Slashdot Mirror
BBC to Provide Extensive RSS
Georgie2032 writes "The BBC News Online's Editor states that beginning in the middle of May, the BBC will be 'completely liberating the availability of its content' using its Really Simple Syndication (RSS) tool. 'So in May we'll be happy for outside websites to dip in and take our headlines'"
installed by Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, and is now all fired up about RSS.
The screensaver shows a swirling mist of RSS headlines from a selected feed, and every few seconds zooms in on one, lets you read it, then twists it away into vapor.
Hard to describe, but there's a movie here which shows it in action.
Pure eye candy of course, but majorly cool!
Hrm. According to the article, BBC's current RSS feeds are for personal use. However, slashdot has been republishing the BBC Tech News in a slashbox for quite some time.
Further investigation shows this page which indicates that UK Based sites can also make free use of the syndicated feeds. It seems other sites need to license them.
"When I grow up, I want to be a weirdo"
Actually I'd disagree that the BBC News is biased. The problem is that all the other news services in this country are obsessively shallow and/or right-wing biased. Just watching Sky News for a bit brings home to you how disgusting they are. I remember the rail crash near Paddington in '99. The hotel only had Sky on and they kept showing footage of the crash interspersed with comments about how this footage was exclusive and brought to them by a loyal Sky News watcher.
Essentially the BBC's job is to question the government and the opposition. They are a about as un-biased as you will get but the rest of the media makes them seem biased because they follow the route of hounding after 'celebrities' and the money big business provides. Or else they pander (like the Daily Mail) to small-minded thoughts that cease to have any bearing 3 miles outside someone's home: The "lock up the criminal scum (poor/black/non-christian people) but don't you dare build any prisons near MY house" mentality.
The BBC is a well-respected source of unbiased news. (Tony Blair and Alistair Campbell disagree with that, but events have proved how wrong they are.)
To have other sites using their news feed will enhance the reputation of the Corporation further and can only be a good thing as far as they are concerned. Because they strongly depend upon their reputation when it comes to gettting funding it's a win-win situation.
That's a very good reason for the decision.
Something is happening here but you don't know what it is, do you, Mr Jones.