Tim is speaking at an event to launch a new "open source and collaberative" TV documentary series Digital Revolution.

Photo from Bill Thompson on Twitpic.

Photo from Dan Biddle.

There's some activity on twitter right now. And there'll be more from the event on the Digital Revolution blog soon. Here's the press release, Rory Cellan Jones' blog post and a story from BBC News . Plus we hope to have a blog post about the series on the Internet blog next week.

Nick Reynolds is editor, Social Media, Central Editorial Team, BBC Online

As a follow-up to Stephen Elson's introductory post, I'd like to go over some of the technical features and reasons for Glow.

Like many developers, English is my second language but I don't yet have a first. The BBC can't afford me a ghostwriter so we're all going to have to suffer my terrible grammar.

What is Glow?

Glow aims to make working with JavaScript and the DOM easier by providing shortcuts for common functions while ironing out the differences between browsers.

Browsers are the #1 cause of gentle sobbing and even screaming in a web developer's life. From that, I guess you could say Glow's goal is to "minimise screaming and sobbing".

I'm sure you're already aware that Glow isn't the first JavaScript library to do this, which begs the question...

Why did the BBC build Glow?

Glow isn't the BBC's first JavaScript library, although it is the first to get an open source release.

Before Glow there was a library called JSTools, and before that was EOLTools. To give you a rough timescale, EOLTools had code to differentiate between Internet Explorer 3 and Netscape Navigator 3, code which I only became aware of when it started politely suggesting Safari 3 users upgrade to IE3 on an ancient BBC page.

JSTools was showing its age and needed replacing. Plans were in motion to bring our page templates kicking and screaming into a "standards mode" doctype. Then, Netscape Navigator 4 fell off our level 2 browser support list, which was a major blocker to making a 'modern' JavaScript library.

Why not use an existing library?

At the time we were considering this question, there were a range of excellent open source JavaScript libraries available, the most popular (with BBC developers at least) being jQuery. In fact, the first version of the current style BBC homepage design used jQuery, as Glow was still in the early development stages. However, no existing libraries met our standards of browser support and accessibility.

At the time we were still fully supporting IE5.5 and Safari 1.3, among others, and we continue to support Safari 2. On top of this, we have to actively avoid errors in our "Level 2" browsers, which still includes IE5. IE5 for instance will throw an unpleasant parsing error if it encounters a non-greedy quantifier in a regular expression.

The BBC's support standards are based on usage stats and the upgrade paths available to users of particular browsers. For instance, while we had a significant number of users on Safari 1.3 we refrained from asking them to upgrade to Safari 2, as that would be asking OSX 10.3 users to pay for 10.4 or later. Asking them to switch to Firefox 2 would have been biased, and providing a list of all alternatives would have been confusing and unhelpful. Considering all this, it was clear we couldn't just use an off-the-shelf solution.

Forking an existing library to add the necessary browser support was an option, but that would still mean actively developing a library, and as the original library moved forward we'd be left maintaining code no longer supported by the original library.

As parts of many BBC pages are independently developed and controlled, we needed a library that could sit alongside other potentially incompatible versions without namespace collisions or CSS styles clashing (as in, CSS rules intended for Glow 1.5 widgets must not affect 1.6 widgets).

Should I stop using my favourite JavaScript library in favour of Glow?

Glow was created because we have requirements that most people don't. It goes without saying that if everyone had similar requirements to the BBC, other JavaScript libraries would meet them.

Glow won't be able to make use of technologies in newer browsers unless they can be at least emulated in all the browsers the BBC needs to support. Other libraries will be able to drive forward new & exciting technologies, whereas Glow will be there for those who can't adopt those technologies for browser support and accessibility reasons.

We don't expect or want to steal users from existing libraries, but provide a library for those in a similar situation to the BBC.

What does Glow do?

