Stuart Pinfold

Updated BBC Correspondents Map now online

29 September 2008 at 13:26

At the start of the year, I designed and developed the BBC Correspondents Map, which pin-pointed the base locations of all BBC News' (and some World Service) bureaux, correspondents and stringers.

The response to the map has been amazing: Journalism blogs have linked to it, journalists have criticised it, BBC Backstage featured it, mapping sites liked it, Ariel (the in-house staff newspaper) wrote about it, The Guardian copied it, the Red Cross made it into an education exercise, and even the BBC's dotlife and Google's Lat/Long blogged about it.

So, why change it?

I've been told that in order for it to appear on Gateway, the BBC's intranet, it must use Microsoft Virtual Earth technology, not Google Maps. We can have an argument forever about how "locked in" to Microsoft technology the BBC is, but ultimately I wanted the map on the intranet, and therefore had to change the API.

The result is I've had to code a complete design overhaul, due to MSVE's 'info bubbles' being a lot smaller than Google Maps'. However, it means the application has been re-invented, and I have new-found energy for developing and designing new features.

So, for now, it has the same functionality (but a different design) to the original mash-up, but expect to see more features as soon as I can get my head around MSVE.

Click here to access the new-design BBC Correspondents Map.

(Comments are closed for this post; to comment on this blog post or the Correspondents Map, please leave a comment on the original blog post.)

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Is This Thing On? (Part 2)

26 September 2008 at 18:14

More quotes overheard in the newsroom on feeds which have had their microphones left on, funny things which have been said down the line, or just things which might tickle you when taken out of their original context. See also this post from last year for more!

I'm so glad I'm half a planet away from the madness that's obviously going on in London...

Can you just say that again as there was some idiot jumping about behind you...

Reduction in the amount of time that can be... Balls. Overlap.

There wasn't an America then, was there? I wonder if anyone will spot that...?

"What is the point in telling us the temperature in Celsius? Nobody in England knows what you mean. The Daily Mail prints its temperatures in Fahrenheit and people know what they mean." - Audience log 14/12/07

She nicked that out of some graveyard!

That would be a good way to destroy one's broadcasting career...

I don't like being sucked in and spat out the other end...

It just sucked it off without asking...

Let me go and widdle the wires...

People will think we got up together!
Shall we tell them?
Well, we are a bit close together...

Being in Helmand province is like being on holiday... without the sea.

Hi News 24, We haven't got Willy yet...

I'm going to try a sex-changer. Don't know if it will make any difference, though...

I know! A major earthquake and you can't even get a bloody glass of water round here!

Yeah... Yeah... Yeah... I've actually peed in that toilet!

That's bollocks.. If Hezbollah kidnaps someone, I'll eat Nasrullah's turban...

I can't help thinking it's unlikely... Those dogs can only sniff so fast...

Just like me: light, fluffy and soft on the inside...

If he's managed to find inspiration out of this he's a f**king genius!

(Random kid) What's that?
(Reporter) Very expensive!

...At least you don't have a long trek to get to civilisation...

I'm trying to get a 1-on-1 with Condy Rice...

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Travel Review: Dubrovnik, Mostar and Montenegro

Getting there
We flew to Dubrovnik from Luton Airport on ThomsonFly. It cost £190 or so for both of us return, although we did book six months before. ThomsonFly only fly to Dubrovnik over the summer, although easyJet and Ryanair both fly to other Croatian cities, such as Split, Rijeka and Zadar year-round. Cilipi Airport is about half-way between Dubrovnik city and the Montenegro border.

The Hotel
Croatia is full of business-class hotels (with price tags to match) which are well out of most tourists' leagues. The good people of Dubrovnik and other coastal cities have realised this, and have opened up apartments in their own properties. These vary in the number of guest rooms, but the one we stayed in, Apartments Nadramija on Put od Bosanke, has seven apartments of various sizes for guests to stay in. Our double-room apartment (A1) had a perfect view overlooking Dubrovnik's Old Town and harbour, Lokrum island and the cruise liners which pull in and out. As I said in my TripAdvisor review, the only thing you have to worry about is the amount of steps up to the apartments - 192 to the city centre, or 269 down to the beach.

