New BBC Sports Website Makes Heavy Use of RDF

Reality distortion field? by Ferzerp · 2012-02-01 06:12 · Score: 4, Funny

They had better be careful. Apple is a very lawsuit-happy corporation.

Re:Reality distortion field? by BasilBrush · 2012-02-01 06:38 · Score: 3, Funny

A Reality Distortion Field is our only chance of winning medals.
Re:Reality distortion field? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-01 06:47 · Score: 0

You mean besides curling?
Re:Reality distortion field? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-01 07:24 · Score: 1

Lads, this is London. That's a full 20 imperial oz curl you're doing there. It's not one of those wimpy 16 US oz curls they pull over in the States.

RDF? by mpeskett · 2012-02-01 06:12 · Score: 5, Informative

Wish it was more common in writing to define an acronym before using it, especially one that doesn't appear in the article.

Re:RDF? by Tetravus · 2012-02-01 06:19 · Score: 3, Insightful

Resource Description Format? Oh no, it's a Framework.
http://www.w3.org/RDF/
Re:RDF? by TBedsaul · 2012-02-01 06:22 · Score: 5, Funny

Robotech Defense Force
Re:RDF? by unts · 2012-02-01 06:24 · Score: 1

Seeing as this is the British *Broadcasting* Company we're talking about here, they *must* be referring to RDF Television: http://www.rdftelevision.com/
Re:RDF? by Nick+Fel · 2012-02-01 06:35 · Score: 5, Funny

Never mind RDF. What's 'sport'?
Re:RDF? by errandum · 2012-02-01 06:43 · Score: 2

It actually mentions the use of semantic web technologies, so I highly doubt that was what they meant.
On the other hand, why does using RDF and semantic web makes journalists spend "more time creating content"? I'd say that has nothing to do with semantic web but with the publishing tools they use.
Re:RDF? by demonbug · 2012-02-01 06:58 · Score: 1

Robotech Defense Force
So you think they're running their website on MAC IIs?
Re:RDF? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-01 07:22 · Score: 0

Almost makes me want to sign up so i have the potential to get mod points...
Re:RDF? by icebike · 2012-02-01 07:25 · Score: 0

Wish it was more common in writing to define an acronym before using it, especially one that doesn't appear in the article.
Especially since none of the linked stories ever mentioned RDF even once, nor did the summary even follow up with any specifics.
All of which suggests speculation in the summary title with no actual knowledge of exactly what they are using.

--
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Re:RDF? by icebike · 2012-02-01 07:26 · Score: 1

And of course everyone knows exactly what "semantic web technologies" implies.....

--
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Re:RDF? by rossdee · 2012-02-01 07:30 · Score: 1

Radio Direction Finding - used for navigation in WWII
Re:RDF? by msauve · 2012-02-01 07:43 · Score: 1

"Wish it was more common in writing to define an acronym before using it, especially one that doesn't appear in the article."

Radio Direction Finding. And it's very common, in fact required, in good writing. Whoever wrote the summary simply can't write well.

--
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Re:RDF? by jraymayhem · 2012-02-01 08:01 · Score: 2

There is a link to another blog post about BBC coverage of the World Cup which is referenced in the story. That article is all about semantic web and rdf (even has diagrams and stuff). My guess is that the new sports page is another implementation of the same CMS framework. http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2010/07/bbc_world_cup_2010_dynamic_sem.html
Re:RDF? by errandum · 2012-02-01 09:24 · Score: 1

Well, you're on slashdot, it is expected of you to either know or google it if you don't (:
Re:RDF? by unts · 2012-02-01 09:39 · Score: 1

Indeed. That and the fact that I was taking the piss... which the GP doesn't seem to have noticed.

Except maybe they did, and I've just fallen into a trap...
Re:RDF? by Threni · 2012-02-01 10:08 · Score: 1

Radical Dance Faction? UK band which split and became known as DF118, after a popular recreational drug.
It's perfectly common, by the way. It's just Slashdot has gone to shit lately, especially after that pointless "Look! I made a pretend ZX81 out of lego" nonsense a few days ago.

