many people would love an opportunity to even possibly affect to the TV programming of their favourite channel. The applet is also positive in matter of company image as it gives out the image of the channel really listening to their viewers.

Benefit to Â鶹Éç? Well, another piece of code could interpret the statistics and find patterns to create simple information about your viewers and how they see the programming to suit their personal schedule. This would create enormous amounts of practically free, useful information. Just ask for the viewer's age and zip code for example, and there you go.

I live in Finland and have had this idea for some time now, but your competition was the first one to actually write it down to a sensible forum. Hope you find it useful as well.

Regards,

Erik Lyden

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• - What's this?

Surely I must not be the only person reading Â鶹Éç Backstage on a Windows computer? I've used Konfabulator for some time now, and it might be very useful to make widgets for this platform, in order to reach a wider audience. The kind of widgets I am thinking of are 1 Traffic Widgets - using the Â鶹Éç JamCams and Traffic feeds 2 News Feeds - just like the very neat one for Dashboard 3 Radio Player - again, like the one for Dashboard 4 Weather - easy to use as Konfabulator's one is, I like others would prefer to see something in the vein of the Â鶹Éç Weather service, espescially as I see the new system as a vast improvement.

The thing to bear in mind is that over 90% of the world's computers run Windows, and therefore Dashboard Widgets are irrelevant to the majority of users.

I'm learning about widget-creation as I write this, so some time this summer I might give it a go.

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• - What's this?

A map UI for sports weather information.
E.g. Sailing: For known weather station locations/Tidal locations have map pointers with graphical tidal and weather information.
With known weather and location preferences, this could extend to highlighting optimal conditions.

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• - What's this?

The basic concept is to turn everyone into a news gatherer even down to the local street level. News is mostly dominated by a few media organisations and there are few truly independent agencies as they all have share holders or other outside influences.

Google searches of news sites, searchs of bbc sites with location search terms eg village would show official stories for that area. Residents could submit news stories and they could be added into the feeds. News stories could be parsed for similarity so once there are at least 2 independent versions of an event then it starts to have some truth to it. The end product would be a community site with local news produced by the bbc and local news produced by the local people which could include local tales and local comment about events in the area.

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• - What's this?

How often do you think, "Oh, there's an interesting development. I should follow that thread!" but if you have not got the time to scan the News thoroughly everyday, you miss follow-up articles. 'Follow That Story' enables users to track the development of a story that caught their attention. It aims in a similar direction as "Story of a Story" and "No News?" in this section.

All articles on Â鶹Éç News have links to related articles, but these (naturally) only point to older articles. When you stumble on an older article it is very difficult to see how that story developed. The idea is to use the existing 'backward' links harvested from the new articles in the RSS feed to build a tree or network of related articles extending into the future. For each article, 'forward' links would be displayed, leading the user to articles that link to the current article.

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• - What's this?

Places are emotional, but how can this emotion be represented?

One way is to consider the sum of news articles relating to an area as an indication of a places current emotion.

So for this idea to work, news articles would need to be rated as either good or bad and be associated with a particular area, perhaps a county. Obviously there are certain problems with such a classification.

However ideally, a google map overlay could be created to indicate the current emotional state of, say, each individual county.

This would lead to stats such as the happiest county today or the saddest county this year etc etc.

In this sense the UK could be described by an emotional landscape, represented by a map.

Not only news but weather reports could also contribute to the emotional state of an area.

other problem - each good or bad news report would need to be measured for severity or importance etc to give a good measure of emotional state of an area.

Its a bit of a gimmick idea, but might be cool.

anyway im enjoying reading all the ideas and prototypes, this is a great site. Keep it up.

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• - What's this?

I have been creating a new tv show format that blends together the familiar talk-show/hosted program with numerous high-tech methods to interact with the show in real-time.

The host would start the program "rolling" and seed the topic or content, but from then on the viewers begin shaping the program.

Not just viewers at home logging sending email, chatting with the host, etc. This should would superimpose users' session content onto the screen. Different parts of the screen are used for various content/functions. Users could show a video they like in the corner, have a chat with multiple viewers on the left side, start/end subtopics at any time.

The host would try to pull all the various inputs & displays from viewers into a somewhat coherent or at least understandable show.

