Science Library Pad

Tafelmusik Galileo Project + Royal Astronomical Society in Ottawa

Did you know that Galileo's father composed music?  Hear it on March 6, 2009 as part of Tafelmusik's Galileo Project, then afterwards have a look at the night sky with the Royal Astronomical Society.

The Galileo Project: Music of the Spheres is an orchestral concert programme [featuring] Tafelmusik’s multidisciplinary celebration of the International Year of Astronomy and the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s first use of the astronomical telescope. The glorious music of Vivaldi, Handel, Bach and Vincenzo Galilei (father of the astronomer) will be interwoven with Inuit drawings of the northern lights, astronomical photographs and a narrated script taken from the writings of Galileo, Isaac Newton and other great astronomers.

Ottawa Chamber Music Society Concert 6: Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra

Tafelmusik's Galileo Project page has additional information, including detailed programme notes.  Tafelmusik is Toronto-based, they have tour dates coming in Canada and the USA.

Friday, March 6 2009
7:30 pm
Dominion Chalmers United Church
(355 Cooper Street)
Ottawa, Ontario

After the concert: star-gazing with the Royal Astronomical Society.

There are a variety of price bands, going as low as $15.  See Ottawa Chamber Music Society - Ticketing.

UPDATE 2009-03-08: The concert was extraordinary.  I was sceptical of the multimedia part, but I was looking forward to the music.  My scepticism was totally unfounded - the concert is a seamless integration of spoken word, music, and images projected on an unusual circular screen.  More than that: Eppur si muove - the musicians have memorised their parts entirely, which enables them to move around on the stage, like a sort of human orrery.  As well they used the space of the church extremely well - including in one case Venus as the morning and evening star - two musicians up in the balconies on each side of the church.  To be able to see some of the best Baroque musicians in the world perform in this amazing piece in a church just a few blocks from my house was a great privilege.  I highly recommend this performance if you have a chance to see it.  If not, the entire concert (including the narration) is available from the CBC as an audio stream (in Windows Media format, which may be problematic on the Mac).

Tafelmusik's The Galileo Project: Music of the Spheres · CBC Radio 2 - Concerts On Demand

I agree for the most part with Richard Todd's review in the Citizen, except his comment "Only a few of the pieces on offer had any obvious astronomical associations" is bizarre as the entire programme reveals how much of a role the planets and planetary mythology played in the music and writing of the 17th and 18th centuries.  It was fascinating to hear the words of Galileo from Starry Messenger in which in very clear language he talked in one breath of art and in the next of science.  The end of the concert, connecting the prediction of the return of Halley's Comet based on Newton's insights into gravity and mathematics to the ordered music of Bach, showed how truly connected the worlds of art and science can be.

iTunes and classical music

CBC radio says that their show In Tune (Saturday 5:00 p.m.) will be looking at iTunes and its impact on classical music this Saturday (September 13, 2008).

iTunes will be 8 years old this coming January 2009.

homecoming cleanup procedures

Omit the beans
Cancel the hash
'Cause Benny a-had a-plenty a-that
Delete the spam
Ebay the stew

Ella Fitzgerald - Benny's Coming Home on Saturday

Ok, I'm not really sure what's she's saying about the stew.  Evade?
But she really does say "delete the spam".

I can't link you to the lyrics because the Copyright Lyric Police shut down all the sites, because I guess there's a plum fortune to be made selling lyrics.

Classification: Music for the Modern Age

learn from music industry, we all can

Speaking at the GSMA Mobile Asia Congress in Macau, Edgar Bronfman told mobile operators that they must not make the same mistake that the music industry made.

"We used to fool ourselves,' he said. "We used to think our content was perfect just exactly as it was. We expected our business would remain blissfully unaffected even as the world of interactivity, constant connection and file sharing was exploding. And of course we were wrong. How were we wrong? By standing still or moving at a glacial pace, we inadvertently went to war with consumers by denying them what they wanted and could otherwise find and as a result of course, consumers won."

Mobile operators risk the same, he said. Fewer than 10% of mobile owners buy music on their handset, the vast majority of which is ringtones.

"The sad truth is that most of what consumers are being offered today on the mobile platform is boring, banal and basic," he said. "People want a more interesting form of mobile music content. They want it to be easy to buy with a single click - yes, a single click, not a dozen. And they want access to it, quickly and easily, wherever they are. 24/7. Any player in the mobile value chain who thinks they can provide less than a great experience for consumers and remain competitive is fooling themselves."

MacUser - Music boss: we were wrong to go to war with consumers - November 14, 2007

widely reported

All of us who are adapting to the new ways of operating in the digital environment can learn a lesson from this.

ban smoking for healthier... accordions?

There is anecdotal evidence that the interiors of accordions played regularly in smoke filled environments are dirtied as a result of the trapping of contaminant particles circulating in the air as it filters through the instrument. We conducted a telephone survey of all workers involved in the cleaning, repair, maintenance, and renovation of accordions in the Republic of Ireland.

Confessions of an accordion cleaner
John F Garvey, Paul McElwaine, Thomas S Monaghan, Walter T McNicholas
BMJ  2007;335:630 (29 September), doi:10.1136/bmj.39346.507778.3A

via Globe and Mail (Agence France-Presse) - Ireland's cleaner accordions - September 29, 2007

DUBLIN -- Ireland's smoking ban has not just improved the air quality in its famous pubs, but has also boosted the quality of music sessions for drinkers, doctors reported yesterday.