I'll get a gold in freestyle grammar nazism by Hognoxious · 2012-02-01 06:12 · Score: 5, Funny

BBC has rolled out the latest changes to it's sports website

Did they include an erroneous apostrophe detector?

--
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."

Re:I'll get a gold in freestyle grammar nazism by nahdude812 · 2012-02-01 06:57 · Score: 2

I'm sure they did. It's got to somewhere among the 76 individual <script src="..."> includes or 73 inline <script> ... </script> tags.
Looking at this source code... it makes me cry on the inside just a little bit.

--
Slay a dragon... over lunch!
Re:I'll get a gold in freestyle grammar nazism by Menkhaf · 2012-02-01 07:38 · Score: 4, Interesting

On a similar note, what's up with the 5196 empty lines?

~/tmp$ grep ^$ launching_bbc_sport_new.html |wc
5196 0 5196
...or the 21360 kB of whitespace?

~/tmp$ grep '^[[:blank:]]*$' launching_bbc_sport_new.html |wc
5896 1400 21360
That's one sixth of the page size (excluding external sources).
And speaking of external sources: 336 kB of Javascript. Neat, huh?

~/tmp/bbc$ for i in `grep --color=never -o 'src="http://[[:alnum:][:punct:]/]*"' launching_bbc_sport_new.html |sed -r 's/src="//' | sed -r 's/"//'|grep '.js' --color=never`; do wget $i; done;
~/tmp/bbc$ du -ch *.js*
28K bbccom.js
28K blq_core.js
16K comments-blog.js
8.0K embed.js
16K gloader.0.1.6.js
16K gloader.js
8.0K gw.js?csid=J08781
20K id-core.js
60K id.js
24K require.js
64K s_code.js
36K sharetools.js
12K swfobject.js
336K total
I haven't done any webpage project nearly as big as what I imagine BBC to be, but still, 476 kB all in all. Wow.

--
A proud member of the Onion-in-Hand alliance
Re:I'll get a gold in freestyle grammar nazism by Finallyjoined!!! · 2012-02-01 07:41 · Score: 1

It's got to somewhere among
What?
Makes me cry on the outside.

--
If I had an Ass, I'd call it Fanny Bottom, then I could slap my Ass; Fanny Bottom, on the Arse.
Re:I'll get a gold in freestyle grammar nazism by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-01 11:36 · Score: 0

id.js should contain one function: var id = function (x) { return x; }
60k, talk about code obfuscation.
Re:I'll get a gold in freestyle grammar nazism by jd · 2012-02-01 12:34 · Score: 1

The whitespace is so that they can add whatever content or images they like whilst leaving network transfer times the same.

--
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)

Apostrophe? by jginspace · 2012-02-01 06:14 · Score: 2, Informative

the BBC has rolled out the latest changes to it's sports website

New submitter (and Unknown Lamer) could have learned how to use the apostrophe.

Re:Apostrophe? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-01 06:48 · Score: 0

the BBC has rolled out the latest changes to it's sports website
New submitter (and Unknown Lamer) could have learned how to use the apostrophe.
Why bother? Theres alway's some egotistical asshol'e ready to poin't it out.
Re:Apostrophe? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-01 07:02 · Score: 0

's some egotistical asshol'e ready to poin'
yer missin' one.

