Clematis

Clematis
Originally uploaded by Jonathan Marks.

Outside doing maintenance to some satellite dishes and long-wire antennas. There was some sun, but generally temperatures are well below normal.

Electric Strawberries

Electric Strawberries
Originally uploaded by Jonathan Marks.

Bergen from the mountain

 

Bergen is the home of microclimates....within 10 minutes we had rain, hail and sunshine at this spot. Didn't know much of the town was destroyed by fire at one point. The Great Fire of Bergen doesn't feature in UK history books. 

Very well thank you

 

Thanks for the e-mails asking if I have died and gone to heaven. Just in stealth mode at the moment - as well as spending a few days in Norway. If you are in Bergen or Oslo, do take the 790 Kroner day tour called "Norway in a Nutshell". Whatever the weather (and I'm lucky today) the views are simply breathtaking... 

BBC Experimental Catalogue

It may come as a shock, but many radio and TV stations around the world have devoted very little in the way of resources to cataloguing programmes they have broadcast. There is now an on-line experimental public catalogue of just under a million programmes produced by the BBC, who have been cataloguing and indexing their programmes since the 1920s. There are a lot of gaps though, if you compare what's in the archive to vintage copies of the BBC's magazine "The Radio Times".

For example, in the early days of broadcasting, for both Radio and TV, the majority of programmes were broadcast live and were never recorded. There was therefore little point at the time to do extensive cataloguing and indexing of material that did not exist. The number of catalogue entries for a day in the 1990s, far exceeds the entries for a day from the 1950s.

As recording technology developed in both mediums, the requirement to keep material for re-use also grew. If material was going to be re-used, it had to be catalogued and indexed. The original records of radio programmes were handwritten into books; over time, card catalogues were developed, and from the mid-1980s onwards there have been computer based catalogues.

This experimental catalogue database holds over 900,000 entries. It is a sub-set of the data from the internal BBC database created and maintained by the BBC�s Information and Archives department. This public version is updated daily as new records are added and updated in the main catalogue. This figure is so high because, for example, each TV news story now has an individual entry in the catalogue
 

HD Radio test station

 
The only AM station I can hear sounds strangely tinny (artifacts) on the set in the NAB press office. Boston Acoustics makes this set, reminds me of Model One from another Boston radio company. While HD is plastered all over the stands in the radio hall at NAB, I went to a couple of electronic store outlets in Vegas (like Fry's) and they hadn't heard (yet) of HD Radio - they said I must be confusing it with XM or Sirius radio. Perfect proof that marketing still has a long way to go. I wonder if HD will be the saviour - or the death - of radio as we know it. 

HD Radio demo

 
Press office has a HD radio for journalists to play with. Push the AM signal and it sounds like FM mono. Setting up the processing on this form of digital radio must be an art in itself. 

Quality of Service

 

I do notice that the quality of service on mobile's here is a lot less than in Europe. Signal strength is much lower, even in a city like Las Vegas. 

In the Distance

 

I had to remove a bar preventing me from opening the hotel window (its on the 25th floor that's why) but amazed at the zoom on this P200 Sony Cybershot. Those mountains are way off in the distance. 

The Drive in Vegas

 

Arrived in Vegas now, for a visit to the National Association of Broadcasters meeting. This place is a zoo for the broadcast industry - flea market is probably a better description. I can see "the drive" assault course from my hotel window, at the end of the (very convenient) monorail. 

Santa Fe Vista

 

Long flight to a meeting in Santa Fe, New Mexico, the only state capital without an airport. But I am greeted with a great view and the old town is a great place for a wander. 

Headline in Santa Fe

 

While waiting for the shuttle to Santa Fe, the attendant asked me if I wanted to read the local newspaper. Staying at a hotel not far away from this... 

Media Network 25th Anniversary Vodcast

I have been commissioned by Andy Sennitt, editor of the Media Network website, to put together a special vodcast, which is going to make a lot more sense if you remember my work on the Media Network show at Radio Netherlands.




So here's a little advanced warning to put May 7th 2006 into your calendar. On that date Radio Netherlands will be celebrating one quarter century of Media Network on-air and on-line by bringing you a vodcast.




Where are Mike Bird, Victor Goonetilleke, Diana Janssen and Jim Cutler these days? We have spared no expense (actually we have!) to track them down for this safari into the past - and future. More news as it comes together....

Working over Easter

In my kind of business, you think of an idea, pitch it and then hope that not all the ideas will be rejected. In the last couple of weeks, all kinds of people have come back on pitches which, frankly, I had already forgotten about. Good news is they are going ahead. Bad news is they're going ahead right now. Every hour of the day is accounted for at the moment. It's fun. But, soooooo intense.

Happy Easter if you're celebrating. Spring seems to be coming here slowly, the sun is cooperating, but the wind is still too cold.

You Tube & My Space

There is suddenly a lot of hype surrounding the success of short videos on You Tube and My Space.com, the latter bought by Murdoch for more than 500 million dollars last summer. My Space is a indeed a hang-out for youth, where parents are not welcome and where kids do all kinds of things, most of them forbidden in the real home no doubt. There are ways to involve that group with time on their hands, providing it helps them start conversations with their friends and helps them improve their social status within the group. If they can do something that others find cool, they might become a "local hero" within that vast on-line massa of 66 million.

Linear TV programme makers don't understand how to involve that group yet. It has to be more than just giving away funny clips from America's Funniest Home Movies, bloopers, pranks and parodies.

Now a scheme like this one would be useful in major urban conurbations in the Netherlands - and I guess across Europe.  

BBC's MySpace Interface..or so it seems

Now this is worth sitting back for, even though the player won't let you fast forward. Bill is clearly uncomfortable as a presenter and is reading prompts from a screen. Ashley Highfield from the BBC gives a fascinating demo of the next generation players they're working on. Basically it is Myspace for broadcasters. Now since Murdoch paid half a billion dollars for MySpace last year, you can bet they're working on something similar with Murdoch's content (20th Century Fox). Best bit comes around 5 minutes into the video.  

Some great sound advice from a cable manufacturer....not often you get this straight talking from the people that make high end cabling....upgrade your components first before dreaming that changing the cables will make one bit of audible difference. 

This IS an April Fools joke. With Google being accessed around 200 million times a day, it must be one hell of a big joke. 

Brilliant and not an April Fools joke. This is the way to move forward...collaboration