The term used to describe the swine flu (Mexican Flu, H1N1 Influenza A, North American Flu) outbreak has become controversial.

The original, and colloquial name, “swine flu” has run into objections from pork producers who say that it spreads fear about eating pork. You can’t get swine flu from eating pork.

Fiona Fleck, a spokeswoman for the World Health Organization explained to the New York Times on Wednesday that the World Health Organization would start using the term “influenza A(H1N1)”

In Canada both CP24 and CTV has started using the term H1N1 flu. The CBC continues to use the term swine flu, because the term “H1N1 Influenza A” is a lot put in a script, “but more importantly, at least one infectious disease expert we consulted says it is inaccurate,” a CBC producer said.

The WHO take a different stance on the issue. “We’re a scientific organization. A(H1N1) is a scientific name. That’s it. But the scientific name is not very user friendly. I think it would help all of us if we could find a name that’s easier to say that’s more popular.”

Fleck suggested there could be a competition, and members of the public could come up with a better name.

Swine Flu naming contest anyone?

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	In Plain English, Media Coverage	Posted at 1:38 pm (01 May 2009)

Over the last few weeks the CBC has received a ton of criticism and attention in the media, culminating with Heritage Minister James Moore’s comments from last week that the CBC should “stop chasing revenues and eyeballs.”

On Saturday, Kirstine Layfield, the executive director of programming for CBC Television, responded to some of the criticism.

People say the CBC is chasing eyeballs. Personally, I have never met an eyeball. I have met Canadians from across our great country who have eyes — and ears and hearts and minds. They have a thirst to understand their world from a Canadian perspective and a desire to hear their own stories and music. This is the audience of the CBC.

Layfield also addressed some of funding issues, ratings, and competition with the privates. Her full comment is here. It’s worth a read.

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	Executives, Media Coverage	Posted at 10:45 am (23 Mar 2009)

The announcement that the CBC will freeze executives salaries and cut executive bonuses in half has not gone over well with CBC staffers.

“This means that the compensation for each of our eighty or so top managers will on average be reduced by 10 to 20 per cent next year,” CBC President Hubert Lacroix wrote on Wednesday.

Lise Lareau, president of the Canadian Media Guild, told the Globe the clawback “rang the wrong way” to many people. Most CBC staffers don’t receive performance and incentive bonuses, “What’s a bonus?” a commentator on this blog asked. ”You remember that time there was half a sandwich left in that boardroom and you got to it first? That was your 2008 bonus,” another replied. 

The reaction was covered in a story by the Canadian Press last night.

CBC spokesman Marco Dube explained that cutting the bonuses and freezing salaries will save the about $1 million this year. Based on those figures, even if the bonuses were eliminated entirely the savings wouldn’t likely amount to more that a couple million dollars a year, which would help, but it’s a long way from addressing a revenue shortfall that stands between $150 and $200 million.

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	Executives, Media Coverage	Posted at 8:18 am (20 Mar 2009)

CBC President Hubert Lacroix gave a speech last week that had some interesting factoids fun facts about the CBC:

• Canadian’s personal annual contributions to CBC/Radio-Canada is $34 a year, less than a dime a day. The BBC receives $124 per Briton, and funding in France was $65 per citizen in 2007;
• CBC audiences download close to two million podcasts every month;
• In addition to offering its services in English and in French in five time zones, the national public broadcaster also provides coverage in eight Aboriginal languages, in eight international languages for new and aspiring Canadians, and nine languages via our worldwide radio network.

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	Media Coverage	Posted at 1:17 pm (02 Mar 2009)

Hello friends … It’s Friday the thirteenth, in FEB-roo-EHR-ee … the month I receive calls and emails from incensed members of our audience … the month that has TWO “r”s in it … the month that is difficult to pronounce. But I know we can do it! We’re professionals!

1. This is also a month of difficult weather across the country. Snow. Rain. Ice. Sun. Snow. Rain. Ice.  Everything possible. The weather has been a news story, so we tried to vary our description, and make it sound new and fresh. “Schizophrenic” and “insane” are two words that are not particularly appropriate.

