BBC's Blog, page 31

Hi, my name's Eliza and I'm the new content producer on the BBC Internet blog. It's my job to get people from around BBC Online to write about the work that they and their teams do.

I have been at the BBC for around five years, have worked across lots of different departments and consider it a big privilege to be able to highlight the innovative and cutting edge work carried out by my colleagues all across the organisation.

The events of the last few weeks have thrown a shadow over all of us, but I continue to believe in both the BBC and its values. We are impartial and honest and that means we should be transparent and open about what we do. This blog, like many BBC blogs, is a place to do that.

However, the Internet blog isn't just another forum for us to talk to you. It also gives us a chance to listen to what you have to say to us: to tell us what you think of our online products, to feedback on changes that have been made to them, to tell us about things you don't like or and maybe even occasionally to give some praise.

I hope the blog reflects the diverse array of work that's done by BBC Online and BBC Future Media. If it doesn't then let me know what you'd like to hear more about by leaving a comment.

iPlayer cupcake

Until then, my colleagues and I will continue to recover from Children In Need. If you work anywhere in the BBC this usually involves a 3 week semi-compulsory cake eating marathon, for the kids. It's Pudsey's fault but Mary Berry hasn't helped.

The BBC iPlayer cupcake you see above was made especially for CiN and was pretty good, but the chocolate and Guinness cake from the strategy team was the true winner.

Eliza Kessler is Content Producer, BBC Internet blog.

In May the BBC Homepage became the first product to take part in the new Connected Studio initiative.

As product manager for the Homepage I was really looking forward to this and couldn't wait to hear the ideas which were going to be pitched to us.

The Creative Studio Workshop Day

Over six months have now passed since the initial creative studio day and the pilots are now well underway. One of these pilots is called Now by creative software team Red Badger.

As the champion for the Now project I thought I would share my experience so far.

As the name suggests we want to create a time based Homepage to give a real feeling of liveliness.

By offering different levels of manual and automatic personalisation the user gets live information on things that they are most interesting in, be it Strictly or F1.

This 'fast lane' of content, which is relevant to you, sits on the right hand side of the page and updates dynamically.

I offered to champion this project as I feel it offers something new to the page and thought it could offer real value to our audience.

I also felt the potential to integrate social media and tie-in to big events such as Radio 1's Big Weekend, Children In Need or Wimbledon was really exciting.

Getting started

We initially took a small step back and did a little bit more discovery work to validate the ideas before jumping into the build.

This started with a great workshop day at Red Badgers studio.

Myself and colleagues from UX and Editorial spent the afternoon reviewing the work so far, looking at our audience personas, reviewing competitors, market trends and also sharing what we thought were the most important elements of the concept.

It was really important to me to get something in front of the audience as quickly as possible to gauge what they thought of the idea so a prototype was swiftly put together and we agreed to spend a day showing it to our audience the following week.

User testing

Last week we completed a day of user testing in the R&D lab at Media City in Salford. We spent a whole day speaking to representatives from various audience demographics and ages.

We showed them our idea, listened to what they thought about it and observed how they would use it.

The main concept was positively received by all participants. Some of the key things we learnt were:

• Filtering content by topics was popular.

• There was an expectation to remove content and topics if they aren't of interest.

• General impression was that the page is more up to date.

• People weren't comfortable with seeing social media content from their friends alongside BBC published content.

• Keep it simple - people would generally prefer larger images and slightly less functionality. For example the full set of share tools on every item isn't necessary.

We are now using this insight to help form the final idea and help us prioritise what features will make it into the backlog.

Work in progress on the Now pilot

What the audience said

"You could just have it on your laptop or whatever, [...] you could have it minimised, and it's there and just refreshes it, and keeps it up-to-date."

"That's a BBC reporter. It was seven minutes ago so you don't get more up to date than that"

"These are up to date things that [the BBC] have posted about the show. That [post] was only 30 seconds ago that's brilliant'

"Definitely [I'd come back throughout the day] because that's going to guide me to the interesting bits of news and save me time looking for it."

"Not really [interested in seeing what his friends shared], only because I go on to BBC for professional journalism and BBC opinion on views and journalistic approach. I don't go on there for other people's opinions really."

The prototype

As this is a pilot we have got the opportunity to use a range of technology which means we can build as much as possible in the time we have, which is just four weeks.

We are currently prioritising the features we feel offer the most value to the audience and are at the heart of the concept.

The biggest challenge with this project is how we make it relevant to people. The BBC publish so much content every day how do we decide what is important and relevant enough to appear in the fast lane?

We are hoping by using a combination of linked data and filters we can solve this problem.

What next?

The current plan is the pilots will be live to the public on the Connected Studio site where possible so I will be able to put links to them for everyone to access.

We are also planning on running user testing sessions with 100 members of the audience so we can gather feedback before making a decision on whether to implement it into bbc.co.uk.

Eleni Sharp is Product Manager, BBC Homepage, News & Knowledge, BBC Future Media.

The Rolling Stones ©Rolling Stones Archive

The Rolling Stones

Rock legends The Rolling Stones are 50 this year and we've got some brilliant extras coming up on the Red Button to celebrate. Speaking to Radio 2's Jo Whiley and Huey Morgan just before their 50th anniversary tour, the band reveal the highs and lows of five decades in rock 'n' roll.

Available on Freesat/Sky/Virgin Media/Freeview:

Sun 18 November, 7-7.55pm

Sun 18 November, 9-9.55pm

Mon 19 November, 6am-12pm

Mon 19 November, 5pm-12.15am

For more from Mick Jagger and the gang we've dug deep into the archive to bring you exclusive rehearsal and performance footage from the band, including 'Tumbling Dice' from Montreux Rehearsals in 1972, 'Black Limousine' performed at Hampton Coliseum in 1981 and 'You Got Me Rocking' from their Twickenham gig in 2003. Press red to see this previously unbroadcast footage.

