I’ve been meaning to write up a post on the BBC Editors blog for a while now, but I thought I’d mention this as it’ll take place tomorrow.

According to Simon Waldman on a post titled ‘Realtime blogging‘;

If it works, it might give you a fly-on-the-wall insight into how a continuous news channel operates: how and why we reach our decisions on editorial and production issues; the last-minute changes in running orders; which stories merit ditching all other news to ‘roll’; how we react when things don’t go entirely according to plan (which, since you ask, is rather more often than is good for one’s health).

Live or realtime blogging has been a regular feature on some weblogs for a while. Blogging Juggernaut Engadget has been doing it at events and launches for a while. Media Guardian have been doing it for TV shows like The Apprentice and this week the Radio Festival, although those updates are hourly rather than every few minutes.

The BBC’s efforts around blogging are admirable, although I think there could be a little more range on the Editor’s Blog as far as authors and issues are concerned. I’ll post again after the realtime blog, with a few notes on the whole live blogging concept.

There are many useful extensions for Firefox - right now I have one for page rank, the Webmaster Toolbar, del.icio.us and ColorfulTabs. One I’ve been trying for a while is the eBay Companion for Firefox. Although much is made of “eBay Edition”, I just added the companion as a normal extension.

The main part of the companion is the bar which appears when you click the eBay button in the toolbar. You get a list of the items you’re watching, bidding on, selling, or all of them at the same time. The current bids and price are shown, with an option to place a bid, buy now or find similar if the auction has ended. The arrow on the toolbar button will also take you directly to My eBay, Buying, Selling etc.

But what I find really useful is the box which appears when an auction is coming to an end. If I’m working on something I might not check the account eBay emails are sent to or check My eBay, and this has been a really useful, yet simple tool.

See More: Firefox, eBay Edition

The Department for Transport have today announced that the Cross Country franchise will go to Arriva in around four months. It includes Cardiff to Stanstead and Aberdeen to Penzance, and Virgin currently run the franchise.

The new service will be run as CrossCountry, with a different name and logo to other Arriva services. Most people I know have been happy with Virgin, so it’ll be especially interesting to see how Arriva can improve. The Pendolino and Voyager trains are comfortable enough, even if they do seem to vibrate more than those on the East Coast Mainline. Annoyances might include those automatic doors between carriages that close on you…

The highlights outlined by Arriva are both encouraging and interesting for the huge number of people taking to the train year on year.

Providing 35% more seats on peak services, extra seats through Birmingham and some reconfiguration for more luggage all sound good. Sometimes you have to be built like a Peperami to avoid the sleepy student in the seat next to you and the big suitcases on wheels being dragged down the aisles. The addition of longer trains in the form of High Speed Trains on the longest routes sounds interesting, but they’ve not been built for 23 years. I was on one yesterday which didn’t look like it’d ever been refurbished, and it did feel surprisingly comfortable.

Arriva also promise to introduce at seat catering for all passengers. Wi-Fi is also mentioned, although this could do with being cheaper and more stable. The service on GNER costs £7.95 for 2 hours, and once you’ve paid up doesn’t feel tremendous value for money.

Booking tickets online is long overdue some improvements, in my opinion. Being able to print tickets at home would be quite cool, but being guided to cheaper routes is also quite important. More information on board in general would be a nice improvement.

The rail network in the UK is a topic which always solicits an opinion. The franchises, privatisation, crowding, prices and the railways themselves are fairly complicated and can be confusing. With the improvements to the Tube, the Crossrail project and ongoing changes to franchises hopefully it’ll make the rest of the UK more accessible to tourists, visitors and business users, especially around events like London 2012.

Channel 4 have this morning been awarded the licence to launch ten new stations on DAB. The group, headed by Channel 4, includes Emap, Sky, UTV, Carphone Warehouse, Crysalis and UBC. This is great news for DAB - the Channel 4 bid included some really interesting stations and should bring some more variety to the platform, as well as some competition to Radio 4.

There was only one other bid, from National Grid Wireless (NGW) who have a big hand transmission networks in the UK.

Channel 4 will operate three stations themselves, with Disney joining to launch a children’s channel. Disney and GCap parted ways earlier this year which resulted in the closure of Capital Disney on digital platforms.

The range of stations really interests me - it’s just what DAB needs, in my opinion. Stations include adult album format Original from CanWest MediaWorks who have stations in Bristol and the South Coast, rolling news from Sky, a format around “news, views and entertainment” from UTV who own TalkSport and some talk formats from Channel 4. I would guess that Closer might be a jukebox service, similar to Q and heat which Emap already run, and that Virgin Radio Viva would be similar to Virgin Radio Groove in that there’s no presenters, but it’d be nice if there was a DJ led show or two, and news bulletins. Here’s the full list, from Ofcom;

One of the most interesting evolutions in online music for me is the rise of services last.fm and Pandora. Put simply, both sites take the music you like and find other tracks and artists you may also like, and play them to you as your own internet radio station.

Last.fm came about in 2002 as a social networking site, using AudioScrobbler to build a profile of your music taste. This is done either through the sites own streamed radio stations or by downloading a plugin for your media player. You sign up for a profile, download the plugin and start playing your music as usual. The details of each song played are sent back to last.fm who add it to your profile. After a while a picture builds up of your musical tastes and the social networking portion comes into its own.

You find yourself placed with neighbours who have similar tastes to you. You can play stations to discover music you might also like (neighbourhood radio), based on songs you loved on the last.fm player or launch a station based on similar artists to one you’ve selected. I’ve been using last.fm for over a year and really like the social portion. It’s a great and well focussed community, with the ability to add yourself as an attendee to an upcoming gig or chat with other fans of your favourite bands, as well as show off that you’ve listened to Tom Jones 155 times this week.

