I had the pleasure of attending the evening with my gorgeous girlfriend, Amy, and we sat with the others from One Media Group.

We enjoyed a three course meal, even if the beef was a bit tough, including a very chocolaty desert!

Before the meal the Society colours were awarded and many of the management, including myself, got colours which are described as “the highest recognition a society can give to its members”.

OMG as a whole had been nominated in several categories for other awards and on the night we found out that we had been short listed for Event of the Year (Divide – a regular alternative music evening) and Society of the Year. Neither of which we won, but we were up against some tough competition.

OMG also presented its own awards to some of the team, and unlike last year, the winners were not told in advance. Maddy Andrews received Best Journalist for her coverage of the Shelton Siege, Best Female Presenter went to Naina Rishiraj for a second year whilst Best Male Presenter (an award which I won last year) went to Steven Cummiskey. Best Format was awarded to Liam Maxwell for his Monday show, Decade Jukebox.

The final award that OMG presented was the Outstanding Contribution Award. I am amazed to say that this was awarded to Oliver Needham! It was a great shock as I wasn’t expecting anything like this at all! I did have a little tear in my eye as I accepted an award and received a little plaque!

As I didn’t get to make a speech, I’d just like to thank everyone who I’ve worked with this year at OMG. If it hadn’t been the support and encourage of management and also the Students’ Union then the new website and outside broadcasts wouldn’t have happened in the first place.

Also a thank you to my girlfriend, Amy Sims, who was there supporting me and offering a different perspective when I needed it the most. It was a pleasure to share the awards evening with her, and she looked stunning as well!

Here’s to another year of OMG progressing and being even better than it already is!

Photo courtesy of Amy Sims.

I remember buying them from the independently ran shop (which is now a ‘Premier’) near my house in my hometown, for about 40p.

I got rather excited with my Kinder Surprise as I hadn’t had one in ages! I knew that they had changed the capsule which holds the toy (they’ve made it easier to get in).

The toys weren’t what they used to be either; they’re now very simple, two or three piece figures which don’t tend to do very much. I remember getting a car that had some strange gear/spinning wheel thing inside it which was awesome!

My toy in my March 2012 Kinder Surprise was an elephant which was three pieces. It wasn’t challenging or that exciting.

My disappointment came when I looked at the piece of paper inside that described which series of toys it was from. It showed the other animals from the series and then showed a small lion icon. Above it was a diagram that showed if you visited their website and showed the icon to your webcam, it would reveal more content.

However when I visited the website it was just health and product information about Kinder products. I checked I put the address in correctly and then went searching on their site for this extra content. There was none to be found!

I went to their contact page and wrote this following message:

Dear Sir/Madam,

I recently bought a Kinder Surprise.

I was delighted with the toy, however when I went to www.2magic.com and chose the United Kingdom as my country, I was appalled to see that there was nowhere for me to scan my Natoons lion symbol. On the diagram below the symbol, it showed that I could hold it up to my webcam, and that magic would happen.

I am unsure what magic, but I was unable to find out where to scan my symbol.

Please could you re-enable this feature on your website, so that I may get the full enjoyment out of my Kinder Surprise experience.

If not, may I have another Kinder Egg to complete my experience.

Thank you very much.

Oliver

That was a genuine email and I hope that they do reply to me.

I wonder how many other children have been disappointed with their Kinder Surprise experience. It’s certainly worse that mine from when I was a child.

If there any developments, I’ll let you know!

Apparently the NME awards happened recently! I think I voted in them, but I can’t really remember. Either way, a film called Submarine got the best film award. It’s a film I wanted to see but never got around to it.

NME awarded Submarine the best film gong this week. With music courtesy of Alex Turner, it sounds worth a watch! amzn.to/ACM3iq

— Amazon Music UK (@AmazonMusicUK) March 2, 2012

2. Horsegate jokes

I heard about Rebekah Brooks’ horse adventures via Twitter, so it’s only fair that I would hear some of the best jokes from Twitter as well! Here The Guardian try to get a round up of the best jokes. Look in the comments for what people have suggested.

