BBG Innovation Series, 10 Jan 2013, April Deibert/Addie Nascimento: "VOA’s Urdu Service, Indonesian Service, and Khmer Service are using SoundCloud in a pilot project. These uploads can take place daily, weekly, or biweekly—but they must be done manually—but once they are uploaded, all content plays automatically and functions like a radio station. Their staff uploads content to SoundCloud manually pushing metadata-rich podcast feeds (VOA’s Urdu, Indonesian, and ___ are already doing this) to the SoundCloud server. There are upcoming changes that will allow this process to happen automatically. However, their users are accessing the content through SoundCloud’s main website, through a Play Store app, through an iTunes Store app, as well as directly on Facebook ... Be sure that you have clean metadata. You always need unique titles and descriptions for your media files. Make this a common practice. This will help your content perform better in search engines. This will also help identify one program from another; users will look for a person’s name or topic of which they are interested."

BBG Innovation Series, 10 Jan 2013, April Deibert: "A few months ago, I posted about HTML5 video and Randy Abramson (Director of Product and Operations) posted about News On Location (NOL). In this post, however, we want to take a look at how HTML5 mapping is evolving and how BBG’s NOL may make use of the technology in the near future. Knowing the location of users (with their permission of course) can be a good thing both for them and for one’s service. Not only do users often feel that they’re receiving personalized results, but there is potential for them to contribute to live maps and live feeds—making their entire interaction with your site more relevant."

GCN, 17 Jan 2013, Greg Crowe: "The Broadcasting Board of Governors, the federal agency responsible for such broadcasts as Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, recently announced that it put all of its content on the Google Currents mobile platform, giving its users a magazine-like experience. Because of the nature of its work, BBG’s feeds are delivered in 40 languages to a populace that’s increasingly mobile."

AOL Government, 10 Jan 2013, Judi Hasson: "The Currents application comes preinstalled on many Google Android devices and can give government agencies enhanced access to audiences on all mobile platforms. The app is available for both Apple iOS and Google Android supported devices. Users can find the BBG editions by downloading the application in the Apple App Store or Google Play Store and search for VOA, RFA, RFE/RL, Marti and MBN respectively. 'Syndicating content to Google Currents can be as easy as simply providing an RSS feed. However, in our case, it got little more complicated due to the many languages and the fonts they required,' said Addie Nascimento, BBG's syndication product lead, who built all the BGG Current editions. In just a few months, BBG's Google Currents has brought in over 10,000 subscribers to VOA English alone, about 7,000 to VOA Mandarin and 3,500 subscribers to Radio Free Asia, all without any real marketing."