Compact Cassette tapes replaced by mp3 playlists May 8, 2007
Posted by Andy Roberts in : Mac, Music , 2comments
Just when I finally got around to finding a way to connect up a cassette player to my computer, the medium is declared obsolete:
Currys gives cassettes the boot - blaming the “MP3 generation”
That icon of music discovery, the audio cassette, looking to be heading off the shelves for good. High street retailer Currys is selling off its existing stock, with no intention of replenishment. The reason? We’ve all gone digital.
The vital pice of equipment was a phono lead, connecting the headphones output socket on the portable CD/tape player to the microphone input socket on the soundcard device, in this case a griphin iMic. Adjust the volumes, boot up Audacity and save each side as a huge wave file or export sections as mp3. Simple. I don’t think I’ll be going through my entire colection of old tapes though, the albums, Bhangra and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan tapes from Green Street market, concerts, compilations and “last night’s John Peel”
But it will enable me to futureproof and edit a couple of old tapes I recorded in 1981 of a load of old songs I wrote as a young person n the 70’s and then upload them as back catalogue to last.fm , ( when it’s working for upload )
The demise of professional photographers May 5, 2007
Posted by Andy Roberts in : Flickr, Long Tail , add a commentMore casualties of the mass amateurisation of everything..
Andrew Brown: We all helped to speed the demise of professional photographers | Technology | Guardian Unlimited Technology
Just as film has been replaced by digital, professionals are being replaced by amateurs. The changes are partly technological and partly economic, but the final blow to his profession has come from Flickr and similar Web 2.0 sites.
Worried wifi workers well warned May 3, 2007
Posted by Andy Roberts in : edublog , add a commentWhere shouldn’t you place your laptop? On your lap, apparently.
BBC NEWS | Technology | Wi-fi? Why worry?
They should be calling for the closure of TV and radio transmission towers rather than asking us to turn off our wi-fi laptops.
The modulated frequencies that carry Radio 4 and ITV into our homes are just as powerful as the wireless networks, and a lot more pervasive.
And my wireless network is only carrying data when I’m online, while Radio 3 burbles all day long, possibly exciting electrons in my brain and causing headaches.
Then there is the danger from photons of visible light streaming down onto us as we work, since these carry more energy than microwaves and could surely do more damage.
Perhaps we should demand that our children work in the dark.
Pandora shuts out world wide listeners May 3, 2007
Posted by Andy Roberts in : Music, London , 2commentsPerformance rights issues take a new twist today as one of the more popular music listening sites capitulates to music biz interests.
Pandora To Shut Out Non-U.S. Users Thursday Evening
If you live outside of the U.S. and enjoy listening to customized radio stations on Pandora, brace yourself for some bad news. The site will be shutting you out starting Thursday evening.
It will be interetsing to see how this converts into good fortune for London based rival Last.fm who are rumoured to be heading for a lucrative takeover.
Penryn May 1, 2007
Posted by Andy Roberts in : Flickr, UK , add a commentI remember Penryn mainly for the scond hand car auctions, relatively cheap housing for Cornwall, rough pubs and traffic hold ups on the way in to Falmouth. And the fish and chip shop I suppose.
Now those associations with the word are about to be wiped out and replaced by the result of marketing for cutting edge technology as Intel has chosen to name their latest chipset after one of Penryn’s namesakes.
Not Penrhyndeudraeth the networked village through which runs the charming FFestiniog railway either, but some town 12 miles away from Folsom in California, where the Intel designers are based.
is an online professional who initiated DARnet 
