Happy Monday, CBC fans and fellow comrades employees alike. It was a quiet week last week in the world of CBC news, but news is a-flowin’ a bit, so enjoy the ride.

I’ll be a little slow in replying to your emails as I’m out of town on a sabattical (think monk clothing, Tibetan bells, and hours pouring over LOLcats) but I’ll still be scouring the blogs and receiving tips from you on CBC news.

In just an interesting side note, I see that last week, the CRTC granted a former Vancouver radio personality a licence to operate a local radio station for the “Tri-Cities” region of greater Vancouver (Port Moody, Coquitlam, and Port Coquitlam). While it’s not CBC news per se, it’s interesting (and, I think, encouraging, to see the CRTC responding to regional growth). CBC Radio in Vancouver years ago led the way by launching a full news bureau in Surrey, a rapidly growing region of the area.

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	About This Blog, Vancouver	Posted at 2:15 pm (14 Jul 2008)

Owing to a pretty bad bike accident yesterday (thrown about six feet over my handlebars), it seems I’ve broken one or more bones in my left hand. So for the next day or two I’ll only be blogging stuff if it’s urgent or really big news. Comment moderation (which can be done with one hand) won’t be affected.

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	About This Blog	Posted at 11:00 am (11 Jun 2008)

As you can see, the blog has undergone a design refit. I’ll still be working on it over the next week, tweaking very exciting things like span classes, but for now it’s in place. Thanks to everyone who emailed suggestions.

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	About This Blog	Posted at 8:53 am (28 May 2008)

In a week or two, you’ll see a new look to InsideTheCBC.com. With any luck, the new design will make it easier for you to find things, subscribe to email alerts or RSS feeds.

As always, your thoughts and suggestions are more than welcome!

– Tod

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	About This Blog	Posted at 12:33 pm (16 May 2008)

UPDATE: Temporarily disabled until a software conflict with comments is sorted out. As one of the commenters noted, this site and every other web site still works on iPhones and iPod Touches… this enhancement simply makes it much more readable.

With the iPhone coming to Canada later this year, I’ve started a bit early and launched a special iPhone version of InsideTheCBC.com. Just visit the site with any iPhone or iPod Touch to get this special version.

(Programmed by Canadian firm BraveNewCode which is giving the theme away for free.)

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	About This Blog	Posted at 5:41 pm (29 Apr 2008)

About a dozen of you emailed to say you were having problems posting comments to the site. It must have been one of the, er, “enhancements” I made on the weekend. ;-)  Should be fixed now. Sorry about the inconvenience.

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	About This Blog, Asides	Posted at 5:35 pm (31 Mar 2008)

Over the weekend, I upgraded the blog software and added a few more features to make this site a bit easier to peruse:

• Commenter pictures: You can now have your photo (or almost any image representing yourself) beside any comments you make. Want to get started? Get your own “gravatar” here.
• Integrated Digg.com: Now, if you “digg” one of the stories here on the popular social news site, the famous little Digg button will automatically appear on the story. Here’s an example.
• Wider page: Now, there’s more width to the pages, so that should make reading a bit easier.
• Easier to use categories: Instead of one long list of categories to select from, the list (at the top of the grey sidebar on the right) only displays top-level categories at first. When you click one, it expands.
• More comments shown: Comment summaries shown in the sidebar now have more text to them and there are many more comments displayed.
• Tag cloud: It’s just getting started, but a “tag cloud” exists in the sidebar in case you prefer to do your browsing that way. (The bigger the word, the more posts are about that topic.)

As always, please keep the suggestions coming!

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	About This Blog, Asides	Posted at 1:08 pm (31 Mar 2008)

Thanks everyone for your kind emails about my neck injury. Initial thoughts are it’s related to (a) the way I sleep — on my stomach, and (b) strain from not being very ergonomic with my computer use. Thanks to the wonder of Tylenol 3s and Robax, I’m doing much betterrrrrrr……. zzzzzzzzzzz

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	About This Blog, Asides	Posted at 1:44 pm (26 Feb 2008)

Those management appointment notices, corporate news releases, and policy announcements that flow into your Groupwise will be cut by about 80% when the CBC’s new intranet launches shortly.

Two years in the making, the new intranet — named iO! — will feature “role-based personalization.” This means that the site will automatically detect what media- or business-line you work in and which region you’re in. Relevant information will then bubble up to the front page.

Here is your first glimpse at the CBC’s new employee intranet which will launch soon — really soon {ahem} :-).

“I’m hoping there’s a big dropoff [when it launches] on emails from English services, corporate communications, French communications,” said CBC communications executive Kevin Payan told InsideTheCBC.com. “We want to take stuff out of Groupwise, start using the portal, and reinvigorate what’s going on with a fresh tone and fresh style, as opposed to the traditional executive memo.”

The CBC has hired an editorial director for the intranet who will re-write, in a more “human” tone, news releases and policy announcements from the CBC.

In time, individual users will be able to customize the page at a much more granular level.
“It’ll help you get through the reams of information coming into Groupwise mailboxes right now. You’ll get to pick what bubbles up,” said Angela Wissink, director of CBC portal services.

As well, the site will have some limited feedback ability. Employees will be encouraged to email in comments and feedback, and the intranet’s editorial director will republish a summary of comments received.

In time, the portal may supplant this blog, but for now InsideTheCBC.com will stay as is, says CBC’s vice-president of communications, Bill Chambers. “The blog is free-flowing, agenda-free. It’s as broadly based as the CBC. I see the portal and the blog as complimentary.” Stories from the blog will appear on the front page of iO!

When it launches, iO! will become the default page on all CBC web browsers (which, sadly, still languish at IE6).

(Incidentally, although the site is an intranet, in CBC-language it will be referred to as a “portal.” Because that’s the way we roll.)

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	About This Blog, iO! intranet	Posted at 2:26 pm (18 Feb 2008)

The Net Pub Eng folks at CBC have used the rant about Prime Picks in Prime Picks itself.

Touché.

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	About This Blog	Posted at 6:28 pm (06 Feb 2008)

Some of you may notice that over the holidays, we made some improvements to the blog.

First, this site is now much more easily viewed on a Blackberry, iPhone, and other PDAs.

But the really cool new feature is threaded comments — now, you can reply directly to another commenter or start your own thread. You can also put a photo of yourself or an icon beside any of your comments. Enjoy!

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	, About This Blog	Posted at 9:12 am (02 Jan 2008)

Hey all, Paul Gorbould here - I’ll be filling in for Tod for the next couple of weeks while he takes a well-deserved health break, so please bear with me while I adjust the seat and mirrors, and do send me any comments or story suggestions you might have. Thanks!

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	About This Blog, Asides	Posted at 1:06 pm (21 Nov 2007)