Available on Freesat/Sky/Virgin Media/Freeview:

Sun 18 November, 1.15-4am

Thu 22 November, 9pm-4am

Sun 25 November, 12.25-4am

1Xtra Live

Alicia Keys headlines 1Xtra Live in Birmingham

1Xtra Live has been touring all week with some brilliant artists including Alicia Keys, Plan B and Tulisa - we'll bring you highlights from the tour this week. Get a taste of the action to come with these great clips from 1Xtra Live or visit the the 1Xtra website.

Available on Freesat/Sky/Virgin Media/Freeview:

Sat 17 November, 6am-2.30pm

Tue 20 November, 5-6am

Tue 20 November, 6am-7pm

Wed 21 November, 12-6am

Wed 21 November, 6am-7.30pm

Wed 21 November, 10pm-6am

Thu 22 November, 6am-9pm

David Attenborough - the early years
David Attenborough past and present

David Attenborough and his early years are the subject of a new collection of films from BBC Four. Watch specially selected clips from the collection on the Red Button.

Available on Freesat/Sky/Virgin Media/Freeview:

Fri 23 November, 9pm-4am

Strictly Come Dancing

Denise Van Outen and James Jordan

It's the big Wembley Arena showdown this week, press your Red Button to join former Strictly champion and professional dancer Karen Hardy with celebrity friend Russell Grant as they commentate live on the couples' performances. Expect a mixture of insight and irreverence as they give you the heads up on who's hot and who's not on the dancefloor before the judges have their say. And don't forget about the Strictly blog for more backstage gossip.

Available on Freesat/Sky/Virgin Media/Freeview:

Sat 17 November, 6.30-8pm


Sat 24 November, 6.40-8pm

Antiques Roadshow Play Along

Fiona Bruce presents Antiques Roadshow from Falmouth

Fancy yourself as an armchair antiques expert? Demonstrate your knowledge by playing along with
The Antiques Roadshow quiz. Our valuation game is simple, fun and free to play. All you have to do is consider each of the objects featured in the programme, select an option before our experts give their valuation and see how many you get right.

This week Fiona Bruce and the team are at the Falmouth National Maritime Museum. Why not join them and play along with the BBC One programme by pressing red? Use the colour buttons on your remote control to select a value. Will you be a novice, enthusiast, connoisseur or expert? Play along to find out and tweet your scores to #antiquesroadshow.

Available on Sky/Freeview:

Sun 18 November, 7.55-9pm

Dragons' Den

Peter Jones

The Dragons are back and the keen entrepreneurs can't wait to enter the Den to make a pitch for an investment that could make their business - and possibly change their lives.

Here on the Red Button we get to peek behind the scenes for the inside story on the investments made in the Den each week. What attracted the Dragons to the business? What did the other Dragons make of the deals? And why did the entrepreneurs take the deal they did in the Den?

Available on Freesat/Sky/Virgin Media/Freeview:

Sun 18 November, 9.55-11pm


Tue 20 November, 12.15-1.25am

Have your say on BBC Online and BBC Red Button Service Review

The BBC Trust carries out an in-depth review of each of the BBC's services at least once every five years. This time, the Trust is looking at BBC Online and BBC Red Button Services.

The Trust wants your views on these services and your suggestions on how they can be improved. There is also space in the consultation to raise any other points not covered by our questions. The consultation is open until 23rd January 2013.

To find out more about the consultation and how to take part, visit the BBC Trust site: BBC Online and BBC Red Button Service Review

If you would like a paper version sent to you, email [email protected] or call 0800 0680 116.

To request the questions in audio or braille please call 0800 0680 116 or textphone 0800 0153 350.

Large print is also available to download via the BBC Trust site: BBC Online and BBC Red Button Service Review

CBeebies Red Button

BBC Red Button welcomes younger viewers and grown-ups to the big, bright and fun world of CBeebies interactive!

Your children's favourite characters are at the heart of the interactive TV experience. Satellite and digital terrestrial viewers will have slightly different offerings
from one another. This has enabled the Red Button team to offer the best games tailored to each system.

CBeebies Red Button is available on the CBeebies channel, and via page 5900 on other channels.

CBeebies website

Available on Freeview and Sky only

BBC Sport

Catch up on all the latest Sport via the BBC Red Button. Please note that Red Button sport timings are subject to change at short notice.

For the latest information refer to the BBC Sport website.

Highlights this week


F1: Live coverage from Brazil
World Track Cycling: Live from Glasgow
NFL: San Francisco 49ers at the Chicago Bears

**Please note all Red Button times are subject to change at short notice

Hello I'm Sophie Bradshaw, Technical Project Manager in Future Media Children's.

When CBBC legends Dick and Dom announced that their newest show was going to be a bungalow inspired show taking place in a battered old fairground in Devon, we knew straight away there was a great opportunity for some exciting interactive CBBC content.

Dick and Dom's Hoopla

In their latest outing, Dick and Dom's Hoopla, the pair take their version of a carnival to the unsuspecting public.

As ringmasters they host a combination of silly and messy games, circus and music acts and some terrifying clowns to create a show full of mystery, silliness and a good helping of grossness all of which we wanted to re-create online.

With our interactive offering we wanted to bring our audience closer to the fun and mayhem of the carnival atmosphere.

