A while back, I said that this radio ad on tv was possibly the best of its genre.

The marketing director for Capital Radio at the time, Carl Lyons, has posted more details of how the ad got to be made: and a rather good out-take. Read his blog post here.

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Post tags: advertising, capital radio, marketing, radio
These are my personal views and not those of the BBC | Full disclosure

The radio department

Save Our Sounds [Paul Easton]
A rather good writeup of a rather splendid project by Kate Arkless Gray of the BBC. You should follow @bbc_sos on Twitter if you've not done so already. And contribute some sounds!

RadioDNS – Developments Update
A nice update in developments around RadioDNS, the technology that links broadcast to IP. Worthwhile looking at, if you've not already – there's some really good news to come.

Radio Scilly [guardian.co.uk]
A rather lovely writeup of my favourite local radio station, Radio Scilly. In, naturally, the TV Blog in The Guardian – which clearly stretches to television for grownups as well (i.e. the radio).

How Many People Does It Take…? [Paul Easton]
Following a throwaway comment in this blog, Paul goes off to investigate staffing levels for BBC Radio 4. I must admit, I've no idea what 55 people do running the Today Programme either.

Digital Britain has arrived (or is at least en-route) [Nick Piggott]
Nick's take on the Digital Britain report – essential reading for anyone involved in DAB Digital Radio or the future of radio

Absolute Get it Wight [James Stodd – Radio Producer]
A rather good review of Absolute Radio's interactive accompaniment to the Isle of Wight Festival. I'm rather proud of my old team. They do a good job with virtually no resources, and could teach the BBC a thing or several.

Thrilling Radio – [Nik Goodman Media Consulting]
Nik discusses his work with his stations after the death of Michael Jackson. Proof that a good consultant never sleeps: well worth a read.

The “listen to me” department

Lakeshore FM
I was interviewed for this NPR station in North Indiana about future media for radio – and it’s an interview with a difference. Take a listen.

RadioTalent podcasts
Paul Easton noticed that there's a podcast of an interview with me at the radiotalent.co.uk website. Many are for sale – apparently, I come free (which is nice). Pop along and download it if you like, it might be good, though I do remember wittering along rather a lot.

Digital Britain [PC Live Radio Show]
As if you haven't already had enough links to my 12 year-old squeaky voice, here's another: this one with Dusty Rhodes, and broadcast on RTE Choice. Hear me summarise the Digital Britain report with the help of rather a lot of Google News.

The usability department

Pressing red turns the power off? Err… not most of the time… [Bods's Blog - Planet Bods]
A very worthwhile read, showing the difference between remote control "visual languages". If the consumer electronics industry can't even agree on the right colour for a power button, why are we trusting them with the future of our medium?

The ‘who would have believed it’ department

ASCAP Wants To Be Paid When Your Phone Rings [Electronic Frontier Foundation]
ASCAP, the American equivalent of a bit of "PRS for Music", are going after the mobile phone companies wanting money for public performance of ringtones. ZOMG. ROFL. OMFG.

The other interesting departments

Announcing the AdSense for Mobile Applications beta [Official Google Blog]
A quick way to monetise those iPhone apps. So, if you're not already on the iPhone, now's the way to make it earn you some cash.

Top 10 Productivity Basics Explained [Lifehacker]
Lifehacker makes productivity seem to easy. Oh, so easy. Why do I find all this stuff so hard? They make it so easy. Gah.

A break from the norm [My Thoughts Today]
A review of the recent Club of Amsterdam event I hosted, by Eleanor McHugh. I don't think she liked me very much, calling me supercilious (but then, at least I can spell it). I was only following my orders.

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Post tags: radio
These are my personal views and not those of the BBC | Full disclosure

Doing some tidying up this evening, and discovered my introduction to the recent Club of Amsterdam event. Worthwhile not just deleting it, but posting it here.

Radio is an interesting and, until recently, quite unique thing.

In 1954, a company called Regency Electronics made something called the Regency TR-1. It was the first transistor radio. And for the first time, we could get the latest music, news, and opinion, wherever we were – on the move, at home, in the office, on the beach. The first truly connected device. A device that changed our relationship with music forever.

