BBC Radio WMA Streams for Windows Media Player

So you want to access the BBC Radio streams as you did in the good old days before the iplayer? Well i’ve found the links hidden away on the BBC’s website. Many a day have i been swearing that I can’t stream programmes such as click, and radio stations to my media player. I just hate the need for flash, a security hole in any system. I hate the need to have a web browser open. I hate the media interface that doesn’t work with my laptops hot-keys! For all those with similar complaints over the iPlayer go to:

http://iplayerhelp.external.bbc.co.uk/help/streaming_programmes/real_wma_streams

Over the last few days I’ve been reviewing our draft ‘copy’ for the new oneplace assessment in North Yorkshire and York. We will be going live soon and there’s been a lot to check through. We want to improve how we communicate with people who pay for and use public services. This takes care and time. 

Organising and providing information in a way that suits people who use and pay for public services is making us think and work in different ways. Our oneplace assessment starts and ends with the priorities that local public services have decided are important for their areas.

So our reporting on the oneplace website is also organized around local priorities. We are telling the story about what is happening on these priorities. Are things really changing? Will other action need to happen to make a dfference?

 Our work complements the work of Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Nigel Shadbolt on sharing more government-held data. They described what they are doing in a recent article in the Times (see  http://bit.ly/7Gfxir). They talked powerfully about their initiative to make more government held data – that we have all paid for – available to everyone in an easy way.

 People are used to searching out information on subjects they are interested in. They are used too to getting the products and information they want when they want. The Skyplus box and iPlayer have put VHS tape machines into technology museums. The challenge for public services and the bodies that regulate them is how to make sure that we are swimming with this tide and not against it. 

Interactivity is a ‘voguish’ term that I’d normally run a mile from. But people are now used to and expect greater interactivity with all sorts of organisations. Entertainment channels and programmes encourage involvement by email, ‘phone-in, text, twitter and so on. It’s a foolish business that ignores what social media and the internet can do. But the ‘Establishment’ can get caught out too. A recent High Court gagging order on reporting a Parliamentary question was undermined by a seismic twittering.

 So people want to have their say and they expect public servants like me to respond. If they are fed up we can expect to hear about it. In an age of greater scrutiny this provides another route to accountability.

Here’s the link to Thierry Henry. While his basketball skills may have evaded the match officials they were not missed by the TV audience. While FIFA appears powerless it’s worth asking if the viewing public is. There are – as I write – 135 Facebook groups dedicated to his downfall. Twitter is a-buzz with his actions. Wikipedia had to protect his entry after some ‘vandalism’. And some aggrieved individuals are already giving his commercial interests electronic notice of boycotts of their products.

 Digital technology is putting more power into the hands of the ordinary person who otherwise might struggle to get the access to put their views across. If you are wondering if this is true take a look on YouTube at the song United Breaks Guitars. A consumer who felt badly treated by this airline wrote and filmed a song to protest. On YouTube it had over 3 million views. I suspect it left the airline wishing it had dealt successfully with his complaint first time round.

 In this new world then the burden falls on public servants like me to communicate better. To put better quality information out for them to use to make decisions and seek action to make their lives better. Not a bad mission.

Just a quick post to anyone looking to connect a Wii to the web, particularly since the very popular release in the UK of the BBC iPlayer channel Wii app.

I have produced a guide, Connecting the Nintendo Wii to the Internet .  Includes information on Nintendo’s “Connection Ambassador” promotion in Europe, intended to get more Wii owners connected.

Connection Ambassador

Hope you find the guide useful.

Wat zou je vinden van één online radiospeler voor alle legale Britse radiozenders? Nou die komt er. Vandaag is bekend geworden dat de BBC samen met commerciele radiozenders begin volgend jaar de UK Radioplayer gaan starten. Met deze pop-up speler kun je meer dan 400 legale Britse radiozenders beluisteren, zowel live als on demand.

Om door de bomen het bos nog te kunnen zien is er een mogelijkheid om je favoriete zenders onder voorkeursknoppen te plaatsen. En er is een mogelijkheid om te zoeken op onderwerp, genre of zelfs titel.

Op dit moment hebben de BBC, RadioCentre, Global Radio en Guardian Media Group hun handtekening op de overeenkomst gezet. Partijen die meedoen, of mee willen doen, kunnen via de dienst ook aanvullende diensten aanbieden, zoals het aanbieden van betaaldiensten, tonen van webcams, enz. De dienst zal echter een uniforme uitstraling hebben, ongeacht de aanbieder.

De dienst zal eerst voor de PC beschikbaar komen, maar gepland is om ook mobiele diensten te gaan aanbieden.

Een mock-up voorbeeld van de console is hier te zien, voor lezers buiten de UK klik hier.

Bron: persbericht BBC

The Wii’s blue glow this morning alerted me to another message from those nice people at Nintendo.  I’d been anticipating this, following the recent announcement by the BBC of plans for a Wii iPlayer channel.  Sure enough, there was a brief message explaining the new channel and a handy button to connect to the Wii shop.  The iPlayer channel software is free, of course, and it downloaded in less than a minute.  I chose to download to the Wii memory rather than to the SD card, as I expect the iPlayer channel to become one of my favourites.