2. Taser is a registered brand name for a product. It should always be written with a capital “T“. It is becoming common to hear it used as a verb. Try to avoid that, and explain exactly what it does to a person. It stuns, shocks, disables, hits.  One alternative phrase is “electroshock gun”. There is a fuller discussion in the Lang File   (alt/F2 … enter Taser in the search window)

Now for your consideration, some alternative “understandings” of common medical terms …

Artery……………………. The study of paintings
Bacteria………………….. Back door to cafeteria
Barium…………………… What doctors do when patients die
Benign…………………… What you be, after you be eight
Caesarean Section…….. A neighborhood in Rome
Cat scan…………………… Searching for Kitty
Cauterize…………………. Made eye contact with her
Colic…………………….. A sheep dog
Coma………………………. A punctuation mark

[Read more →]

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	In Plain English	Posted at 12:56 pm (13 Feb 2009)

There have been some subtle changes to the site that havn’t really been advertised. I’ve taken a moment to outline them for you:

Mobile Site Revamp
There were two major changes to our mobile website. The first was the outsourcing of the site to a third party called Quattro Wireless. They allow us to automatically reformat the mobile site depending on which device you are using. So the site you see on your Blackberry will be formatted for the Blackberry. While a visitor from a cell phone will have the cell phone version of the site displayed to them properly.

The second change we made was to automatically detect if users are coming from a mobile device if they visit www.cbc.ca. If they are, then they will automatically be directed to our mobile site: m.cbc.ca. There were a few bugs with this auto-redirection, but they have been ironed out this week.

This way, you have one url you need to remember: cbc.ca. If you visit from a phone, blackberry, or desktop, you will automatically be sent to either the mobile or regular website.

Flash Video
We have had flash video on the site for a while now. We’ve recently rolled this out to the news areas of the site, specifically The National.

This new video format allows us to provide higher quality video at a lower bit rate. It also allows us to almost guarantee that the video will be played on all platforms as the flash format is supported in most browsers.

You can expect to see Flash video to slowly replace all the windows and real media video on the site. We are currently testing live streaming with the flash player as well.

Anything Else?
There are some pretty cool projects going on that I will reveal over the course of this year as they roll out. So stay tuned!

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	, CBC.ca web site, Under the Hood	Posted at 1:31 pm (06 Feb 2009)

CBC.ca has moved from the second floor up to the ninth floor over the course of the past two weeks. Us, along with the finance department were the first “guinea pigs” for the office space redesign.

Because this is going to be our permanent home, we were literally given keys to the blueprint. After playing around with little chairs, tables, and desks on a floor plan the workers starting building our “dream office”. In 7 months or so, they were complete!

You can see a few select photos of our new space from my co-worker Julian Dunn on his flickr page. Additionally what our old space looked like is also available on flickr.

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	, CBC.ca web site, Under the Hood	Posted at 12:18 pm (22 Jan 2009)

Early Monday morning (01:00-05:00 ET Monday January 12, 2009) we will be taking the site off-line to perform some much needed maintenance on our storage device.

The CBC.ca website uses a lot of disk space. All of the media, news stories, podcasts, etc.. add up. We store all of this information on device produced by a company called BlueArc. All of the web and application servers “mount” the BlueArc to serve the website content. There is approx. 3 terabytes of data that is used for the website. 3 Terabytes is a lot of data, to put it in perspective:

1 Terabyte would be equal to 50,000 pages of printed material.
1 Terabyte of seconds would be 32,000 years.
850 Terabytes of storage is used for all of the pages in the Google search index
2,250,000,000 Terabytes of data in 1 gram of DNA

What will I see during the outage?
Because we need to take the BlueArc offline to perform the maintenance, all of the pages in CBC.ca will not be available. However, we are going to be providing an extremely limited site (what we’re referring internally as the “skinny site”). This site will be extremely light-weight and only offer the latest news.

A preview of the site during the maintenance.

All other content will be unavailable until the maintenance is complete.

If you have any specific questions on how the BlueArc works, or why we’re doing this maintenance, please feel free to post a comment.

