RadioDNS

Periodically we send out a short summary of all the recent activity in the RadioDNS project. If you’d like to receive it by e-mail, join our (low-traffic) announcements group at http://groups.google.com/group/radiodns-announce

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Talking about RadioDNS

As RadioDNS grows in size and visibility, more people are talking about the opportunities that hybrid radio provides the industry, and how RadioDNS can play a role in that development. Here’s a selection of interesting reads (and listens) that help put what we’re doing into context.

Industry discusses RadioDNS (podcast):
In a tumultuous period for UK Radio, RadioDNS’ Secretary Elect James Cridland explains why hybrid radio is a bright innovation for the industry. If you’re interested in the saga of the consolidation, de-regulation and “de-localisation” of UK radio, then enjoy this podcast from the beginning, but the RadioDNS specific discussion starts at 36’50″.
http://www.radioacademypodcast.co.uk/podcast/iframe.phtml/?podcast_id=81

BBC works on RadioDNS:
The BBC are members of RadioDNS, and their Research and Development team has been working on RadioDNS for some time. George Wright, the head of the team, gives some insight into their work generally, and what they’re working on with RadioDNS, in a blog update.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/researchanddevelopment/2010/07/prototyping-weeknotes-22-09071.shtml

RadioDNS in the US:
The last RadioDNS update came directly after a significant event for RadioDNS – our first every live presentation of RadioDNS in action on a mobile handset at the TechINK conference in Santa Monica, CA. Here’s how RadioINK covered the event.
http://www.radioink.com/Article.asp?id=1828297&spid=24698

Hybrid Radio is “Better” Radio:
Hybrid Radio is about making better radio, and who better to judge that than listeners and non-technology colleagues. James Stodd (a UK Radio producer), gives his review of 95.8 Capital FM (London’s) “Summertime Ball Event”, and likes what his RadioDNS enabled radio can do for him and other listeners.
http://jamesstodd.wordpress.com/2010/06/07/summertime-ball-mixes-it-up/

Hybrid Radio is more profitable radio:
Hybrid Radio should also be more profitable radio, and I’m pleased to see more stations and their clients realising the added value it can deliver. Global Radio (UK) have been commercialising visualised radio for some time, and now Absolute Radio (UK) are writing new revenues streams from it too.
http://onegoldensquare.com/2010/07/universal-mccann-book-a-microsoft-office-campaign-that-includes-radio-dns-visuals-by-paul-brown/

Hybrid Radio in the car:
Roger Lancot is an Analyst for Strategy Analytics, and he’s been looking at the challenges of getting digital radio a standard item in vehicles worldwide. He talks about how a hybrid approach, as enabled by RadioDNS, could be the ideal scenario for manufacturers.
http://blogs.strategyanalytics.com/auto/?p=125

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Team Updates

All three Technical Teams agreed by the Steering Board meeting are now up and running, and working on solutions for their respective challenges. Any member can join a team, and supporters can ask the Team Leader if they’d like to join too.

RadioVIS is led by Ben Poor and is specifying the presentation of visuals to accompany radio
RadioEPG is led by Ben Matthew and is specifying the provision of EPG and other Service Related Data
RadioTAG is led by Andy Buckingham and is specifying a simple interaction framework for connected radios

You can follow all their discussions in our Developers’ discussions at http://groups.google.com/group/radiodns-developers

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Trials

More stations are trialling RadioDNS, including our first temporary event-based station. The number of countries in the database continues to grow, and we’re more than happy to help stations who want to trial RadioDNS. We’re expecting the members and supporters to continue releasing open-source software packages to allow broadcasters and manufacturers to quickly build test and development environments – that information will be circulated on the Developers’ list and added to the website when it happens.

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TVDNS?

