Searching The Memories

Published on 7 March 2005 in BBC, Internet, Work, BBC, bbc.co.uk, search

Was it really 2001 that I spent months working away on the new, amazing BBCi web search? Ah it was, and the reason why I’m suddenly wittering on about it is because Martin’s found a screen grab of a rather hidden page that few people ever saw.

The page itself was hidden away at bbc.co.uk/search and I can’t really remember why it existed in the first place. I think it was so we could link to a search page on all the webpages which hadn’t (for one reason or other) been converted to the new templates and hadn’t got the new BBCi toolbar at the top of the page. Pages like bbc.co.uk/stars and an early homepage for the BBC News ticker for example.

As I recall, we found out we needed it rather late in the day and the page itself was quickly rustled up in an hour or so!

Rather ironic to see that again giving me a blast from the past – especially given some certain other occurrences today which I’ll cryptically not go into at this time, although two people might understand what I’m on about – and who knows if they’ll even be reading this page!

I’ll stop being annoyingly vague and incomprehensible and recall the time when we actually launched BBCi – which we had the joy of doing at midnight. A group of poor developers sat around until 5am making sure everything went smoothly, whilst eating pizza, whilst most sensible people were doing what sensible people do in the early hours of the morning – sleep.