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	CBC.ca web site, News & Journalism, Under the Hood	Posted at 3:42 pm (08 Jan 2009)

In part two of two of my “Federal Election” series we are going to talk about two items. The first, which is the brain child of David Raso, is the postal code/riding look up. For that, I’m going to hand the keyboard over to him:

My Ridings
Hi, I’m David Raso a Senior Architect of Front-end Development at CBC.ca and Blake asked me if I could explain how one of our Election modules work. We wanted to build a module which would show you information and results for the riding you live in, so the My Riding module was created. This module allows you to enter your postal code and then displays information about your riding - it’s on every page of the Canada Votes site.

No Database Needed!
Sounds simple enough right? The simplest solution would have been to hook up the form to some sort or dynamic backed code written in Java or PHP which would search though the postal code database we got from Statistics Canada and display your riding info. Well because we get so much traffic on election night we have to build everything to be extremely stable and scalable. So using a dynamic application was out of the question - so then how do you provide a postal code look up database without a database? We could use some cloud computing (like Amazon or Google) or big complicated Akamai cached edge applications - but we like to keep things simple.

Everyone in meetings would say: “It can’t be done”, then you sit and stare at the white board. Few minutes later we came up with one of those “It’s so crazy it just might work” ideas.

When you enter your postal code into the form and hit search - we don’t connect to a database and find that postal code - we change your postal code into a url and using AJAX (a JavaScript programing technique) we fetch a flat HTML file which contains the ID of your riding. We then use that ID and AJAX, again, to fetch a flat HTML of your riding info. This is all done by your browser so all our web servers have to do is return those tiny HTML files your and computer does all the heavy lifting.

How It Works
So if you enter M9A2X1 we change that into “http://www.cbc.ca/news/canadavotes/myriding/postalcodes/m/m9a/2×1.html” we then download that file using AJAX. The files contents are stored as JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) which the My Riding JavaScript can easily understand and obtain the ID for your riding. Once we have your riding ID we then use AJAX again and download the file for your riding “http://www.cbc.ca/news/canadavotes/myriding/ridings/130.html” then all we have to do it display that HTML file in the My Riding module. Easy Peasy, Lemon Squeezie.

That’s all good and it works but you might be asking your self: “Does that mean you have a HTML file for each and every postal code in Canada?” - yup you’re correct. Over eight hundred thousand - 827,018 files to be exact. We took the database from Statistics Canada and created a script that would turn each postal code into a flat HTML file that contains the name and ID for the ridings in that postal code - some postal codes have multiple ridings, try out K0A1W0. We then uploaded the 3GB folder to our webservers - and because they don’t change we can cache all those files using Akamai.

On election night when the hundreds of thousands of users try to find their riding there is no database to go down, or application server to be bogged down. Just one small cached HTML file to download!

Comments and the Black Out
This is the first Election where commenting was allowed on CBC.ca. One of the issues we faced were users posting election related results in their comments.

This was an easy solution. We asked the 3rd party company that is responsible for moderating our comments (called ICUC) to not approve any comments for publication until the blackout period ended.

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	CBC.ca web site, Under the Hood	Posted at 3:50 pm (05 Dec 2008)

In a quick email John Cruickshank explained that his decision to leave CBC News does not reflect on the CBC. “I’m going to The Star because I want to go back to newspapers because I understand them and love them. I miss the feeling of being directly involved with a story from conception or event right to the doorstep,” Cruickshank said.

As far as the concerns about his departure he said “One of the challenges Richard [Stursberg] and I have been working on is how to create more authority and accountability in all senior roles.

I believe the things we accomplished as a team in News were extraordinary. There’s now a great leadership group, we have a great plan, an inspiring and evolving mission and a structure that has brought all the News staff together,” Cruickshank said today.

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	News & Journalism, The Exit Interview	Posted at 1:14 pm (27 Nov 2008)

The latest federal elections introduced some new tools for site visitors to use on our site.

You were able to use your postal code to get riding information, view real time results on an interactive map, view live video, and talk politics by posting comments.

