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Welcome T' Frozen North
Manchester greeted me yesterday with howling winds and a few brief showers. Not the best of starts weather-wise after the glorious sunshine that bathed London last week. However I'm now sitting in the Research & Development office of the BBC's New Broadcasting House in Manchester, getting settled in. How I came to be here was somewhat of an interesting story, and I explained a little here. But what I'm doing over the next 6 months will be even more interesting, and it's a journey I hope some of you might like to join me on. We have the task of establishing a new Research & Development lab in Manchester ahead of the BBC's move to Salford Quays. Setting up a new broadcast and media research lab isn't something that happens often, so just how we go about it will be full of creative and technical challenges.
More iPhone Apps
Last week I shared some of my favourite iPhone apps. Here's a few more, including transport tools, media apps and a set of web information tools...
Metadata: Getting it right, even when it's wrong.
Well, today is my last official day working on BBC HD audio. Somehow I don't think this project will leave me alone just yet, but after a week's leave, my main focus will be elsewhere. So I thought I'd take the opportunity to talk about something which has consumed a fair bit of my time, but which I haven't blogged much about: metadata. For the uninitiated, metadata is "data about data". A photo's metadata for example might tell you what camera it was taken with, where it was taken, what exposure was used and so on. In the case of BBC HD's audio, metadata is carried by the Dolby E and Dolby Digital streams we use, and has two main functions: it describes the audio being carried, and it controls the decoders in your homes. One parameter, often called dialnorm (for Dialogue Normalisation), tells your decoder how loud the programme is, so that it can attempt to smoothe out differences between programmes and channels to give you a more consistent loudness. Another set of parameters control what happens when your decoder downmixes the audio, meaning when it produces a stereo mix for your stereo speakers from the surround sound we may be sending. It's important stuff, so we have to make sure that metadata survives our distribution chain, and sometimes we even have to add metadata to a programme automatically, which can be tricky. Here's some of the work we've done...
Got Any Good Apps?
The percentage of my friends who have an iPhone is quite frankly incredible. So when we get together, once we've caught up on our latest news and got through a pint or two, the question inevitably arises, have you got any good new apps? Similarly when chatting to someone new who turns out to have an iPhone, the same kind of question pops up. The App Store is like a little club that we all joined, and sharing recommendations about the best downloads is a new game. So as to further ruin my conversation possibilities with my friends (one of whom says that my blog is great because she can keep up to date with my life without ever having to speak to me!) I thought I'd share the current contents of my home screen. Here's part one...
That Syncing Feeling
It's been a long time since I've updated you, for which I apologise. However the good news is this will hopefully be my last post about lipsync issues on BBC HD. That's in part because I'm really running out of bad puns based on the word 'sync', but mostly because - and I realise I'm tempting fate here - we may have got to the bottom of it all. Let me elabourate...
In Blog We Trust?
In my last post, I discussed one of the interface changes in Windows 7, with reference (probably too much reference) to a blog post by Paul Thurrott, and I explained how that article wound me up a bit. Today I got incredibly annoyed with an article by the same author, and it got me wondering just how you find the voices you trust and like amoung the millions of bloggers out there...
Easy or Simple? Why I Like Windows 7 More Than Windows Fans
Microsoft recently released a public beta of Windows 7, which means you or I can go and download the next version of Windows right now and give it a try. This seems like a great opportunity to see what they're up to, so I've had a quick play and I've read some reviews and articles around the web. Now we all know I'm a big Mac fan, so of course I have a habit of noticing the new features which bear a striking resemblence to existing MacOS features. And there are a lot. I thought about writing a post about that, but there were too many to mention, plus it would be pointless; good ideas are worth using, and Apple has certainly 'borrowed' features from Windows over the years too. Sometimes it just makes sense. So rather than moan about Microsoft stealing ideas, I thought I'd celebrate one idea in particular which they've stolen, because it leads to a big improvement in the usability of Windows. The feature I'm referring to is the task bar, which has undergone quite a radical overhaul in Windows 7. The thing is, some of the more vocal and established Windows fans seem to hate the new design - where I rejoice that it's much more similar to Apple's superior Dock interface, they complain that it's too similar to Apple's rubbish Dock interface. Hmmm... it seems this could be one for personal preference. Here's why I like the Dock, and (mostly) Windows' new taskbar.
Pres and Cons
I'm starting this post with about 5 ideas in my head of what I want to talk about, and they're only loosely connected. This is probably not a good way to write an engaging and well structured post, so I apologise now if it's a bit rambling and rubbish. But bear with me; hopefully I have some interesting things to say, and I definately have some interesting links to share.
This week at CES, Palm announced the Pre and webOS, a new touch-screen smart phone and its associated operating system. Cue much media hype, cries of "iPhone Killer" etc etc. I got dragged in to the story a bit and my initial impressions were very favourable, however after a bit of reflection the story is a lot more complex than it looks, and interesting not just because of the Pre itself, but what it tells us about the iPhone, Blackberry and even media coverage of technology.
MacOS : Not Quite As Stupid As You Think
This is very sad, but something just brought a little smile to my face. There I was, saving some files with numbers in the filenames. Something along the lines of 1.txt, 2.txt ... 8.txt, 9.txt and then I thought, "Oh Bugger. There's more than 10 files. I should have used 2-digit numbers. D'oh!" For I had expected that the old computers-are-dumb problem would leave me with a folder of files in the order 1.txt 10.txt 11.txt 2.txt 3.txt and so on. Usually, these things get ordered by first character first, then by the second character and so on. So 10 comes before 2.
But hallelujah! It seems that MacOS 10.5 has some basic intelligence! My files get listed 1 to 11 in proper order :-) I've even attached a screenshot to prove it...
Now this could have been around for years and I just didn't notice it. It could even work in (shudder...) Windows too. But as someone who spends his life working with technology and having to deal with it continually disappointing me, it's nice when it works and you didn't expect it to!
Testing The Test
Last time I told you about the efforts we've been making at BBC HD to get an A/V sync test to your TV in order that you can measure the synchronisation between audio and video in your home TV setup. You'll be very pleased to know that we're done and the test has made it to air! Andy Quested has posted in his blog about how you can use the sync test - and its counterpart the test card - to line-up your equipment. I therefore won't repeat that here, but I wanted to give you a bit more detail about what we've achieved and how.