Specifically, it has helped musicians clean up their traditional instruments, clogged up with years of dirt in smoke-filled pubs, so they can produce clearer sounds

die, DRM, die - courtesy of EMI

Apple has announced that iTunes will make individual AAC format tracks available from EMI artists at twice the sound quality of existing downloads, with their DRM removed, at a price of $1.29/€1.29/£0.99. iTunes will continue to offer consumers the ability to pay $0.99/€0.99/£0.79 for standard sound quality tracks with DRM still applied.  Complete albums from EMI Music artists purchased on the iTunes Store will automatically be sold at the higher sound quality and DRM-free, with no change in the price. Consumers who have already purchased standard tracks or albums with DRM will be able to upgrade their digital music for $0.30/€0.30/£0.20 per track.  All EMI music videos will also be available on the iTunes Store DRM-free with no change in price.

EMI PR - EMI Music launches DRM-free superior sound quality downloads across its entire digital repertoire - April 2, 2007

via Digg

my review of the Sony K790 cameraphone

Summary

This is a very full-featured phone, with a lot of great capabilities.  If you're looking for a phone plus an MP3 player, FM radio, and camera, this may be a good choice for you.  The phone does not have built-in GPS.

As low as $200 from Rogers if you take a first-time three-year contract.  As low as $300 from Rogers if you have an existing contract and extend it for three years.  $410 direct from Sony Style Canada, without any contract.

Minimum user available memory: 64 MB (mine actually had about 74MB free).  Expandable with Memory Stick Micro (M2) card.  Used a 1GB card, $55 from Sony Style Canada.  Current maximum available is 2GB.

Headphones, power, USB etc. connect with proprietary Sony Fast Port connector.  Power cable has passthrough to connect another Fast Port accessory while charging.  It also charges automatically when plugged into USB (which may save you hauling around the power cable, e.g. if you have a laptop).  Adapter to use regular headphones is available.

You can semi-automatically geocode photos, but only with the addition of an external Bluetooth GPS (not included) and added software

May be available unlocked from various vendors, in the US you can try e.g. Amazon, searching Sony k790.  Here's a link to one result I found:

Amazon.com - Sony K790a (unlocked) from Soar Dime

Details

This phone has a huge number of features, I will walk through the ones of interest to me item-by-item.
As some background, I had a number of drivers.  I wanted to see what the state of the art was for cellphone as integration platform.  I wanted to have a camera all the time, without having to remember to bring my Canon PowerShot, so that when I'm walking down the street and think "hey, that would be a great shot" I can actually take the photo.  And I dreamed that perhaps the phone GPS + camera capabilities might let me automatically geocode photos.  I also wanted international roaming, but most any Rogers GSM phone on a contract plan would have given me that.

First I did a quick comparison survey to see what advanced phones were available and coming, and picked the K790.  Check the survey for more info about the K790's capabilities.

I learned a few things: one, there is a "conceptual" base unlocked phone, and then there is the actual phone as modified by your wireless carrier - not all features the phone supports may be available.  Also, wireless Internet over cellphone from Rogers is bloody expensive, which limits a lot of the Java Internet stuff you may want to do.

Here's the phone (with strap attached) and the M2 memory card, next to a pen for comparison

It comes with lots of accessories: power cable, USB cable, headphones/handsfree microphone.

(above photo taken with the phone itself)

Computer Features: Supplied Windows Software

It comes with a CD, many many drivers are installed, including modem and Ethernet capabilities.

It does not include the Sony Picture Motion software that comes with some Sony Cybershot cameras, which means that the automatic map integration provided by the Sony GPS-CS1 is not available (you can still use the Sony GPS software and software like RoboGEO - see my GPS-CS1 review for more info).

There are two modes for connection: "Phone mode", in which the phone continues to operate and in which you can do file transfers.  Then, confusingly, USB "File Transfer" mode, in which the phone ceases to operate (in terms of receiving calls), and which is required in order to use the music transfer (Disc2Phone) and photo download (Adobe Photoshop Album Starter 3) software.

Features: Digital Music Player

They provide an application Disc2Phone to move music to the phone. Many formats: MP3 etc. (Although it supports AAC, don't interpret that to mean Protected AAC; it will not play DRMed files from the iTunes Music Store.)

The interface on the phone is the usual navigation by Artist, Track or Genre.  You can also make playlists.

Features: Flight Mode

Can you listen to your tunes on the plane?  Yes.  There is a flight mode that turns off all the radio features (cellphone, FM radio, Bluetooth).  This may seem like a somewhat obscure need, but I actually bought my iPod mainly to listen to audiobooks on the plane.

Features: FM Radio

Requires the headphones (the headphone cord is the antenna).  Works well, nice clean interface.

Features: Blogger

Built-in Blogger integration (mainly intended for photo blogging)

http://www.sonyericsson.com/product/blog/

is not supported by Rogers.

Features: Google Search

Does have built-in Google Search, available from "Activity Menu Key", * Internet->Search Internet

Features: Email

UPDATE 2007-05-08:

Rogers

If you want to avoid data charges, Rogers has an SMS-to-email bi-directional gateway.  Simply compose a text message:

[email protected] (subject) body of message

and send it to address 0000000000

Your email address will be [email protected] where aaabbbcccc is your phone number.  (The client is actually a bit more sophisticated, you can send it a message to set an alias so you can change it to e.g. [email protected] - text alias yourname to 0000000000 - you can also set your name by texting name Firstname Lastname to the same address.)

Built-in Client

The built-in email client is actually quite powerful.  It's available under Messages->Write New->Email or you can access your email inbox and settings (separate from your text message inbox and settings) under Messages->Email.  Note that this will use your data plan.  I set up a Rogers Internet secondary account for my phone, but presumably you could use any POP or IMAP accessible email account (e.g. Gmail).

