Category: technology

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dab digital radio mobile radio technology

nanoDAB – DAB, Bluetooth and Mobile

GSMWorld 2008

Tucked away on TTP’s little stand (1B39) was something remarkable, and genuinely revolutionary. This is “nanoDAB“.

Well, actually, it’s not nanoDAB. It’s a Lobster phone, ex of BT Movio fame. (Remember them – Mobile TV – yes? no? oh well, suit yourself). TTP designed the guts of the BT Movio device, which most owners (all five thousand or so of them) will tell you was a dreadful mobile phone with a rather marvellous DAB Digital Radio in it. It was sensitive, it was functional, and it had a very nifty little EPG.

When Movio closed down, it seemed a shame to lose the phones. So it’s great news that TTP have extracted the goodness, and squeezed it down into a great DAB radio accessory which can hook into any device via Bluetooth. Neat.

At first glance, it’s great because now you can have DAB Digital Radio on any mobile phone, and you get a free handsfree too. Or maybe it’s the other way around. Whatever. It’s a great opportunity. (Unless you have an iPhone, of course, which has a crippled Bluetooth interface. Can’t imagine why that might be).

But here’s the very special sauce of the nanoDAB.

Why are all DAB Digital Radios square wooden boxes? Because radio manufacturers understand square wooden boxes, and colour displays, embedded browsers and memory over 2Mbytes scares the living daylights out of them. So much DAB functionality is unused because of boring radios, from manufacturers who assume that consumers are boring and unable to deal with change.

But a mobile phone. Well, it’s a nirvana. Handheld, colour screen, embedded browser, pots of storage, performance microprocessors, and a real, genuine, programmable operating system. Now the nanoDAB allows DAB data services to bridge into the mobile phone, and finally you can see what DAB is to radio – it’s mobile, wireless, broadband at a fraction of the cost of 3G/UMTS/WiFi or WiMax, and it’s ours… all ours. We control the spectum, and we get it for free.

TTP were demonstrating DLS text, Slideshow, EPG and downloading audio and video files for on-demand playback, and doing so on a Nokia, a Sony Ericsson and a Motorola phone. Just pair the device, it installs the relevant Java app, and off you go.

Go find out about nanoDAB. It will be worth it. Pass the details around to colleagues who don’t get DAB because all they see is wooden box radios.

nanoDAB is the future of DAB. Good work on TTP for salvaging something genuinely useful from the wreckage of BT Movio. Let’s hope they keep the APIs nice and open so that people can freely develop exciting applications for it. (And apologies to them for adding an enhanced profile to Slideshow about two weeks before they launched it. But that’s innovation).

(P.S. I didn’t actually see the nanoDAB device. It was kept hidden around the back for cryptic reasons to do with branding).

(P.P.S.The eagle eyed will spot the juxtaposition of “Planet Rock” with Slideshow content from KISS 100 in London. Apparently, that was an in-joke).

Categories
mobile technology

GSMWorld…zzzzz….

What's on at GSMWorld

Two days in Barcelona at GSMWorld, to devine what’s in the pipeline for the mobile environment over the next couple of years. Knowing what mobile devices manufacturers are going to be pressing into consumers’ hands means we can start working out how to get radio onto them, and what kind of experience it should be. It’s also early warning of new competition for listeners’ mobile time, and new directions for mobile content.

The good news, strangely, is that GSMWorld was pretty dull. No whizzy new phones, no outstanding new functionality, no category killers. It looks very much like the manufacturers have stop trying to capture market share off each other with incredible innovations, and are trying to make a decent margin by selling sensibly featured phones at presumably sensible prices (but who knows, because it’s the networks that buy the phones). So really, nothing sensational to report.

Nokia rolled out their N96, which is an N95 8GByte with some go-faster stripes. ARM, Qualcomm and a few other fabless silicon shops were “demonstrating” the Google Android platform. Samsung sheepishly rolled a statement saying they would demo an Android phone “soon”. I can see that major manufacturers don’t want to antagonise network operators at this stage over the issue of advertising funded mobile devices. Nokia Siemens (the networks and infrastructure business of Nokia) were demonstrating the concept of targetted advertising injected into the mobile network, and there was some talk of a collation of networks looking at advertising funded mobile web browsing.

