General | Webcasting | Webcasting: EU | Webcasting: US
Submitted by johnh on February 4, 2006 - 20:09.
Attention: speculation alert!
What if all this 'darknet' stuff and the wanton hiring in London and the blah blah blah was far, far more interesting than some pissant spat about Baby Bells in the US?
For a very wild theory indeed, click 'Read More' to continue.
3G | Webcasting | Webcasting: EU | Webcasting: US
Submitted by johnh on November 16, 2005 - 11:33.
Well, the ROKR "iPod phone" from Motorola was a disaster for them in the US. So it's a rare thing when a major company (and a telco, at that) steps back and looks at what it did wrong. Rarer still when they hit the correct answer spot on.
Cingular is to add broadcast radio to its phone network.
Sadly, it's Music Choice. Fumbled three feet from the touchline, as I believe local parlance would have it. But hey, pretty close for a first attempt.
Submitted by johnh on March 12, 2005 - 22:08.
In a survey run by Blogads.com, which was filled out only by people who would ever have been exposed to a link to the Blogads survey (read: blogging types, and others who are supposedly clamouring to listen to podcasts oversized, overlong MP3s of some whiny voice blathering about nothing for an hour), an interesting titbit:
Question: You listen to how many podcasts each week?
Answer (of 92.1% of respondents): I never, ever, ever listen to podcasts.
Webcasting | Webcasting: EU | Webcasting: US
Submitted by johnh on January 3, 2005 - 08:29.
Cybersky-TV [more info] represents, if it turns out to work, the holy grail of webcasting. Like Bittorrent, but for live TV. Expect it to be chock-full of relays of live sports, movie channels, cable pr0n and all other kinds of infringements when (if) it launches on schedule in about a month's time. Shortly after that, there'll be homebrew versions of the above as people figure out how to make a 'channel' by making a looping playlist from from their TiVo recordings and downloaded torrent files.
Shortly after *that*, it gets interesting as the required 'substantial non-infringing uses' get underway with community and college radio and TV channels, some of them brand new. Home appliances which can view these new channels. Auto-downloading plugins for Windows Media Player and RealPlayer/QT. If it works.
For broadcasting, probably the beginning of a fatal earthquake. *Totally* the end of cable TV and the ever-crappy DAB Digital Radio. If it works, if it works, if it works...
... Peercast, for example, just falls short of the mark - extremely skippy for the most part even over DSL - and is too tricky for end-users even though the Winamp plugin is very painless. The thing is, something which does work is definitely coming down the pipe any moment now. Get ready. Meantime, I've signed up for the CTV testing runs and I'll let you know how it's going.
Happy new year...
Submitted by johnh on December 21, 2004 - 12:20.
MP3newswire is kicking off quite the rumour wave with a suggesiton that Apple's going to produce an iPod with a Sirius satellite radio receiver. Notes:
Initial take: nah.
Webcasting | Webcasting: EU | Webcasting: US | Wireless
Submitted by johnh on October 17, 2004 - 22:05.
SoniqCast Aireo 2: 20GB MP3 player with built-in WiFi
I'm a radio person, so I don't really give a stuff about the 20Gb hard disk and the ability to spend money on ephemeral stuff that goes down the flusher at the first sign of a disk error - all that's in the realm of the rich kids as far as I'm concerned.
No, this is interesting because it has a Wifi adapter and can therefore stream internet radio. Sure, the number of places where you can wander around listening to your home town's breakfast show while abroad is limited *now*, but there's a clear trend developing.
Keep that spare eye on Wi-Max, and fer Chrissakes, if you've got money tied up in any company involved in DAB digital radio, get it the hell out.
For seven years now I've been boring people to death about this one, but here I go again because I'm right: eventually digital radio distribution will become a straight fight between
And in that straight fight to the death, digital radio is fucked in the first round.
General | Webcasting | Webcasting: EU | Webcasting: US | Wireless
Submitted by johnh on October 6, 2004 - 13:41.
