They’ll Huff, and they’ll puff

[Archived in Entry]

[GoldSounds] Now, I’m normally not one to support near-monopolies, having been burnt time and again by Microsoft’s ham-handed exploitation and butchery of the software industry, but Hilary Rosen’s fervent desire to have Apple open up the iPod to other music stores seems counter-intuitive and downright strange (even to former Record Company execs) Apple’s iPod plays only standard, unencumbered music formats - MP3, AAC (the next-generation MP3, and an open format), WAV and Apple Lossless formats. On music from their own store, they place their own DRM wrapper around the AAC files in order to restrict the rights of the user to copy and share that music - a feature, I might add, that was demanded by Rosen’s own RIAA.

Some slightly related from Technorati and Google.

[ThePodcastNetwork :: The TPN Blog] Podcasting FAQ or Podcasting for Dummies: No…of course not…but portable music players like the Apple iPod and Creative Zen make it easy for you to listen to podcasts no matter where you are, but you can listen to them on your desktop computer, on your PDA or MP3 capable mobile phone and you can even burn them to CD and listen to them on any CD player. Any device that can play audio files can be your gateway to a world of relevant audio content unavailable on the traditional radio networks.

[Computer Alchemy] LuxPro Super Tangent on eBay: LuxPro, makers of the Tangent iPod shuffle clones, has released their products, it seems, as the Super Tangent is showing up on eBay for a starting bid of $90 for a 1GB model. The Buy It Now price sucks—$130—but if you can get it for less than $100, you're getting twice the capacity as the iPod shuffle for the same price (plus even more features, like voice recording and FM radio). I personally am waiting on the model with a screen. If only they'd support regular old AAC, in which I have (dumbly, I'm realizing) encoded much of my music.

[morituri.tonight] The emergence of micro-tablets : Nokia 770: Since it runs on Linux, Nokia has wisely piled on the applications : web browser, email, RSS news reader, media player (plays many video formats including MPEG4, Real, AVI and 3GP), music player (Internet radio support, MP3, AAC, WAV and others). There's no mention of Calendar or other PIM (personal information management) applications. It's clearly designed to work with existing Nokia phones that has Bluetooth and GPRS/EDGE/3G, as well as direct connections to public hotspots or your own wireless LAN. The main weak point as I see it is the battery life - the Nokia 770 comes with a 1500 mAh battery, which is only good for 3 hours of browsing.

[Bpurcell.org] bpurcell.org - Converting Itunes protected files m4p to mp3 files: I am a big fan of the iTunes program and I download all my music through iTunes. I also own an iPod but I found it frustrating I could not listen to the music with our in dash MP3 players that we have in our cars. I purchase the music but without the iPod the songs are useless if you want to take it with you. A few searches on the internet turned up partial solutions but I thought I would share the entire solution with you. This process only works if you are the actual owner of the song and have it authorized through iTunes.

[Toomuchsexy.org] TooMuchSexy.blog - AAC vs. MP3 (A Cry for Help): The New Hotness is AACplus. Now that stuff is the bomb. Even at just 64kbps, it’s much better than 128kbps MP3. Very enjoyable and artifact-free even way down at 48kbps. (Check out AACplus streams at Tuner2.) Basically indistinguishable from CD at higher rates. Awesome.

[Jacobsen.no] Comparison of MP3 and AAC (Anders Jacobsen's blog): The original MP3 codec in now being replaced with MP3 Pro, which I have just recently found out. Its combined with MPEG4 which also includes AAC allowing small, low-bit rate files to contain much more high-frequency detail than standard MP3 files encoded at similar low bit rates.) The high-frequency portion of the audio signal is handled by an advanced and extremely efficient coding process known as Spectral Band Replication (SBR), while the rest of the signal is encoded using the same process as in regular MP3. This enables older MP3 "player" software applications to play files encoded in MP3. I am not going to do in to the depths of MP3Pro as it contains AAC, but I would say that they are each other’s competition.

[Audiolicious.com] M@blog » Blog Archive » MacWorld on Express and iTunes: Woah… not really so cool… it goes on to say that essentially iTunes decodes the mp3/aac/whatever into raw audio, then reencodes it into apple’s lossless format and then sends it along…

[Wheii.com] | Wheii.com | blog: Other interesting features of the new software include support for a new audio format called AAC, or Advanced Audio Code. Songs in this format sound terrific and are supposed to take up less space than MP3 files. Apple digital-rights management software technology called Fairplay, allows creating a custom mix, make a copy of a CD for backup purposes, put a song on an unlimited number of iPods or on other computers. In the case of computers, you're limited to three, which should be enough for a computer at home, a computer at work and the laptop you travel with.