The thrill and interest in the show is the real-time interactivity between not only, the host & viewer, but between viewers as well. The show would almost be a interactive meeting place and serve only as a common location with the technology to allow everyone to interact together.

In short, the show would be a controlled chaotic multimedia experiment with the outcome completely unknown before the show really ends..A type of stream-of-consciousness and group-expression...

Interested in this? I have more details along with specifics on how the display, sets and technology would look and work together.

Contact me via my email address. If your network would sponsor the airspace and related equipment, I will volunteer my time and effort to experiment with this idea. At the very least, it could spawn other ideas or grab some headlines for your network.

Take care,
Robert Carr

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• - What's this?

In the current security situation in UK (and abroad) an indirect consequence of each attack is that millions of people call or text each other to ask if their friends or family are ok, and to reassure that they're ok themselves. Some mobile networks have proved to be vulnerable to such increased traffic. Furthermore it's a hassle calling round. The obvious solution to this increasingly frequent hour or two of anxiety is to centralise these call cascades. In outline the idea is that users create circles of friends and family online via a facility provided by Â鶹Éç. Each user creates in effect an alerts account, within which is depicted the status of each of their chosen friends and family. When a security incident is signalled then the system goes live. Each user only has to txt either a predetermined ok signal, or might write a special message which could appear online too. This txt goes to the central alert centre, which updates the status of this caller in all the us! er accounts in which he/she is featured. The reassurance requirement for those who can not / don't want to get online is supplied by a programme (perhaps user defined) that first of all alerts the user themselves by txt if they have not responded within 30 mins; secondly, between hours +1-3, txts a (designated) set of users (friends and family) that X is not yet 'OK' on the system; finally, perhaps, (again user defined) hour +4, the system notifies the police incident team. The idea might, with mobile company support, be restricted to within a certain area of an incident, city-wide for example “ i.e. only users whose phones are registering on mobile systems with an affected area will go live on the alerts system. With their cooperation too all monies from txts going out on the system could be donated toward victims of such violence. Â鶹Éç's role would be to provide up to the minute news coverage alongside the user's alert account page showing the status of all the! ir designated friends and family. The Â鶹Éç could also perhaps i! nclude b rief alert summaries with the 'reminder' txts at +30mins, and +1hour. A button on all Â鶹Éç webpages would appear as soon as an alert was declared. This button, and indeed the server support required, could indeed be supported by any number of large news outlets. Hope that's clear. Ideally this kind of service would not be necessary, nor would you hope it will be needed again: but... It is also appropriate to answer any kind of large scale public alert / event, and could even be adapted for public convenience at large events etc. Such a service would gain widespread subscription if it had at least the initial support of an organisation like Â鶹Éç.

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• - What's this?

It's good that you can listen to music online, such as Mixing
It, Jazz on 3 and Booby Friction and Nihal etc. but these are
long programmes and cover much content. It would be good if
separate tracks could be catergorized - including the
relevant talking - into something that means the listener
could listen to excerpts from several programmes in one go.
For instance I heard a wonderful 4 year old track from
Panjabi MC, which would go with some of the acoustic tracks
on Mixing It, aswell as some of the singer/songwriter
influenced house heard on Peter Tong's programme and the more
ambient influenced stuff on Jazz On 3. Obviously Late
Junction covers a wide range as do the various Radio1 and 2
programmes on Saturday and Sunday. Afterall who has got time
to listen to every programme that may include tracks you may
like. If you could, for example, choose from the previous
week's Â鶹Éç radio something like : acoustic guitar/dance
beats/singer/songwriter ; all these stylistically si! milar
tracks could come up. This means you could have a web Â鶹Éç
radio compilation radio show along the lines of the numerous
compilations people buy (such as 'Cafe Del Mar').
What would I do to improve it? I have plenty of time but no
money so the question is hyperthetical.

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• - What's this?

A background application which alerts the user to the appearance of any programs in the schedule which match a set of criteria that they have previously defined e.g.

- All Westerns starring Clint Eastwood.

- Any program concerning parenting

Once alerted to the matching program the user can choose to schedule a recording which is set up via a message sent to their IP-connected PVR.

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• - What's this?

How about a rolling archive of the 7 day listing data including URLs to the listen again content? Then a program/webapp offering the next 7 days' schedule could also offer historic schedules with a link to listen again to any available program. I'm forever narrowly missing programmes, so direct access to listen again from the schedule on my desktop would be great.