They say great minds think alike, and we recently made contact with Project Baird, who are looking at how hybrid TV might evolve. It’s relevant as more connected TV manufacturers also look to include an enhanced radio experience. The project is looking at how RadioDNS or a close-variant of it, might become part of their project. We’ll keep you updated their progress, but if you’re technically inclined, you can follow the discussion here.
http://projectbaird.com/discovery/tvdns/

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Pure Offer

I’m very pleased to say that PURE, the manufacturers of digital radios, have offered members of RadioDNS a discount on their entire range of radios, including the Sensia which includes RadioDNS technology. If you’d like to take advantage of that offer, please e-mail me (nick dot piggott at radiodns dot org) and I will pass your interest onto PURE.

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Coming Up

We expect to be announcing some new members to the project shortly, and demonstrating RadioDNS on more stations and more devices. We’re also hoping that RadioDNS will be present in some form at IBC Amsterdam (September) and the NAB Radio Show (October).

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Finally

As ever, RadioDNS thrives on the involvement and engagement of its members and supporters. Supporters can get involved for free, and members (who get voting rights and control the direction of the organisation) pay a membership fee of just CHF2.000,- (about USD1,800, EUR1.200,-) a year.

If you know a station or an individual who’d like to know more or get involved, send them in the direction of http://radiodns.org/membership or get them to email feedback@radiodns.org

Thanks for reading this update,

Nick Piggott
Chairperson
RadioDNS

RadioDNS founder Members Absolute Radio have been creating content using RadioDNS technologies since the launch of the PURE Sensia.

Today, they’ve added a blog post to their corporate website with a headline “Universal McCann book a Microsoft Office campaign that includes RadioDNS visuals“.

The article and video contains no more details about the Microsoft campaign, but does contain a useful overview of the kind of content that’s available on Absolute Radio’s RadioVIS feed.

The capability of RadioDNS technologies, like RadioVIS, to earn additional revenues for broadcasters is an important part of the suite of technologies that the RadioDNS framework allows. We’re delighted that adverting agencies and broadcasters alike are recognising the capability of RadioDNS-enabled technology to reach audiences in a more powerful way.

Andy Buckingham, who is heading up the RadioTAG team, writes:

Following on from Ben’s establishment of the RadioVIS application team
I would now like to announce to the wider RadioDNS development
community the list of members for the RadioTAG Application Team:

James Cridland – Not At All Bad Ltd
André Fatton
Mark Glanville – BBC
Chris Gould – All In Media
Sebastian Kett – Südwestrundfunk (SWR)
David Madelin
Jason Malaure – All In Media
Chris Needham – BBC

As the current documentation for tag is an initial draft specification
the primary focus of the team is to publish a final V1.0 specification
for the RadioTAG application. This will then allow those interested
parties to implement the application from both a client and server
perspective.

Key areas that need the attention of the team include, but are not limited to:

* Finalising a suitable authentication methodology between client and server
* Finalising the data exchange between client and server

I would also like to host discussions on the potential for different
service providers to share information on tagged events so users can
view tags from one particular service provider on another service
providers platform.

Beyond finalising the specification it would be fantastic to see
members and the wider community develop a shared knowledge on how to
implement the protocol and potentially see some open source libraries
emerge within the RadioDNS ecosystem at large.

As with Ben and the RadioVIS team, I will be leading the discussion
and presenting my own thoughts on the above points but also acting as
a collator of the team’s thoughts. If you would still like to join in
and have your say on RadioTAG then please do get in touch with some
details on why you are interested in taking part and I will do my best
to accommodate you.

This e-mail will be followed with an introduction to the RadioTAG
developers list which is independent of this list. You are free to
observe the work of the team over at
http://groups.google.com/group/radiotag-developers/

Finally a very special thank you to those new members who have agreed
to dedicate time to this project. I hope we can present back to the
wider RadioDNS developer community a well thought out and innovative
final specification for RadioTAG in a timely fashion.