Ugh by bhcompy · 2012-02-01 06:15 · Score: 1

So, is Web 3.0 going to be hectic dynamically tiled web design that looks like it belongs on TMZ and other gossip rags rather than respected news websites? There is such a thing as too much active content, you know

Re:Ugh by Elf+Sternberg · 2012-02-01 06:41 · Score: 4, Insightful

It depends upon how "active" you want it to be. RDF is mostly for the back-end anyway.
As a developer heavily involved in building RDF/RDFA utilities, I can't begin to express just how annoying it is to see a Slashdot header pointing to a "technical blog post" that has absolutely no mention of the technology used: nothing about the libraries or server platforms used; nothing about the trade-offs with client desktop vs mobile vs legacy (IE7 / FF3.x) vs. ARIA (accessibility). If you search through the article, you find a link to another article that says they use Silverlight (WTF!?) to handle their contentEditable stuff, Java as their RDFa store, and PHP as their deployment strategy. It looks like an overpriced, incoherent mess that's already headed for legacy status.

--
If you're so smart, why aren't you naked?
Re:Ugh by errandum · 2012-02-01 06:46 · Score: 1

You can make horrible UI's no matter what the web version used. Their tech guys are trying moving forward, while the designers aren't. What's your point, really?
Re:Ugh by jd · 2012-02-01 12:48 · Score: 4, Informative

The BBC was one of the first websites to actually survive the Slashdot Effect (and report having done so), an achievement worthy of an award at the time. Their tech guys also invented the Dirac format (which they have yet to use for anything). The BBC multicasts at least some of their channels and provides the iPlayer for VoD-ing programs later (pity they don't support PPV for out-of-country, but it's a start).
As such, I'd say their tech guys have defined "forward" for the next decade for everyone else. It's good to see them continuing to experiment as well as adapt to the new medium. Research and development has pretty much died - where it ever existed - amongst many of the major television stations. Given their financial situation, I'm actually very impressed that they're putting money into technical innovation.

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It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Re:Ugh by MaxiCat_42 · 2012-02-01 13:37 · Score: 2

"Given their financial situation, I'm actually very impressed that they're putting money into technical innovation."
The BBC don't have a financial problem. They just tax everyone with a TV in the UK - even if you never watch their stuff. Other TV companies have to earn their money.
Phil.
Re:Ugh by chris.alex.thomas · 2012-02-01 20:37 · Score: 1

and as such have produced much of the best tv ever produced.
so it's a price worth paying and well worth it if you want to compare against the networks paying millions to people probably not worth it, or endless friends&co re-runs....
Re:Ugh by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-02 00:36 · Score: 0

That iplayer for non-UK consumers is in the pipeline. The problem is obtaining the relevant licensing deals. The BBC's own programming is generally farmed out to smaller producers these days, and has been for something like 15 years. This creates big issues when dealing with using the content outside the sphere of the license payer.
Re:Ugh by Xest · 2012-02-02 02:35 · Score: 3, Interesting

