One Canuck's Radio Weblog

  Friday, 13 May 2005

. .< 3:29:12 PM >
Playlist: New in iTunes 4.8
Videos on iTunes? No, not the music videos and movie trailers found at The Store. Rather, the iTunes Music Store now includes videos that are included with select albums sold by The Store. [Thanks to Playlist forum visitor mrhsean for being the first to bring this to our attention.] To see the system in action, check out the Dave Matthews Band’s latest, Stand Up, and you’ll discover that along with the album’s music you also get a digital booklet that contains the album artwork and a video. This 5 minute 28 second MPEG-4 video weighs in at around 55MB and is of the “making of the album” variety, showing some interview clips along with scenes from the studio.

This is an interesting development for the iTunes Music Store in an age where recording companies are beginning to release DualDiscs—discs that contain music on one side and DVD video on the other. While bandwidth limitations may keep the iTunes Music Store from offering the same content as a DualDisc, it does put The Store in the video space and allows it to charge more for an album than the usual $9.99 (the Dave Matthews album costs $11.99).

. .< 3:16:18 PM >
Apple Releases iTunes 4.8
Apple today released iTunes 4.8, a free download with minimal documentation. According to the ReadMe file, "iTunes 4.8 includes new Music Store features and support for transferring contacts and calendars from your computer to your iPod," noting that the latter feature requires Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger. Poking around a bit reveals that Apple is incorporating video into iTunes; you can drag a QuickTime movie to the Library, where it appears with a small gray videocamera icon. Playing the movie displays it in the little Now Playing box (where album covers appear); clicking the movie opens it in a separate window, and clicking a new Show Video Full Screen button presents the movie full screen (although the full-screen option doesn't work for videos or movie trailers downloaded from the iTunes Music Store.) A new preference also controls the default window setting for video playback. As of this writing, the update was available only as a stand-alone download, but I'm guessing it will appear via Software Update soon. The iTunes 4.8 installer is an 11 MB download. [JLC]

Read the tea leaves. This news + QT 7? Video iPod coming soon.

< 3:14:07 PM >

I'll admit it. I was rather disappointed with iPhoto 4, the previous version of Apple's consumer-level photo management program (see "iPhoto 4: The Potential Remains" in TidBITS-718). It wasn't that it lacked high-end features; it was that it was the latest in a series of mediocre implementations of what was, and still is, a brilliant idea. Apple was the first to understand that most people want a soup-to-nuts photo management program that handles everything from importing and organizing through editing and output. And iPhoto remains pretty much the only such program on the Mac, although several similar programs have appeared on the Windows side.

< 3:12:41 PM >

< 3:11:22 PM >

< 3:07:45 PM >

< 3:03:27 PM >

• St. John’s rocketed up with huge increases in all its shows. The station was up to an overall share of 14 per cent. The Morning Show’s share of 24 per cent is up seven points and both the noon show (16 per cent) and afternoon show (21 per cent) are six points higher
• Ottawa remains the top ranked station in its market, with Ottawa Morning at 21 per cent, up by one point from the fall.
• Toronto’s Metro Morning is once again Number One in the 6 - 8:30 a.m. time slot.
• In the West, Calgary, Edmonton and Saskatoon rebounded and are on par with last spring’s levels.
• In Vancouver, Radio One captured a share of 9 per cent for its highest share in the past 10 years. The Early Edition remains in second place at 14 per cent, up two points from the last two surveys.
• Victoria enjoyed record-breaking shares; 9 per cent is the highest captured by the station since it launched in spring of 1999. The morning show (13 per cent) and the afternoon show (9 per cent) are also achieving their highest shares ever.

CBC Radio continues to be a major source of news for Canadians with almost 2.4 million people tuning in to World Report during the week. Anna Maria Tremonti and Shelagh Rogers are the most listened-to hosts in Canada with 1.5 million and 1.1 million listeners a week, respectively. Over all, the majority of weekday programs on Radio One maintained their shares or saw increases over the last two surveys.

Update: Additional ratings details

< 3:01:38 PM >

The deregulation of radio was tough on good-neighbor radio because Clear Channel and other conglomerates were anxious to vacuum up every station in sight for fabulous sums of cash and turn them into robot repeaters. I dropped in to a broadcasting school last fall and saw kids being trained for radio careers as if radio were a branch of computer processing. They had no conception of the possibility of talking into a microphone to an audience that wants to hear what you have to say. I tried to suggest what a cheat this was, but the instructor was standing next to me. Clear Channel's brand of robotics is not the future of broadcasting. With a whole generation turning to iPod and another generation discovering satellite radio and Internet radio, the robotic formatted-music station looks like a very marginal operation indeed. Training kids to do that is like teaching typewriter repair.

< 2:59:24 PM >

< 3:31:20 AM >

[re Tiger] But the development that’s got me most excited at the moment is the introduction of “Canadian” as a palette for the “input menu” that can appear on the menu bar at the top of the screen, [snip]

I could have got a Canadian flag by selecting a “Canadian (French)” input palette, but that gave me accents where I didn’t want them etc. Everything would have been fine if I’d been English, or Afghani, or Cherokee, Danish or Innu. But you could not for love nor money get the flag to be a Canadian flag and yet give you a useful Canadian English keyboard.

Now that’s all changed. Apple has acknowledged my existence and allows me not to become testy every time I look up and to my right. About %#§¿¡⁂〰ing time.

[Via Xanada]

. .< 3:14:39 AM >
BBC Backstage :: Front Page ::
backstage.bbc.co.uk is the BBC's new developer network, providing content feeds for anyone to build with. Alternatively, share your ideas on new ways to use BBC content. This is your BBC. We want to help you play.

. .< 2:47:45 AM >
10.4: Use keyboard navigation in Mail's message pane

I know everyone hates the look of the new Mail.app, but in at least one small way functionality has improved. Apple has (finally) enabled keyboard navigation of the mailbox/folder panel. Up/down arrows move up and down throug...
[Via macosxhints]

. .< 2:46:09 AM >
Mayor smooches princess

The mayor gave a Dutch princess a Montreal-type kiss on both cheeks, which is apparently Not Done to royalty.
[Via montreal city weblog]

. .< 2:39:03 AM >
Nero AAC Encoder/Decoder Integrated Into Yahoo! Music
Nero, leaders in digital media technology and Yahoo, a leading global Internet company, have forged a partnership to provide users premium quality music experiences via AAC. ...Read More »
[Via Digital Pro Sound News]

More proof of what I've said many times before: the iPod is a platform.