A few weeks ago I wrote about the closure of some stations on DAB Digital Radio, and over the past week there’s been a lot of speculation on what GCap might do about their stake in Digital One, who operate a digital radio multiplex which carries stations like Planet Rock, theJazz, Virgin Radio and Birdsong. Fru Hazlitt (who I’ve stood next to - go me) has today announced that GCap will be closing Planet Rock and theJazz. She said;

“DAB with its current cost structure and slow consumer response is not an economically viable platform for the group.” - Fru Hazlitt

There’s plenty of analysis at Media Guardian, as well as comment from folk including James Cridland and Nick Piggot.

I know some people who bought digital radio just for Planet Rock, and I don’t imagine that they’ll be best pleased. On a personal level, DAB feels quite different to how it did back in 2004 when I bought my first set. It was a fairly heavy and robust thing bought after lots of saving up - really just to listen to Virgin Radio in the evenings where AM reception was poor and to get more choice during the day than FM offered.

Having moved to the North East, I can’t move for FM stations. There’s Alpha, Durham FM and Sun FM from TLRC alone, three BBC locals (Tees, Newcastle and York), Metro, Galaxy, TFM, Century and others - all on my cheap DAB/FM radio. But this isn’t the same everywhere and the loss of another two or three DAB stations will be noticable to real fans.

GCap also announced that they’re trying out streaming radio on the iPhone and iPod touch. This would be a “killer app” for me, especially having seen what my Reciva set can do with listen again content and podcasts. It’s not the first time that streaming radio has been done on the iPhone, but it does look good and easier for the consumer.

The BBC has revealed the new look of BBC Three, and the orange blobs are set to go.

Credit: BBC. But I captured it all on my own!

According to research carried out by the BBC, viewers think that they’re “cold and shouty”. Personally, whilst I never really warmed to them, they’re unique and interesting. I think the background is a little cold, but you couldn’t accuse the channel of not having a personality.

Credit: BBC Press Office

Being honest, I’m not keen on the new branding. All I’ll say is that the channel gets a really hard time from the DCMS select committee and this’ll do nothing to help. ;-)

I turned on my DAB set this morning and had a flick through. It’s one of those ones with the knob that goes through the stations as you turn it, and I landed on Core which immediately changed its name to BFBS Radio. I knew it was closing (the last presenter-led show was a while ago), but the addition of BFBS was interesting. Oneword has also closed and whilst it retains the same name and a scrolling message about the closure, Birdsong has made a return.

Thinking about closures, I remember listening to the last few hours of Capital Disney on DAB last year, and the set still has “SMASH HITS!” in the list, although there’s nowt there. In London, Virgin Radio Groove has gone, and digital station The Arrow is dropping presenters. Sky News Radio has lost a partner, and Virgin Radio Viva will now not launch. Capital Gold and Classic Gold are now one. Life is also set to close.

It’s not like the services aren’t being replaced, though - I’ve noticed one or two additions here, including Traffic Radio. Personally I think it’s a shame for listeners - Capital Gold and Classic Gold felt distinctively different to me, and Sophie Bruce on Core was always great to listen to. A rolling news service on radio would be great - and it would be a shame if this now does not launch. Virgin Classic Rock took on several presenters a while back and made the station far more enjoyable to listen to. Many of those presenters have now gone. The Arrow has always been a haven when you didn’t fancy the heavier Planet Rock, but will also now have less presenters.

At the end of the day, digital radio sets are getting cheaper, more people are buying them and according to Digital One, stations are interested in joining the platform.

Smooth Radio

This week Smooth Radio North East launched, with local presenters Tom Davies and Paul Wappat, with the likes of Mark Goodier doing the morning show. Everyone I’ve spoken to this week is aware of the launch and has listened at some point. The buses passing the flat have their adverts, and the coverage on local TV has been widespread.

I’m not really a ”smooth” listener - but I have to admit the station sounds excellent. The local news in the evening is superb (especially CSI: Crook running this week), and the number of calls and texts being fielded by local presenters is immense. Everyone absolutely loves the music - well done them for pulling off a great launch.