Together with external interactive specialists Team Cooper of Sheffield we spent three months in the Dick and Dom mind-set creating a suite of games to take the Hoopla experience beyond TV and onto the website.

We decided that Flash was the best technology to use for this suite of games.

The majority of our audience access the CBBC website from a desktop computer so this is still the most widely accepted technology that provides consistency across multiple browsers. It also represents good value in terms of high levels of interaction, audio control and production quality.

Of course as innovation continues in the mobile and tablet space Flash might not be the right solution for these platforms.

Here in Children's we've already dived head first into HTML5 game technology with commissions for CBeebies Justin's House and the launch of CBBC's Young Dracula.

Working closely with the TV production team we took a road trip to Devon and got access to the set and characters to inform the tone of the games and find the right balance of addictive gameplay and the trademark spirit and anarchic comedy of Dick and Dom.

In the games we've grabbed them, shot them, snotted them and spun them til they were sick.

To start, non-graphical prototypes were created to make sure that the core game play was indeed fun and addictive.

Time was spent finely tuning the viscosity of snot, the reloading speed of ping pong balls and ensuring the claw grabber was not quite so hard to use as the ones we've all become accustomed to!

The right viscosity of snot: achieved

Hoopla presented Team Cooper with a great technical challenge having been briefed to create several games which had the short punchy spectacle of fairground games yet also had levels and depth to keep the player hooked.

Normally each level of a game would be hand-coded to define the player experiences but given the aspiration for limitless levels this would impose a hard cap on the end of the games.

Rather than hand-coding an algorithm was created to automatically generate potential levels, integrating variety to keep the player interested whilst gradually making the games harder.

This approach also made it much easier to stagger the introduction of new gameplay features without breaking level design.

Combining this with a tutorial system players have a gentle introduction to the games with controls and features fully explained as they're introduced.

Once they have a grasp on gameplay, the difficulty is gradually ramped up to a limitless extent.

Finding new innovative ways for play and interaction has always been high on our agenda. The success of our first multiplayer game Trapped! meant we have some solid evidence that our audience enjoy collaborative and competitive play.

With this in mind each of the games were carefully considered from the ground up so that a single player game could be translated easily into a 'Play with a Friend' mode, satisfying the competitive streak in our young audience.

The Hoopla games are the first on CBBC to allow two users on the same computer, whether they be children or adults, to go head-to-head knocking down as many ducks as they can, firing the most snot from their gunge machines or producing as much vomit as possible from their hapless victims.

To extend the fun of the games we offered users enhanced gameplay when they signed in with a BBC iD.

The Grabby Grab game

BBC's Games Grid API provides leaderboards so die-hard fans can have their top scores showcased.

In addition, Games Grid also allowed us to add rewards in the form of in-game achievements that mean everyone can take something away from the fairground.

We then had the challenge of recreating the authentic battered and stained fun fair aesthetics of the show for the game graphics.

Luckily, a trip to the National Fairground Archive in Sheffield provided the creative team with enough photographic inspiration to recreate it beautifully.

Before unleashing the games we tested them with children from local Salford schools.



Testing the visual 'wow' factor and the gameplay allowed us to identify a need for clearer instructions and some changes to the play with a friend mode.

All in all, we received a clear message that it was on the right track.

After adding the final elements of Hoopla mayhem the first two games Snot Shot and Duck Down launched to coincide with the first transmission on Friday 21st September and the final two games Grabby Grab and Plate Sick Spin in mid-October.

So far we've seen some impressive figures with the games peaking at 40,000 unique browsers a week. More excitingly, we've seen encouraging statistics for our play with a friend mode with 15% of users playing a game with a friend.

What next for play with a friend?

Hoopla is just the start for collaborative gaming in Children's - come late 2012 into early 2013 expect to see us pushing these boundaries with users being able to play against other online CBBC users all over the UK.

We can't wait to see what our audience think of it.

A big thank you to the Hoopla production team who made this all possible: Aidan Castelli, Claire Miller, Mark Owen and Will Storer at the BBC and Team Cooper of Sheffield.

Sophie Bradshaw is the Technical Project Manager in Future Media Children's.

Hello I'm Dan Forys a software engineer in the Future Media Platform team. I work in a small team dedicated to front-end frameworks and libraries used by the rest of the BBC. One of those frameworks is Barlesque.

Ostensibly Barlesque is the header and footer of most BBC web pages. In reality it's a framework providing global templates, styles and modules.

It currently provides three main versions - a 'Legacy' version for older pages, a fixed-width desktop version and a mobile version - 'Mobilesque'.

Mobilesque

Today, delivering two different versions of a page for mobile and desktop is not always desirable. There is a development overhead to creating and maintaining two different codebases and users don't want to learn different interfaces on different devices.

Also, increasingly there is no clear delineation between what constitutes a mobile device and a desktop device. Supplying a 'desktop' experience with a (normally) higher download weight to a netbook on a train with poor connectivity might be a poor experience, even though it is equipped with a desktop-grade browser.

Similarly, a connected TV - whilst not physically mobile - might have poor browser support for a desktop-grade experiences.

As a result there are many teams now working on device-agnostic responsive products and Barlesque has to work in a similar way.

Because Barlesque is the 'glue' that binds the page together with every other team's products we need to be one step ahead to deliver optimal experiences, whatever the device.

With this in mind a few months back we started developing a new version of Barlesque - codenamed ORB - or 'One Response Barlesque'. The One Response referring to our goal of having a single, cacheable response that will be quick to load on slow devices and connections.

Get ready

Having one response is especially important when pages are delivered through Varnish caches or even a Content Distribution Network (CDN). If we delivered a different masthead for different devices we would need a cached copy for every single variation - potentially making the page completely uncacheable and therefore every request hitting our servers.