Please explore Glow's demos and documentation for full details. However, here's a quick run-down of the core features:

DOM manipulation

The backbone of Glow is our DOM module, which allows you easily gather and manipulate parts of a page. For example, if you wanted to add "link:" to the start of all links:

glow.dom.get("a").prepend("Link: ");

If you're familiar with other JavaScript libraries you'll recognise this 'NodeList' pattern. In fact, you may want to map glow.dom.get to a shorter variable for familiarity, such as:

var $ = glow.dom.get;

NodeList documentation

Events

The events system allows you to nominate a function to call when a particular event occurs. The interface to listen for events is identical between DOM nodes and other objects

glow.events.addListener("#myLink", "click", function(event) {
    alert("ow!");
});

var myBall = new Ball();

glow.events.addListener(myBall, "bounce", function(event) {

    alert("boing!");

});

The above assumed Ball is a user-created constructor, and at some point it contains...

glow.events.fire(this, "bounce");

Events documentation

Animation

Animations in JavaScript can be a major source of screaming and sobbing, but Glow provides methods to make it simple.

To slide an element away over 3 seconds:

glow.anim.slideUp("#myDiv", 3);

You can also, animate most CSS properties. To animate a background colour to red over 2 seconds:

var myAnim = glow.anim.css("#myDiv", 2, {
	"background-color": "red"
}).start();

Animation documentation

Widgets

Whereas the previous features are building blocks, widgets are more 'out of the box' user interface components which can be easily styled to fit your site. These include (but are not limited to):

• AutoSuggest - A dropdown list of 'suggestions' that appear when the user types in an input element. Used on Glow's API quick reference
• Carousel - Scrollable list of items
• Panel - An overlaid dialog which can be modal / modeless. This is used on many BBC pages as light boxes or modal dialogs.
• Slider - Form control for setting a numerical value within a range
• Timetable - A scrollable display of items positioned by time & duration

What's next?

Glow was developed as an internal library for the BBC, and parts of Glow 1.5 may reflect that. But work now begins on Glow 2.0. Our priorities are:

Performance

Many Glow modules were created while we were still fully supporting Safari 1.3 and IE5. Development became a balance between slowing faster browsers down with lowest-common-denominator code, and increasing file size by forking code so newer browsers got a speed benefit while maintaining compatibility with older browsers.

As we've since waved goodbye to some of those browsers, we can remove those forks and start getting the most out of our current support list.

File size & structure

Glow + widgets + CSS file currently weighs in at ~60k, which is comparable to other libraries. However, for the majority of development we were unable to use gzip due to an obscure IE bug that was menacing our stats (another blog post perhaps?). As a result, some code was written to get the most out of YUI Compressor, perhaps at the expense of YUI Compressor + gzip.

Expanding existing features

Glow 1.x was about building a set of modules and widgets, now we have the opportunity to go back and improve features on existing modules.

For instance, our CSS selector support is relatively simple and needs expanding. Glow 2.0 would deal with that, and yes, we're considering adopting a library dedicated to CSS selectors to do this.

Improving stability on non-BBC pages

Glow has been (so far) developed with the BBC's page templates in mind, and some modules may have issues outside of them.
For instance, the Sortable widget was developed for the BBC homepage and hasn't been thoroughly tested outside of that.

Comprehensive accessibility testing

Accessibility testing is difficult as assistive technology usage stats are unreliable, usually being based on sales figures rather than actual use. However, we intend to create an accessibility support list similar to our browser support list and improve testing strategies.

Want to get involved?

Download Glow, try it, and let us know what you think:

• Download Glow
• Glow API Documentation
• View / download Glow source code
• Contribute to Glow

Once Glow 2.0 is released we'll be looking to introduce new features and widgets, so we're eager to hear what you'd like those to be!

Jake Archibald is Senior Client Side Developer, Apps Team, Vision, BBC FM&T.

I'm sorry about the viewing problems with the Michael Jackson Tribute. Like Krayzee, I also set my Sky + to record and got home to find that it had been knocked out by thunder, leaving me with a blue screen and just the sound coming through, so I share the frustration. But the event organisers were at least kind enough to finish in time for Torchwood though I had some anxious moments at around 8.15.