Horsegate: give us your best jokes gu.com/p/35qe2/tf

— Media Guardian (@mediaguardian) March 2, 2012

3. BBC Three understands science?

BBC Three want to delve into the world of science with their new programme, Secrets of Everything. I didn’t think that BBC Three was a place for science and that Bang Goes the Theory on BBC One had it covered, but maybe this programme will bring it to the ‘cool kids’.

#SecretsOfEverything with @gregfoot starts Sun at 8pm! Read Greg’s blog and ask him a science question here: bbc.in/x7ah0z #AskGreg

— BBC Three (@bbc3tv) March 2, 2012

Here I’m going to take a quick look at some of the sites I’ve came across and briefly give you my thoughts on them.

The Bad

Hayes FM - www.hayesfm.org

Hayes FM is “a community focused local radio station based in Hayes in Greater West London, England.”

What I like about their website is that it’s not overloaded with many different colours and clearly has a four column layout.

My gripes with this site is that it doesn’t feel too easy for me to read. There are many different font sizes; from the headers in the right sidebar to the large listen again in the centre.

There’s also too much white space that could be utilised better as well and an awkward local news page.

I can see that they’ve used CMS Made Simple to create the site. I don’t know enough about the software to comment on whether they’ve used it to it’s best ability.

Takeover Radio - www.takeoverradio.com

Takeover Radio is a charity operated community radio station broadcasting to the city of Leicester.

The first thing that strikes me is the bright background. I think it’s important to have a page background that compliments the main content. However the bright purple is too much for my eyes to handle.

The whole site navigation was a pain for me to use. Many sites these days keep the navigation at the top or on the left. Here they use both. But the main problem I have is that the left menu items are all flash buttons. I remember using them in year 7 when I didn’t know any better. This has a couple of usability issues; if a user is using an Apple device, they won’t see it as well as someone who uses a screen reader.

Many of the pages have too much going on, with small headers and inconsistent spacings in the text. Overall it’s pretty hard to read.

The whole site looks to be a custom built job and it’s clear by the source code that their techniques are a bit dated, using tables and “styleXX”.

The Dysfunctional

Moorlands Radio – www.moorlandsradio.co.uk

Moorlands Radio broadcasts to the Staffordshire Moorlands and has been in development since 2003.

What I like about the Moorlands Radio website is that it works. The navigation is very clear and the content is easy to read. The brand is also very consistent between pages.

My problem is the way that it hasn’t been adapted at all to suit their specific needs or brand. The WordPress theme (Structure) is straight out the box and they haven’t made the most of the awesome things that WordPress can do. They could add a dash of their orange colour across the site and I don’t think it would hinder the design at all.

Gravity FM - www.gravityfm.net

Gravity FM is broadcast from Grantham, Lincolnshire and has done so since December 2008.

I wouldn’t say Gravity’s website was ugly, it just needs a guiding hand.

What I like is that the content layout is consistent throughout and it’s easy to read.

The issue here is finding the content you want. I got lost trying to find out more about the station and ended up learning about the CIC instead of the actual station! The navigation need a second look at, with better grouping and arranging. I eventually learnt that the top navigation takes you to parent pages and the left one takes you to child pages.

With a lick of paint as well this website would be great! The content is all there, it just need rearranging into a sensible and logical order.

Gravity use Joomla, which I’ve worked with a little and know that it can be a great CMS (see Hope FM). Gravity just need someone to sit down with them and run through how they can utilise it best with their content.

The Good

Unity Radio - www.unityradio.fm

Unity Radio is a Greater Manchester station whose primary audience is 15-25 year old.

What I like about Unity’s website is that everything is clearly labelled. You know exactly what to expect under each heading and page designs are all similar; it’s mainly just the blogs which have style deviations but sometimes that can’t be helped.

Some of the actual content could do with some work. For example, what many would consider to be the schedule is actually called the ‘timetable’. A bit unconventional, but it seems to work for them.

What seems to be a featured content slider, is in fact something completely different! If you click one of the genres underneath the image, it takes you to a page which displays shows of that genre which they broadcast. That confused me a little but that’s about it.

