In spite of having what I now suspect as hayfever plus a cold plus a hangover, I went to Alexandra Palace today for the BBC’s Mashed, a place where hackers across the UK came to play with some of the BBC’s content and other bits.

Alexandra Palace has an interesting link to the BBC, and broadcasting in general. It was in 1936 when the first, ever, television broadcasts came out of here - and the BBC used Alexandra Palace as broadcast studios and a transmitter site until 1956. BBC broadcasts still come from the building: it runs a low-power analogue television relay, two commercial radio FM broadcasts, and also broadcasts the BBC’s DAB multiplex (and Digital One, and all the local London muxes too). And this weekend, it was also broadcasting two more channels - this time, digital terrestrial television, as the BBC let people play with MHEG.

For reasons associated with my hayfever/cold/hangover combination, I arrived in the middle of the presentation of the hacks - still in time to see some of my team’s work (which includes a way to punch in your lastfm profile and be told what kind of programmes you might like on the BBC, which is rather marvellous).

I saw many others, too - including a rather splendid automatic translator for television. Here’s roughly how it worked: it watched live BBC television, got the subtitles off Freeview (which are sent as bitmaps, by the way, not text); OCRd the bitmaps to turn them into text; popped off to Babelfish to translate them into German, got the German text into a speech synthesiser, and added that audio over the top of the (delayed) video. Bloody clever. And it worked using a Mac and a PC (”to keep everyone happy”, said the team).

I’d have liked to have taken part a little longer; but I was mightily impressed at what I saw. Wonderfully organised, and a real credit to the BBC. Many congratulations, Matt and Ian.

Huckster: a seller of small articles, usually of cheap or shoddy quality - the latest in a series about the domain-name industry…

An email plopped into Media UK’s inbox the other day, promising a “prime domain” just for me:
Would Media UK be interested in purchasing our domain name OneMedia.co.uk?
Most of our clients are now finding that prime domains such as this pay for themselves within weeks rather than months by virtue of the extra business that they drive to their websites by means of type in traffic and greatly enhanced search engine positions.
I would strongly advise an early contact if this is of interest.

Sounds interesting. a “prime domain” - which drives extra traffic because of “type in traffic” and “greatly enhanced search engine positions”. I did a little research. In order to sell a domain-name, either people needed to be searching for it, or it had to be high on Google’s ‘pagerank’ (so it appears high in Google searches), or it needs high traffic figures.

Popping along to Google websearch, let’s search for “one media”, or without the quotes, just to see if it turns up. It doesn’t, not on the first page anyway (and who ever goes to the second page?). This possibly isn’t a splendid start.

Still, even if it’s not obvious, people must be searching for it, right? Next stop: Google Trends, which monitors what people are searching for. Punch in “one media”, which onemedia.co.uk should rule the roost in, and given it’s a “.co.uk”, select the United Kingdom as the region you want the data from. And, er, look. Not quite the best of starts. Nobody’s searching for “one media” at all.

Still, hey, there just might be loads of traffic there. Let’s see what Alexa has to say… oh, that’s not so good either.

Well, at least it might rank high on Google’s pagerank system, the magic number that has direct bearing on your search results. Media UK, and this website, are pagerank “6″. And checking onemedia.co.uk’s pagerank gives a slightly less impressive… 0.

Beware the hucksters. While this isn’t in any way illegal, this is an entirely worthless domain - a little research goes a long way.

Photo: Bruce Alderson. Used under licence. A different version of this posting appeared on June 16th, with the company named and shamed, which I removed shortly after posting. It’s not hard for you to find out who the company is, but it’s probably not too fair for me to do a frukt on them, and be their second hit on Google. Thanks to those of you who noticed it and urged me to repost it.

I feed the cat. Lazy Sunday morning. Do a load of washing (the black-wash, consisting of socks, underwear, and two black fleeces); put yesterday’s (a shirt wash), now dry, away. Eat the strangely sweet breakfast cereal that’s been in the cupboard for the last six months. Have toast. Get dressed. Go to the airport.

