CBC Introduces its iPhone Application
The CBC introduced its first iPhone application today. The application streams content from Radio One, Radio 2, and CBC Radio 3, and audio from CBC Television.
The free application works on the iPhone or iPod Touch. It will allow users to listen to as many as 19 live streams and a host of on-demand content. “One of the best features is the integration of the iPhone optimized web site within the application, so that you browse cbc.ca while you’re listening to the CBC,” Jonathan Carrigan, who lead the product development, said this afternoon.
Carrigan said the development was extremely smooth, partly because everyone on the project was passionate about it but also because everyone realized the public demand. He said the CBC’s audience relations department has been getting a steady flow of requests for an iPhone app for several months, so he was very pleased to be able to introduce it today, “this truly is in response to popular demand,” he said from Vancouver.
Carrigan said the application focuses on audio content because “the numbers point to audio being a big opportunity.” He also hinted the CBC is currently working on other iPhone applications for the fall, but couldn’t be more specific.
To get the application click on this link (note: clicking the link with open iTunes)
What do you think of the new app?
|
Email This Post |
| CBC Mobile, Programming |
Works great, although I would like to see Saint John in the local radio one live list!
Why does the iphone get a cool app that actually lets you stream while Blackberry users get a glorified email alert that will excite no one?
Nice! I’m glad there are live streams and on-demand content.
Before this I was using a combination of Wunder Radio and RSSPlayer depending on whether or not The World At Six was currently airing.
19 streams and nothing that is not out of Ontario?
Where is CBC North, Iqaluit, Montreal or the SRC?
CBC.ca/mobile/iphone promised “Enjoy 23 live streams and more than 70 of CBC’s most popular programs on-demand.”
So what is missing?
And why not a button for French as well? Are the tete-carres in Vancouver so deaf they don’t consider that we prefer the music on SRC to Radio 2 or 3?
French CBC had this tool 2 month ago it seems, but again no all encompassing menu. The two solitudes.
Get together, man!
http://www.apptism.com/apps/la-radio-de-radio-canad
I tested it out for a few minutes, here are a few notes for anyone who cares.
- I have a first Gen Iphone (Non-3G) and the streams appear to work well even over the slower EDGE network.
- The “Surf and Listen” feature is a nice touch so you can read the CBC news website while you listen.
- I really like the Frequencies list, paired with “find your location” it promises to be a useful feature for those who like to stay on CBC radio during long road trips (If you dont feel like paying for sat radio)
-Have not tried any of the “On Demand” stuff yet but nice feature… I prefer just having the podcasts via itunes so I can listen to them in the background of other apps
Wish list
-The CBC Radio One streams list seems a bit short. Ottawa, Fredericton, St john’s and many more are missing.
-The “Find your location” location does not seem to work with my non GPS capable iPhone (other applications and Google maps work fine with just cell location)
- When playing streams, The Radio-Canada app shows current show (Premiere Chaine) and Current Song info (Espace Musique) It would be nice to have that for the CBC side too.
-Please add Radio-Canada International “RCI” streams
I just tried the Live Streams > Radio 1 and I get Goose Bay, Inuvik, Iqualuit, London, Quebec City, Toronto, Vancouver, Whitehorse, and Yellowknife. This seems weird. How come there’s no Winnipeg, Regina, Alberta anything in the Maritimes? It looks like there are more options for Radio 2.
The Surf and Listen locations are also a little spotty with locations missing as well.
In general, the locations should use the location that is set in the timezone panel.
The local stations panels could also be larger (the buttons could be larger or they could just take up more space on the screen, it’s a little empty).
I do like it and it seems to work well for listening but the locations need updating. Great start!
Seriously well done, builds off the already great iPhone site. I’ll be using this often. Public broadcasting FTW!
p.s. If you could get Age of Persuasion on-demand that would be super.
It’s a great first start, and I second the requests above for additional streams. In addition, I’d love to have the schedule cached locally after being downloaded so that it could be accessed while not on the Internet. This is particularly useful for those of us with iPod Touches, who only have Internet when we are in a wifi zone.