Mobile TV was considerably reduced over the heydays of 2006. Most of the majors had their 2007 handsets on display, reserving a bit of space for DVB-H, T-DMB, S-DMB, ISDB-T or somesuchother format. But no big displays for TV, and interestingly it was music and media capable devices that were being given the prestige slots. Maybe Live TV on the go isn’t what consumers want – maybe something common sense might have told you. Oh well.

Nothing staggering in content either, other than to note that the ringtones/ringtunes/wallpapers business seems to be subsiding a bit. Adobe demonstrated Mobile Flash Lite, which offers some excellent opportunities to develop fun things for mobiles, including customising the User Interface. Opera Mobile is developing nicely too, and maybe it will slowly edge towards a defacto standard?

There was one interesting item – the nanoDAB. but I’m going to blog that as a separate item.

(PS. Isn’t it so nice of GSMWorld to consider our spiritual wellbeing, by making sure that the Prayer Room was located conveniently close to the Adult Content Zone. Well done chaps).

(PPS. “When clever travel plans go wrong”. I think I was the only delegate who took 17 hours to get back from Barcelona. What started as a “clever idea” quickly turned into a re-routing nightmare involving four hours sleep in a Holiday Inn Express, and delays at GVA, FRA and 35 minutes circling LHR waiting for fog to clear. I made it back to the office with minutes to spare).

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mobile radio technology

Live radio on the iPhone and iPod Touch

iPhone Streaming (C) 2008 GCap Media plc

Ubiquitous and mobile – two characteristics that encompass the radio experience. For over twenty years, between the invention of the transistor and the arrival of the Walkman, those characteristics were unique to radio (the medium) and radio (the device).

Radio, the device, has no future.

That seems to be a bold statement to make against sales of 6.5m DAB Digital Radios in the UK, all of which have been dedicated “radio” devices, or “radio” devices primarily sold on the feature of radio. Those radio devices have been bought by an unconverged generation; older, more affluent, less aware of the fashionability of technology. They have replaced traditional wooden transistor radios by radios that are reassuringly recognisable, and simple to operate.

Radio, the medium, is capable of much more.

Once you shake off the radio=medium=device thinking, it allows so much more exploration of what radio is, and what it could be for people who do live in a converged media world; who do want to buy technology because it’s fashionable, and who want functionality executed brilliantly. That isn’t to say that DAB is pointless. DAB Digital Radio is a distribution platform that is extremely well suited to delivering radio into converged mobile devices, and it’s been a huge impediment to its growth to have been stuck in the radio=medium=device paradigm.

So if we are passionate about retaining our ubiquity, our mobility and our attraction to users, then we have to go and find out what devices listeners love, and find a way of getting radio to them.

Apple dominate the personal, mobile entertainment device market.

They understand the combination of form and functionality, and are uncompromising about delivering a converged experience on a converged device. As technologists and media operators, we might rail against the tightly-controlled integrated platform they’ve created, but it works for consumers. However, even an organisation as focused on delivering a brilliant mobile entertainment device can slip up, and I think Apple have.

Why is there no live radio on the iPod / iPod Touch / iPhone?

Is it conspiracy or cockup? It’s hard to say, and I doubt Apple would want to admit to either. But the absence of the UK’s/Europe’s most popular form of mobile entertainment from the most popular mobile entertainment device makes no sense to me. If Apple is intent on universal ownership of their device (and that’s a reasonable objective for a company), then we need to be equally passionate and focused about getting radio onto them. By hook, or by crook.

GCap Media is the first broadcaster to deliver live streaming radio to the iPod Touch and iPhone

I am immensely proud of my team – Andy Buckingham, Ben Poor and newcomer Adam Fox – for hacking their way into the iPod Touch and iPhone and being the first people to deliver live streaming radio. You don’t need any specific firmware, you don’t need to jailbreak your device, you don’t need to install anything. Simply visiting www.musicradio.com from your iPod Touch or iPhone will give you access to the live streams from GCap’s major stations, plus those essential features that all radio must now come with; what’s playing now, on-demand audio (podcasts), opportunities to purchase (from a selection of vendors, incidentally), and access to the station websites. Andy, Ben and Adam did the creative work to make it happen, and my role was to provide encouragement, direction and cups of tea.

No doubt the inquisitive will quickly reverse engineer what we did, and we’ll see more and more radio arrive on the iPod Touch and iPhone, at which point I would rather hope that Apple would choose to support it formally and embrace the opportunities. I’m positive that the EMEA people in Apple can help their colleagues in Cupertino see how important radio is in Europe, and how rather forward looking European broadcasters are.