Ben Poor, who is heading up the RadioVIS application team, writes:

Dear All,

I’m pleased to announce that we now have a healthy list of volunteers
wishing to be part of the RadioVIS application team. These are:

• Chris Gould – All In Media
• Jason Malaure – All In Media
• Scott Robinson – The Student Radio Association
• Kennet Andhersån – CasterPlay
• Martyn Humphreys – Bauer Radio
• Phill Clark – GMG Radio

The main aim of the team is to produce a new verson of the technical
specification for the RadioVIS application (currently at 1.0.0). This
should include, but not be limited to, the following:

• Signalling of RadioVIS to support IP streamed stations
• Consideration of current and future device sizes and profiles

I also hope that the team will go beyond the specification and develop
shared knowledge on the implementation of applications, specifically
around:

• Running a Stomp server to cope with the demands of different Broadcasters
• A successful Comet implementation of RadioVIS

I shall nominally be the lead in this, but I see this role as being
the wrangler and collater of thoughts – I shall also be a part of the
team in terms of feeding my own ideas. I’m looking forward to hearing
the thoughts that the team have.

Please note that it is not too late to join this team if you feel a
desire to shape where RadioVIS will be going in the future – although
obviously being an early part of the process is an advantage.

I shall follow this up with communications directly to the team via a
new Google Groups mailing list so that the
discussions are still visible to the wider community.

Many thanks,

Ben Poor
ben.poor@radiodns.org

Here’s what’s caught the RadioDNS Project’s eye over the past few weeks:

Summertime Ball mixes it up
Radio producer James Stodd discusses Capital FM’s Summertime Ball – and is impressed by RadioVIS by RadioDNS on his PURE Sensia radio.

25 things you may have missed at NAB
The international magazine RadioWorld covered RadioDNS’s presence at the NAB show in Las Vegas in their recent webinar. The webinar is an hour of great information, and is free to view. RadioWorld also covered the first US demo of RadioVIS by RadioDNS, and covers our CoolStuff award.

RadioINK covered Nick Piggott’s talk at the RadioINK Tech Summit, as well as the live demo.

And, a while back, Irish radio provider Digital Radio Ltd wrote about RadioDNS in their corporate blog.

We’re grateful to everyone for writing about us.

This is a semi-regular email from Nick Piggott, Chairperson of RadioDNS, to the RadioDNS Announcement list. You can subscribe to the list elsewhere on our website.

RadioDNS demonstrated on a mobile phone

This (slightly delayed) update is coming to you en route from the TechINK Conference at Microsoft, Mountain View, CA, where RadioDNS was presented. and where we achieved two “firsts” for the project.

It was the first time that RadioDNS was demo-ed live in the US. We are grateful to our member Clear Channel for allowing us to use 98.5 KFOX, KISS 98.1, 94.9 WILD FM and Star 101.3 as demo stations for RadioVIS.

We were also able to demonstrate, for the first time, RadioDNS running on a mobile phone, using the built in FM tuner. You can see a video of this in action. The demo app, which can be installed on an Nokia N900 phone, was developed by Peter Redhead of the Creative Technology Team at Global Radio (UK).

If you would like to organise a similar demonstration, contact me (nick.piggott AT radiodns DOT org) and we’ll try and organise one of the members to help you. (See also TRIALS below).

Steering Board Meeting

The Steering Board met for the first time during May, and the minutes are published. The project is looking healthy, and we’re still working on a couple of start up issues, like where to open bank accounts and have registered offices.

The main action point from the meeting was to form three Teams to work on RadioDNS applications. More on that next.

I’d like to thank all the SB members for attending the meeting (which was in awkward time zones for some) – SB members are YOUR representatives at the executive level of RadioDNS, so don’t hesitate to contact them or myself (nick.piggott AT radiodns DOT org) if you have thoughts/ideas/concerns about the project you’d like to see more specifically discussed.

Teams

Teams are our way of bringing together people with a common interest in developing an application based on the RadioDNS framework.

