A DAB Digital Radio, showing Norwegian radio station P4’s visual service

My boss’s boss has posted a long and cogent think-piece about DAB Digital Radio, which is well worth a read. From it…

I want DAB to show me weather, traffic and travel information graphically, on (a) nice big screen. I want DAB to use its metadata - the information about the programmes - to differentiate itself from FM, which is surely its biggest competitor. I want DAB to look like a product of the future, not the past.

It’s a great post. I have long argued that the benefits of DAB (the equivalent of, for most people, ten megabits of data, for free, into almost all homes in the land) should be used for more than just audio.

And Ashley’s right. Where things become even more exciting is a device which contains a DAB radio and wireless connection: it’s the backchannel which is most interesting.

Imagine what could happen if you could use this to - with your permission - monitor what you listen to and offer additional choices of programmes it thinks you’ll like (I’d like that across all of radio, not just the BBC). Use the technology to listen live via DAB (with all the quality of service that gives you) but on-demand via IP to the last seven days of the programmes I want to listen to. “Radio James” sounds compelling for me, and I can ignore, thank heavens, all the hideous Goldfrapp on “Radio Ashley”.

The backchannel could also add details of the song, or book, or play, sent to your email address, or to your iPhone, or to your Dualitt toaster, to continue that music discovery chain.

While this may get me a piece in Private Eye’s “Order of the Brown Nose” column, Ashley’s spot on here. While none of this is new, he’s combined some good thoughts into an interesting piece. At a time where some quarters of the industry is making funny noises about supporting DAB, it’s exactly the right thing to say. I hope that the rest of the BBC, and the industry at large, listens. It’s the future of radio we’re talking about, after all.

PS: as part of this, we’re hiring for an Executive Producer, Visualisation for BBC Audio & Music Interactive: making radio look as good as it sounds. Apply early!

Photo by Gabriel Saldana, used under licence

Ashley Highfield, my boss’s half-boss, has posted on the BBC Internet Blog that the BBC’s Linux userbase is around 0.3 to 0.8% of all BBC visitors.

Over the last month, Media UK, a mostly-used-at-work media website I run (583,000 visits a month, so a decent size), splits down like so:
Windows: 93.49% (95% in 2006)
Macintosh: 4.89% (4.02%)
Linux: 1.40% (0.28%)

My own website, james.cridland.net, has 4.56% Linux users, though that figure is much less accurate due to much lower traffic levels and a skew of subject matter. Media UK is closer to the ‘real world’, and reflects at-work usage as well as at-home usage - as reflected by a lower Firefox percentage of use too (just 14%). It contains nothing that would attract Linux users more than the average.

I’m quite interested about this. First, it shows that Linux users are still firmly in the minority - albeit a vocal minority. But it’s clear that Windows is in trouble: gains over the year by the premium Macintosh and the free GNU/Linux makes it clear that even with Vista, Windows is losing many users from all areas of its business. Yes, they still have a sizeable majority, but it seems more of us are happy to try something new.

But, of course, the most interesting thing is the stark fact that in just a year, Linux use has increased fivefold. This is no fluke - Google Analytics reports consistently increasing Linux use on mediauk.com (0.24% in December 2005, for example), and a similar increase, though more statistically noisy, is also shown on my personal website.

Fascinating. With the advent of the very cheap gOS machine, I’d see Linux use increasing in the future - possibly at an even faster speed. Now’s the time to move your software to the web, before your customers disappear…