“When one out of five of everyone you know is listening to music on a portable device packed with hundreds or thousands of songs, commercial-free, what can your station bring them that they can’t self-program better?”
— Mark Ramsey quoting a national study by American Media Services
Mark Ramsey offers some insight into what’s happening (and is likely to happen) as terrestrial radio rolls out the HD channels (frequencies?).
“It couldn’t be clearer that HD will be a new battlefield where the intent of the broadcaster will be to draw the blood of their competitors. We will try to eat our young. As you evaluate this list as a listener, ask yourself the big question: do you want to buy a new radio?”
Seems like broadcasters have a lot riding on listeners adopting HD. I suppose it’s possible they’ll put some really good formats on the new channels but I’d have to hear it before I’d pop for a new receiver. And I can’t (easily) hear the new stuff …until I buy a new receiver.
Chrysler is the first American manufacture to offer iPod integration on their models. In 2006 over 40% of the cars sold in 2006 will offer iPod integration. They’ve sold over 42 million iPods, over 850 million songs, over 8 million videos. (From Steve Jobs keynote at Macworld via Engadget)
Motorola will soon begin selling Web-enabled cell phones that feature easy access to Google by clicking on a button on the phone’s keypad. Okay, now this makes me want a cell phone.
I’m giving the Firefox browser another try. Every clued-in person I know of and respect uses Firefox (or something other than IE). So I’m gonna give it another shot. I miss is the little “click” sound you get with Internet Explorer. I know it’s stupid, but I like the click.
Update: As is so often the case, Andy had the answer/link. I’m browsing with Firefox, now with the comforting little click. But now my little flickr badge doesn’t seem to be working. Must be a setting that needs to be changed.
A video is part of most of our presentations to universities when bidding on the athletic multimedia rights. I’ve never been at one of the presentations but I’ve seen the videos. Lots of snap, crackle and pop. In a recent presentation, our guys loaded up some video iPods (the sexy black ones) with the pitch video and threw in some highlights (TV and radio); a bunch of still images and anything else they could get their hands on. Very high cool factor. The university folks can’t keep such goodies but they can auction them off for a charitable cause or something. The point is, something magical happens when people get these things in their hands. The ear buds go in and they are in…the…zone.
Speaking of iPods… I was in a meeting with some department heads recently where blogging and podcasting came up as marketing tools. I opined that you really need to have and use an iPod to understand the podcasting phenomenon. The head of the division was running the meeting and told each of the department heads to purchase an iPod and learn how to use it. Smart move.
I just came across the coolest thing while reading the Library Thing blog:
“MothBoard allows you to create simple, private discussion boards for free, and without registration. Boards normally expire in two weeks, but you can extend their life indefinitely.”
I’m gonna try this here at smays.com as soon as I think of the right topic. Unlike complex, threaded forums, MothBoard just goes two deep (topic & reply). No endless replies-to-replies-to-replies. And if there isn’t sufficient interest to keep a topic alive, the board dies. As it should. Neat idea, stay tuned.
Popped into Staples today and picked up a Belkin TuneCast II Mobile FM Transmitter for the nano. The plan is to load up with tunes and podcasts for the long drive to Destin. I must say this model seems to work much better than the first one I tried and allows me to select any open frequency (instead of just 4 down at the bottom of the dial).
I’m listening more and more to podcasts. Favorites to date: Adam Curry’s Daily Source Code; Leo LaPorte’s This Week in Tech (TWIT); and NPR’s Tech News.
After gushing all over everyone about the superior design of my Apple Nano, the little bastard has locked up tighter than a drum. Frozen solid. Tried all the fixes suggested on the Apple website but to no avail. Even tried to run the “restore to factory pre-sets” app but couldn’t make the PC see the Nano. Hmm, just like any other computer device, it would seem.
Update: When the battery finally ran all of the way down, the Nano powered down. When I plugged it back in the the PC, it apparantly reset itself.
Zowie. Nobody needs to read one more gushing review of the iPod so I’ll try to tone this down, but…damn. The UPS man left a little cardboard box on the front porch today and inside was my iPod Nano. As in small. I already had iTunes installed with my meager music collection imported but syncing up with the iPod was about a 4 minute process. 259 songs…zip…in my shirt pocket.
I don’t remember very many computer experiences being this easy (I know, I know…the Mac thing). The user interface is…a thing of beauty. Sorted all my songs. Easy to navigate. And the sound? Well, I’m not audiophile but it sounded perfect to me. The iPod ads frequently talk about photos and I couldn’t imagine that being very useful, given the size of the screen, but I have to admit it’s kind of cool. I’ll put some more on.
It’s easy to see why these things (in all flavors) are selling so fast. I showed it to Barb and she immediately decided she wants one. Anniversary present, in the bag.
And you know what? I’ve had the thing for half a day and I’m already thinking, “Maybe I should head on over to iTunes and buy a few songs.” We’ll talk about podcasts in a future post.