I’ve watched the BBC iPlayer via the Wii’s Opera browser, and found it quite acceptable.  I was looking forward to a simpler approach to iPlayer viewing, and the new channel didn’t disappoint.

The iPlayer appears, as you’d expect, as another channel on the Wii menu.  It starts significantly more quickly than the Opera browser, taking about ten seconds to bring up the home page.  From there it’s pretty much what you’d expect.  I tried one of the recent Horizon programmes, “How long is a piece of string?”.  Playback started almost immediately.  Picture quality is excellent.  Sound likewise.  Controls are pretty basic, with a pause/play button and a back button, visible on screen only when you move the Wii controller.  The + and – buttons on the controller perform skip forward and back; for the one hour programme I was viewing, the skipped time was six minutes, so perhaps one tenth of the programme length?  Pressing the D-pad left and right moves  focus between pause/play and back buttons.

There’s an online FAQ for the iPlayer, accessed via a Help button on the main screen.  Pages requiring scrolling have a slider on the right but this has to be clicked with the A button… the D-pad up/down is not enabled, which would have been nice.

This is UK only, due to broadcast regs, and (according to the FAQ) your broadband connection needs to be at least 1 Mb/s.

Verdict: if you live in the UK and your Wii has a moderately fast broadband connection, give the Wii iPlayer channel a try.  I think you’ll like it.

P.S. I have posted a guide to connecting your Wii to the Internet, with plenty of screenshots.

The Doctor (David Tennant) in full geek chic mode

I don’t care what any of the fanboys on the forums say, Russell T Davies and David Tennant will be sorely missed from Doctor Who next year (much as I love Stephen Moffat and am keeping an open mind on Matt Smith). The Waters of Mars is (so far) the best episode of Doctor Who ever. I sat perched on the edge of the sofa for the whole hour and for once Christmas can’t come soon enough.

Having been thoroughly drenched on the jog back from school this morning, water is very much on my mind today – and so, MI directs you to two of the many ways you can help provide clean water to people without this most basic of needs.

You can combine your good intentions with your Christmas shopping and head to Oxfam Unwrapped to buy safe water for ten people - for just £9. Sometimes it’s hard to believe such a small sum of money can make such a big difference.

Or you can head to Water Aid and get involved by donating money or time, or perhaps including it on your wedding list (I bet like many people you already have a toaster, bath towels and cutlery…).

And you know that the lovely Mr Tennant would heartily approve of either of these big-hearted decisions. So before you go off to rewatch The Waters of Mars on iPlayer, take a minute to make a difference for someone who not only is unlikely to ever see this fabulous hour of television, but much more crucially, doesn’t have clean, safe drinking water to hand at this very moment.

Update: een interview met Erik Huggers over dit onderwerp is nu hier te vinden: C21Media (video)

Tijdens het afgelopen Futuremedia congres sprak Erik Huggers over de interactieve diensten van de BBC. Deze Nederlander is Director Future Media & Technology van de BBC. Hij gaf een overzicht van wat de BBC nu al aanbiedt, maar vooral interessant waren de plannen voor 2010. Hieronder wil ik twee hoogtepuntjes eruit pikken:  iPlayer v3 en Canvas

iPlayer v3

Naast de iPlayer voor de Wii, waarover ik al eerder berichtte, werd de iPlayer v3 aangekondigd. Aan de hand van gebruikers feedback zijn veranderingen doorgevoerd, met als belangrijkste punten:

• Nog gemakkelijker in gebruik
• Slechts twee tabbladen: TV en Radio
• Suggesties, van redacteuren, algoritmes en vrienden

Huggers: “This is not the BBC entering into Social networks. [...] It’s the opposite.” Neem je vrienden mee naar de iPlayer, zie wat je vrienden aan het kijken zijn.

Erik Huggers presenteert de iPlayer v3 (foto: BBC Flickr site)

Canvas

Het moet nog goedgekeurd worden door de BBC waakhond BBC Trust, maar als het wordt goedgekeurd, dan zal dit een game changer zijn. Canvas is TV met internet, en mogelijkheid voor apps op TV. Canvas is moeilijk te omschrijven, maar een goed voorbeeld is op deze Youtube video te zien:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Smg_SKyoIU0

Prachtig is in dit voorbeeld te zien hoe Twitter kan worden geïntegreerd tijdens het kijken naar een Olympische 100 meter finale. Met een verwacht aantal van meer dan 5000 uren video tijdens de OS van 2012, is te begrijpen dat niet alles meer lineair kan worden aangeboden. Integratie van TV met internet is dan een uitkomst.

bron: BBC internet blog

Well after finding out about the BBC iPlayer channel coming to the Wii I decided to look out for some information on this.
Well didn’t I step onto a nice juicy bit of info, for those of you hoping for a VoD service to come to your very own region, well I personally don’t think it will be too long until something comes along. Can I hear Netflix somewhere in the shadows?

We have just announced the release of a new version of BBC iPlayer for Nintendo Wii. The new version is a Flash based application using the newly released Video on Demand Framework (VODF) from Nintendo. From 18 November you can find and install the BBC iPlayer application from the Wii shop at no cost. This version replaces the previous browser based version.