"They just tax everyone with a TV in the UK - even if you never watch their stuff."
They tax everyone who watches live broadcast TV in the UK.
Yes, whilst a fair whack goes to the BBC, it also goes to looking after the broadcast infrastructure in the UK also. you might have noticed recent talk about using surplus from the digital switchover fund which came from the BBC's pool of money being used to fund broadband too.
So enough of the bollocks about having to pay for something you don't use, you do use it, if you watch UK broadcast TV live, you're getting benefit from the license fee. If you don't watch broadcast TV live, you have no need to pay the license fee. Chances are even if you pay for Sky, or Virgin and solely use that, you've watched shows that are at least in part funded by the license fee.
People stupidly believe the FUD that the license fee only pays for the actual BBC channels, but it doesn't - it pays for the content they produce, that's shown elsewhere, the broadcast network, subsidies for ITV, Channel 4, and Channel 5, and also any number of projects related to media access in the UK.
The BBC are restricted in how well they can generate resources to compete- Sky gets more income than the BBC does from license fees, and whilst the BBC could compete, it's been artificially restricted from doing so at the behest of Murdoch due to his corrupt links with numerous high ranking government ministers.
BBC World was growing incredibly fast as a result of the quality and popularity of their content (i.e. Planet Earth), and the BBC was looking at producing set top boxes along with the likes of ITV, Channel 4, and Channel 5 for on demand TV well ahead of it's time (long before Apple TV, and Google TV etc.). These are examples of where, due to Sky/Virgin lobbying the BBC has been artificially held back. The worst part is, for people like you, who clearly detest the license fee, that it could've been reduced, or even abolished if the BBC was allowed to pursue these revenue streams. Effectively despite Sky receiving higher income than the BBC by quite a margin, the BBC was restricted because despite it's lower income, it was out competing Sky due to better innovating. Now, ministers have prevented it innovating, so that Sky could continue to make more money, without having to bother to innovate.
It's somewhat of a coup too, the BBC was established to be independent of government, but government does have some control over it's budget, and the Tories most recently have abused that to restrict the BBC's ability to outcompete the likes of Sky based on innovation. Both previously Labour and now the Tories know they can't use the BBC to push their agenda because it is at least editorially independent, so instead they use their control over it's budget to restrict it's ability to compete with Sky which, being controlled so heavily by Murdoch they can use to push their agenda - when you understand this context, you'll understand why Jeremy Hunt was so openly going to allow the full News International takeover of Sky despite the blatant evidence of corruption right until the point it became a truly untenable position to defend. He was willing to be so openly corrupt because he knew that if it succeeded that a couple of years Murdoch propaganda before the next election would make him and his party look like saints again regardless.
There's a reason Murdoch's press and it's biggest ally, The Daily Mail create this anti-BBC propaganda about how you're paying for Jonathan Ross' extortionate salary and so forth and harp on about how unfair the license fee is if you don't watch Eastenders ignoring everything else the license fee goes to in their articles. I have plenty of complaints about some areas of the BBC myself, but make no mistake it's still one of the best editorially independent news outlet in the world, still arguably the best producer of documentairies in the world, and most importantly - it's under attack by vested interests.
So by all means back the propaganda, pre
Re:Ugh by tehcyder · 2012-02-02 03:03 · Score: 1

"Given their financial situation, I'm actually very impressed that they're putting money into technical innovation."
The BBC don't have a financial problem. They just tax everyone with a TV in the UK - even if you never watch their stuff. Other TV companies have to earn their money.
Phil.
Who would have a TV in the UK and never watch the BBC? About twelve people who just want Sky Sports, so fuck them and the Murdoch-faced horse they rode in on.

--
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Re:Ugh by jd · 2012-02-02 04:25 · Score: 2

Agreed, and it now also pays for the World Service (which used to be paid via the Foreign Office), not to mention virtually all local and national radio, not to mention the BBC news service, all royalties owed due to people ordering content via iPlayer, their research division (the Olympics is due to be shown in Ultra-High Definition TV, something for which there is no meaningful off-the-shelf hardware to support, they're having to make it themselves), etc.
For the longest time, it also covered the Radiophonic Workshop and their Costume Department - two exceptionally high-prestige units killed due to previous budget cuts.
The BBC, cost per unit of produce, is incredibly cheap.
The other thing the critics "forget" is that the channels that work via advertising still cost them money. The advertisers don't donate cash out of goodwill to viewers, they take it out the pockets of the product manufacturers, who in turn take it out of your pockets by raising the price of their goods. So you are subsidizing ad-based television channels via an invisible tax but a tax nonetheless. And since a lot of companies are global, you're subsidizing those channels in countries you will never visit.
The BBC is at least honest about what they bill you and uses that money in the country in which it is collected. Fox, et al, are not and do not.
I'd rather have an honest bill and know what I'm getting for it than a dishonest one where the produce is given to someone else instead.

--
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)

I'll Take Silver by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-01 06:18 · Score: 0

'BBC has rolled out the latest changes to its sports website.' Please!