I’m off to Geneva today, the world’s biggest airport lounge, for a bit of fun. Normally my trips are business-related - this one isn’t. I’ve been kindly given a ticket for the Euro 2008 match between the Czech Republic and Turkey; so I’ve dug in my wallet for a little trip to Geneva, and a potentially really crappy cheap airport hotel experience, before flying back at 7am tomorrow, to be at my desk by eight thirty. It’s a good game, too - whoever wins will go forward to the second round or the quarter final or whatever it is; and it’s also the last of three in the Geneva stadium.

Swiss International Airlines turned out to be almost the cheapest when I booked this a few weeks ago; there was one slightly cheaper flight but it was from Heathrow at 6.30, requiring a £35 taxi, thus negating any price benefit. Instead, I’m making my way to London City Airport for a lunchtime flight.

Get to the Victoria line. Discover there’s no Victoria line. Get to the DLR. Discover there’s no DLR. This is a Sunday, and they’re doing line work on the Victoria for the new trains, and station work on the DLR for longer trains. Forced onto a bus at Canning Town. Regaled by some loud tinny rap music from a mobile phone somewhere, even though I’m plugged into my iPod.

Through the airport, waving my magic online checkin piece of paper. Get stopped at the other side of security by a woman who says she has to check whether my hairgel is actually hairgel and not some kind of explosive. It’s a random check apparently. She puts some details about me onto a computer for some reason, swabs the hair gel, decides that it’s all okay. And now it’s on a computer database that I use hairgel. Good job I don’t carry KY jelly with me. Whatever that is.

Ten minutes to kill, so wander into the bookshop to find something to read. Decide on a Ben Elton (I know, I know). Wait to pay as woman behind cash till whines to co-worker that Sundays are so busy they’re like weekdays now, and “they” had better realise that we’re understaffed and overbusy. Wait politely while understaffed and overbusy woman finishes whining to her friend, then turns her attention onto the only person in the queue. I suspect “they” know their staffing levels are about right.

Board plane. Swiss is the ‘airline for all fans’, as it proudly proclaims on the side of the plane. Inside is a special duty-free selection of a football game, a football, and two replica planes which look a little more footbally than normal. I wonder who buys replica model planes? I’m sitting next to two Turkish supporters, and an eager and quite excited japanese man.

Captain comes on. Apologises, but says we’ll be twenty minutes late to takeoff. Nobody tuts. He says we’ll still land on time. On cue, stewardess walks down aisle offering Swiss chocolate to everyone to apologise (even though it’s just air congestion). But it’s not the normal Swiss slabs of chocolate - oh no, today we get chocolate footballs! Japanese man smiles a lot. I do too. This is good. Might buy a replica plane after all to say thank you.

Food and drink comes round, still free to everyone, unusually. Eager japanese man asks for orange-juice whilst simultaneously miming an orange. A mime of an orange. Nice.

Memo to Swiss: I liked the sandwich. Nice Swiss salami. Tasty gherkin pickle thing. Pleasant bread roll. Your beer, though: it might be brewed by Heineken Switzerland AG, but Heineken is really from Amsterdam, not Switzerland. Are there really no Swiss beers to serve?

I decline a potential purchase of a replica plane in a small beer-related huff.

Landing at Geneva airport was smooth as silk. I walk, in a moderately circuitous route, to the hotel. It is chock full of Turkey supporters. This hotel normally costs 99CHF to stay in (it’s currently 150CHF); it’s more basic than basic, but clean, and that’s all that matters. Much rather this than some of the grimy hotels I stayed in while I was fulltime on Media UK (yes, £35 a night is achievable in London, and no, you don’t want to). I was given a free travel ticket by the hotel - turns out it’s something Geneva city are doing, and I’m very grateful for it.