There were multiple challenges on this project. The design challenge was to make the iPlayer work on the television screen in a simple way. The team streamlined the user journeys. We have used the rumble feature on the controller to give feedback. A search feature allows you to find the content easily. The design team went through multiple iterations; user testing and got to what I believe is an experience you would like.

The technical challenges were many. The technical teams had to optimise and innovate in every part of the technical chain to make iPlayer work on an embedded device. Due to the limited processing power and memory available on these types of devices, most of the effort went into optimising data requests, minimising client side processing, reducing network traffic and balancing the remaining processing power available for video decoding with interface and interaction features.

This release is part of a challenging programme to expand the reach of BBC iPlayer in the living room by syndicating it on television devices and platforms. I will keep you updated.

Rahul Chakkara is Controller, TV Platforms, BBC FM&T.
Quote found here

Video on Demand Framework recently released by Nintendo, well looks like Nintendo have the tools its just not long until many developers avail of these services.

The Wii is getting a tailor made channel for the BBC iPlayer, all relevant information is in the video above.
All I can say is, it’s about bloomin time!

Now lets just wait for other TV stations to join in the fun.

BTW… 1 million viewers a day on iPlayer, well that would equal a LOT of revenue for the TV stations that do advertise!

For more info please go here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8357777.stm
Click through for images showing the channel in work.

*Denominación: BBC IPLAYER

*Tipo de medio: web de radio y televisión de las cadenas pertenecientes a la BBC.

*URL: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/

*Introducción: He escogido la página web “Iplayer” de la BBC, pues me parece una página muy actual, multimedia, tecnológica y que comparte tanto temática como público objetivo con mi blog.

Mediante el BBC Iplayer los usuarios con un proxy del Reino Unido podrán ver y escuchar los programas de todas las cadenas que tiene la BBC, tanto de radio como de televisión.

*Productos informativos:

Los contenidos informativos que podemos encontrar en el BBC Iplayer son:

Contenidos de Radio:

-BBC Radio 5 Live

-BBC World service

-BBC Radio 5 Live sports extra

Contenidos de televisión:

-BBC News

- BBC Parliament

El peso que se le da a la información en este portal no es demasiado elevado, prima la programación de entretenimiento, pues la información se puede encontrar en abundancia en el sitio tradicional de la BBC.

Sin embargo, TODAS las emisoras de radio y televisión de la BBC se encuentran reunidas en este portal, por lo que el usuario podrá acceder y hasta descargarse en algunos casos, los informativos de una antigüedad máxima de 7 días, que es la frecuencia con la que se renuevan los contenidos.

*Análisis de servicios y documentación complementaria:

Indudablemente este es el aspecto en el que más destaca la página, dada su naturaleza. Se trata de una plataforma para poner a disposición de los usuarios todo el material que produce la BBC “A la carta”.

Podemos enumerar, pues una larga lista de servicios y contenidos a los que podemos acceder desde el portal:

-Descarga y visionado en streaming de material de vídeo en excelente calidad.

-Reproducción en streaming de programas de radio.

- Envío y recomendación  de contenidos a amigos.

-Suscripción a últimas noticias del portal.

- Portal de empleo.

-Interfaz para monitores grandes.

-Ayuda de accesibilidad.

-Anúnciate con nosotros.

- Posibilidad de entrar en contacto con los creadores.

- RSS sobre la programación de los distintos canales de la BBC.

-RSS sobre programas destacados de Radio y TV.

-Otros FEED.

- Ranking de contenidos más populares.

-Últimos contenidos reproducidos por el usuario.

En mi opinión la herramienta-portal de BBC Iplayer es un sistema modélico de cómo una televisión pública permite el acceso a sus contenidos sin tener que renunciar a la calidad, ni perdérselos por no estar disponible en el momento de la emisión.

La televisión pública británica nos lleva años de ventaja y eso se nota también en este tipo de servicios aun poco extendidos en nuestro país. Las posibilidades que ofrece al usuario el BBC Iplayer son infinitas: descargar programas de televisión y guardarlos en nuestro ordenador por 30 días, escuchar programas de radio tanto en directo como en diferido, suscripción a noticias y novedades o cambios en la programación…y muchos servicios más que facilitan la vida de los consumidores.

*Uso de la publicidad:

Gracias al modelo de financiación de la BBC, el portal carece totalmente de publicidad, por lo que resulta muy cómodo y relajado navegar por este.

Lo único que podíamos interpretar como algo semejante a la publicidad es un recuadro donde se anuncia la nueva interfaz para usuarios con monitor grande, así como los links a la programación más vista.

*Análisis de la participación:

En cuanto a las posibilidades que se le presentan al usuario de una comunicación bidireccional son casi nulas.

Las únicas chances con las que cuenta el usuario de “participar” en cierto modo son:

-          Enviando un email en la sección “Contacta con nosotros”

-          Anúnciate con nosotros.

Aparte de estos dos métodos, no resulta posible comentar las series, informaciones u otros contenidos accesibles a través de esta web.

Sería un paso interesante que incluyeran cierta “interactividad”, como la posibilidad de que el público comentara los contenidos, sin embargo no creo que la ausencia de esta posibilidad haga que la calidad del portal sea peor, pues su principal función es la de OFRECER a su público la posibilidad de conseguir sus contenidos, es decir, es una página de “dar” no de “recibir”.

