Gadget podcast and video channels

08Mar

Absolute Radio’s available on more platforms than any other radio station – but if it all gets confusing as to ‘where you can listen, how you listen and what you get – then fear not, we’ve been making some handy ‘how to…’ videos although sadly there’s no Gaz Top and Fred Dineage!

Surprisingly to some, videos like this are really popular – so there’s a brand new youtube channel and also a technology podcast channel on iTunes. By creating these separate channels, we’re not diluting all of the presenter, interview or session videos on our existing channels and providing bespoke content for those who want it, all in one place.

You can subscribe to the OGSLabs account on Youtube. So – what do you get? Well, lots of stuff about how Absolute Radio is available on the O2 Joggler, the Apple iPad emulator and the Amazon Kindle. If you want this stuff as a podcast, then you can subscribe via iTunes .

We’ll be updating both of the channels as we become available on more platforms and as those clever chaps in OGS Labs develop more clever stuff for us to play with. If you write a technical or gadget blog you can embed the videos and share them!

Categories: Technology podcasts 0

Posted by carrie on March 8, 2010

Jonathan Jacobs, Absolute Radio’s new Marketing Executive

08Mar

 

Jonathan Jacobs is joining Absolute Radio today as our new Marketing Executive.

Jonathan joins from Juice FM in Liverpool where he was Sponsorship, Promotions and Interactive Exec doing everything from everything from picking up 4 industry radio awards, organising 3 huge award shows, working backstage at the European MTV Awards, launching 2 Breakfast shows and even dressing up as a half naked “Superlambbanana” (see: superlambbanana.com) running around the streets of Liverpool City Centre!

Jonathan went to Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts to study BA (Hons) Music, Theatre and Entertainment Management. He was the President and Entertainments Manager of Student Union and also ended up with a first class degree plus the Paul McCartney Human Spirit award (the top school prize voted for by students and staff to someone who represents the spirit of LIPA!)

With hobbies including music, theatre, the internet and nights out there’s no doubt he’ll have a lot of common with everyone here.

Follow Jonathan on Twitter: http://twitter.com/jonathanjacob

Categories: People absolute marketing 1

Posted by rhiannon on March 8, 2010

Get A Life(stream) by Martyn Lee

07Mar

One of the impressive things about working here is the confidence you have to ask for something which makes us better, even if you know it’s going to dump a load of work on someone and cause the boss to open his wallet.

Which is exactly what happened late last year and, after an incredibly short gestation period, our baby is finally born.

The feeling on the breakfast show was that we hadn’t loved our website enough. It wasn’t for the lack of content – the four of us (OC plus three producers) cough up daily and weekly podcasts, each with custom content alongside ‘best of’ audio, a weekly vodcast of content exclusive for online (the stuff we can’t format into breakfast friendly portions really), along with extended videos of every interview we do via custom branded iTunes and YouTube channels.

Add to that daily blogs with pictures, audio and video of memorable stuff from each show, and that we tailor that to relevant social media rather than lazily shoving it out from ping.fm

No, the problem was that all of this grew over time and sprawled across the web with little reason to visit our ‘official’ page. Listeners were increasingly interacting with us and we’d spend all day checking the various platforms.

We wanted a way to bring all that content together to have a conversation with our listeners 24/7 from one point.

We wanted to combine both updates from the show along with listener messages, comments and tweets, both in response to Christian but also each other.

And we wanted to emphasise the sense of community that being a fan brings, rather than just being a radio show that you could interact with for four hours a day.

Which is exactly what the online team have created with the new breakfast show website. It has met all our dreams and much more.  They’ve even given it a name that sounds like we knew what we were doing all along…’The Lifestream‘.

Categories: absolute 0

Posted by dan on March 7, 2010

Live streaming preroll support for all browsers by Simon Ngo

05Mar

If you listen to us through our online player and use a browser other than Internet Explorer, you may have noticed we’ve just introduced an audio preroll to the start of each stream.

So why have we decided to do this? Previously we only streamed a preroll to Internet Explorer users. However, according to our stats, Internet Explorer now accounts for 63% of our website listening – down from 73% the previous year. With the increased usage of other browsers such as Firefox, Safari and Chrome, we thought this was a great way of extending our reach.

Browser visits to www.absoluteradio.co.uk

 

So how does this work? We’ve developed a system that allows any of our content team to simply attach a new preroll to any MP3 and Windows Media live audio stream. It even gives us the flexibility to schedule different prerolls during different shows. So perhaps you’ll hear a ‘Who’s Calling Christian’ preroll during the breakfast show and a different message at other times. Clever eh?

So next time you’re listening to us via our website, keep your ears peeled for our prerolls!

Categories: Technology 2

Posted by paul on March 5, 2010

Absolute Radio iAmp now on the HTC Tattoo

04Mar

The Absolute Radio iAmp has been available for Android smart phones for a while now – but we’ve taken the chance to update it and make sure it’s available on all of the latest handsets powered by the Google operating system, including the HTC Tattoo.

Because the Tattoo has a smaller screen size, any applications need to be QVGA approved before you can find and download them, which required some development work, but now that it has been completed and tested, you can find the new version of the Absolute Radio iAmp for Android in the Android Market via your phone right now.

We also took the chance to upgrade the functionality by including background streaming, so you can enjoy Absolute Radio, Absolute 80s, Absolute Classic Rock and dabbl while you surf the web, check your emails, or anything else you fancy doing with your phone.

Check out the demonstrations below of the Absolute Radio iAmp for Android on the HTC Tattoo (And also on the Google Nexus One).

Check out all the ways to listen to Absolute Radio on your mobile, including Android, Nokia, BlackBerry and the iPhone.

Categories: Technology 1

Posted by dan on March 4, 2010