5 things I'm thinking about

Alice, Matt , Ian and many other super lovely clever people have done this, so just to prove to myself I qualify as the same species, I'm going to try too:

1. The Broadcast/ IP distribution thing is coming to a head in terms of the legal underpinnings of the business models people assume will support their day to day life. After years of denial, it's as if the crew of the Titanic have decided their best bet is to leap onto the iceberg and try and charge a ticket price to the passengers scrambling after them. It's not clear if it's gong to work- some might argue that it's worked in music, but I doubt that's the case. If the last defender of the music industry is the scarily wizzened aging punk you last saw on Cheggers Plays Pop 30 years ago in a grubby parka, I'd suggest the gig is up. Apple are the new music behemoths, and in case anyone has missed it, they're not paying the record industry much.
In broadcast the sticks on hills will soon be the second fiddle in video distribution. They'll be filling homes with the mass market low margin filler, and, true, the live events will be best delivered over that route, but all this will come via an experience defined in the main by interfaces entirely divorced from any concept of 'schedule'.
In this media experience, the way we pay for content (and we all do, directly or otherwise) will need a whole new approach. I just hope the license fee stays as part of it.

2. (Hope this one is shorter!) Getting fast broadband (50Mbps upwards) into homes, all homes, and for that matter all businesses, is tricky. Not a 'scientifically hard problem' to be sure. In fact it's technically trivial. However, getting the mishmash of commercial interests, co-ops and public efforts large and small to pull together the way the ConDem coalition want it to, even with their really rather feeble USC targets, is a decidedly non-trivial thing. The last few years of the Labour governments attempts at this were pretty poor, and it seems the new bunch are picking up where that lot left off, and I do worry that this represents a real missed opportunity to start this effort afresh.
I've heard various worrying rumours and skuttlebutt about different parties involved- some genuinely worrying, some probably irrelevant. There are real problems with the 'incumbents' and their historical practices (most probably not even their fault). Getting it to work, and work well, and affordably for a Britain that seems likely to be in for a protracted belt tightening period will need proper visionary leadership, the like of which we have yet to see.

3. I hope the BBC doesn't leave the developer community behind. Shouldn't say too much on this, as it's not yet set in stone, but if changes to the way we talk to developers come about I truly hope they represent a growth and an improvement.

4. Is it possible to design very long period predictable orbits for artificial comets of the solar system, and in particular the inner planets? The last year or so has shown some fascinating papers published looking at very long term stability in orbital dynamics of the inner solar system, and there's a real possibility that focused research in this area could turn up some excellent results, of real use to one of the projects I'm working on.

5. Will the iPad make tablets cool? Generally I mean. I am so not a fan boy, but I have to acknowledge that battery life, screen resolution, apps availability, non-multitasking, dammit even the heft of the bloody thing make, altogether, for an exceptionally pleasant experience. My worry is that nobody else will have the guts to go for quality the way that Jobs has, and without that dedication to the pleasure of the haptic experience, other tablets will just seem flat (oops haha). If nobody else makes tablets work then Apple win. Big.
If Android phones are the model Google are looking at as the way they're gonna do Chrome on tablets they are lost- I have the HTC HD2 (I know win6.5 borkage all the way- had to reboot by taking the battery out TWICE today) and that's about as nice a piece of hardware as HTC can make. As hardware it is ace, but HTC only made it as nice as they wanted to. OK so MS made them stick a Win button on it (oh the fucking irony- it's the damned opposite of win), but how may 'driod phones have you played with where the hardware wasn't quite perfectly matched to the OS, in terms of interface feel and affordance. It'll be pretty much all of them by the way, 'cept maybe the G1, the Droid, and the Nexus. Maybe.
My point, and I do have one, is that Apple have been betting on quality. These are big bets, and with a few wobbles they have paid off, but they are narrow bets. Everyone else is spreading, and they may, on balance, do ok, but I honestly think that with the iPad, Apple have upped the ante to the point where everyone else has folded. Arse.

Ok, that's it. Wasn't too hard. Should blog more often.

