Sidepodcast

A Live Aside

I like to judge the success of an evening by how long it takes one to recover, and given that Christine and I were still feeling the after effects of Friday's inaugural Evening with Joe on Monday, I'd consider it a blinding success.

Joe tackles Formula 1's big questions with a microphone and a glass of wine.

Friday 26th was a busy day for us. We arrived in London uncharacteristically early, which gave us plenty of time to look around the designated venue, The Engine Group, just off Oxford Street. It's a great place, in an ideal location and Joe had booked the entire upper floor for the evening, bar included.

Wifi was provided, which was a great boon for Christine who was planning to live blog the whole evening, providing text and picture updates throughout the night for those unable to attend.

Before the doors opened, a quick soundcheck revealed the only major headache of the day - the building offers a fully integrated audio/video system to feed satellite TV to various speakers and screens, but there was no means of obtaining a direct audio feed of Joe's talk.

Let us not discuss the unfortunate incident with the locked door.

Joe took his seat just after 7pm to an almost full house, and from that point the night turned into something of a blur. Questions came from the floor thick and fast, and Joe tackled each one with candour. Every question was a good one, every answer detailed, insightful and often humorous. Still the questions came.

Although the original plan was for a Q&A session followed by a meet and mingle, the never-ending quest for knowledge meant questions continued past the enforced break, and kept on coming until event organisers eventually shut the bar and threw us out... well almost. I have no idea how Joe managed to talk for a whole evening and make it feel like five minutes had passed, we all wanted more and the night came to a close far too soon.

If we had a complaint it was only that there wasn't quite enough time at the end of the evening to meet everyone present. Being in the company of so many dedicated and intelligent Formula 1 fans must be a very rare thing, and I wish we could've spoken to everyone and for longer.

Eventually we really did get thrown out, packed up our recording equipment and headed to the nearest pub for yet more F1 chat. Sometime around 3am, we found our way home.

If you didn't manage to make the inaugural Evening with Joe, you really missed out. There is a second event planned for March 29th in Melbourne, and further talks around the world throughout 2010. Don't miss them.

We did eventually manage to record the whole evening using a room mic, but we've ended up with something like 3+ hours of content, so it might take an extra day or two for the podcast to see the light of day. Lou was designated official photographer for the evening, so watch out for plenty more pictures coming soon as well.

In conclusion, I think Joe's onto a winning idea, and I'm hoping that more F1 journalists give some thought to reaching out and meeting fans. F1 may be becoming more open than ever this year, but it could do with getting a bit more personal too.

A big thank you to Joe for putting together a fabulous evening's entertainment, to everyone who came over and said "hi", and to those who bought us drinks. I wonder how we can get to Melbourne?

Apple to Unveil New Product Today, We'll Take Three Please

Sidepodcast has not jumped the shark, I promise. There's a tenuous F1 connection here somewhere.

As we've mentioned several times in the past, the entire Sidepodcast project is built upon the product foundations that Apple have built and we've long since come to the conclusion that it wouldn't be possible to do what we do with anything else.

Later on Wednesday, the entire of the technology world will be looking in the direction of San Francisco, where Apple are holding a media event to launch a new product. The sensible money says it will be a tablet shaped product.

Proceedings kick off at 6pm GMT and we'll be specifically looking for announcements that directly affect what we do including:

• Improvements to video quality - Currently the size and quality of our F1 video podcasts are tied directly to what the iPhone will support. Might we see improvements in this area?
• Podcasts in the cloud - Will the iTunes eco-system see personal content made available online, and if so will that change how media is consumed?
• Tablets everywhere - How portable and affordable will the rumoured device be, and can we make use of one or more of them in a live streaming environment?

Admittedly very little of this is specifically F1 related, but any hardware or software improvements will likely reflect on the kind of Formula 1 coverage Sidepodcast is able to provide this year.

We'll be following the launch via words and pictures on the Endgadget's Live Blog and will keep this post up-to-date with any relevant announcements. If you're interested in joining the fun, we'll be ticking off the rumours with this handy Prediction Score Card and posting updates in the comments too.