Old Town
The best way to see the Old Town itself is by taking a walk on the city walls (right). It's an amazing way to see the city contained within, the sea and the fortified gates at both ends - expect to spend at least half a day wandering the walls.

In the evening, make sure you head to one of the Buza bars for the perfect sunset view. What makes it so special is the fact they're outside the city walls. They were built during the war, when planning permission was the last of the authority's worries, and have remained since, despite local objection. At both Buzas, the brave dive from the rocks into the sea, and the others watch in amazement. Don't stay here all night though; drink prices were the most expensive we found in the town, at around 35Kn (£3.50/$7) per beer or alcopop, compared to an average of about 20Kn for a beer (£2/$4)

Summer Festival
While we were in Dubrovnik in July 2008, the city was gearing up for the annual Dubrovnik Summer Festival. It started a few days into our trip, with a beautiful fireworks display (left) to mark the start of the 45-day extravaganza. Festival events include open-air opera, choir-singing, acting and plenty of street-art.

East of the Old Town
Banje Beach - the city's main beach - is a rocky beach just outside the Plocé gate, and was always packed when we were there. Half of it is owned by a beachside bar - they've filled it choc-full with beach furniture and parasols, and six four-poster beds, which were quite cool but too expensive unless you're there for the whole day.

Lokrum Island is a large island about four times the size of the Old Town. Taxi-boats shuttle between the island for 40Kn (£5/$10) each until 8pm (Apparently no local will stay on the island after 8pm due to some ridiculous Old Goose tale). It has an abandoned monastery, currently under some reconstruction, a 'dead lake' which is perfect for swimming in, rocky beaches (and a naturist beach), plus - if you're really fit - a lookout tower at the top of a very steep hill with a beautiful view back to Dubrovnik Old Town and down the coast to Montenegro.

Bete's Cave - A small cave about half-way between the city and Hotel Belvedere (see below). The legend goes that Marin Getaldic, a mathemetician and physicist, spent his time here working on hypotheses and theories, making the locals very suspicious of him.

Hotel Belvedere - Walk around the coast, away from the Old Town, down quiet lanes surrounded by fig and cypress trees, and stumble across tiny, private beaches. Continue walking, and you'll come to a rusty gate with the words 'Hotel Belvedere' above them. This once-mighty hotel was completely destroyed during the seige of Dubrovnik, because the tanks firing shells towards the Old Town were based in the scrublands just past the hotel grounds. The gates remain wide open today, and visitors can wander round the 1950s faded glory of this huge hotel complex. See the two now-graffittid swimming pools (right),
outdoor entertainment arena with a backdrop of the Mediterranean sea, Lokrum island and Dubrovnik Old Town, lift shaft with the lift cabin somehow staying up on the top floor of the shaft, kitchens with blackened extractor pipes and utensils still visible, and, looking up although inaccessible, the hotel tower itself, with broken windows, pockmark shell holes, a stuck-in-time exterior clock, and the feeling it's all going to come crashing down around you. Just below the complex is a fairly quiet rocky beach with a bamboo shack cafe and watersports.

Excursions
There are plenty of excursions to go on from Dubrovnik. We had a hire-car throughout, but you can get to Mostar and Montenegro through organised coach excursions - visit the tourist offices in the Old Town.

Mostar - Think Mostar, think the Old Bridge bombed by the Croats in 1995. Well, now it's been rebuilt - the 'new Old Bridge' - and stands proudly among the churches, mosques and still-bombed-out buildings on both sides of the emerald-green Neretva River (left). Watch young divers from the Mostar Diving Club jump off the bridge, explore the Turkish-style gift shops and climb Mosque minarets for the picture-perfect view of the Old Bridge.

Montenegro - This tiny, mountainous country has a long coastline, the largest fjord in Europe (Bay of Kotor), and lots of national parks to explore. We started by making our way up Lovcen Mountain - a very hair-raising drive - and stopping at the top for a well-deserved drink and magnificent view over the fjord. Kotor itself is like a mini-Dubrovnik; a walled city with a harbour and more fish restaurants than you can tease a shark with.