When I started this blog six months ago talking about chips, Birmingham and recently purchased books, I was really excited about everything I was going to post about. In May I had so many ideas for blog posts I filled a month and a half of my Google calendar with them, if I posted one every day. But like so many blogs, it’s gone quiet, and I could have done with some tumbleweed.

The year has flown by, and sitting here in that week between Christmas and New Years I’ve been thinking about 2008 and some new years resolutions. Here’s a few, and I’ll come back in a years time and see how I’m doing.

• Learn more about Photoshop. I really like Photoshop and use it almost every day. However, I know there’s so much I’ve not yet discovered. Two sites I plan to spend more time on are Radiant Vista and PSDTuts. The level of quality and professionalism in the video tutorials at Radiant Vista is phenomenal, and PSDTuts has been a great site for experimenting with Photoshop in downtime.
• Audit everything. I’m not Robert Scoble, and sure don’t need to be subscribed to as many feeds as he is. Last night I cleaned out my GMail inbox so I’m now down to 1 unread email (next on the list is starred and drafts). I probably don’t need three operating systems on the laptop (especially as I use XP and Ubuntu for only 2-3% of the time). Do I need so many accounts all over the place? Can I bring my to-do lists (in Tadalist) and planning (in GoPlan) and contact management (in Outlook) together, online? I haven’t updated Twitter in 123 days… do I need to use it? Does it need to be on the side of this blog?
• Do more learning. I’d really like to get into Ruby on Rails, and perhaps build a tiny project with it. It’d be nice to find time to read more of the paper, watch more decent programmes on Television and listen to more World Service and NPR.

A less serious resolution is to finally build a HTPC. Oh, and stop procrastinating over a portable music player. (That’s actually a good post for tomorrow). I’ve been playing with 43 Things (a site where you can list goals, have a public profile and set yourself reminders via email). Time to start adding to that list…

Outfit Mode has a really nice use of music on their site, playing Wonderwoman by Leaf - currently number ten in the Dutch Top 40. It’s a really nice design, which the song sort of compliments.

Last week Aldi had a £50 internet radio and media player on offer. I’ve been looking at a Squeezebox for a while, but that still requires an amplifier of some sort, and it’d be redundant if and when I sorted out a media centre in the main room. Plus it’d be nice to wake up to stations all over the country, even world.

I’ve bought a Tevion product before - a digital radio in July. I keep meaning to finish the review of that, but it’s been brilliant so far. This internet radio uses the same design, and the software is similar. The main difference is the lack of a battery compartment, and it only does FM radio - not DAB. That’s a shame, but it’s easy to see why. I’ll cover the hardware, the Reciva service, listening to stations (and on demand, which is brilliant), adding streams and podcasts and playing your music collection.

The Hardware

On the way out of the store I had a peek in the box - it looked like it had been opened before. Getting home confirmed that, but it was a dream to set up. It feels heavy and well built, and I assume the antenna is for FM radio rather than wifi. There’s not a lot going on in the box - just the radio, the power adaptor, the manual and packing material.

There’s some little rubber feet, and it feels sturdy when you use it. Earlier in the year I looked at a few internet radios and they shot across the surface when you tried to press a button. Not so with this Tevion model. The buttons are a little clunky and you don’t always get a response.

The speakers / overall sound is very average, but no different from my clock radio which this is replacing. Fine for kitchen/bedroom environments.

Switching on the first time

On turning it on there’s an FM radio, which is simple enough. It defaulted to 108.00FM, and going down a few steps to Durham FM confirmed it was working fine.

On pressing the IR button, it’ll switch to internet radio, search for networks and come back with a list. I confirmed the network, then put in the WEP key. After a little while it changed to ‘Network OK’. On pressing select you can go down the stations menu, at which time it connects to the Reciva service to download a list of stations.

This was suprisingly quick. You can then browse by Genre or Country. The selection is impressive, and I’ve not yet not been able to find a station I listen to missing.

Reciva

What’s been really interesting is the Reciva service. Reciva supplies the database of stations, an area for users to login and add streams, favourite stations and podcasts and the actual brains of the radio to the manufacturer. I signed up to Reciva last night and set up some stations and podcasts, and then followed the manual to get the registration code and serial number from the radio.

Add this to the members area on the Reciva site, power off the radio at the wall and back on (to force the radio to download a list of stations again) and the information is automatically pulled down. Once this was done I played a few stations and streams with no problem, and was especially impressed with the podcasts feature. I download a lot of daily news podcasts and never listen to them - this could be really good to go to bed to, especially as you don’t need to download them locally first - the radio picks them up from Reciva and just starts playing them.

Listening to Stations

Tuning into stations is really easy to do. Just press select, choose Genre or Country and keep going until you find a station. Connection is almost instantaneous on some stations, but buffering for 10-15 seconds isn’t uncommon. I listened for a few hours today and didn’t have any stations buffering once the stream started.

On the BBC stations you get an option of Real, WMA and On Demand. Selecting On Demand comes back with a list of programmes available for listen again, and even more impressive is that you can pause them with the play/pause/stop/forward/back buttons. When you select a programme you can even specify the start time, which is a nice touch. These programmes sound about the same as anything else through the speakers.

Listening to a Music Library

The documentation for setting this up is pretty decent. I had some troubles to start with owing to an old LAN configuration, but passed that and through UPnP I was listening to all sorts of music I forgot I had on various hard drives.

Conclusion

This is a brilliant bit of kit. It’s really excited me about what radio can be with the internet, partly for the convenience of listening to podcasts almost as easily as Radio 4 live. I’ve not really found a breakfast show on local DAB or FM that I like waking up to, so am thinking of tuning into a random station every night and letting the radio wake me up at 6am with the internet radio option.

What would really make it brilliant is the ability to set up alarms with a station (say, weekdays, choose Original 106 at 7am, Saturday choose BBC Radio 2 at 6am and Sunday choose Einslive at 8am). I find the internet radio slow to start at times - I understand other models with the Reciva software are much quicker. Overall, I think it’s well worth the £50.

I’ve been using the radio for about a week now, and am still impressed. For a few days it wouldn’t connect to the Wireless network on its own, but this seems to have cleared and it’s now great. Some stations buffer a fair bit, which is annoying, but some not at all. The main drawback is still the slow startup time, but I’d consider a Reciva radio again in the future.

Recently my card details were taken when a major ticket retailer’s website was hacked.

This is irritating anyway, but I didn’t think about it until my bank phoned to say the card had been used and would I confirm whether a selection of transactions were made by myself. Amazingly (to me, at least) the card details had been used in the United States, United Kingdom and Turkey within a matter of days.

The person(s) had been to the Carphone Warehouse, T-Mobile, iTunes, Tesco Online and a few other independant retailers. Walking through town last week I started to think about the music this person might have downloaded, who they called and send text messages to and what food they were buying.

It’s made me more interested in this sort of crime. As a consumer I did everything right; I used a very reputable retailer with SSL on the order process, I never gave my card to anyone else, I never wrote down the PIN and know I don’t have anything like a keylogger. Yet someone (in an age of CVV2 digits and chip and pin) was able to charge hundreds of pounds against my name. The user can’t have had the correct PIN or CVV2 digits, and the retailers still processed the transactions.

Interesting stuff!

(Oh, and. How did I know it would have been taken in London when I saw it?)

Not much to comment on recently, but today I was shown some excellent tips for editing images, particularly those taken at night or with a washed out feeling. With all of the photos I felt disappointed with what I came away with, especially as some of them really are once in a life time chances to get a decent photo.

I need some more practice with the tools and settings, but I’m impressed with the difference.

Original Photo

After removing noise and changing contrast in Neat Image

Some final tweaks in Picasa to bring out some colour

There’s a lot of photos from the night that can’t be saved, and the improvement on this set isn’t as obvious as some others I’ve tried. The tools are Neat Image and Picasa.