As three applications exist currently, the first three Teams are there to work on those and make them officially RadioDNS, which will include formal declarations of IPR/Patent status by the identified contributors:

• RadioVIS – will be led by Andy Buckingham of Global Radio (andy.buckingham AT thisisglobal DOT com)
• RadioEPG – will be led by Ben Matthew of Absolute Radio (ben.matthew AT absoluteradio DOT co.uk)
• RadioTAG – will be led by Ben Poor of Global Radio (ben.poor AT thisisglobal DOT com)

As RadioVIS is pretty much in production, that team will work on some tweaks based on production experience, and formally publish v1.00 of the RadioVIS spec. The other apps are still in development, so your contribution is welcome to make sure they do what the majority of users need them to do.

If you, or someone in your company, would like to join a Team, there are two ways of getting involved:

• As a MEMBER, you can nominate someone to join the Team on your behalf
• As a SUPPORTER, you can ask the Team Leader if you can join by invitation, which the Team Leader will discuss with the other Team members.

Just get in contact with the Team Leaders listed above, and say you want to get involved.

If you’d like to champion development of a new application, please let me know (nick.piggott AT radiodns DOT org) and we can get it on the agenda for the next Steering Board meeting.

Talking of RadioDNS

RadioDNS grows when members and supporters evangelise about what a connected radio future can do. If you’re doing a presentation or conference spot, or blogging about RadioDNS, let us know on feedback@radiodns.org, and we can dig out some slides & visuals for you. You’ll get the credit for introducing people to the RadioDNS concept.

May was quieter than April (and it could hardly have been busier):

• Nick Piggott (Chairperson) presented to the EGTA AGM in Vienna on 27th May. EGTA is the Association of TV & Radio Sales Houses in Europe, and had earlier heard from John Pearson (Virgin Radio International) that “radio’s greatest weakness is its lack of back channel” and from Dominic Grainger (Group M) that radio needed to be “more measurable” and have “verifiable innovation”. RadioDNS provides solutions to those problems, and was received with interest.
• Nick also presented RadioDNS to a number of companies in the automotive space, looking at how RadioDNS might help in-car, and with traffic/travel information enhancement.
• RadioDNS was presented at RadioPULS, an annual conference in Sweden organised by Teracom (a leading infrastructure operator). RadioVIS was demonstrated on a number of radio stations. You should read James Cridland’s (Secretary Elect) excellent blog about it.

Trials

More stations have joined RadioDNS to undertake trials. Trialling RadioDNS is free, but do try and give us a bit of notice to get you set up, as we’re still hand editing the zone file. Just email feedback@radiodns.org if you’d like to be added for a trial.

We expect the final fees for RadioDNS to be in the order of USD8-USD10 a year per station, with a set-up fee of under USD100.

Developer’s mailing list

The Developer Mailing list has been busy this month. The list exists to help developers solve problems, discuss solutions, or just find out more about RadioDNS. Yes, it’s fairly techie, but the level of discussion is informative. It’s also a great place to do a search to see if your problem has already been solved.

You can subscribe here.

If you need confidential advice, then please e-mail feedback@radiodns.org and we’ll try and put you in contact with someone specific on a confidential basis.

Finally

Just a reminder that RadioDNS is probably the most efficient industry project in the world, which is what makes our membership fee just CHF2.000,- (about USD1,800, EUR1.200,-) a year, and being a supporter is absolutely free.

If you know a station or an individual who’d like to know more or get involved, send them in the direction of http://radiodns.org/membership or get them to email feedback@radiodns.org

That’s May’s roundup. Thanks for reading, and for your continuing support for the project,

Nick Piggott
Chairperson
RadioDNS

Yesterday, we added a video of RadioDNS adding visuals to FM broadcasts on a Nokia mobile phone.

The first device to support RadioDNS lookups to enable RadioVIS visual content was the PURE Sensia, and we’ve not posted a similar video showing this in action. Today, therefore, we’re adding a video, above, to the RadioDNS website.