Otherwise, great work!
Would like to see a Victoria version
[...] InsideTheCBC.com comes news that CBC Radio has launched an iPhone/iPod Touch application. The application streams [...]
Any chance of an application for Google’s Android? Because, you know, most smartphones will ship with Android within a year and more and more of those are coming to Canada.
Chris Tomalty>> You will have to wait years before they do create a Android app, as the folks at CBC have no clue what a Android or Blackberry device is. Its so sad that the Blackberry thats made in canada does not have a proper app from CBC.
I would really like to know how many hits from Iphones we get in Canada vs a Blackberry.
Why can’t we have the stats for it?
We all know that the iPhone is only popular with a cetain crowd while the blackberry is more prevelent.
Who determined that Goose Bay, Inuvik, Iqualuit, London, Quebec City, Toronto, Vancouver, Whitehorse, and Yellowknife would be the only local Radio 1 locations available? What are the criteria? When will the others be added?
I’m just speculating since I had nothing to do with the development of this but I suspect the odd selection has to do with the encoding of the content, and the difficulty of getting a feed from Calgary into a server in Toronto.
I suspect there is a special server doing the encoding and or delivering of these streams which is sitting in Toronto.
All of the stations listed above are available in the Toronto broadcast centre, mostly because their programming is fed to a satellite for distribution to remote transmitters, so in Toronto they can pull these feeds off the bird and send them to the iphone server. It’s much harder to do for other locations where the audio feed doesn’t go up to a satellite and therefore doesn’t come in to Toronto.
They may have to do what they did with web streaming and put individual servers in each location to deal with the audio freed from that spot. When you listen to an audio feed of Calgary for example, you are getting that from a server that is based in Calgary. Their feed doesn’t make it into the TBC, making it difficult to centralize streaming for all CBC locations.
The irony is that some of these markets (Goose Bay, Inuvik, I think Iqaluit) have no Rogers coverage in their areas so none of their regular listeners have iPhones anyway.
I may be wrong, someone with firsthand knowledge of the project can feel free to correct me.
Hi,
I’m one of the engineers who built the Radio iPhone app at CBC.
To Damien: we do know what Android and BlackBerry devices are, and we have some of those platforms and other devices in our office. While we strive to support as many platforms as we can, we have to choose our battles.
To give you a bit of insight – we have a development team of 3 people. At any given time, there’s usually only 1 full-time engineer working on complex mobile applications. So this is a matter of resource utilisation, as opposed to picking favourites. I am not the person who decides the platforms or the priorities; however I do assess technology. The Radio app development started in late 2008, so you perhaps you can understand it takes time to deliver something of quality .
To iNudes… the lack of Maritime and Calgary streams is because the iPhone does not support WMA (the current format for most of CBC’s streaming content). These streams are in the process of being converted to MP3 streams; and this is a ongoing project. MP3 Streams are better generally for everyone (Linux and Mac users too). You are partially right about the streams being located in Toronto, however some of the streams, for example Vancouver, are located in Vancouver, not Toronto.
Patrick: we show the current playing program and the upcoming program for Radio 1 and Radio 2 location based streams. Radio 3 has metadata, as well as all Radio 2 live genres.
Ash,
Thanks for your comments. It’s always most helpful to hear insights from those on the inside.
After hearing Andy Barrie plugging the CBC app on Metro Morning today, I was wondering if there’s anything similar available for Android. In searching, I found this page.
Given the limits on what can be done in-house, another option might be to ensure that whatever server-side support this application uses is open and accessible to developers who want to create an unofficial version for other devices.
I have no doubt that, as a public broadcaster, the CBC wants to reach as many readers/listeners/viewers as possible. Working with the open source community is a great way to do more than you could on your own.
Congrats on all your app’s success!
Hi Dave,
Mobile is a huge growth area and still very much in early days; if the numbers back up Android or any other device, than those results will drive our desire to build apps.