Recently I’ve found last.fm to be a little slow and decided to check out Pandora again. Pandora is sort of similar, but instead of recommendations uses the Music Genome Project - a musician listens to the track and analyses the elements to create the genome. When you visit Pandora and give an artist or track it’ll come back with the musical attributes and play similar tracks.

Part of the reason I stuck with last.fm for so long is that there seem to be a few more of my favourite artists there, and the forums which accompany them are mainly English, which is really nice as they’re mainly European artists. I tried them again and they’re still not there, but Oasis, Nerina Pallot and Foreigner came back with some great tracks. The selection seems more varied, and it’s not yet told me it can’t connect or that it’s run out of music.

A song going around in my head at the moment is Chocolate Cake by Crowded House. I stuck this in and for over an hour on two occasions haven’t skipped a single song - I’ve actually noted almost all of them as albums I’d like to find and hear more of.

So now if asked what my favourite music is, it can be summed up with a single released in 1991 that I don’t think even charted in the UK.

Pandora can also be played through a Squeezebox - a wireless device that plays internet stations and music on your PCs. If these devices come down in price like DAB sets and all sorts of Wi-Fi gear maybe they’ll even be on bedside tables and in showers. The future of radio is going to be fascinating, and it’ll be great if services like Pandora can step beyond the desktop and coexist in devices alongside a DAB tuner and MP3 player.

According to media reports, the BBC’s Maida Vale studio is set to close. It’s where many sessions have been performed for programmes such as John Peel’s, and still are for many BBC Radio shows. In the last year or two The Scissor Sisters, Orson and KT Tunstall have given great sets for Radio 2, and Zane Lowe has hosted his Radio 1 show from the studios many times. Whilst seeing any iconic building close or change can be sad, this line appears on most articles;

“The BBC are yet to announce whether the studio will be replaced or not.”

The Radio Theatre at Broadcasting House has just reopened (having been closed in 2002) and is now home to at least one weekly show which used to be at the Drill Hall. The PDF seems to support its suitability for live music gigs, it seats more people and is in a good location, so it’s not all bad if the theatre can accommodate those gigs and rehearsals.

Further investigation seems to show that a decision is yet to be made, but a spokesperson has spoken of the technical limits in the 21st Century with the converted ice rink.

To-Do lists are incredibly useful. I have a few notepads full of them and have started to go online with my tasks and little jobs for the day, or the points of a task itself.

Ta-da List

Ta-da List is from 37 Signals - the creators of popular online tools Basecamp, Highrise and Backpack. Sign up is simple - you need to supply a username, real name, email and password. I’m not sure why these tools require a real name - perhaps it’s in case someone steals their neighbours milk, and a check can be made to see who had that as a to-do item. The privacy policy is thankfully quite short and very clear. Once you’ve signed up you get an URL to use to login to the list.

The welcome email is short and to the point. There’s a simple Frequently Asked Questions page and I can now login. The whole process feels very clean and tidy. On the field to confirm my email address I purposefully misspelt it and the resulting error was very clear.

Creating a list just requires a title, and then you can input items. Once an item is typed, hitting enter saves the item and gives a new box. Sometimes I find there is a little lag on this and you can’t bash out the items very quickly, although it’s not a real issue. Editing and deleting items is done on the same page - clicking the X deletes and you can save the list when you’re done. Reordering is very easy - just drag the items around. Ticking the box to the left of the item will move it off the list, to a smaller one of completed items. There’s no submit or save buttons when setting up your lists.

I really like Ta-da List and use it almost every day. The interface is very simple and easy to use and it’s perfect for those simple lists. There’s an RSS feed for updates to your lists and a nice touch is the dot next to each list - the larger it is the more items there are which need to be completed.

I recently ordered two CD’s from CD WOW as the price was reasonable and I’ve found delivery in the past to be very fast. I’d have liked the CD’s for a journey on the 6th of July, so ordered about two weeks earlier. When I didn’t hear anything I wondered if they’d got misplaced here and they hadn’t, so I checked on the CD WOW website. It turns out they hadn’t yet been despatched, and once I found a contact form sent a question to enquire when they might be. A polite and well written reply came 46 hours later to explain they weren’t in stock, and were waiting to hear from the supplier when they would be available.

There is nothing to indicate whether a CD is in stock or not, but as everything had been so quick in the past I assumed it was. At the moment I’m £20 down, don’t have the CD’s and don’t know when they will arrive. I now feel less inclined to use CD WOW in the future - especially as the out of stock CD’s are still available to order. Had I received an email before initiating contact to explain that there would be a delay, I think I’d have felt better about it. Whilst I wouldn’t now tell someone not to use CD WOW, I’m more likely (if asked) to recount this experience than the other positive ones before it.

The CD’s aren’t available easily in the UK and I’ve always used eBay to get them from Europe. Next time I’ll probably do the same, and following a positive purchase from Play.com of a DVD that might be where I make my next normal CD purchase. To give an example - Time Capsule by the B-52’s it’s available on both. CD WOW lists it at £5.99, and Play.com at £6.99. However, Play.com tells me it’s out of stock, and if I wanted it urgently I’d just move on.

Communication is so important with customers - before, during and after the process. Whilst the reply from CD WOW was timely and professional, it would have been nice not to make it at all, and the stock level or delivery estimate to be available up front. It’s even more important for smaller retailers online where there are several other sites which can be found within seconds to make the same purchase.