You may need to get connection settings.  You can go to www.sonyericsson.com/support and get sent basic settings by SMS.  Once you have those settings, here is an example for a Rogers email address.  (Note: You probably don't want to do this with your mail Rogers account, since you'll end up with some of your email permanently on your phone.  That's why I created a new secondary account.)

Messages->Email->Settings

Create a new account - Account Name of your choice

Connect Using: Rogers Internet (there are many choices, this seemed the most logical one)

Email Address: [email protected]

Connection Type: POP3 (I chose this for Rogers) or IMAP

Incoming Server: pop.broadband.rogers.com

Username: foo

Outgoing Server: smtp.broadband.rogers.com

No Advanced Settings need to be set (although you might want to set Your Name).

That's it.  You should now be able to send and receive emails, including sending photos.

Note: Sending photos by email doesn't work from the photo browser (Cyber-shot->View->Send->As Picture Msg.) - even if you select an email address, it will send the photo to picturemessaging.rogers.com and send an email to the selected address to check out the photo there (Rogers trying to lock you in to their online photo service).

In order to email a photo, you need to either

1) use the file browser: File Manager->Camera Album (select image) More->Send->As Email

or

2) select as a file attachment to an email: Messages->Write New->Email select Attachments Add->Picture

ENDUPDATE

Features: Camera

Turn sideways.  Open camera lens cover.  Press focus button - focus button has a slight metal bump next to it - sometimes press bump by mistake.

Flickr

You can upload to Flickr directly, using mobile Internet to

m.flickr.com

Entering in your username and password (and any textual information) is quite tedious though.

The phone seems to have a bit of a split camera/phone personality.
For example, it would seem logical to do

Flickr->Upload a photo
Select

(Phone Menu that came up automatically) Select File->Camera Picture

but when I do that, I get "Another application is running.  Close it, and then start the camera."  What the heck?  So ok fine, I go to the next logical

(Phone Menu that came up automatically) Select File->Picture

but none of my photos are there, just some pre-loaded little images.
It transpires that I have to do

(Phone) Main Sony Menu->File Manager->All Files->Camera Album

then select the image I want, then More->Manage File->Copy->Phone->Pictures

Well, that wasn't confusing or anything.  I have to copy pictures from the... phone... to the... phone.
All completely logical.
Why doesn't Camera Album come up as a choice in the Select Files automenu?  What's the difference between "Camera Album" and "Camera Pictures"?

Anyhoo, once you have the image copied into Pictures it can be... slowly... uploaded.  It is NOT automatically geotagged/geocoded.

Rogers

Rogers has its own, rather confusing, online picture service.

You go to rogers.com/mypix which takes you to

http://www.picturemessaging.rogers.com/

Pictures I had sent were in Messages->Stored Messages, and could be copied to a photo album from there.  It's not clear to me whether "photo album" images can actually be shared on the Internet, or only sent to other phones via MMS.

Sony Ericsson

Provides free storage space, I haven't tested it much.  Go to

http://www.sonyericsson.com/fun/wxhtml/overview1?cc=CA&lc=en&lf_res=ca&remove=?

Photo Quality

Here are two photos, roughly the same shot, taken in nice bright sunlight, first one from the K790 (set to "normal" quality) and then one from my Canon PowerShot S70

I'm afraid I have to characterize the camera in the K790 as merely adequate.  This is not too surprising - there is not much room to put in good lens optics - as it is, the lens is a bulge on the back of the phone.  I find the K790 tends to have substantial blur on edges, rather than having clean sharp lines.  And I am not a particularly picky photographer.  That being said, the camera is more than fine for sending picture messages or even taking casual pics - which is all I wanted.

(I don't think this is a megapixel issue, I took thousands of pictures with my 3 megapixel Canon PowerShot S20 and they were sharp even when blown up to huge 20"x30" prints.)

UPDATE 2007-03-02: There is an option to choose between "normal" and "fine" (higher-quality) photos, in Settings->Picture Quality.  I believe that "fine" mode just adjusts the JPEG compression, thus resulting in larger image files where more of the fine details should be retained.

The camera has many settings, just like a regular digital camera, I won't go into them all.  I recommend the extensive review of the photographic capabilities from Mobile-review.com, as part of their detailed examination of the K790.

ENDUPDATE

On Flickr

Unfortunately Flickr considers all the variant models of the K790 (K800x and K790x) to be completely different.  You can see photos from the various models at

http://www.flickr.com/cameras/sonyericsson/k790a/ (North America)

http://www.flickr.com/cameras/sonyericsson/k790i/ (international except NA and China)

http://www.flickr.com/cameras/sonyericsson/k790c/ (China)

http://www.flickr.com/cameras/sonyericsson/k800i/

Automatically Geocoding

This is a bit of a dream of mine: take a photo and have it automatically stamped with its location.  For more details, see my geocoding photos page.  I can report that we are... almost... there.  Although I had seen the K790 reported as having a GPS, there certainly weren't any Java-accessible built-in GPS features available to the software I downloaded.  (All cellphones must have positioning capability for enhanced 911, but it gets rather obscure rather quickly how many of them have full GPS built-in.)

The software that was best was j2memap.  A bit difficult to get the right version installed (I managed to get 0.914 eventually) but then very smooth - it requested access to the Internet (I assume this is combination of the phone and Java doing the request) and then was able to locate the Bluetooth GPS I had paired with the phone (my Holux GPSlim236).  Pulled down the Google satellite image of where I was standing, very cool (and as I mentioned before, unfortunately very expensive due to Internet costs on the phone).   You can take a picture using the software and it will send it to Flickr  along with the geotags for your location.  Therein lies the "almost" automatic bit.  It's not clear whether Flickr will, in the background, convert machine geotags (geo:lat, geo:lon) into a map link, or whether you have to manually run Flickr's (hidden feature) Geo Import each time.  It also doesn't appear to be possible to set either photo privacy or location privacy when uploading.