Re:I'll Take Silver by Samantha+Wright · 2012-02-01 07:00 · Score: 0

I'm afraid you've got bronze. Hognoxious and jginspace have the gold and silver, respectively. But don't worry, it's a very nice medal! With a swastika surrounded by the five Olympic rings, and everything! The National Spelling & Grammar Worker's Party has been honoured, and the cause of International Grammar Fascism advanced. We'll drive those dirty populist language reformers out of the Internet at any cost, and make them bleed red ink for disturbing our utopia of unambiguous syntax and inflection.

--
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Re:I'll Take Silver by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-01 07:20 · Score: 0

I'm afraid you've got bronze. Hognoxious and jginspace have the gold and silver, respectively. But don't worry, it's a very nice medal! With a swastika surrounded by the five Olympic rings, and everything! The National Spelling & Grammar Worker's Party has been honoured, and the cause of International Grammar Fascism advanced. We'll drive those dirty populist language reformers out of the Internet at any cost, and make them bleed red ink for disturbing our utopia of unambiguous syntax and inflection.
Being irritable about ignorance and laziness doesn't make someone a Nazi. It isn't Hognoxious' or Jginspace' fault that the OP failed school.
Re:I'll Take Silver by Samantha+Wright · 2012-02-01 09:54 · Score: 1

Any genocide has to start somewhere!

--
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Re:I'll Take Silver by Americano · 2012-02-01 11:04 · Score: 1

People who utilize improper punctuation are a blight upon civilized society, and must not be tolerated. What you call genocide, I call eliminating criminal elements.
They're monsters! I hear they eat their own grandmothers!
Re:I'll Take Silver by Samantha+Wright · 2012-02-01 12:40 · Score: 1

Indeed. The purification of the English linguistic community, through the removal of degenerate elements, is a matter of utmost importance.
Some day, I swear, I will rewrite Mein Kampf so that it is about linguistic poverty.

--
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!

2012, year of the semantic web! by Trepidity · 2012-02-01 06:19 · Score: 4, Funny

Unfortunately we have a bit of a backlog, and the year of the semantic web is current queued just behind the year of the linux desktop, so there may be a short delay.

--
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10

Re:2012, year of the semantic web! by errandum · 2012-02-01 06:54 · Score: 2, Interesting

Flash had been around for over 5 years until it became the unofficial standard for rich internet applications (right around the time youtube showed up).
The idea behind the semantic web (context > statistics) is not a bad one, the biggest problem I see though is that everyone is trying to implement it using entirely new standards and with an utopic ideal. If they worked on how to get existing technologies to take advantage of all those ideas (for ex: altering SQL to accept the returning of relations instead of creating SPARQL) instead of pushing forward Turtle, RDF, OWL, SWIRL, and a whole bunch of stuff that only die hard techs will look at, maybe it'd go somewhere.
Re:2012, year of the semantic web! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-01 07:51 · Score: 0

I've been there, done that. The whole semantic data concept. And it's a nightmare.
The problem is the amount of work to create all the associations.
In essence it boils down to one of two choices:
Either for *each* change you make, you go through *all* entities in your database, and check them against your changed stuff,
or yo have to accept that your ontology is a incomplete chaotic useless mess.
So you usually start out trying the first, start to fail, accept the latter, and then give up because it became pointless.
Which means that unless we find a way to automatically read our minds to create the same associations we have in our brains without having to manually enter the changes of every learning event, it's not gonna happen.
I read TFA (yeah, *gasp* ;), and they use a enterprisey IBM "solution" that can "automatically" detect associations in natural language text. Which, as you can imagine, is crap. Because, not even a human can detect all those associations from the text of another human. It's basically snake oil, and works as well as e.g. Google Translate to hand-written Chinese, Inuktitut, Tifinagh and back. ;)
Re:2012, year of the semantic web! by icebraining · 2012-02-01 09:36 · Score: 1

What's the alternative to RDF and OWL?
And I'd say SPARQL is a good as it gets in terms of a derivative of SQL that's adapted to query triples instead of simple records. If you know SQL and understand RDF, it's pretty easy to pick up.

