Frankie Roberto's dashboard

Frankie Roberto started a conversation in BBC on September 16, 2008 15:32:

I love radio pop because...

I just wanted to say how much I like Radio Pop! It's great to be able to track what stations I've been listening to, and the 'pop' moments. It'd be even greater once I've got more of my friends using it!

Good work, I love it!

Frankie Roberto shared an idea in BBC on September 16, 2008 15:30:

Show 'currently playing' info within the popup player

It'd be really great if you could show the name and link for the current 'show' (programme) within the popup player.

For bonus points, it'd be great to have the name of the currently playing song (for music stations), with a link to the song (or artist) on /music.

A comment on the idea "Make the search default to 'BBC News & Sport', NOT 'All of the BBC'." in BBC:

True enough! :) – Frankie Roberto, on September 08, 2008 08:11

Frankie Roberto shared an idea in Dopplr on September 08, 2008 08:09:

Supporting daily commutes

I travel daily between two cities (Manchester and Sheffield) as a commute. It'd be nice if there was a way of easily reflecting this in Dopplr. I can't be the only person who commutes between cities/big towns.

Frankie Roberto replied on September 01, 2008 09:10 to the idea "Episodes list pages" in BBC:

Good point, but then this would be a good example of where users could help manually re-arrange the episodes into the correct order. Wouldn't be too difficult (especially as many of them have 'episode X' in the title).

Surely the goal of having a page listing series and then episodes, in order, is so obvious and worthwhile that it's worth a bit of effort?

Frankie Roberto replied on September 01, 2008 09:07 to the idea "Import historial programmes from the Infax database" in BBC:

How about the credits and 'appearances'? That was pretty interesting metadata on the old catalogue site.

Frankie Roberto replied on September 01, 2008 09:06 to the idea "Allow users to suggest edits and corrections to the data" in BBC:

Sounds good. I think that allowing user input is the first step on the path towards making the /programmes pages truly valuable.

And I think there's definite scope for passionate fans, regular listeners, etc to enhance the pages by adding things like the names of guests (on radio shows), related links, credits (often absent), etc. Especially when old programmes from the Infax database get imported... (see http://getsatisfaction.com/bbc/topics...)

A comment on the question "Search!" in BBC:

Done: http://getsatisfaction.com/bbc/topics... – Frankie Roberto, on September 01, 2008 09:02

Frankie Roberto shared an idea in BBC on September 01, 2008 09:01:

Make the search default to 'BBC News & Sport', NOT 'All of the BBC'.

The search box on the BBC News website should default to searching news, not random BBC stuff.

I'm sure this is how most users expect it to behave already!

Frankie Roberto replied on September 01, 2008 08:56 to the question "Search!" in BBC:

P.S The other place that scoped search REALLY needs to happen is on the BBC News website - where the search box searches all of bbc.co.uk and then you have to select 'news' after. Sooo frustrating, I might have to post that as a separate request...

A comment on the question "Search!" in BBC:

Yep. Scoped search can be problematic if it doesn't match the user's expectations (as Michael mentioned above), but I think in cases like /programmes and /iplayer, there's a clear user need and expectation for them.

See Jakob Nielson on scoped search: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/2001051... – Frankie Roberto, on September 01, 2008 08:53

Frankie Roberto marked one of James Cridland's replies in BBC as useful. James Cridland replied to the question "Search!".

Frankie Roberto replied on August 05, 2008 23:12 to the question "Search!" in BBC:

I agree that contextual search (or having 2 search boxes) can both be confusing, and that this is hard thing to get right (having seen some user testing in the area myself). Adding extra options to search boxes (search 'all' or 'programmes') just makes it even more confusing.

Ultimately you need one search box, and then to somehow return exactly what the user was looking for. Perhaps this means adding biases so that programmes show up slightly higher when searching from /programmes, or perhaps it just means making the search work damn well and using a combination of previous popular searches and editorial picks to make sure that the right results come up first.

Good luck!

Frankie Roberto replied on August 04, 2008 14:54 to the question "Search!" in BBC:

I agree - there should definitely be a /programmes search (which searches the actual database, not the webpages).

The /food portal has a 'recipe search' after all, which seems similar to this problem:

Frankie Roberto started following the question "Search!" in BBC.

Frankie Roberto started following the problem "Show duplication" in BBC.

A comment on the problem "Missing playlist data" in BBC:

Ah, I did wonder how you were dealing with the many releases problem.
Last.fm seem to deal with it purely by string uniqueness (eg http://www.last.fm/music/The+Beatles/... is listed as appearing on many albums). However I think they are working on something cunning to weed out spelling mistakes and find similar tracks... – Frankie Roberto, on July 31, 2008 10:31

A comment on the problem "Missing playlist data" in BBC:

Interesting! Hope Patrick/Nick blogs about that at some point.

I'll be interested to see how the system copes with the BBC archive session tracks that 6music often plays (eg from the John Peel sessions). It'd be great if they all had MusicBrainz identifiers too, as some of them are pretty culturally significant, so the data should be released out there! – Frankie Roberto, on July 30, 2008 19:23

Frankie Roberto replied on July 30, 2008 19:18 to the idea "Add 'played at' time to playlists" in BBC:

Rights reasons? What an arse. When did this kick in? Adam and Joe's show from 21st June has played at times, but shows after that don't seem to.

I'd be interested to know why the rights companies are against this feature (having had to try and deal with them in the past). I'm guessing it's to stop people from fastforwarding to that minute of the show in your new Flash-based radio-on-demand player to listen to the track. All the same, surely the most common use for the tracklistings is to help people locate the names and artists of tracks they heard on the radio - which is surely good for record sales...

Incidentally, I just remembered your last.fm feeds, which do reveal the exact play time (see 6music tracklisting). But I won't tell PPL and PRS if you won't... :)

P.S Thanks for correcting me on this being a /programmes issue rather than /music/beta. Have removed the relevant link. Though the boundaries do blur (in a wonderful way).

Frankie Roberto shared an idea in BBC on July 30, 2008 17:29:

Add 'played at' time to playlists

The tracklisting feature is great. However could also also add the time that the track was played at (surely this data must be saved?). This'd be more useful than the order number given at the moment, as you're more likely to have remembered listening to a track at a rough time.