We decided to take a 'mobile first' approach. This means we'll deliver the minimum possible code to the browser and then enhance that code on larger screens and more capable devices. The benefit of this is that we don't send code to devices that can't use it.

This meant we had to throw away some of the existing behaviours of Barlesque - no more loading of JQuery on every page for example!

ORB has a new, smart menu at the top. As the width of the browser decreases menu items drop out and become part of a bigger drop-down menu.

Similarly, as width increases, items pop back into the main menu. This behaviour isn't tied to any text size or particular width, ensuring that any unusual or future screen sizes will still be catered for. At very small widths the search box and BBC iD button collapse into icons.

Tabs for the smart menu

In-page there's a new (optional) responsive grid in development by our UX team. There's also a fluid footer which flexes to any width like the header.

I'll go into more technical detail in future posts - but for now here's a summary of some of the techniques and libraries we're using:

- Sass to help us manage our cross-browser CSS rules. We have different stylesheets for some browser widths and early versions of IE. Sass compiles these into regular CSS files.

- CSS rules based on great work in normalize.css, Eric Myer's Reset CSS and the work done by our very own Responsive News team. Our new rules are optional and designed to be very lean. This will allow products to design as they wish without being constrained to overzealous reset rules or a fixed-width column - both problems with the current Barlesque.

- RequireJS to provide modular Javascript loading across the BBC. This is how we load JQuery and Barlesque's Javascript enhancements.

- JSHint and CSSLint to help maintain code quality. Every time we commit to our code, we run these tools to make sure we conform to various coding standards.

Right now we're busy porting over some internal libraries around cookie privacy opt-outs, statistics gathering and a way of getting user feedback. We're also testing like mad on as many devices as we can get our hands on. Hopefully you'll start to see the first ORB sites rolling out in the very near future.

Dan Forys is a software engineer in the Platform team in Future Media.

Changes to the BBC Homepage highlighted - a new flavour bar and a simplified carousel

Hello, I'm Eleni Sharp, Product Manager of the BBC Homepage.

I'm delighted to tell you about a development on the Homepage which the team and I have been working on and which went live yesterday.

We have been developing the following new features to the carousel which takes up the top half of the page. The changes are based on how we can see the audience have been using the page and also what people have told us about the page during audience feedback sessions.

From today the Homepage has changed in the following ways:

• There's a revised content mix in the carousel

• There's a new flavour bar in the middle of the page

• News and Sport are no longer grouped together

• Carousel rotations are no longer dependant on interaction with the flavour bar, hopefully making it easier for people to see more content

There are also lots of additional features coming in the next few weeks which the team are busy working on, including more Entertainment headlines and Twitter modules.

Why make these changes?

The role of the Homepage is an important one. It is often a visitor's first impression of BBC Online and the start of their journey with the BBC. The Homepage's purpose is to ensure people can find what they are looking for as quickly as possible and also encourage them to browse to discover something new. So everything the team does is focused around these themes.

In August alone the Homepage produced 142 million referrals to other areas of the BBC such as News, BBC iPlayer and CBeebies. Helped by the Olympics and the start of the new Premier League season, Sport alone received over 64 million referrals from the BBC Homepage.

The development of the Homepage is an on-going process. We are continuously analysing how the audience is using our product and working with our colleagues in Marketing and Audiences, UX and Editorial to improve our service.

Since the launch last year we've been exploring how people have been using the new page though analytics and user testing sessions which were ran across the UK.

Some of the most interesting things we noticed were

• People aren't engaging with the Flavour bar: the filtering tool, that sits in the middle of the page. We want to make this easier to use.

• The content mix on the page is feeling limited for audiences because they aren't using the filtering mechanism

• There is too much content, and sometimes duplication of content. We want to make the experience of the Homepage more focussed.

• We want to add an increased sense of 'liveliness' to the page.

• We want to explore how the Homepage could increase referrals to other areas of BBC Online.

What did we learn from the analytics?

The BBC Homepage is the third most popular Homepage in the UK behind Yahoo and MSN, we are notably the only page in the top four without an email provider (Neilsen Reach ranking).

Since the relaunch last year we have seen our weekly visitors remain stable at 9 million, although during the Olympics we saw this peak at over 10 million.

Whilst mobile and tablet usage are increasing, 75% of the homepage's audience still visit on a desktop device so it is important that this page is as efficient as possible.

On a monthly basis 40% of people who come to the Homepage are interacting with the carousel in the top half of the page. However, only 30% of total users who come to the Homepage are clicking on a piece of content in the carousel, so I wanted to look at why and find ways to increase this.

The BBC Homepage development team at BBC North in MediaCityUK, Salford

As always we would love to know what you think. Please use the comments area below or alternatively tweet using the hashtag #bbchomepage.

Eleni Sharp is Product Manager, BBC Homepage, News & Knowledge, BBC Future Media

Six New Comedy Award

finalists

New Comedy Award Live

Who will be crowned the king, or queen, of comedy at this year's New Comedy Awards? Find out on the Red Button as we

host the grand final live from Blackpool. From 800 entrants, six funny hopefuls will battle it out, hoping their killer

lines will deliver them the New Comedy Award 2012 title.

Host Patrick Kielty will be joined by a comedy panel including Stephen K Amos, who will give their verdict on the

performances before handing over to the public vote. Don't miss your chance to get involved - you can vote for your

favourite online or by SMS.

Find out more about the BBC Radio New Comedy Award here.