Of course, there are weaknesses to our approach (not least of which it involves rather more horsepower at the back than we would like, and it’s at times like these that Amazon EC2 is a welcome helping hand), and inherent weaknesses in trying to use WiFi (or even 3G) to provide a reliable streamed service to mobile devices. If you up and leave your WiFi hotspot, then you’re going to lose your radio service. Anyone who’s used 3G on their laptop to stream content will know that 3G is a very stop/start system when you’re on the move.

So view what we’ve done as a prototype – an “in principle” demonstration of what is possible with radio on the move on a modern media device. By itself it won’t be material to GCap’s earnings this year, and I doubt it will deliver significant listening hours. Indeed, using the current approach of streaming over WiFi or 3G, it scales very poorly and we will struggle to deal with significant numbers of concurrent listeners.

If this prototype excites listeners and the radio industry, then the next step is to capitalise on that and look at how to integrate a proper mass-market distribution technology into the device, of which only one candidate fits the bill (in terms of economics, functionality and power consumption) and that’s DAB Digital Radio. And of course, whilst Apple make the world’s most successful portable media device with a phone in it, Nokia make the world’s most successful mobile phones with media players in them – and Nokia are already ahead of Apple with Nokia Visual Radio and Nokia Streaming Radio.

Categories
dab digital radio technology

OFCOM’s Review of DAB Sound Quality

Like My Ears? by *Rob* at flickr

 

OFCOM’s Future of Radio consultation has come back for a part 2, following the initial findings published in November 2007. Whilst most attention has focused on the regulation applying to local content on Analogue radio, there is also a significant statement on DAB Sound Quality.

 

Sound quality is a subject that provokes ferocious sentiment in a small number of listeners, some of whom feel that DAB should have stuck to its original proposition of very high quality sound. They haven’t accepted that the success of DAB so far has been driven by the mass-market appeal created by variety of services, and so continue to look for ways to bring DAB back to the place they think it ought to be.

 

I wonder if OFCOM occasionally curse the Broadcasting Act (1996) that brought DAB to life, as it also contained a statutory requirement to regulate the “audio characteristics” of a service, a piece of legislatory meddling that was no doubt done to appease someone somewhere, but now looks increasingly anachronistic in a world of streaming over the Internet and via Digital TV where no such regulations exist.

 

Unfortunately, the statues stand (s 54(6A) and 54(6B) if you’re interested) so OFCOM isn’t in a position to allow the market to take its course as it would do anywhere else. It’s also a point of leverage that the audio connoisseurs can bring to bear.

 

At first glance, their statement that they will now regulate not just the bitrate for services, but also whether they’re in mono or stereo, is pretty heavy-handed.

 

I ‘ve always maintained that OFCOM is a pretty realistic and pragmatic regulator, so finding themselves in between the rock and the hard place, I think they’ve found a way of meeting their statutory obligations (of which they have no doubt been reminded by the lobby groups) whilst seeing a way through pragmatic requests for change.

 

Reading the justification for the decision:

 

“…our policy is intended to be a backstop to ensure that multiplex operators do not seek to unacceptably diminish the range and variety of the services that they broadcast by changing the audio characteristics of a radio service in order that freed-up capacity can be allocated to services which, in our view, would not be in the best interests of listeners. Examples of such services would be those aimed at a closed user group (i.e. not available to the general public) and where Ofcom judges this would not be in the overall public interest.” 

 

That sounds like a very clear reference to DigitalOne’s situation where the (now defunct) BT Movio Mobile TV service chewed up vast amounts of capacity, forcing radio stations like Core and Life and theJazz into mono. As we’re some way past the event now, I can say that there was quite a lot of discussion about how to fit three radio stations into space made (snugly) for two, and in the end the decision was that it was better to run two moderate and one good quality mono services, than one medium quality stereo service and two ropey mono ones. If you disagree, then aim your complaints at me.

 

If OFCOM stick to the guidance they appear to have issued themselves, then I can’t see that it will affect reasonable requests from broadcasters, and by leaving the door open for a review in 12 months time there’s an opportunity to show that the market can manage services and spectrum effectively.

