Corporate Radio Starting to Lose

I'm done! That's right, finals officially ended for me at 4PM yesterday. I think I put the hurt on that Linear Algebra final, but I'll post reflections on the year as a whole when I move out. Until then, the show must go on. I've been mentioning music a lot lately, and that's because it has come up so much. There has been huge growth in alternatives to normal radio: 22% for listening to songs from computers and 37% for listening to streaming internet radio online. The cost to corporate radio is only a few percent so far, but if they don't start playing more good music they'll probably lose more. Plus, I'm amazed at how many don't offer streams of their shows online. The great thing about podcasts, which I mentioned a couple of days ago, is that they're easy to obtain through a computer and transfer to your mp3 player or PSP. What's also really cool is this little device called Infusion that can tune into internet radio through a WiFi connection. It also has an FM receiver, can play mp3s, and can record sound as well. More devices like that could make the music market much more mature and almost monopolistically competitive.

So what else did the news have in store for technology? Well, TigerDirect lost its ridiculous case against Apple for use of the name Tiger for its new version of OS X 10. They ultimately just couldn't uphold the burden of proof and the court determined that the harm of siding with TigerDirect would be much worse than that incurred against TigerDirect. Serves them right! I ran into a great article about the good of tv piracy in that it can expose audiences to shows they've never seen before so they can get easily hooked on it. What's more important though is that the writer makes a great point about having an advertiser's watermark on each frame of the show to bring in revenue. It sounds pretty feasible to me given how widespread this has already become. In quite an interesting move, Sun and Microsoft have begun outlining projects to help their respective products be compatible with each other and communicate. A marraige between .Net and Java could be huge, so I guess we should just stay tuned for more developments in this fresh alliance. Microsoft is also planning to cross-license some patents with Toshiba, which could either mean that we'll see more innovation or more evil. There's a good, brief op/ed piece about our favorite M$ rival, Linux, over here regarding the lessons to be learned from DOS. It makes sense, but I think the reason Linux won't become mainstream is because it isn't simplistic enough.

Now for a spat of movie news. Some great early reports today. There's some information here regarding the showing at Cannes of the first 14 minutes of George Romero's Land of the Dead, and it sounds like it has the makings of a classic horror movie. Some lucky bastard got into a test screening of Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but thankfully he shared his tale. It sounds like it'll be very different from the original and should be a lot of fun to watch. There's a new tv spot for War of the Worlds now online to get us even more pumped up, and I'm expecting great things here. Oh, and Quint at AICN visited the movie set, but it's quite a long read. JoBlo put up a ton of shots of posters on his visit to Cannes that you should look over here. Not much else going on though. The weekend box office looks pretty weak so far, but official numbers will be in tomorrow. If you can't get enough of Star Wars you can see just how much money the empire rakes in over here and celebrate the forgotten background characters here.

I actually have some randomness today. There's a cool editorial here about what it takes to be a real blogger, and I'm glad I can just talk about random stuff here. With E3 just around the bend Nintendo is giving some small details about the Revolution beings backwards compatible with Gamecube games (so the same damned tiny discs) and also supporting wireless internet, and worked with IBM and ATI on the hardware. Not much else though, and it's expected to be out next year. Don't forget about the PS3. If you're interested in current games though, you'll savor some details on SOCOM 3's multiplayer, which looks totally sweet so far. More levels and vehicles and all that good stuff.



Now, embrace some Unconscious Mutterings:

I say ... and you think ... ?

1. Grandma::Granny
   
2. Pet::Dog
   
3. Desolate::Empty
   
4. Backspace::Keyboard
   
5. Common ground::Debate
   
6. Storm::Thunder
   
7. Dark::Night
   
8. Water bottle::Good stuff
   
9. Training::Buff
   
10. Dot coms::The web