Month: November 2002

  • 1968 demo includes first public appearance of "mouse"

    As non-desktop playback devices (PDAs, smart phones, tablet computers) change how we interact with digital media, now is as good a time as any to reflect on the origins of pardigms that have dominated for the last 20 years. One important milestone was December 9, 1968. On that day, Doug Engelbart demonstrated an online computer…

  • Digital media technologies changing the film business

    DV cameras and new avenues for video distribution — web and DVD — have ignited a revolution in independent filmmaking in the same way that PageMaker and the laser printer did in publishing. Jason Kliot says this in a Wired story: We made Chuck and Buck for a half a million dollars. If we had…

  • Hilary Rosen says pirated music to blame for Mexican Supreme Court move

    The chairman and CEO of the RIAA is claiming that pirated music is to blame for the Mexican Supreme Court’s move to quieter locale. Says Ms. Rosen: This would be almost laughable if it were not true. Almost laughable? As Wired notes: …few federal officials saw it as anything more than a sensible relocation. After…

  • Computers don't steal content, people steal content

    Peter Chernin, CEO of Fox and COO of News Corp. (Fox’s parent), preached to an audience of techies at Yawndex on Tuesday. He said that Big Media and Big Tech must work together to protect content. To paraphrase: Big Tech must stop the production of general purpose computers, and instead start making consumer-proof entertainment purchasing…

  • "American Injustice: HR 5469"

    Webcaster Alliance recently published a three-part series, “American Injustice: HR 5469”, that documents the story of the Small Webcasters Settlement Act (SWSA). There are serveral audio interviews, some of which are very revealing in terms of how the RIAA tried to divide and conquer the webcasting community. | “American Injustice: HR 5469” | The Register…

  • An unintentionally amusing article with 3ivx's CEO

    In another My First MPEG-4 Article, the German site 99mac interviews 3ivx about their “miracle” 3ivx codec. The interviewer (conducting the interview via email, apparently) quotes Happy Machines’ CEO, Jan Devos, verbatim. Happy Machines is a company that was formed in July 2000 as the official entity for developing and marketing the 3ivx codec, the…

  • And the award for Webcasters' Most Unlikely Ally goes to…

    …Jesse Helms, who blocked the first version of the Small Webcasters Settlement Act (SWSA), and whose revised version was passed by both houses of Congress on 14 Nov. Although his motives were apparently to provide relief for small, conservative Christian webcasters, he’s inadvertantly provided hope for all small and non-commercial webcasters. Although the SWSA itself…

  • Somebody stop them! Before they aquire again!

    Loudeye — that webcasting/encoding company with the impenetrably odd name — continues their feeding frenzy with the aquisition of “Streampipe”, another oddly-name company (one friend found it somewhat ecologically menacing, another remarked that it sounded like a euphemism for a male body part) that does corporate and government webcasts. Streampipe brings Loudeye an additional 80…

  • Could AACplus make MPEG-4 the best streaming format for audio?

    AACplus is the next evolution of AAC. It’s being used today in XM satellite radio, and it’s on its way to becoming a core audio format for MPEG-4. This is extremely good news for MPEG-4, as a source imtimate with its quality reports: It is spectaculary better than all proprietary schemes. AACplus uses Spectral Band…

  • "Where is MP4?"

    Another day, another My First MPEG-4 story. It’s interesting that the author’s frame of reference is MP3 — the only thing he knows, probably — when something like QuickTime would be a far better starting point for helping readers understand what MPEG-4 is today and will be in the future. Although the author says silly…