Overall I feel that this site is solidly built on WordPress and it suits the target audience.

Hope FM - www.hopefm.com

Hope FM is a community Christian radio station serving Bournemouth, Poole and Christchurch.

Hope FM’s site is another example of a website which is clearly solidly built. The headers and modules are and concise.

There aren’t any nasty surprises on the homepage, except the exceptionally slow featured slider transitions! On some of the other pages tables are used to display information and use very bright colours which don’t compliment the rest of the site at all. This is just a simple issue of deciding how to best present some information.

The site is built using Joomla and is a great example of what how a website can utilise it.

My Conclusion

All the sites, bar one, have used an open source or free content management system. This is the way forward! There are many great platforms out there which offer free, flexible solutions for radio station. My favourite being WordPress.

Once WordPress is set up the stations can create whatever kind of website they want and the back-end is easy to use as many people are already used to it. I wish more community radio stations would spend a bit of time getting a student or someone who knows what they’re doing to set them up their own hosting, install WordPress and help them customise an out-of-the-box theme. If everyone did this then the stations would have much nicer websites.

So who am I to comment on radio stations’ websites? I’ve worked with about 4/5 community radio stations in some way since the age of 12, with varying website capabilities. More recently I helped a student media group at Staffordshire University redesign their website and to drive their online content more. I’ve also worked with a Christian community radio station in Stoke-on-Trent where I’ve helped develop parts of their website. I’ve even teamed up with a good childhood friend of mine to develop the Radio ‘On Air’ Script, which is now used at three radio stations in the UK.

I don’t claim to be an expert at web design (I know I can still learn massively and improve!) but I hope that my opinions can help shape other’s future projects.

If you have any comments, please feel free to leave them on this article or email me at oliver@thewebguyuk.co.uk.

Note: I work for a couple of community radio stations at the moment, and have also influenced the website of another. I’ve not included these at all in this as it would be unfair. I’ve also not included any student radio stations as I would be very biased towards them as I work for one!

Sources: Ofcom list of Community Radio Stations and relevant radio stations’ websites.

On 16th January I tweeted the university to ask if there was a reason the sign has been taken down recently and this was their reply:

@thewebguyuk Hi Oliver. The sign you mentioned was a temporary feature and is due to be replaced with permanent signage later this year :)

— Staffordshire Uni (@StaffsUni) January 17, 2012

So it looks like it might come back but in another form. Maybe a more static sign? We’ll see.

On Friday 13th March 2009 it was Red Nose Day 2009. During the week of the day some guys at PRC Broadway Media & Journalism Centre decided to do a ‘Broadway Dances For Comic Relief’ thing in the TV studios at Broadway. So I was dragged in to do the vision mixing for the Wednesday and Thursday of video recording. Below is a video from the Campus’ YouTube channel. I did all the vision mixing and the graphics in the studio and recorded it directly to tape, and then Scott has uploaded it. So watch and enjoy. Hopefully more of it is coming soon.

Posted 18th March 2009

Looking back that video was horrendous! Also the other ones were just as bad really! I’d say that they were particularly bad because I was one of the only first years that had figured out how to work the vision mixer, I couldn’t vision mix and also the choice of camera shots I had wasn’t any good either.

I also did this one, but this embarrasses lots of people that were at college with me and also those still at Peterborough Regional College.

I am looking forward to 2012 as it means there are lots of things to look forward to and I hope many things will continue to develop in the year to come!

The Rebrand of OMG

In January 2012, OMG will be launching a new logo and rebranding itself. I’ve already redone the website and in January I’ll be launching a new player as a web app. Also we’ll start planning for Varsity and also a possible world record attempt.

Staffs Uni vs. Keele Varsity

Varsity is a great chance for OMG to show what we can really do. It will be a real test of the website’s ability to handle a large amount of users as well as the ability of our contributors to post great articles. It also brings challenges as to how we will broadcast from Keele and get it back to the studio.

