Saturday, January 04, 2003

Toshiba's Tablet PC selling better than expected. Despite everyone predicting that Tablet PCs would face a lukewarm reception at best, at least one manufacturer, Toshiba, is actually seeing better-than-expected demand. They've just announced that they're going to increase production for the Portege 3500 Series Tablet PC by 35 percent. Apparently they sold out their first month's supply in just two weeks. Maybe the Tablet PC is going to be a bigger hit than everyone expected. Amazon is out of them at the moment; hopefully they'll have some more in soon. Read Amazon [Gizmodo] 4:51:48 PM  comment []       RIO SPORT S30S   Look what Santa got me this year!! RIO SPORT S30S - 64MB of built-in memory (Upgradeable to 192 MB using MMC™ memory cards) FM tuner - great for the gym USB connection Sport earphones http://www.sonicblue.com/audio/rio/s30s.asp How did I live without it?  I now move my favorite MP3s off my computer and onto the RIO for listening through my car radio (using tape deck adapter - not included by Santa) on the way to work.  The device is small and fits in hand real nice.  Makes it real easy to pick it up when I want to change tracks.  What I wish it had (at least I haven't figured out yet) was more play options like fast forward and reverse for the tracks.  One false move and I'm listening from the beginning of the track again. I recently joined a gym in town.  They have 4 televisions mounted in front of the steppers, stationary bikes and tread mills for all to see.  All volume to the external speakers on the televisions is off.  They modulate and broadcast the audio from the televisions in the FM band.  The RIO makes tuning into any of the 4 televisions audio possible.   2:00:14 PM  comment []       Joichi Ito's Blogging about Blogging -> Blog Style Review -> "I'm one of those people who hates reading books and hates writing stuff. I love talking to people and I do most of my thinking when I'm talking to someone or when I'm preparing to talk to someone. That's why I love blogs so much. I feel like I'm talking, not independantly cogitating. Now my question. In a discussion, you're allow a certain amount of sloppiness and you mold your position and you develop a model together with whoever you talking to. I feel similarly when I blog. Having said that, what you write persists and you can get criticized for what you write. Larry Lessig's blog is "tight". I mean, it's well thought out and non-sloppy. (He IS a law professor. ;-) ) On the other hand, Marc Canter's blog is a bit more sloppy, but quite interesting. Dave Winer seems to have mastered his style, a combination of short references, personal opinions and technical clarity.Doc, Meg, Dan, almost everyone on my blogroll has a pretty cool and unique style that works. One of my problems is that I think and talk differently depending on where I am and who I am with. This is helpful in providing myself with a variety of models that represent mutliple points of view when I think of an in issue. On the other hand, blogged, this turn into a mish mash of styles. Does this work? Can people filter the stuff that doesn't interest them? I assume they can. I LOVE "10 Tips on Writing for the Living Web" It was a great help when I started blogging. Tip 3 is "Write Tight". So... that's my dilemma. Are people interested in the stream of consciousness sort of blogging I'm doing right now, or should it be tighter? Should I be MORE introverted and personal about my feelings, or more organized and intelligent. Is it OK to use my blog to think out loud? Do I have to check my spelling? ;-p Hmm..." 1:46:21 PM  comment []       Sounds like Radio UserLand tool time! Adam Curry: Adam Curry's Weblog -> "bittorrent or bust-mpeg no good. Holy moly, I didn't expect so many people to try out our bittorrent experiment. Something is definitely worng with the file I set up. Apparently there are still a lot of differemces in mpeg(4) implementations. Of course I'm using a Mac, so I'm not completely surprised. The good news is that gigabytes of data was transferred amongst a community of users, each sharing their upstream capacity as they downloaded themselves, and only for the file in question. Sweet stuff! Now, to figure out what the best settings are to bake a [universally viewable] mpeg from a DV file. I have cleaner 6 pro. Help is appreciated! A side note that developers might want to think about, using the RSS emclosure tag and a bittorrent URL would be perfect for large media distribution, since bandwidth would only be used by subscribers to that feed, and in turn provide the capacity for the tranfers to take place. Sounds like Radio UserLand tool time!"   10:34:57 AM  comment []       RatcliffeBlog: Business, Technology & Investing -> Scheduling error "Check out this audio interview by Marketplace's David Brancaccio with Penelope Spheeris, who produced the television movie "The Crooked E: The Unshredded Truth About Enron," which will appear Sunday on CBS. Seems it was originally scheduled to appear on the Sunday before the November Election, but CBS execs scrubbed the date suddenly and with no explanation. She says the producer really wanted the film out before the election, because it could have had an impact on voting. Conspiracy theories aside, why not release it on the Net? In a schedule-less world (when PVRs such as TiVo or Replay and time-shifted audio programming, like Audible delivers* are pervasive), there will be no first viewing. Instead, producers will market shows to gain audience--some of the pitch will be a "see it before your friends" prestige-boosting approach and some will be based on slow word-of-mouth campaigns for programs that are perpetually available by slow download for later viewing. Once the schedule was changed by the network execs, I'd have had tapes of the show up for bid on eBay. But that's just me. * Disclosure: I am a consultant to Audible" 6:39:25 AM  comment []       Audioblogging tool design To make an audioblogging tool simple and uncomplicated, it makes most sense to have one set of audio tags and to carry thoses same tags along the creative and distribution processes of the tool. With that in mind, I am looking at the MP3 ID3 spec for inspiration, integration and most importantly cooperation. MP3 ID3 made easy "The audio format MPEG layer I, layer II and layer III (MP3) has no native way of saving information about the contents, except for some simple yes/no parameters like "private", "copyrighted" and "original home" (meaning this is the original file and not a copy). A solution to this problem was introduced with the program "Studio3" by Eric Kemp alias NamkraD in 1996. By adding a small chunk of extra data in the end of the file one could get the MP3 file to carry information about the audio and not just the audio itself." What is ID3v2? "ID3v2 is a new tagging system that lets you put enriching and relevant information about your audio files within them. In more down to earth terms, ID3v2 is a chunk of data prepended to the binary audio data. Each ID3v2 tag holds one or more smaller chunks of information, called frames. These frames can contain any kind of information and data you could think of such as title, album, performer, website, lyrics, equalizer presets, pictures etc." ID3 tag version 2.3.0 "This document describes the ID3v2.3.0, which is a more developed version of the ID3v2 informal standard (version 2.2.0), evolved from the ID3 tagging system. The ID3v2 offers a flexible way of storing information about an audio file within itself to determine its origin and contents. The information may be technical information, such as equalisation curves, as well as related meta information, such as title, performer, copyright etc. " 4:46:35 AM  comment []       Washington Post: FCC Preparing to Overhaul Telecom, Media Rules. If all of the changes being reviewed by the Federal Communications Commission are enacted as proposed, major telecommunications and media corporations will be less regulated, and more free to grow, than at any time in decades. [Tomalak's Realm] Key quote: "It is clear, though, that Powell wants companies to compete by building their own facilities and networks, rather than relying on piggybacking." If you believe that the RBOCs own all the rights-of-way that their networks inhabit, then you won't have a quibble with Powell. I, however, do. [Scott Mace's Radio Weblog] 2:56:51 AM  comment []

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