 

However, the phrase “shifting the deckchairs on the Titanic” also springs to mind. The reason D1 took BT Movio’s shilling (well, I hope it was more than 5p) was that it needed to justify the costs of their network and turn a profit, and that in turn overrode the economics of the radio industry and forced a capacity squeeze and a sound quality squeeze. The underlying problem of all of this – the reason why stations have to scrimp and save on capacity and cost – is that the infrastructure as originally built in the UK is too expensive.

 

OFCOM’s Digital Working Group, and particularly the Technology team, need to look at why DAB infrastructure is so inexplicably expensive, and how it can be got into the realms of the affordability that are achievable. If OFCOM can successfully apply their regulatory weight to that problem, then it will be appreciated by both broadcasters and listeners.

Categories
dab digital radio technology

A Good Day for DAB Digital Radio

Avalon balloons by DogfromSPACE @ flickr

Two reasons to feel good about DAB today.

First up, the DRDB reported another excellent Christmas for DAB Digital Radio sales, with 550,000 units sold, taking the cumulative total to 6.45m. The projections for this year put the total at over 8m come January 2009, and 30% of households using Digital Radio in some way or other.

The continued strong sales of DAB Digital Radios is all the more remarkable given that the UK retail sector generally had a lousy Christmas,  and consumer sentiment towards discretionary purchases is pretty weak. Is this a sign that DAB is now established as the primary radio device, and no longer a special purchase?

The breakdown of sales is also interesting, with MP3/DAB Digital Radio combined devices rating well. It’s surprising when you consider that there aren’t that many MP3/DAB combination devices, that none of the major MP3 brands are making them, and that the convergence of MP3 and DAB functionality on those devices hasn’t exactly been stellar.

Handheld devices like these are more valuable to a mobile medium like radio than kitchen radios, but they do pose a particular challenge to broadcasters in providing robust enough signal strengths for them to work reliably. It can be done, but it needs a shuffle up of the existing network plans, which is going to be complicated. DAB still seems to be growing apace, and it would be disappointing if the growth of handheld DAB devices, which offer new functionality and genuine mobility, was held back because we were slow to deliver the right quality of signal to them.

To put some numbers on that challenge:

  • A DAB transmitter needs to transmit 10kW of power to provide the same breadth and quality of reception on a device as an FM transmitter at 1kW (due to a combination of path loss at the different frequencies and a slightly lighter sensitivity requirement for DAB receivers) *
  • DAB is (currently) allocated only 7 frequencies, which means that nearly all DAB multiplexes are either adjacent (in frequency terms) to another multiplex in the same area, or on the same frequency as another multiplex nearby. That means there is far less elbow room for manoeuvre (currently) over transmission sites and powers.

These issues are resolvable, and the upturn in sales of handheld DAB devices should provide the impetus to start that difficult process.

The second piece of “good” was tucked away in a piece that Jack Schofield wrote about My Classic fm.

Aside from the fact that My Classic fm is something rather marvellous that my team made a significant contribution too, Jack has been very much more precise about what it is that he doesn’t like DAB, which is the use of MPEG-2 as a coding technology and the poor stereo image that Joint Stereo encoding produces. And I agree totally with Jack. DAB isn’t broken, but the audio coding technology we have in the UK isn’t optimum. And fixing that is a challenge at least as big as moving transmitters round (rainy, flooded, muddy) fields, and also one that we can’t afford to shy away from.

* Hello radio transmission engineers. I realise that this is a gross over-simplification of the issue, but without going into a realm of detail, it demonstrates the scale of the issue.

Categories
dab digital radio mobile radio technology

CES – The Radio Perspective

CES Welcome Screen

I was lucky enough to visit The Consumer Electronics Show this year. CES lies at the very heart of the consumer electronics industry, and is a bellwether for the health of consumer spending and consumer interests. I went to go and see how radio fits into this frenetic and fast-moving world.

CES is vast. Truly awe-inspiringly vast. 140,000 delegates, thousands and thousands exhibitors, spread across tens of thousands of hall space across three huge venues. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist, but that’s just peanuts to CES. (with apologies to Douglas Adams). Your chances of seeing it all are slimmer than a whelks chance in a supernova (ditto). But one does ones very best, and wears comfortable shoes (the very best tip I got from reading the blogosphere)

CES has the whole spectrum of consumer electronics providers – from the powerhouses of Samsung, LG, Microsoft, Intel, Motorola, Panasonic – to hundreds and hundreds of booths in a shanty town like arrangement representing the manufacturing communities of China and Taiwan.