It looks unfortunately as if there are no worldwide rights to a repeat showing - so I'm sorry since we'd have liked to have done so, but if things change I'll bring you an update.

Danielle Nagler is Head of BBCHD, BBC Vision

In his round up, Steve mentioned some of the open source software that the BBC has created such as Kamaelia and Glow. At the time Glow was not actually available outside the BBC, but we are happy to announce that Glow is now released under the Apache 2.0 licence.

That's all very well you may say, but what on earth is Glow?

Glow is a JavaScript library used extensively across BBC Online, and now available for anyone to download and use on their own sites.

Put simply, Glow allows web developers to easily manipulate web pages, create animations and add sophisticated "widgets" to their pages. The library has a comprehensive and easily navigated set of documentation.

We started using Glow on bbc.co.uk in late 2007, and since the start have always intended to release it for wider use. It's taken a little while to get there, but we are very excited to be in this position today. The BBC and open source software have a long history; much of bbc.co.uk is powered by such software, and amongst other things we have released various CPAN modules, Apache modules, and even state of the art video codecs.

Of course, there are many excellent JavaScript libraries available already, many of which are open source themselves, so you may ask why we chose not to adopt one of these? The simple answer can be found in our Browser Support Standards. These standards define the levels of support for the various browsers and devices used to access bbc.co.uk: some JavaScript libraries may conform to these standards, but many do not, and those that do may change their policies in the future. Given this fact, we decided that the only way to ensure a consistent experience for our audiences was to develop a library specifically designed to meet these standards. A more in depth look at this question is available on the Glow website.

If you want to find out more, we recommend you have a look at the Glow website, and if you are of a technical persuasion perhaps even download the library it and have a play. Whatever you think, we welcome your feedback.

Stephen Elson is Lead Product Manager, Glow, BBC Vision

OK so here's the thing. We're a disparate bunch really.

Despite the hopefully seamless front end presented to radio listeners and the online community as 'Radio 4', in reality our content is generated all over the place: news from TV Centre, continuity from Broadcasting House, factual programmes from BH as well as Bristol, Birmingham and Manchester, OBs from all over etc etc.

And then there are the internal BBC structures - the interactive team sits within Audio and Music (A&M) division (as do the radio networks) but our technology partner is Siemens and our technical support - including for this blog - is from our Future Media and Technology (FM&T) division.

My role as Operations Manager for A&M Factual is to manage the technical resources for our in-house factual radio production base. We are around 300 350 in number and our core teams provide programmes like Any Questions, 9am discussion programmes, Womans Hour, You and Yours, Food Programme, Front Row, Material World, Saturday Live, documentaries and many many more for Radio 4 in addition to factual output on R2, R3 and World Service.

I look after a team of fifteen studio managers (sound engineers) and dedicated recording facilities - studios, workshops and the bizarrely named 'woffices' - and endeavour to enable any project envisaged to make it to air by hook or by crook.

Radio is our world. Until relatively recently producing content for it was a pretty linear operation: for pre-recorded programmes: gather raw material, edit it, script around it, record script, mix together, give a final stir and voila....

and for live programmes: compile pre-recorded content, book live guests and facilities, build a running order, gather like minds together in a studio and broadcast at allotted time with a few tweaks to accommodate topical events or unforeseen problems.

Now though we have listen again multi platform interactive on demand podcast appetites to consider and things are getting pretty crazy. The beast needs feeding.

And then I hear they want to try putting us on telly. Well in radio we're quite an unkempt bunch by comparison with our glamorous TV counterparts and we imagine that we generate beautiful, intellectually challenging mind pictures which are far superior to anything a screen has to offer. And our presenters sometimes don't even comb their hair or wear trousers.

