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Are You Willing to Pay for Web Radio?
Mark Fleischmann  |  Mar 12, 2007  | 
A new royalty structure approved by the federal Copyright Royalty Board has webcasters quaking. Formerly they paid the music industry's SoundExchange between 6 and 12 percent of their revenue. But under the new royalty structure, they'll pay $0.0008 to stream one song to one listener, rising to $0.0019 in 2010. That may not sound like much, but it would amount to 1.28 cents per listener per hour, more than estimated current ad revenue of 1.1 to 1.2 pennies per hour. And that's just for starters. Rates would continue to rise every year. More bad news for small webcasters: There would also be a minimum charge of $500 per year per channel. And the new rules don't apply to songwriter publishing royalties, potentially an additional expense. Whether all this will kill web radio as widely predicted remains to be seen. But the fledgling medium will certainly have to find a more lucrative business model if it wants to survive. So, a speculative question: Just how much would you be willing to pay for Internet radio?
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Artist Finds Inspiration in Cables
Mark Fleischmann  |  Aug 13, 2008  | 
If you live anywhere near the Wedge Gallery in Asheville, North Carolina, check out the paintings of Ruth Whiting. She's every nerd's dream--a painter who finds inspiration in cables! Says Whiting: "My work can be seen as a product of my fascination with the sublimely ordinary. For some time now I have set myself the task of revealing the beauty and heroism of mundane objects. I think of my paintings as lenses through which insignificant items, usually thought of as nothing more than functional, can assume the roles of heroes. My paintings do not attempt the illustrative role of myth, and yet there is a level upon which a giant orange extension cord that writhes through the nave of a quiet church demands a mythic justification. Thus, rather than propose a narrative, I attempt to create a situation that calls for an explanation. Electrical cords are like the connective tissue of our technological lives yet most of the time all we do is trip over them. This is a show dedicated to glorifying the dreams of extension cords." See showrooms here and here. This page includes clickable larger images. All oil on paper, the paintings are for sale at prices ranging from $130-500.
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AT&T Bridges PC-TV Gap
Mark Fleischmann  |  Mar 27, 2007  | 
Looking for a new way to get TV onto your PC? If you already subscribe to AT&T's next-generation U-verse service, you can also sign up for a free 14-day trial of OnTheGo. If you keep it, you'll pay an extra $10 month (over and above the usual U-verse cost) to access 30 channels from your PC. Mac users will not be pleased to hear that the service requires Windows XP, Internet Explorer, and the Windows Media Player. And the initial lineup may provoke further gripes: Fox News and Bloomberg but no CNN, Comedy Time but no Comedy Central. However, AT&T promises to add more channels as well as video on demand. OnTheGo is a joint venture with MobiTV, whose other activities include routing TV and XM channels to cell phones.
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AT&T Enters TV-Over-IP Market
Mark Fleischmann  |  Jan 18, 2006  | 
AT&T has snuck into the television-delivery market on silent cat feet. Without fanfare, the company formerly known as SBC has begun providing TV-over-IP service to a lucky handful in its hometown of San Antonio, Texas. Ironically, that's the same state where arch-rival Verizon has premiered its own television service. Unlike Verizon's capital-intensive all-fiber-optic approach, which extends fiber directly into the home, AT&T is building fiber only as far as "nodes" in the neighborhood, then compressing the signal into copper lines for the final leg of the journey. AT&T's initial offerings include 200 channels, including all the major networks, and some on-demand programming. This is a huge story and I'll get back to it as soon as I know more.
