Olinda

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Nothing about Macca's first wife. Instead, via Gizmodo, this story about the BBC's big new idea - a DAB radio with social networking:

The Beeb is on a roll these days, shedding its frumpy national broadcaster disguise for a schizophrenic alter-ego that’s sitting at the forefront of interactive TV development.

With iPlayer continuing to shock with its popularity and freaking out the nation’s ISPs, the broadcaster has just announced that it's commissioned a new DAB radio that adds social networking functionality.

The Olinda prototype, design by Schulze & Webb, will let you see when your friends are online and what they’re listening to. It will also boast some customisable, ‘snap-on/snap-off’, hardware modules that would allow listeners to make VoIP calls via Skype from the radio to their friends and even capture and send audio clips to their social networking profiles. The Beeb says:

'Olinda has six lights that show when a close friend is listening to the radio, using Wi-Fi and Radio Pop, a prototype BBC website for sharing ‘now listening’ information. Each light is a button: you can tune in to listen along with them, discovering new stations via your social network.’

Jack Schulze, Director, Schulze & Webb Ltd, says:

“When products are easy for everyone to customise, like home DIY and adding apps to your Facebook page, that’s called ‘adaptive design,’ and there’s growing demand for it. Olinda’s hardware interface lets any person or company sell or share new modules to upgrade Olinda like Lego. I’d like to see adaptability in more and more consumer products.”

Olinda will also ‘learn’ your listening habits - you closet Archers lover you – sporting a double tuning dial: one for tuning stations alphabetically and the other that tunes into your most listened to stations.

Sadly, the BBC will not be making this commercially but will be making “these ideas, concepts and novel solutions free for any manufacturer to use under a simple license”. So, who’ll be first then?-Martin Lynch

[Olinda]

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