This week, the part of the BBC that I work in (Future Media & Technology) have been running a series of talks: designed to share information on what each team is doing. And today, it was the turn of Audio & Music Interactive, the part of the BBC that I work in (I know, this split personality is dreadful) to come and show some of the things we’ve been working on.

So, we came to Ada Lovelace, which, is a room in the BBC’s Broadcast Centre in White City (which is in the west of London).

Now, a slight diversion. I’m not allowed to take photographs in BBC buildings. I did fill in a photo permit form, which I sent to our local facilities manager in January, but until it’s processed, that’s all I can really do. Instead, the photo above is the closest photo that I can legally use of Ada Lovelace - the person, not the room: that’s her, in Lego format, thanks to Flickr user Andrew Becraft, who’s graciously licensed his photographs as creative-commons.

Right. Anyway, I first introduced my colleague Tom Scott, who eloquently described the hard work we’ve put into /programmes, which is a much more complicated and complex project than its simple design might communicate. Tom then discussed the work going on to replace the backend for the BBC’s music site, and the growth we’ll be able to achieve once we’ve stopped producing that site by hand-cranking a ton of static HTML pages, and using the power of the Musicbrainz database, the output from our playout system, and other feeds to beef up that website. Tom does a good talk, and he was virtually mobbed after the event by eager developers wishing to learn more about the internal and external feeds that both products expose of data, and much of the thought that’s gone behind their design.

I then filled manfully as Macs were unplugged and replugged, and then Yasser Rashid spoke about visualising radio. Adding visual content to radio is an important part of our work this year, and Yasser’s clear enthusiasm for this was evident. Some of the work, especially the mockups of visualisations, is quite stunning, and again got a lot of questions.

What’s evident is that we’re doing a lot of groundbreaking work in “FM&T for A&Mi”, as I’ve quietly rechristened our department. But what’s also evident is that, with the exception of the BBC Radio Labs blog, we’re being particularly expert in keeping it quiet; so I look forward to making a little more of a noise about us.

Perhaps now might be a sensible time to point to my unnaturally quiet speaking engagements (there’s some tbc to go in there in Scandinavia and Amsterdam, incidentally). If you’re internal to the BBC, we’re happy to pop along to your team meetings, and if you’re external, then do get in touch.

Photo taken this week by mike138. Used under licence. Photos for my Delicious postings like this will be taken from Flickr’s ‘interesting feed’ for the day concerned. Seemed like a good idea.

Postalicious
One of the reasons I stopped posting my Del.icio.us links to this blog was the unpleasant way that it rendered, and the lack of any control I had with regard to timing. This hopefully fixes this.

Meet Mr. TechCrunch UK - ScobleShow
In the latest of my “let’s mention Robert Scoble because he normally adds your mention to his linkblog”, a serious one - Robert interviews the excellent Mike Butcher, who’s looking very well in this video. I last saw Mike a good eight months ago.

Ubuntu
Recently added it to my normal workhorse laptop (an HP Compaq tc4200). I wouldn’t say it worked totally instantly out of the box, but after a little tinkering, it’s doing everything I want except print, which is a good start, and I’ve still Windows on the machine if I need it.

The UCC Journalism Society Conference 2008 (my speaking events)
Delighted to be speaking on “the place of traditional media in the Web 2.0 world” at this conference for University College Cork: under the auspices of my Media UK work.

An ego blog-search
I wanted to see who was blogging about me, but I had problems with Google Blog Search returning my own blog entries. I’ve worked out how to stop that with -blogurl, like so: “James Cridland” -blogurl:james.cridland.net -blogurl:www.flickr.com

v-moda “Vibe Duo” headphones for the iPhone
My Christmas present to myself was an iPhone: and these are just excellent headphones - way better sound than the original crappy ones, and with a headset mike, so I can still use it as a phone. Mind, damn expensive.

ShinyRed - 10 blogs to read in 2008
Nine blogs you might actually want to read; and one ridiculous suggestion. But it’s very nice of them, so thank you, ShinyRed.

John Naughton posts this nice picture of me at work (CC licenced) - thank you, John, that makes me look incredibly popular, and misses the empty rows at the front!

Amazing building, the Open University. And the sound in this hall was impeccably good; making virtually every radio conference I’ve been to appear poor by comparison. (Two notable exceptions: the BBC Audio and Music Festival, and the Radio Academy’s “Radio at the Edge” conference last year). Good after-speech chat, too, with some really very bright minds.

(Hello, too, to you if this is your first time reading this blog. I predict a stampede from one organisation today; remember that I’m perfectly entitled to change these views to the, harrumph, right ones. Do also note that this is not my idea of a great-looking website, and really one day I ought to make it look a little less bobbins.)