Technology360

Pandora again dominates online radio metrics

Mark Ramsey reports that AndoMedia metrics for December have been published showing Pandora exceeding 300,000 listeners on the average tuned in at any given time – about the same as CBS Radio and Clear Channel combined!  He also provides some analysis of this.

Link:  Hear2.0.  --Dennis

FCC today authorizes digital radio power increase

The FCC today released an order permitting significant power increases for the digital signals of FM broadcast stations:

…the Media Bureau … adopts changes in our digital audio broadcasting … rules to permit FM stations to voluntarily increase FM … digital … ERP … from the current maximum permissible level of one percent of authorized analog ERP … up to a maximum of ten percent of authorized FM analog ERP.  In addition, we are implementing interference mitigation and remediation procedures to resolve promptly allegations of digital interference to an authorized full-service FM analog facility resulting from … this Order. …

Not all stations will be able to get the full 10-fold power increase.  Text of the full Order is available here.  --Dennis

Digital dark ages

The concept of a coming "digital dark age" has been around since the early years of the web, originally covering the possibility that content would become orphaned due to advances in file and storage formats.  Andrei Codrescu updated the concept in an NPR commentary earlier this month.  And, although he doesn't use the term, John C. Dvorak singles out search engine optimization as contributing to the death of the internet.  He writes:

... The problem with the technique is that it ruins the search experience for users and also requires the search engine folks to constantly work on countermeasures to minimize the impact of SEO techniques. SEO techniques then adapt to the changes, and then begins round two, then three, etc. ...

Link:  PC Magazine.  --Dennis

Gegenwart: Unity between the present and presence in radio

I’ve been meaning to post for quite awhile on a lengthy (30 pp) essay by Pierre Bellanger, Founder and Chairperson of Skyrock, the French-based social network/ radio station (in itself an innovative mash-up).  I do a lot of reading in media topics, and think this is the first time I’ve seen Goethe invoked.  But what an interesting invocation!  He writes:

… As regards the essence of its content, radio is an audio presence. Presence means the co-existence alongside me of another human being with whom I share the present moment. Radio is both about humanity and immediacy. Radio is the audio link between another person and me at the same time.  ¶  Therefore, in radio there is an inseparable unity between the present and presence. To understand this better, it is necessary to read Goethe …  Goethe wrote to his friend, the musician Zelter, and shared his thoughts on the present and presence which in German are a single word: Gegenwart.  ¶  Goethe talks about an intense experience of the moment, a presence in the present and that is radio. It is only worth anything in that moment and in the human intensity which occurs at that moment.  ¶  The vector of that experience is sound. …

The essay draws a distinction between just digitizing radio (e.g., HD Radio in the U.S.) and how radio can be something much more in the internet age.

Link:  Skyrock.  Thanks to Vincent Benveniste, CEO at DAVID Systems, for the tip and link.  --Dennis

Platform overload

About the proliferation of on-demand video platforms, Dan Rayburn writes:

After all the news that came out of CES last week on the number of companies working on software platforms for TVs and devices, one has to wonder if these platforms are destined to follow the fragmentation we currently have on the hardware side. As an industry, we still haven't figured out what devices can survive and co-exist in the long run. We currently have so many broadband enabled devices in the market including the Roku, TiVo, VUDU, PS3, Xbox 360, TVs, Blu-ray players, Apple TV and soon to be Boxee and Popbox, without having to figure out what platforms they can all run. …

The post also includes updates on a large number of platforms/businesses for moving content over broadband to your TV.  Netflix alone claims that it will be on more than 100 broadband-enabled devices by the end of the year!

Link:  BusinessofVideo. 

In a different post, Rayburn writes that Roku currently “holds the title belt” for units sold – more than 1 million, as of Jan. 8th being the number 2 best seller in Amazon’s television and video category.  With less than a week of experience on my Roku HD-XR, I sure like it.  Link:  BusinessofVideo.   --Dennis

Public Media, Public Education, and the Public Good

Henry Jenkins has a two-part interview with Heather Chaplin on these topics (both professors).  Chaplin is an advocate for a National Public Lightpath.  An excerpt:

[J] Your white paper opens with the provocative question, "what part of the Internet is going to be devoted to the public interest?" How would you answer that question?