What the hell is this podcasting crap?
I was quietly ignoring it for weeks, secure in the knowledge that it was just Dave Winer plugging the enclosures feature of RSS 2 by other means (conveniently ignoring the fact that you can send encoded binary data in any XML format you like already by wrapping it in [CDATA] tags).
But today I see that the bullshit wagon is starting to get some traction - admittedly almost entirely at the hands of Winer and Adam-Curry-who-isn't-famous-unless-you're-over-35-and-American - with a couple of truly outrageous pieces of nonsense.
Exhibit A: A suspiciously-anonymous, wilful, pollution of Wikipedia. "They are published in an RSS 2.0 enclosure feed", no doubt because just downloading an MP3 won't work with an audio file. But the first line is just puke-inducing: "Podcasting is based on asynchronous bundles of passion". Wankers, wankers, wankers.
Exhibit B: Why Podcasting Will Save Radio. Get a fucking grip.
Let's set this straight for a minute.
We've heard it all before:
"DTP enables anybody in the world to put out their own magazine." Or in other words, DTP enables anyone in the world to put out a butt-ugly photocopied pile of crap using every single font that came free with Microsoft Publisher. Having the tool does not mean you can design something and it does not mean you can write your way out of a paper bag.
"Self-publishing enables anybody in the world to publish their book." Self publishing enables anybody whose vanity matches the size of their wallet to print a book which nobody wants to read. There's a better-than-average chance that the publisher didn't want to print your book because your book sucks. Get over it.
And now we have "Podcasting [spit] enables anyone to produce their own radio programme." Whoopee-do. You mean I can spend 2 hours downloading an MP3 of someone with a nasally whine mumbling incoherently into a low-quality microphone while driving around in his car? Really? Can I?
Speech radio is NOT just about talking into a microphone. It's about communicating a message to people. It's about good writing far, far more than it's about having a 'good radio voice'. This stuff has neither.
It's not radio, people. It's like downloading a talking book. Except without the writing talent.
[sigh] On the plus side this thing *might* have something going for it in the ongoing battle to 'save radio'. While the ego-ridden rich kids are concentrating on this little successor to Pointcast and its provenly-failed ilk, it means that they're opting out of the real future of broadcasting, where a million stations bloom without the restriction on frequencies inherent in the old model, and the best programming gets the biggest audiences. And if that means they won't be getting their goo all over our thing, so much the better.
More on the real story tomorrow. I've got a piece in the works due in by then.
Webcasting | Webcasting: EU | Webcasting: US
Submitted by johnh on June 10, 2004 - 12:07.
Yesterday a sudden flurry of postings about how TiVo could possibly be planning to deliver TV online. One of the odd things about living in the UK is that you forget that people in other countries don't necessarily know the things you know.
So:
You may now return to your US-centric worldview...
Submitted by johnh on December 27, 2002 - 15:56.
Judiciary Panel Adds Surveillance Oversight (TechNews.com)
"Leahy next year wants to reform the process that Internet radio stations use to negotiate royalty rates with the recording industry, artists and songwriters."
Result. Sure beats whining about commercial webcasters trying to earn a living, anyway.
Oh, and Happy Xmas, and all that.
Submitted by johnh on December 8, 2002 - 22:23.
From the increasingly stupid Orlowski in the Reg, who's now evidently dealing with the reality of being completely, irredeemably wrong before the Act was passed by going into a denial phase.
From the article: "In an analysis on DIU, Brian Hurley writes:-
"'This bill mentions negotiations that are to take place by December 15. Who are the webcasters negotiating? Do they represent all classes of webcasters? How will they be chosen? There is no mention of this by the RIAA, Sound Exchange, or Senator Helms' office.'"
Well, I dunno Andrew - perhaps finding out the answer would be YOUR JOB? Still, if Drew was paying me even if I couldn't be fucked to make a phone call or two to find out (this really is Journalism 101 stuff), maybe I'd just churn out some lazy crap and bank the cheque.
Actually, no I wouldn't...