SELECT ?x ?name WHERE { ?x foaf:name ?name }

The only difference there is that the condition is a triple, but that's inevitable.

--
Dilbert RSS feed
Re:2012, year of the semantic web! by errandum · 2012-02-01 11:13 · Score: 1

Let me put it another way (And picking up on the flash example). You used to need flash to insert videos into web pages, but now there is a "video" tag. My gripe is not with RDF or OWL themselves (even though the fact that you can't compute the entirety of OWL kind of strikes me as a bit stupid - why go all out to then say "but you can only use # = 1"), but with SPARQL. They could have just added SPARQL like features to SQL and you'd only use it if you wanted... SQL uses tables, but isn't a table a matrix and aren't those one of the ways you can represent a graph?
Right now you need a specific setup to run things using semantic web, most of which I'd say are highly "unscalable", while requiring hacks to get simple functionality, for example, if you want to do a case insensitive queries, you need to either normalize your whole database to use lower/uppercase or use regular expressions to filter results (which, by my testing, makes it extremely slow).
Also, convincing your boss that you need to revolutionize their IT department for a non-specific gain is a lot harder than just using what you already have.
Re:2012, year of the semantic web! by jd · 2012-02-01 12:58 · Score: 1

Three alternatives to RDF used by Google:
http://code.google.com/apis/gdata/index.html
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/05/introducing-rich-snippets.html
http://ebiquity.umbc.edu/blogger/2009/05/12/google-support-rdfa-and-microformats/
http://schema.org/
Microsoft uses OData as well as Schema:
http://www.odata.org/
OWL is a way to write schemas, making the logical alternative
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RDF_Schema
Popular schemas include everything in this list. Schemas are not necessarily compatible and tools are usually written for a specific schema.
http://139.91.183.30:9090/RDF/Examples.html

--
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Re:2012, year of the semantic web! by jrumney · 2012-02-02 02:20 · Score: 1

Flash had been around for over 5 years until it became the unofficial standard for rich internet applications (right around the time youtube showed up).
Youtube has nothing to do with RIA BTW, Flash was just used for video playback. Flash never became the standard for RIA, because RIA didn't really take off until Javascript performance and browser standardization made AJAX viable.
Re:2012, year of the semantic web! by errandum · 2012-02-02 03:59 · Score: 1

Never said it was, but because of youtube flash got installed pretty much everywhere.
You said they never took off, but have you ever seen, for example, a blockbuster movie website made in the last 10 years? It's all flash. Same with big companies like mcdonnalds or coca cola.
And you mention AJAX, do you know what it is? Javascript, yes, but AJAX was not a game changer at all.
Re:2012, year of the semantic web! by errandum · 2012-02-02 04:00 · Score: 1

and on a sidenote, click where it says "major platforms"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Internet_application

The one acronym that seems to make sense by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-01 06:21 · Score: 5, Informative

Apparently they're talking about the Resource_Description_Framework.

Shame... by unts · 2012-02-01 06:23 · Score: 3, Interesting

So if such an incredible amount of effort went into getting the HCI/UI/UX right, then why does it look... awful, just awful? It's a shame really, for a site that's existed for so long.

Re:Shame... by realmolo · 2012-02-01 06:35 · Score: 1, Interesting

Why does it look awful? Here's why:
1. Money. Someone has to get paid to design this thing, and the BBC probably prefers to pay somebody (or some firm) with the right political connections, regardless of their design talent.
2. Sports fans are tacky motherfuckers. Have you seen what sports fans wear? Neon fucking nightmares, every one of them. They probably LOVE the new design.
Re:Shame... by PDoc · 2012-02-01 06:43 · Score: 3, Interesting

Damn right. I just gave them some feedback (which you can too at http://ecustomeropinions.com/survey/survey.php?sid=878133413): "Why does the new site use so little screen space? On a fairly standard monitor, less than half of my screen space is being used by content. The yellow/black theme is fine, but throwing blue into the mix is horrible! The shade of blue chosen is also almost identical to that used in Windows 7 to highlighted text. There is also very little commonality in CSS - why are some section headings backed with a yellow banner, but other are not? Randomly scattered white boxes along with the yellow banner spreading out along the screen for no reason also distract. The whole design feels very rushed and unfinished, and not up to the usual BBC standards. The new BBC Food ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/ ) and Weather ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/ ) pages (in particular) have been refreshed much more successfully. Extremely disappointing."

