Photo uploaded today by Niek R. Used under licence.

Executive Producer Mobile, Audio & Music Interactive, BBC
A good-looking job within the BBC if you do mobile and you do radio. You do? Excellent. You’ve got just ten days to get your application in.

Digg: We’re Fixing The Annoying Ads
Digg removes auto-playing audio ads from their website. Another example why I think jackfm.co.uk shouldn’t auto-play on visiting their website… (though I guess it’s a little different)

Twitter killed the Status Star
The excellent Mike Butcher posts about Twitter. I think he won’t like my status updates then. Oh dear…

Twitter / jamescridland
It’s me, on Twitter. Suddenly really got into Twitter, since it’s updating my Facebook status automatically now, and also is full of surprisingly interesting people. If you’re on, please FOLLOW JAMESCRIDLAND, I’d like that

Why DAB Stations Closing Down is Good News
Core closing… Life closing… and OneWord closing. Anyone would think this is… good news? A cogent and quite splendid piece by Matt Deegan.

New Capital 95.8 Website
Another post from Matt Deegan, including the gem: “GCap have done a good job with the latest roll-out of sites … I think they they clearly lead radio’s online presence”. I think you’re talking bollocks there, Matt.

Listening to internet radio while on the move
“I’ve been taking advantage of my spiffy new EV-DO net connection.” Man (or woman) listens to radio via the internet in the car. Likes it.

Prompted by Martin Belam’s list, and to avoid the utter boredom of reinstalling OSX now that my Mac Mini’s internal hard drive has given up the ghost a day before Christmas, here’s my top ten blog posts of 2007, thanks to Google Analytics.

I don’t get nearly the number of readers that Martin gets, and interestingly my recent appearances on the BBC Internet Blog (and links from it) haven’t altered my blog traffic significantly. In fact, most of the traffic to james.cridland.net has been related to a BBC Backstage gadget I’ve written, bringing feeds of BBC Weather to iGoogle. But, here’s the most-read blogs.

1. Fantastists and lazy journalists
Back in March, I looked at a story that the press failed to adequately check before printing, while I checked on it by, um, typing things into Google. I don’t comment on this story any more, and almost feel wrong even linking to it, but it’s clear that others still find it interesting. I wish Ryan and his family all the best.

2. When a perfectly valid credit card won’t work
Highly confusing, this one. This is just a rant, in January, against a credit card (one I don’t have any more, I think), but has clearly caught some search-engine love.

3. iPlayer on GNU/Linux
Welcome news about the BBC iPlayer, with a screenshot from the Ubuntu box in the kitchen. Oly posted in 12 December, but the third most popular posting of the entire year.

4. Review of the O2 XDA Mini S
A review of one of the most hateful phones I’ve ever had the misfortune to have to own. Curiously, my idea (held within this post) of how wifi should work on mobile phones is entirely how the Apple iPhone works. Interesting, too, how much of what I say is fixed with the iPhone.

5. I move to the BBC
My announcement from May, which many linked to. This posting has the record for the amount of comments on this little blog - 37 comments to one post. I ended up leaving Virgin at the end of June, and starting at the BBC on 9 July.

6. DAB+ in the UK
From March, a posting which appears quite high in a search for “DAB Plus” apparently; berating WorldDMB’s Quentin Howard for saying DAB+ would “never come to the UK”. He was wrong then, and while there are still no plans for any DAB+ broadcasting in the UK, he’s still wrong now.

7. How to auto-fill your iPod and train it for better music
From January. I mean to write a follow-up; but sadly have lost my iTunes library thanks to a failed hard-drive today, including all my information about the songs I like. Sigh. Will have to listen to lots more music, then.

8. Channel 4 and DAB Digital Radio
From March: an enthusiastic post about the (winning) Channel 4 bid for the second DAB multiplex. I wonder how many of the promised services will actually make it on-air? Virgin Radio Viva’s certainly not there… and it had a nice logo, too…

9. The Apple TV versus the Sony PSP
A long blog entry from March, essentially saying that if you allow people to hack your products, they’ll sell more. The Apple TV has, of course, sunk without trace; while the Sony PSP has lived to see another day.

10. iGoogle BBC Weather gadget
The source of most traffic to james.cridland.net these days. Bizarrely, Hereford appears to be the most popular place that people want their weather for.

11. Pandora - available to the US only? Or not
A rant about Pandora (who don’t pay PRS/MCPS and PPL licences) still being available in the UK.

12. talkSPORT nicks my little UK flag
…and I’m happy. This blog posting made me add the flag to all my sites again. Ah.

13. DAB audio quality from Ofcom
94% of people say that DAB audio quality is just as good if not better than FM. Worth a blog post.