Bill Gates (Microsoft) and Paul Otellini (Intel) both devoted large segments of their Keynote speeches to the future of Digital Entertainment (and a quick bash on Guitar Hero for Bill, and a bloke called Slash). Sweeping presentations and brilliant visuals emphasised a seamless entertainment experience in the home, the car and the mobile device. TV – yep. Films – you got ’em. Music – sure thing. Radio… Hello, hello, paging radio – is radio in the house? Apparently not. Oh well. (Otellini’s speech started with a reworking of The Buggles, Video Killed The Radio Star which rather fell over when people realised that video hasn’t actually killed the radio star – but hey, it was a great 80’s start to the show).

So where was radio amongst the vast shiny stands of the world’s major consumer electronics brands. Not present. Largely, I guess, because radio isn’t cutting edge techsexy. (Although I’ve no idea what LG were thinking of when inventing Mobile Pedestrian Handheld “MPH”, and attempting another flogging session of the dead horse of mobile TV). Does Microsoft’s Mediaroom (their IPTV platform) support radio; well, they weren’t sure, but it does do music. How about Microsoft Media Center (sic) – same response. Slightly better news at the Zune stand, where they recognised that lack of streaming support was a bit of a negative, and said there was a roadplan.

Nokia was good. They were demonstrating streaming radio on the N95 and Capital 95.8 streamed faultlessly first time. They talked about bringing together the Visual Radio and Streaming Radio into a single client, which is an exciting prospect. And they really joined in with the enviro/green theme of the show (which must have had a dedicated, and doubtless coal-fired, power plant. Amusingly the local coal lobby was running adverts on the local radio stations about how important and how much cleaner coal was nowadays. Yeah, yeah).

Most of the brand MP3 players have FM radio chucked in as an afterthought. It adds headcount, but nothing very exciting or revolutionary for the radio industry. iRiver were the notable exception, demoing their excellent little B20 device (which has the most comprehensive DAB Digital Radio implementation ever seen, on any device, anywhere) alongside their new W7 and W10 wifi enabled devices. Cowon also demo’ed a MP3+DAB radio unit. But where are Creative, Apple?

So, what about WiMax – to some people, the solution for broadcast radio to the masses? XOHM is the US implementation of WiMax, and they had a great theme driven stand. I asked which theme radio fitted into, and they thought it would probably be the “in the car” theme. But the “in the car” team hadn’t thought about radio. They thought it probably would work because mobile TV works over WiMax, but they promised to have a think about it and get back to me. Seems like the admiration between radio and WiMax isn’t mutual.

So far, the picture looks a bit glum. In a show driven by innovation in consumer electronics, there’s not much radio brings to the party. But let’s go deeper, and talk to the people on the stands.

Most the product managers I was able to talk to were quite interested in the idea of a new kind of radio. In essence, they were saying – give us something new to talk about, and we’ll include it. Logitech and Sonus talked about how their streaming devices can support visualisation, extended information, and interactivity – but no radio station has ever come and asked them about it. I spent some time with the folks from HD Radio, and they talked about how well the iTunes Tagging concept had been received, and demo’ed their natty media player device. Sirius and XM both had impressive stands showing of their range of own brand devices. Radio can do innovation, but apparently only when it’s done by new entrants; it would seem that legacy businesses find it awfully hard to get their heads round anything other than today and yesterday.

The other astonishing hit of the show, in terms of ubiquity, was Digital Picture Frames. They were simply everywhere, despite being described by one wag as “21st Century Lava Lamps”. I predict that an awful lot of homes will have them, and the manufacturers are already trying to differentiate themselves. Some have WiFi, some have Bluetooth, some play MP3s to accompany the pictures. But hang on, if it can play MP3, why not DAB digital radio? Isn’t the Kitchen Radio of the future actually a nifty 7″ digital picture frame, that shows Slideshow when you’re listening to the radio, and shows your favourite pictures when you’re not. Why, hey – now there’s an opportunity. (And a new Slideshow spec will be out shortly).

I was really pleased to be able to meet Jack Schofield of The Guardian in Vegas. We literally bumped into each other on the strip, and used the opportunity to have a really good discussion about DAB Digital Radio. Readers of both our outputs know that my responses have been tart at times, but I hope that the time we spent having an interesting and wide-ranging chat affirms with Jack that there’s no personal animosity, and that everyone on the Digital Radio project has a real passion for radio and that we do the very best we can with the resources and freedoms we have.

