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August 30, 2005

No recording options in Windows Vista?

This article from News.com paints a bleak picture about the future of making peronal recordings with the upcoming Windows Vista operating system.

Long live XP!

Posted by Bill Dettering at 09:48 PM | Permalink | Technorati Tags: | Comments (1)

August 26, 2005

Pandora passes the "Sue Test"

I have a fail-safe litmus test for new technology -- introduce it to Sue, my wife, and see if she takes to it.

Today we went onto Pandora. I had her pick a song she really liked, "Motherhood" by Natalie Merchant, and then we listened to music for a couple of hours.

Afterwards, we had a list of five artist she wanted to learn more about. We found some pretty cool songs, too.

Definitely a good sign...

Posted by Bill Dettering at 10:52 PM | Permalink | Technorati Tags: | Comments (1)

More on Pandora

My first impression of Pandora, the new music recommendation service, is that it's pretty cool. And it actually works.

I'm taking my 5 star tracks from iTunes, and using them as songs to base my playlists upon. I started with DMSR by Prince, recorded 2 hours of radio with Replay Music, copied the tracks to my iPod, and I had some great music to listen to all day long.

I'm still looking for that system that finds you songs that you absolutely LOVE the first time you hear them. Musical tastes are complex, and I'm not sure that Pandora would be able to do that based upon how the technology works, but nevertheless, I had a lot of new music to listen to today that I really LIKED.

I always thought that an affinities engine for music would work well, similar to the technology Amazon uses to recommend books. "If you like this song, other people who like it also like ____". Certainly would be less work than what the Pandora folks have undertaken.

It'll be interesting to see how Pandora's business model pans out. Charging a subscription fee for radio is tricky, since radio is essentially free. I have some ideas...

Posted by Bill Dettering at 03:27 AM | Permalink | Technorati Tags: | Comments (1)

August 23, 2005

Music Loops for Screencasts and Podcasts

If you are looking to add background music to your screencasts or Podcast, check out J Wynia's links.

Posted by Bill Dettering at 06:38 PM | Permalink | Technorati Tags: | Comments (0)

Podcast Guide Milestones

Our Replay Media Guide has just reached over 7000 Podcasts and nearly 110,000 episodes. (This is the guide that's also used by Replay Radio in both the paid program and the free Podcast edition.)

And unlike some other iGuides from Cupertino, all of our Podcasts are verified to have real, listenable MP3 enclosures.

When we started this back in April, we had 2400 Podcasts. This is some pretty amazing growth.

Posted by Bill Dettering at 05:28 PM | Permalink | Technorati Tags: | Comments (0)

August 15, 2005

Finding great music with Pandora

Pandora looks like an interesting service to solve the problem of "how do I find new music I'll like?".

This is one of the great unsolved problems of media and search. Their approach, in theory, makes sense.

I asked for a trial code. More soon.

By the way - this would make an awesome companion to Replay Music, or digital music services like Rhapsody and Napster.

Posted by Bill Dettering at 02:26 PM | Permalink | Technorati Tags: | Comments (1)

August 11, 2005

Replay Screencast 1.1

Replay Screencast 1.1, our program to make screen capture videos, was released today. The huge improvement is the ability to choose between high motion and low motion recording modes.

Low motion is great for making software or Web site demos.

High motion can be used to record Flash Video, QuickTime, or other videos that cannot be recorded using WM Recorder and RM Recorder.

You can try Replay Screencast for free from here:
http://www.applian.com/replay-screencast/index.php

Posted by Bill Dettering at 10:05 AM | Permalink | Technorati Tags: | Comments (0)

August 10, 2005

Real Networks on Portable Subscriptions

Portable Subscriptions aren't ready for prime time yet, according to Rob Glaser, Real Networks CEO.

From The Real Networks Q2 report via Adam Brotman:

Regarding portable subscriptions - Rhapsody to Go – Glaser commented that "consumer hardware is not ready for primetime"; he believes that portable subscriptions won’t be “ready for primetime” until 2006 because of the hardware; and that portable subscriptions are “more hype than substance right now, and not likely to change until next year”. After all that fanfare around Rhapsody-to-Go just a few months ago. Very interesting indeed. Like I've been commenting recently, it seems that portable subscriptions are confusing to the average person looking to get into online music, and they don't work on the iPod and...they don't work on the iPod. So, portable subscriptions are having a slow uptake. I like how Glaser says that the "hardware isn't there yet to give a big boost to portable subscription uptake." That's turning out to be an understatement. Did I already mention that you can't use the iPod to play your portable subscription tracks?

Uh... how about using Replay Music with your Digital Music Service and your iPod???

Posted by Bill Dettering at 12:12 AM | Permalink | Technorati Tags: | Comments (0)

August 09, 2005

AudioFeast goes down

Looks like Podcasting has killed at least one company - AudioFeast - a $10M funded startup selling a subscription audio service. It appears they burned through that money since December 2004, no small feat. Now it looks to be a Podcasting site. Bummer.

Content is king, and the big media content owners know this. When I was full into Mazingo (a company delivering audio and video to PDAs), we were all shocked at the onerous licensing terms from companies like CNN and WSJ, just to name a few. The theory was that we were offering a new distribution channel that wouldn't cannibalize existing channels, and we wanted to do no-money-up-front rev share agreements. The only deals to be had for the name brand content were guaranteed minimums. Needless to say, Mazingo didn't make it.

Here's more on AudioFeast.

Posted by Bill Dettering at 11:42 PM | Permalink | Technorati Tags: | Comments (0)

August 06, 2005

The Podcast Anthem

This is awesome. Debbie turned me on to this song "On a Podcast".

Enjoy!

Posted by Bill Dettering at 01:26 PM | Permalink | Technorati Tags: | Comments (1)

August 05, 2005

What's the Ideal Podcasting Device?

As a long time iPod user, I was recently given a cool Flash-based MP3 Player from Digital Mind, which I'm now using for Podcasts. It's changed my thinking a bit.

It's small, easy to transfer files onto, and has great sound. It's a lot more convenient than an iPod to carry around, and it has a UI, unlike the Shuffle. And it's under $100.

I'm thinking this sort of device may be the best Podcast listening device, if all you're doing is listening to Podcasts.

I'm interested to hear comments from you about what you're looking for in a dedicated Podcast device. Am I on target? Crazy?

Let me know...

Posted by Bill Dettering at 03:58 PM | Permalink | Technorati Tags: | Comments (3)


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