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• - What's this?

When listing the election results (either on Â鶹Éçi online or interactive TV), the results could be listed in order declared on the same page. For instance, sub page 1 would have Sunderland South, sub page 2 Sunderland North, sub page 3 Houghton and so on

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• - What's this?

how about a OSX widget for ball by ball cricket updates

If the feed

https://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/sport1/shared/bsp/hi/cricket/in_vision/html/in_vision1.stm

stays the same I'm sure someone with some programming skill could make a cool one, maybe in the shape of the ashes urn :-)

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• - What's this?

I think Douglas Adams' vision of H2G2 is great, but it doesn't do any more than Wikipedia. With the Â鶹Éç running the site there is a real opportunity for the next generation of search engine/encyclopedia. The Â鶹Éç has vast archives on a whole host of topics - nature, holidays, food, documentaries etc., all of which are increadibly well researched and presented. Either edit them down or use them straight as i-Podcasts for people who want to look things up! It would be a fantastic use of the Â鶹Éçs resources.

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• - What's this?

UPDATE: We're pleased to announce the competition is no longer restricted to just those living in the UK. Everyone is now eligible to take part!

Having made the on backstage.bbc.co.uk, we're now keen to see what you can do with it!

The way people watch television - and choose what they are going to watch - is changing. More channels, new delivery platforms, new ways to consume television programming...

For the first backstage.bbc.co.uk competition, we are offering you the opportunity to innovate and build prototypes that demonstrate new ways of exploring the Â鶹Éç TV schedule. Plus we have arguably the ultimate "geek bling" prize for the producer of the winning prototype.

Some possible ideas you might like to incorporate include:

• Combining schedules with web services such as del.lici.us, furl, flickr and technorati to open up each programme to external annotation.
• Focusing on specific genres (contained within the TV Anytime metadata). Promotion of signed programmes, etc.
• Introducing a social element to a schedule or channel (such as bookmarking programmes, rating/voting, vertical searches by genre).
• Alerts, SMS, email broadcasts and other client-push delivery mechanisms.
• Combine the schedule data in interesting ways with existing Â鶹Éç feeds or non Â鶹Éç information feeds (such as IMDB, Google images, Wikipedia, Google Video, Yahoo Video).
• Explore new ways of users tagging the TV data and aligning that with tags attached to existing tag based web services

... but you will no-doubt have your own ideas too!

The winner of the competition will receive a rackmount server, delivered to their door! Whether they chose to co-locate it in a data-centre or run it from their bedroom, we hope it will prove useful for their future backstage.bbc.co.uk prototype hacking.

The winner will also be invited to the Â鶹Éç to discuss their prototype and take a tour of the department as guests of the backstage.bbc.co.uk team.

We also have two 1Gig USB MP3 players to give away as runners-up prizes.

The competition closes on Monday 5th of September, so get cracking!

Please check out the for details.

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• - What's this?

Backstage Competition rules

1. This competition is open to both UK residents and those living overseas.

2. If you are under the age of 12 you must obtain permission from your parent/guardian before you enter this competition.

3. If you contribute a Winning entry (i.e. an entry that wins first, second or third prize), you agree and acknowledge that the Â鶹Éç may link to your prototype from any Â鶹Éç website (and reference your prototype in Â鶹Éç publicity material).

4. You must also provide the Â鶹Éç with your name to enter this competition. The Â鶹Éç will only use your personal details for the purposes of administering the competition, and identifying the creators of the winning entries. You agree and acknowledge that should your prototype be deemed one of the winning entries, the Â鶹Éç may publish your name along with your prototype. If you would like to know more see the Â鶹Éç's privacy policy.

5. The Â鶹Éç shall provide a first, second and third prize to the best entries. First prize shall be a rackmount server and second and third prizes shall be 1Gig MP3 Players. Prizes must be taken as stated and cannot be transferred. There will be no cash alternatives.

6. Only one entry will be accepted per person.

7. The editorial teams decision shall be final and no correspondence will be entered into.

8. The winners will be decided on the 5th September 2005. Winners will be informed by e-mail.

9. The Â鶹Éç does not accept any responsibility for late or lost entries due to the internet. Proof of sending is not proof of receipt.