[C] It's actually a really hard question to answer, based on what your notion of "in the public interest" is. I mean, NPR and PBS have presences on the Internet. And I suppose you could argue that there are probably millions of sites out there that serve the general public good. So, if I were to play devil's advocate against myself, I suppose I would argue that the very nature of the Internet - the anyone-can-publish idea - is in itself a public good.  ¶  But here's the thing, I'm not really the libertarian type. I don't believe that things will necessarily just sort themselves out if left alone. When I talk about creating a piece of the Internet in the public interest, I'm really talking about both public ownership of the infrastructure and content created specifically to educate, enlighten and enrich in the interests of genuine literacy and civic engagement. …

Link:  Confessions of an Aca-Fan.  Part One.  Part Two.  --Dennis

Are we becoming gadgets?

I’ve just ordered Jaron Lanier’s new book, You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto based on a review in Slate by Michael Agger.  He writes:

… As near as I can make it out, Lanier's view is that the Web began as a digital Eden. We built homepages by hand, played around in virtual worlds, wrote beautiful little programs for the fun of it, and generally made our humanity present online. The standards had not been set. The big money and the big companies had not yet arrived. Now Google has linked search to advertising. The Internet's long tail helps only the Amazons of the world, not the little guys and gals making songs, videos, and books. Wikipedia, a mediocre product of group writing, has become the intellectual backbone of the Web. And, most depressingly, all of us have been lumped into a "hive mind" that every entrepreneur with a dollar and a dream is trying to parse for profit. …

It seems to be a critique in many ways of how derivative content has become in the Web 2.0 age; how we’re replacing creativity with rehashing what’s come before.

Today’s episode (hour 2) of the NPR program, On Point with Tom Ashbrook is a discussion of the book with guests Lanier and long-time Web visionary (co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto), David Weinberger.  --Dennis

The Price of Free

… Is the title of a November Nicholas Carr article in New York Times Magazine occasioned by his discovery that a new Blu-ray DVD player bought was internet-enabled.  He writes:

… Ever since, and much to my surprise, I’ve been using the device more to transmit Internet content than to play discs. I stream TV shows and movies from Netflix, music from Pandora and videos from YouTube. Beyond my existing $11-a-month Netflix subscription, I haven’t forked out a penny for any of this programming. It comes flowing out of the Web, whenever I summon it, free. …

Link:  New York Times. 

My Blu-ray player isn’t internet-enabled, but before Christmas, I bought a Roku box.  Carr’s article inspired me to install it tonight.  Actually, setup was pretty easy – the “hexy” password I use notwithstanding.  The only annoyance was having to go to my computer to enter various access codes for the box and for various content “channels.”  But now I can stream directly from Amazon and my Netflix account, view Flickr and Facebook photos, listen to Pandora, and view numerous free content sources like my fave, twit.tv.  Really fast streaming access and decent video quality.  I might actually use this toy.   --Dennis

TV spectrum debate at CES

Glen Dickson has good overview of panel discussion at this week’s CES and from other sources about whether the feds should reallocate spectrum from television broadcasting to other uses.  Link:  Broadcasting & Cable.

Broadcasters are placing a lot of their claim on the spectrum on upcoming developments in the mobile space.  Dickson also has an article on that which also contains some more on the spectrum issue.  Link:  Broadcasting & Cable.  More here.  --Dennis

Pioneer high-end car system to pull Pandora streams from iPhone/iTouch

According to the Wall Street Journal, The Register and others, Pioneer has announced at CES a new high-end ($1,200) car nav/audio system that will, among other things, detect Pandora's software on your iPhone/iTouch, import the music data, and also the stream. 

You can do the same thing with a $6 audio cable from Radio Shack to any of the many car sound systems that feature an audio input jack -- though of course you'll have to look at the iPhone display for program data if you really need that.  --Dennis