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AT&T Stiffs Chicago Suburb
Mark Fleischmann  |  Aug 29, 2006  | 
If you live in Naperville, Illinois and want telco TV as an alternative to cable and satellite providers, you're out of luck. AT&T has dropped the Chicago suburb like a bag of dirt. Naperville was willing to sign a franchise agreement that would have brought AT&T's Project Lightspeed—a combination of television, broadband, and telephone service—as long as all residents were eligible to subscribe to the service. AT&T walked away, an executive pouting: "Nowhere in this country has AT&T agreed to a build-out requirement." Then again: "We have an economic incentive to make the service as widely available as possible." But: "What we're not willing to do is make a commitment in 'x' number of months." However, AT&T actually did sign an agreement with nearby North Chicago to provide video service within 18 months. Confused? Here's the catch: that agreement doesn't specify next-generation Internet-based video. The folks in Naperville charged AT&T with making a scene in an attempt to strong-arm Congress into passing pending legislation providing telcos with a national franchise agreement that would end-run municipal governments. A Naperville council member commented: "We have some intellectual dishonesty taking place." See coverage in ArsTechnica and the Chicago Tribune. More tomorrow.
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Audio-Technica QuietPoint ATH-ANC7 Noise-Canceling Headphones
Mark Fleischmann  |  Aug 22, 2007  | 
Last weekend I took a Sunday afternoon stroll in Greenwich Village. I was wearing an "Upper West Side 10025" T-shirt to show the Lower Manhattanites who's boss. Following an excellent lunch of cold egg noodles at Mingala, as I strolled down Lafayette Street, I put on the Audio-Technica QuietPoint noise-canceling headphones. Traffic wasn't especially heavy, but you're never really free of internal-combustion noise in Manhattan, and as I hit the switch on the left can, I noticed the low-level hum just disappear, to be replaced by the NC circuit's acceptable low-level hiss. I started grooving on Oleg Kagan's and Sviatoslav Richter's expert performance of Beethoven's "Sonata No. 5 for Violin and Piano."
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Audioengine 2 Amplified Speaker System
Mark Fleischmann  |  Sep 19, 2007  | 
Is less of a good thing better? You're about to find out as Audioengine returns to these webpages with a smaller version of the previously reviewed Audioengine 5 powered speaker system. The new Audioengine 2 scales down the formidably chunky form factor of its larger sibling into something that won't dwarf your video monitor or earn dirty looks from boss or spouse.
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Audioengine AW1 Wireless Audio Adapter
Mark Fleischmann  |  Jun 04, 2008  | 
There are lots of wireless ways to get two channels of audio from point A to point B. But which is the right one for you? One of several possible answers is the Audioengine AW1 wireless audio adapter. It takes the form of two shiny black objects. Each one is the size and shape of a box of kitchen matches, with a stubby USB dongle at one end and a stereo mini-jack at the other end.
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Bar, What Is It Good For?
Mark Fleischmann  |  Oct 04, 2013  | 
Bar, what is it good for? Absolutely nothin', say most audiophiles. But an increasing number of consumers begs to differ, and the audio industry caters to them with an increasing selection of soundbars. At the recent CEDIA Expo, nearly every manufacturer that makes audio-for-video products was showing a soundbar or three, and no doubt I'll be reviewing some of them over the next year. With such a proliferation of soundbars, some of them may actually be pretty good, within their inherent limits, and worth considering in a bedroom system or something other than a primary home theater system.

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BART Teams Up with iPod
Mark Fleischmann  |  May 16, 2006  | 
Are you about to bring your iPod to San Francisco, Oakland, or the Bay Area? Then don't forget to download Bay Area Rapid Transit information before you leave home. In addition to the BART system map, you'll also get schedules, station information, and email warnings whenever the system changes. The map will work only on iPods with color displays and iTunes 4.7 or later. For skeds and stations you'll need a display (color or B&W) plus the Notes feature. BART also offers a PDA QuickPlanner for the Palm OS and Pocket PC and a Wireless QuickPlanner for web-enabled mobile devices. For other cities, check out isubwaymaps.com (formerly ipodsubwaymaps.com before Apple's lawyers sent a nastygram). The enthusiast-fueled site has maps of Berlin, Bilbao, Boston, Chicago, Hong Kong, London, LA, Lyon, Melbourne, Milan, Montreal, NYC, Paris, Philadelphia, Salt Lake City, San Diego, San Francisco, Seoul, Singapore, Tokyo, Toronto, Vancouver, and Washington DC. Paypal donations appreciated but not compulsory.
