Funny how media is these days. We’ve come full circle, and then we’ve gone around again a couple more times in the past few years.

Used to be we just had radio to listen to. Then the movies came. Then TV. Recorded material came and went: wax cylinders, vinyl, cassettes, film, Beta, VHS, Laserdiscs, CDs, VCDs, DVDs, HD-DVDs, Blu-Ray - we could listen to music and watch shows on tape and discs. Cable came and opened up the world to us - we could watch anything and everything, on demand. We can now pause live TV, and record many shows simultaneously, preprogrammed weeks ahead if we couln’t be there to push the buttons.

Then internet mixed it all up together even more: you can watch live streaming TV, download music and movies and enjoy them on players and computers. All permutations existed, and there wasn’t enough hours in the day to listen to and watch everything we wanted.

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you’d know I’m a voracious podcast listener. While the name is new, podcasts are just old-fashioned radio shows at heart. Having worked in radio for two decades and doing three-hour talkathons twice a week for years, there’s a special place in my head and heart for the format. It’s nice to sit back and listen to folk talk about things and discuss them. In the course of listening you get to know them and they feel like they’re your friends.

One of my favorite podcasts is Buzz Out Loud, which is a daily (well, Monday to Friday) tech-news-and-views talk show of indeterminate length (usually about 30 minutes) from CNET. It’s over 700 episodes now, which is a considerable run, and I started listening to it in the upper 300s or so. Hosted by Tom Merritt and Molly Wood, with producer Jason Howell piping in now and then, it’s an interesting and fun show for geeks like me who need to get updated and hear different takes on what’s new. (Give it a try, why don’t you? It’s available free from the CNET site and through the iTunes Store. Links at the end of the post.)

BOL and CNET have lately taken to streaming their podcasts live on cam via UStream as they are recorded, which seems to be an increasingly popular trend with previously audio-only podcasts. (Leo Laporte’s TWIT is also doing the live video streaming thing, along with other shows.)

I’ve been watching, and it strikes me as odd to watch people do a radio show on TV - or in this case, live video streaming via the net. Radio is meant to be heard, and the missing dimension of sight is actually a major factor in the makeup of the show. Watching people talk in front of a mike gets seriously boring after a while - I mean, what are you watching for, facial expressions and wild gesticulation? Radio shows are best heard than seen (no offense, Tom and Molly).

In my talk shows in radio back in the day, I’ve had visitors come and sit in on a live show to watch, and they invariably go glassy-eyed after the novelty of being in the radio booth wears out. After a while they just stare at the soundproofing on the wall and listen, they way they’ve been accustomed to at home or in the car. (It’s a phenomenon similar to when I catch myself at a front row seat at a live concert watching the video monitor coverage instead of the stage - but that’s a topic for another post.)

I’ve been watching BOL vidstream live for a few days now, and I’m the same way. After a few minutes I stop watching Tom and Molly and just listen to them talk, staring absently out into space the way I normally do when I’m plugged in and listening on my morning commute to work everyday on my iPhone. The vidstream is in that odd limbo between TV and radio that sometimes exists when new technologies get mashed up, and it can’t seem to yet find its level and place in the world. Those visually-oriented will sit and watch, and those audally-inclined will just listen. (Said another way, the young ‘uns will watch, and the old farts will listen. I’m an old fart.)

Also, watching them takes out a bit of the mystery of the show. Through my months of listening I’ve created my own CNET studio in my head, and have invented places where Tom and Molly and Jason would sit while they talk, how they would act, how they were dressed - and watching the reality somehow takes the magic out of it. And lately, I find no joy in listening to the audio version of the episode I’ve already watched, and I miss my BOL in the morning.

It may work for some people, but I guess not for me. I’d rather listen to them on my iPhone on the road than watch them on my Mac at 1AM - which is the ungodly hour  they come on in my country. (I had to sneak in the Mac reference, lest some readers berate me again for posting something not Mac-related; this is after all a Mac blog.)

But it’ll find its level eventually, I’m sure. Until then I’ll just listen. After all, Buzz Out Loud is still an audio podcast, and not a TV show; the live video stream is just a bonus for hardcore fans, so I don’t really have any right to complain.

Only BOL completists and obsessives will watch it, I figure; most folk, like me, will stick to the old audio version on their iPods. So why does BOL do it? I guess because, like that adage about why dogs do what they do when they have nothing better to do, they can.

Catch Buzz Out Loud here, and the video stream here (which starts at 5PM GMT) or here, or subscribe to the podcast via iTunes here.

I was expecting this, but not in this way. Not on the iTunes Store, for goodness’ sake.

