9 posts from May 2008

Yo Agenda 33, with audio feedback about No Agenda 33, is here:

Yo Agenda 32, commenting No Agenda 32, is here:

While watching a Finnish Premier League football match, our 7-year old son got up after a dubious decision by the referee, and shouted for everyone to hear: "The ref is totally blind!!!".

The whole stand burst out laughing... Way to go!

In Yo Agenda 31, Comic Strip Blogger and The Candyman provide audio feedback to No Agenda 31 by Adam Curry and John C Dvorak.

The other day I was browsing the CD / DVD section of a regular department store. Suddenly my eye fell on a new release by Porcupine Tree, a band I had only recently discovered when I bought their CD "Fear of a Blank Planet" with an Amazon gift certificate. Or to give credit where credit's due: through listening to the Silhobbit.com podcast who regularly feature Porcupine Tree.

The release I found was a rerelease of their 2000 album "Lightbulb Sun", consisting of a CD with a 2007 remix of the original album plus a DVD-Audio. I did not pay any attention to the DVD-Audio, because I did not own a DVD-Audio player (or actually I did, as I found out later). The package was reasonable priced, certainly worth buying it for the CD alone.

After having listened to the CD for a couple of days in my car, I decided to pop the DVD-Audio disc into my laptop's DVD drive to see what would happen. To my surprise, I was able to play the DVD-Audio tracks just fine! Even better, I discovered that the DVD-Audio played in our regular DVD player as well.

In both cases I had to use the 24-bit Linear PCM mix. I was not able to play the 5.1 DTS Dolby Digital Surround mix, because neither player supports DTS, but that is actually not a problem, as I do not own a 5.1 surround system. Nevertheless, even on my mediocre HiFi system / laptop I could hear the difference between the regular CD and the 24-bit LPCM DVD-Audio. For me it brought a whole new dimension to listening to the album. It is a superb album and it just sounds fantastic in this new format!

The outcome is that I will most probably buy more DVD-Audio releases quite soon. There is a bit of a format war going on between DVD-Audio and the Super Audio CD (SACD), but since the DVD-Audio plays on regular DVD equipment it is currently the clear winner for me. SACD would require me to buy a new SACD player.

The only benefit the SACD seems to have is that it contains also the regular CD tracks so it can be played back on regular CD players, like in cars (and it means you can rip it to your favourite MP3 player). With DVD-Audio that is not possible.

Perhaps it is also worth to point out what the CD + DVD-Audio package gives me in terms of content in this case:

1. CD with 2007 remixed album
2. DVD-Audio with 5.1 DTS Dolby Digital mix + 4 bonus tracks
3. DVD-Audio with 24-bit Linear PCM stereo mix
4. DVD-Audio with original 2000 CD stereo mix

It seems that the music industry is so messed up with looking at the negative issues, like illegal downloads and DRM, that there is no room anymore to talk about new developments that could bring some more positive interest into new music formats.

Or is everybody just happy listening to lower quality MP3s....?

The Business, Episode 2

In Episode 2 of The Business we cover 2 main areas:

Explanation of the term Cash Flow (15 minutes)

• Importance of Cash Flow to running a business
• Importance of Cahs Flow to assessing the success of a business
• Different types of Cash Flow
  

Interesting business news (remainder of the show)

• Deregulation of French retail industry (source: FT.com)
• Companies using YouTube to promote their products
• Comcast buying Plaxo
• The EU and US issuing a joint statement on Open Global Investment (EU press release, europa.eu)

Listen here:

Feedback to: thebusinessfeedback@gmail.com

Web site: www.thebusinesspodcast.net

Comic Strip Blogger and myself (using my Candyman alias) have started another podcasting project, called The Business. We have two main objectives with The Business:

1. Educate the audience by explaining a business term
2. Review the (business) news from the last week

Like our other podcasts, The Business can be found on Mevio, Share on Ovi and through my Vox blog posts. To subscribe to this podcast, please use this RSS feed.

In Episode 1 we explain the difference between businessman/woman and entrepeneur, as well as some random news items, see the show notes.

Listen to The Business episode 1 on Vox here:

And on Share on Ovi here:

 

Feedback can be sent to: thebusinessfeedback@gmail.com

For a while now I have been doing an audio feedback podcast called Yo Agenda. Yo Agenda is an answer show in response to No Agenda by Adam Curry and John C Dvorak. I am doing Yo Agenda under my alias "The Candyman" together with Comic Strip Blogger.

We have actually never met in person, but we kind of bumped into each other over the Internet because of our contributions on Adam Curry's DailySourceCode. Yo Agenda was basically born out of our frustration with the lack of quality of the discussion on No Agenda, and in addition the lack of feedback from listeners on the show.

Comic Strip Blogger usually creates a Comic Strip to accompany the episode + some album art.

Yo Agenda is created by recording our raw discussion using Skype, and technical issues that occur are part of the charm of the show!

Subscribe to Yo Agenda by using this RSS feed.

Yo Agenda 30, subtitled "Raw meat for vegetarians", provides audio feedback to No Agenda 30. Enjoy it right here:

Feedback to Yo Agenda can be sent to: yoagenda@gmail.com.

Yo Agenda is also available on Share on Ovi:

This has been an inactive blog if ever there was one....

Perhaps I should start blogging here again, as it seems to be a better blogging environment than my blog at Mevio.com.

I mean I can upload my audio podcasts here: