Navteq doesn't get it

My car uses CD-ROMs to give the navigation system the maps it needs. Navteq, the supplier of the maps sent me a flyer in the post because it wants me to buy a new set to "keep up to date". I plan to replace the car next year and I know that the new car will probably use a single DVD rather than a set of CDs. Would I be able to exchange the set of CD-ROMS for a DVD to fit the system in the new car? No, says Navteq,

"NAVTEQ is the database provider for your navigation system. We are not a system vendor. BMW is the company that choose the device that is factory fitted in your system. You currently have a CD based system and it is possible indeed that the new BMW are now factory fitted with a DVD based system.

About subscription policy, please note we do not deliver such a service. If you wish to update your maps, you have to place an order. If your dealer informs you that the CDs are not compatible with the system of your next vehicle, you are the only person who decides if it is necessary to update your maps."

With an answer like that, I know my answer is going to be "NO". They could offer a subscription service, offering data in any relevant format as a way of building customer loyalty. The cost of the CDs and/or DVD is just a few cents. But no, Navteq is working on an "out of business" model.

SMS Replaces Radio for Warnings?

Some of the regional public broadcasters in the Netherlands have a special status in this country because they would work with emergency services in case of a natural disaster or terrorist attack. They are seen as "emergency sources".

I guess their status will come up for review since these networks only tend to appeal to older listeners. The police forces are working on SMS alert systems for the public, which they clearly think are more effective. After a very successful SMS alert pilot in a specific neighborhood in Tilburg, the Netherlands, the Dutch police force is now ready to gradually roll out the service to the rest of the Netherlands. The SMS alert combines SMS mobile-technology with the effective eyes and ears of local residents, to offer a service for improving local security and providing a communication system for mobilizing local residents in case of a crisis.

During a special ceremony attended by national press, police forces, the major and other dignitaries, corps chef Frans Heeres officially launched the service, by sending an SMS with his postal code to the dedicated shortcode 8844.

Currently the service has over 2500 inhabitants subscribed to the service and was successful on many occasions. Roland van Veen, project leader at West Brabant police force: “During the pilot, which started mid 2004, we have been able to locate 4 missing children after sending out a SMS to all subscribers with their profile and last known location. Also we were able to arrest two men who stole an elderly lady’s electronic wheelchair. Besides this we could notify citizens when there was an active burglar in their residential area or alarm them for other calamities."

Also internationally the project received interest. “Police forces in the US stated that this system could have helped a great deal with warning citizens about the Katrina hurricane”, comments corps chef Heeres.

Medical Instruments

Medical Instruments
Originally uploaded by Jonathan Marks.

Fascinating shop off Wenceslas Sq in Prague that sells old medical instruments, including microscopes and early box cameras. Well worth a browse.

Medical Instruments

Medical Instruments
Originally uploaded by Jonathan Marks.

Fascinating shop off Wenceslas Sq in Prague that sells old medical instruments, including microscopes and early box cameras. Well worth a browse.

Medical History

Medical History
Originally uploaded by Jonathan Marks.

Fascinating shop off Wenceslas Sq in Prague that sells old medical instruments, including microscopes and early box cameras. Well worth a browse.

First Snow for Prague

First Snow for Prague
Originally uploaded by Jonathan Marks.

In Prague for a broadcasting conference. This was a shot looking out of the apartment window, to see the first snowfall of winter 2005.

Jags in Johannesburg?

Jags in Johannesburg?
Originally uploaded by Jonathan Marks.

Interesting promotion for South Africa on this London taxi. It says "No Lions and Tigers prowling our streets...just jaguars."

Pub-licity

Pub-licity
Originally uploaded by Jonathan Marks.

That edition of the London Evening Standard sold out much earlier that usual....they were gone by lunchtime the newspaper vendor complained to me. For a European, this discussion about open hours still seems rather strange.

Zimbabwe House on the Strand

Zimbabwe House on the Strand
Originally uploaded by Jonathan Marks.

Zimbabwe House in London is indeed amazing....completely empty, except for the posters. I wonder why Mugabe keeps it open when he hates the UK so much

St Pauls Cathedral

St Pauls Cathedral
Originally uploaded by Jonathan Marks.

I remember vividly climbing to the top of this cathedral with my father in the early sixties. There was a tiny ladder to the top. I remember being really scared that the wind would blow me out onto the dome. Amazing how I recall what must have been 15 seconds looking out onto London

Pubs Open 24hrs

Pubs Open 24hrs
Originally uploaded by Jonathan Marks.

The Wellington near the Aldwych. Too bloddy cold to sit outside in the winter. To dangerous in the summer with the Carbon Monoxide fumes from the Strand!

Harry at Leicester Square

Harry at Leicester Square
Originally uploaded by Jonathan Marks.

Ask for HP in London and they used to hand you brown sauce. Now it means Harry Potter (and the Goblet of Fire) which dominates the scene in Leicester Sq at the moment. The premiere took place here. The trees on the square have been clever lit by spotlights on the side of the cinema to create the "letters" effect seen in the first film

Great Software Store

Great Software Store
Originally uploaded by Jonathan Marks.

Enticed into this shop at the start of Tottenham Court Rd because I recognised the voice booming out of the Home Cinema display. Jim Cutler was promoting a HD DVD production. Jim is one of the great voice actors living in NYC and part of the former Media Network production team.

Shop window in London

Shop window in London
Originally uploaded by Jonathan Marks.

This is a new radio from the Freeplay company, although there are not many countries in Africa where this "safari" style radio would work. Seen in Stanford's shop window while on a trip to London

Ian Henderson

Ian Henderson
Originally uploaded by Jonathan Marks.

Ian heads the sales force for the Internet radio at Reciva. VPRO radio appears to have bought some for experiments in the Netherlands

Radio at the Edge

Radio at the Edge
Originally uploaded by Jonathan Marks.

Excellent turnout at the Radio Academy's special event on Radio at the Edge. 140 people, with some interesting and controversial views on the future of radio. The Royal Society of the Arts is a great location, although their sound system in the great hall refused to work on all occasions it was needed.

Tottenham Court Road Radios

Tottenham Court Road Radios, originally uploaded by Jonathan Marks.

DAB Radios are supposedly one of the hot items for Xmas in the UK. Unfortunately, after much publicity, the DRM chip sets won't be out until March 2006. So DRM is for Xmas 2006. I wonder how that will affect the relaunch of Radio Luxembourg in the UK.

DAB Radio on Safari

DAB on Safari
Originally uploaded by Jonathan Marks.

Podcasts "First" Victim

I am sure that others may have happened on a smaller scale, but the sudden disappearance of Purecast.com who were hosting a number of podcasts is to be expected. Their business model was flawed from the start - offer a few leading podcasts free hosting, and use viral marketing to bring in the smaller guys. PureCast was formed by a group of ex-Clear Channel guys who clearly didn't understand the difference between the broadfcast model used on FM radio (infinitely scaleable) and Podcasting (victim of your own success since the producer pays the bandwidth). Now these guys didn't have the decency to allow the authors who did use their services access to their material to put it elsewhere. Imagine if you lost your blog in this way?

Dutch Public Podcasts

Dutch domestic public broadcast services launched their podcast site today, bundling their podcasts together under one banner. On day one, the most popular material has been the highlights of the breakfast show, with 1309 downloads. The others in the "top 5" show much lower figures (around 70-80) when I checked. It will be interesting to see how these podcasts take off over the next couple of months. Would you regard 1309 downloads as a success on day 1? The other popular podcast seems to be the weekly TROS On-Line show about media/computer developments, though when I looked at the site the conversion of the date info had gone haywire, claiming the latest programmes was made on 25-02-2033. I don't think so.

Google Analytics

I have been playing with the beta version of Google Analytics, which seems to track where traffic to your chosen site is coming from and map the results. This isn't new, but I like the format it uses to present the data. Results for this site indicate about 1700 unique visitors a day, which I don't think is bad as I am not promoting the site. You can see the figures plummet when I don't write something. There are obviously too many people using the service already as the site won't accept new sign-ups at the moment, nor can I expand the experiment to include other blogs I write. Can you see yourself on the map above?

Lunatic EchoStar Campaign - texas

It seems a town in the US has accepted the challenge to re-brand itself as part of the Echostar DISH City Makeover and rename itself 'DISH.' As of today, Clark, Texas, a small tight-knit bedroom community located a half hour north of Fort Worth, Texas, has legally changed its name to DISH, Texas. In exchange, DISH Network has agreed to provide every household in the town of DISH 10 years of free basic satellite TV programming, including equipment and standard installation. DISH Network introduced the DISH City Makeover as part of recent re-branding efforts and a new advertising campaign trumpeting "Better TV for All."


The Clark Town Commissioners voted to rename the town DISH Tuesday evening at a packed town hall meeting. Clark, first incorporated as a town in 2000, is located 25 miles north of Ft. Worth and has a population of 125. The town of Clark is a rural agricultural and ranching community as well as a bedroom community for commuters who work in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area.

Wonder if they have told Google Maps?

SNS Bank - Personal Pass

Banks in Holland (SNS Bank and Postbank) are now starting to offer personal bank passes which you can design yourself. Kinda like this massexclusivity. Wonder if they will put limits on it like the Postoffice did (people went on line and made stamps with photos on B Ladin and the like.)

iPod Video Mixed Messages

I have been playing with the iPod video player - movie trailers look great. Thats why I was interested to read this entry on John Robb's excellent website. He writes..


A couple of weeks ago, my family started watching the first season's LOST episodes from Netflix. Of course, watching them end-to-end was great and we became quickly hooked. Unfortunately, we are now half-way through the second season and we didn't have any of the second season's episodes on TiVo. How could we catch up? That's were iTunes comes in. They have LOST episodes from the second season available for download at $1.99 a pop. Very nice. However, here's the problems we ran into (mostly having to do with ignorant DRM decisions):

Extremely restrictive digital rights management (almost unusable because of it). The shows I downloaded were restricted to a single download to one computer (which is not the expected behavior). I can't burn the shows onto a CD or DVD. I can't view them on the other computers I have in the house. Of course, I bought these episodes for my family (wife and two older kids). The restrictions mean that I in order to share these shows I have to provide my Powerbook as a mini-theater to three other people (~4 hours each for ~12 hours of viewing). I suspect that the DRM gods thought that this is a personal price rather than a family price, and that in order to share I would buy it again. That's wrong. It is just something that pisses me off. I am not going to buy the episodes again for other family members and I can't think of anyone who would. Bad decision.

The quality sucks. Granted, for a small screen this is fine. It downloads quickly. However, I wouldn't have minded 3x to 4x increase in download times to get higher quality fare. In contrast to those wonderful HD movie trailers that Apple offers and the quality of the DVD presentation of the show on my 55 inch monster TV, this is pretty low end. Again, this is probably a DRM decision (since they didn't want to sell these shows as a replacement for the DVD). Bad decision.

The Apple iTunes software has a crappy video viewer. In fact, the entire interface associated with video display on the Mac is pretty messed up. I have a DVD player, QuickTime (which I upgraded to Pro), and iTunes. Hey, give me one darn video viewer with controls that I can access in "full screen" mode (hopefully the QuickTime interface). The iTunes viewer doesn't have any controls I can find/use in the "full screen" mode. That sucks. Again, the use of the iTunes video viewer is probably a DRM decision. Another bad decision

Lookings for Comedy in the Muslim World

 

I remember Albert Brooks for his role as the passionate journalist (but heavily sweating newsreader) in the film Broadcast News. I bought it on DVD when I was last in the States and still find it an amusing film.

As from January 20th 2006, Brooks is back on our screens as the central character in a film called Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World. The trailer looks amusing - its the story of what happens when the U.S. Government sends comedian Albert Brooks to India and Pakistan to find out what makes the over 300 million Muslims in the region laugh. Brooks, accompanied by two state department handlers and his trusted assistant, goes on a journey that takes him from a concert stage in New Delhi, to the Taj Mahal, to a secret location in the mountains of Pakistan. Wonder if they are researching another new TV channel - like Al-Hurrah? Will other Muslims find it funny? Note that it is focussed on South Asia rather than the Middle East or Indonesia.

Blue Skies at Noordwijk

 
Great day for a walk on the beach - Noordwijk, The Netherlands. 

What do you guys want?

The new editor of Russia Today, Margarita Simonyan, had some interesting body language during the Thursday morning Newsxchange session which invited newcomers to discuss their entry into the satellite TV news business. She was adamant that the new network will be independent from the government - but her folded arms didn't send the same message to the audience at a hotel in Amsterdam.


In fact it all sounds like it will be a TV version of the Voice of Russia radio service, when this new external TV service starts next month. But we can only judge whether it is Putin's TV network by watching it for a couple of months in 2006. I wonder if it will be on the Sky platform? Don't confuse the website with unrelated www.russiatoday.com.

Al-Jazeerah remembers

Al Jazeerah recalls the names of journalists who have either died or are in prison for their jus doing their job 

Gallery of Stuff

Huge amount of equipment inside the Kransnapolksy smaller ballroom....I'm glad they put the chairs in a circle. That makes it much easier for people to see and share. 

Peter Feuilherade, one of the best media analysts at BBC Monitoring. He really understands the situation in the Middle East. 

sponsors.... 

Dish on the Dam

Serious satellite truck outside on Dam Square and thick cables coming into the Hotel Kransnapolksy. Personally, I would have tried to hold the conference somewhere else, or even it at one of the NOB studios in Hilversum...more space and much nicer staff (the hotel has terrible wifi and very demotivated staff). But Amsterdam does have a better atmosphere than Hilversum, anyday. 

Newsxchange

Newsxchange is an annual conference of newsmakers, mainly TV network anchors and managers, who this year met at the Krasnapolksy Hotel in the heart of Amsterdam. The ballroom was turned into a TV studio...that must have cost a small fortune. Richard Sambrook, head of the Global News Division of the BBC was blogging for the few days of the conference.  

Reception in the Winter Garden

Reception at Newsxchange 2005. Colleagues from ARD Germany, Press Gazette and the Dart Centre 

Goodbye to a friend

 


My GE Superradio, which I bought in Washington back in 1987 has finally packed up having performed for many years in the bathroom I opened it to discover fatal corrosion. This radio had the BEST audio for mediumwave (as well as sensitivity) and will probably go down in history as the best MW radio ever built. Think I paid 40 bucks for it. 

James Bond's Next TV

 


If the makers of the next James Bond film have 6400 Euro over, they might want to invest in one of these LCD TVs from the Dutch company of Two Eyes TV in Amsterdam. Saw a demo this afternoon - really cool design and apparently HD ready. Push the remote control and the screen slides up out of the case (shown here partly hidden). Mind you, the product placement department will probably do the deal without the 6400 Euro. 

Help needed with survey

Perhaps you can help me build the best independent consumer-advice guide for radio reporters and podcasters? Radio production went digital ages ago. But radio reporters (especially freelance feature makers) have been struggling with recorders that are either modified consumer equipment or "special" units designed by people who have never had to make a programme to a deadline. The picture above would be great - except that the Apple iPod doesn't make good speech recordings to broadcast standard! Many of the guides I have picked up at trade shows are hopelessly out of date or go into far too much technical detail. I believe passionately that this situation needs to change.

More details here

BBC's programme catalogue

"The BBC plans to open up its archive to make a treasure trove of material available to everyone." - BBC Press Release, August 2003


Matt Biddulph in the Hack diary writes

Ever wondered what's in that archive? Who looks after it? It turns out there's a huge database that's been carefully tended by a gang of crack BBC librarians for decades. Nearly a million programmes are catalogued, with descriptions, contributor details and annotations drawn from a wonderfully detailed controlled vocabulary.
I'm the lucky developer who gets to turn this hidden treasure into a public website. No programme downloads yet, but a massive searchable programme catalogue.

In the early part of next year, you can look forward to a public beta with extensive programme details and broadcast histories. There are "On This Day" schedules that go back to 1933. It's got full contributor histories, and Really Good Search. I can't begin to describe the depth of this dataset - it had an entry for the one time in the 1990s when my dad was on local TV news as a spokesman for Oxfordshire County Council. The cataloguers have worked hard on this stuff for years, and it deserves a wide audience.

Here are some early screenshots: searching for John Peel ; John Peel's contributor page The design's not finished yet, but they give you a flavour of the data.

Oh yes, there's also plenty of web 2.0 goodness: Ajax, feeds for everything, tags, full read-only REST API including FOAF for all contributors, and it's all run with Ruby on Rails. Yes, the BBC have allowed me (after some persuasion) to rapidly prototype and deploy this 7,000,000-row database-backed site in everyone's new favourite web framework. This first version is really just a prototype; wisely, the BBC have decided to get it out there quick and see the public reaction.

We've got Ben Hammersley on board working on layout, CSS and feed design. Murray Walker is our BBC developer on the inside. This is the most fun I've had on a project for a long time.

Excellent example of how the UK government is consulting with the public on the future of radio - and the Dutch government isn't.