We thought we should help promote a fantastic project from BBC World Service that aims to preserve sounds...

Hello, I'm Kate Arkless Gray and I'm working on an exciting project for the BBC World Service called Save Our Sounds. There are so many photographs and words to capture the world, but barely anything in sound. We want to put that right and so we're asking people to help us preserve "endangered sounds" by recording them and sending them in to us. We've created an interactive map that allows you to upload your audio and place it exactly where it was recorded. Other users can then click around and travel the world in sound.

Getting people to actually record sounds for us is a bit of a challenge, so we're trying to make it as simple as possible. The map uploader is very easy to use and allows you to submit .wavs and .mp3s. The .wavs get automatically converted to mp3 before appearing on the map, so that it doesn't collapse under the weight of the files.

The really exciting bit is that we've been working with AudioBoo which is a free iPhone app that allows you to record an upload sound to the web. If you do this, and tag your sound with "BBC_SOS" it gets fed straight into our map (well, the moderation queue at least) via an RSS feed. Geotags then enable the sound to be placed exactly where it was recorded. Clever stuff.

We have to remember that this is a worldwide project and we have to be wary of assuming that everyone has access to the latest gadgets and high speed internet connections. To help people over the technical hurdles we're also offering a postal option and giving out the World Service phone number so that people can "ring in" their sounds. Their calls are converted and delivered to us as mp3s so that we can check them and add them to the map. Admittedly the quality of phoned-in sounds won't reach broadcast standard, but we don't just want our audiomap to reflect technologically advanced areas of the world.

Digital Planet is featuring Save Our Sounds in next week's programme and they're asking for your help to presvere the sound of 56k modems, dot-matrix printers and floppy disk drives. Can you help?

You can visit the Save Our Sounds map at http://www.bbcworldservice.com/saveoursounds and follow them online at http://www.twitter.com/bbc_sos.

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If you're a regular reader of Radio Labs you'll have noticed quite a lot of noise (and hopefully some signal) about two of our major projects: /programmes and /music. Both services have been designed according to linked data principles in an attempt to not only provide well designed, joined up and coherent websites but also to open BBC data to wider reuse.

Yesterday BBC Backstage announced that this data is now available at two SPARQL endpoints hosted by OpenLink Software and Talis. If (like me) you're new to SPARQL (a kind of SQL for the web) the Backstage blog also has links to tutorials and examples. If you want more details about the kind of data we model the Programmes Ontology and the Music Ontology are good starting points. If you're more comfortable with relational databases please check out the /programmes database schema.

Read more and comment at the BBC Backstage blog and the BBC Backstage mailing list.

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As regulars of the BBC iPlayer Radio message board will be aware, I'm currently looking after the BBC iPlayer for all of BBC Radio. We've a wealth of great content, and I'm keen to make it even easier to find, play and share the great radio programmes you can hear on the BBC.

BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra was an odd experience on the BBC iPlayer: while you could listen to the station live, you were unable to listen again. There were a host of reasons for this - some related to sports rights, some related to our technical infrastructure, and some related to even more boring things than those two. (Yes, there are even more boring things than rights and infrastructure. You'll have to trust me on this).

Anyway, a few weeks ago, we made history by making on-demand programmes available for BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra for the very first time. You're now able to listen-again to Test Match Special and our Formula One coverage for seven days after transmission. So, if you missed a great interview after yet another UK win on Formula One, or a great catch in TMS, then I'm pleased to let you know that we've made the unmissable... unmissable.

There are more things planned for the BBC iPlayer's radio content shortly, as some long-term projects reach their welcome conclusion. I look forward to letting you know about them as soon as I can.

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