As it stands, there’s nothing really stopping the open-source community from building their own software; as CBC publishes all the feeds in use, plus the listing of Podcasts – freely available on the web. Even the metadata for the streams is available. All we’ve done is put these together in a cohesive package for the iPhone at present.
Regards
Ash
Hi Ash,
Thanks for the response. That’s great to hear!
Is there a listing of MP3 streams available anywhere? This page only lists Windows Media streams:
http://www.cbc.ca/listen/index.html
As you point out, MP3 streams are great news for everyone, not just mobile phone users.
By metadata, do you mean the ID3 metadata for each stream, or some kind of more comprehensive metadata repository (RDF or something)? Does the iPhone app have the listing of available streams and podcasts built in? Or does it access such a listing online?
Thanks again,
Dave
Nudes says:
“Why does the iphone get a cool app that actually lets you stream while Blackberry users get a glorified email alert that will excite no one?”
Because blackberry is a ‘serious business’ pda specializing in email and all that boring crap. Wheres as the iPhone and Android(very cool) phones are media-o-centric consumer devices.
Anonymous: “blackberry is a ’serious business’ pda”
As someone who uses a blackberry I can say it’s both for business (which is why my boss gave me one) and for fun (which is why I like to have it for). Seeing the number of blackberries handed out around the corp, I would think there would be an internal push. I’ve been fiddling around trying to figure out how to stream a show or download the podcast and it’s not easy or straight forward.
Lots of areas of Canada you can have a blackberry and not an iPhone because of rogers smaller footprint.
Dave,
Much of the listings of live and on-demand streams are currently built-in; but this is changing in a TBD future release.
With regards to streams, these are the ones the iPhone app uses. (There’s nothing here you can’t sniff over a network connection)
http://atl2.fla.abacast.com/ (Search for CBC. Disclaimer: many of these are unsupported streams, thus no warranties about their reliablity or quality)
For a list of the podcasts
http://www.cbc.ca/podcasting/podcasts.opml
We publish additional metadata for many of the live R2 and R3 streams
Here’s an example:
http://www.cbc.ca/radio2/channels/feeds/jazz.xml
Standard disclaimer applies.
Regards
Hi again Ash,
Thanks for all the fantastic information! The problem with sniffing it is that it would require having an iPhone in the first place.
I’m most impressed by your openness and helpfulness.
Cheers,
Dave
Hi Ash,
Thanks for all the information you’ve provided …
Like other users, I also would like support for my Android phone (HTC Magic). It was a big surprise to see the listing of Icecast streams for CBC radio. I live in Victoria, and at this point (September 1st) it appears that although the Vancouver Radio 1 station is available, the Victoria streams do not have any content (unsupported). Hopefully all the streams will soon be supported.
I’m been able to uses AOR (Android Online Player – http://www.cyrket.com/package/com.leadapps.android.radio) to confirm the Vancouver Radio 1 feed.
Does CBC do any polling to determine what platforms their users (a.k.a. taxpayers) want supported?
Cheers,
~ David
Hi Daid,
I can’t really discuss how the platforms are determined as my role is as the software engineer. My conversations with those who make the business cases – alot of what is reviewed are industry reports – i.e. polls and surveys of the number of devices that are sold in Canada, the consumer momentum, the product roadmap moving forward, and lastly a cost analysis (which is based on how easily app can be easily developed).
Of course the CBC has financial restrictions. You may be surprised, but each taxpayer in Canada pays the equivalent of $33 a *year* to support CBC content. That’s very little to support a broadcaster that has a mandate as large as the CBC. Only this year, we’ve had to layoff 800 jobs; which is very damaging. As a result the CBC may / will consider making products for platforms which are strategic to its financial health.
As for the Victoria stream; we are aware that it currently does not provide audio. As I mentioned in a prior post, not all the icecast streams you can view have a guarantee of stability or quality. Once the stream is available in the iPhone app (or other devices that use it), then internal commitments are made to the quality and reliability of the stream.
Kind regards
Ash