American Idol aspirant Renaldo Lapuz, a Filipino who caused a riot of sorts with the hosts of American Idol Season 7 by WilliamHung-ing his way into the spotlight with his white feathered costume and self-composed ode to Simon Cowell, is now a free music video on the iTunes Store.

Oh dear God.

It was amusing at first to the MacADoodlers in the Philippines, where MAD is made, and where Lapuz was originally from, but it was particularly amusing for the Doodler himself, as Lapuz’ previous job for 13 years prior to moving to the States, he discovered, was as a public tricycle driver in Sikatuna Village, where the Doodler lives. No wonder he looked familiar.

AI gave him lots of airtime, and Simon himself predicted sarcastically that Lapuz’ song, We’re Brothers Forever, would be the next hit. Well, it’s here. A free 7-min video, all of an 83mb download, from the iTunes Store. Get it while it lasts.

Another sign that the end times are nigh.

Far be it for me to start blogging about Windows topics in a Mac blog, but this one is a special case. Yesterday at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Bill Gates, Microsoft Chairman and CEO gave the Keynote speech. Which, incidentally, is also his last one as he is retiring from Microsoft.

It’s interesting to note in comparison with a Steve Jobs Keynote how an MS Keynote would progress. For one thing they have more gimmicks and entertainment mixed in. They have to work harder (I guess because they have less interesting points to share), and there is a lot of creative stretching involved as well. Nothing to write home about though.

Our favorite gadget and tech sites gave it equal time and had online real-time coverage of the Bill’s CES Keynote, just like the Macworld Jobs keynote speeches. It’s kinda odd reading though, specially if you’re used to following Macworld coverages. Check out the live reportage of Gadgetell and Engadget.

One of the more entertaining moments is a seven-minute produced clip about Bill’s last day at Microsoft, with appearances by Matthew McConaughey, Jay-Z, Steven Spielberg, George Clooney, Jon Stewart, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and even Apple stalwarts Bono and Al Gore (Apple board member). It’s one of those things Apple could have done, but it’s a bit surprising Microsoft did it. Gizmodo’s Brian Lam says “this video makes Bill Gates look cooler than Steve Jobs”, and I agree (up to a point: Bill wore a pink shirt and a purple sweater to the Keynote).

I enjoyed the video immensely, and you can watch it for yourself here.

Bill, you old coot, we’re going to miss ye.

With the constant trickle of TPAs (third party applications) for the iPhone and their quick and painless installs, you tend to try everything out - because it’s just as quick and painless to uninstall them. (And believe me, there have been a lot that don’t last ten seconds on mine; the ratio of crap to good stuff is heavily one-sided.) Whatever the case, updating Installer has become a daily routine, which I expect is the same for a lot of you guys.

At the moment I have four pages of apps on my iPhone (considering that the Apple-legal stuff takes up only over half a page, that’s a lot of TPAs). The number of pages grow and shrink as the weeks go by, and staying on the iPhone is survival of the fittest; the ones that stay are either really useful or fun, or are just really good conversation pieces. The common thread among most of them is, why didn’t Apple think of these? (The only one I haven’t yet come across, but was fully expecting to appear this year, was something that let me cut and paste text.)

It being year-end, people have a compulsion to make lists, and I’ve succumbed and made a listing of apps I’ve kept on my iPhone over the many weeks. Please take note that these are personal, subjective choices. I’m sure you have others you prefer, or some you feel are moronic. But hey, it’s my list. Why don’t you post some of yours in the comment box? Who knows, there might’ve been some we missed and should know about.

Anyway, here are some that have managed to stay on my screen this year:

weTool - There have been a few other apps that individually do all the small things that weTool does, but none all together, none as well, and none in a more professional looking package. You can delete specific items in the Call and SMS logs, you can forward texts (to multiple recipients!) and contacts, you can even save texts to Notes. You can even makes calls directly from it. One of the best parts is that it has a set of visually stunning page transitions you can select that Apple is only beginning to do (as the page curl transition seen in a screenshot of the 1.1.3 preview.) Nice one.

TuneWiki - This is for the karaoke lover in you. When connected online, it will search an online wiki database for the lyrics of the song currently being played in iPod mode and will show it to you line by line as the song plays, ostensibly so you can sing along. Of course you have to manually forward each line by tapping on the TuneWiki icon on the screen, but hey, it’s free. Who’s complaining?

[Read the rest of this entry »]

You know things have gone past silly when Steve Jobs creates attention by being seen in public not in a black mock turtleneck and jeans.

That said, take a look at Steve in a suit:

From earlier this year, when he went to Norway to see Al Gore receive his Nobel Peace Prize.

Snazzy, but he’s looking his age. Stick to the t-shirt, dude.

(Via Gizmodo)