The PURE Sensia supports RadioVIS in DAB Digital Radio mode, demonstrating that RadioDNS’s support for radio is truly multiplatform.

This morning, the Chair of RadioDNS, Nick Piggott, demonstrated RadioDNS technology live in the US for the first time.

Demonstrating a test app written for a standard Nokia N900 mobile phone, the audience at the inaugural Radio Ink Tech Summit saw IP-delivered visual accompaniment alongside the FM services of KFOX, a Clear Channel station available in Mountain View, California.

RadioDNS connects broadcast radio to the internet, in ways that can significantly reduce the load on cellular networks, increase functionality to the mobile user, and increase battery life on the device.

See the demo on the YouTube video, above.

For more information about the benefits of RadioDNS on mobile devices, see the facts about radio on a mobile phone.

Editor’s note: this is a semi-regular email from Nick Piggott, Chairperson of RadioDNS, to the RadioDNS Announcement list. You can subscribe to the list elsewhere on our website. The post below was added here on 6 June 2010 along with the May 2010 update.

It’s just a month since RadioDNS was formally created, and it’s been a busy month. Here’s a brief update of this month’s activities in the project, and advance notice of events.

RadioDNS at the NAB Show, Las Vegas NV – April 12-15th 2010

You may remember that we were very kindly offered space at one of the world’s leading broadcast exhibitions by the NAB, and that we had decided to create a modest RadioDNS presence. I’m pleased to say that we stuck to our commitment to spend no more than US$1,500 on the event, which went almost entirely on branding and information leaflets. (You can see a photo of the stand here). James Cridland (our Secretary Elect) and I split the time in Vegas between us, with a day’s handover.

We were overwhelmed by the response to the stand, with a constant flow of broadcasters interested in the project, and taking away information leaflets. We were also pleased to welcome delegations on tours organised by the NAB, including the Chairman of the FCC and his colleagues. The concept of RadioDNS has been very warmly received, and I hope we’ll be welcoming more North American members and supporters to the project as a result.

Incidentally, we invested GBP25 in bags of Cadbury’s Chocolates, which seemed to be a hit with visitors to the stand. I can also recommend FedEx Office’s rather excellent Internet printing service, which meant everything prepared as .PDF files (including our striking RadioDNS banner, designed by Andy Buckingham) was ready for us to pick up when we arrived in Vegas.

RadioDNS presented to NRSC – April 10th

The NAB also arranged for RadioDNS to be presented to the NRSC (National Radio Systems Committee) at its meeting immediately prior to the NAB Show. The NRSC has members from the broadcasting and consumer electronics industry, and it was a honour to be allowed to sit in on the meeting, and to present RadioDNS. All the attendees received the Technical Information leaflet, and I gave a presentation. There were quite a few questions about the technology, its application, and practical progress to date.

RadioDNS presented to NABA – April 28th

Following on from our presence at the NAB Show, we were given the opportunity to present to the Radio Subcommittee of NABA (North American Broadcasters Association), as part of their regular telephone conference. This presentation was similar to that given to the NRSC, copies of the same information leaflet were provided by e-mail, and I took more good questions at the end of the session.

Peter Cook, from CBC Canada, attended the meeting, and was kind enough to tweet:

“Sat in on a NABA meeting & got to hear @nickpiggott present on @radiodns post NAB. Very happy this idea getting attention it deserves”

Award Winning RadioDNS

Barely a month old as an organisation, and I’m extremely proud that we’ve picked up two awards already.

• RadioWorld gave us recognition as being “Cool Stuff“
• techINK bestowed their Technical Innovation Award

These awards recognise the efforts made by all the people who have contributed to the growth and formation of RadioDNS over the last couple of years, most of whom have done so with discretionary effort and in their own time. I’d like you to give them a virtual round of applause. Thank you.