10. Entrants must supply full details as required and comply with all rules to be eligible for the prizes. No responsibility is accepted for ineligible entries or entries made fraudulently.

11. Â鶹Éç competitions are not open to employees or contractors of the Â鶹Éç, any person directly or indirectly involved in the Â鶹Éç or the running of the competition, or their direct family members.

12. The Â鶹Éç reserves the right to cancel a competition at any stage, if deemed necessary in its opinion, and if circumstances arise outside of its control.

13. Prizes unclaimed after 28 days will be deemed to have been forfeited and the Â鶹Éç reserves the right to either offer the prize to the entrant whose name is next drawn at random, or to re-offer the prize in any future competition on the Â鶹Éç.

14. Entrants will be deemed to have accepted these rules and to agree to be bound by them when entering a competition. Entrants will also be deemed to have accepted and agreed to be bound by any extra rules that appear on the site where the competition is hosted.

15. These rules are governed by the laws of England and Wales.

Competitions on the Â鶹Éç website are administered by the Â鶹Éç.

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• - What's this?

Many people use a media player with a library that can handle both streaming content and local media (windows media player or winamp being good examples).

Unfortunately, it's difficult to integrate the Â鶹Éç's content into those libraries because much of it is streamed in the proprietary real player format.

How about streaming in mp3 and creating plugins for the major players so that we can browse and search the Â鶹Éç's (excellent) content from within our preferred players? It would make a change from the American stuff that's bundled with most of the players.

(If anyone is interested, my own workaround is to use the Â鶹Éç urls published on https://dave.org.uk/streams/ oaste them into winamp and then bookmark them- a pain, but it works)

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• - What's this?

Thank you for attending the backstage.bbc.co.uk Open Tech 2005 conference!

You can download today's presentation:

• (Microsoft PowerPoint)

This presentation is released under a licence.

Recordings of the event (both video and audio) are .

If you would like to contact us please use the following address: backstage (at) bbc.co.uk.

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• - What's this?

I originally built a Google Maps page using Road + Rail (from bbc) + Weather (from weather.com) data. This is located @ (you can use this page in Internet Explorer as well as Firefox).

I then started developing Greasemonkey scripts for Mozilla Firefox. An extension of my original project was to have an optional overlay of traffic data on the actual Google Maps page, and this is the result so far.

I thought it might be useful if used in conjunction with Google Maps journey planning features.

Further plans include adding all UK locations available ( i am manually adding them at the moment); adding rail delays as an optional overlay; and also fixing a few bugs.

Feel free to email using the address shown on my web page

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• - What's this?

I thought you might be interested in my hack of Google Earth to show all Premiership clubs with club news (pulled from Â鶹Éç RSS feeds) being overlaid onto the popup balloon.

More info at the URL given for the Prototype URL.

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• - What's this?

SMS news alerts allow you to receive news notification from various feeds of backstage data.

You can subscribe to multiple news feeds, create keyword based filters allowing you to only receive the information that you are interested in. Aswell as SMS alerts, you can also receive email based alerts with links to the full content on the Â鶹Éç.

Over the coming weeks I will be adding the ability to specify delivery options including time based rules (eg. don't send me messages at night).

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• - What's this?

Following on the from the excellent , this prototype does the same - but for the main bbc.co.uk homepage.

It checks for changes every minute, and also displays the differences in a nice format, so you can scroll back and see how the Â鶹Éç homepage has changed over the course of a day.

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• - What's this?

The Â鶹Éç makes use of numerous Skinkers 'desktop' applications, most notably to provide Â鶹Éç Radio information to viewers.

We would like to make this more widely available to non-Windows users based on the feeds provided on the Â鶹Éç site. We feel this is best served by making a browser-based viewer and alert system for the information. This would work cross-platform and remove the need to install software on machines (such as work PCs).

The work for this prototype has already been completed, and was launched on chrismoyles.co.uk to provide access to the Radio One feed, however it was removed at the request of the Â鶹Éç.

I think it's an application that fits in well with the thinking behind backstage, and it's a real shame that we are not able to show our work.

Thanks,
Chris Harris.

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• - What's this?

Is there an easy way to collect names (e.g. Aceh, Depp, Wonka,), new words (e.g. PDA, blog), etc., used on the Â鶹Éç website, and repackage them as a "Lexicon Update" for commonly used word processing and email software?

