Random words from FrequencyCast

Everybody loves pizza. Friday night was pizza night for the FrequencyCast boys tonight, and we took the easy option and ordered a Dominos pizza online. Car’s a “create your own” kinda guy, and Pepperoni does it for Pete.

Ordering online is pretty straightforward, obviously. Slap in your details and address into the ordering engine at www.dominos.co.uk.

Then, the clever bit – pizza tracking. See the moment that your pizza goes from “prepared” to “in the oven”, then a nice satisfying “it’s on the road”.

Yes, we like Dominos tracking service, but we think we need even more real-time pizza info.

Here’s what we’re thinking… a GPS tracking chip in every pizza. It’s great to know the moment that the pizza’s out of the oven and on the way… but where is it? Stuck in traffic? Navigating through the one-way system, or maybe the driver’s sat nav’s out of date. Dominos… if you’re listening – how about an interface to the fleet’s TomToms, or a chip in every box… so we can get a pizza overlay in Google Maps…

Now we know we’re asking a lot… but it’s only a matter of time before there’s an iPhone app for that…

A little musical challenge for you.

The FrequencyCast phone, the INQ1 has a distinctive 3 note “Low Battery” tone that wafts through FrequencyCast HQ and reminds me of a certain UK song.

Click on this link to have a listen: http://www.frequencycast.co.uk/audio/inqnotes.mp3

Have a quick listen, and see if it reminds you of anything… Comment below if it sounds familiar!

Pete

 

 Three notes from the INQ Phone [0:43m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Freeview’s HD service launched in December 2009, but it’s only now that the required set-top boxes are trickling onto the market.

The first of the bunch of Freeview HD boxes to appear, as was reported recently by our podcast boys, is the Humax Fox-T2 Freeview HD box, pictured below. On the face of it, a decent HD receiver, likely to be in demand by those keen to get a little dish-free HD action.

Here’s the rub though.

You can get a standard definition Freeview box for £25 – a standard definition box is capable of getting 50 Freeview channels.

With the new Freeview HD boxes though, you’ll get 52… the Freeview channels, plus BBC HD and ITV 1 HD (Channels 4 and 5 will be along in the next 2 years)

The cost of the new HD boxes? £180… yep, that’s £155 extra to get BBC and ITV in HD.

So, for that money, either the content needs to be awesome, or the box needs to be amazing. Perhaps the box has a built-in hard disc recorder or DVD player? Nope. And it can’t make the toast either. Sure, it does support playback of a handful of media formats if you plug in a USB hard drive, and there’s an Ether net socket to support a connection for BBC iPlayer in the future… but £180? Yee-ouch.

Add to that, only two regions can get HD at the moment – growing to 50% of the UK later this year.

Compare this to Sky… Sign up to their basic package for £18 a month and you’ll get over 200 channels (including almost all of the Freeview ones). Plus a FREE Sky+ HD box. For an extra £10 a month, you’ll get over 30 HD channels, and even if you save on the £10 HD subscription, you’ll still get BBC HD (but the box will now cost £49). Did we mention that the Sky box has a built-in hard disk recorder? Sky Offer details.

OK – You may have an objection to subscription TV, or not a fan of the Murdoch Empire, which may make you want to steer clear of Sky, but you have to admit that Sky’s HD offer’s a good one, and if you want to make the most of that HD telly, Freeview’s two channels.

So, the question is this… Freeview HD. Is it really worth the wait? You decide…

Channel 4 has announced that it’s relationship with the US series Friends will come to an end next year.

4’s digital channel E4 has been showing two eps each night for the last six years, and it still draws a steady audience despite the show’s end in 2004.

Channel 4’s Gill Hay said: “After 15 years, 10 hit series and 236 terrific episodes, it’s time to say goodbye to old Friends and welcome new ones,” said .

Channel 4’s 15 year relationship with Friends comes to an end in 2011 allegedly to free up some cash for new shows – we think differently though…

It’s because the UK population now know the words to every single episode.

“We were on a break”.
“18 pages… front and back”
“It’s not that common, it doesn’t happen to every guy and it is a big deal”…. “I knew it!”

See?

The end of an era – but fear not, those old episodes will still be “there for you”… to ensure you don’t start forgetting the words, we hear Comedy Central pay be picking up the rights from next year…

“How YOU doing?”

Spend any time watching rolling news services such as BBC News or Sky News?

This little video clip from Charlie Brooker explains how it’s all put together. You’ll never look at another news item in the same way again!

Be warned, the clip contains a couple of rude words…

YouTube Clip : How to report the news

For Charlie Brooker’s regular take on the TV news, and UK media in general, keep an eye out for the superlative Newswipe on BBC Four.

A FrequencyCast gold star for the best use of ‘Plane Engrrish’ goes to Barnetts Solicitors, in Southport.