Anyway, kudos to the j2memap people for an amazing application - it's a shame I won't be able to use it much, due to the outrageous 3 cent to 5 cent per kilobyte Internet data charges from Rogers.

I also attempted to use Shozu, but it asked for a whole bunch of Java rights settings, and then wanted me to enter a bunch of APN info for Internet access that I know nothing about, and I'm pretty sure they asked for my phone number too.

Features: Strap

The strap itself is thick, but it connects to the phone via a very thin string; I am dubious about the ability of this string to withstand much abuse.  Worst of both worlds - thick inflexible strap with thin connection to actual phone.

Computer Features: Automatic Update

The ability to automatically update the software on the phone is provided.  I do not recommend this procedure, unless you either have a major bug you know will be fixed, or a major feature that will be added.  You are basically doing a firmware replacement - anyone familiar with this term will already be shuddering.  You have to remove the SIM card and place the phone in a special update mode.  The problem: if the update fails, your phone may be dead.  Totally dead.  No power-on, no way (AFAIK) to reset.  As you may guess, this happened to me with the update process, which reported rather bizarre completion percentages, then died partway through, declaring "your phone software is up-to-date".  My phone was, in fact, totally dead.  Very fortunately, I was able to reboot and re-run the update, which completed successfully and brought my phone back to life.

Features: Expand Memory with M2 card

This is easy to do, just stick the card in the side.  As with many such devices, it has quite a strong partitioning between the memory card and the internal phone memory - you have to designate stuff to go to one or the other.

Compatibility: Mac (as USB drive)

While there is no Mac software, you can just plug the phone in as a USB drive on the Mac, if you want to download photos or upload music.  You don't have to do anything special, just put it in file transfer mode and plug it in.  The phone and memory card show up separately.

(I assume it will also work in Linux in the same way, but I haven't tested it.)

Feature: Remote Control (using Bluetooth)

UPDATE 2007-02-24: This phone has so many features I'm sure it will take me months to explore them all.  One I just tried is using the phone as a remote control, over Bluetooth.  The whole procedure went very smoothly (the way these technology things should work, but usually don't).  Turn Bluetooth on in the cellphone, make the phone visible.  Then on my Mac PowerBook (OS X 10.4.8) laptop also turn on Bluetooth and discover the phone.  The Mac detected and paired with the phone no problem, and gave the following capabilitity options: address book, modem and remote control.  I clicked to agree and that was it.  Set the phone into Remote Control - Presenter mode

The above shows the screen that comes up in Presenter mode, showing the remapping of various phone keys.

The main controls for slides are the up/down buttons on the right side of the phone - very nice ergonomics if you're holding the phone in your hand - just use your thumb, no need to even look down at the phone.  Fired up Keynote 3 and started playing a presentation - clicking the slides back and forth just worked automatically.  Also worked fine with Mac PowerPoint X.  My preference when presenting is to be able to walk around, and I've always wanted one of those clickers that some presenters have, but I was never willing to shell out for one, particularly without being sure that it would work with the Mac.

I will definitely be trying this out in my next presentation.  (Although I wonder: what happens when you get a phone call in the middle of your presentation?)

A nifty addition to the phone, and kudos to Sony Ericsson and Apple for making it all work more or less automagically, although it's not entirely clear to me how to reconnect for Remote Control without having to re-do Bluetooth discovery on the Mac again.

Another potential external device consolidated into the phone.

You can find it under Menu->Entertainment->Remote Control

And for the sharp-eyed amongst you, yes, Remote Control - Desktop option makes the phone work like a remote mouse, the mini-joystick on the phone can be used to remotely control the mouse pointer, and you can do mouse clicks and access a limited number of keyboard keys as well.  Also kind of cool although I'm not sure I will ever use Desktop mode in practice.

ENDUPDATE

Other Comments and Notes

Phone so good at power saving it's difficult to tell when it's on. Very quick to black screen.  No time or charging display (when in black screen powersaving mode).  "Themes" create somewhat distracting screen - time for some reason either tiny and hard to read, or larger but faint and hard to read - would prefer to have nice bright clear time on the display.  Couldn't find a built-in theme that didn't interfere with reading the time.

UPDATE 2007-03-01: When the phone is in standby (black screen) mode, you can press the up/down (zoom in/out) buttons on the right-hand side of the phone to briefly display a plain grey screen that shows just the current time (in black).  ENDUPDATE

Yahoo Go is not supported on any Sony Ericsson phones, neither is Yahoo ZoneTag.

You can download MP3 ringtunes from Sony for free, but it won't let you set them (Rogers prevents you from using MP3s as ringtones).

UPDATE 2007-04-17: In response to a comment, the easiest way to get downloads for your phone is to go to

http://www.sonyericsson.com/

then select your country and phone, and go to "Fun & Downloads".

The specific link for Canada K790 is

http://www.sonyericsson.com/fun/wxhtml/download1/download1_1?cc=CA&lc=en&products=K790a

There may also be a built-in link on your phone itself, check your Internet links (click the button on the right face of the phone, between the right -- and the C key, it's the * tab in the display that comes up).

ENDUPDATE

Developer Info

http://developer.sonyericsson.com/site/global/products/phonegallery/k790/p_k790.jsp

Java - Sony Ericsson's Java™ Platform 7 (JP-7) / Java Micro Edition - appears to be the main platform for K790 applications.

