Friday, April 30, 2004

Moon with Saturn, Mars, and Venus Photo from Iowa. Place your cursor over the picture for the helpful diagram. Enjoy! Available for the next 24 hours. - Editor A Western Sky at Twilight (2004 May 1) [Astronomy Picture of The Day] 10:37:32 PM

Further Comments: Wired on the Scalability of Feed Aggregators Wired on the Scalability of Feed Aggregators. It seems that people finally start to 'get it' (see wired article); that the current approach of continuous feed polling, will not scale. I have explained this in detail before, see for example 'On the Scalability of Feeds and Aggregators', or as early as two years ago (see Wes Felter's report from the Internet2 meeting). It is cool to see that the solutions people are now willing to discuss (p2p or bittorrent style) are the ones that I have been advocating for a number of years, and that have found their implementation in Newswire. We have had some legal issues with the deployment of the newswire beta, and a new core communication component is being developed. But I would be happy to break open the ideas in the system and work with others to see whether this can be a good experimentation platform. [All Things Distributed] 6:23:51 PM

Notes on Digital Audio Encoding by Ottmar Liebert New lossless Apple Encoder. The new lossless encoder came with the newest version 4.5 of iTunes. I will try to compare AIFF, Apple Lossless and AAC and the best way I have been able to figure out is albeit a little complicated: I will take a good sounding CD and import it to iTunes as AAC/160, as Apple Lossless and as AIFF file. Then I will burn an Audio CD using these three files, which will create new AIFF files of differing quality, depending on the source (AIFF, Lossless or AAC). Lastly I will import those resulting AIFF files into ProTools and listen. Why am I doing it this way? Well, first of all, our human audio memory is very bad and the best way to compare audio is by switching back and forth between different sources. By importing the files into ProTools I will be able to have each on a different fader. I can then adjust the volume of each type of file to be exactly the same, and using the solo buttons on the mixing console I'll be able to switch between the three choices very quickly.....I'll let you know what I'll find. [Ottmar Liebert] 6:16:48 PM

Media and Entertainment 2010 White Paper The open media company of the future. IBM's "Media and Entertainment 2010" white paper predicts that by 2010 we'll have wide open media, reacting quickly and nimbly in a digital world of micropayments. Participation with the audience is prominently featured in the report as critical to the future success of media. [Hypergene MediaBlog] 6:14:07 PM

Will RSS Readers Clog the Web? By Ryan Singel Wired: "What happens when everyone discovers the power of aggregators? Will the Web be able to handle it? In Internet boom-speak, will it scale?" [Scripting News] 6:08:58 PM

Strange Brews More strange Music. Sammy Davis Jr. singing the theme song from Hawaii Five-O - thanks, Alan! Venus in Furs performed by a band from the Ukraine - thanks, Dirk! [The Cartoonist] 6:06:12 PM

Test. How grammatically sound are you? Via Coudal. [The Cartoonist] 6:58:47 AM

Solar Thermal New production of solar thermal dishes:  Phoenix-based Stirling Energy Systems Inc. and Schuff Steel Co. unveiled a prototype generator that could bring the cost of solar electricity down to 5 cents to 6 cents a kilowatt. .. Arizona Public Service Co., which is under an Arizona Corporation Commission mandate to generate 1.1 percent of its electricity through renewable resources by 2007, has agreed to buy 10 of the units next year. Southern Nevada Water Authority wants 40. "  Sandia has ordered a number of them this year.  They are 38-foot dishes with a Stirling engine, each generating 25 Kw.   "the Stirling units use no water, in contrast to so-called solar trough generators that use the sun's energy to produce steam to turn turbine generators. "  Prototype units cost $300,000 each.  "Stirling believes it can bring the cost down to about $25,000 per unit if they are mass-produced. That would make them competitive with conventional power plants, Liden said. " [Ken Novak: Future energy] 6:42:32 AM