´óÏó´«Ã½

Happy New Year!

The podcast is in its usual place, ready to download or listen through. There have been some changes to how the Podcast is presented and kept online again, but I think it is best to let the experts explain about what has been happening.

Jim Downie of Audio and Music Interactive has been looking at changes in how the podcast might work and if the episodes should be collected on our pages. Here's what he told me:

"Currently, when a podcast episode is published it is only available for 7 days. We'd like to know the level of audience demand for extended availability and to assess what impact this might have on the wider market. As part of the assessment we decided to run a trial, which ran from October to Christmas 2009.

A broad range of podcasts were chosen and during the trial their associated episodes were not deleted after the usual 7 days. This meant that in the relevant podcast pages, or in software like iTunes, a lot more episodes would be visible and available to download.

When the trial ended, any episodes outside the 7 day window were automatically deleted and if listeners had not downloaded them beforehand they would now not be downloadable.

To try and avoid frustrating or confusing listeners we issued various briefings, so hopefully the message got through that the build-up and subsequent disappearance of episodes was to be expected.

We now intend to collect and analyse the data from the trial. This will help in deciding whether we will offer some or all of our podcasts for an extended period of time, at some point in the future."

So, what do you think? The podcast is now back to being up for seven days, so make sure you catch it while it's hot. I'd like to hear more about how Jim's trial affected you though, so please do leave a comment here - or send me an email. The details for contact are a bit further down this page.

On the podcast this week, we kicked off the new year with an assorted menu of goodies.

Our Chris Vallance put together a brilliant appraisal of Twitter. Graham Linehan, Tom Standage and Alan Rusbridger chat with him about the online and mobile service that has changed the game for so many of us.

Social gaming is spreading fast but how's the quality on story lines? Are Facebook and Twitter related games a matter of clicking to win? Alexis Kennedy of Failbetter Games hopes that his offering, provides more in the way of story writing and user influenced content.

Sci Fi audio can be a treasure or a nightmare, depending on how it is presented. Peter Bullock, editor of translates stories into audio form, sometimes read by the authors themselves and all on a volunteer basis. Find out why he felt that these tales of the unexpected deserved such special treatment.

That's all we had time for this week. If you have been up to something intriguing and fresh online, then let me know and hopefully we can share that activity. If you want to drop me a line about the podcast you can leave a comment here, or send an email to podsandblogs at bbc dot co dot uk. You can also find me on Twitter as

'Till next week!
Jamillah