Brolly Brilliant

A few years ago I went for a walk, a biggish walk, which I do sometimes do. And I took with me a very excellent umbrella I'd been given by the delightful people at RTE when I did a workshop at the BISA event they hosted. That wooden handled brolly served me proud on my walk in Andalucia, keeping the worst of the sun off me as I tramped up through the Alpujarras, and making a very handy walking pole.


When I got up into the Sierra Nevada peaks proper, above the snow line the brolly kept on working- a decent walking pole now doubled as a stop gap ice axe, and a wind break on exposed ridges as I hunkered down with a few biscuits. It even stood up well as a photo monopod with the Gorilla pod grip for my compact camera.

My trusty brolly did me proud, and I actually rather liked sauntering around BBC facilities with another broadcaster's logo splashed about- it got looks, raised eyebrows. It was cool.

And I left it on a bus in Brighton, sigh.

Still, what this brolly led me to think it that there is a real gap out there. That the last piece of outdoor gear to get properly techno fetishised is the umbrella, and there's a hell of an opportunity there.

Firstly it's a stick. Shock absorbing, adaptable, strong, and extendable- so many options in terms of mechanisms and materials immediately spring to mind- carbon fibre being the obvious first choice.

It needs a handle, shock absorbing, comfortable, ergonomic, possibly including atachments for cameras, and small compartments for storage. And perhaps this handle can convert into an ice axe head?

Then it has a spike, or whatever ending is appropriate for the terrain, with a sleeve to cover the far end/ centre of the canopy and act as a temporary second handle.

And there's the canopy itself- this is already water and windproof, but we can go further, and ensure it's properly impermeable to UV, and perhaps radio waves too (see later) but just porous enough to act as a large area water filter.

The spokes, always the weak link of an umbrella design, could be so much better made- titanium is the obvious choice, light, strong, springy, it could be structured to give the perfect shape...

The shape- why not a perfect parabola? Imagine the potential benefits of having an accurate parabolic reflector surface on hand in the wilderness to boost mobile phone reception (radio waves!), or to boost the visibility of signalling lights!

I tell yah this has got to be a winner! The Gentlemans Adventure Umbrella! I'd call it 'The Penguin'!

Mean while, these really do float my boat....

Victorinox Automatic Umbrella

The Blunt Umbrella

Recruiting at the BBC

There are some seriously senior R&D positions coming up at the BBC in the next few months. I really hope we get some good candidates. I know some people who'd be great in these roles, but I just don't know how I ca help get them aboard.

Outside the box. A long way outside the box

This post has an ethical dimension, and I strongly defend my position, but feel free to have a pop. Last Wednesday I and a number of colleagues attended a show called 'Soldier Tech 2007'. It was as you might expect from the title, an exhibition and conference covering all the latest the a soldier my desire. It was very VERY interesting, and well worth attending as an innovator in broadcast technology.

The following day I presented an idea that had come from the inspiration of that show, and it appears not everyone thought it was quite as focused on the needs of broadcast as it ought to have been. Without going into the detail (it was a proposal to look at the dangers faced by journalists and technical crews in news gathering and see if we could help develop better protective gear for them- niche, but important) I strongly feel that an important point needs to be made here, and made very clearly:

To innovate means many things, including creating new ideas and developing them in new ways. It also means taking an idea from place and applying it in a new way. The Broadcast world is actually very small, I've been in it for perhaps five years now, two and a bit at the R&D end, and though I meet new people all the time, I do already recognise a 'horizon' to this world. Go to broadcast tech show after broadcast tech show, tv conference after conference, and you will soon see the same old stands, technologies, lectures one after another. Sure there will be announcements, new demos etc. but they will ave been leaks, murmurs before, and the application will already be sewn up, and the world keeps ticking on all the same. Groundhog innovation. Something of a non-sequiteur don't you think.

To any and all technologists and innovators out there- at least once this year, go to a show about which you no NOTHING- nada, didly squat- abut the application area. Two things will happen- you will learn new things and have new ideas, and so will the people there. It's a win win, and frankly if any of us are going to make any difference in our jobs, we have GOT to get out of our comfort zones. Swords do beget plough shares, but not by us hiding from them.

