大象传媒

We are proud to introduce a new initiative with the 大象传媒 Digital Media Initiative (DMI), which will affect the 大象传媒 for many years to come. Something which I'm sure the Backstage Community will and could sink its teeth into.

From how the metadata is structured to what formats we should or could be using. Its all in the DMI.

There will be lots more information about this long term initiative in the next few weeks, till then we thought we'd give you an overview of this massive project.

It is generally recognised that the media industry is undergoing a fundamental shift towards an environment characterised by audiences consuming digital content delivered on demand through platforms of their choice. As outlined through the Creative Future strategy, the 大象传媒鈥檚 ambition is to be at the vanguard of global media organisations operating in this exciting, but challenging new world and to continue to be able to serve the ever changing needs of audiences in the UK and abroad.

Fulfilling this ambition requires considerable change across the 大象传媒. The Digital Media Initiative (DMI) is at the heart 0of this transformation providing the 大象传媒 with a flexible, multiplatform enabled, digital production capability with the associated technology infrastructure.

DMI is focussed on delivering a solution that will provide the 大象传媒 with the following capabilities:

• Collaborative multiplatform production capability: DMI will allow multiplatform programme making teams to work together throughout the production lifecycle and provide individuals access to the work-in-progress content from the point of its inception regardless of the platform.
• Streamlined and agile production process: The move from tape to file-based digital production workflow will reduce the time consuming activities relating to the handling of tapes and allow more time to be spent on creative, editorial tasks.
• High quality information about assets: DMI will drive a step change in behaviour towards an asset management culture where information about the content is captured at the point of knowledge and gradually enhanced to facilitate effective exploitation of content throughout the asset鈥檚 life.
• Flexible infrastructure capable of supporting future services: DMI provides a solid, reusable foundation for cost effective delivery of new and emerging audience facing services.

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This year the (Media Guardian International TV Festival) has spawned its own fringe event, the TV Un-Festival. This day-long event which takes place on Saturday 25 August will centre around the clash of the well established TV world and the constantly accelerating Internet world using the unusual un-conference format, where the cost of entry is participation.

The highlights from the TV Un-Festival will be presented at this special event, giving everyone a chance to speculate on the future of TV, online entertainment and cross platform narratives.

This year the TV Un-Festivial hosted by Backstage.bbc.co.uk and guided along by the fabulous , aims to explorer the clash with in a series of free formed sessions similar to known as style. Everyone will be able to participate by using one of the free 30 minute slots which will be available.

Who's signed up?

大象传媒, Google, BT Vision, Microsoft TV, P2P-Next, Joost, Trustedplaces.com, Mind Candy, MTV, Tapeitofftheinternet.com, Freenet, Blip.TV, Zattoo, Licorice Film, and many many more鈥�

if your interested, and we'll see you in Edinburgh

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Our goal at Hack Day was to build an application that creates a seamless transition between your computer and mobile experience. We both work in the Research and Development group at The New York Times Company and spend a lot of time thinking about the changes in the way people use and consume media, particularly around mobile devices. Over the past few months, our group has been exploring a variety of emerging technologies, some of which helped seed the idea behind our hack.

Currently, your desktop, mobile, television and gaming experiences are, for the most part, separated. One of the problems we both encounter on a daily basis is trying to shift between a web and mobile environment, having to worry about loading content on a slow mobile phone, what it will look like, or if it will even be legible. Then, when you get back to your computer from being out and about on your mobile phone, having to filter through what you have and haven't read. We wanted to start looking at how to seamlessly shift between these platforms and how to appropriately deliver content for each different device and screen size.

When we sat down to decide what we would like to work on for Hack Day, we wanted to showcase a variety of technologies and skills including hacking hardware, mobile, web, user interface design and a little duct tape! We both very work well together as a small team. Nick covering the front end type work, including User Interface Design, CSS, mobile etc., and Michael doing all the AJAX and back-end coding (working in PHP, MySQL, Java, etc.)

Our Hack Day Experience

Although we came up with our idea for Hack Day a day or so beforehand, we had no idea what it was called and the real logistics of how it would work. We arrived at 鈥淎lly Pally鈥� around 10 a.m. on the Saturday and immediately set out to work. At around 5 p.m. on Saturday, Matt Cashmore from the 大象传媒 stood up and announced that everyone would need to 'submit a hack name and URL's by 1 p.m. the following day', so we frantically started searching the web for a domain name, the closest thing we could come up with to explain shifting, or transitioning, from place to place was shifd.com.

As Nick set out to figure out and design a simple, clean and self-explanatory user interface, Michael started working with the RFID reader and tags, and began building the database and API integration. Then the real coding began. Michael a 'Black Belt' in PHP and Java, and Nick a 'CSS Ninja' worked through the night creating all the different pieces that would become shifd.com. We went back to our hotel later in the evening to get a couple of hours sleep and then came back first thing in the morning to try to pull all the pieces together, fix the final bugs and 'hack together' the mobile site. We ran into some hardware problems, including trying to figure out where to put the RFID chip in the phone and also which RFID chips worked with our reader. (Some required a special touch, specific distances or ran into interference.) 2 p.m. rolled around, we were frantically trying to wrap things up鈥攆ixing bugs, setting up the mobile site, working with the API's, and, trying to find tape!鈥攚hen we were told to submit our hack and receive a slot and time to present. Then, as Nick went to sign up for our presentation slot, something in the AJAX went wrong and we couldn鈥檛 find the fix. Lack of sleep can be a killer when you鈥檙e trying to fix bugs! As time drew on, Michael was frantically trying to fix the code and we were told to make our way up to the stage to present to the judges. Luckily, there was a long line of people also waiting and we managed to somehow fix the glitches and go through a dry run whilst sitting on the floor in front of the stage. We didn't actually fix the final RFID bug until we were walking onto the stage! Talk about a close call.

The atmosphere at Hack Day was truly amazing. It was incredible to see so many people working on so many interesting projects in one place. We had to stop many times throughout the two days to walk around, take pictures and take in all of the creativity around us. Both Yahoo! and 大象传媒 were amazing hosts 鈥� taking care of all of us with food, drink and plenty of great APIs and content to play with. It was also fantastic that a lot of the folks that created the Yahoo! and 大象传媒 tools and APIs were on hand to help out the hackers! I couldn鈥檛 believe to hear that Rasmus Lerdorf was actually helping folks out with PHP during the night! Unreal.

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