Scream if You Wanna Go Faster

It's been a while since we talked technical, and since 2009 is rapidly coming to a close, I figured now would be a good time to blog about website updates - where we are, and what we're currently working on.

I'm well aware that things would get done a whole lot quicker if we stopped discussing what we plan to do and just got on and did it. I'm also acutely aware that these kind of self serving posts can be intensely boring to read, so allow me to present to you a colourful graph.

Credit: Sidepodcast.com

Average homepage response time for sidepodcast.com

Exciting, isn't it? Unlike your average company sales graph, in this case, smaller is most definitely better and faster. As the caption on the chart states, the data is displaying the average time it takes for this site's homepage to respond in milliseconds, over time. Back in September, site performance was bad and pages took an age to load, but since then we released two major performance upgrades, both of which improved the situation dramatically.

We now have something of a sensible platform to build upon. It may not be perfect - the whole look of this place is somewhat bland at the moment, and we still have reliability issues to resolve during intense commenting sessions - internally though, we've drawn a line under the project marked 'performance' and while there will always be minor tweaks available, the big gains have been achieved.

Starring Christine... on the Internet

In amongst the upgrades a few features have sneaked in under the door. Lets take a look at those too.

Star ratings have been added to individual posts, and we'll be using those to gauge not only how well a post was received, but also how good or bad a podcast was. Additionally we may use the information to figure out how well a particular series is doing, or how a guest post has gone down.

In short, ratings are an important feature of Sidepodcast. While we appreciate all feedback, ratings are an especially useful way of giving us a quick indication, especially if you're the shy type who'd rather not leave a comment.

Show No Mercy

One of this year's ideas that helped launch the Playground was Show Selector and that has finally been integrated into the main site. A visit to the Shows page will give you the opportunity to create a custom subscription feed containing only the shows that you're interested in.

We're assuming that for the most part the main podcast feed will still contain all of the edited shows we put out but if you'd like to be more selective when it comes to what you listen to or watch, then Show Selector is the place to go.

Stream of Consciousness

We're trialling a new method of streaming video content starting this week. If you head on over to the most recent live show replay the video should begin almost the second you hit play and then allow you to jump to any point in the recording without needing to download the whole show before hand. If all goes well with the trial, we'll roll this feature out to other videos on the site in due course.

That pretty much covers where we're at. Aside from fixing minor issues, we don't have any immediate plans to make further changes in the short term. We're still thinking about revamping live blogging / live commenting using the infrastructure provided by Google Wave, but thus far the technology is a little too unstable for its own good. Fingers crossed something will be working by the time the F1 circus reaches Bahrain.

An update to the look and feel of the site is still pending, but we might hold back on that until the beginning of the season. In the meantime another challenge waiting in the wings will be to make similar performance improvements to our other sites F1 Minute and Media. Future. Change. We'll blog about changes on those sites as they occur.

Thank you to everybody who's put up with any usability annoyances that have come up prior to and since September, and please don't be afraid to yell if something isn't right.

Here's to a faster 2010.

Online Launch for Toyota TF109

In a couple of hours time Toyota's 2009 F1 challenger will be given its world premiere, but unlike the Ferrari launch earlier this week, this one will happen exclusively online.

It's not the first time a team have tried this, in fact last year's Toyota launch was streamed via the web too, but it does provided a compelling alternative to the closed press launches we often witness in Formula 1.

There's been speculation leading up to the event as regards to the nature of teaser shots distributed last week. Scott covered this in a recent post on his blog. Will we see a radical livery change today, and why are the boys from Cologne pushing the Hollywood connections so hard?

All will become clear soon, and you can follow live on www.tf109-premiere.com. If you're watching, please do let us know. We've commented on a bizarre selection of events in the past on sidepodcast.com but I believe this is the first time we've covered the unveiling of a car before. As with the Ferrari launch, please let us know all your thoughts on the new styling and how it stacks up to the Italians. We'll keep this thread up to date with the latest video and photographs as they become available.

Update: Predictably the web site fell over during the first few minutes of the launch. Once it became accessible we were treated to the sight of a remarkably similar livery from previous years.

