It has finally been discovered ;o) that it takes a little work to rip CD’s to MP3’s that sound ok. Back in the hey-day of Napster there were many files to be had, but most of them didn’t sound very good. I guess that the general public is beginning to realize that size isn’t everything…:O|

Wired News: Old Rips: May They Rest in Peace

The Daytime Emmys will announce a new award for video aired on computers, cellphones and video iPods. The New York Times reports:

The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, best known for handing out the Daytime Emmy Awards, is expected to announce on Tuesday that it has created an award category to recognize original video content for computers, cellphones and other hand-held devices, like the video iPod and PlayStation Portable.

The new award will first be presented during the academy’s Sports Emmys presentation, and ultimately be added as a category for other Emmy presentations as well. The category will not be included in the prime-time Emmy Awards.

Why might I find this interesting? It’s great to see a professional orginazation keeping up with technology, and realizing that new technology leads to new art forms that are equally worthy of award. The Broadway Theatre League still doesn’t recognize sound design as a design element, and thereby sound is not worthy of award. That would be to progressive….

Today Meyer Sound announced the acquisition of LCS (Level Control Systems).

Although the screen shots of the yet to be released, Galileo 616 loudspeaker processor on the Meyer web site do look like the CueStation interface, it was little known that LCS was collaborating with Meyer on this project. It will be interesting to see how Meyer leverages LCS’s technology in the future. I think LCS does have a leg up on some of the competition, with it’s cross platform, client-server topology. If Meyer can use it’s marketing power to promote and educate people about LCS, they could make quite a wave in the industry. Alternatively, perhaps Meyer plans on using the software and hardware LCS has developed to take their speaker lines in a new direction.

I guess we’ll have to wait and see….

Meyer Press Release - Meyer Acquires LCS

It’s been a long time coming. According to Clear-Com (Vitec Group), the FCC is in the final stages of approval for the use of CellCom10 in the US. Popularly know as FreeSpeak10 in Europe and elsewhere, the name was changed for the US and Canadian markets due to trademark issues.

UPDATE (12-05-2005) : The FCC has approved the CellCom10 for use in the US, and is already in use at Harpo Studios in Chicago.

It’s been slow going for Clear-Com on this one. They have been showing mockups and feature descriptions of the product at trade shows for at least a couple of years.

CellCom is a revolutionary new concept in wireless intercom, combining license-free digital transmission with an intelligent base station that interconnects with wired communications. Go beyond the typical wireless party-line or even two-channel capability, with one-to-one and group conversations initiated from your beltpack!

CellCom10 supports up to 10 drops and operates using an active transceiver network. The transceivers are strategically placed throughout the desired coverage area and connected back to the base using standard CAT5 connections. The system as whole acts very much like a mini cell phone network, managing the movement of each beltpack from one transceiver to another.

CellCom10 also has the capability to interface with 2 standard party-line channels of com or 4 cross points on a digital matrix, such as the Eclipse or Matrix3 lines, greatly expanding up wireless communications possibilities.

Clear-Com also has a CellCom50 which supports 50 drops, which has not been approved for use in the US.

I’m certainly no mathematician, but I found this interesting. A mathematician in South Wales has published a book that redefined trigonometry with the use of sines, cosines or tangents. I remember how difficult it was to remember all the trigonometric identities (still don’t know ‘em). I have found simple trig to be very helpful, but significantly more difficult when trying to learn Fourier Transforms or integral calculus, which all use the concepts from “basic” trig.

For an audio engineer with a natural curiosity for all things that help me to better understand the nature of my job, I have looked long and hard at trig functions in relation to audio and wave propagation. The notion that maybe some of that pain involved in trig can be simplified to something that looks a lot like 5th grade fractions is appealing.

I do wonder if the concepts can be applied to other areas of calculus, and that I might actually be able to understand the FFT (Fast Fourier Transform) sooner rather than later.

There is a sample chapter available on N J Wildberger’s web site.

Slashdot | Trigonometry Redefined without Sines And Cosines

Latin: Audio, video, disco

Translation: “I hear, I see, I learn”

Believe it, or not… Latin Phases on Wiki

I have written about I, Cringely before. I really like what he has to say about technology, and he’s entertaining to read as well. A few months ago I read something about his efforts to start build a show based around his musings about technology, computers, and opinion. It has finally some to fruition. NerdTV went live yesterday. What is NerdTV?

NerdTV is essentially Charlie Rose for geeks - a one-hour interview show with a single guest from the world of technology.

His first guest is Andy Hertzfeld, who was one of the original Macintosh systems programmers, and now a big proponent of Open Source Software. Upcoming guests include, PayPal co-founder Max Levchin, Apple Computer co-founder Steve Wozniak, Internet publisher Tim O’Reilly, and TCP/IP inventor Bob Kahn. As well as a host of others.

Andy also has a great web site, Folklore.org, that focuses on stories from the original Macintosh development team. It too is a great read. Andy has also just released a book of stories from Folklore called Revolution in The Valley.

Other nerdy aspects of the show include the fact that it is distributed on the internet in a multitude of formats, from mp4 video and audio formats for podcast including ogg vorbis, aac, mp3 and it’s also available as a straight up transcript.

It’s nerdy, and I found it very entertaining.

I, Cringely . NerdTV | PBS

Technorati Tags: Media, Nerd, Computers, PBS

From “For Your Entertainment”: The author, and fellow audio engineer, John Sibley, is my hero. In the midst of a cross country trip, returning to Vegas from a job in Detroit, decided to point his car to the south, and go to Houston instead, to assist the Red Cross with their efforts to help the hurricane victims.

I’m proud to know you…

You can read his account in his Blog:
For Your Entertainment: A Brief Departure From The Funny

OK- I like a gadget as much as the next guy, but does anyone really need this. The bulb monitors itself and when it burns out it sends a message through Powerline IP to a server which in turn sends an SMS message to your cell phone.

They may be on to something if they started making FEL, HPL and PAR bulbs…

SMS Lightbulb : Gizmodo

Wired posted an article today about the Wynn Hotel . I live in Las Vegas, but haven’t been down to that property yet. I thought it was interesting to see this in Wired.

Wired News - Move Over Pyramids, Wynns Here