A trawl around the web on August 1st
Posted on Saturday, August 1st, 2009 at 10:24pm. #
The latest in a list of “things you might find interesting if you’re a regular reader of my blog”. Compiled just for you.
Radio – it’s the future
Toby Anstis | Radio review [The Guardian]
"Everything that's wrong with commercial radio is wrong with the Toby Anstis show on Heart". Oh dear. "Radio, if it is to flourish and survive, has to offer personality and intimacy. Otherwise, we could just all turn to mp3s." Yes, yes, yes. You're right. "Hearing Anstis seemingly thrilled by the new Whitney Houston album, I felt very depressed about radio's future." You're not the only one. It must be time for change, no?
Engaging Through Your Web Stream [The Infinite Dial]
Actually, this piece is just as relevant for the UK industry around DAB Digital Radio – since it is extolling the virtues of what the BBC calls 'livetext' (and what the rest of the UK calls 'scrolling text', not that it should, or does in some instances). If you're a synchronised short-form text producer (some of those exist in the BBC, hello!) then this is a good read for you.
It’s all about ME [Jacobs Media]
Some good research, saying "most stations spend the lion's share of their time talking about themselves, rather than addressing content to the audience". Relevancy can ensure radio's future, and this is really interesting research.
Why the platform question for radio remains unanswered [Nick Piggott]
Nick has a reply for my post earlier this week. I reckoned we should stop talking about platforms, and start talking about content. Nick thinks we should still talk about platforms. It’s a good post. Mind, it’s wrong. But it’s a good post. (grin)
AudioBoo [The Guardian]
Is AudioBoo radio, asks Elisabeth Mahoney, and concludes that it isn’t. Well, that’s settled, then. Good.
Seacrest…out? [Hear 2.0]
Music radio presenter told to talk less after ‘research’ shows that people tune out when he speaks, apparently. Brilliant. Yes, let’s make the radio just like an iPod, and remove the reason why people actually tune into the radio. 1980′s thinking has no place in 2009; the concerning thing is that this damages the very future of our medium.
Breakfast on Fun Kids [Media Guardian]
A perky review of a rather fine radio station. I think Camilla Redmond likes it. This is a good thing, since it is rather a good radio station. And with all this talk of top-slicing, it does pose the question whether the BBC ought to sling some of its children’s programming in the direction of Fun Kids, and enable even higher quality children’s programming for the UK. Otherwise, how on earth are we supposed to get people growing up listening to the radio?
Digital radio switchover: ‘you can’t move faster than the British public want you to move’ [Grant Goddard]
Without comment, Grant copies the comments of the chairman of the BBC Trust, Sir Michael Lyons, from a recent Feedback. (The BBC Trust is independent from the rest of the BBC, and acts as the BBC’s regulator). From what I can work out from the interview, Lyons is basically saying that the BBC Trust thinks we should give up now on a 2015 switchover from FM to DAB (“it’s an extraordinarily ambitious suggestion”), and not even bother trying to meet it. So, either the BBC Trust has no faith in DAB as a broadcast medium, no faith in the BBC’s staff to achieve switchover, or no faith that the audience actually wants the new technology. That’s probably quite serious, wouldn’t you think?
RadioDNS – it’s the future
RadioDNS Supporters
The team behind RadioDNS announced its initial project supporters today. Notable are virtually all of the large broadcasters in the UK (public service and commercial), all of the large broadcasters in Australia (public service and commercial), a large commercial radio broadcaster in the US, a large receiver manufacturer and chipset maker, and those responsible for advocacy around HD Radio, DAB Digital Radio and internet radio in many markets in the world. A significant step – showing the fundemental agreement for the technology. I'm quite proud.
Quick install/build guide for RadioDNS [BBC - BBC RAD labs blog]
A guide to how to get the BBC's RadioDNS + RadioVIS application compiled on Ubuntu 9.04. A greatly helpful post by George Wright's team.
Beer – it’s the future
Tokyo* Fever [Pete Brown's Beer Blog]
Pete discusses the new, super-strong beer from BrewDog. I am rather a fan of super-strength beers, and own a $250 bottle of beer (yes, really) – the one highlighted further down the article. It's amazing stuff. I'd love to know what the BrewDog stuff tastes like. I bet it'll be even better.
Customers – they’re the future
Mowing the lawn [Seth's Blog]
Bloody Seth Godin. Another good point (ensure your top management spend at least an hour a week dealing with customers). Not having contact with the audience is perhaps one of the things I regret most about the BBC.
