Month: August 2007

Categories
technology

Tweaking

Old Telephones by givepeasachance @ flickr.com

Old Telephones by givepeasachance @ flickr.com

You’ll maybe notice that I’ve moved to blog over to WordPress (on James’ hearty recommendation), and I’m hoping it has been seamless. I haven’t yet customised the templates. That’s the next thing to do, along with a general redesign of the code to add some cleverness stuff here and there.

I’ve spent a fair bit of time lately playing more with Voice Over IP (VoIP). I think it’s an interesting technology, and disrupting a well established business model. It’s also financially very attractive to me, having friends and relations all over the place. I now have VoIP “trunks” coming in from 7 different places, aggregated into an Asterisk PBX server.

I wish I could say it was a simple configuration, but even by cheating and downloading the rather marvellous trixbox, which is a bootable CD which completely installs a machine from scratch, it was still a major headache getting it to go. Admittedly, I’m asking for some slightly non-standard things, and balancing access to the server with network security was tricky. I had to drop back to hand editing config files, and sifting through conflicting information from various enthusiast forums, which is not an “out of the box” experience.

After a good solid number of nights work (have you noticed how this kind of messing about always ends up being “nights work”?), it’s pretty much the way I wanted it to be. I can login from the laptop wherever I happen to be in the world, and it aggregates all my calls and voicemails to one place. If I happen not to be logged on to VoIP, it will tentatively call my mobile phone but pull back from that if I don’t answer and take a voicemail which it then e-mails me. I think that’s pretty neat, and should knock the roaming bills down.

The next thing to look forward to is IBC in Amsterdam, and getting a look-see at what new technology is coming our way in 2008.

Categories
real life

Tony Wilson

Tony Wilson by Jason Slack @ flickr Tony Wilson by Jason Slack @ flickr

It’s a sad day. Tony Wilson, ‘Mr. Manchester’ as the BBC has dubbed him, has died of cancer at the age of 57.

I’m feeling a bit shell-shocked. He was a man of tremendous energy and confidence, and he led a life that regularly thumbed its nose at risk and convention.

I was living in Manchester during the Madchester era. I felt the energy that it generated, and so much of it eminated from Tony and Factory Records.

I met him a few times; about a radio licence I was applying for, and around In The City, the music conference that he brought to life. He was by turns infuriating and utterly inspirational. I wish that I’d had the chance to work with/for/against him in radio in Manchester.

When I heard he had cancer, I simply didn’t believe it would overcome him. So little has swayed his course over the years, it seemed quite reasonable to assume that he’d shrug this off to. But the end seems to have been very swift.

Many people have given their recollections of Tony, and I was pleased to see Manchester City Council acknowledging the immense role he played in the regeneration of the city.

The media and music industry needs more people like Tony. He was passionate about music, and his passion drove him to achieve and create incredible things. I’m sure the words “but where’s the business plan?’ or ‘how does this fit into our strategy?’ never passed his lips.

The world will be a duller place without Tony.

Categories
dab digital radio

The Beginning of an Interesting Post

I started reading a what looks like an interesting blog post from Jack Schofield, but frustratingly I can’t get the “read more” bit to work. (I’m on 3G at the moment, and Orange have a rotten habit of fiddling with the HTML documents to insert their own “helpful” Javascript which inevitably breaks all sorts of things). Maybe you’ll have more luck than me?

What drew my eye was the opening statement : “From portable MP3 players and DAB radio to mobile phones, selling a higher-quality audio format to consumers who don’t seem to care was never going to be easy.”

Well, that’s a truth. Individually, we might not appreciate it. Personally, I might to choose to rip my own audio using FLAC and OGG at very high bitrates. But I’m in the minority. A very small minority. I don’t impose my views on others, in the same way that I don’t appreciate religious evangelists telling me that I’m going to hell unless I change my ways.

If the majority of consumers appreciated high quality audio, MP3 would not exist, there would be no file-sharing, iTunes and iPod would be dead in the water. If they appreciated decent quality video, Freeview would not have sold millions and millions of receivers. But the reality of the world tells us otherwise.

(Update @ 21:02 – have now been able to read the post, and it ends by conceding that “we have become the audio version of a fast food nation, consuming low-quality music on the run”. It feels a bit like a gourmet bemoaning the existence of McDonalds).