So the news I got this morning was, on a personal level, quite disappointing. The slideshows we had prepared for a few radio stations didn’t work on the demo models of the rather lovely Pure Sensia that was released today. It eventually came down to connectivity issues that only seemed to happen inside the venue where the event took place — and the detail of that certainly isn’t what this blog post is for.
From what I’ve seen and heard over the past 24 hours, the Sensia is a great little bit of kit whose touch-sensitive glass screen I am very much looking forward to grubbying with my fingers. It’s pretty much the first device that takes advantage of the fact that there’s a web connection in most of the places in which it’ll be used, and then uses that to provide more than just additional web-only stations. The important bit is the support for RadioVIS, which I’ve written a bit about before. As my boss Matt points out, it’s something we expect to have on our devices.
It opens up a whole new range of ways for stations to interact with listeners, and provide additional content to supplement what’s on air and engage listeners. For instance, if you’ve got a radio on your desk and you know that Capital FM broadcasts the status of tube lines (which it does), then you might just wait a little bit to see that come around. Who knows, if you’re not a regular listener then you may well hear something to convince you otherwise. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, with many of us (including the firm I work for, Folder Media) coming up with all sorts of interesting things to serve up to the masses.
As someone who is very much a newcomer to the entire industry, Ben sums up the atmosphere surrounding the whole project very well in his comment on Matt’s post. It’s fantastic to be able co-operate with teams who are essentially competitors, and in a friendly and constructive way. My thanks go out especially to Andy, Ben and the Global team, as well as Matt and David who I work with directly, and Colin and Matt at Pure – here’s to more of the same in the future.
Photo courtesy of James Cridland. Thanks to him too.