The House of Lords has told culture secretary Ben Bradshaw to ’strong arm’ the competition commission into giving Project Canvas the go-ahead. Project Canvas is a joint venture between the BBC, ITV, BT and Five that would create a standard platform for internet based on-demand TV. Think of it as a Freeview for the Internet.

The Competition Commission blocked a similar project, known as Kangaroo, earlier this year. Lord MacDonald told Bradshaw that ‘many people in media believe the Commission lives on a different planet’. The US have had Hulu, a single site for on-demand TV, since 2007. Bradshaw has said that the team behind Project Canvas will have to adapt their proposal to meet UK competition rules and the national interest. He did say he was aware of the risk that US players, such as Hulu, could come in and dominate the UK market.

It was reported earlier this week that Hulu were finalising a deal with ITV ahead of their UK launch. The deal would see ITV hold a 25% equity steak in the company.

Via: DigitalSpy

Uno de cada tres usuarios de Intenet en UK consume TV online según un estudio de Ofcom (el regulador británico).  Gran parte de este dato es atribuible al iPlayer de BBC que es usado por el 27% de la población internauta de las islas. El DVR está igualmente implantado en este mercado y es cada vez más empleado para ajustar la programación a las necesidades de los usuarios.

La comparación con países con tasas similares de penetración de Internet y de accesos de banda ancha arroja resultados mucho menos positivos para el consumo online de televisión. Esta diferencia parece venir motivada por el éxito de iPlayer de BBC. En aquellos países donde las cadenas de broadcast comerciales no cuentan con plataformas similares el consumo de televisión online es sustancialmente inferior.

Dos preguntas para la reflexión:

1. ¿El servicio de televisión a la carta de RTVE tendrá el mismo impacto en España que el iPlayer en UK?

2. ¿Cuándo veremos informes tan interesantes como el de Ofcom elaborados por la CMT, que aspira igualmente a ser el regulador del sector de medios?

Vía: NewTeeVee

Over the weekend I mentioned that I was rereading A Tale of Two Cities.  I haven’t been able to spend as much time with the novel as I like, but I am thoroughly enjoying looking at it in my spare moments.  It may be my least favourite of all the novels Dickens wrote, but it’s still fantastic.  As it turns out my self-indulgent return to this novel was just the first instance of something of a trend in my intellectual and imaginative life at the moment; I seem to be spending a great deal of time with some of my favourite texts.  It’s great.

In addition to stealing a few minutes every day to read A Tale, since Monday I’ve also been tuning in to an adaptation of Our Mutual Friend on BBC Radio 4.  I was sceptical of the first episode, but the second won me round.  That meant this morning I had to fight the urge to listen to the 3rd installment at the end of Woman’s Hour.  Instead I’ll tune in when it’s repeated this evening or have a listen on the iplayer.  The small chunks of Dickens I’ve been reading and listening to have been enjoyable but they’ve also whetted my appetite for more of his prose and plotting making me miss the days when I could spend unbroken hours with my nose buried in one of his novels and legitimately call it research.

Still, I don’t really have anything to complain about because at the end of next week I get to spend three hours discussing The Great Gatsby with a bright bunch of undergraduate students.  I’m always reluctant to call this one of my favourite books, in large part because 3 out of every 5 American high school juniors seem to do precisely that, but I do love it.  I’ve read it at least 30 times, I’ve had the opportunity to teach it on a variety of courses and I’ve researched and written about it as well.  It never gets old and as many insights as Fitzgerald’s book has led me to, I always discover some aspect of it which strikes me in a new and unexpected way every time I read it.

That’s not to say my relationship with the book has always been an easy one.  When I first read it in high school I fancied myself something of a future novelist.  Faced with the clarity and elegance of Fitzgerald’s prose I despaired of ever being able to write anything half as good.  I also found many of my peers’ reactions to the book incredibly frustrating.  Most of them insisted on interpreting it according to the same, unquestioned binary framework they’d always viewed the world through.  The poignant ambiguities of Gatsby and his love for Daisy and what that had to do with America and the American Dream were all things they were completely insensible to.  I’ve always had a tendency to take books very seriously and very personally and it was an isolating experience to feel so strongly and find that most of the people around me reacted to it in exactly the same way I looked at my chemistry book.  It was just another text full of information to process, file away and use on some exam.

I did find a few people who wanted to have earnest, if relatively uniformed discussions about the book at the time and since then I’ve found a large number of colleagues, friends and students since who love the text as much as I do and bring some impressive intellectual tools to bear on it.  As a result I can’t wait to spend some time rereading it and I’m already plotting how, precisely, I want to teach it.  In the past I’ve done things like pass baseballs around the class to get discussions started.  For two years in a row I wore a pink shirt with ostentatious cuff-links to my Gatsby seminar.  In both cases some of my more observant students approached me afterwards to nervously enquire if I’d done so on purpose.  The fact that I had caused them some bemusement although I think it may have made them nervous for other reasons.  Whatever happens this year I’m looking forward to it.