One final observation, and this is more to do with radio programming than digital radio. Vegas is the home of the 80’s pop hit. Music is piped everywhere – streets, lobbies, casino floors, restaurants, lifts. Not once, and I mean not one single time in a 6 day stay, did I hear anything other than pop hits from the 1980’s. Nu Shooz, I Can’t Wait; Falco, Der Kommisar; El Debarge, Who’s Johnny…. Given that Vegas is a multi-million dollar industry that is heavily researched, I believe that 80’s pop hits must make people happy, must make people spend lots of money, and therefore must be the sleeper hit format for digital radio in 2008.

There’s a flickr stream of my CES photos here.

Nick travelled with bmi from Manchester to Vegas, who were lovely, even if they caught a 5 hour delay on the way back. You have to love a British airline that serves clotted cream tea, cornish pasties and cottage pie, and brings the tea round before the coffee.

Categories
radio technology

Where do Good Ideas come from?

No Msg Zone by Quiet Nights of Gotham @ flickr

No Msg Zone by Quiet Nights of Gotham @ flickr

I’ll have to admit I was both appalled and amused by Mark Ramsey’s latest blog item, “Text Messaging – New Revenue for Radio”. Mark, quite rightly, challenges radio stations to go out and investigate the opportunities that SMS Text Messaging can bring to radio stations, and the revenues it can create.

I’m amused because it’s a very symbolic reminder of how great the chasm is between radio in the US, and radio in pretty much the whole of the rest of the world. I can’t think of a country in Europe, Asia or Australasia where the radio stations aren’t using SMS as a primary component of audience interaction, and raising some revenue as a result. Indeed, so great and enthusiastic has been the engagement of radio and TV broadcasters in the UK to embrace revenue generating SMS activity, that it’s provoked a rather nasty backlash from consumers and regulators. Wouldn’t Mark’s blog have been even more effective if he’d Googled on the subject a bit, and appended a warning along the lines of “hey, but check out what happened in the UK when they tried to push it too far, and learn from them”?

Assuming that SMS has been part of the UK broadcasting landscape since 2001 (and I can say with some authority that the DAB station “Core” in the UK was using SMS as its primary listener contact from 15th November 1999), we’re at least 5-6 years ahead of the US. Come learn from us, but start by understanding that you’re not forging ahead into unknown territory.

When I get the opportunity to talk at conferences or with broadcasters who are at different phases in their development of new technology, I always try and highlight the things we have seen go wrong. Knowing what can go wrong and how to avoid it, in my opinion, at least as valuable as knowing what went right.

What appalled me about Mark’s post is, in fact, not really about Mark’s post. What worries me is the widely held assumption that the US radio industry is leading the global development of radio, and that US commentators are more informed and astute than their European counterparts. Not only does this apply to things like SMS messaging, but also subjects like “Why WiMax is the perfect platform for radio” (wrong…) and in programming areas too – witness the flocking to the “Jack” music format.

I consciously decided not to attend NAB Europe in Barcelona this year after some disappointing and frustrating experiences at the last two events. It’s marvellous to bring speakers from the US over to NAB Europe, but could someone please tell them to adjust their attitudes before engaging mouth? Europe may not speak English, but we’re miles and miles ahead of the US industry, which has got stuck in the turgidity of consolidation and insular thinking. From the feedback I received from colleagues at the event, my decision to stay home and work on other projects  looked to be a good one.

This is not a diatribe against the US radio industry and US commentators. They are where they are, and in a lot of cases their landscape is dramatically different to the one the rest of the world lives in. Europe’s infatuation with PSBs will never be understood outside of Europe (and even those of us who live here do wonder sometimes), and I’ll never understand the popularity of Country and Western as a music format. Celebrate the differences rather than trying to iron them out. If anything, my concern is that people in the industry don’t look outside their comfort zones when looking for innovation and future thinking. There are great things happening in radio in Europe, Asia and Australasia and just because those great things are being done in German, Italian, Swedish, Malay, Chinese, or Thai doesn’t lessen their value to a global radio industry.

Categories
dab digital radio radio real life technology

Long range radar calibration available

Radio At The Edge Flier

This is just a quick reminder that if you’re the kind of person who enjoys debate and discussion about the effect of new technology on good old radio, then Radio At The Edge is a realworld event you might also enjoy.