I use it to catch a bus into the centre of town. Then, given I’ve time to kill, I walk from the centre of town to the stadium, along the “fan’s walk”. It’s a 45 minute mostly-well-signed walk, and goes through an area called the ‘fanzone’ (think big telly screens and lots of stalls selling beer). I lack the peculiar Swiss money, and therefore can’t. Instead, I acquire a blister on the sole of my foot. Bah.

I see a lot of rather run-down Geneva. Without the modern miracle of beige-coloured concrete, this city would be huge tracts of wasteland. Walk past dowdy video stores (honest, who hires videos these days?), and one street which smells strangely of laundry until I walk past a laundrette, with a big fan pushing sweet laundry smell out of the shop with a surprising intensity.

Arrive at our seats just before kickoff (after drinking some of UEFA’s beer) and the roar from the Turkish crowd is infectious and very loud. Decide to support Turkey, which has nothing to do with the Turkish man next to me, but more to do with the large number of Turkish supporters I’ve seen today.

The Czechs score. And then, after a half-time interval consisting of TV ads on the in-stadium video screens and a live man on the touchline saying something nobody listens to, they score again. This is bad news. Everyone writes off Turkey. The Czechs certainly do. The two Turkish men in front of me are on their feet, loudly decrying the official’s decisions. One claps his hands to his head so hard it makes me wince.

But plucky Turkey score. And then, in the dying minutes of the game, they score again. 2-2. I remark that it’ll be decided by penalty shootouts, but as I do so, just seconds after the previous goal, they score for a third time. The Turks go wild. The Czechs go silent. And then, as the fulltime whistle goes, the Czechs just leave.

The Turkish man, who has not acknowledged my presence throughout the game, nudges me, tips his hat to me, and grins a big grin. I do too.

Back to the hotel. Set the alarm to wake me at the UK equivalent of 4am. Great. Then set another alarm.

Wake up with the unaccustomed sound of the Blackberry’s alarm. Unpleasant thing. Manage to turn it off. Relax. Instantly fall back to sleep. Wake up one minute later with the iPhone alarm, vibrating the shelf where it’s charging. Struggle out of bed, and snooze it.

Thirty minutes later, I’m walking through a dark Geneva on the way to the airport. Walk past a bus stop, and notice there’s a bus in two minutes. Take that instead - thank you, City of Geneva, for your free public transport.

Queue in Geneva airport. Useful fact: the tannoy is the first five notes of “How much is that doggie in the window”. I may have mentioned this before. The thing that’s keeping me awake is singing “Geee in the window” in my head. Want to buy a t-shirt. Fail miserably: the sensible Genevans don’t open tat shops at 6am.

Get on plane. Full of suits, all going to the City. Sit next to quite attractive woman banker, in suit and white shirt. Realise how different our jobs are. She deals with money, important things. I deal with media, unimportant things in the scheme of things. She turns down the chocolate muffin. And the chocolate football.

Finish Ben Elton book (’Blind Faith’) as we taxi into the gate at London City. It’s his version of 1984 I think. George Orwell it ain’t. But it’s quite good nonetheless.

It’s only five to eight. Just a tube ride to work. Buy a coffee from the airport. Manage to spill some of it on the shirt I’m wearing which is supposed to be a smart shirt for a smart do I’m going to at lunchtime (with Ian Hislop no less). Not only brown shoes with a grey suit, a faux-pas on a dreadful scale brought on my by freshly-hurty feet, but now a blotchy coffee-stained shirt. Oh dear. What will they think?

Looking forward to a tube ride home to greet the unhappy cat. I’ve spent too long away from him this week. He’s due some serious strokles. Oooh. Wuz he a puddycat? Wuz he? Did he be needin’ strokles? Did he? Good cat.

I notice thoughtful posts from Paul Fairburn, Dusty Rhodes and Adam Bowie about the closure of UBC’s Cliq service.