Harrumph, thas bedder.

A new laptop

As I sit listening to 'Sailing by', that peerless intro to the shipping forcast, I am pondering my next procurement. I am going to get a non-desktopped latop. That is to say, a work laptop that isn't nailed to the BBC's rather restrictive standard config. I get the standard config thing (though I've long argued we should run at least two standards- getting everyone from the high end off line editor to the PA to the DG to use the same standard of software set up and support seems to a fool like me to be positively perverse), but I want to run very graphics intensive immersive stuff, so I'm looking for something with a bit of umph.

Turns out there's a lot of umph around these days. Options are:
Alienware- Hi Def native, massive storage and savage video set up, but AMD processors
Sony- great for playing DVDs, but a bit dissapointing otherwise- qua the ar31
Toshiba- beast and very very very old fashioned looking
HP- nothing that good yet in the UK- but the US and japan are getting these very nice pavillion 9500 machines.
Dell- Well there's a couple of options here- the outrageous 2010 (which really needs a team of sherpas to carry) or the very very powerful glow in the dark 1710 - except someone else at work already has one, and if part of the point of this is comparing different stuff, then perhaps I shpould get different stuff!?
Partial edit done at half nine at ally pally

Thing is though there's so many groovy new things on the horizon, or just a cintilla over it- 8 series nVidia cards, solid state disks, hi def 19 inch screens with LED lights. I feel like a kid in a sweet shop, next door to a bigger better sweet shop that'll be opening next week!

Futurology?

Yesterday marked the first meeting of the L10 group that I was invited to. L10, or Life plus 10 (I prefer L10, 'cos life plus ten sounds a bit too much like a gaol sentence for child murder, license fee evasion or copyright infringement or something) is a small, informal, off the books, black ops directorate of the BBC's technology division, like Alias except without a Jenifer Garner. Um though actualy we do. And we do have both an Arvin Sloan and a Jack Bristow. And somethig of a surfiet of Marshals. Oops, there, just blown the plausible deniability.

Anyroad up, we sit around, try and figure out what the world will be like ten or fifteen years hence, and determine how, why or whether the BBC fits into it at all. Sit around was what we did this time. But I hope there will be some standing up too. And waving of arms a la Peter Snow. I really enjoyed it- I got to make completely unattributed Plato quotes and throw up some half boiled social psychology ideas about the nature of communities and society and why people starting uni use facebook (it's cos they are scared and positive vetting of your mates online is cheaper and easier than getting utterly shit faced every night for three months so you just don't care). Ah, the old days.....

Now why am I blogging this? Well I just do don't I. I blog and blog and blog and do all our dirty washing in public, and you can all see it. Both of you. So howabout some feedback. How about all you teeming hordes of BBC-ophiles drop me some sparkling feedback on just where you see the world being in 2022?! Why not point out just how hideouly irrelevant the BBC will be, or alternatively how Ofcom and the BBC trust will have seen the light, and turned over to the BBC an exponentialy growing license fee that we can collect worldwide from a fleet of black helicopters, and any and all dabbling in communications by the publicly owned institutions of europe chall be controlled, edited and ultimately owned by the uber BBC! mwahahahaha. Or you know. Not.

I may yet float the occasional flight of fancy here on this very blog, in part to garner your feedback, but mostly to scare my bosses silly that any of my out of the box radical nonsense is leaking into the public domain.

P.S. I once tried to think inside the box. Sadly I become rather flatulent whilst thinking hard, and so almost suffocated.

P.P.S. I really wanted to come up with a cool logo for L10 based upon the Lagrange points idea, but apparently there are only five lagrange points in a two body gravitic system, and in a three body system the maths aren't do able within the lifetime of the universe. So it would be a random scribble. Which I quite like too.

innovating as i type!

sitting here in the bbc innovation forum, so it felt appropriate to blog a bit. highlights so far include;
os trust framework for media exchange
multi sensory signal processing
a quick chat with siemens innovation chap

so far so good (but the monkey story was wierd!)