Mljet Island - A popular Adriatic island, a 2-hour boat journey north of Dubrovnik, which contains the tiny St. Mary's Island, St. Mary's Monastery, a delicious sea-food restaurant and excellent opportunities for swimming. It'll take you just 15 minutes or so to walk around the entire St. Mary's island, but make sure you stop off and go for a swim on the east side, where you'll be surrounded on three sides by forest on the opposite shore, and the other side the island itself. Also on Mljet is the National Park, where you can swim in a dead lake at 'Mali Most' (Little Bridge), see traditional Croatian island villages and listen to the sound of cicadas all around you.

Photo Gallery
See more photos in the photo galleries for Dubrovnik, Croatia, Mostar or Montenegro.

The full article
This blog post is just an extract from the full article on my website.

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Reykjavik and Iceland review

20 September 2008 at 12:22

Inspired by Roo Reynolds' recent blog post outlining his experiences at Reykjavik's Airwaves Festival, I thought I'd take the opportunity to finally write my Iceland review for my woefully-lacking Travel Reviews section (Number of entries: 10 / Number completed :1 - this is the second!)

So, the following is an extract from the entire article on my website.

Getting there
We travelled to Reykjavik from Gatwick on British Airways, paying about £200 for both of us for the 3.5-hour flight. Flying over the south-west of Iceland on the approach to the airport, we could see the entire land was covered in crisp, white snow.

Keflavik Airport is 50km away from Iceland's chic capital, Reykjavik. The Flybus, owned by Reykjavik excursions company, costs £16/$32 for a return ticket to the city and back, although you must buy the ticket from the desk or machine in the airport. The Flybus route passes the Blue Lagoon (see below) en-route, so they also offer an option to stop there on the way to, or back from, the city.

The hotel
We stayed in the Metropolitan Hotel on Ranargata. Recent TripAdvisor reviews have been very negative; we had no problems at all with this hotel, they even let us store luggage for free in a back room on the last day because of our late flight home.

First day orientation
The first thing we did was to head to the centre of the city, coming across a frozen Tjornin (large photo, top) with locals ice-skating and walking on the city lake, adjacent to Reykjavik's city hall.

City attractions
Hallgrimskirkja cathedral - A space-rocket look-a-like makes up the city's de-facto cathedral (above left), which you can enter for free and pay to go to the top for beautiful views.

City hall - A modern building overlooking the city lake, with free entrance, free internet, the occasional free music concert, and a large relief map of the city.

Perlan (right) contains 6 circular water-storage tanks, with a visitor's centre, cafe and expensive top-floor restaurant built above. One of the water tanks has been emptied to create a museum on the history of Reykjavik, for a small entrance fee.

Attractions around Reykjavik
There are plenty of excursions companies who take you on trips outside of Reykjavik.

Strokkur (left), which erupts every 5 minutes or so. It's an amazing sight to see.

Thingvellir - A national park near to Geysir and Strokkur which is made up of 'new land' and technically isn't in Iceland - or even in a continent. The national park lies on the fault line between the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates, and the land that makes up the national park is expanding by around 10 meters each year.

Gulfoss - A beautiful three-tiered waterfall, again near to Geysir. You can overlook it from a viewing platform at the top of the waterfall or go right down a steep hill, where you can stand almost on top of it.

These three sights (Geysir/Strokkur, Thingvellir and Gulfoss) can be seen on the famous 'Golden Circle tour', which all excursion companies offer. The tour also takes in some other waterfalls, the Kerid volcano crater, Iceland's so-called 'greenhouse village' and more.

Blue Lagoon - A large swimming pool filled with water that's the by-product of a geothermal power station. It's the wierdest sensation in the world, especially in winter - hotter-than-a-hot-bath water on your body, the cold Icelandic winter wind whipping on your face, and your feet treading on a lime-green sludge. Dotted around the outside are various saunas, cream treatments and more.

Photo gallery
There's more photos in the Reykjavik and Iceland gallery on my website.

The full article
This is an extract only from the full article on my website.

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Today, the BBC costs £0.000824133220101170000 per hour.