Little Red Riding-Hood meets Master Wolf

As if all this wasn’t enough I also obtained an illustrated copy of some of my favourite stories yesterday.  I didn’t know this edition existed until I wandered in the bookshop with a book token someone had kindly given me for my birthday and then I had to have it.  It’s a translation of The Complete Fairy Tales by Charles Perrault originally published in 1697.  What’s especially fantastic about this new edition from Oxford University Press is that it also contains the illustrations made by Gustave Doré in the 19th century.  Doré’s images are incredibly evocative and provide an ideal accompaniment to tales that are often more ambiguous, even menacing than the Disneyfied versions that have become so ubiquitous.

Perrault’s version of Little Red Riding-Hood provides a great example of what I’m talking about.  Essentially it is the same story the so many of us are know.  Girl meets wolf in woods who runs ahead to Grandma’s house.  Wolf impersonates girl and eats Grandma.  Wolf impersonates Grandma.  Scene with conversation about ears etc occurs ending with girl being devoured.  Perrault’s version isn’t very long, but it is certainly darker in its warning about the kinds of dangers that can await pretty, unwary females in the world.  Not only is it made clear that Little  Red Riding-Hood undresses before joining the Wolf disguised as the grandmother in bed, but the moral of the tale, presented in verse, makes the metaphoric and symbolic suggestions of the wolf and that undressing explicit:

Young children, as this tale will show,

And mainly pretty girls with charm,

Do wrong and often come to harm

In letting those they do not know

Stay talking to them when they meet.

And if they don’t do as they ought,

It’s no surprise that some are caught

By wolves who take them off to eat.

I call them wolves, but you will find

That some are not the savage kind,

Not howling, ravening or raging;

Their manners seem, instead, engaging,

They’re softly spoken and discreet.

Young ladies whom they talk to on the street

They follow to their homes and through the hall,

And upstairs to their rooms; when they’re there

They’re not as friendly as they might appear;

These are the most dangerous wolves of all.

Careful all you pretty young ladies, this verse says, talking to those apparently nice men could land you in a heap of unwanted sexual trouble.

Obviously there’s a problematic element to this express, if not explicit, moral.  Some might be inclined to argue

The proper atmosphere is essential

that it says that attractive young women only have themselves to blame if they get followed home and raped by some man.  I don’t think that was the message that Perrault was trying to convey, but I am willing to admit that these tales are, in many cases, not exactly politically correct.  I also suspect that some of their more questionable elements are what make them vital and vibrant.  These aren’t just happy, inconsequential tales occurring in an ultimately sanitized long ago and far away.

I haven’t started reading through my new copy of Perrault’s tales yet although I did spend some time paging through the illustrations.  I may wait until a particularly stormy Sunday afternoon or evening to do so.  Ideally I’d like to be able to sit down in front of a nice fire with the book and maybe even read some of them aloud to my wife.  She hasn’t read the stories as far as she knows, but I suspect she’ll know them when she hears them and even discover that, as a child, she did in fact encounter them.  Until then I have plenty of long-time favourite books to make my way through.  Actually they feel more like companions and I’m really looking forward to reintroducing my wife to one of them who, I suspect, will turn out to be a mutual friend.

Can you spot which one is the award?

Last night Landshare won the RTS Innovation Award for User-generated Content. It was one of only six such awards given out (other winners included BBC iPlayer at over 100 times the budget of littl’ ol’ Landshare).

This is the 2nd of these annual awards. Last time out it was even better – Big Art Mob won the Mobile category, an inaugural winner alongside Flash Video (yes, the whole darn technology).

This year Landshare was nominated alongside Sexperience (in the same category), so I liked them 66% odds.

What the judges said: “The judges felt that the award should go to a project that they feel reinvents the viewer/user/programme maker relationship and which is making a fundamental difference to the way key issues of the moment can be addressed. A project whose success demonstrates as one judge put it “how television can make a difference”.”

Straying away from my own oeuvre, another very worthy winner was BBC Children’s marvellous Bugbears – think Monsters Inc meets Creature Comforts, used as a way to help children address&express difficult emotional subjects. It’s the work of Marc Goodchild (who was at our table – the Table of Triumph with its unique double gong status) and my old muckers Joe Elliot and Anthony Lilley of Magic Lantern (among others). I first saw it this time last year at Sheffield DocFest when I was doing a speaking gig on interactive documentary chaired by Paula LeDieu. Japhet (whose second name slips my ravaged mind) from Marc’s team at cBBC demoed it and I was instantly charmed.

Other awards went to the amazing BBC R&D bods who have such a world class heritage in broadcasting/media innovation, pretty much second to none. An honour to be among them.

Update 19.xi.09 BIMAs

Tonight Landshare won the BIMA (British Interactive Media Award) for Community Social Media (as well as being nominated in the Special Achievement Award: Viral Spread category). It follows in the footsteps of MindGym (97) and Embarrassing Bodies (08).

The Jamelia // Maxwell D one …

What Maxwell D had to say …

How to get Real Player URLs for BBC Listen Again programmes? Go to the webpage iPlayer Real converter and turn the PID into a URL. This might not work forever as the BBC switched to Flash and wants to offer AAC and Windows Media streams instead of Real Audio. But for now the legacy Real Audio streams that can be downloaded and save with mplayer are still available.

