Sky Newsbreak

Allo,
I tend to have a news channel on in the background, but that talking thing they insist on doing means it grabs my attention a little too much when I'm working on much more important things, like -

So, to solve this problem I was struck by an idea. Over a couple of days I have meticulously failed to accurately reproduce Sky News' graphics and knocked up a purty little SKY NEWS BREAKFILLER SCREENSAVER TYPE THINGY . I know, I know - just take a moment to let the amazingness catch up with you.
Basically, this parses the RSS feed for BBC News (an odd combination, granted, but I think the Beeb's syndication offerings are a little better) into a perpetually looping sequence. It then displays these sequentially in a breakfiller-inspired malarky that can take anywhere from 5 to 10 minutes. Then it starts all over again. Every time it loops, it compares the just-downloaded stories to the previous set, and flags any BREAKING NEWS with shiny redness and intrusive SWOOSHING. And of course, there's the mandatory Sky News bed playing in a loop forever and ever and ever.

I originally made this for my Media Center PC to run when it's otherwise idle, but I thought I would let you lovely people know of its existence just in case the idea interests anyone, so that I could make it available for download in the form of a screensaver (or standalone app if you actually were interested in using it for the same purpose as I am).
I should point out though that graphicswise it's not perfect yet, though. My MCE is a little lower spec than my desktop, and the ticker gets a bit clunky on it. Also, there's none of the shiny red wiping bars or anything, but these are all things I'd probably end up tweaking at some point:
Here are some screenshots (all taken from the current running version) if you be curious:

http://www.combustion-studios.com/mocks/skynews/break/ident.jpg
As the program starts, it plays the not at all repetitive ident, giving it a chance to do all of its rather clever parsing, comparing and general head scratching. If the internet is down, it won't go any further, and you'll be stuck staring at a Sky News logo for a very long time.

http://www.combustion-studios.com/mocks/skynews/break/tops.jpg
We're then presented with the three top stories at this point in time.

http://www.combustion-studios.com/mocks/skynews/break/main.jpg
And this is the main part - story after story after story. Note the ticker at the bottom is where all the other stories scroll by to make the place look a bit busier.

http://www.combustion-studios.com/mocks/skynews/break/breaking.jpg
Stop - everything. The news is in red, it must be important.

That is, essentially, it. Having this run constantly on my Media Center has been quite nice. When I wake up I can stick the telly on and digest a fair amount of vague near-information in less than five minutes.

I'm not forcing this on you :p just letting you know of its existence, so that if anyone would like to play around with it, let me know so I can package it up and make some tweaks so it can run on more than just my PC.

PS. Thanks to The TV Room Plus Mocks for permission to use their Sky News wallpaper.

Personally, I'd love a copy if you can package it up for us

I did my own version...

http://img504.imageshack.us/img504/9646/skynews6cm.png

(Editable Fireworks PNG)

comparsion:
http://latest.thetvroom.com/images/headlines-01.jpg
Courtesy of The TV Room

Anyways to the mock, I think it's good, may need some tweaks here and there to make the graphics slightly more acurate.

*looks a media PC being built next to me*

Yes I'd love a copy, although why does the headline on this:
http://www.combustion-studios.com/mocks/skynews/break/main.jpg

Look strangely off white? Even so I'd love to have a demo...

It does? Perhaps my monitor has deceived me.
Anyhoo - thanks for the interest - with any luck I should be able to PUSH a build today.

Can't wait, and my eyedropper says its "#FFFFE5" which is, just off white...

Curiously, the original aston PNG is most definitely white. I think this is JPEG getting its revenge on me by tainting all of my whitest whites. B*stard.
(If my server can pull itself together for long enough tonight, I should hopefully be able to actually upload this)

Really like the look of this, is there anyway you could post it in its application form?

If you actually read the posts, it does say he's working on getting it online soon.

http://www.combustion-studios.com/mocks/skynews/break/breaklogo.jpg
Sky Newsbreak 0.1 has been released
It's a fairly hefty download - mainly because of its multimedia feastiness:
Click here to download (21.9 Mb)



As I've said a few times, this still suffers from a severe case of The Naff, but I do hope to patch it up over time to make it a little lovelier. Or, at least a little lovely.
Thank you for your support

I've downloaded it and it really is good and that the improvements will make it perfect

Thats very fantastic, runs fine on my system, the only bugs I can see are the ones you've mentioned, the ticker is a bit fast I think, and needs what I can only describe as a higher frame rate, and the astons are off white.. Other than that its fantastic, well done...