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At 3am every Tuesday morning, about two hours before your average starling considers it worth winding up his pipes to greet returning night shift workers, 5 live plays host to the digital world.

Outriders is an hour of radio dedicated to covering the news as it's seen by , and the . It looks at innovation and well, the Outriders in the digital field.

It's our attempt to report the news members of the public are creating, discussing and sharing across the world thanks to the internet. The segment is broadcast nationally in the UK on MW, on FM on many of the ´óÏó´«Ã½ local stations and is available as a podcast.

CONTRIBUTORS

Chris Vallance

Chris is a reporter. He spends most of his time pointing microphones at people and asking "Is there something here that makes a noise?"

Along with Rhod Sharp and Kevin Anderson (who has since left us to become the Guardian's Editor of Blogs) he started the whole Pods and Blogs shebang in 2005, and is therefore partially responsible for failing to come up with a decent name for the segment until Jamillah renamed it in 2008.

He's interested in the way technology changes society and how the web is changing journalism. He doesn't have a TV, likes folk music and once owned an

Jamillah Knowles

Jamillah Knowles is a radio and online journalist at the ´óÏó´«Ã½.

"I love tech and online things generally. I especially love - robots, comic books and baking. In between making pods and blogs and wasting time laughing at , I am intrigued by geographical differences in the way people spend time and describe things online."

"I also manage an epic fail every time I try to resist intriguing gadgets - but I still have not given in to the iPhone - yet. I wish I had time to study at the Singularity University and maybe earn stripes as a proper coder."

"Though the really interesting thing for me is you. That's very cheesy, but its people who make the web incredible and barely a day goes by when I am not astonished by some new effort somewhere online."

"Remember - all your base might not belong to us - but we do like to talk to you about it."

"Email podsandblogs@bbc.co.uk FTW! "

Rhod Sharp

"Rhod Sharp is a journalist who talked himself into being Up All Night after years of night shifts on the foreign desk had evidently weakened his brain."

"He is still there, as far as anyone can tell. He does have a 3G iPhone and uses it for prosaic things like talking to people as well as texting, twitttering, emailing and recording interviews at a pinch. And reading the headlines and listening in unlikely places to Radio 5 live, and so on."

"Apart from referring to myself in the third person, most of my other foibles are a deep dark secret. I have admitted to Jamillah that I still own a pair of army surplus tank commander headphones which I used on my first outing as a foreign reporter, and a Tandy TRS 100 which still has the nicest, most tactile, computer keyboard ever made. I have a 1.1 fondness for beautifully constructed emails and aspire to a Zenlike calm when reading disagreeable texts which never, ever, come from listeners to P&B"

We want you to be part of this. The segment needs your ideas and your suggestions for stories, guests and approaches to topics. If you've found a good blog, a great podcast or have an interesting story to tell leave a comment on the blog or send an email to podsandblogs@bbc.co.uk, or reach us on or join our facebook group And you don't have to pull an all-nighter to take part; you can listen online any time of day thanks to our podcast and online streaming audio archive.