My Blog Post:

Back in the days BBC used the RealPlayer for its Listen Again service. It supported inline use within the BBC website and streaming facilitating the standalone player. Then they created their BBC iPlayer which uses Adobe Flash. However, they still had a link to the .ram file which contains the link to the .ra RealAudio Stream.

But as you can read in the iPlayer help: Why am I no longer able to ‘Listen Again’ to BBC radio programmes on BBC iPlayer in RealMedia format? The BBC turned of the RealPlayer suppoert on 22 October 2009 – … officially.

On the BBC Internet blog you can read the article: Improvements to BBC Local Radio online. The blog post is from August 2009. It states that Real Streams for Local Radio have been turned off. They plan to offer AAC and Windows Media streams. But this hasn’t been implemented yet. So one can only listen to Local Radio on the Flash-based iPlayer. (Links and information via this site)

But this is not true for National Radio like BBC Radio 4 or BBC7.

The old RealStreams still exist. At least for now. (And maybe only for Non-UK-users) Old links (looking like this rtsp://rmv8.bbc.net.uk/radio7/sat1700.ra? ) don’t work anymore.

The website offering WebbIE, the free web browser for blind people with little or no sight, complains about this step as the flash-player isn’t that accessivle. Read about it here: WebbIE: Accessible BBC iPlayer (Listen Again)

But it turns out there still is a way to get the Listen Again Real Audio Streams for Real Player. I read a blog post about a ubuntu script that’ll download the BBC Listen Again Stream, save it as wav via mplayer and convert it to a mp3 via LAME. This directed my to the website iPlayer Real Converter. If you give the website a iPlayer PID or search through the schedule, it’ll give you a link to the RealPlayer Stream.

I, for example was interested in the current episode of Doctor Who that was broadcasted on BBC7. I will post some links here, but I guess they won’t work by the time you read this, as the 7 days will be over.

From either the Overview page for Episode ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b009szrh ) or the Details page for the Episode ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00nlyg5 ) you can get to the iPlayer (http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b00nlyg5) , which will use Flash to play the episode.  Within the html of the iPlayer I couldn’t find a link the stream. Maybe I overlooked it. Maybe the Flash player is used to create a URL for the stream from the PID. The source code contains somethink like this:

iplayer.semp.setMetaFiles({
flash: {
playlist: "http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/playlist/b00nlyg5",
mp3: true,
aac: true,
aacLow: false
},
real: "",
wmp: ""

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/playlist/b00nlyg5 is a XML file. It contains a lot of information like the image to be used. Or what shows might be similar. But I couldn’t find the stream – URL.

But iPlayer Real Converter will help you. If you go the Schedule of BBC which is retrieved from the BBC via an XML file the old lady is offering, you get a link to http://www.iplayerconverter.co.uk/pid/b00nlyg5/stream.aspx

You can easily exchange the PID b00nlyg5 to whatever PID you have in your case.

The link I got redirected me to a file on the BCC server called: RadioBridge_intl_2300_bbc_7.ram

It contained the following link to a Real Stream “rtsp://rmv8.bbc.net.uk:554/bbc7coyopa/bbc7_-_saturday_2300.ra?timestamp=1257135938&pid=b00nly7h&BBC-UID=3ac234671728faa09320b837d0fb0c3d184337f196774&SSO2-UID=” [I changed the link slightly to obfuscate the UID - you can't use it anyhow because the seven days are over. (and I change the timestamp)]. But from my former experience with the BBC URLs you should be fine using “rtsp://rmv8.bbc.net.uk:554/bbc7coyopa/bbc7_-_saturday_2300.ra?”

You can play this link using Real Player of mPlayer. Maybe you can even use vlc.

Just a quick note:

In case you want to listen the stream on day number 8. You might be tempted to run

mplayer -dumpstream -dumpfile FileNameEpisodeOfDoctorWho.Ra rtsp://rmv8.bbc.net.uk:554/bbc7coyopa/bbc7_-_saturday_2300.ra?

which will put the file FileNameEpisodeOfDoctorWho.Ra into the current working directory. [If you want to use the full URL including the "&"s, you should be aware that Windows will think the command ends at the '&' and a new one starts at the '&'. You'll have to but '"'s around the URL in that case.] You can open this file using RealPlayer or mplayer. You can also use the more advanced command line shown on the blog post about a ubuntu script that’ll download the BBC Listen Again Stream, save it as wav via mplayer and convert it to a mp3 via LAME.

I will let you choose the bitrate for LAME and choose a good cache size and bandwidth. And you’ll get a .wav file from mplayer. The .ra file I created with my mplayer command line isn’t a wav file but a Real Audio file.  The size is about 20MB per hour.

Disclaimer: I surely don’t recommend you to save the stream. They’ll play a repeat someday. You don’t need to circumvent their 7 day constraint.

Halloween Costume

The 8-Bit Low-Res Make-Up Is High-Res Clever

Halloween has come and gone this yea and the photos are up. This is definitely my favorite.

Low Resolution by Kindacarsick

Black Friday

It’s November and sooner that you’d like it will be Nov 27th: Black Friday. To help prepare, why not start looking through those sale ads now. Here are some links I’ve come across of leaked Black Friday Ads.