RATE is the Radio Academy’s annual conference looking at how radio is being disrupted by technology, and it’s usually a sell-out, so if it’s of interest get it in your diary now and contact mandy@radioacademy.org to book your place.

Categories
technology

Tweaking

Old Telephones by givepeasachance @ flickr.com

Old Telephones by givepeasachance @ flickr.com

You’ll maybe notice that I’ve moved to blog over to WordPress (on James’ hearty recommendation), and I’m hoping it has been seamless. I haven’t yet customised the templates. That’s the next thing to do, along with a general redesign of the code to add some cleverness stuff here and there.

I’ve spent a fair bit of time lately playing more with Voice Over IP (VoIP). I think it’s an interesting technology, and disrupting a well established business model. It’s also financially very attractive to me, having friends and relations all over the place. I now have VoIP “trunks” coming in from 7 different places, aggregated into an Asterisk PBX server.

I wish I could say it was a simple configuration, but even by cheating and downloading the rather marvellous trixbox, which is a bootable CD which completely installs a machine from scratch, it was still a major headache getting it to go. Admittedly, I’m asking for some slightly non-standard things, and balancing access to the server with network security was tricky. I had to drop back to hand editing config files, and sifting through conflicting information from various enthusiast forums, which is not an “out of the box” experience.

After a good solid number of nights work (have you noticed how this kind of messing about always ends up being “nights work”?), it’s pretty much the way I wanted it to be. I can login from the laptop wherever I happen to be in the world, and it aggregates all my calls and voicemails to one place. If I happen not to be logged on to VoIP, it will tentatively call my mobile phone but pull back from that if I don’t answer and take a voicemail which it then e-mails me. I think that’s pretty neat, and should knock the roaming bills down.

The next thing to look forward to is IBC in Amsterdam, and getting a look-see at what new technology is coming our way in 2008.

Categories
technology

Don’t Sell Me A Service – Sell Me The Clever

Companies have moved from selling products to selling services. I think it’s time for that model to evolve again.

I’ve worked closely for a very long time with a software company.

At first they sold a product; a set of floppy disks which came with a 1,300 page manual. It was a ragingly successful product, which has been distributed on 5.25″ disks, 3.5″ disks, CD, DVD and now probably available as a download. You installed the product on your own PC, and licensed it. With a “product” comes the burden documentation, and lots of testing on all sorts of different hardware/operating system combinations, and lots of telephone support.

About 5 years ago they developed some functionality which was years ahead of its time. Because it looked rather complicated to most people, and demanded some knowledge of SQL and IIS, they decided to make it available as a service; a service that radio stations could make look like their own by putting their own branding and logos on it. Apparently the only clue that it wasn’t being run directly by the radio station was that it was served from a different IP address.

Quite a lot of companies sell services nowadays. On the premise of rapid deployment, and hassle free operation, they offer an apparently beguiling solution to the problem of keeping up with the market. You can buy content management services, community and networking services, text message services, podcasting services. The common thread is that the functionality is bundled up to the point where you just add colour and logo and link to it.

The difficulty with these bundled service is that you end up with little parcels of functionality all over your site, and it’s very hard to mesh it all together in a way that the user might want to use it. It becomes harder to retain consistency of navigation and behaviour, and if you do want to do a change, it means negotiating with a range of different companies to implement it. And of course you end up with segegrated pots of data and content, which makes it virtually impossible to neatly flow learned behaviours/preferences around your site.

I really liked the functionality that this software company offered us, but really hated the service. It just wasn’t right for what we wanted, and it would have been a major job (and cost) to amend it. So I offered to licence just the core code so that we could integrate the functionality deep into our own systems and sites – and to their enormous credit, they agreed. In fact, it helps them too. They don’t need to create a “product”, and they now don’t need to guess our end-user needs when developing the “service”. And we avoid paying for (and almost certainly unpicking) layers we don’t want or need.

The secret of innovating fast is to make small, incremental, steps quickly. Companies with “clever” are more likely to get a sale by allowing their work to be an incremental building block in someone else’s plan rather than trying to provide the whole shooting match. I think I’ll go mental if another company comes to me with some nice functionality that has yet another “content management system” with it. The sum total of content management systems in any organisation should be one. No higher, no lower. One.

I’d be overjoyed if more companies offered to sell me their “clever”.

(P.S. If you’ve got something clever, do let me know. I might be able to find it a loving home nestled in an existing system).