Get your TV on

An excellent Onion funny yet true story again: "A Columbia University study released Tuesday suggests that viewing fewer than four hours of television a day severely inhibits a person's ability to ridicule popular culture. An hour or two of television per day simply does not provide enough information to effectively mock mediocre sitcoms, vapid celebrities, music videos, and talk-show hosts—an essential skill in modern society," said Dr. Madeleine Ben-Ami, a professor of cognitive science and chief author of the study. "Because the ridicule of pop culture comprises the bulk of today's social discourse, a non-viewer is at a distinct disadvantage in the workplace, on campus, and in the dating scene," Ben-Ami said. "An employee who can't participate in jokes about the suble charms of Eva Pauwels, the toilet habits of Sam Gooris or the dancing moves of "idool" Joeri will sit dumbfounded while a more able coworker ingratiates himself to the boss by laughing."

sharing the sharing

Just ran into a new site which then immideately turned out to be my favourite mp3-blog: 3hive.
Beautifully executed. Cool as cats. Great streaming playlist of all the goodies they find, legal as a lawbook...

Hit Song Science

This sounds like a really bad idea turned realilty:
The Guardian reports on record labels reverting to the use of a computer program (Polyphonic Human Media Interface) to predict the hit-potential of songs. The program works by analysing songs on a mathematical level and comparing their blueprint against a database of hits from the past. It a tune scores well in this analysis, it's bound to be a hit.
Maybe we could ask the makers of the Polyphonic Human Interface to also predict the future hitparade in the process. That way we could finally do away with releasing those drab commercial songs in the first place. Britney's next single: it was a hit!

Shuffle that Apple

Keynote speech from Jobs, and a bunch of new stuff falling from under the Apple tree: a flash-memory Ipod named Ishuffle: just 149$ for 1Gb of shuffling new tracks with every sync. Looks a bit like a pregnancy test predictor and is just about the size of a packet of chewing gum. Cool!
I'm tempted to buy one, but am put off by the power management features: no replacable batteries, powering through USB. So to go on holiday with it, you need an - optional - battery pack. Add 29$. And to jog with it, you need an - optional - bracelet. Add 29$. And to use it in your car, you need an - optional - car kit. Add 29$. ... The only extra's that are included (and probably worth 29$ of the 149 prize tag) are a lanyard to put it round your neck, and earphones: two things I have lying round in the dozens.
So Applehater or Apple-lover, still stuck in the middle (with you?).

P2P-files give you a virus?

PC magazine points out a new threat to your already spyware-laden pc: windows media files spreading through p2p audio & video.
The mechanism: a dialog box labeled "License Acquisition". Normally that dialog box is used to check for a user name or offer a chance to purchase the file that's being played. But a company called Overpeer is using this as a flaw to import all kinds of pop-ups & spyware. "Since the license dialog box acts just like an Internet Explorer window, it can display whatever is on the page it points to--whether a legitimate call for license information or a series of pop-up ads. When we played the modified files, the License Acquisition dialog box showed a page containing ads and quickly spawned more IE windows, each containing a different ad.".
So remember kids, careful with those DRM-infested files, stick to trusted old mp3's! ;-)

The end of radio part1: Audioscrobbler

In the early days of the internet, people were constantly worried of netsurfing being the death of tv. 'Cause that was what many people answered in questionnaires about "what media do you consume less now that you're online". For me, this was certainly true: I cut down on tv-hours to get behind the computer.

Five years later, and I have to admit that my tv-habits have gradually gone back up (now surfing on laptop and watching tv go hand in hand). And it turns out the true victim of my internet connection is ... radio.

Yes: i-Tunes & Winamp are killing radio. P2P and online music purchasing is so ubiquitous and easy, that after a while there's just so much audio sitting on the hard-drive I hardly ever find the time to listen to a radioshow anymore. The computer has become the radio, smart playlists have become the radio-programs.

Not that this is such a great loss: there's so many bad shows, with too many commercials around to mourn. Be it for one aspect: how the heck do you find out about new music????

Zines (online or paperbased) of course, but the network can also come to the rescue: Enter some new tools, which I'm checking out as we speak.

Take: Audioscrobbler. It sits as a plugin in your media-player (they cover almost all players out there) and transmits the ID-tags of the files you're playing to your personal page on their site. This gradually builds your profile (mine is this), from which you can start checking out other users who listen to similar stuff, join forums to discuss, even listen to a personalized radio station "last fm", suggesting tracks you might like ...
Interesting, to say the least!!! Meet you there???