Kmart [pdf], Sears [pdf], Lowes, Old Navy [pdf], Harbor Freight [pdf], Toys R Us [pdf],

Office Max asked for there ad to be taken down, but there is a list of items and prices at Gizmodo.

via [bfads, TheBlackFriday.com, and Gizmodo]

Internet News

Internet Finally Getting Non-Latin Domain Names

The address bar at the top of your browser is filled with latin characters. Those who use the latin alphabet, we haven’t thought twice about this. But if you live in a country with a non-latin alphabet then you had to learn new characters to type in a web address. This is going to change soon, as ICANN (the group that decides on ip and addressing regulations) has decided to use native characters in the address.

If this doesn’t make sense, check out this video

Google Making search more musical

Google has partnered with MySpace (which just acquired iLike) and Lala to give you music results when you search for a song, band, or album title. The first results will have links to play the song. There will also be links to purchase the song/album directly through MySpace or Lala services. There will also be links to music discovery sites such as,  Pandora, imeem and Rhapsody.

I tried out the service on their demo site, before the release date, and it looked good. Though I am unable to get any of the same results on my searches today. The demo is down today, and I do not see the results in my regular google searches. I am not sure if I’m missing something or if the service isn’t fully released yet. ???

Google Onebox Fail

MySpace Adds Full Music Video Archives, Deep Artist Analytics

MySpace as a social site seems to continue dying but they are doing some interesting things. Their purchase of iLike seems to have worked out for them (see above post).

I’ve always wanted a video music player so that I can have a video playlist. If that feature is there I may actually use MySpace.

Web Games

Steakhouse or Gay Bar

A local rock radio station plays this game. You just guess if the name of an establishment is for a Steakhouse or a Gay Bar. Sounds simple but it’s amazingly difficult.

Internet Baby

Woman to Stream Her Child’s Birth Live on the Web

You can find just about anything you want on the web. Now you can watch a live birth. A truly amazing event, but live streaming it? Really? I guess it was just a matter of time…

Actually, this isn’t the first time.

Internet TV

BBC Planning To Launch Global iPlayer VOD Service

I am so excited about this. I watch almost all my shows online now and about 1/3 of those shows are from the BBC. It’s always been a pain to find the shows or wrestle with proxies to watch them. I can’t wait to watch the new season of Dr. Who.

Automobile Accesories

AIDA is the love child of your GPS Device and EVE (from Wal-E).

via [Gizmodo]

Arm Accesories

UIST’09: Enabling Always-Available Input with Muscle-Computer Interfaces

Look Ma’ no hands!

Improved arm mounted flame thrower

Hadouken!

Sinds kort biedt de BBC hun “uitzending gemist” diensten (de iPlayer) aan met hoofdstuk indeling.  Eerder was het al mogelijk om te linken naar een bepaalde positie van de opnames, nu kan ook per hoofdstuk gekeken worden, zoals hierboven in het voorbeeld van Spooks. Ook was het al langere tijd mogelijk om via de iPlayer HD content te bekijken.

De BBC toont hiermee weer aan voorop te lopen met hun On Demand diensten. Waar de Nederlandse Uitzending Gemist pas sinds kort ook via Flash te bekijken is, en HD nog niet mogelijk is, verbetert de BBC aan de lopende band haar diensten. Vanwege de staatssteun voor de BBC (via verplichte kijk en luistergelden) wordt de BBC waarschijnlijk binnenkort gedwongen deze technieken te delen met derden.

NB: De hoofdstukindeling is vooralsnog alleen te zien via de bbc.co.uk/programmes pagina’s, en niet via de bbc.co.uk/iplayer pagina’s

Meer info op BBC Internet Blog en zelf te testen bij het programma Digital Planet (zie rechter panel van dit Blog)

Aanvulling: Sjoerd Tieleman, developer bij omroep.nl laat mij weten dat onder de noemer “fragmenten” dit al geruime tijd mogelijk is bij Uitzending Gemist.

The much loved BBC iPlayer will be making its way to Freesat boxes across the country by next year. The BBC announce today that it’s starting trials of the catch-up service by the end of November.

The iPlayer has been available on VirginMedia set-top boxes since June 2008 and according to Rahul Chakkara, the head of TV platforms for the BBC, a quarter of viewing is via the service. The service is also available on the Nintendo Wii and Sony Playstation 3 as well as the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch.

Earlier this year Richard Lindsay-Davies, director general of the DTG, announced the group were ‘working very hard‘ to get the iPlayer service ready for the upcoming Freeview HD service due to be launched in December.

As with all Internet based Video on-demand services, download speed is a vital factor in the success of the service. The government  promised in its ‘Digital Britain’ report a minimum speed of 2Mbps to every household by 2012. BT’s Vision service already offers an Internet based on-demand service and requires a minimum 2Mbps connection.

Via: BBC News

There are, believe it or not 600,000 Freesat users in the United Kingdom. In the run up to Xmas there will be a renewed awareness campaign for the free-to-air satellite cousin of Freeview (the free-to-air via your TV aerial digital service).

