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Friday, December 2, 2005
Handbasket weaving, cont'd 
Now what?
| | Actually, I think they learned a lot, which was one reason Bush got re-elected. |
| | Still doesn't mean they understood what would happen once liberators became occupiers. Or even the lessons of Vietnam, fergoshsake. As retired Lt. Gen. William Odom said on NPR this morning, "to get out of a hole, stop digging". |
| | Also a very pessimistic one. |
| | My own instinct says things won't be as bad as we think. But they will get worse before they get better. |
Blogpodwikicasts are conversations
| | Some of my experimentation resulted in a piece of the wiki entry being edited out. This was about Kevin Mark's contribution. I wanted to rewrite the paragraph about him as I recalled it, about the discussions we had at BloggerCon and the follow up emails. So, no editing war intended, pilot error. I apologize for any confusion. |
| | Maybe we should get five or six key figures on a skype call and podcast a conversation about the 'definitive history of podcasting'. We could make a mini-series out of it :) |
| | Still, as Dave points out, Wikipedia is still more wiki than 'pedia — at least on subjects like podcasting, where the makers of history are also writing it. |
Up down under
Getting Sirius
| | I was scanning up my new Sirius radio dial last night, past channels for oldies of every decade, fifteen rock channels all devoted to tastes younger than mine, five electronic and dance channels (I paused on the disco channel, called The Strobe), the seven hip-hop/R&B channels (Classic Soul agreed with me), the five country channels (I liked the Bluegrass one), three Christian, five jazz & blues, two standards, three classicals, four Latin & Internationals, two Howard Stern channels (keeping the seat warm for The King of All Media's arrival in January), and then... |
| | There was the voice of our Gang Leader Himself, on a channel (#103) called Sirius Stars. In the dark I could swear the name of the show was "Attention Deficit". It said "Attention (something... ah: 'Tech). Whatever the case, it had mine. But then I had to get out of the car and run an errand; so I missed the rest of the show. sic transit radio |
| | Then I was listening again last night and heard Mike Vizard (get a blog, Mike, so we can link to you) interviewing Dick Hardt of Sxip. The title of the channel was now "Adam Curry's Podshow", I think. Though, obviously, Adam wasn't on it. |
| | I remembered Adam talking about getting on Sirius back last Summer or something, but I kinda forgot about it after my 15 minutes or less of daily podcast listening began spreading across the other 5 zillion 'casts out there. |
| | Anyway, I bit the silo and bought into the Sirius thing, mostly because I wanted to test reception and stuff in the house we're building. Also because reception of regular radio in the new place will be even worse than it is here, thanks to stone walls and a copper roof. |
| | We got a Sportster Replay, which is a receiver-diaplay that works in a car kit, a home kit and a boom box. The unit came with the car kit. The home kit and the boom box were extra. There are big rebates and promotions on all of them. |
| | In the car, the kit attaches by suction cup to the windshield, and gets power from the lighter. In my old Subaru, the only way to play is through the FM radio, and for that the Sportster Replay comes with a transmitter that lets you choose any frequency on the FM band, including the only one with nothing on it: 87.9. For that alone I love the thing. That frequency will get some interference from (and give some to) local stations on 88.1; but otherwise, it's the one frequency that all the little accessory FM transmitters should automatically provide, but none do. Not that I've seen, anyway. All car receivers can get 87.9, and the only station in the country on that channel is 10-watt KSFH from St. Francis High in Mountain View, CA. It has about the same coverage as a bullhorn. Outside of Mountain View, the coast is clear. |
| | The sound is good too; although some channels seem to have that highly compressed sound that seems to be coming through a vacuum cleaner hose. The highs have this funny ringing edge to them. But that's in the car, where trees and bridges often cause drop-outs. The most common words on the display are "acquiring signal". |
| | At home, the sound is pretty good. I'm guessing most of the music channels are about what you get from 128kb mp3s. But it might be better in some cases. I haven't listened enough yet to tell. The sound of the Sirius music stations on DishTV is quite good, and I suppose this is about the same. |
| | The UI of the Sportster Relay isn't bad, as these kinds of things go. It's better than the average aftermarket car radio (featuring, for example, a real knob for tuning, rather than buttons); but not as easy to use as the average GM factory rental car radio (which is, believe it or not, my gold standard for obvious and convenient functionality in car radios). |
| | One possibly cool thing: the kid can sit in the back seat and operate the radio with a remote control we're sure to lose. |
| | It would be nice if there were a way to power the unit off 12 volts of batteries without putting them in a big old boom box. But, considering the need to put the antenna outside, the boom box is kind of a convenient way to wrap 25 feet of cable around something that hides it. The 'box is in fact pretty cleverly designed. The sound is good, but not as good as I'd expected. Nice features are audio-out jacks for headphones and left/right channels. |
| | Big plusses: NPR (3 channels of programming from the network) and lots of sports, including ESPN radio channels and up to three simultaneous NBA games, where the radio displays the live score. |
| | And, of course, Howard Stern, when he arrives. Like Jeff Jarvis, I'm a fan. What I've heard of Howard 100 so far has been pretty funny. |
| | I don't care how many channels you put on a service like Sirius'; they all come from one company, and sound like it. |
| | You know the kind of food you get in Universal Citywalk, or Disneyland, or Busch Gardens? Even if it's from some outside chain, there something homogenous about it. Something totally corporatized. |
| | My kid likes Sirius' 50s and 60s channels, but gets bored with them because they play the same 200 songs or so, over and over, just like terrestrial stations like KRTH/101.1 in Los Angeles do. Sure, they swap a few out every few weeks, but the selection gets pretty monotonous. We also notice the same thing on the holiday music channel and Margaritaville, which used to be called Vacation. If they're trying to be different than ordinary radio, why not play more of the whole repertoire in each channel's genre? |
| | The silo'd nature of the whole thing galls me. The antenna wiring is "special" (and different than what the XM satellite radios use). The radios come only from Sirius. Though they might not be able to get anybody else to make radios to their liking. Not sure. |
| | The website is atrocious. It has annoying flash bullshit on the index page (which has a URL longer than the location bar), and navigation ranging from confusing to opaque. Signing up and getting the service activated was an ordeal. For awhile it looked like we were going to have to do it on the phone. |
| | And how about working some podcasts on the thing? How about some RSS to notify listeners when something's coming up? How about company blogs? |
| | Anyway, we'll see how it goes. The weekend's coming up and I'll be driving around some, so I'll get more of a chance to listen. |
| | The bottom line question: how will it mix, or compete with, podcasts? Right now my choice for that is two silos: Sirius and an iPod, which is actually the hardware end of the iTunes silo. I think the Sirius will win the convenience war more often because it's better integrated with the car, and radiates on 87.9. |
| | Both, I've found, are dangerous to operate while driving. Ya kinda hafta pull over, especially with the iPod. |
| | Any way you slice it, we've got a long way to go. |
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