In praise of BBC Radio

If I could pay the BBC license fee of £142.50 annually, I'd do so gladly. What? you gasp. Nearly C$300 for radio?! Yes. First because of the excellent content, and second because, out of the major English-speaking countries' public broadcasters, the BBC's media player is the best.

Have you ever tried to find a podcast or live radio stream on the CBC's website? Maddening. You bounce around from page to page until you hit a dead end or, all too often, a dead link. Then you get to click "back" a bunch of times and start your quest again. Program and podcast pages are separate (why?) and often not even linked (huh?). It's like the Mother Corp doesn't want you to find something to listen to.

The ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) site has fewer dead links, but it's difficult to find programming of interest due to poor layout. That said, the program pages, once you find them, archive past shows nicely. Once you find a program you like and its corresponding page bookmark it! You may not be able to find it from the main page a second time.

NPR's player is better, but a lot of their old material is up in .ram format, requiring you forego the player and use RealPlayer, if you have it installed... Does anyone use RealPlayer any more? I haven't seen it for years. Also, the site's navigation is far from intuitive: new content could be posted at any time on one of hundreds of pages, and with no index page or all-encompassing guide, you'd miss it quite easily.

The BBC iPlayer (despite some marketing dork's stupid recommendation for its name) is uncluttered, well-organised, and well-maintained. Everything from the stations' last seven days of airplay is there, listed by station then chronologically.

You want listeners? Build it simply and they will come.

And finally because I'm talking about finding content there are two excellent sites to help with that: PublicRadioFan.com and Radio-Locator.

P.S. BBC? I wasn't kidding about £142.50.

A Glympse (into the abyss)

Hey, you! Yes, You. I want you to know where I am and let you track my movements on a website in real-time. What's that? You don't give a flying Foursquare? Well, tell that to the programmers of Glympse.

It's a new app that lets Self-Important You broadcast your location to your co-workers, family, or friends so they can then watch your movements on their PCs or smart phones.

My question, as with all these types of things, is "Why?!" I cannot envision any circumstance under which this would be useful. If you're going to be ten minutes late, just be ten minutes late; I don't want track you like I'm running fucking NORAD. I don't know how you work, but if someone I'm meeting with hasn't shown up by the time agreed on, I'm looking over my to-do list, responding to Email, or catching up on reading.

As the chirpy video guide shown above says, "My family likes to watch me as I head home." Listen, Chirpy, If your family has nothing better to do than watch a blip that represents you move towards their location, you might want to get them part-time jobs, or hobbies, or buy them books or something.

Orwell was wrong: we weren't forced into living in a surveillance society, we welcomed it. Big Brother is Watching Us, through channels we've put in place and happily pay for. Congratulations! You're the Mayor of Airstrip One.

Good idea for a product, bad idea for a price!

These aren't not a bad idea at all, especially for cyclists. I would NEVER (unlike other idiots I pass) cycle while wearing headphones. Something like this would be ideal, and I hardly think the volume would disturb anyone.

But $130 US for a teeny pair of amplified speakers? F no. Where's my soldering iron?

Walkman turns 30

30 years of SONY Walkman personal stereos (yes, that's the official plural of "Walkman" according to SONY). Wow.

I figure I had at least four SONY cassette players, one recorder/player, one cheapie Walkman knockoff (called, I think, a Rollyman or some such), and two Panasonic Sports tape players. The SONY ones were always the best, and got used and used and used until they died a natural death.

I always wanted the WM-W800 (double) Walkman. It was way beyond my first-year university student budget.

How many of these did you have?