--
Give a man a fire, and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life. (Terry Pratchett)
Re:Shame... by BasilBrush · 2012-02-01 06:44 · Score: 1

The choice of bright yellow as a theme is awful. On the plus side, it's one of the few actively maintained sites that doesn't have advertising. So it's got that on it's side.
Re:Shame... by wanzeo · 2012-02-01 06:52 · Score: 1

It feels exactly like MSN, which is not a compliment. There is an upper limit to the number of links I can read on a single page before it becomes a "where's Waldo" experience. At this point I usually go to a search engine.
If the sucess of Facebook and Google suggest anything, it's that clean interfaces are appealing to most people.
Re:Shame... by Hognoxious · 2012-02-01 07:04 · Score: 0

So if such an incredible amount of effort went into getting the HCI/UI/UX right, then why does it look... awful, just awful?
For consistency?
I think it's a corporate standard that things have to look like they were made by a 14 year old work experience boy.

--
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Re:Shame... by owlnation · 2012-02-01 07:30 · Score: 0, Troll

it's one of the few actively maintained sites that doesn't have advertising.

Not quite. It's the BBC, so they are not allowed to advertise. But... they do, all the time. They are just more devious about it. Sure, yes, there's no banners or sidebars with ads. But they will make sure they get team's sponsor's logos in their pics, they'll mention sponsors names where possible, etc. As well as the fact that sport is a big-business commercial product all by itself. You can absolutely guarantee a lot of corporate branding on that website, by stealth, all through the Olympics.

Their sport pages admittedly seem to have less ads than their other webpages and TV and radio channels -- which are absolutely stacked full of viral marketing, press releases and "accidental" product shots.

There's nothing that some of the BBC's employed and sub-contracted producers, journalists, DJ's, and presenters like more, than to be paid twice for their job. Even if it is illegal under their Charter.
Re:Shame... by Pope · 2012-02-01 07:38 · Score: 1

What? There are ads, a banner at the top and a box ad on the side when you're in a story.

--
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Re:Shame... by WarwickRyan · 2012-02-01 07:46 · Score: 2

> On the plus side, it's one of the few actively maintained sites that doesn't have advertising.
They run advertising for users outside of the UK. Users in the UK don't see any advertising.
More information is in the BBC Online FAQ:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbc.com/faq/
Re:Shame... by Finallyjoined!!! · 2012-02-01 07:46 · Score: 1

they'll mention sponsors names where possible
Never heard such a load of old bollocks..

--
If I had an Ass, I'd call it Fanny Bottom, then I could slap my Ass; Fanny Bottom, on the Arse.
Re:Shame... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-01 08:54 · Score: 0

Said the expert: http://stevekerrison.com/
Re:Shame... by BasilBrush · 2012-02-01 08:56 · Score: 1

> On the plus side, it's one of the few actively maintained sites that doesn't have advertising.
They run advertising for users outside of the UK. Users in the UK don't see any advertising.
OK, that makes sense. Good for us Brits then.
Re:Shame... by BasilBrush · 2012-02-01 08:58 · Score: 1

Apparently it's just the UK where there are no ads.
Re:Shame... by BasilBrush · 2012-02-01 09:07 · Score: 2

What utter trollish shit.
For sure sports themselves have sponsors,and so if taking photos or videos of sports and sportsmen, any logos they are wearing will be in the picture. But to suggest that the BBC go out of their way to include such sponsorship, let alone ads, is the very opposite of the truth.
Take for example Snooker, which has always been heavily sponsored. The snooker page (as server in the UK) has no sign of any sponsors or ads, other than in a single photo where the logo is incidentally to be seen on the referee's jacket.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/other_sports/snooker/default.stm
Re:Shame... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-01 10:04 · Score: 0

A yellow/black theme is not OK unless your message is "Danger!"