15 September 2008 at 01:42

A reminder, should it be required, that I am - as always - speaking personally, and the words I express here may not reflect the views or opinions of my employers.

TV Licence critics always have two themes in their arguments. Take the first two lines from this post on the MoneySavingExpert forums discussing Noel Edmonds' refusal to pay his TV licence:

"Watched Noel Edmunds [sic] interview earlier today, and it gets me thinking! Do I really care if there are adverts between programs [sic]?"

Edmonds' gripe isn't necessarily about the cost of the licence fee, but of the 'scare tactics' used to advertise enforcement techniques. However, there are plenty of others complaining about the 'high cost' or 'low value' of the fee - and these almost always follow the themes of "Television" and "Adverts".

"Television"
The "Television" argument goes along the lines of "Why should I pay £139.50 per year for EastEnders and endless reality shows which I never watch?". My own non-scientific study of programmes across the 4 main terrestrial channels for today (15th September 2008) shows that the BBC showed more news/current affairs, sport, children's and game shows than ITV1 and Channel 4 combined:

While it's true that, looking at single channel figures, both BBC1 and BBC2 showed more programmes which I categorised as "Reality/Property/Food" than either of its commercial rivals, the type of programmes differed: BBC programmes in this category includes Antiques Roadshow and What To Eat Now, while on the commercial side it includes Jeremy Kyle and Come Dine With Me. Of course, this is non-scientific, and to get a true idea of the scales, this should be done over an entire 7 days of programming... anyone want to volunteer? ;)

>> See the full figures (Excel document)

Either way, the figures show that the BBC shows a lot more varied programming across the day - exactly as its charter says it should. The licence fee is non-discriminatory; students, widows, parents, the unemployed all have to pay the fee - and they have the right to expect programming which is of interest to them. For this reason, the argument to scrap all but BBC1 and Radio 4 is non-sensical.

Another variation on the "Television" theme is getting into the trap of linking the "TV licence" explicitly with what comes out of the box in the corner of the lounge. Admittedly, this is partly the fault of the name - but the licence funds the whole of the BBC, not just television.

Radio, the website, television, engineering, archives, staff and pensions, buildings and property, insurance, travel - it all comes out of the licence funds. So when I hear people shouting "I don't watch anything on BBC television!" I get annoyed - do they really never look at bbc.co.uk, never listen to any of the 10 national, 6 regional or 40 local BBC local radio stations, have the travel RDS function turned off in their car, never read a BBC magazine, never watch archive programmes on UKTV or other non-BBC digital tv channels, never use iPlayer?

Well, they do:

"Well I was about to agree that I don't watch much on BBC, then I realised Strictly come dancing starts next week, and the spin off it Takes Two, both of which I watch avidly. And I also watch Newsnight and liten [sic] to 5live."

In fact, even including the soon-to-be-launched BBC Alba in Scotland, BBC network and digital television accounts for 153 hours of programming every day, while network, digital and regional radio overshadow that amount at 310.75 hours a day - and that's excluding the 40 local radio stations.

So, how much is the licence fee really worth? £139.50 a year, £11.63 a month, 38p per day, and - excluding local radio, bbc.co.uk, the iPlayer, interactive tv and the countless other services provided by the BBC, your licence fee is worth £0.000824133220101170000 per hour of network/digital programming produced. Still seem expensive?

>> See the full figures (Excel document)

"Adverts"
The second argument is the "Adverts" theme. They say that the only draw-back to not having to pay the licence fee is that the BBC would have a few advert breaks for every hour of programming. It may be that simple from the listener and viewers' point of view, but not from the industry's viewpoint.

If advertising were to start on the BBC programming, two things would happen.

The first would be that many, many smaller - and some larger - tv and radio channels would close down pretty much overnight. More advertising opportunities doesn't mean more advertising revenue. If your company wants to advertise, they don't have the money for two advertising campaigns, so they choose the one with the better impact. Following this logic, a company advertise wouldn't advertise on Local Station Y when they could advertise on BBC Station Z instead, with a larger audience and stronger brand association. Community radio stations would be gone, niche digital tv channels would disappear, and even mammoths like ITV would suffer with the same amount of advertising revenue potentially being moved to its competitors.

