From all the staff at the Community Media Association and Canstream, we would like to wish all of our subscribers and supporters all the best for 2012. We are looking forward to an exciting new year and we will be busier than usual for the next few months upgrading our servers and back office systems to give you better streaming service and value. As a taster, look out for new and improved streaming statistics from the Spring onwards.

It will be another important year for community media with more community radio stations granted licences and regional consultation about the new Communications Bill – keep in touch with us for more details.

ALISA bridges the gap between your online streaming and your Listen Again platform. With ALISA you can record your station’s output and automatically upload it to the Listen Again platform. Just complete an online schedule with details of your shows and everything you want to record gets automatically uploaded and can store up to 20 gigabytes of programmes.

Cost: £10 per month or £100 per year +VAT with a podcasting account only from Canstream!

Our “Station Manager’s Toolbox” features some of the web’s best resources to help with managing your station and your volunteers. We particularly like to highlight free and open source resources.

The Guardian has long been known for its coverage of the arts and is now building on that with the launch of the Guardian Cultural Professionals Network – the newest addition to the Guardian’s portfolio of professional community sites, established to share sector-specific ideas, insight and best practice. And they’d like you to be part of it.

Gradually, social networks are beginning to have a bigger role in building community and catalysing neighbourhood co-operation and social action. The recent post-riot clean-up Twitter campaign was one example of how social media can be used to inspire people to get involved in community life.

Ofcom has published new guidance for radio broadcasters (PDF) on the use of offensive language. The Ofcom Broadcasting Code rules on the use of offensive language on radio remain unchanged. However, the new guidance is designed to explain these rules in more detail and assist radio broadcasters in their compliance with them. Particular focus is given to: lyrics in music tracks; live music performances/interviews/studio conversation; and speech and comedy content.

Fourteen cities across the UK have the chance to become super-connected cities, Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt has announced. In the Autumn Statement, the Chancellor George Osborne announced up to 10 cities would share £100m and become super-connected with 80-100Mbps broadband access. The four capitals – London, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast – will benefit while the others will be chosen through a competition. Details of those eligible to apply have been published along with guidance for bidders.

On behalf of the thousands of community media around Europe, the Community Media Forum Europe (CMFE) and AMARC-Europe wrote a letter to the European Commissioner for the Digital Agenda to ask:

- To include necessary actions in the Digital Agenda to accommodate community (local) media to enter the digital broadcasting era;
- To enforce the use of open standard, hybrid digital radio receivers;
- To support and promote the adoption of DRM+ and
- To monitor the revision of national FM frequency policies among member states.

Gateway 97.8, a community radio station in Basildon which aims to enrich the lives of young people and to tackle antisocial behaviour, is the latest winner of the Prime Minister’s Big Society Award. Gateway is run entirely by volunteers and as a community station it also offers free advertising and support to local charities. They have been able to offer work experience to over 200 school children in the last year, many of whom had behavioural problems.

The BBC is to introduce a new radio website, codenamed ‘Audiopedia’, to contain virtually its entire archive of speech radio programmes going back to the 1940s. The service is being developed for launch “within the next 12 months”, said Tim Davie, director of BBC Audio and Music. “Audiopedia”, its working title, may yet become its formal name, he added.

Audiofil.es is a new website from the US showcasing public radio and podcasts from the big guys like NPR and This American Life to local stations, independent producers and ground-breaking podcasters: storytellers from across the country who are doing work that deserves to be heard.

Try our Canstream “RSL Bundle”. We have a package aimed specifically for stations about to start a Restricted Service Licence. With any of our live streaming accounts you also get 2 months Listen Again alongside.

From just £60+VAT you can stream live 24hrs a day for a month and upload over 8 hours of your best bits with no download restrictions. Also included are complete online statistics. Tell your mates about us with [FORWARD].

Canstream is delighted to tell you about our free service. If you webcast with Canstream then we can automatically email you a warning if you become disconnected. This is an opt-in service for all clients using Canstream for their live streaming.

What if you are away from your desk or don’t have a smart phone? Not a problem because if your stream becomes disconnected we can also send you an SMS text message!

Email notification is free, the SMS text service is priced at £5 per month. Email us for further info or to sign up.

The London Sound Survey is a growing collection of Creative Commons-licensed sound recordings of places, events and wildlife in the capital. Historical references too are gathered to find out how London sounds have changed.

This social media guide offers a good introduction to video and photo sharing tools accessible online. The following articles are helpful in thinking about how and what to share online, and what the options available are “Video Sharing Online” and “Photo Sharing Online”. The toolkit focuses on web uploading but many of the same tools can be used on mobile phones.

Twitter is the contemporary postcard-social updates that are limited by size, but not imagination. For a month, with a billion stamps, this correspondent moved his tweets from the laptop to the post office, and rediscovered the joy of mail.

Un-Convention at Roundhouse Rising 2012 looks at political voices and social messages through spoken word, hip hop, social media, art and culture. Two simultaneous events connecting with each other in real time: Roundhouse, London UK with The Museum of Modern Art, Medellin Colombia, explore the voices and messages of young people through music, art and digital media.

Panels include Female MCs, Hip Hop (live from the barrios of Medellin), Social Media in Places of War, Digital Innovation, Latin American Music in the UK (curated by Como No), intermixed with spoken word and hip hop performance.

[cma-l] F- word on Radio – Seems its all OK?
thread started by Alan Coote.

[cma-l] Fwd: Ofcom update: Local TV locations proposed
thread started by Jaqui Devereux.

[cma-l] Community Station Breaches
thread started by Gary Jackson.