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• - What's this?

We have just launched Â鶹Éç OpenSource – the new repository for open source code released by the Â鶹Éç.

For the Â鶹Éç, open source software development is an extension of our Public Service remit. Releasing open source software helps our audience get additional value from the work they've funded, and also get tools for free that they couldn't get any other way. It also allows people outside the Â鶹Éç to extend projects in such a way that may in future be used in the Â鶹Éç.

We hope there will be opportunities for cross-pollination between and Â鶹Éç OpenSource.

If you would like to know more, check out the Â鶹Éç Open Source FAQ or visit the site directly.

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• - What's this?

Â鶹Éç News stories are primarily listed in genre-led indexes such as the , , etc.

However, stories can exist in more than one index, which enables the journalists to also create theme-led indexes - such as the "" index and the "" index.

The neat thing about this approach is that we automatically create an RSS feed for every index upon it's creation, meaning an RSS feed was the moment the editor created the "London Attacks" index last Thursday.

In fact we have an RSS feed for every "" index (as we call them) - check out .

If you want issue-led RSS feeds for your news aggregator, website or project, check it out. Also, don't forget you can always download the in - it reflects all currently active indexes, including In Depth indexes (There's also a of all RSS feeds living on the domain belonging Â鶹Éç News, Â鶹Éç Sport, CÂ鶹Éç Newsround and Â鶹Éç World Service).

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• - What's this?

This widget was born out of frustration with travel delays in the UK. Now, there is a quick and easy way to help solve that problem. Built for Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger Dashboard, my widget uses data supplied from backstage.bbc.co.uk and allows you to see the travel problems in either your region or by your mode of transport. The list you see is sorted by severity, so the most important travel news is at the top. To see more information on an item, just click it.

I am planning to release and update this widget on a quick and regular basis. I have several ideas of enhancements, but if you want to submit feature requests, please email me.

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• - What's this?

By using a combination of (i) the "See Also's" sidebar on Â鶹Éç News stories and (ii) "link:" searches in Google, build a tool to navigate the story of a story.

Imlement it by adding a top frame that gives navigation in time. See how a story forks into several as you go forward in time and (this is icing on the cake) display this graphically.

This should be useful to researchers of all sorts

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• - What's this?

The guys at Â鶹Éç Radio and Music Interactive have launched the Â鶹Éç’s first official desktop widget for Tiger OSX.

"Â鶹Éç Listen Live" enables you to listen to nine of the Â鶹Éç’s national radio stations via your desktop – an alternative to using the web-based Â鶹Éç Radio Player.

Activate your Â鶹Éç Listen Live widget to hear live radio from nine of the Â鶹Éç's national radio stations without the need to turn a switch or load a webpage. And if that's not enough - why not pull out multiple widgets to represent different radio stations that you regularly listen to? Always present, always ready - it's like having a radio installed in your computer.

There are already a number of members working on OSX widgets. Apple have created a whole swathe of new remixing opportunities with the release of their .

? All we ask is that you don’t include any Â鶹Éç graphical branding to ensure that it’s clear to end users that your widget is a third-party proposition.

Do what you’re working on, we’re always pleased to receive your !

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• - What's this?

Inspired by my commute which involves tube and two different train operators, my Commute allows you to pick 'n' mix your public transport tube operators, to a single page covering those companies. There's also an RSS option.

At the minute you select per company/line but in the future, searching by location could be added in as well.

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• - What's this?

One of the oldest ideas here says: "Grab a copy of bbc.co.uk/news every 5 mins, do a diff, then save the index if there's been a change."

It does exactly that, except it's every minute, and also displays the differences in a nice format, so you can scroll back and see how the Â鶹Éç News Front Page (UK Edition) has changed over the course of a day.

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• - What's this?

Just taking a look at the new TV listing RSS feed based on the TV anytime format.

Seems pretty detailed but I would like to see as much information as possible rather than a basic overview, what I would be looking for is to implement a system not dissimilar to TiVo in the US. Users are able to enter actors/actresses that they are interested in (TiVo then records any programs it finds them in) .

I was thinking more along the lines of desktop alerts. This information can be matched to any level of extraction allowed by the bbc. (genres, even year etc)

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• - What's this?