It’s been a good week: lots of exhausting but good meetings with genuinely lovely people all week so far; but Thursday morning gave me one of my proudest moments yet: the launch of a technology I’ve been hatching for over 18 months.

That’s Colin Crawford, the Marketing Director for PURE, launching the new PURE Sensia above. It’s a great product: internet radio, FM and DAB all in the same box, but with a beautiful colour screen and a great interface.

There are two things that set this product apart. The first is the use of apps: this comes with Twitter and Facebook built-in, but the company promises an SDK and an ‘app store’ to allow other people to produce applications. Like radio stations. This is a thrill and excitement, and I look forward to playing with the SDK and understanding what it’s capable of.

However, the main thing is the incorporation of RadioDNS into this product. RadioDNS is something that Global Radio, the UK’s biggest commercial radio company, has been working on alongside the BBC; and something that Global Radio’s Nick Piggott and I blogged about nearly a year ago on the BBC Radio Labs blog. It’s a way of combining broadcast radio (the most sensible way of reaching hundreds of thousands of people) with extra, additional information from the internet. I’ve spoken about it many times here, and in front of chipset manufacturers and conference audiences worldwide; and have been excited when BBC R&D’s Chris Needham worked on the technology, open-sourcing incredibly useful demo software.

The PURE Sensia is the first device to use RadioDNS technology, which powers the RadioVIS application in the device. What’s exciting is that Classic FM, Heart, Capital, Planet Rock, Absolute Radio, Fun Kids and many more commercial radio stations are providing slides for use in RadioVIS (on any device). And it looks just excellent on the Sensia. Some of the RadioDNS team are, even at this late hour, playing with a Sensia all the way out in Bristol, just proving this to themselves.

The PURE Sensia is the clearest example of ‘Agree on technology, compete on content’ that it’s possible to have: additional content available in an open way using published specifications that have been the subject of work by both public service and commercial sectors for the benefit of the whole industry. It’s a credit to the team at PURE that they’ve trusted the RadioDNS team with a major part of their product; and a credit that they’ve made every effort to work together with the whole industry.

There’s more information on the PURE Sensia at http://www.touchmyradio.com/.

Incidentally, you can follow Global Radio Labs and the PURE Sensia on Twitter. And me, for that matter. And I’d like to particularly thank Global Radio’s Nick Piggott and his colleagues Andy Buckingham, Ben Poor and Adam Fox for their hard work. They, alongside all the collaborators of the project, have really made it fly.

Tags: bbc, DAB, global, ip, pure, radio, radiodns, sensia | Permalink | Comments RSS