Radio 4 have chosen Material World as their guinea pig and since it's 'one of mine' I intend to do all I can to facilitate things here. I meet with Ilika Copeland (exec producer of the trial for A&M Interactive across all the networks) and Chris Price from DV Solutions who will be providing all the stuff we need but don't have: cameras, lights, action (actually we have plenty of the latter but draw the line at car chases as they distract the studio guests). On the radio side we are joined by Richard Courtice - all-round technical guru for Radio 4. All people I can definitely do business with - they undoubtedly know their onions.

We look at the studio that Material World transmits from each week. As luck would have it is a rather unique arrangement of a single large studio with a control room either end. This is fortunate since we conclude that fitting the personnel and equipment for visualisation into the control room being used by the radio production team is not really feasible. However we establish that as long as we can hear 'open talkback' from the Material World production team then no other direct communications are needed so the visualisation team can set up at the far end as below:

Picture left: An Anycast vision mixer and flash-encoding PC

Of course since Material world only transmits for 28 minutes each week I have to make sure that other users of the studio across the week are not inconvenienced by the cameras, lights and cables so we have a lengthy dialogue about tripods, light fixings, ceiling tiles and chairs. Also what colour microphone cables look best (answer: black) -but I know my team prefer them coloured so they can quickly see which is which so this is all highly controversial. You should have been there - it was a blast. But at least it'll all stay put once set up for the six weeks of the trail.

And then we hear it won't. The cameras and lights are needed back each week so we now have to find studio time and personnel to rig and de-rig each week and make arrangements to courier the kit to and from TV Centre every Thursday and Friday.

Next up the thorny matter of a date for the first live visualisation. After much to-ing and fro-ing we settle on June 25 so I have to find time to schedule a technical rehearsal. We choose the preceding Wednesday and mock up the programme using nearby 'stooges' in place of Quentin Cooper and guests.

The day of TX arrives and I try to show moral support to the vis team by being around as they set up and for any last-minute trouble-shooting. I have to say my contribution was minimal since they all appear to very much know what they're doing. Fascinating to me though as it's all new.

I leave them to it for the programme, as extra 'bodies' are unhelpful and return to my desk in anticipation of the ultimate visual experience.

It starts. And good lord isn't that Quentin in all his glory ..looking remarkably smart - and some stills - and some errant monkey footage - and some listener blogs - and some 'coming ups'.

A discussion about dinosaurs ensues and Quentin performs his master stroke. He places a rubber model of T-Rex on the table beside him. Looks glorious in shot. Though now I think about it it's quite funny that T-Rex's gaping jaws are just big enough to span Quentin's head.

Yes the beast needs feeding. I shall have to say something.

Dare I 'contact the studio'? Pause. Yes - 'tony from london' - that'll do it.

'I can see that T-Rex finds Quentin's head quite a tasty proposition'.

Oh I do amuse myself.

Then... nothing.

Other comments far less witty than mine appear. Then the audience correspondence is taken off the screen. Quentin's thanking his guests and trailing next week's programme. Fifteen seconds to go. All in vain. Then suddenly 'tony from london' bursts into view in all its glory.

I'm published. I've always wanted to say that.

It's quite good this visualisation lark. Yes I think I'm a convert. Feed the beast.

Tony Ward is Operations Manager, BBC Audio & Music, Factual

I want to bring you news hot off the press that BBC HD will be carrying the Michael Jackson Memorial live from LA tonight.

We'll be starting at 6pm, and will aim to stay with it till the close (expected at 7.30, but it feels like one of those things that could extend some way beyond that). High emotion, great music, and tributes from those who knew and were inspired by him. Do watch, and set your recorder if you can't get to your TV in time.

We will try to show it again over the weekend, but it is likely to be one of those moments you just want to be part of when they happen. Apologies too - I took the view it was worth displacing Doctors, but can promise a double bill tomorrow to compensate.

Danielle Nagler is Head of BBC HD, BBC Vision

If only you could send them a link that took them directly to the exact moment in the programme...

Well, now you can, thanks to a BBC iPlayer feature we recently introduced which allows you to create links that jump directly to any time within a programme.