In Conclusion

I really am pleased with the phone overall.  I am hoping I can use it in many cases to eliminate carrying an iPod, and in some cases to eliminate carrying a camera.  It's unfortunate that in-phone GPS capabilities haven't caught on yet, but I'm sure this is coming within the next couple generations of phones (the Nokia N95 puts a big emphasis on GPS).  It's also very unfortunately that the extremely high cost of the Rogers data plan means that I will not be running many otherwise cool Internet/Java applications.

PS The Memory Stick Micro M2 really is the size of my thumbnail:

Here are some options for M2 memory from Amazon.com.  UPDATE 2007-08-13: Added 4GB card.

Note: Do not confuse Memory Stick Micro with MicroSD, a completely different, incompatible memory card format.

UPDATE 2007-05-05: In the US, you can get cell phones and plans directly through Amazon; the specific offerings depend on your location.

DRM and legal music in Canada

I haven't been tracking this issue much lately, I'm afraid I'm such an early adopter that my interest started in 2001

http://web.archive.org/web/20010607052414/http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/~rakerman/digimusic.html

and that after Apple (finally) launched iTunes in December 2004, I stopped paying much attention to the issue of the availability of legal, Mac-friendly, and ideally non-DRMed music in Canada.

There has been a lot of buzz about the topic of music DRM lately though, plus my new Sony phone plays MP3s but not, of course, the protected AACs from the iTunes store.

Steve Jobs has been under pressure in Europe to open up iTunes, his response was to examine a number of options, ending with what some read as a call for the elimination of DRM.

With cellphones gaining more features each year, it's becoming obvious to me that the phone is the logical place to have your music, rather than juggling two devices.  Other figures in the electronics industry see a strong benefit from removing DRM, in order (one assumes) to open up more content for use on their phones.  The Globe reports today on RIM speaking out in favour of non-DRMed music.

"I think [DRM is] just going to break down with the normal proliferation of the Internet," Mr. Balsillie told analysts and investors at an RBC Dominion Securities Inc. conference in Toronto. "It's going to be tough. I think [content providers] are going to have to shift their business models. But they will go down swinging."

As well, out yesterday was Cassandra Szklarski's CP story Music labels flirt with looser DRM rules.  The big news is that PureTracks, a Canadian service, is selling unencumbered MP3s for a small set of artists now, in addition to its tradition WMA Windows Media DRMed songs.  However, if you're on a Mac, you're still greeted with

A polite message that would, nevertheless, in another context be called a "PFO".  Basically, thanks for visiting, only Windows is supported, have a nice day.

For Nettwork at least (BNL, Sarah McLachlan and others) you can buy directly from their Nettwerk Werkshop store (formerly Nettmusic).  Works great on a Mac.  I bought The Perishers - Sway EP from there a long time ago, still one of my favourite sets of tracks.

Rogers has also been promoting something called the Rogers MusicStore

http://rogers.com/musicstore

It has three basic features:
1. An application called Rogers MediaPlayer that is Windows 2000+ only.

2. The ability to have "unlimited" downloads to a PC or PC and mobile phone.  These downloads are DRMed, I think they will only play in Rogers Mobile MediaPlayer on selected cellphones.  And if you stop your subscription to the unlimited download service?  Poof, no access to any of that music any more.

Rogers FAQ: What happens to the songs I’ve downloaded to my PC or mobile phone when I cancel my Unlimited subscription?

If you cancel your Rogers MusicStore Unlimited Music Subscription, you won’t be able to play the songs you have downloaded to your PC or mobile phone.

3. Pay per download.  Still DRMed.

Rogers FAQ - What are Rogers MusicStore pricing options?
What is pay per download Music?

Pay per download Music refers to purchasing tracks a la carte, one at a time. Each downloaded track will appear as a unique charge on your wireless bill. Pay per downlaod songs also are encoded with DRM, but these tracks are owned by the customer indefinitely. The songs can be played an unlimited number of times, at any time the customer wants. These songs can also be burned to CD.

Pay per download pricing is, err, a bit outrageous

You can browse, preview and download songs to your PC for $1.25 per song or download songs to both your PC and your mobile phone for $1.99, plus a $1 mobile download fee.

To download music from the MusicStore on your phone you must have a supported phone because you must use the aforementioned Mobile MusicPlayer (624KB download).  Featuring a big glowing red EULA you must agree to before starting the software.

Attempting to buy ABBA's "Money, Money, Money" through my cellphone brought up yet another set of terms and conditions, in which I appeared to be agreeing to a monthly MusicStore subscription, so I cancelled the purchase.

Ridiculous.

But the Sony phone is no better in a way - it has a proprietary interface, the "Fast Port", rather than a regular headphone jack, which means that in order to use any normal headphone I have to buy a special FastPort-headphone jack adapter.

Basically the underlying problem with any proprietary technology, whether it's DRM or an interface, is it makes hugely unreasonable assumptions in an age of technological change, along the lines of:

• everyone uses a Windows PC or device that supports Windows DRM or
• everyone uses an iPod
• hard drives (or any other forms of storage) never fail
• authentication services (needed to verify and play DRMed songs) will never fail, and will be available forever
• you never need to move content from one platform to another

What I also find frustrating, and part of what motivated me to create my page on digital music 6 years ago, is that even if you want to obey the law, the music (and movie etc.) industry puts barriers in your way.  In 2001 the main problem was I couldn't buy many songs online legally in Canada at all.  Now there is a lot more content available, but still not all.  Want to get the UK TV series Hex on DVD in Canada?  Sorry, region 2 DVDs only.  Want to buy "Glass Vase Cello Case" by Tattletale from the iTunes Music Store Canada?  Sorry, not available.  Want to buy any TV show of any kind from iTunes Canada?  Sorry, no TV shows available.  How bizarre is it that I have no way to legally acquire desired digital content?  Talk about your marketplace gaps.

