When the GCTO (Group Chief Technology Office) team at BT were introduced to a highly innovative programming language for children last year, they knew it contained the germ of an even bigger idea - the challenge was nurturing it into a real world product for customers.
The story begins at MIT Media Lab, part of the Massachussets Institute of Technology, where Cefn Hoile, inventor and strategist at BT, is on a university liaison placement. One ongoing project that captured his interest was Scratch, a software programme designed to teach computer programming skills in an intuitive way.
Hoile says: “I was drawn to Scratch because it is aimed at children and non-technical adults, helping them develop skills such as computer use, mathematics and design, with a creative and entertaining output.”
Using Scratch, the user can create interactive stories, animations and art by dragging graphical tiles onto a palette and fitting them together, akin to building a jigsaw.
Each tile represents an action, which is applied to whatever media content the user wants to add, and shaped so that only actions that would work together, fit together, to create a predetermined sequence of actions.
Scratch has been available to download and use free of charge since May 2007 and it has been incredibly popular around the world. There is even a three day Scratch@MIT conference taking place for developers and educators to exchange knowledge and build further on the model.
So far, so simple, but the exterior simplicity and ease of use of Scratch belies the underlying capability. What it represents is a technology platform that is truly straightforward for non technical users, yet powerful and flexible.
Hoile says: “The scratch model removes the complexity of programming - no code, integers or technical language. Our extension of the model can turn consumers into operating system programmers, with all of their digital estate as raw material. This can include your desktop, mobile phone, messaging services, devices, PC software and online services.”
The origin of the name Scratch is the DJ term for mixing different pieces of music by ‘scratching’ two records at the same time. For BT though, the term ‘building from scratch’ was more appropriate. Hoile says: “Translating the scratch idea into a functional commercial service that would benefit BT customers was a big challenge. Literally from scratch we had to build our own interface and behaviours, we had to be able to run code in different places - on mobile, desktop, email, using home automation dialects.”
Thus was born codename BT Rules. The principal is similar to Scratch, using a graphical language in the form of jigsaw tiles to create event programming for content and devices.
For example, use your mobile to turn on the lights in your house as you near home, or to tell your home media server to start downloading a film. A weekly email from your supermarket could trigger the printing of your shopping list. A location detection service could be linked with a social networking site, a mobile phone and SMS messages to invite anyone in the area for a drink. The potential is enormous.
BT will host a central hub as a secure location for the code to reside and run, with a javascript plug-in for web browsers and an install program for the desktop. Any e-mail and messaging manipulation will run on the server.
BT Rules will marry the creative side of open source with commercial necessities. Hoyle says: “The probability is that BT will provide the basic software for free and charge for added value services, such as SMS or integrated banking.”
Cefn Hoile expects there to be a sizable active community, testing and improving the functionality. For security reasons, the community will not be able to develop their own tiles, only build jigsaws from the available tile-set.
“When we make a new set of tiles available, the community can review them and work out new functions and event sequences. They can request features and as we control the hub, we can withdraw programs if they don’t function as we or the community require.”
BT Rules will move to a trial version in the next few months and is expected to be released as a full service by the end of 2008. The initial idea may have been seeded elsewhere, but it is only through a ground breaking effort by the GCTO team at BT that great innovation is to become a great new service.