The second thing is that impartiality would decrease. We can argue until the dinosaurs come home about how impartial the BBC is - but the fact remains that, if Ryanair is paying you to make them look good through them advertising with you, do you cover the story of 3 recent Ryanair incidents in the last three weeks in your news? Is this why ITV news didn't cover the story of Barclays pulling out of talks to buy Lehman Brothers on Sunday evening?

Conclusion
Of course, the BBC is not perfect, and I know that a little blog like mine is not going to encourage thousands of licence-fee haters to suddenly realise the value of having good-quality, public-funded, public-service broadcasting. The BBC needs to do more shouting about how good it is - it started a few years ago with the "This Is What We Do" trailer campaign.

The films showed what it takes to get programming on-the-air, and - I believe - went some way to encouraging people to think of the bigger picture - news programmes don't just consist of what we see on-screen: a presenter and a few reporters. It requires camera operators, teams of journalists phone-bashing behind-the-scenes, producers writing scripts, engineers operating and maintaining studios, weather screens, microphones, satellite links... the list goes on.

But imagine a world where public-funded broadcasting in the UK didn't exist. ITV have already pulled all children's programming, as evidenced by the big fat 0 in the figures above. They are trying to lobby OFCOM to release them further from other public-service comittments, particularly news.

With the BBC broken up, what would happen to the BBC's 50+ national, regional and local radio stations? Who would be willing to finance a 24-hour news radio station to replace 5Live? Indeed, would anyone step in to launch a 24-hours news channel, or would we be left with the sole 24h news provider being Sky News - which isn't even broadcast on Virgin Media?

Now may be time to re-think the BBC's priorities and to re-assess the licence fee. But getting rid of all altogether or making it voluntary just isn't an option.

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All change - already?

09 September 2008 at 09:04

Click the image above, and you'll see a screen-shot of the Transport for London website, in particular real-time running information from 0830 this morning for the Hammersmith and City Line.

It's interesting to note that there is a signal failure at a station that hasn't even opened yet!

Is this a sign of things to come? I hope not - the opening of Wood Lane means I only have to get one Tube line round to work, instead of having to change at hellishly-busy Oxford Circus station or getting the hellishly-slow Circle Line!

There's a good history of Wood Lane station for London Underground buffs like me over at Annie's excellent Underground History site.

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The great GTS Pips merry-go-round

04 September 2008 at 15:14

If you were listening to the World Service yesterday, you would have heard the top-of-hour GTS 'pips' as usual. Except, behind the scenes, there was a great big merry-go-round of GTS pips travelling around London.

Bush House (home of the World Service) lost their audio feed of the pips at around 5am. So, their control room asked the Broadcasting House control room - 1.5 miles away - to route their feed of the pips on a 'bunker line' which runs underground between BH and Television Centre - 4.5 miles apart.

We in Radio News - the only department which has fixed audio lines running to Bush - were then asked to route this bunker line on a Traffic line back to Bush control room - 5 miles away.

All this on a networked computer system which is at breaking point and is just about being held together - with selotape and some strong willpower - and which had crashed twice that very night.

Which brings me onto the fantastic in-house engineers we have at BBC News, who, unlike some departments which have been outsourced, still work 24-hours and still attend to call-outs within a matter of minutes and not days. However, the scale of the cutbacks across the BBC have hit them, and from next month the plan is for News to have a very basic engineering cover during the night, based not at Television Centre (where the whole of News is based) but at Broadcasting House.

They will, apparently, be able to control some systems remotely from central London, so will still be able to fix the majority of minor faults; however they only have one line to do this, which means attending to only one problem at a time - and relying on that one line not to have any problems in the first place.

Then, from early next year, the weekends will switch to this system of working too.

So, if there's a server crash or other big problem during the night or at weekends, the engineers will have to get a taxi over to W12, presumably at quite a price it being at ridiculous-o-clock and ordered at short-notice - negating any possible cost savings as a result of the cutback. It also means that any major faults - black-outs or big technical problems with the BBC News Channel or Radio 5Live, for example - will take longer to sort out while the people who know how to fix it travel across London.

Well, it makes sense to me...

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