UPDATE: You can also buy music legally in Canada from Sony Connect

http://www.sonyconnect.ca/

Windows only, you have to download their SonicStage app or access a different site that only supports Windows Internet Explorer.  The test songs I bought were all downloaded as OpenMG DRMed ATRAC files.  Brilliant, take a format no one uses (ATRAC, "the 8 track of digital music formats", yet another bit of proprietary Sony brilliance) and then put extra DRM on top of it.

ENDUPDATE

EMusic remains my fave store so far, although I haven't bought from them since their long-ago days of unlimited legal MP3 downloads for a fixed monthly fee.

You can find more (somewhat dated) info at

http://www.akerman.ca/digimusic.html

PS I took a picture of the music store purchase agreement when I tried to buy the ABBA song but--I am not making this up--my camera's hard drive crashed.  Which is a good reminder that the probability of a hard drive failing is 100%.  On the plus side, it had lasted something like 7 years--it was an IBM/Hitachi 340MB Microdrive.

National Arts Centre podcasts

Join host Christopher Millard (principal bassoon, NAC Orchestra) as he explores the world of orchestral music and its great composers. In this series of 10-15 minute audio programmes you can look forward to hearing insightful commentary about upcoming NAC Orchestra programmes as well as musical excerpts and interviews with NACO musicians and guest artists.

Podcast at http://radio.nac-cna.ca/podcast/NACOcast/NACOcast.xml

For more information, see http://www.nac.ca/en/multimedia/podcasts/

Digital deterrents drive fans away - article and audio

Canadians who download music haven't hurt record sales, but digital locks and technology imposed by major companies to restrict music sharing has created a "sense of fear" that may drive consumers away from Canadian music, a coalition of prominent musicians said yesterday.

The Canadian Music Creator's Coalition was in Ottawa urging the ministers of heritage and industry to do what's best for music fans and embrace the new world of digital downloading and online music sharing in the government's upcoming review of copyright law -- even if that means upsetting the powerful music industry lobby.

Ottawa Citizen - Digital deterrents drive fans away, musicians' group tells politicians.
You can also listen to the audio of their interview (MP3).

via Boing Boing - Copyfighting Canadian musicians talk about Parliament meetings

the rise of new media, the fall of the old

So which will libraries be, old media or new media?

The ubiquitous Jian Ghomeshi ("CBC pop culture specialist") is doing a series called

The End

This includes The End of Radio, TV and

The End of Print

which will air May 20, 2006 at 9:30 pm ET/PT on CBC Newsworld.
All episodes will be available online as Windows Media or QuickTime, currently only The End of Radio is up.  From a library perspective, the blurbage for End of Print is interesting

Google Print, a full-text search engine of every book ever published launched the project late last year with much fanfare. The project has the potential to replace yellowing card-catalogs with a book search product as powerful and comprehensive as Google's search engine for the web.

Yeah, we really should think about some way to put that Public Catalogue Online so that it can be Accessed.

<rant>I do have an ongoing issue with the CBC (and other channels) that try to "youthify" their networks by bringing in youth experts who are... middle aged.  George Stroumboulopoulos is not edgy.  He's ancient.  Street Cents is the only show that succeeds somewhat in this area, what with it using people who are actually like, under 30 years old.</rant>

The Economist recently looked at media from the reverse perspective, discussing blogs, wikis, and other usual suspects in a Survey on New Media - Among the Audience.

the Trotts decided to build a better “blogging tool”, which they called Movable Type. “Likening it to the printing press seemed like a natural thing because it was clearly revolutionary; it was not meant to be arrogant or grandiose,” says Ms Trott to the approving nod of Mr Trott, who is extremely shy and rarely talks. ...

These two incarnations of movable type make convenient (and very approximate) historical book-ends. They bracket the era of mass media that is familiar to everybody today. The second Movable Type, however, also marks the beginning of a very gradual transition to a new era, which might be called the age of personal or participatory media. This culture is already familiar to teenagers and twenty-somethings, especially in rich countries. Most older people, if they are aware of the transition at all, find it puzzling.

Calling it the “internet era” is not helpful. By way of infrastructure, full-scale participatory media presume not so much the availability of the (decades-old) internet as of widespread, “always-on”, broadband access to it. So far, this exists only in South Korea, Hong Kong and Japan, whereas America and other large media markets are several years behind. Indeed, even today's broadband infrastructure was built for the previous era, not the coming one. ...

The age of participation

... Last November, the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that 57% of American teenagers create content for the internet—from text to pictures, music and video. In this new-media culture, says Paul Saffo, a director at the Institute for the Future in California, people no longer passively “consume” media (and thus advertising, its main revenue source) but actively participate in them

In addition to the articles, there are five audio interviews (MP3 format).

The Globe referenced the Economist article on wikis in an editorial

Wikipedia's world, and where it points us
Monday, May 1, 2006, Page A12

The Wikipedia model is not perfect, but its success has implications that go far beyond how people conduct research. It puts a question mark over the whole idea that information must move from credentialed producer to passive consumer. That presents established companies and organizations with a big challenge. Media groups will have to find a way to emulate Wikipedia and bring readers and viewers inside the tent, as this newspaper is trying to do by, among other things, inviting on-line comments and organizing question-and-answer sessions with journalists. ... Government itself, that ultimate control freak, will have to open up to the views of its Web-empowered citizens. In the same way that Wikipedia presumes "collaboration among users will improve articles over time," government should learn to accept that collaboration among citizens can change things for the better.

