If anyone truly believes the future in commercial broadcast radio as more than a niche market has a lifespan of more than a few years, I expect they are 40 years or older, live in an area with poor broadband coverage, or have never heard of this thing called the iPhone. Mobile radio—using devices like the iPhone to listen to Internet radio—is going to kill standard commercial formats. It may also bring new life to non-corporate formats like indie, college, alternative, and public radio broadcasters.
Read the rest of Internet Killed the Radio Star
BY GLENN FLEISHMAN, 07/20/2009, 11:09 AM
I had written similar things in a class paper last year. I thought a lot about this when I first got my iPhone, and finishing my COM degree.
I felt like an alien, attempting to descibe this other planet, where the radio is turned inside out, flattened, like the newspaper industry.
Technology will catch tv in short order.
Information is not the commodity anymore, connecting is.
The only "problem" with the story was not what was written, but that I had to read it. Let me explain a further idea by the process of connecting and consuming information in the world of tomorrow.
1. I have a blog (this) that pulls in headlines in an RSS feed from a variety of news and information sources.
2. I read (see) a headline that I think may be interesting, so I click on the link.
3. I read (see) the story and gain something from it.
4. I do something with the information that you can read (see).
See the problem?
No?
Try driving while doing those steps (don't, it is against law and common sense).
When Apple upgraded the software to the 3.0 version it brought a few features. One feature was a Voice Control, you say "play some music" and that is what happens. Adding cut/copy/paste to the iPhone was nice, but many years ago Apple had/has a text-to-speech engine on its computers.
Stay with me here.
There is a neat little application that you can download to your Mac that converts text-to-speech as an audio file, iSpeak it I could import the converted file to my iTunes play list and play the static file, maybe a book, on my iPhone.
That is just not good enough, and ubiquity begs the question: where is the "streaming" text-to-speech? Why, oh why, isn't the device reading my email, Facebook Friend status, tweets, news headlines, to me while I drive?
Doesn't my new iPhone have as much computing power as my old PowerPC 6100/AV?
Well, maybe that sounds like a strange thing to want to have, to have my phone read the latest breaking news from the New York Times to me while I drive home from work. Do I listen to broadcast radio, Internet radio streaming, or a text source speak to me, anywhere I go, everywhere I go?
I think that is a killer ap for the news "paper" business, and journalism.
1. Voice Control: Safari, read headlines. My phone reads headlines and "listens" for a command to "follow link", or "read story", and that is what it does.
2. Voice Control: mail, read subjects, the phone reads the subject lines and who it is from (including the email address), and listens for read/delete/forward to commands.
3. Voice Control: read book by H.G. Wells, The Time Machine.
I am sure there would be a better solution, application, to bridge streaming text sources to mobile audio devices as streaming audio.
What is a radio, anyway?
ra⋅di⋅o [rey-dee-oh] Show IPA noun, plural -di⋅os, adjective, verb, -di⋅oed, -di⋅o⋅ing.
Use Radio in a Sentence
–noun
1. wireless telegraphy or telephony: speeches broadcast by radio.
2. an apparatus for receiving or transmitting radio broadcasts.
3. a message transmitted by radio.
ok, let's call it all radio.
Sure, having text items spoken to me in the Apple computer voice of Agnes, or Alex, while driving or walking around would be a little strange. I have had Agnes read many of my term papers back to me (it actually helps), but the mobility of text is bound by its medium.
Have a great day,
Mike Baker
Sent from my iPhone
Visit me here:
http://ManyWordsForRain.blogspot.com