Incidentally, if you’re entering awards for systems or technologies that features RadioDNS, let us know if we can help you with supporting information to give you the edge – all we ask is that you let us know if you pick up the silverware.

New Member – Screenpeaks

Our Membership Application process came into effect on the 1st April, and we received an application from Screenpeaks (Israel) to become a member of RadioDNS.

I’m pleased to say that the process worked, and the members approved Screenpeaks request to become our 23rd member.

All our members are listed at http://radiodns.org/members

We also welcome YLE (Finland) and Computerrock.Net (Germany) as Supporters.

RadioDNS at the Radio Tech Summit, Mountain View, CA (United States) – June 2nd & 3rd

The Radio Tech Summit has been organised by techINK Technology Editor and well-known radio-tech evangelist Skip Pizzi. (@skipizzi). There’s a very interesting lineup of speakers, and RadioDNS will be presented by myself and James Cridland (Secretary Elect), where we will also receive our techINK Innovation Award on behalf of the project.

If you can make it along, the details are at http://www.radioink.com/techsummit/ and do let us know, so we can say hello and celebrate our award.

Steering Board – Your representation in RadioDNS

We’ll be having a Steering Board meeting in the coming month. The Steering Board is the executive body of RadioDNS, but they’re also your route to having your voice heard during the course of the year.

The Steering Board members are listed at http://radiodns.org/2010/04/01/steering-board-elected/ and you can contact any of them as first.lastname@radiodns.org . In the first instance, please contact the member who probably understands your issues or concerns most, but you can contact me if you don’t feel your message is making it to the Steering Board meetings. Steering Board meeting minutes will be published on the website as soon after the meeting as possible.

The initial agenda is quite full, not least because we have to choose where to open our bank account. Decisions, decisions.

Developers’ Mailing List

The Developers’ mailing list has been getting busier recently, with new names asking and answering questions. If you have people who enjoy tech, they’ll find it worth while keeping across this list, which isn’t so busy (yet) as to be noisy in your mailbox.

Some interesting issues have come up here, including how to make RadioDNS applications (such as RadioVIS) available to streaming only services. Even if you don’t understand the tech, you might value seeing different views on the subject.

You can see the mailing list posts (and join the list) at http://groups.google.com/group/radiodns-developers

That concludes this month’s update. My apologies if you received this e-mail more than once, but our (free) mailing list hosting can’t de-duplicate between our various lists. It also doesn’t allow HTML messages, hence the old school ASCII formatting. We’ll keep the use of Google Groups under review.

There’s a couple of people I’d like to specifically thank in this e-mail. James Cridland (RadioDNS Secretary Elect), Andy Buckingham (Global Radio) and Sebastian Kett (SWR) all contributed to our successful presence at NAB in Vegas, and I’d like to thank David Layer (NAB) for making that time in Vegas so valuable and worthwhile.

To everyone who has helped RadioDNS this month – either by designing or writing or setting up meetings or just evangelising about the project – I very much appreciate your contribution,

Best regards,

Nick Piggott
Chairperson
RadioDNS

The RadioDNS project is very proud to be able to announce that we are inaugural winners of a techINK Innovation Award.

The awards were determined by techINK’s Editorial Advisory Board, and will be showcased in the May issue of techINK (included in the 5/17 issue of Radio INK). Presentation of the awards will be made at the RadioTech Summit in Mountain View, CA on June 2-3, 2010.

Skip Pizzi, Radio Ink’s Technology Editor, said, “The judges were impressed at the number and quality of award-worthy products this year, particularly given the economics of the previous year, during which they were being developed.

“Radio broadcasting is fast becoming as much as about IP as it is for RF; and the judges felt that RadioDNS is an important part of radio’s hybrid future.”

Nick Piggott, the Chair of RadioDNS, said, “All of those who’ve worked on the project are delighted to win this award. We’re very grateful to gain further recognition from a highly influential publication.”