cityofsound

Public Service Futures

Again, a self-indulgent post of things I need to check out - although enjoy if you're also interested in thinking about public service media, the BBC etc..

From OpenDemocracy's series on Public service futures. All the hits and more, including:

"Quality not profit", by Andrew Graham

"A leading British economist takes on the free market argument, and insists public service broadcasters are as necessary for a healthy society as fresh air."

"The BBC no longer washes whiter", by David Elstein

"Andrew Graham?s argument is seductive but wrong. The British experience shows public service broadcasting is wasteful, patronising and too close to power. A diverse, efficient future is coming ? thanks to the market."

"Purpose first, value second - but only if you mean it", David Elstein

"Social purpose is indeed essential to broadcasting ? something ignored in the recent ?market farces? of the UK sector. But funding sources and methods are still crucial in judging performance and value when the public?s money is being spent. The emotional preference for the public over the commercial sector inhibits the rational assessment of either."

"Turn on, tune in ? pay up?", by Todd Gitlin

"Democracy needs probing and accessible broadcasting news sources which commercial stations are unlikely to provide. David Elstein?s strong case for marketplace virtue remains at the level of potential. But, concludes the media co-editor, the shadow of audience tune-out threatens us all."

"He who pays the piper...", by Caspar Melville

"McKinsey's report on public service funding is an useful read and very supportive of the BBC - I wonder who paid for it?"

"Bringing oxygen into the magic circle", by Richard Collins

"The debate about public service broadcasting has been conducted in a pre-web frame. The whole argument is being altered by the experiences of new forms of public information as we go digital, says the British Film Institute?s head of education."

"Neither history nor mystery but reality", by David Elstein

"The core arguments against the way public sector broadcasting operates in the UK are restated by the media section co-editor: excessive cost, inefficiency, and (in the context of a fragmenting audience) anachronism. By the valid criterion of good value for public money, BBC and Channel 4 simply do not cut the mustard."

"Money can?t buy you broadcasting value", by Steven Barnett

"The old David Elstein understood what the new one has seemingly forgotten, that an obsession with cost leads to the worst of both worlds ? inefficiency as well as an erosion of the creative spirit. It is time to rethink."

Interactive TV in Britain

Thinking a lot about this stuff at the moment, so this and the following entry are markers for myself as much as anything. Sorry!

"Interactive television will bring the internet to the poor. At least that is one of the ways the British government accounts for massive spending on digital terrestrial television. But the silence is deafening as technological decisions are taken which will make delivery of this vision impossible, says the editor of Inside Digital TV."

OpenDemocracy: One-way traffic: the failed promise of iTV

Navigation is a political issue

"In a briefing note prepared for the House of Lords, (the BBC) concedes that BSkyB could legally consign the regional services to obscure parts of its on-screen channel menu, making them more difficult for viewers to find."

MediaGuardian: BBC may lose local listing on BSkyB

Audioscrobbler

Jones mailed me about this ages ago, but I'm still yet to really check it out. Slack. Anybody got things to say about it?

"A website that acts as your personal music adviser has been set up by a student at the University of Southampton. Richard Jones began working on Audioscrobbler as part of his third-year computer science project and has been surprised at how popular it has become. Now, around 3,000 users regularly tune in to the website to go to the forums and get in touch with people with similar music tastes.

BBC News: Website offers new view of music
Audioscrobbler

Spamage Limitation

"On average, a spammer needs response rates of only 0.1% to make sending worthwhile."

Christ. The levels of spam in my various in-boxes are now reaching insane levels. That'll teach me to join in discussions in the public/private sphere.

The Apple Mail thing clearly doesn't work, for the v.basic reason Tom makes clear in the comments here. These kind of percentage games (<0.1%=success) make it very difficult for coherent responses - it strikes me that the anti-spam software needs to take a similarly viral, marginal approach to this battle. Sorry for the war-like language (there's a lot of it about), but a smarter pre-emptive strike perhaps? Currently, it just looks at incoming, and tries to deflect back - which is no good if the originating target isn't actually a target. I know I could employ the cloaking device of a nospam mailbox, but that's hassle. Isn't this the kind of thing software should be smarter at?

Fortune.com: There's a Killer App on the Loose--But I'm on the Case

Fast & Slow Quotes

Two quotes arguably RE Adaptive Design which simultaneously collided in front of me a couple of weekends ago.

"That which is overdesigned, too highly specific, anticipates outcome; the anticipation of outcome guarantees, if not failure, the absence of grace."

From William Gibson, All Tomorrow's Parties
[via Simon Hopkins - thanks!]

And then, walking to the Design Museum that Saturday afternoon, I re-read this quote on the wonderful Eduardo Paolozzi sculpture outside:

"Human subtlety will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple or more direct than does Nature, because in her inventions, nothing is lacking and nothing is superfluous."

Which reminded me of the Janine Benyus piece I alluded to in my Adaptive Design presentation.