If we can harness our collective wisdom the way Wikipedia has, the potential for unleashing human creativity is enormous. Instead of a camel, we just might create a unicorn.

This did not impress some people, such as

PAUL AXELROD

dean, Faculty of Education, York University

Toronto -- Your benign defence of Wikipedia (Wikipedia's World, And Where It Points Us -- editorial, May 1) is misplaced and naive. It is one thing to hail the Internet as a "democratic" venue for the expression of opinion, informed or otherwise. It is quite another for an "encyclopedia" with no academic standards and no discretion with respect to the choice of authors to pose as some kind of intellectual authority, and, worse, to be legitimized as such by The Globe.

It's one of three comments under the heading Weni, widi, wiki.

Writing on May 6, 2006, Shannon Rupp covered the issue of Wikipedia's reliability for the Globe

Working through Wikipedia's vanity fair

...

Wikipedia's name gives the wrong impression, said Simon Fraser University communications professor Richard Smith. The open-source site (meaning it can be written and edited by anyone) is called an encyclopedia only for lack of a better term.

"It's socially produced knowledge. But they didn't know what they were producing when they began," Prof. Smith said, explaining that many of the volunteer editors are authorities on their subjects. "It's like being cool in high school: You build up social capital. You do something uncool and you're gone. If you lied on Wikipedia, you would shame yourself."

... new media or old, the same guideline applies: Always consider the source.

The Globe also had an article about modern photography.  It went something like "Flickr Flickr, Flickrflickrflickr".  That's it.  Everyone is now officially banned from talking about Flickr.  Find a new example.  The article is One Giant Web Gallery.

Also in Globe world, Dave Chalk discussed web video in Nothing on TV?  Where's my Canadian iTunes TV, that's what I want to know.

Lastly, Digg unearthed a past BayCHI event

Beyond Search: Social and Personal Ways of Finding Information
Neil Hunt, Netflix; David Porter, Live365; Tom Conrad, Pandora; Kevin Rose, Digg; Joshua Schachter, del.icio.us; Rashmi Sinha, Moderator

There is audio (1h48m, MP3) as well as notes.

Yahoo bought WebJay

I read about this on the 9th in O'Reilly Radar.

SearchEngineWatch Blog has a good story as usual: Yahoo Acquires Webjay.
In it Gary Price points out the Yahoo Music Blog.

I think it is interesting to speculate exactly what they are buying.

(I guess I should say first what Webjay is: a music playlist sharing community.)

Web 2.0 buzz?
A user community?
A standard for exchanging lists of music tracks?

This last one interests me.
Suppose I have read a bunch of interesting journal articles online.
How should I bundle up the references to them and send the info to you?

A list of DOIs?
A bunch of raw citation information you have to process in some software of your own?
Connotea links?
OpenURLs?
EndNote or some other citation format?

Unfortunately this rapidly starts to edge into territory in which librarians are quite expert, and in which I am totally lost.  I can copy and paste a list from some conference blogging I did at InfoGrid 2005...

need XML-based representation for compound objects
- many options MPEG-21 DIDL, METS, IMS/CP, RDF...

UPDATE 2006-01-14: XMP

I don't actually know the details of what any of those are.

Google music search

http://www.google.com/musicsearch

e.g.

Google music search on Jane Siberry

via Darren Barefoot - Google Music: Because Maps, Web Stats and Email Aren’t Enough

some info to be found in Google blog - Searching for music

Unfortunately it only exists for google.com, not google.ca, and it will cheerfully point you to US online music stores.  On the plus side, the iTunes links seem to work ok, I land at the correct item in the Canadian store if it exists, or it says "the item you've requested is not currently available in the Canadian store".

Jane Siberry: set your own music price

Jane Siberry is a brilliant lyricist and musician, and then she went indie, and I gather had to spend vast amounts of time doing accounting and businessy things rather than creating. "She took a course in sales..." I think that business diversion was not such a good direction for her. Her latest idea is... to let her users decide how much to pay.

Canadian musician Jane Siberry is no longer selling or making CDs. All of her songs published since the early 1980s are available for download on her Website only. The twist is that fans can pay whatever they want for a song - including nothing. Siberry calls it "Self-Determined Pricing".

from Future Tense: Jane Siberry ditches CDs, lets fans determine price for her digital music

(You can listen to RealAudio of the story.)

Individual MP3s @ 128kbps, or a combined download (.zip file) at 192kbps.

I highly recommend her first album, Jane Siberry from 1981.

This approach reveals some issues with our technology.
MP3 good.  But there's no (easy, built-in) way in an MP3 to say "distribute this freely, but come to this site if you want to pay for the music".  Right now Jane controls the means of production, distribution, and payment.

That means the more popular her downloads get, the more she will have to pay for bandwidth.
That sucks.  There needs to be a way out of the distribution business.  She should be able to set the bits free on a peer-to-peer network, e.g. BitTorrent, while still being assured that those who enjoy the music will be able to click back to her site to pay.

the video iPod and the iTunes community

The video iPod was foreseeable, here's what I wrote (elsewhere) in March 2005:

iTunes Video Store

I wondered why Apple put trailers inside of iTunes.

But I have figured it out.
Apple is building the platform for selling video downloads the same way they sell music downloads.

Why do they host trailers on their site at all?
Hmm, sort of a daily infrastructure test...

Why video inside iTunes?  iTunes is crossplatform... sales platform...

