On the BBC Annotatable Audio project...

Tom Coates writes:  "... It's officially my last day at the BBC today, but with the permission of my outgoing boss ... I'm going to make the very best use of it by talking about a project that we've been working on for the last few weeks. I consider it one of the most exciting projects I've ever worked on, and BBC Radio & Music Interactive one of the only places in the world where I would have been able to have done so. ...¶... The project we undertook was focused on Annotatable Audio (specifically, but not exclusively, of BBC radio programming) - and we decided to look in an unorthodox direction - towards the possibilities of user-created annotation and metadata. We decided that we wanted to develop an interface that might allow the collective articulation of what a programme or speech or piece of music was about and how it could be divided up and described. Our first ideas looked for approaches similar to del.icio.us, Flickr or our own Phonetags - which create collective value by accreting the numerous annotations that individuals make for their own purposes. But after a fascinating discussion with Jimmy Wales, we decided to think about this in a different way - in which (just like Wikipedia) individuals would overtly cooperate to create something greater and more authoritative. ..."  Link:  Plasticbag.org.