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Battle of the Batteries
Mark Fleischmann  |  Feb 27, 2006  | 
Digital camera pooping out on you? Duracell says its new PowerPix can power twice as many pictures as an ordinary alkaline battery. The PowerPix uses a new NiOx technology—that's nickel-oxy-hydroxide for those of you majoring in chemistry. Meanwhile, Panasonic makes the same claim for its new Oxyride batteries, compared to its own Alkaline Plus, adding that a new version will deliver three times as many pictures around the time the swallows return to Capistrano. Finally, Energizer says its e2 Lithium lasts seven times as long as competing alkalines and that e2s have replaced all the alkaline batteries aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery. Any of them should keep your remotes under control for years.
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BBC Goes Online
Mark Fleischmann  |  May 30, 2007  | 
The British Broadcasting Corporation has been busy lately. Its iPlayer is about to relaunch following a beta test. It will enable viewers to download single episodes or entire series a month after airing. In other BBC news, an archival project will put a million hours of historic material online for free, according to the Guardian. In this case there's a catch. You'll have to pay the annual BBC license fee to access it. The archives include an interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, conducted two days before the shooting, in which they candidly discuss the impact of their relationship on the Beatles. There's also an interview with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., conducted the day before his death, in which he says: "The important thing isn't how long you live, but how well you live."
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Beatles Downloads to Debut on iTunes
Mark Fleischmann  |  Dec 04, 2006  | 
"Fortune has learned that iTunes is close to a deal to bring the Beatles catalog online," the magazine's Tim Arango reported last week. How ironic, given their 20 years of legal battles, including most recently a tug of war over the right to use the brandname Apple. Neither Apple Computer or Apple Corps has confirmed the rumor and the deal may still fall through. However, the president of EMI recently told a music industry conference that he expected to see Beatles downloads available "soon." Still to be determined: What window of exclusivity will iTunes win from the Fab Four and their survivors? Will the Beatles allow their tunes and images be used for televised or other cross-promotional advertising, as U2 has done so successfully? Frankly, I couldn't care less, since my iPod already contains Beatles content ripped from legally purchased CDs. What I want to know is: How much longer do I have to wait for the Beatles catalog to be remixed in surround and released on SACD, DVD-Audio, Blu-ray, or HD DVD?
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Behind the VEIL
Mark Fleischmann  |  Feb 09, 2006  | 
Here are some fun facts about VEIL, one of the technologies underlying the Digital Transition Content Security Act of 2005—better known as the Analog Hole Bill:
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Best Buy Site Wears Two Faces
Mark Fleischmann  |  Mar 07, 2007  | 
Let's say you spot a bargain on the Best Buy website. You go to the local Best Buy to buy the product. Sorry, says the salesperson, that's not the correct price for that product. How can that be?, you ask. The salesperson boots up the site and shows you and then you feel like a ninny. But you're not a ninny--you've merely been robbed. Best Buy has confirmed to Connecticut state investigators that it maintains a second site, an intranet site, with different prices. I'll let "Consumer Watchdog" George Gombossy of the Hartford Courant tell the rest of the story: "State Attorney General Richard Blumenthal ordered the investigation into Best Buy's practices on Feb. 9 after my column disclosed the website and showed how employees at two Connecticut stores used it to deny customers a $150 discount on a computer advertised on BestBuy.com. Blumenthal said Wednesday that Best Buy has also confirmed to his office the existence of the intranet site, but has so far failed to give clear answers about its purpose and use. 'Their responses seem to raise as many questions as they answer,' Blumenthal said." Best Buy's serpentine response is to blame its employees: "We are reminding our employees how to access the external BestBuy.com web site to ensure customers are receiving the best possible product price."
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