Show #64

[Download Show #64 as MP3]

News

• Apple & 20th Century Fox Sign iTunes Movie Rental Deal
  • There are numerous rumors going around the internet about Apple and Fox coming to a deal on iTunes Movie Rentals
  • This goes against Steve Jobs earlier desire to sell movies rather than rent them
  • While the feature of movie rentals within iTunes has been long requested, one wonders how it will be done and how it will be handled when it comes to iPods
  • We will know more next week after the MacWorld event that takes place this coming week
    
• Sony/BMG Plans to Drop DRM
  • To quote the TechCrunch website, "Ding Dong the Music DRM Witch is Dead"
  • Early last week, Sony/BMG announced plans to go DRM Free on their digital music
  • They later explained the plans to sell cards at brick and mortar stores for DRM-Free tracks via a special website. Think iTunes cards but for DRM-Free Sony albums.
    
  • This means that the last of the top four record labels is going DRM-Free
  • What does this mean for us? Well we can not get just about every artist in DRM-Free Mp3 downloads
  • While it will probably take a while for all the catalogs from Sony/BMG and Warner to make it out to Amazon, this is still a major deal
  • The next step in squashing DRM? Movies & Television shows
    
• Bill Gates introduces "Microsoft Surface," a virtual reality table
  • http://gizmodo.com/338568/gizmodos-most-popular-hits-of-2007
  • Uses computers and cameras to quickly respond to touch (like a giant iphone) which makes information and entertainment easier to use and quicker to access
  • Can set digital camera on it (wi-fi), files immediately show up on table screen with no extra software, cords
  • See them in restaurants first, where you will be able to order your food by touching the tables surface and even divide tickets, add up tips and pay your bill
  • It's really exciting b/c it shows how close we are to actually being able to design and use programs like (in that tom cruise movie "Minority Report"- not the 'seeing the future' part) the part where where an entire wall size area was completely interactive...almost like pulling the information out of thin air... and is used by companies for presentations and everyday work

• Warner Bros. Goes Blu-Ray Exclusive
• After this announcement was made, HD-DVD consortium canceled it's CES appearance.
  
• New Line Cinema has announced that they will follow Warner Bros' and go with Blu-Ray exclusively
  

Software / Hardware / Power Web Picks

• Spicebird - Mozilla Based Collaboration Outlook Killer
  • Everyone knows what Microsoft Outlook is
  • Several people know what Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Thunderbird are
    • Mozilla Firefox is an open source desktop web browser
    • Mozilla Thunderbird is an open source desktop email client
  • Well some folks are working on a Mozilla based open source email client that will contain calendaring and task functionality in an attempt to bring about an open source Outlook like program
  • While one of these already exists in the Linux world (its called Evolution), this is something that is severely lacking on the Windows front.
  • However, I doubt that it will sync your calendar/contacts with your mobile device so until it can do that, it really will not "kill" outlook
• Keybr.com
  • Improve your typing speed
    
• Open Source Living
  
  • ke.
  • The folks over at the Open Source Living website are there to help you find the best piece of open source software to do what you need to do
  • The website is divided into sections for the different types of programs (Audio, Video, Web Development, Graphic & Photo, Content Management, and several more) so you can easily find the piece of software you are looking for
  • While this website does not offer a comprehensive list of applications, it is a great start and a nicely designed, easy to navigate, no frills website.

Gamer's Corner

• [Derek] Skype Coming to the PSP in late January
  

Editorial ("Power Up")

• Why Today's Music Sounds Like S**t
• While surfing Digg, I found a link to an article that discusses why music today sounds horrible
• No, this is not why there is so much bad music out there but rather about the fidelity and overall sound quality of music
• Turns out that because more people are listening to their music on their iPods or other media players that the record labels are essentially forcing engineers to increase the volume of the masters and compress the overall tracks so that they "sound better" when converted to compressed audio files (ie Mp3 files)
• It goes on to mention that because of this, we as consumers are suffering from ear fatigue more often because all music is mastered louder in general and so you no longer hear the highs and lows in the overall "experience" of the music. In other words, the "quiet" parts are still loud. We have lost the dynamics.
  
• I think that this is a result of both the industry and the consumer not being overly educated.
  • I think that the consumer doesn't realize that encoding at the default iTunes values or even Windows Media Player values, leaves you with a low quality encoded track (usually 128bit)
  • The article mentions that to the average person, audio tracks encoded at high bit rates (around 224) are indistinguishable from the source CD audio. This is most definitely true.
  • As a result of this "bad learnin'" the customer is encoding at low quality rips and as a result the record companies are trying compensate.
• This proves that the record industry has lost their way. Rather than focusing on the music and the dynamics inherit within that music, they are worried about a product.
  • Also, if the record companies would master the music for the CD and not worry about the digitally encoded tracks, they would have a better overall product
  • To top it off, if they did focus on mastering for the CD, the low quality rips that show up on MOST download sites would sound bad and people wouldn't want to download them
    
• The article goes on to give examples and show graphical representations of several tracks help people understand how things have changed
• Folks, if you are going to rip your music using iTunes or Windows media player, use the "High Quality" settings rather than the default settings. You want something that is at least 224kbps encoding to get a quality rip.