The accelleration of change is getting faster – and now our connected devices talk back – they learn from us – they tell people where we are and what we’re doing, and we’re ever more comfortable with sharing more and more data, from wherever we are, to whoever wants to use it.

What the humble transistor radio did in the 1950s is now a world away from where we are today. Permanent connectivity is continually pushing new boundaries – new boundaries in technology; and new boundaries in social behaviour. And our preferred future depends on it.

I’m thrilled to be able to connect with all of our speakers and our audience this evening, and I very much look forward to an interesting night. Thank you.

Photo montage: John Ousby. The older radios are the Regency TR-1. Used under licence – thank you, John

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Post tags: amsterdam, future, radio
These are my personal views and not those of the BBC | Full disclosure

I was lucky enough to be able to chair a rather splendid evening recently at the RSA: The Future of Connectivity from the Club of Amsterdam. I heard three rather excellent speakers, and made rather hasty notes so that I could kick off questions.

It’s probably worthwhile you knowing the format for this: three speeches (15 minutes long), followed by 30-minutes of drinks and chat, followed by 30 minutes of Q&A. A rather nice format, I felt, which made for a good evening of discussion.

Dr Ir Egbert-Jan Sol was first – who went through a rather good presentation extrapolating Moore’s Law to encompass many other elements. The size of computers will shrink amazingly in the next ten years or so, if innovation keeps up; and the same goes for the cost of bandwidth. He argued that bandwidth would practically be free in ten years time, and that in fifteen years time, we’ll be down to computers the size of your pen lid. In 2020, he says, the amount of connections to the internet will be equivalent to 250 embedded wireless devices per human being. Wow, that’s some future.

His practical outcome of this was the truly ‘auto’mobile – a car capable of driving completely automatically, keeping a safe but close distance from the car in front, by 2040.

Professor Peter Cochrane was next up – the former BT Chief Technologist, he argued that we do things the wrong way round. Nature makes simple things which combine to do complex tasks; on the contrary, we make complex things to do simple tasks.

He pointed to there being over 4 billion mobile phones worldwide, with over 50% of those being internet-ready; and mentioned his Linked-In account, which shows that there are already 7,982,000 people just three degrees away from him.

He said that, in 2006, the internet had the same number of nodes as a human brain; by 2012, it would have a thousand times the number of nodes; and by 2018, a million times the number of nodes. He says that laptops aren’t smart: they have no sensors, and no concept of adaptability; but that as we build more sensors into things, our machines will be capable of being much smarter. He points to the iPhone, with its camera, its compass, its accellerometer. He says that humans can’t get more intelligent, while computers can. They can access more data, and extract knowledge from it easier. He points to a future which is more run by computers than before.

Finally, Hardy F. Schloer started shakily (”I haven’t received a fax for… nearly four months!!” he announced to a slightly bemused audience, wondering what a fax machine was), but rallied quickly to point to computers’ use being a changing one.

He says people used computers for two things: “getting information” (getting emails, temperatures, stock information, etc), and “posting information” (writing documents, sending emails, managing robots and power plants, etc). The computer is in the middle of us humans, he argues – and that the human’s role in all of this is going to disappear.

Very soon, he says, there’ll be no financial industry left. Computers can learn how to run the stock markets just as well as humans can: you won’t need humans to do this work any more, he argues. He points to chess: the interest in chess as an international sport completely died after computers started beating Grand Masters. And he points to many things – running busy ports, motor racing, banking, etc – being capable of being done almost solely by computers.

And, as was twittered by @kuxi, he said “those who are able to change will survive”.

It would seem, in the discussion afterwards, that entertainment is one of the only things that can’t be done by computers. You might want to tell that to the overnight radio presenter who’s job was replaced by a playout system, but I see what he means.

A fascinating evening, and one that – as always – opens up new thoughts and horizons.

Photo: Dawn Danby. Used under licence – thanks. Full disclosure: I didn’t get paid to chair this event, though I did get a nice piece of luggage from the sponsors, a pen from the organiser, and a dinner which was mostly soup and risotto).

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Post tags: amsterdam, connectivity, radio, rsa
These are my personal views and not those of the BBC | Full disclosure