

Campaign urges BBC News to release full text RSS feeds - pclark
http://www.journalism.co.uk/2/articles/535000.php

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simonw
The Guardian (disclaimer: my employer) are one of the only newspapers in the
world to provide full content RSS feeds:
[http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/insideguardian/2008/oct/22/fu...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/insideguardian/2008/oct/22/full-
fat-rss-feed-upgrade)

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pclark
are you the simonw involved with the API project?

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simonw
Yes, and the MP's expenses project.

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pclark
Awesome. We're based in Cambridge [UK] so if you ever want to chat news over a
beer ...

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simonw
I don't get up there often, but the Guardian is right next to Kings Cross -
drop me a line at simon.willison@guardian dot couk if you're in the area.

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pierrefar
Given that the tax payers (and I'm one of them!) fund the BBC, we shouldn't be
needing to demand this from them. They should've done it ages ago without
prompting. It's our money that paid for it and we should have unfettered
access.

Come on Beebs, release your feeds!

I'm seeing a parallel to government funded academic research that comes with
stipulations that the resulting publications should be Open Access.

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pclark
that was kind of my point, but I didn't want to sound too aggressive by saying
that

yet ;)

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pierrefar
Well someone needs to hammer the point home.

Also, this may fall on very favourable ears: part of the most recent
govrenment, ummm, cabinet improvement was a move to open up the UK
government's data. RWW has a nice piece on it:
[http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/open_goverment_berners-...](http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/open_goverment_berners-
lee_and_the_uk_to_show_obam.php)

And who's in charge of this? None other than Tim Berners-Lee.

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dtf
Hmmm.... I wonder if they'll let him do what he really wants to do with it?
The UK govt has made a number of high-profile - dare I say, "celebrity" -
appointments at the moment (see also Alan Sugar, Martha Lane Fox). So do they
want the best person for the job, or is it just a matter of the publicity and
the prestige? As a citizen, I think TBL is an excellent choice for the job.
Will the govt be able to stomach his changes? I sincerely hope we don't see
him resigning from his post in 6 months, citing "unassailable differences of
viewpoint with his employer".

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halo
For UK readers, the majority of which are license fee payers, I agree.

But I'm not sure about international visitors as the BBC generates revenue
from ads shown on their site, so I'm not sure if it would make sound financial
sense and be good use of the taxpayers money if it would impact their revenue
stream. The downside is that people using online readers would be hit in the
cross-fire, but that's unavoidable.

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pclark
what ads?

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halo
The BBC shows ads on its website to non-UK visitors and have done since 2007.
From
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/bbcworldwide/worldwidestori...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/bbcworldwide/worldwidestories/pressreleases/2007/10_october/bbc.com.shtml):

"The BBC Trust has approved proposals for the BBC to establish bbc.com, a
commercial venture to offer advertising on the BBC's international online
service for users outside the UK. UK users' experience of bbc.co.uk will not
be affected.

...

bbc.com will use robust geo-IP technology (see Editor's Notes) to separate out
international visitors to the site."

From these ads, they made £1.5m ($3m) in the 5 months after launch (from the
BBC Annnual Report at
[http://www.bbcworldwide.com/annualreviews/review2008/Digital...](http://www.bbcworldwide.com/annualreviews/review2008/Digital_Media.aspx)).

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pclark
they should just put them in the full article feed, then

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kierank
This would be pretty useful. The best use of the BBC's RSS feeds that I've
seen was on a ferry and they had BBC screens showing the latest news.

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pclark
here's the direct url: <http://bbcfree.net>

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keyvan
Until they do implement this, there's always <http://fivefilters.org/content-
only/>

