One Canuck's Radio Weblog

  Thursday, 4 March 2004

.< 11:48:01 PM >
The Register-Universal builds 20TB digital music archive
According to UMI, each album is essentially stored not as separate tracks but as a disc image from the master, along with such metadata as the Universal Product Code (UPC) and ISRC (International Standard Recording Code #1) information. [snip] "The beauty of storing the CD images in their entirety is that we can encode from these images and deliver the content in whichever contemporary format and bitrate is required by the retailer," he added. The system allows UMI to cope with future format changes that might otherwise require a "re-rip".

.< 11:15:43 PM >
The Mac's 'ultimate remote control' leaps forward

Salling Clicker arrives on Series 60 [The Register] 'Apple Computer loves Jonas Salling's Clicker software, and it's not hard to see why Cupertino values it so highly. Clicker won two of the company's Mac Design Awards last year - for most innovative product and best Mac OS X software - and it plays to several of Apple's strengths. The software, which fuses Bluetooth devices to the Mac, highlights the considerable advantages of Apple's Bluetooth wireless technologies, AppleScript and ease of use over the nearest Wintel equivalents. Microsoft has notoriously dragged its feet over Bluetooth support, and although it has a scripting engine (Windows Scripting Host) it doesn't match the elegance of AppleScript.'

< 10:55:27 PM >

Sonic Studio,LLC is pleased to announce the addition of James Andy Moorer to its advisory staff. Dr. Moorer, inventor of the NoNOISE restoration system and cofounder of Sonic Solutions, will help guide the Sonic Studio technical team's ongoing and future product development. [ProSound News]

Fantastic! This is very exciting news. Those of us who have stuck with Sonic through thick and thin feel great today.

< 10:45:43 PM >

DVD-Audio Council Hails Format's Fast Growth
LOS ANGELES, Calif., Mar. 03, 2004 -- The DVD-Audio Format is seeing exponential growth, according to the DVD-Audio Council, an industry group composed of record companies and hardware manufacturers (see list below). It says more than 160 DVD-Audio player models are available from 35-plus manufacturers, and more than 14 million players are already in the market. This number far outstrips the sales of competing audio formats, with player sales up 500% from the previous year, the Council says. Read more [Digital Pro Sound News]

< 10:44:27 PM >

"subway systems of the world, presented on the same scale" [Daypop Top 40]

< 10:30:56 PM >

Using iChat AV with a Bluetooth-enabled headset has great potential and some immediate benefits. Dori Smith has wrestled with the configuration and shows you what works, what almost works, and what to look out for. Dori is the coauthor of Mac OS X Unwired. [Meerkat: An Open Wire Service: MacDevCenter.com]

< 9:17:35 PM >

Universal Music on Wednesday said that its European business unit has converted 300,000 songs to digital form, Reuters reports. The company is making its entire active European music catalog available to online music stores. [MacCentral]

< 9:16:20 PM >

I was just surfin' Safari and thought this was pretty cool. To scroll a page without needing to use the scroll wheel or manually clicking on the up or down arrows, simply do this...

Hold down the shift key and click and hold... [macosxhints]

< 9:04:29 PM >

Although Microsoft's Office 2004 won't be on store shelves until the middle of this year, we got a sneak peek at its new features. And these additions -- from a command center for related correspondence, calendars, and files, to an audio recorder that gives your typing fingers a rest -- made quite an impression. Come take a look at the next version of one of the most important program suites for the Mac. [MacCentral]

< 9:03:37 PM >

Apple CFO Fred Anderson and Corporate Controller Peter Oppenheimer, recently spoke to investors and analysts at the Morgan Stanley Semiconductor & System Conference. In a session about 45 minutes long Oppenheimer and Anderson covered some interesting points about Apple's business strategy, its success with the iPod and iTunes, and how it plans to continue making money and improving margins. [MacCentral]

< 8:30:05 PM >

Montreal ranks 24th in the world in one of these quality-of-life rankings that come around. We do better for health care availability than most of the world, a thought that should give us pause. [montreal city weblog]

Vancouver is 3. I think they weighted climate much too heavily. The folks doing this rating obviously aren't Cancucks.

< 8:26:58 PM >

He lives in NYC.