Welcome to ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Radio Labs
This is the new ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Radio Labs blog - a place where we, ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Audio & Music Interactive, write about what we're working on, look at developments in music and radio in the digital world and show some of our prototypes for new sites and services. Prototypes and betas are really important to us and we want to get them out there for you to see and tell us what you think. They are all at an early stage of development and some of them might not work quite right, some might look a bit sketchy, some may never be taken any further, and some may simply disappear without warning. We'll write about every new beta we release so please play with them and come back here to let us know what you think. Also let us know if there's anything in particular you'd like us to write about.
I'm Tristan Ferne and I work in the Future Media & Technology team at ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Audio & Music Interactive, the people that bring you /radio/ and /music/, the Radio Player, podcasts, digital radio, our interactive TV services, our mobile sites and more. I do R&D within our team, working on innovative ideas and building prototypes and I thought you might like to know about some of the cool things we do. I also blog at . But it's not just me, other team members will be posting here as well...
Chris Bowley - "I am a software engineer in the R&D team. I build working prototypes around new ideas we have and to investigate technologies we are interested in. Recent projects have centered on , and gaming, my specialist subject." Chris also blogs at .
James Cridland, Head of Future Media & Technology, ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Audio & Music Interactive - "I've worked in radio since 1989; mainly in commercial radio (Emap and most recently Virgin Radio). I've done quite a few jobs, and I have a dubious claim of being the first local radio presenter to read out an email address on-air. (I didn't get very many)." James also blogs at , and elsewhere at the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ.
Simon Cross, Senior Client-Side Developer - "I spend my days trying to stretch the limits of where content can be consumed. This might be mobile devices, on-demand audio and video, socal networking apps, mashups or new-age web apps. I'm particularly passionate about JS, PHP and audio."
Chris Kimber, Managing Editor - Chris runs the music side of Audio & Music Interactive, including the music radio networks. I'm hoping he's going to bring an editorial and content perspective to the blog.
Yasser Rashid - "I'm a senior interaction designer at Audio & Music Interactive and this involves being across a diverse range of projects such as the various websites we do for radio networks, prototypes for mobile, DAB and IPTV applications and R&D projects. I'm going to be posting here about work in progress and interesting projects that are emerging from the arts community and universities that are relevant to the work we do here."
Tom Scott - "I'm a Technical Projects Team Leader which basically means I manage a team of Technical Project Managers and help work out how we are going to deliver some of our interactive audio and music stuff. I'm interested in technology and design and how to combine them to create useful interactive products." Tom also blogs at .
So there you have it, a fine line-up. We've got a number of prototypes completed and ready to write about and a few in the pipeline, so why not subscribe to the blog?
Am I the first commenter, or are you just slow to moderate, I wonder...
Good luck anyhow. (Do you need luck to keep a blog going? Probably).
How about kicking off with a look at some of the projects that never quite took off? Specifically, I'm thinking of Connector (was that an A&M product, I'm not sure?), the Radio 3 PIP infrastructure (superseded by /programmes?) and PhoneTags (abandoned after Tom Coates left?)
Hi Frankie,
You are the first - congratulations! But we also may not be the quickest to moderate - apologies in advance.
Looking at past projects is an interesting suggestion though I would worry that I would not be able to do them justice. I'll see if Tom Scott (see above) would like to write something more about the relationship between /programmes and PIPs.
Congratulations on your new blog - sounds like it will make benchmarking you guys just so much easier. Your reader #? reporting for duty from Helsinki, Finland.