Cliq was originally a service using DAB data to let you buy any song you heard on any participating radio station. It was rather clever, though for the life of me I couldn’t work out how to earn any money out of it. Then, it became a service using a Java client for mobile phones, again, allowing you to download any song you heard on a participating radio station. This was rather clever too: less technically clever than the DAB version, but slightly easier to earn revenue from. UBC have called it a day, pulled the plug, and Cliq will henceforth be a business-to-business service for broadcasters and manufacturers alike.

Bloggers like me have mostly used our blogs to post why we thought it failed, and what we would have done better if we ran the service instead of our own day jobs, like we know better. This probably irritates my friends at UBC (past and present) so, apart from mentioning that if you’re going to produce a service to run on the radio, try to call it a name that people know how to spell, I’ll refrain from it. (And anyway, GWR Group were first with the ludicrously named “koko.com” as their own website brand. Hah.)

However, Cliq highlights one of the main things I’ve spotted since joining the BBC - and it won’t be a surprise to regular readers of this blog, but boringly I’ll mention it again in a Mark Ramsey bold style: there’s more to radio than music.

There is clearly a market for something that, when you hit a button, buys the song you’re listening to. Radio remains the main way that people discover new music; it’s only natural that it retails it. But there’s clearly a market for something that does other things when you hit a button. Like these silly ideas:

- I’m listening to the radio on my phone - and press the “email the studio” button to, er, email the studio.
- I’m listening to the radio on my iPod - and press the “podcast” button on the screen to automatically subscribe to the show’s podcast.
- I hear a fantastic deal on double-glazing, and hit the “want it” button to get the company’s phone number emailed to me by the radio station.
- The presenter’s asking me whether he should play Keane or Queen. I hit the “Queen” button. So do lots of other people.
- I thoroughly enjoy the current book that’s being read, and click the “read it” button to get the first chapter sent via email, with an offer to buy the full book.
- On the way home from work in the car, I hear five songs I really enjoy. On arriving home, there’s an email in my inbox with the titles, and links to buy.

Oh, and if it worked well on DAB, and online, and on HD Radio, and even, hell, why not, FM… then that would be good too. And no, I don’t have wifi everywhere, and no, I quite like my mobile phone too and I don’t want a new one. And I want it to work on a load of different radio stations, please.

Radio’s more than just music - and it’s listened-to on more than just one device. So when we want to interact with it, there needs to be more on offer than just music commerce.

Photo: Tonx; used under licence

Grüße Deutschland!

It’s been an eye-opening day. I’ve been at RadioDay 2008 in Cologne, a really very large get-together for the German radio industry. Over 2,000 people come every year: three separate tracks of conference speakers, and a quite wide-ranging amount of corporate stands.

The overwhelming impression, for someone who doesn’t understand the German radio market well, is one of disunity and pluralism. Everyone takes advertising here, whether “public” or “private”. There’s no equivalent of the RadioCentre, a place where the UK commercial radio industry gets together - instead are two sets of advertising companies, one with a logo that on first glance reads “ASS Radio”, which was hugely amusing for at least twenty-five minutes. There are almost no national radio stations either; and virtually no networking. The NRJ group apparently does do some networking (for two hours a night) but the NRJ station in the old East Germany - and yes, to my surprise, people here still do refer to it as such - doesn’t take the shared programming, since they’re owned by the Polish NRJ not the French NRJ (even if it’s the same brand, which would in ordinary circumstances lend me nicely to another Virgin riff, but I won’t). “Disunity” sounds like a negative, and it is in many ways (it’s harder to buy radio advertising here, and harder to reach consensus on technology-related issues) but it’s also a benefit, with a much more vibrant, creative industry than the Global/Bauer/GMG/BBC-controlled industry we have at home.

Radioday is their “Radio Festival”, a place where people come to meet and talk. The party in the evening, where I’ve just come from, is famous for its food - everything from currywurst to chinese food - its entertainment - this year, the entertaining spectacle of Croatia beating Germany, followed by Austria drawing with Poland, followed by Mousse T (”Horny horny horny”) and, among others, Roachford (sing “Cuddly Toy” and all, er, his, cough, other hits) - and its beer - tiddly little 20ml glases of Kolsch, the local beer type.