For example, I loved Steve Hughes in Michael McIntyre's brilliant Comedy Roadshow - see him here: http://bbc.co.uk/i/lbtbg/?t=16m51s

You'll notice that the above link is nice and short, making it perfect for Twitter posts or pasting into an email. We created our own "short URL" system to save you the trouble of having to use a 3rd-party service, and also to ensure that your users see a trusted bbc.co.uk link instead of one of those obfuscated short URLs that could take you anywhere.

To use this new functionality, just click the Programme Information link below the video playback window in iPlayer to reveal the new Send to a Friend options:

The new direct link functionality is available at the moment for iPlayer TV programmes. We hope to add support for radio as soon as we can.

PS: Remember Mr Collins from the BBC's Pride and Prejudice all those years ago? Well, while watching our new Psychoville production I was amazed to see David Bamber reprising his Mr Collins role - see for yourself: http://bbc.co.uk/i/l9n18/?t=21m29s

Anthony Rose is Controller, Online Media Group and Vision, BBC FM&T

There are two main things to say:

First, the project team has gone through your feedback over the past week and given replies to specific queries, which are further down this post. They have also compiled a Help page of FAQs which will cover many of the questions you've asked and pull all the answers together in one place.

Read more and comment at The Editors blog at BBC News.

Steve Herrmann is editor, BBC News website

The man responsible for the Herculean feat of ensuring all of this content was brought together with the minimum delay is Tim Clarke, Senior Content Producer for major music festivals. Tim has written a behind-the-scenes look at how that was accomplished for the BBC Music Blog. You can read his post here.

Matthew Shorter is Interactive Editor, Music, BBC Audio & Music Interactive

I'm glad that on the whole you seem to be enjoying our Wimbledon coverage. Yes, there have been a few technical glitches, all of which are picked up and addressed, but I hope you recognise that it is a pretty complex technical operation, especially since we are combining BBC coverage of the tournament on BBC One and BBC Two in order to bring you as much of the action as we can through the day.

This is the first year that we've taken this approach (and indeed had the infrastructure around the ground to bring all the action to you in HD) - I believe that it does allow us to offer you sight of more matches, and we'll build from the experience this year to try to ensure that it is even more seamless next year.

I know that many of you are frequently frustrated about the programmes not in HD. Along with the sports events we don't currently screen, you often raise Top Gear as a show you believe would benefit from being in HD.

I wanted to ask you:

What it is about Top Gear that means you really want to watch it in HD?

What are the qualities which you identify as particularly suitable for HD?

Can you let me know - ideally in one short sentence - either through comments here or by emailing me at danielle.nagler@bbc.co.uk? I want to understand what you see in SD shows that you believe gives them added value in HD, not least because it is really helpful in evaluating new HD programme opportunities that cross my desk.

Thanks as always for your input, and enjoy the last couple of days of tennis.

Danielle Nagler is Head of HD, BBC Vision

For as long as the BBC has been making programmes, audiences have been talking about them and we have done our best to showcase some of those conversations on-air, via programmes like Feedback and Points of View. However, it is only with the advent of the internet that those conversations have become accessible to a much wider audience. Here on bbc.co.uk we have a range of blogs, messageboards and other commenting tools, which enable users to talk about our output. However, much of the conversation about BBC programming inevitably happens away from bbc.co.uk on people's personal blogs or microblogging services such as Twitter.

Shownar aims to track the wealth of activity that takes place around BBC progammes online and work out which are currently gaining the most attention. So why do it? To borrow from the site's About pages: "First, it will help you find shows that others have not only watched, but are talking about. Hopefully it'll throw up a few hidden gems. People's interest, attention and engagement with shows are more important to Shownar than viewing figures; the audience size of a documentary on BBC FOUR, for instance, will never approach that of EastEnders, but if that documentary sparks a lot of interest and comment - even discussion - we want to highlight it. And second, when you've found a show of interest, we want to assist your onward journey by generating links to related discussions elsewhere on the web. In the same way news stories are improved by linking out to the same story on other news sites, we believe shows are improved by connecting them to the wider discussion and their audience."