Original

Final

Picasa is a really impressive tool. I have photos scattered everywhere from camera phones, my camera, photos I’ve been given and can never find them quickly. I’d recommend it to anyone who has a lot of photos stored locally, and it’s also made me think about saving all my photos to the external drive before touching them with any tool.

I’ve also never done anything with my photos after they’ve been taken. This has made me think more about what can be done to improve photos.

I hear concerns about using a card online all the time. Perhaps seven years of purchasing online has been lucky. Just got an email from a (very reputable and popular) ticket retailer in Germany.

wir möchten Sie darüber informieren, dass wir vor kurzem entdeckt haben, dass Kartenhaus Opfer eines rechtswidrigen Angriffs auf seine Internetseite [removed] wurde. Durch diesen Angriff hat ein unbekannter Täter einige Ihrer persönlichen Informationen gestohlen. Wir haben leider Grund zu der Annahme, dass Ihre Kreditkarteninformationen, einschließlich der Rechnungsanschrift für Ihre Karte mit der Endnummer **** gestohlen wurden.

Which (Google) translates as;

we would like to inform you about the fact that we discovered recently that house of cards became victim of an illegal attack on its Internet side [removed]. By this attack an unknown quantity author stole some your personal information. We have unfortunately reason to the acceptance that your credit card information was stolen, including the bill-to-address for your map with the end number ****.

If this was my debit card I’d be really worried. I only use the card for places which don’t take a debit card (like train tickets); will now be checking my statement, although I guess it could be late this month.

On this blog I’ve spoken about the value of adding a blog, and other social media to a website. Something I’ve not yet talked about is a forum - or message board - that allows contributors to come online and discuss any topic they like. It takes minutes to install an open-source package like phpBB, and maybe a day or two to really get things looking good, but the long term effort is often underestimated.

Sandown High School on the Isle of Wight has taken down its forum and website following undesirable links on the forum (story on Metro.co.uk). It tuns out these are just spam messages that come up on blogs and forums automatically everywhere, but in the radio report I heard, this wasn’t mentioned.

• Do you really need a forum? What value is a forum going to add to your website? Is there another way of getting this information out, such as responding to emails by posting them on a good FAQ section, or by having “open threads” on a weblog with good spam filters, a semi-focussed discussion etc.
• Will you have time to look after it? Many businesses start a forum, and then it seems to be forgotten about. This could be one of the reasons for the downfall of Yahoo! Podcasts - apparently the community were coming on with bug reports and questions, but no one was responding to them. Even worse, if current or prospective customers post to a forum and no one replies, what is the support going to be like? Rather than let someone create an account, describe their problem and check back frequently, only to find no-one seems to care, it’s probably better not to do it at all.
• How secure is the software; what’s the spam protection? This could be the thing that caught out Sandown High School’s forum. They use phpBB, and the number of phpBB forums I see full of spam messages is staggering. I’m not saying phpBB is bad software - but it’s worth signing up for the email newsletters and keeping the software up-to-date, and check out the documentation to see how you can make it secure and keep out spam.
• Is open membership appropriate? In this case, it might have been worth a member of IT or the website team checking out the new registrations every morning. Blocking those with hotmail and gmail.com addresses isn’t a great idea, and those CAPTCHA images can be awful. Minimise the effort required to allow people access, but as you’re inviting them into your house, it’s your job to keep the undesirable stuff out, not make it difficult for genuine users and easy for you.
• Do you want to manage a forum? Forums are a great place to grow a community and have discussions. However, there will be undesirable members posting questionable content. Check out some guides and forums on looking after a community, ensure you have clear rules, and don’t be afraid to remove even very popular members of that community.

Forums are a good idea in general, but without proper attention from moderators or owners they can look deserted, full of useless content and even get you into the news when something goes wrong, as has here. Not everyone will understand the workings of a forum and automated spam - ensure you don’t have to explain it.