The difference between Radioday here and the Radio Festival in the UK is that, because of the sheer number of people who work in the radio industry here, there are loads of potential visitors. The uncharitable might claim it’s 1983 here - mostly, not networked; mostly, multiple owners; and almost totally still in the analogue era. And it won’t come as a surprise that I was there talking about DAB Digital Radio, which is the only real way of getting digital radio into a device costing as little as 15 euro. It’s a far cry from the UK industry, that’s for sure.

Today has been interesting to see how different the German radio market is, and what a surprise it is to them when public and private broadcasters work together. I was speaking with Nick Piggott from GCap Media, and I hope that we’ve shown that if you agree on technology and compete on content - then good things happen. And that means agreeing on Europe-wide technology, not just within Germany.

Photo: Merlijn Hoek - used under licence, and yes, I’ve a few pictures to upload shortly. Disclosures: for this conference, flights, accommodation and food was paid-for by AS&S Radio and Radioday. I got a nice gift of an analogue radio from AS&S Radio for speaking at an event the previous night, and a small speaking fee which I donated to charity.

Updated on legal advice. Woo!

One of the problems of a website like Media UK is that it’s hard to really prove that something is what it seems.

As a person, when you register, Media UK insists on an ‘identity-verifiable email address‘. As a quick example: someone registering as “Terry Wogan” is probably going to be Terry if he’s registering at his @bbc.co.uk address, but probably not going to be reliably checked as Terry if he tries using terrywogan175@hotmail.com instead. This proves a moderately reliable way, if not foolproof, of showing that somebody’s claimed identity is the right one. It also proves a right pain. I don’t know of a better way of doing it.

For media organisations, it’s rather more difficult.

Interestingly, Media UK is being used as part of some fraudulent scams - where some organisations claim they’re running a magazine, we dutifully add the magazine to the directory, and they then use Media UK’s entry as proof that they’re a legitimate organisation. Clearly, this makes life rather difficult for Media UK, as well as its users. So, somehow, I need to work on a way of checking that a magazine is really a magazine.

A potential way of doing this is, I discover, the ISSN. The ISSN is a number given to many legitimate magazines, just like an ISBN is given to a book. With an ISSN, you get into the British Library, I guess, as well as get to form a sensible barcode for your product. Unfortunately, most people don’t publish their ISSN; but the ISSN is available from the barcode on the magazine. So, MacUser has an EAN13 barcode of 9770269327071 which results in an ISSN of 0269-3275, which is then findable on Google, and thus fairly verifiable. You might want to try my EAN13 barcode to ISSN script and see if it works for a magazine, or potentially a newspaper, that’s hanging around the house.

Finally, Media UK clearly also has this issue for radio and television. I’m guessing that an Ofcom licence number, and/or their MCPS/PRS licence numbers, are the way of adequately checking whether an organisation is correct. Does that make sense?

Potentially also, a company registration number mightn’t be a bad plan. The Webcheck system from Companies House works at least most of the time, and might be a quick way of checking who is company registration number 451593 I guess…

Thoughts?

Photo: Amaury Henderick. Used under licence.

If you link to this blog from your own blog, it manifests itself as a ‘pingback’ in the comments below (through ways I’m still a bit unclear about). And all new comments automatically go through manual approval.

So, it was of great interest when I saw http://talktotimlradio.co.uk/ appearing in my comments yesterday, who linked to my post about the end of Virgin Radio. I visited the website, as one does, to see what they’d written.

I wasn’t expecting what I saw… a full blog, from the new owners of the Golden Square-based business, to the staff. The presentation they presented to the staff… photos of the team… a piece from Clive Dickens about his iPod music choice… and the latest posting (above) being “hey, don’t worry about blogging about us if you want”.

A more open and transparent way of a new management team conversing with their staff - and people as a whole - would be hard to find.

In terms of the ownership of that business: my, what a change.