Going Backstage with the BBC/Virtualised R&D - Birmingham Post - 050628

You may have read of the BBC's plans to release some of their immense digital library onto the web Yet another BBC initiative, BBC Backstage, received less coverage but could have a greater long term impact.

Launched in May, BBC Backstage is where the BBC will open up its computer programmes to web developers. As it says on the BBC Backstage web site “we're passionate about giving designers and developers the content and services they need to create cool new things“.

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Deep Impact hits Tempel 1

Deep Impact: Your First Look Inside a Comet! - Galactic fireworks courtesy of NASA.

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Millennium Development Goals

The United Nations Millennium Declaration of 2000 marked a strong commitment to the right to development, to peace and security, to gender equality, to the eradication of the many dimensions of poverty and to sustainable human development. Embedded in that Declaration, which was adopted by 147 heads of State and 189 states, were what have become known as the eight Millennium Development Goals, including 18 timebound targets.

They provide the best statement so far of what needs to be done. They are:

Goal 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
Goal 2: Achieve universal primary education
Goal 3: Promote gender equality and empower women
Goal 4: Reduce child mortality
Goal 5: Improve maternal health
Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
Goal 7: Ensure environmental sustainability
Goal 8: Develop a Global Partnership for Development

Make Poverty History drives towards these through:

- Cancelling debt
- Increasing responsible aid
- Building fair trade

The UN Millennium Project identifies 10 key actions to acheive the MDGs:

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Pink Floyd at Live 8

Got back from Deborah's concert in time to see Pink Floyd. Not a bad set at all, the body language was interesting though. Mason and Gilmour exchanging glances, neither looking at Waters, even when Gilmour and Waters were singing together, even when they sang:

We're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl, year after year,
Running over the same old ground.
What have you found? The same old fears.

At the end it was Waters who appeared to be gathering the others in for the group hug.

As to the pieces, I suppose Breathe was the "dark side" cloud pleaser - prototypical Floyd, Money was always the favourite before The Wall, Wish You Were Here was as always "for Syd", and Comfortably Numb is again in the Top 3.

What I think was missed though was a chance to really to visuals that did the songs and the even justice. One thing that struck was how the lyrics did echo the cause, especially if they'd added something like Dogs. Money was just crying our for Debt images, Comfortably Numb (as at Aseriti) just summed up the worlds attitude, or at least of its leaders.

The track they really should have sung though was The Tide Is Turning (After Live Aid). OK it's a Water's track so unlikely to be picked, but I'm sure its why Waters agreed to do the event. You can't write a song like that, and then turn down Live 8. And more than anything its sums up what an event signifies. Yes the lyrics then were very Cold War orientated, but the message is still there.

Now the satellite's confused
'Cos on Saturday night
The airwaves were full of compassion and light
And his silicon heart warmed
To the sight of a billion candles burning
Oo, oo, oo, the tide is turning
Oo, oo, oo, the tide is turning
The tide is turning Billy

I'm not saying that the battle is won
But on Saturday night all those kids in the sun
Wrested technology's sword from the hand of the
War Lords
Oh, oh, oh, the tide is turning

Certainly enough to make me click through to Make Poverty History and sign up.

I'm also working my way through "The End of Poverty" by Jeffrey Sachs, certainly the closest thing yet for a poverty elimination plan.

Get the Pink Floyd at Live8 video.

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Birmingham Live8 crowd

Birmingham Live8 crowd


Originally uploaded by halo4256.

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Streaming Music

Having got all the vinyl burned it's time to seek out some new music. With HMV about to close their current download service (and launch a new one), I've got to spend my 95p of credit before the end of the month. Since a track costs 99p I can't buy anything. But whole albums are typically only 11p to stream. So I can sit here and work my way through 8 albums.

Really does make me wonder why I burned all that vinyl. Say I spend 25 hours a week listening to music, that's about 25 albums, or £2.50. Over a year that's £100 for a whole HMV sized music library. No wonder bits are taking over from atoms...

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AJAX - Asynchronous Javascript and XML

adaptive path » ajax: a new approach to web applications

This i sprobably it, where so much recent software developemnt has been heading. Just as we're getting used to server driven web services along come client driven web services.

Our current approach to most development is to write everything server side, let the server call on other web services (speech systems, maps, google and amazon databases etc), and then let the server serve the finished page out to the relevant device in the relevant mark-up, HTML, Sitepal HTML for web speech, VXML for phone speech, WAP etc.

AJAX makes us of the new XMLHttpRequest Javascript command. This lets a web page go behingd the scenes to get data from another system - a web service typically - then use XSLT and Javascript to manipulate it, and then push in onto the screen using CSS and the DOM. All of a sudden the user has direct access to the data and you've skipped a link in the chain, reduced latency, buit a richer client environment and so on.

What differentiates this from old style client-server is that the client page is usually served from the server. So for instance the server core might handle initial sign on and a top level menu. Then each main application area gets its own AJAX page which can be served out to the user and take-over until they need another key bit of the application. Once we've got our GoogleMaps demo out the way we'll see about doing an AJAX demo.

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