Xmas Bonus

Freesat owners will be getting an early Xmas present with the arrival of the BBC iPlayer service for Freesat boxes that can connect to the Internet. Mostly this tends to be for HD boxes that already have the requisite ethernet socket.
Also a small number of (OK two) locations will be enabling HD content for Freeview itself as the first generation HD capable Freeview boxes go on sale. Expect to see existing non HD set top boxes and PVRs drop in price as old stock is cleared.

Blank Canvas

Meanwhile the BBC trust has been told that Project Canvas, the joint venture between BBC,ITV, Five and BT to bring on demand content to viewers via  suitably enabled TV sets and Internet enabled set top boxes will likely cost more than £115 million in the first fours years of its operation with £17 million recouped via revues the service will bring in at the end of this period. Questions remain as to what extent ITV and Five would be in a sound financial position to afford the estimated £25 million a piece that they’d be required to put into the funding pot.

Project Canvas has been a contentious undertaking in that it allows non-public service broadcasters to become partners with the bbc which was not the case when originally conceived. BSkyB would be welcome to provide services on the platform but cannot become a partner in the project.

Kangaroo Court

Canvas also has to walk carefully in the shadow of the now defunct Project Kangaroo which proposed a consolidated video on demand (VOD) platform with content from BBC Worldwide,ITV.com and Channel 4’s 4OD which was planned to launch in 2008 but was eventually blocked by the competition commission this year.

Related articles by Zemanta

• BBC’s Project Canvas could reach 3.5m homes by 2014 (telegraph.co.uk)
• Charge for iPlayer, says ex-BBC chief (guardian.co.uk)
• Video-on-demand converts ’shifting away from traditional TV channels’ (guardian.co.uk)
• BBC spends nearly £1m on unapproved Project Canvas (telegraph.co.uk)

Everyone enjoys a bit of a moan, and twitter allows angry people around the world to instantly do this.

But is the online flash-mob threatening free speech?

Nick Cohen’s article about the latest twitter-saga in the Observer today is an example of twitter-rage gone mad. This relates to how Andrew Neil introduced the BBC’s This Week and is a classic example of the fear major industries have of the twitter-mob.

The show began with Neil mocking Gordon Brown for not answering a question on his favourite biscuit. He then turned to his guests Diane Abbot, who is black,  and Michael Portillo, who is white, and said: “And here we have our very own chocolate HobNob and custard cream of late-night telly.”

A tiny number of viewers complained because of the supposed racist undertones of the comment in an example of people who a) have too much time on their hands and b) love complaining.

The power of the hob-nob-mob was proved as the BBC cowered and removed the show from Iplayer. After Brand/Ross-gate last year, the BBC know only too well the potential online lashing that could arise from a possibly racist slur.

If media companies are too scared to publish/print because of the pick-axe wielding online mob – is free speech under threat?

The majority of twitter members sign up, follow a few celebrities  and then do nothing on there. I don’t blame them. It’s confusing, annoying, and full of a lot of people who think we want to hear about their breakfast choices.  This online community are also raising their pitch forks and exposing major corruption (Trafigura).

Of course everyone now knows (and hates) Jan Moir who faced a huge backlash on twitter.  But, a homophobic article in The Daily Mail is not that shocking – as Nick Cohen says:

I have known for years that the Daily Mail hired homophobes as columnists – no, really, I have – but others were shocked beyond measure by the discovery that Jan Moir could use the death of Stephen Gately as a reason to sneer at gay marriages.

Twitterers seemed ready to fire bomb her house the day this was published.

I have become a fully fledged twitter fan. Twitter is only as good as the people you follow and I’ve branched out from my favourite celebs and am now connecting with bloggers and other onliners across the globe.

Twitscoop is my new favourite obsession. A running stream of the most talked about topics on Twitter – it is a direct link to the latest and most important stories people are talking about right now.

With the recently published Twitterature (the re-working of great literature in Twitter form) – where will it stop?

Twit-fan or Twit-phobe, you can’t avoid it. With 18 million members, the future is here (in 140 characters).

It is not just self-important weirdos in their bedrooms – twitter is instant news and never sleeps.  That bird looks innocent but no one is safe from its powers, be careful what you say or prepare for a barrage of protesting tweets coming your way….

A lot of people who look for apartments or rooms rely on the internet. This is a good way to get informed about the prices in certain areas.

When I came to London, the first thing I used was Gumtree, which is the UK’s biggest website for local classified ads and community site.

Once I found a really stunning apartment for less than 200 Pounds a week with two bedrooms in a really nice area. There were plenty of beautiful pictures and a nice description. When I contacted the landlord, she said she is out of the country at the moments and wasted her time already for people who wanted to see the apartment but then couldn’t afford to rent it. To show her, that we have the money, she wanted me to transfer it to a friend of mine and only send her the receipt.

If I would have done it, I would have been scammed by around 1500 Pounds. Everything looked so honest and the woman always wrote very long and trustworthy emails. I only did not transfer the money because I did not have the full amount in that short period she requested.

After that I informed myself about scams and found a lot of information on the gumtree forum.

There is also a very interesting documentary on the BBC iplayer which explains how these scams work.

The most important rule is- never transfer money over Western Union, when you don’t know the person, and don’t even share the receipt details with a third person. Always view the apartment first before signing any contracts or paying money.