Cre8 Radio is on air again

I was thrilled to be part of Cre8 Radio last year and this year I get the opportunity to be part of it again. I’m looking forward to being part of the team and also broadcasting on FM again. Hopefully I’ll be able to present a bit more this year and muscle in on some of the subjects broadcast.

Essex International Jamboree 2012

In October I found out that I had been accepted to be part of the EIJ radio broadcasting team. As we go towards August and the broadcast I’ll be assigned my role (hopefully presenting!), preparing show content and getting to know my fellow members of the team.

Continued work at Cross Rhythms & Staffs Union

I will start 2012 continuing to work with Cross Rhythms and Staffordshire University Students’ Union. At Cross Rhythms I will continue to work with them on their social media and also develop the website (where I can). At the Students’ Union I continue my job as Web Designer. No doubt I’ll work on Varsity integration with the OMG website and also the world record attempt (if that goes ahead!).

That’s my work and volunteering roles pretty much covered, but my continuing relationship with my girlfriend Amy is what I’m looking forward to the most! We’ve been together over a year and a half and we’ve shared some amazing experiences together and I hope that they may continue throughout 2012.

If you want to keep up to date with the emails I send out (Oliver Needham Updates if you will), then click here.

This year’s music has been non-stop and I have to say that my favourite songs of the year has particularly been dance music. Here’s my favourites:

• Avicii – Levels
• Calvin Harris – Feel So Close
• Nero – Welcome Reality (album)
• Foster the People – Pumped Up Kicks
• Rizzle Kicks – Down With The Trumpets
• Calvin Harris – Bounce
• Swedish House Mafia – Save The World
• Two Door Cinema Club – Something Good Can Work

Those are just some of the tracks I’ve enjoyed over the past year and have been played a fair bit from Spotify and my iPod!

Above this post is DJ Earworm Mashup – United State of Pop 2011 (World Go Boom). Usually he takes the Billboard Top 25, but this year he’s based it on other numbers. Either way; it is awesome!

Below is the UK version of DJ Earworm’s 2011 mashup; Beat-a-Maxx’s 2011 mashup for the Official Charts Company.

Actually “ifttt” stands for “If This Then That”. ‘But what is ifttt?!’ I may here you cry!

ifttt is a web app that puts “the internet to work by creating tasks”. The tasks follow the formula ‘if this, then that’.

I found ifttt when Vic from Staffs Union started using it to tweet when he had a new follower. I also saw some others using it to tweet specific things but I’ve found a more creative use for it!

Some of the channels available on ifttt

ifttt tasks are built up by using channels to configure triggers and actions. There are currently 39 channels that you can configure, including the usual suspects of Twitter, Facebook and Gmail. There’s also some interesting ones like date & time, SMS and phone calls!

One that interested me was the triggers linked to your Last.fm account. Every time you scrobble a track to Last.fm you can trigger a channel action.

I’ve wanted to display the music that I listen to on my website for quite a while. Until recently I had Twitterfeed take my Last.fm RSS feed and tweet it to a Twitter account that I used just for that. I then displayed that Twitter timeline in a WordPress widget. It was a fairly long way round of doing it and sometimes I didn’t have the effect I wanted.

I figured that with ifttt and some goodies from Tumblr I would be able to show off my latest scrobbled tracks as well as their album covers in a slightly easier way.

So I attached my Last.fm account to ifttt, then set up a Tumblr blog called What Oliver Listens To. I had learnt when I put together Stoke CU’s media page that you can embed a tumblog using a bit of Javascript found on their Goodies page. It comes with no styling and just some Tumblr classes with which you can play with.

I told ifttt that when I scrobble a track, it should post a photo post on Tumblr, with the album cover as the photo and the artist and song title in the photo’s caption.

With a bit of CSS magic I got it to look reasonably nice on both this blog and my portfolio site.

There are loads of things that you can do with ifttt! Like ‘When Facebook profile picture changes, update Twitter profile picture‘ or even ‘Annoy friends by posting a link to Rebecca Black’s Friday on Facebook every‘! There are loads of them on the Recipes page on ifttt.

Now, can I get it to text message me when a relative has announced on Facebook what present they’re getting me for Christmas?