One of our team moved house recently, and was persuaded to make use of this nationwide solicitors service, as opposed to using a trusty local firm of solicitors – all to save a few bucks. Apparently, you’re assigned a number, given access to call centre staff for when you need to chase them, and the move appears to be handled with the aid of a computer assisted flow chart. Apparently, he’s learnt his lesson, and won’t be doing that again.

Anyway – today, a letter, and a cheque, plopped onto his mat:

Always nice to get a refund, but the reason: “in respect of an update” is hardly informative.

It was the last line that got us though:

“We will revert back to you upon registration”.

Any clues, anyone?

“Revert” in a legal sense, is defined as “to go back”, which means that the “back” is superflous. So, Barnetts will get back back to us once something has been registered. It’s unclear what is going to be registered, and by whom.

Is this some legal expression that we’re not familiar with, or just a very odd way of trying to be clever at the end of a letter.

Comments please…

Going back to my youth!

Back in the 80’s, while my contemporaries were blowing up asteroids or shooting invaders from space, my game of choice was a Pac-Man clone called Ladybug.

Ladybug was a maze-based game where the mission was to dash around eating crosses, hearts and letters (spell Extra for an extra life). The game featured revolving doors that could be used to trap the bugs that inhabit the maze. Once 4 bugs roam free, there’s a mystical fruit in the centre of the maze that stuns the bigs briefly, allowing you to complete the level.

My love of the game may have had something to do with the fact that the game was the only arcade game in the cafe close to school, so I had little choice but to master it.

I’ve been on a quest to track down Ladybug for some years, and found it a while back for the MAME emulator – but it was a lot of hassle to set up and play.

Now, I’ve found it again – this time, it’s an Adobe Flash game, and it seems you can play it online, free at http://www.freepacmangame.net/ladybug_pacman.html

Anyone else remember this classic coin-up? Or is it just me…?

Just one more go, mum…

Friday the 3rd of April 2009 – a sad day for two London radio stations, Time 106.8 (serving South-East London and Greenwich) and South London Radio 107.3 (for Lewisham and Bromley), as they vanished from the airwaves.

It’s a tough time for the UK commercial radio industry at the moment, and we’re sure that these two stations won’t be the last to shut up shop this year and fall silent. The story of the demise of Time is a sad one though. The station has been around since 1990, first as RTM, then as Millenium Radio. Most recently, the station was owned by the Sunrise Radio Group, but was sold towards the end of 2008.

According to Time’s website, a buyer was found in February, but after owning the station for just seven days, informed the staff that he couldn’t fund it. Station staff had been working for free since February hoping for a last minute rescue… that never came.

Our two podcast presenters, Carl and Pete, come from the world of commercial radio, and in the office this morning, they were looking at www.time1068.com and reading the “farewell from the station to its listeners”. Particularly sad was the “listen now” button just beneath the story of the station’s closure…

Out of morbid curiousity, we clicked “Listen Live“. The feed from the station is still streaming away, broadcasting silence, punctuated with occasional bursts of tone.

Always sad to see the end of a station, and rare that two vanish on the same day. With other local stations losing their identity in Global’s Heart re-branding excercise, and the outlook for national commercial radio looking bleak (birdsong anyone?), we hope and pray that those predicting the end for commercial radio have got it wrong.

Our thoughts and best wishes to the staff of Time and South London Radio, and to the listeners that have lost a local voice.

OK, so I know it’s childish, but every day I look at this, I smirk.

Viewing the Media Guardian RSS news feed on an iPhone results in a slightly embarrasing shortening, as pictured in this screenshot.

I just had to share…

The clock is ticking for the UK commercial radio industry.

Ad revenue is falling, the big players are struggling to make money, listening is down, digital’s not taken off, and big names have scaled back their plans for future radio services.

That’s the bleak picture being painted by many, and at the recent Changing Media Summit, the prediction was made that commercial radio could be a thing of the past 15 years from now.

This month, we’ve seen another bunch of Global Radio’s stations lose their local name and be assimilated by the Heart Collective (Resistance is futile), and the industry’s in a state of terminal decline, according to Media Guardian’s Matt Wells.

So, is the doom and gloom correct? Well, it could be.

After all, now that we’re all hooked up to our iPods and mobile media players, we can listen to our music, when we want to, in the order we want to… without chatty jocks and double glazing ads. Of course, radio’s not all about the music – we also want to be entertained – but we’ve got podcasts for that – portable downloadable on-demand radio shows (like our own FrequencyCast). That just leaves news – something we can get from the Mobile Internet.

So, could radio survive? In our opinion, local community radio could survive – as there’s always a need for local news and somewhere to turn when the Great British snow falls. The Beeb’s national radio future is certain, as we’d be lost without our Radio 2 and Radio 4.

Can radio be saved? DAB Digital Radio’s failed to capture the public imagination, and plans for “Radio Plus” (catch-up, live pause, on demand, series link for radio) all seems a little late in the day. What could save radio? Perhaps a good reason to listen… back to the days of personality radio, perhaps?

Love to hear your thoughts…