Sport by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-01 06:26 · Score: 0

...not Sports

I went to the BBC website today... by thatbloke83 · 2012-02-01 06:46 · Score: 1

...and got a shock.

It looks like it's a trial run for Microsoft's Metro UI that's going to appear in Windows 8. (Not a good thing, in my opinion).

Semantic publishing by ygslash · 2012-02-01 06:49 · Score: 4, Informative

The interesting part is behind a link buried deep inside this post. It's the dynamic semantic publishing engine, which was originally used on their World Cup 2010 site.

Re:Semantic publishing by jd · 2012-02-01 07:02 · Score: 1

There are many RDF-based languages (DublinCore, for example). Microsoft have their own metadata format and Google supports Microformats. The situation is an unholy mess.
OWL may or may not be the way to go, but there needs to be more of an effort to standardize the metadata or it will be impossible to utilize.

--
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Re:Semantic publishing by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-01 08:11 · Score: 0

Obligatory xkcd reference.
http://xkcd.com/927/
Re:Semantic publishing by jd · 2012-02-01 12:32 · Score: 1

That would be meaningful, except that in this case the standards are 99.9% the same -except- that they're all in different namespaces, with the 0.1% difference not being in the use cases supported but in the nomenclature.

--
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)

Re:"Great" my ass by Hognoxious · 2012-02-01 06:58 · Score: 1

They might hate CEOs and other multimillionaires for being too rich or something but they just love multimillionaires who can kick a ball.

FTFY

--
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."

Unfortunately by Lincolnshire+Poacher · 2012-02-01 07:10 · Score: 1, Funny

Unfortunately two-thirds of the pages are reserved for corporate sponsors and the public is required to enter a raffle to have to have the opportunity of viewing the remaining pages, most of which are concerned with lawn bowling and tiddlywinks.

Only VISA is accepted for page view payments.

Do not attempt to drink non-sponsoring beverages whilst viewing the pages.

Note to non-UKians: this is indeed satire.

Re:Unfortunately by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-01 07:45 · Score: 1

Note to non-English-speakers: if you're going to write satire (or any prose) in English, try to avoid foreign idioms like "UKians" or "USians". No native English speaker ever uses that form, and it is like ruining a joke by stuttering on the punch line.
Re:Unfortunately by Finallyjoined!!! · 2012-02-01 07:51 · Score: 1

Note to non-UKians: this is indeed satire.
From someone else who is a UKian, and lives in Lincolnshire; this indeed is not satire..

--
If I had an Ass, I'd call it Fanny Bottom, then I could slap my Ass; Fanny Bottom, on the Arse.

how exciting by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-01 07:30 · Score: 0

someone updated their website!!!!!!!

Semantic web my arse by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-01 07:44 · Score: 0

Where's the semantic markup? All I see is XHTML 1.0 with a shitload of minified inline scripts and a totally non-semantic DIV hell with more inline scripts. The element IDs and classes are purely presentational. If they have all these metadata stored, why don't they include them as microformats, microdata or, you know, RDF?

Richard Dawkins Foundation? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-01 09:21 · Score: 0

Didn't realize how big atheism was getting in sports.

Comment removed by account_deleted · 2012-02-01 11:36 · Score: 1

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Typo: PDF by Moskit · 2012-02-02 01:36 · Score: 1

Submitter or editor made a spelling mistake. Site apparently uses a lot of PDF, which is a proprietary Portable Document Format.

Slashdot Mirror

New BBC Sports Website Makes Heavy Use of RDF

89 comments