I will be talking about these applications in detail in the next few posts.

Blackout
Providing these features proved to be a challenge. The Elections Act doesn’t allow us to broadcast results to areas of the country where the polls haven’t yet closed. Therefore we were not publishing any results on the website until 10PM ET. This is known as the “blackout” period.

Flash Crowd
Because of the blackout wasn’t over until 10pm ET, that’s when the majority of users came to the site. Let’s take a look at the traffic graph for that particular evening.

The date/time in the graph is in Eastern Time. To give you an idea of the scale of the graph the top of the Y axis would be a value 3.8 times higher than at the bottom. The red arrow indicates the peak, which lasted for approx 10 minutes. As the evening progressed the traffic subsided.

“Elections Mode”
Because of the blackout we had to figure out a way to display results on the site the instant 10PM rolls around. Here’s how we did it:

All of the site assets were uploaded to the webservers hours in advance. We were able to control the display of these assets using Server Side Includes (SSIs).

SSIs allows us to hide or display certain html based on the existence of a variable by using if statements. Here’s an example:

<!–#if expr=”${electionsmode} = on”–>
<results related HTML goes here>
<!–#endif–>

We include a file called “vars.html” at the top of every page which defines the “electionsmode” variable. When it’s time to go live, we just change the “electionsmode” variable in vars.html from “off” to “on” and the new content appears instantly on the site.

Getting The Data
The elections results are delivered to us from another IT department. It is the exact same data feed that is used on-air. We process the results every 30 seconds and spit out XML data for our applications to use. The process works like this:

1. IT FTPs the raw election data results to our server.
2. CBC.ca’s Java application sucks in the raw data.
3. The application applies business rules, calculates percentages, then outputs XML files.
4. Process is repeated again in 30 seconds.

The XML files are used for the flash map and riding result pages. Because this process only happens every 30 seconds, you might see a delay from what you see on Television. This is because TV does not have this post-processing and transforming that we do.

The Flash Map
The flash map was developed by Tom Klepl, a very talented flash developer. He worked closely with the system administrators to ensure that the map was designed in such a way that it played well with our CDN (Akamai).

The map allows users to zoom in to their riding and see real time results of who is winning the race. As well, it gives a general overview of all the ridings in Canada. One of our interface engineers, David Raso, produced the following time lapse video of how the country voted on election night.

In Part Two
In my next post, we’ll go into further detail on how the postal code search works (hint: no php, java, or database required!) as well as how we dealt with users who would post election results in comments!

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	, CBC.ca web site, Under the Hood	Posted at 4:09 pm (20 Nov 2008)

Sadly this is the last Olympics that CBC will be covering for a while. That said, this is also the most well covered Olympics in CBC history. Partly thanks to the Internet and cbc.ca.

Don’t Feed The Animals
cbc.ca/olympics provides you with up to 12 online “channels” where you can watch Olympic events live. This is possible thanks to the folks in Television (specifically Web Presentation group), encoding software by Digital Rapids called StreamZ, and Akamai.

The Olympic feeds are back hauled by Television to Toronto where they are encoded by the Digital Rapids boxes. They are encoded in Windows Media v8 at 500kbps. This stream is then sent to Akamai for distribution.

In most cases the video you see are raw feeds from the venues. This means that there is no commentary. The only audio you here is ambient sounds from the event.

A lot of people like these feeds as they provide coverage for their sport even if it is not available on television.

Canada Only, Please
Due to licensing restrictions by the IOC, only Canadians are able to view Olympic coverage provided by the CBC. As such, we’ve had to use technology from Akamai to ensure that we follow the rules.

The Akamai method of “geofencing” (as we call it) is more sophisticated than what I described earlier. Multiple methods are used, some of them are:

• Your IP Address. Using a database of known IP blocks and locations.
• Which Akamai DNS server you use. When you look up a host name (like www.cbc.ca) you hit a specific Akamai DNS server. Akamai knows which DNS server is in which country and uses that information to figure out what country you’re in.
  BGP Metrics. In a nutshell, Akamai looks at what other servers/routers you go through to get to the stream. If those are in the country Akamai thinks you’re in, then the confidence level goes up.
• Timezones. Using a piece of javascript on the client side. We figure out what timezone your clock is set to. If it matches with one of the timezones in the country Akamai thinks you’re in, confidence level goes up.
• We have people who watch you.