I'm a big fan of the new matt-black effect, but it's still not enough to mask the mismatched front and rear wings. More images and videos from the launch can be found in the comments along with initial reactions as the car and drivers were rolled out. By far the best shot is this photoshop disaster. The mind boggles.

Travelling Light

In the comments recently Trig pointed out Sidepodcast has a habit of making him want more gadgets and gizmos. It reminded me I was supposed to write a behind the scenes post about recent changes to our live setup. This is that post.

Know Your Limitations

Last year, around the time of Silverstone testing and the British Grand Prix, we put in place a rudimentary system that allowed us to follow comments on this site, upload photographs and even stream some live video. In most respects everything worked as planned, but we found ourselves with an excessive amount of equipment to carry, whilst being severely restricted by battery life. Additionally as soon as a website thread hit more than 500 comments, it became nearly impossible to load it over the air.

For 2009 we intend to solve those issues and improve our coverage, without breaking the bank.

Keeping it Real

More by luck than judgement, the real time commenting system that was introduced to help us follow conversations during a live show, actually appears to solve the limitations we experienced connecting via 3G.

Previously it was necessary to load a whole thread's worth of comments just to catch up on the most recent submitted entries. With the new system however, we'll be able to quickly access only the latest comments and add to the conversation with the minimum of fuss. The amount of data transferred is relatively small (and we're working on reducing it further), which means costs should also be lower than before.

With no effort whatsoever, the commenting limitations can be ticked off our list.

No Expense Spared

Reducing the amount of hardware we carry was a bigger problem, but technology marches ever forward and thankfully costs continue to fall. The picture above details our revised hardware line-up for 2009, which is smaller, faster and better in so, so many ways.

I should point out that the Sidepodmug is in shot only as a guide to the relative size of the surrounding equipment. It provides no purpose other than to contain liquids, and we've no reason to carry it anywhere.

Paranoid Android

Although Christine's mobile phone did a reasonable job of tracking comments last year, she returned from Silverstone with very sore thumbs. Thankfully her contract expired recently meaning she could grab herself a brand new HTC Googlephone, free of charge and for the same monthly rate. With it she gets a decent keyboard, a proper web browser and improved 3G connectivity. It ticks all the boxes in terms of cost and productivity, but it's pretty much the same size as the old one.

On the photography front, a compact Panasonic LX3 was purchased recently at a handily discounted rate - which earns it points on the cost front. It's much smaller than the usual DSLR we carry around, took good pictures at the recent trip to Red Bull's factory, but struggled with the shadows at Williams HQ. We're still 50/50 on whether we should rely solely on the compact during this weekends Autosport International outing, but its size makes that a tempting prospect.

Lastly we have the laptop. I can't explain how unbelievably heavy the old Windows machine was to carry around, but by Sunday at Silverstone my back was in agony. On top of that, the damn thing lasted for just an hour on a single charge, meaning I was lugging a brick around for the best part of the day.

To improve matters, we bought a cute little Asus Eee PC, which has a tiny screen and an even smaller keyboard, but features a built in card reader for transferring pictures, and a USB slot suitable for an already owned 3G modem. The machine comes with a poor version of Linux pre-installed, subsequently upgraded to the latest version of Ubuntu, but we're still suffering some teething troubles on that front. Thankfully the device has a runtime of about 6-7 hours on a full charge, plus it's lovely to carry around. The downside to the Eee PC is the purchase price, which we could probably have done without.

When All Else Fails

So that's a long winded way of saying outdoor things should see an improvement this year. Nothing is perfect by any means, and we're still planning to keep Christine's mother-in-law on hand back home to ensure we can relay messages via telephone and keep in touch with the site if everything else fails.

We have no solid solution for video streaming as yet. The process is battery hungry and 3G bandwidth is limited, but it's on our list of things to address in the future.

If you're attending any F1 related events this year, please do let us know what equipment you're planning on taking and if there's anything you recommend we should be using or need to consider.

Incidentally, if you have a relatively modern mobile phone, the Real Time Doohickey is excellent for keeping up with the flow of conversation around these parts, whether attending races or just away from your desk for more than say, five minutes.