14. Sky Anytime
I discover this catchup service on my Sky box. Seems to me that we’ll be much better services by proper IP-delivered catchup services. BBC iPlayer seems to fit the bill rather better these days.

15. The story of last.fm
To coincide with their sale to CBS, I witter on about how they don’t pay any licences to the music collection agencies, and just went ahead and made a business (while PPL, MCPS/PRS just stood around and did nothing). Nothing has changed.

16. DAB Slideshow
A photograph of the UK’s first DAB Slideshow services. The BBC has since added some slideshow services, but I don’t own a radio capable of decoding them.

17. Facebook - goodness, it’s good
I discover Facebook. In May of this year. And it’s quite good.

18. Getting rid of out-of-office replies in Gmail
Quite a few rules to rid yourself, mainly, of out-of-office replies. This post needs updating.

19. Logitech Harmony review
A long-term review of a remote control. No, seriously, it’s in the top 20.

20. Google Charts with PHP
Only posted in December, this is announcing a free mostly-port of some Google JavaScript code (which does the same job in PHP). The power of open-source strikes again.

Might I wish you a happy and safe Christmas.

Photo: Stuart Meldrum. Used under licence.

Graffiti on Longfellow Bridge, Boston MA. Photo by Frank Hebbert. Used under licence.

Presenting my journey home this evening, as it would have been if I was on Facebook, thanks to today’s tube strike. (Keen readers aware of my home location will question my need to avoid taking a tube, but I reckoned it might be a bit busy, and apparently I was right - not least because of a signal faliure)

James is leaving work on a bike
James is quite enjoying riding his bike
James is cycling past Western House, home of BBC Radio 2
James is inexplicably and totally unnecessarily on the Euston Road on his bike
James is getting a bit scared on his bike by the buses
James is walking on the pavement with his bike
James is pushing his bike through Kings Cross station
James is amazed how busy it is in Kings Cross station
James is folding his bike
James is waiting on a train which isn’t going anywhere
James is still waiting on a train
James is getting more and more crowded by people on a train
James is on a train that is moving at long last
James is getting off a train to get another one
James is waiting for people to get off this train I’m catching
James is still waiting for people to get off this train I’m catching
James is cramming onto a train
James is on a train
James is on a train, leaning on a door, without much space
James is on a train that is stopping seemingly less than a minute after getting going
James is having to get off a train to let other people off before getting back on again
James is back on the train
James is on a train wondering where he is
James is opening the door for other people because he’s closest to the door controls
James is slightly amazed that the door controls work on trains, because they don’t on tubes
James is on a train wondering which stop to get off on, whether it’s this one or the next one
James is on a train and has decided he’ll get off the early one with less of a hill to cope with
James is getting off a train
James is walking up the stairs holding a bike
James is watching his arm grow longer
James is unfolding his bike
James is cycling up a hill
James is finding cycling up a hill quite hard work
James is still cycling up a hill
James is navigating a rather nasty right-hand turn
James is still bloody cycling up a hill
James is wishing he got off on the next stop
James is on a busy road
James is cycling past a bus
James is blimey that car was close
James is in the middle of the road oooer
James is thank heavens not cycling up a hill any more
James is home
James is knackered
James is drinking beer

Only three more days.

Photo by Christian Guthier on Flickr; used under cc licence

A long and massively point-missing piece on Facebook this morning on BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House (available to listen-again).

In it was a “fat librarian boy” who was most upset to discover a Facebook group entitled “We hate the fat librarian boy”; and a couple who’d split up but are still being kept in touch with their exes by friends via Facebook. With any internet story, you need to ask the question whether the internet is to blame, or whether this kind of thing would have happened anyway without the internet. The answer’s clearly the latter, of course.

One bloke came on, a little concerned about the etiquette of refusing friend requests. The good news (and something Facebook should be clearer on) is that if you hit the ‘ignore’ button, nobody knows: it doesn’t send back any message to the person who asked. I use it all the time - having a “must have met at least twice” rule. Nobody knows you’ve refused the request. It works just fine.

Perhaps the most interesting part of all this was someone coming on at the end and saying that if you want something private, don’t stick it on the internet. At all. Ever.

In order to underline that point, I thought I’d go and look for how much updating information I could find on the internet about my activities online. And it turns out that there’s quite a lot. You can view my stalkerfeed, as I’ve christened it, on my website.

Through publicly-available RSS feeds, you appear to be able to view a large amount of information about me. This kind of information is available for many of us; if we use last.fm, or Facebook, or Twitter, or many other systems, it’s quite possible to piece a ton of information together about us all. Particularly if we use the same username on all of these systems.