Available on Freesat/Sky/Virgin Media/Freeview:

1Xtra Live

Alicia

Keys

1Xtra Live is back and better than ever! They're hitting the road again and taking the show on tour to four UK

cities. Kicking off in Brixton, London (12 November), they move on to Manchester (13 November), hop across to Liverpool

(14 November), before finally taking Birmingham's 'Ballroom' by storm (15 November).

Get more details on the 1Xtra website and, of course, don't miss a

minute of it on the Red Button.

Available on Freesat/Sky/Virgin Media/Freeview:

Tue 13 November, 4:30am-6:00am

Tue 13 November, 4:30am-6:00am

Tue 13 November, 6:00am-7:00pm

Wed 14 November, 12:00am-6:00am

Wed 14 November, 6:00am-6:00am

Thu 15 November, 6:00am-6:00am

Fri 16 November, 6:00am-12:00pm

Fri 16 November, 1:00pm-7:10pm

Sat 17 November, 4:00am-6:00am

Sat 17 November, 6:00am-2:30pm

Radio 2 In Concert: Florence + the Machine

Florence + the Machine play a homecoming gig

for Radio 2

What a gig it was - relive Florence + the Machine playing their homecoming gig at the Rivoli Ballroom in South East

London. Watch highlights of concert on the Red Button and find clips, photos and more on the Radio 2 website.

Available on Freesat/Sky/Virgin Media/Freeview:

Sat 10 November, 6:00am-11:50am

Sat 10 November, 8:05pm-11:50pm

Sun 11 November, 9:00pm-9:55pm

Mon 12 November, 4:00am-6:00am

Mon 12 November, 6:00am-7:55pm

The Cenotaph
Poppies on Remembrance

Sunday

We're offering extended coverage of Remembrance Sunday commemorations from the Cenotaph on the Red Button. Join us

for more from the service including interviews with the veterans by BBC News'Sophie Raworth.

Watch BBC One coverage and the press red.

Available on Freesat/Sky/Virgin Media/Freeview:

Sun 11 November, 12:00pm-12:30pm


The Rolling Stones

The Rolling Stones turn

50

Rock legends the Rolling Stones are 50 this year and to celebrate we've dug deep into the BBC archive to bring you

exclusive rehearsal and performance footage from the band, including 'Tumbling Dice' from Montreux Rehearsals in 1972,

'Black Limousine' performed at Hampton Coliseum in 1981 and 'You Got Me Rocking' from their Twickenham gig in 2003.

Press red to see this previously unbroadcast footage.

Available on Freesat/Sky/Virgin Media/Freeview:

Sun 18 Nov, 1:15am-4:00am



David Attenborough - the early years
David

Attenborough past and present

David Attenborough and his early years are the subject of a new collection from BBC Four. Watch specially selected

clips from the BBC Four

collection on the Red Button.

Available on Freesat/Sky/Virgin Media/Freeview:

Fri 16 Nov, 10:10pm-4:00am


Strictly Come Dancing

Karen Hauer and Nicky

Byrne

Press your red button to join former
Strictly champion and professional dancer Karen Hardy with celebrity friend Jon Culshaw as they commentate live on

the couples' performances. Expect a mixture of insight and irreverence as they give you the heads up on who's hot and

who's not on the dancefloor before the judges have their say.

Available on Freesat/Sky/Virgin Media/Freeview:

Sat 10 November, 6:30pm-8:05pm

Sat 17 November, 6:30pm-8:00pm




Imagine

Alan Yentob meets China's Lang Lang in

this week's Imagine

If Alan Yentob's BBC One profile on China's classical music superstar Lang Lang has you hooked, press red to see the

pianist extraordinaire perform the following:

Chopin Waltz no.1 (Latitude Festival, Southwold)

Chopin 12 Etudes Op. 25 No.4 (Carnegie Hall, New York)

Beethoven Piano Concerto No.5, 3rd Movement (Royal Albert Hall, London)

Watch
Imagine: Lang Lang's Story

Available on Freesat/Sky/Virgin Media/Freeview:

Mon 12 November, 11:55pm-12:17pm





Antiques Roadshow Play Along

Fancy yourself as an armchair antiques expert? Demonstrate your knowledge by playing along with Antiques Roadshow.

Our valuation game is simple, fun and free to play. All you have to do is consider each of the objects featured in the

programme, select an option before our experts give their valuation and see how many you get right.

This week Fiona Bruce and the team take a rare opportunity to set up for a Roadshow inside the Farnborough wind

tunnels. Objects under discussion range from some of the earliest designs for a flying machine to a poignant story of a

sailor lost during the Battle of the Bismarck Sea.

Watch
The Antiques Roadshow and play along with the BBC One programme by pressing red. Use the colour buttons on your

remote control to select a value. Will you be a novice, enthusiast, connoisseur or expert? Play along to find out and

tweet your scores to #antiquesroadshow.

Available on Sky/Freeview:

Sun 11 November, 7:55pm-9:00pm




Dragons' Den

Hilary Devey

The Dragons are back and the keen entrepreneurs can't wait to enter the Den to make a pitch for an investment that

could make their business - and change their lives.

Here on the Red Button we get to peek behind the scenes for the inside story on the investments made in the Den each

week. What attracted the Dragons to the business? What did the other Dragons make of the deals? And why did the

entrepreneurs take the deal they did in the Den?

Available on Freesat/Sky/Virgin Media/Freeview:


Sun 11 November, 9:55pm-4:00am

Tue 13 November, 12:17am-1.25am

Have your say on BBC Online and BBC Red Button Service Review

The BBC Trust carries out an in-depth review of each of the BBC's services at least once every 5 years. This time the

Trust is looking at BBC Online and BBC Red Button Services.

