One Canuck's Radio WeblogA 'news items' companion site to canuck.editthispage.com |
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30/6/2005; 15:54:02 |
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Their job is to discern and define attributes in tunes by artists as diverse as teen diva Hilary Duff and jazz legend Miles Davis. The listeners classify hundreds of characteristics about each song, including beat, melody, lyrics, tonal palette and dynamics, then plug the data into a music recommendation engine — software designed to find songs that share similar traits.". .< 2:23:59 AM  >XM Satellite, Audible team up New device to play XM's satellite radio service and content from Audible [Via The Globe and Mail - Technology News] "The handheld devices will be able to receive XM's roughly 150 digital radio channels, as well as store Audible's audio programs from broadcasters and publishers of newspapers, magazine and audio books, all of which can be downloaded from the Internet, the companies said in a joint statement." . .< 2:16:27 AM >Is Intel a safe bet for Apple security? Macs have largely been immune to the viruses that plague Windows PCs. Experts pitch in on whether the Intel chip switch will change that. [Via CNET News.com] . .< 2:15:35 AM >Shooting in the RAW, Perfecting the Image Selecting RAW changes how a camera saves an image, maximizing picture quality and giving the photographer more control over the way the pictures look. [Via New York Times: Technology] "The real trouble comes when you edit a JPEG - cropping it, for instance, or fine-tuning color and exposure. Each time you modify and save the image, more data is thrown away. And once the data you wouldn't miss is gone, the compression attacks more noticeable details. Save and resave and save again, and your image can become a blurry, blotchy mess." Perhaps some day people will realize that the same problem exists with data compressed audio schemes such as mp3. . .< 2:11:30 AM >Less Cursing, Better Pictures: 10 Suggestions A guide to things you should ignore and things you shouldn't. [Via New York Times: Technology] Judging by what I see in the rss feed, NYT has a special section on photography today. Check out this article and more. . .< 1:59:39 AM >Which Camera Does This Pro Use? It Depends on the Shot With four decades of war, sports and politics at hand, photojournalist David Burnett has had a lot of experience with a lot of different cameras. [Via New York Times: Technology] " On the screen was a wide overhead picture of a John Kerry rally last fall in Madison, Wis., which Mr. Burnett shot with a Canon 20D digital camera, the same camera used by thousands of other professionals around the world. Not surprisingly, the picture looks like thousands of others that were shipped around the globe during the campaign. The colors are bright. Every part of the image is crisp, so crisp that just picking the minuscule figure of Mr. Kerry out of the huge crowd takes a "Where's Waldo?" moment.And then Mr. Burnett flipped to a photograph taken seconds later with the ancient Speed Graphic. Suddenly, the image took on a luminescent depth. The center of the image, with Mr. Kerry, was clear. Yet soon the crowd along the edges began to float into softer focus on translucent planes of color. The effect is to direct the viewer's eye to Mr. Kerry while also conveying the scale and intensity of the crowd. In accomplishing both at the same time, the old-fashioned photograph communicates a rich sense of meaning that the digital file does not. The digital picture pretends to display raw reality. The analog picture is a visualization of human memory." As an audio person it is fascinating for me to watch this happen in the realm of digital photography. We spent the last 25 years going through the same process. At first we were blown away by certain features of digital. But those who were really paying attention noticed a sound quality problem. This led to long arguments as many people attributed the defects to the wrong thing. Here we are 25 years later and what we have realized is what people in digital photography will soon know. Digital is the practical work tool a long time before it has quality surpassing analogue. But it does happen. Get the design of the cameras and their DSP away from the engineers and into the hands of artists, get enough 'bandwidth' and eventually you will find that film is used when a certain effect is desired. It will be a Photoshop 'plug-in'. Maybe it is already! |
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