When at Virgin, I had the real benefit of having student placements embedded in my department. The interesting thing is watching their normal internet use; because you learn a lot from it. My practice of using the same username on everything appears to be completely alien to ‘the youth of today’; not only do they use a dazzling amount of different usernames, they’re also using names that seemingly don’t tie back at all to their identities, or are suffixed with seemingly random numbers. I don’t know enough about whether they do this on purpose, but the net result is that you cannot easily do the same ’stalkerfeed’ exercise on them. My enjoyment on getting my ‘real name’ on Gmail, for example, clearly isn’t shared by them - apparently preferring random and weird names on their own Gmail accounts, for example, instead of their own names - even when their names are still available.

Those concerned about internet privacy should perhaps learn something from those students; where you don’t want to leave a trail of data, don’t use the same username on everything. Simple, innit? (If only we all thought that way…)

One of my team, the very clever John Martin, has been working for the past couple of days on this - the Facebook Virgin Radio app.

I took one look at the API, and it hurt my head. For John to have, this quickly, integrated tons of Virgin Radio activity into the Facebook API is just awe-inspiring. It shows the real benefits of a small, tightly-knit, flexible dev team.

I’m really thrilled about this - Facebook is massive, and to allow our users to spread the word of Virgin Radio on Facebook is a top thing.

<plug>Go and add it now!</plug>

I read somewhere that last week, Facebook added the same amount of users who are on Second Life. In just one week. And no, I can’t understand the new Facebook Apps feature, much though I’d like to. I do have a natty service for Facebook users, mind, so I’ll have to understand it sooner rather than later. That’s scary too.

But perhaps most scary is my discovery that my mother is also on Facebook.

Uh oh.

Thing is, I’m quite free with my status updates (they’re on this website’s front page, too) since they give a vague impression that I’m down with the kids, and not a boring 36 year-old whose idea of a long weekend is a good excuse to tidy the house and go to Tescos to buy a new bin - both of which I’ve done this weekend. Think of the Clubcard points. My status updates are along the lines of “James is meeting fatcontroller”. “James is currently in the pub, being bought too many glasses of Leffe Brune”. “James has lost his glasses”. “James is bizarrely in Oslo”. “James is waking up and discovering he is unaccountably covered in cheese”.

But my mother reading them? Shudder. It’s bad enough that she reads this blog from time to time (calling it, kindly, “James’s rant page”, I discover from my father). But now she’s discovered Facebook, only a few weeks after I discovered it, I worry that my mother’s nearly as hip as me, and that’s not good, trust me.

Anyway, must go. I want to be away from the Google Talk when she’s worked out Facebook applications before I have - that would be truly crushing.

(As an aside, on Thursday I will be bizarrely in Oslo - talking to the nice people at the top commercial radio station P4 about new platforms and radio. If you’re in Oslo, and you’re one of the near 200 subscribers to this blog, then it would be good to meet. I’ve only an hour or so, but why not? Get in touch).

A friend of mine registers on all the social networking sites, just to ensure he keeps his online identity blemish-free. I agree with that, and on MySpace I have one friend, Tom, and that’s all. (I’ll reject you, so don’t!)

However, after someone I didn’t consider particularly geeky let me know that she had a Facebook page this afternoon, I thought I’d try it. And goodness. It’s good.

For example, I was asked, when I registered, whether I might like to check my Gmail contacts. I did. It found a bunch of proper friends I had, and handled it in a professional, friendly way.

It’s a social networking site that just works for geeks. I can read my friends’ “notes” (Facebook parlance for blog entries, kind of) via RSS within Google Reader. I saw this and didn’t like the prospect of another blog to update, but - guess what - this blog now gets imported directly into Facebook. And there’s a full developer section, with a full and fearsome API, to allow all manner of interesting things.

And it’s a social networking site that looks great. Really clever bits (like “The next step”, to hand-hold you through what to do next on the site), made to look simple and easy. It’s quick, and it looks nice. It’s both simple, and incredibly feature-rich. It’s really, really, really good.

Compare with MySpace, which apart from looking like a dog’s breakfast and with a user-interface that must give Jakob Nielsen, nightmares, simply works terribly. Example from tonight: when I tried logging in with an incorrect password, the error message was “You have to be logged in to do that!”

If I was staying with Virgin for a little longer, the first thing I’d be doing is using that API to allow Virgin Radio VIPs to interface directly with FaceBook, and both import their ‘notes’ into the Virgin Radio site, or explain how to export their blog postings into FaceBook. I’d not be losing control of our VIPs, but enabling them to bring their FaceBook friends into Virgin Radio, too.

I’m really quite flabbergasted at what a splendid site it is; and I might finally have found a social networking site that I like: because it’s both simple and fully-featured, giving me the tools, as an advanced user, to do what I want to do wth it. Bravo, team.