The methods listed above, plus a bunch of others combine to give a Country accuracy level of 99%.

Trends
Because of the twelve hour difference (in the Eastern Time Zone) quite a few of the events happen late at night and early the next morning.

The above graph shows the number of people watching the streams over the past seven days. The majority of the watching happens between 8pm and 12am EDT, and 6am and 12pm EDT.

Some days are more popular than others (like August 14, versus August 16). The little red arrow you see on August 19, at around 12pm EDT is when the most users were watching the streams ever.

I suspect that the closing ceremonies will generate the most streaming traffic during the Olympics.

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	CBC.ca web site, Specials, Under the Hood	Posted at 2:11 pm (20 Aug 2008)

This past week we released a new version of the CBC Program Guide. This was a much needed upgrade as the old version was virtually useless because it constantly crashed.

The Nitty Gritty
This new version is written in Java using Struts and Hibernate. These are enterprise frameworks that eliminate the need to create custom libraries. These “custom libraries” are what caused a lot of the instability with the previous version of the Program Guide.

The previous version stored all of its data in an Oracle database, with no expiry policy. This means that you could go back years to see what was on CBC Television in 2003, for example. The new version stores all of its data in a PostgreSQL database with an expiry policy. There really is no need to know what was on CBC.

The new guide is also extremely extensible. Able to output in multiple formats including HTML, XML, and JSON. This allows other CBC developers to leverage the data located in the guide.

Quick Rundown
Program Guide information is available for all CBC properties: Television, Newsworld, Radio One, and Radio 2. It also includes A to Z guides of all CBC Programs and Personalities. The new guide has been redesigned so that it is easy for you to view what is currently on air right now, which is highlighted in blue.

You are able to “segment” your day into early morning, morning, afternoon, or evening. So you only can only see 5-8 hours blocks at a time. You are also able to view the full day, or a schedule for the entire week. Clicking on a show title will bring you to the program page which will allow you to see air times, plus a description about the show and its personalities. You can also filter your schedule by program category. So you can only see Sports, Comedy, Drama, etc.

The print friendly version of the guide is well formatted and easy to read.

The Future
With the new Program Guide framework we are able to provide a lot of new features. Some ideas floating around include RSS feeds of your favorite show (air times, descriptions, etc..). The ability to include program/personality information in our search engine is also a possibility.

The new Program Guide will be used during the Olympics to allow you to know exactly what event will be on-air when. You will be able to access this information from the Olympics page or the Program Guide main page.

Expect to see more features and pages that utilize the new Program Guide in the near future!

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	Under the Hood	Posted at 2:34 pm (22 Jul 2008)

Can you guess which CBC employee this is? (Hint: This person is in management at the regio… er, “centre”-level.

1. My first job was at McDonald’s
2. I once lived in Winnipeg for 11 months, which gave me great appreciation for the west coast
3. In college, I was the drummer in a band; my nickname was “Sticks”
4. I make a mean Greek salad and a killer side dish of humus
5. My favourite hockey team is the Montreal Canadians
6. I love driving fast cars
7. I’ve been know to Karaoke to Frank Sinatra
8. I actually owned a white suit in the mid-eighties
9. I shoot and edit my own videos
10. Photography is one of my favourite hobbies!

The answer is at StationBreak.

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	Columns	Posted at 2:37 pm (05 Jun 2008)

Rae Hull, former director of CBC Television in Vancouver, has been immersed in her new responsibilities as Director of Partnerships with the Vancouver 2010 Cultural Olympiad for more than a year now. Her job is to develop a “framework” (those old management-speak words just keep following her around) with both government and private sector partners which will maximize nation-wide participation by Canada’s provinces and territories and their cultural engagement with Vancouver 2010.

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	Where Are They Now?	Posted at 12:47 pm (02 Jun 2008)