The Trust wants your views on these services and your suggestions on how they can be improved. There is also space in

the consultation to raise any other points not covered by our questions. The consultation is open until 23rd January

2013.

To find out more about the consultation and how to take part, visit the BBC Trust site:
BBC Online and BBC Red Button Service Review

If you would like a paper version sent to you, email [email protected] or call 0800 0680 116.

To request the questions in audio or braille please call 0800 0680 116 or textphone 0800 0153 350.

Large print is also available to download via the BBC Trust site:
BBC Online and BBC Red Button Service Review

CBeebies Red Button

BBC Red Button welcomes younger viewers and grown-ups with a sense of adventure to the big, bright and fun world of

CBeebies interactive!

Your children's favourite characters are at the heart of the interactive TV experience. Satellite and digital

terrestrial viewers will have slightly different offerings
from one another. This has enabled the Red Button team to offer the best games tailored to each system.

CBeebies Red Button is available on the CBeebies channel, and via page 5900 on other channels.

CBeebies website

Available on Freeview and Sky only

BBC Sport

Catch up on all the latest Sport via the BBC Red Button.

Please note that Red Button sport timings are subject to change at short notice.

For the latest information refer to the BBC Sport website.

Highlights


MotoGP: Live coverage from Valencia.
Rugby Union: Scotland v New Zealand, Autumn Internationals.
NFL: Kansas City Chiefs at Pittsburgh Steelers

**Note all Red Button times are subject to change at short notice

How can BBC Sport make the best use of new technologies, ever-increasing Internet connectivity, and social media growth, to offer more to audiences?

I'm Matthew Clark, Senior Technical Architect for Future Media Sport.

As I wrote in my last blog post, it's been a busy year, due to a plethora of new features made in time for this summer's Olympics. With the Games now over, it's time to consider what's next: what is the future of online Sport coverage? How can we make the best use of new technologies, ever-increasing Internet connectivity, and social media growth, to offer more to the BBC's audiences? That's a big question, so it's excellent timing that we have the Sport Connected Studio to help.

The BBC Connected Studio programme has its own website with all the details, but here's a summary:

Over the course of the year the programme works with ten BBC Online product teams of which BBC Sport is the 6th. You can attend as an individual or a business/organisation, and there's some financial support available for the later stages. (See the FAQ for more.) To give you an idea of Connected Studio's ambition and what has happened so far you can have a look at a post from Adrian Woolard, Programme lead on Connected Studio going through all the current pilots.

So, on to the brief for Sport. You can view it here, but here's my take.

We're focusing on live sporting events - moments where major sport events are happening and large numbers of people are following it online. What can be done to make this a more rewarding experience? In particular, we're looking at two scenarios:

1. Moments when major sporting tournaments are happening. These include Wimbledon, Glasgow's Commonwealth Games, the Winter Olympics, and the World Cup (all of which the BBC will have online video coverage for). These events often overlap - for example, there will almost certainly be days in 2014 when Wimbledon, the World Cup, Formula 1 and cricket are all on the same day.

2. The football season. Every Saturday, millions follow football games throughout the country (and the world). Most games aren't televised live, but there's plenty of coverage through radio, online, and studio TV coverage such as Final Score.

For both scenarios, the question is: what can be offered that makes following the sporting event better? Ideas can be pretty much anything, so long as they cover either or both of these scenarios. It has to be an online product, but that doesn't just mean web pages - interactive apps, perhaps for phones or internet-connected TVs, are encouraged too.

Not got an idea? Here are a few topics to whet the appetite:

• Choice: How does the audience want to choose and interact with multiple concurrent sporting events?

• Interaction: Can the audience be further engaged whilst watching live events?

• Second screen: How best should handheld devices work alongside TVs?

• Social engagement: How should use of social media drive a live sporting experience?

• Accessibility: How are more interactive experiences offered to those using screen readers or other accessibility tools?

• Companion data: What and how should information be added to video to make it more enjoyable and accessible?

• Varying audiences: Do people of certain age ranges, or sporting interests, prefer different experiences?

• Audience behaviour: How does real-time analysis of site interaction shape what should be on offer?

• UX: How can an interactive experience be built, for all size screens, without impacting the live video and detracting from the main event?

• Data mining: Can sport stats, user behaviour, and social data be analysed to provide new insights?

• Technical speed and scale: Can you deliver real-time updates to millions of users, whilst still staying reliable at key moments?

So, are you interested? If you've got innovative, creative, original ideas for online Sport coverage, make sure you apply. It doesn't matter whether your idea is big or small, or how thoroughly prepared it is. Get your skates on - the 'creative' day, where ideas are developed and pitched - is on the 21st November.

Matthew Clark is Senior Technical Architect, Sport, BBC Future Media.

Product releases in the run-up to the Digital Olympics

The BBC's digital coverage of this summer's London Olympic Games has been widely recognized as a great success, with audience online viewing figures and feedback exceeding expectations, as detailed in Cait O'Riordan's post "The story of the digital Olympics".

Reporting to Cait, as the L2012 programme manager, I was responsible for the delivery of the product development and in this blog, I'll review some of the challenges we faced in delivering this coverage, how they were met by the BBC's Future Media delivery team, the key lessons we learnt along the way and the legacy that remains for the coverage of future major events.

This blog post is aimed at project and programme managers, but will be of interest to anyone facing the challenge of managing large software projects.

Organisation and Development Approach

The complexity of delivering 24 hour live coverage of every event, with up to 24 streams of video, web pages for each of the 30 venues, 204 teams, 10,490 athletes and the results of every event, alongside coverage of the Torch Relay and 2012 cultural events, required a large team of product development staff working alongside key suppliers, over an 18 month period up to the Games.