Journalism centred design – [currybet]
Guardian fan-boy (well, I had to) Martin Belam discusses the idea of building useful and clever tools for your staff, as well as the outside world. In too many places, internal tools are left to a different team than those who do the website – and it can really show. A great internal tool is just a valuable as a great external feature, particularly if it frees up your team to produce more great content.
Websites – they’re the future
Radio Forums [Paul Easton]
An interesting post about the falling traffic of most (radio) forums, but I bet it’s just as relevant for website forums generally. Paul blames it on the fact that the people who have a lot of interesting things to say no longer say it in a forum, but say it in a blog posting instead – and that is where the informed and controlled debate is now going on. I'd tend to agree – which makes for an interesting future for the Media UK discussion area. I've got thoughts on how we might change that.
BBC News widget becomes default news provider on iGoogle UK [BBC - Journalism Labs]
"There are, of course, already quite a few BBC News widgets out there – mostly simple feed readers created by users", this blog post says. I made one over two years ago – which got so popular, I had to pull it off my own servers. The writing of this blog is rather patronising – as if nothing users could do themselves would be anywhere near as good as the BBC's crack team of perl monkeys – and totally ignoring the obvious question: "What took you so long?". Still, getting it installed by default means that they've already got 576,000 users at the time of writing, which can't be bad. That must annoy ITN: who'd run a business doing news when the BBC will supply it free to anyone who wants?
The iPhone – it’s not the future any more
Will Google Voice be the Straw that Breaks the iPhone? – iPhone Apps | AppCraver
Interesting piece, pointing out that Apple’s over-controlling attitude to apps is losing the company a lot of goodwill with the very customers it needs – the geeks. I took a long look at a few Google Android phones recently (the Magic and the Hero) and it’s clear that the product is significantly better in many cases, not least the open-source element of it. Sadly, my contract with O2 ends in 14 months – the consequence of upgrading to the 3G model and therefore having two 18 month minimum contracts to chomp through.
How long can Apple’s reputation stay untarnished? [cubicgarden.com]
Ian Forrester says exactly the same as the man just up there says about Apple, but in a rather different way.
Bad Apple: An Argument Against Buying an iPhone [Lifehacker]
And now it’s the turn of Lifehacker to stick it to Mr Jobs.
It’s Twitter time – right now! [O2 Digital News Centre]
Rather good news from O2, and particularly "well, we got everything ready early so we're making it available now". Enabling texts from Twitter is certainly evidence that O2 aren't the baddie when it comes to the iPhone…
The music industry – definitely not the future
I now pronounce you monetized: a YouTube video case study [Official Google Blog]
Google very excited that…
1. People upload great content onto YouTube with music backing track
2. YouTube slap ads all over the video for the music backing track and earn record company lots of money
3. Meanwhile, original uploader earns nothing.
“One of our main goals at YouTube is to help content creators effectively make money from the distribution of their content online” – no, one of your main goals at YouTube is to help the record companies effectively make money from the distribution of their content online, whereas the content creators in this case – without whom Chris Brown’s Forever wouldn’t have seeped into the public consciousness – earn nothing whatsoever. Way to go, Google. Um.
Spotify rocks – but without a compulsory, public digital music license they are doomed [MediaFuturist]
It's what we all know, but what few will actually say out loud: Spotify's business model can't pay. It's chomping through money quicker than Paris Hilton on a shopping trip. Oh dear. Who’s fault is it? The music industry’s, natch.
Other things – they’re the future too
Crowd [Not Art Really]
This man takes my oft-used 'crowd' picture on Flickr, makes it look like a painting, and plans to put it on his wall. How lovely.
New Victoria Line Stock Makes Its Public Debut [London Reconnections]
Oooh! New trains on the Victoria Line! And there's one trundling around there as we speak (well, not quite as we speak because it's closed for the weekend, probably). Looking forward to taking one of these to work.
iQ font [i love typography, the typography and fonts blog]
I love the fact that a car company would allow a font to be released on its website, for seemingly good marketing reasons. What a splendid thing.
Woman ruffles landlord’s feathers on Twitter, sued for $50,000 [BitterWallet]
“We’re a sue first, ask questions later kind of an organisation”, says a company that has made a complete fool of itself on Twitter. Hmm. A rather good piece.
And that’s it. Postalicious has failed to print the standard disclaimer and stuff. Anyway, you’ll see selected posts on my Delicious feed, and on my Google Reader shared items feed. Probably.