So, how does it work? In the first instance, we decided to focus on tracking in-bound links to programme-related pages on bbc.co.uk, so we could be confident that the discussions were actually about a BBC programme, rather than a different usage of, say, 'archers' or 'apprentice' (although intelligent keyword matching remains a future aspiration). Rather than develop technology to crawl the web ourselves, we decided to partner with data providers who were already doing that, and who could supply us with good, clean data. We took a look at a range of possible suppliers, and for this initial prototype chose data provided by Yahoo! Search BOSS, Nielson Online's BlogPulse (which indexes over 100 million blogs), and Twingly (which searches microblogging services like Twitter, Jaiku and Identi.ca for links, even when they are shortened using URL shortening services such as TinyURL and bit.ly). We are also ingesting data from LiveStats, the BBC's own real-time indicator of traffic. Once ingested, this data is processed according to a specially created algorithm to calculate the 'buzz measure' for every BBC programme - more detail on the algorithm can be found on Shownar's Technical information page.

The front-end interface offers a range of different ways into the data, from the 'fresh buzz' chart on the homepage, to the schedule heatmap which shades the 'hottest' programmes on each of the BBC's TV channels / radio stations (which also have their own pages). There is also a Catch up on iPlayer page, enabling you to filter programmes available to watch on demand by channel, genre and time of day. The genre cuts are particularly compelling, enabling you to see, for example, which Comedy programmes are generating the most buzz. There's also the blueprint, which provides full access to all of the data, including permalinks, so I can tell you that the most buzzed about factual TV programme at midday on Monday 22nd June was BBC Two's James May on the Moon.

The site has been live as an internal BBC beta for a few weeks now and it's already started to have a real impact on my consumption habits, introducing me to programmes I had missed in the schedules such as Radio 2's Back from the Dead: The Return of Spinal Tap, BBC One's Famous, Rich and Homeless and BBC Two's NASA: Triumph and Tragedy. It's also doing the job I hoped it would do in terms of onward journeys, with particularly rich discussion around Radio 4's The Reith Lectures. To find out how your blog links and microblog updates can end up on Shownar (and for information about moderation) visit the Get involved page.

We're keen to hear your feedback on Shownar, so please leave a comment below or send us your thoughts by email. If the prototype proves successful, we are hoping to integrate the functionality of Shownar into bbc.co.uk. Possible future developments include additional data sources and a full API.

Shownar was designed and built by Schulze & Webb, with input from a small BBC project team: Katherine Sommers, Mark Simpkins, Catherine Wingate, Yuri Kang, Andrew Barron, Chris Sizemore and myself. We hope you enjoy using it.

Dan Taylor is Senior Portfolio Executive, Internet for BBC Vision.

For 15 years a dedicated cadre of engineers and managers from R&D has been working to develop tools which will preserve the BBC's vast archive into the future.

The latest product of their efforts is the ASTOR demonstrator - (aka 'the world's heaviest laptop') which is currently being tested by the archive and network media research engineers.

It's big, runs pretty hot, weighs close to half a ton, and can store dozens of hours of HD content, but perhaps most amazingly is that in its brief few months of existence, it's clocked up more than 10,000 miles. That's because in April, Rajitha Weerakkody and I took the prototype box along to NAB (the world's largest broadcast technology conference and exhibition) in Las Vegas.

The story began three years ago, when R&D started looking at the best ways to store large amounts of AV content in digital form. We produced a huge amount of data as well as recommendations and proposals, but it was clear that the digital storage industry couldn't match the needs of our archive, nor the needs of the thousands of other broadcasters who faced the same challenge.

Led by the technologist Richard Wright, R&D joined forces with academic researchers and industry experts to develop a new system which could manage the vast volumes of digital data. This became known as the 'Avatar-M' research project, and we revealed the first technical prototypes at the NAB. We're hoping to thoroughly test the kit at Kingswood over the summer, before enhancing the platform and possibly incorporating elements of the Dirac video codec (also produced in R&D).