Steve has said that portable video (the "iPod Video") doesn't make sense. (There is already portable Mac video, it's called an iBook or PowerBook.) But downloading video to your desktop... or say the Mac Mini... Send the video over wireless to your TV like they do with the AirPort Express audio thing...

Notice how every time Steve does a talk he goes on and on about some new video thing the Mac can do? I thought he was wearing his Pixar hat, but he's actually building the Mac video infrastructure.

The man's a genius.

I still think video on the iPod is really the least important bit of the whole thing.
There's still the device challenge which they haven't overcome: we want devices to be as small as possible, but we want displays to be as big as possible, and interfaces to be a reasonable size.
I had thought they might at least do a 16:9 wide-angle display by turning the display sideways on the iPod and having a much smaller control area.

Plus which, mobile video seems a bit dubious to me.  The only time I use it is when I watch stuff on my laptop on airplanes.

This is the most interesting video part to me, which I haven't seen widely mentioned:

purchase ad-free episodes of your favorite ABC or Disney television shows and watch them on the go.

Here's what it says on the iTunes Videos page

Easy As It Looks

The virtual shelves of the iTunes Music Store now feature a video section. Music videos, Pixar shorts and select ABC and Disney television shows live right alongside songs, podcasts and audiobooks. Browse featured listings or search the archive to find just what you want, then click to buy. Once you do, you get stutter-free, ad-free video delivered directly to your desktop. From there, the sky’s the limit, because you own purchased video forever. Watch as many times as you choose, share between five computers, burn to data CDs or sync to the new iPod. Instant gratification never looked better. ...

TV Star

In addition to music videos, the iTunes Music Store also features select Disney and ABC television shows, ready to download. For $1.99, you can own the latest episode just one day after it airs. With full seasons of “Lost,” “Desperate Housewives” and “That’s So Raven,” plus episodes of new shows like “Night Stalker” and “The Suite Life of Zack & Cody” at your fingertips, you’ll never miss your favorites. Plus, you can sync shows to the new iPod and watch them on the go.

I strongly agree with Steve's "people want to own, not rent" model.
However, it's worth pointing out... this is the opposite model from the library model.

In any case, while the video is big news, there are also other developments that are just as important.
They are making iTunes into a community:

Send songs, albums, playlists, even music videos and TV episodes to anyone with an email address. ...

Get personalized recommendations, courtesy of the iTunes user community and a host of in-house music experts. Hear what's in store for you. ...

Post your own customer reviews and ratings, and read what over 10 million iTunes users worldwide have to say about what's playing on iTunes.

from iTunes - Download

Building communities is where the web action is.  You have to give people a reason to come to your site.

(No TV downloads available from the Canadian store yet.  The videos are all 320x240.  This posting is a bit of a cross-post.)

Alberta Scene Radio podcast

Alberta Scene is a big set of events in Ottawa celebrating Alberta culture.
One promotion tool they are using is Alberta Scene Radio, which is available as a podcast:

http://albertascene.ca/rss/albertascene.xml

contest: win world music for your library

Philly Markowitz of CBC's Roots and Wings has a new contest for Canadians, she's talking about it on Radio 2 right now.

She has specifically set it up so that you can nominate "deserving lending institutions" to win the CDs, so that the music can be shared as widely as possible.

These world music libraries are available to be won by any public or charitable institution across the country with lending, listening, or broadcast facilities (think libraries, schools, hospices, community radio stations, rehab centres, friendship centres, transition houses, and the like.) ...

As of February 6th, 20005, Roots & Wings is 500 Shows Strong, and We're Celebrating!

Enter the Roots & Wings World Music Library Contest.

It's your chance to nominate a place in your community to win a fantastic prize pack of 50 world music CDs hand-picked by me, and generously donated by artists, labels and distributors across the country and around the world.

Here's the list of 50 CDs,
here's how to enter the contest,
and here's the fine print.

music search - can you whistle?

If you can whistle, you can search for music.

Musipedia

Simply whistle or sing your melody to the computer.

from Using Bees to Effect Vengeance
(you will have to scroll waaaay down to see this posting, due to Blogger's new *cough*broken*cough* templates)

feedster.tv - the new tv dinner

Feedster.tv :: Rich media feeds for your aggregator

MP3 audio, video, BitTorrents, pictures

Is this the first search engine to have a radio button to search for podcasts?

Previously:
Google video search
video search

the Library song

    TUNE:   "LIBRARY" (MP3)
    Duration: 00:02:11

    Recording Format (Medium): CD
    Recording Title (CD or Album): [Library] (EP)
    Spine: LOCDEP04
    Cut Number: 1
    Release Year: 2003
    Label Name: LO RECORDINGS
    ARTIST, CURSOR MINER [see discography]
    COMPOSER, R.TUBB

from Brave New Waves, December 9, 2004.

Bonus: Library video. (Flash I think.)

MP3 metadata mess

Thinking about metadata.  I'm having to retag a bunch of MP3s I made from CDs.  The ID3v1 tags they have from RealPlayer are not read properly by iTunes, I have to change them to ID3v2 tags.  This is particularly a mess for classical music.  It's unfortunate in that classical music has a very rich set of metadata, you may have something like "The Gordian Knot Unty'd, Z. 597 - Minuet", with performers, conductor, composer, etc. but the schema is just not rich enough or more importantly, used in a standard way.  Album title is pretty consistent.  Beyond that, most of the info gets jammed into a giant long title.  Artist is sometimes the performer, but sometimes the composer.  After that, things just get worse.  I have two CDs from a box set, for one CD The Beatles are tagged as "Pop", for the other they're tagged as "Rock".

This is a mess.  Maybe librarians could have helped this situation out?  Maybe they still can?