The team had significant experience in 'agile' website development using scrum and kanban techniques, but had to define how this would work alongside the more traditional 'waterfall' development with an immovable deadline. We were also working with partners to deliver the new technologies needed to deliver the 2500 hours of video and data driving the dynamic creation of thousands of web pages, which added to the complexity of coordinating the programme of work.

The programme organised the teams into two enabling workstreams for the delivery of the dynamic streaming video and data infrastructure and the remaining six for audience-facing propositions, including the main Olympic sports pages, the interactive video player, a 2012 portal and Torch Relay, connected tv apps, mobile browser and apps and the red button service. This enabled each team with their own editorial and technical leadership, business analysts, UX designers, developers and testers to build their own products, within a common architecture and API's to the shared data services.

As well as dividing the work by team, the functionality to be delivered was prioritised by 'core, target and additional' scope, which helped to group features or 'stories' into releases, from which we scheduled the delivery of the highest impact areas first. Working with our editorial and business stakeholders, we established the audience value of features in terms of their expected reach, impact and value for money, against the technical challenges of various implementation options.

Detailed estimates of the development and testing of each story comprising a feature or task, was undertaken, as part of the sprint planning process. Once approved through the governance process, we were able to schedule the releases and assign the development and testing resources accordingly.

To ensure we kept to schedule with our commitment to deliver all the core and target functionality, the prioritised backlog of stories was tracked using "burn-down" charts, with the actual achieved velocity monitored at the end of each fortnightly sprint and remedial actions taken to re-establish track as required.

Testing and Releases during the Summer of Sport

We planned to start releasing features from the first quarter of 2012, in order to give plenty of time for integration of the components and their end-to-end testing. An overview of the BBC's on-line architecture for the Olympics and the strategy in testing for the expected traffic levels across all platforms is covered by Matthew Clark's blog post on building the BBC's Olympic site.

As each iteration of development was completed an end of sprint 'show'n'tell' session was held, where project team members demonstrated their latest features to the stakeholders and other teams. This gave early visibility on how requirements were being implemented, recognition for team members and built confidence on progress towards the planned release.

Throughout the product lifecycle, both functional and non-functional requirements were agreed, developed, tested and refined. As soon as a viable product was available, it was promoted to a staging environment for integration with other products and performance testing. A cloud-based testing service was used to simulate the levels of user interaction expected during the Olympics, to test performance under load and how caching could improve responsiveness.

We found this testing invaluable in improving the resilience of the products, under both desired operation and failure modes.

The wide range of sporting events and the Torch Relay, in the lead-up to the Olympics, also provided an opportunity to beta test the Olympic web pages and multiple events video player, with real data where available. The LOCOG test events, Formula 1 racing, Euros football and Wimbledon tennis tournaments allowed new features in the interactive video player to be trialled in a live environment with our audiences and their experience using it on a range of browsers, tablets, phones and connected TV's provided useful feedback to the product teams.

Communication and Keeping Track of Everything

The development programme produced over 500 product releases across the 8 workstreams, involving a significant number of technical inter-dependencies, with hundreds of emergent risks, issues and changes to be managed along the way. The development teams were also working across two sites; the London W12 Media Village and the recently established Media City in Salford.

Co-ordinating this and keeping everyone informed of progress required regular meetings with teams and stakeholders, ranging from daily team stand-ups, to weekly management reviews, fortnightly steering groups and monthly boards. We made extensive use of video and tele-conferencing, instant messaging, VoIP, wiki's and collaboration tools on both desktop and hand-held devices to do this.

To provide the latest input to these meetings and track progress, we required programme-wide, web-based information systems. For product development and

release, we used a ticketing system to plan releases, epics and stories down to individual task level and found this worked well, although it required significant effort to create and maintain the deployment tickets.

For project control and reporting, we configured a BBC in-house application to capture and constantly update all our milestones, risks, assumptions, issues, dependencies (RAID) and progress. This enabled RAID items that impacted across workstreams to be escalated and prioritised for resolution. Typical outputs were one page RAG reports, top risks and issues and release dashboards.

Using these communications and information tools, we were able to triage the daily workload of tasks and problems to be solved and keep a wide range of stakeholders engaged and informed of progress.

Lessons Learned

We captured the lessons from the programme as we went along, from end of sprint retrospectives and the rich data captured in our information systems above. At the end of the Olympics the project managers facilitated workshops to capture additional successes and improvement opportunities and share these with their colleagues. From these on-line surveys and interviews with stakeholders, over 300 lessons were captured in our project register.

The key lessons touched on above were the importance of organising and planning the work amongst self-directed, multi-disciplinary teams, with a layer of information and communication support provided by the management team.

The ability to prioritise the scope and deliver it incrementally with frequent opportunities to test at scale and in a live environment, contributed to the success of a once-in-a-lifetime sporting event for the BBC's on-line audiences.

Legacy

The BBC's digital video coverage and results from the Olympics will remain online until the expiry of the rights on 13 Jan 2013. Beyond that, there will be an archive of material, available for audiences to enjoy for many years to come.

The technology that was developed to deliver this coverage continues to be enhanced, including the high definition video streaming infrastructure and the linked data, for use in other BBC on-line products and future live events. Keep an eye on BBC Sport site for on-going developments

The experience and lessons learned in delivering this exciting programme will be carried forward by the team members into their next projects, while the environment and process limitations identified, will drive improvements in technology provision and uptake of best practices.

Mark Smith is a Programme Manager in Knowledge & Learning, BBC Future Media

Florence + the Machine live in concert

Radio 2 In Concert: Florence + the Machine

Join us live on the Red Button from the beautiful Rivoli Ballroom in South East London for BBC Radio 2 In Concert with Florence + the Machine on Thursday 8th November. Florence and the band will be performing classic tracks and songs from their latest album Ceremonials, plus talking to Jo Whiley straight after the show. You can also watch at bbc.co.uk/radio2 or on BBC Big Screens.

Watch highlights of the concert and interview on the Red Button and online from 9pm on Friday 9th November.

Freesat/Sky/Virgin Media/Freeview:

Thu 8th November, 8:00pm-3:30am

Fri 9th November, 9:00pm-6:00am

Sat 10th November, 6:00am-11:50am, 8:05pm-11:50pm

Invaded Extra

CBBC's been invaded! Press red on the CBBC channel this week and join Chris and Dodge T. Dog as they introduce an Invaded Extra special - all about the brand new CBBC show Wizards Vs. Aliens, and the new series of Young Dracula! Watch a behind-the-scenes tour of the Wizards Vs. Aliens set, and get the lowdown on the characters. Plus we have some CBBC Extra-style sneak peek clips from the new episodes of CBBC favourite, Young Dracula.

As always you can also read Chris and Dodge's blog, check out the answers to some of your questions, read your horoscope and see if the jokes that made Chris and Dodge LOL will have the same effect on you.

Go on, press red... You know you want to!

Available on all platforms

Freesat/Sky/Virgin Media/Freeview:

Sat 3rd November, 11:05am-12:00pm

Sun 4th November, 7:00am-10:00am

Mon 5th November, 7:00am-12:00pm, 3:00pm-7:30pm

Tue 6th November, 7:00am-7:30pm

Wed 7th November, 7:00am-7:30pm

Thu 8th November, 7:00am-8:00pm

Fri 9th November, 7:00am-12:00pm, 1:00pm-7:30pm

Antiques Roadshow Play Along

Fancy yourself as an armchair antiques expert? Demonstrate your knowledge by playing along with Antiques Roadshow. Our new valuation game is simple, fun and free to play. All you have to do is consider each of the objects featured in the programme, select an option before our experts give their valuation and see how many you get right.

This week Fiona Bruce and the experts arrive on the North Yorkshire coast at Scarborough for another day sifting through family treasures. Objects brought to the cameras include a moving carved tribute to a Spitfire pilot who was killed in action and one of the earliest forms of fridges. Plus there is a big surprise in store for the young owner of a Fijian war club, known as a buli buli.

Play along with the BBC One programme by pressing red and using the colour buttons on your remote control to select a value. Will you be a novice, enthusiast, connoisseur or expert? Play along to find out and tweet your scores to #antiquesroadshow.

Available on Sky/Freeview:

Sun 4th November, 7:55pm-9:00pm

Strictly Come Dancing

(L-R) Craig Revel Horwood, Darcey Bussell, Len Goodman and Bruno Tonioli

Press your red button to join former
Strictly champion and professional dancer Karen Hardy with celebrity friend Lionel Blair as they commentate live on the couples' performances. Expect a mixture of insight and irreverence as they give you the heads up on who's hot and who's not on the dancefloor before the judges have their say.

Available on all platforms:

Sat 3rd November, 6:30pm-8:15pm

Sat 10th November, 6:30pm-8:05pm

Dragons' Den

Theo Paphitis

It's a new series and another new raft of keen entrepreneurs are about to enter the Den and make a pitch for an investment that could make their business - and change their lives.

Here on the Red Button we get to peek behind the scenes and get the inside story on the investments made in the Den each week. What attracted the Dragons to the business? What did the other Dragons make of the deals? And why did the entrepreneurs take the deal?

Available on all platforms

Freesat/Sky/Virgin Media/Freeview:

Wed 7th November, 12:00am-4:00am, 11:00pm-4:00am

BBC Online and BBC Red Button Service Review

It is the BBC Trust's responsibility to get the best out of the BBC for licence fee payers. One of the ways they do this is by carrying out an in-depth review of each of the BBC's services at least once every 5 years. This time the Trust is looking at BBC Online and BBC Red Button Services.

The Trust wants your views on these services and your suggestions on how they can be improved. There is also space in the consultation to raise any other points not covered by our questions. The consultation is open until 23rd January 2013.

To find out more about the consultation and how to take part, visit the BBC Trust site:
BBC Online and BBC Red Button Service Review

If you would like a paper version sent to you, email [email protected] or call 0800 0680 116.

To request the questions in audio or braille please call 0800 0680 116 or textphone 0800 0153 350.

Large print is also available to download via the BBC Trust site:
BBC Online and BBC Red Button Service Review

CBeebies Red Button

BBC Red Button welcomes younger viewers and grown-ups with a sense of adventure to the big, bright and fun world of CBeebies interactive!

Your children's favourite characters are at the heart of the interactive TV experience. Satellite and digital terrestrial viewers will have slightly different offerings
from one another. This has enabled the Red Button team to offer the best games tailored to each system.

CBeebies Red Button is available on the CBeebies channel, and via page 5900 on other channels.

CBeebies website

Available on Freeview and Sky only

BBC Sport

Catch up on all the latest Sport via the BBC Red Button.

Please note that Red Button sport timings are subject to change at short notice.

For the latest information refer to the BBC Sport website.

Highlights


Formula 1: Live coverage of qualifying for the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.
American Football: Philadelphia Eagles at New Orleans Saints.
Football: Midweek Final Score. Keep up to date with all the goals and major incidents as they happen.

**Note all Red Button times are subject to change at short notice.