In September the kit, plus its trusty band of demonstrators, will take to the road once more - this time to Amsterdam for the European forum for broadcast tech, IBC.

Ant Miller is Senior Research Manager, BBC Research and Development.

• Find out more about the Avatar project at the project site

We have some great partners who supply us with 'raw' stats data across the breadth of sports and competitions that you demand. Our job is to group, collate, filter and format the information, and get it out to you on all the platforms you might want to access it from as swiftly as possible.

Read more and leave your comments on the BBC Journalism Labs blog.

Over a third of people in the UK listen to digital radio each week and most of these devices have a screen. As a result, people increasingly expect visuals to supplement their listening. With that in mind, we're running a trial to bring a new level of interaction, including the faces and events of live radio, to the screens of your computer and your mobile.

This started at the beginning of June with 5Live's Simon Mayo show (5 Live's Interactive Editor Brett Spencer wrote about visualising Mayo here). At the start of this week the trial moved on to The Chris Moyles Show, Radio 1's Zane Lowe show, Switch, Radio 4's live science magazine show, Material World, and BBC 6Music's The Hub. The programmes in the trial represent a cross-section of BBC Radio output and target audiences in order to give us representative insights into how we can innovate and offer a much richer experience to those listening to their radio on a device with a screen, but without losing any quality to traditional radio output.

So how does this trial look to audiences? They will be able to go online to access the 'console' which will give them a whole new view of their favourite radio programme. The new 'console' will bring you live steaming video feeds from the studio, as well as giving you the opportunity to send messages into the programme, live DAB text, track listing information and even tweets from the Twittering classes. On other BBC blogs over the next week or two you'll be able to read about other aspects of the trial too, for instance, information about the video kit we're using (which is quite different from the tech you'll find in a TV studio).

It's important to note that this trial is not about turning radio into television. Early experience tells us that the pictures we get from our radio studios are very different from the material produced in BBC TV studios daily. There's something about the intensity of a filmed radio interview that I think you're going to find fascinating. But this is not just about AV - there is far more interactivity being offered to audiences through the new console. For instance, you can email the show directly from the console, and see the results of an audience vote on a 'swingometer'. We call this 'glanceable' content - the kind of stuff that will add something to your listening experience without being essential to it.

Another important aspect of the visualisation trial is our plan to share our findings with the rest of the radio industry, once the trial is complete. The whole UK radio industry needs to understand the implications of visualisation better and we're happy to help spread the knowledge we acquire during the trial.

5Live's Simon Mayo trial ran from 1-19 June. The remainder of the trial started with The Chris Moyles Show on Radio 1, and will run across all participating programmes until 31 July.

Posts by Brett Spencer on the News Editors blog and Guy Strelitz on the Radio Labs blog have already appeared and Mark Damazer, Radio 4 Controller, has written about the Material World experiment on the Radio 4 blog. Participants and listeners will be twittering their experience - on both sides of the glass and on both sides of the mic. Keep your eye on the hashtag #vistrial to read their contributions (but remember the BBC doesn't control what appears on Twitter).

Please join in with our experiment in adding pictures to live radio - on your computer or on your mobile - and let us know what you think, here on the blog or via the participating programmes.

Mark Friend is Controller, Multiplatform & Interactive, BBC Audio & Music

• Brett Spencer on the News Editors blog, Guy Strelitz on the Radio Labs blog and Mark Damazer on the Radio 4 blog.
• The Visualisation Trial is available on the following Mobile devices: Nokia N95, N96 and Nokia 5800 XpressMusic; Sony Ericsson K800i; Blackberry Bold and Storm; Samsung i600 and HTC Touch.
• BBC 5 Live's useful FAQ for the visualisation console.
• The BBC's press release for phase two of the visualisation trial.
• Search Twitter for the hashtag #vistrial.
• The most recent RAJAR radio listening figures.