Recent Comments:
Apple working on streaming your iTunes library to your iPhone? {Engadget}
Aug 9th 2008 1:19AM I'm doing it right now with Nicecast.
http://www.rogueamoeba.com/nicecast/
Feed your iTunes library into Nicecast and stream your own
radio station to the internet. Call up the station via Tuner.
This is not new. Works fine, but now we can receive it
with the iPhone.
Dan
CBS Evening News goes HD July 28 {Engadget HD}
Jul 17th 2008 12:33AM It's not "filmed". You should write where it's "shot" or "produced".
Dan
Charter Communications opens the HDTV gates in Westport, MA {Engadget HD}
Feb 17th 2008 1:51PM What's CSR's ?
Linksys intros Wireless-G Internet Home Monitoring Camera WVC54GC {Engadget}
Jan 9th 2008 11:05AM Windows only? I'll pass.
OTA antenna sales skyrocket, cable subscribers jump ship {Engadget HD}
Dec 6th 2007 1:31AM As a broadcaster from way back (since the 70s) it shows how
lousy broadcasters are at marketing. Sure, they can run fancy
promos on their own air about news and prime time shows,
but the minute they need to promote themselves outside the
box, they lose their way. How could an opportunity been
presently more with with a ribbon on top of it, than cable TV
charging $100 a month for crap, and over the air reception,
after putting in an antenna, is free to all. The only thing they
needed to do was explain it to the public..... you know,
a report, a story, 5 minutes a few times a day per station.
Ever watch anything on HGTV? That cable TV network can show
millions of viewers how to update a living room for under a
grand in just a weekend, but broadcast television can't show
people how to put up an outside antenna for $150 and one day
of their life? This, versus $100 a month all year, three years,
and $6000 in five years?
It is funny but sad at the same time what has happened to
free, over the air television stations. Everyone will end up paying for everything they watch in the next few years. The era of advertising supported television, free over the air is over.
Dan
Plantronics EOLs VolumeLogic but offers fix for Leopard {The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)}
Nov 15th 2007 7:02PM To Dan above;
Volume Logic is (was) the opposite of adding dynamic range.
It is a multiband compressor/limiter. One with almost the
same level of quality your local FM broadcast radio station uses.
It brings up the low levels and brings down the high levels.
Ever notice how when you are in your car and you are listening to
your radio, you don't have to keep changing the volume up and
down as the song plays or people are talking? This is because they use compressors and limiters at the station. That's what Volume Logic does, with the very same technology the stations are using but at a very small fraction of the cost because it's all in software.
These other enhancers you read about are a totally different
concept. They do indeed change the frequencies and phasing
of the music. Volume Logic does not.
Plantronics had a very good product which they purchased from
the original company, then proceeded to kill it in every conceivable
way. I saw it coming a mile off, because Plantronics makes and sells
very low quality stuff and here they got their hands on a great
product. I knew they would screw it up. No matter how many times
I wrote them and pointed out those of us in the PRO market would
pay dearly for a PRO version of their product, they did nothing.
I hope the people who sold the technology to Plantronics
can buy it back from them and then learn a thing or two about
marketing. The product is not the problem here folks.
It's how it's been marketed. Sound familiar ?
Dan
QVCHD coming in 2008 {Engadget HD}
Nov 9th 2007 4:29PM The technical upgrades to the production facilities have already
been done this past August. Anyone who is a regular viewer
would have noticed the much better looking cameras. The studio
cameras were up to 10 years old. Yes, the current output is
down converted to 480i, but the new Ikegami cameras look great
in any resolution.
Dan
iTunes Radio? {The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)}
Nov 2nd 2007 11:25PM Don't have an iPhone yet. Are you guys saying that if I pointed the
iPhone Safari browser to an internet radio station that one can find at
http://yp.shoutcast.com for instance, that the iPhone/Safari/iTunes
will not play back the stream like Safari/iTunes will on a Mac?
That sucks if it's true. I had planned on streaming my home radio
station to my car using Nicecast to my iPhone when I bought one of
the next versions of the iPhone.
Dan
Check out Check Off for a simple to do list {The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)}
Oct 29th 2007 3:17PM I like tadalist.com. The list making is easy and it's great for lists you need to see outside of your computer or laptop. When you go to your list on the iPhone, they have made a special screen version so it fits the screen. It's a nice, free app from the folks at 37 Signals.
Dan
JVC unveils the KT-HDP1 "plug and play" portable HD radio {Engadget}
Sep 28th 2007 12:16AM Here's what I think a lot of people are going to figure out...
You can set up your own internet radio station very easily on the Mac with
Nicecast. (Probably there is something on the PC too). All you do is
run iTunes into Nicecast and broadcast your stream on the internet.
If you have DSL you can easily have enough bandwidth for one or two
streams, so you can point your iPhone to your own internet radio station
and listen to your own mix, on the way to work and on the way home
and in the office, ( for 128 or higher bit rates, we'll need version 2 of
the iPhone next year... so be it). This is very simple and once people are shown how simple it is, they will most likely start setting it up themselves.
A few simple video tutorials on youtube and off you go. Maybe I'll do a few.
Broadcasters have killed the goose by putting 20 minutes of commercials
in a typical hour and also basically eliminated new and interesting music
because their consultants told them the 30 songs they MUST play to get
listeners. This is bad because where are new artists going to get
exposure going forward? Certainly not from the iPhone-iTunes-Nicecast
senario I mentioned above. The marketing of music is forever changed
and it seems like the last folks to understand the change are Radio folks.
How will new artists get exposure? I'm not a guru and don't have the answer.
I ask you this, if a new Elton John were to release an album next month,
(a 24 year old Elton that is) who would hear it? Only a very small sliver of
the listening audience, versus 37 years ago when the vast majority would have
had the opportunity to sample his music on various stations across formats.
Not today my friend. So how does it work today? That is not a simple answer.
40 years ago it was very simple. Broadcasters today have not even the
foggiest idea of how to do it, which begs the question..... what do we need
them for? They don't do news, they don't do local coverage of any kind
whatsoever like we used to. They don't cover local bands. They don't
cover local politics. What are they there for? Why do we give them our
airwaves free of charge? Are they serving the public interest as a public trustee?
Stuff to think about, no?
Dan