[btw, thought the Manolo Blahnik exhibition was rubbish, but that Rockstar Games and Jonathan Ive in Designer of the Year was good, and that the Superstudio stuff was awesome. So, Design Museum = Curate's Egg.]

Brand Extension

Adam gets to see Stewart Brand's keynote at IA Summit:

"For the last several years, roughly since the publication of his magisterially funky "How Buidlings Learn," Brand has been thinking about time and adaptation. ... Brand is trying to extend the way our culture understands time - encouraging us to think about how complex systems, very much including human ones like communities, socialities and arrangements of governance, adapt and evolve over deeper stretches of the long count ... His talk today didn't depart wildly from these lines, so in that sense I suppose it was nothing new for anyone who's been following his last decade's output, but I never cease to be amazed by the power of physical presence. It was really gratifying, for example, to see Brand briefly summarize the shearing layer diagram from "How Buildings Learn" - something I know Jesse has picked up and run with - in front of an audience richly prepared to make practical use of its insights."

As Adam notes, Jesse has run with the shearing layer diagram too. As has Peter and Peter. As did I, though my running was hardly Emile Zatopek class .... As part of my Adaptive Design presentation (and therefore hidden in horrible .ppt - sorry), I briefly loitered with the idea of mapping the different layers of Brand's original onto a web experience context i.e. enabling builders of user experiences to think of shearing layers within their systems, such that IA moves at a different pace to the CPMS, or that the UI could break down into basic user tools, which move at a different pace to whatever the user has decided to personalise (and how), which moves slower again than the user's 'saved state'. All this was contextualised a bit more in person (there's some notes in the .ppt), but here's my diagram anyway:

v2: Brand Experience

iPod Battery Update

Huzzah! One of my previous posts which drew some comments was the old iPod battery life issue. And look!

"Pod Software 1.2.6 provides improved battery management which solves a problem that may appear to shorten your iPods battery life."

"Some customers have reported that over time their iPods battery life has declined. This update enables the iPod to more accurately monitor its battery charge, thus using the entire battery capacity and regaining long battery life. The result is longer playback time and extended standby time. After updating the iPod, customers can expect at least 10 days of standby battery life on a full charge. Prior to this update, the iPod would sometimes mistake a temporary low voltage condition as an indication that the battery was discharged. This resulted in the iPod shutting down prematurely, even though the battery was still capable of powering the iPod"

I'm downloading it right now.

Apple: iPod Software 1.2.6 Update

Little Fluffy Ambient Bluetooth iD3 Clouds

Thought this idea-burst from Jones was brilliant, btw. So much in there ... reminds me of the Diller+Scofidio 'braincoats', but I really like Matt's notion that this relates to band t-shirts. And this Dan says there's nothing wrong with Steely, neither.

Blackbeltjones: iChatStatus

A Public Private Apology

Blogs are strange things: when you're feeling good and therefore writing, it's the proverbial outboard brain; when you're not and therefore not writing, it becomes a source of guilt ("Must-update-my-blog-with-something-good"). In short, I feel I owe you, and my blog, an apology. I've been more or less absent from these pages for a couple of months now, as some have noticed.

Basically, I started a new job at the BBC in February which has taken a vast amount of time and energy - almost like a startup phase. I'm now responsible for the tech and design across all the BBC's Radio & Music sites; which means I'm responsible for trying to weld the vagaries of XP and Scrum to UCD to the opportunities afforded by RSS or XSLT, say. Whilst trying to revamp the Radio Player (more soon!), say, and instigate some blue-sky thinking time, some coherent multidisciplinary experience design project management processes, advocate user research, and solve some little local difficulties with bureacracy (in the bad sense of the word) - bringing new ways of thinking about a new medium to a division of the BBC which has been around, one way or another, since 1922.

Amongst other things. Which anyone who manages a team of any size will be familiar with.

I'm also trying to find a way of sticking close to products too; I'm a designer, for better for worse, and still think of myself as one - yet am struggling to find the time - and opportunity, without treading on toes I should be, er, nurturing - to actually design. (Nurturing toes? Jeez). Of course, design by proxy, via a team, is a fabulous thing when it works. And that's the stage I'm at, but I'd be intrigued to know if others felt this way about their work ...

Don't get me wrong - it's a fantastic job, I'm very lucky, and I'm enjoying it very much. And I aim to bring much of the development work back here, for public consumption or criticism ... However, as I work flat out, it's difficult to find as much time as I'd like for this. Folks will know I don't usually use this blog for personal matters, but folks will also know that personal matters affect everything nonetheless.

All this naval-gazing is merely an excuse to myself really, though. As somehow I have to figure out a way of achieving all of above whilst writing here, thinking here, responding to the brilliant people who mail me via this ... I'm horribly reminded of Clay's aside that blogging is a daily activity.

Anyway, just wanted contextualise the lack of input here a bit. Somehow I'll figure it out.