U2 performed a few songs from the roof of the BBC’s Broadcasting House in London last night. Early activity on blogs, message boards and twitter ensured that there were some diehards finding the best vantage points for this “secret” gig from quite early in the afternoon. As it approached 6.45 the police closed off Portland Place and the band stepped out to perform ‘Get On Your Boots’, ‘Magnificent’, ‘Vertigo/Substitute/She Loves You’ medley and ‘Beautiful Day’.

There were several thousand people on the street and loads of disappointed people who all had the great idea that they would get to the top floor “heights” bar in the hotel next door for an amazing view. unfortunately the whole bar was closed off for a private do. I was lucky enough to get a view from my office.

Regardless of what you think about U2, (i’m not a big fan myself) this was an amazing spectacle. There was a great atmostphere with the sound of cheers, electric guitar and overhead helicopters mingling together. It felt like you were part of something special.

more pictures and some short video clips on my flickr site, and much more on the BBC website

early morning stroll in Berlin, originally uploaded by fatcontroller.

probably should have worn more than short sleeves (it was -2c)

This is twinity, a 3d virtual world based on real world data – the first city is Berlin, others to follow. Lots of elements similar to other virtual spaces but pretty cool to walk round a geographically accurate replica of a city. You can rent or buy property, clothes, etc. (or advertising hoardings, commercial property etc). Wonder if they have squatters.
You have quite a lot of control of your avatar, including the ability to upload a photo of your face which maps to the avatar. doesn’t seem to apply to the hair style – or i just haven’t found the right tool yet!. even if you put in the right info it still appears to be quite flattering on how it renders your body

really interesting stuff, still in beta, but don’t bother unless you have XP or Vista on a fast newish machine with a decent graphics card. twinity.com

interesting to see a TV remote with an “internet” button on it. still early days, as can be seen by the strange way some of the content is organised. Yahoo have stolen the early march into this space with their widgets. there are a few more pictures here

copyright BBC Radio 2

more live music from BBC Radio 2

For me, it’s an opportunity to get a first hand look at some of the new connected audio and video devices coming to market, for the home, on the move and even in car, and to ask some of those questions not addressed in the hyped up press releases…

I’ll also be meeting a wide range of the companies in the connected audio device market along with other international broadcasters at the inaugural meeting of the Internet Media Device Alliance (www.IMDAalliance.org). I don’t have too much time to attend the conference sessions, apart from the one I am speaking on of course , where I’ll be talking about the role of video for radio.

I’ll be twittering from the event, so follow @fatcontroller from twitter.com or check out the pics on www.flickr.com/photos/ousby/ if you’re interested in a radio angle on what’s at CES this year. For a wider view, follow @ces09 on www.twitter.com which pools anyone’s tweets with the #ces09 tag in it.

If you want to see the bun fight over who can get their news posted first on new product releases, then a few of the best places are:

bbc.co.uk/blogs/technology/
ces.engadget.com/
ces.cnet.com/uk.gizmodo.com/
crunchgear.com/

If you’re at CES and want to get in touch then email me john@ousby.com

Gill was multi faceted, giving us several typefaces, including Gill Sans (the BBC font), and many beautiful carvings, sculptures and engravings. Ariel is also the name of the BBC staff magazine. Much has also been said about his unorthodox and plainly weird behaviour. A part of the Prospero and Ariel statue had to be reduced in size rather promptly after the official unveiling – I don’t think you’ll have to guess too hard which bit it was after reading the wikipedia article…

Prospero and Ariel

BBC Broadcasting House, London

images of the stone carving with kind permission from Iain Margery. All other images are my own.

When something of interest came up on 5Live or radio 3 then all that was needed was a trip to the sitting room where it could be listened to on a DAB/FM mini hifi or freeview, But it was a bit of a hassle.

Here’s the replacement, a Pure DAB radio. So my parents can now listen to as many stations as they want from a much wider choice, in the kitchen, without fear of missing the exact spot on the dial for the best radio 4 reception. Also, guests such as my family and I can easily tune in to stations more acceptable to our kids without fear of never finding radio 4 again. Maybe it will even encourage a sampling of other digital stations. BBC7 seems an obvious choice… Ease of tuning easily trumps sound quality in the kitchen – most kitchen radios only have mono speakers anyway.

A radio that has been sitting in my kitchen for a while now is the Acoustic Energy wifi internet radio. Perfect for listening to podcasts, on demand comedy shows or random music stations in the evening , or sampling some new international stations on the weekend.

However my morning listening always defaulted to the DAB radio for quick, reliable access to live news, traffic and travel and a bit of light relief, along with the DLS text information to help me out when needed.

The AE is now also installed up at my folks house – they are contemplating how they can navigate through 12,000 stations on a 2 line display – they’re not the only ones!

Anecdotally, the number of stations that people regularly listen to over internet radio increases from 3.5 to just over 5, with the first station representing 60 rather than 80% of listening. There’s also a lot more sampling.

I now have only one radio in my kitchen, the Roberts WM-202 combined DAB, FM, Wifi radio which also operates on batteries. I could equally easily have chosen the stylish Revo Bliq. The key thing here is that what makes the Roberts so attractive is the combination of DAB and internet radio – they do slightly different things for me, and suit needs at different times of the day or day of the week. FM could also be useful in areas where DAB coverage is missing, or for small local or community radio only available on FM.

I have mainly been talking about the kitchen in this post, the dynamic changes slightly when we move to the bedroom or sitting room, let alone outside of the home, but for now the attractiveness of a multi mode home receiver seems obvious and desirable. We’ll see a lot more combined DAB, FM and internet radios before xmas this year, but i reckon xmas 2009 will be the turning point for internet radio devices. There’s also other stuff you can already do, or will be able to do with these devices, like ipod docking or access to your music collection, let alone what will happen with the advent of large and colour screens (or some of the concepts behind the Olinda physical prototype)

There are many issues to be resolved to see internet radio devices prosper, but two of the biggest right now are how broadcasters can send synchronous metadata easily and openly across a range of output formats to a number of different devices and how the navigation and discovery around radio can be moved away from a tiny monochrome screen to a more suitable environment – either a larger colour screen on the device, or through a peronalised web portal.

One thing that’s clear to me is that internet radios are much more interesting when they include digital terrestrial radio and FM.

extract follows:

“General interference with organisations and production - Organisations and conferences

1. Insist on doing everything through “channels”. Never permit short cuts to be taken to expedite decisions
2. Make “speeches”. Talk as frequently as possible and at great length. Illustrate your “points” by long anecdotes and accounts of personal experience….
3. When possible refer all actions to committees for “further study and consideration”Attempt to make the committees as large as possible. Never less than five
4. Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible
5. Haggle over precise wordings of communications, minutes, resolutions
6. Refer back to matters decided upon at the last meeting and attempt to reopen the question of the advisability of that decision
7. Advocate “caution”. Be “reasonable” and urge your fellow conferees to be reasonable and avoid haste which might result in embarrassments or difficulties later on
8. Be worried about the propriety of any decision – raise the question of whether such action as is contemplated lies within the jurisdiction of the group or whether it might conflict with the policy of some higher echelon
9. Demand written orders
10. “Misunderstand” orders. Ask endless questions or engage in long correspondence about such orders. Quibble over them when you can”