BOLT  is a web browser developed for mobile users with even the simplest phones.  BOLT provides mobile users with the ability to view PC style web-pages via their mobile device.  Features include streaming content, RSS feed support and 25 to 50 percent faster load times than most mobile browsers.  From Bitstreams website “Built on Bitstream’s ThunderHawk browsing technology, BOLT is the result of 5+ years experience developing mobile browsers that optimize usability, speed and performance on resource-constrained systems with limited memory, processing power and screen space.”  The Beta 2 version is available as a free download.  I have been using this on my Blackberry Curve 8330 for a few weeks now and am very pleased with its performance.

BOLT Browser Website

Flock

Last night the folks at Boxee announced the release of a new Boxee alpha.  The top additions to this new alpha are the support for Pandora music streaming, PBS streams, RadioTime, a new API and the video playback is built on the XUL framework.  The XUL framework is the same that Firefox is built on.  Yes, HULU does work.  Good Luck blocking it now.  I just downloaded the alpha release from Boxee.tv and must say it delivers.  Go get it.

http://boxee.tv

Here is a short how to in order to use the new plugins:

Start Boxee and in the left navigation pane scroll down to “Apps Box”.  Along the top of your screen there are four selections, choose the repositories tab and add a new repository.  Type the following in the text field minus the quotes ” dir.boxeehq.com” and select done.  You will now be able to back out and select “New Applications”.  This is where you can add all sorts of new feeds to your Media Player.  Have Fun!

On December 24th 1906, the world heard its first extended voice radio broadcast.  It was from Massachusetts and the broadcast was received by “sparks”, otherwise known as the communications officers on merchant ships in the Atlantic.  Since then it seems that radio has made a few technology advances in how we receive their product but since the onset of FM has been stuck in a technology black hole and refuses to accept that the world around them is changing.  Technology is changing and the method to deliver their broadcasts is going to change.  I will admit that the radio industry has made a few attempts to leap forward with the times but have been run over with a truck much like Frogger.  These are my views on some of the mistakes that have been made and where radio needs to advance too.

I have been a Broadcast Engineer for 12 years.  I started when i was 20 years old and just recently have left the industry to pursue bigger and better things in the IT sector.  In my career I have worked for 2 different radio companies that shall remain nameless but are quite large .  In the time that I slaved over 50,000 watt transmitters and rodent infested transmitter sites in the middle of no where, I got to play with some pretty cool stuff.  Systems to digitize the music library, automation systems, RDS (Radio Data Systems), transmitter remote controls, instant news services, broadcast consoles that were fully routeable and HD Radio.  I watched all of these systems evolve quite a bit in the last 12 years to the point where they function reliably and efficiently with the exception of HD Radio.  I will get to that in a min.  All of the companies that produce these systems have embraced the new technologies, the Internet and the idea that everything is going to computers.  Radio has tried to go another route with the deployment of HD Radio.

HD Radio is the industries answer to improved quality and delivery to you the listener.  CD quality music with the option to hear more stations with the inclusion of HD2  over-the-air to your radio ( If you spend 200 bucks to buy an HD radio).  Has anyone heard HD Radio.  Does anyone even own an HD Radio.  More importantly, is anyone planning on going to buy one.  I think the answer is an overwhelming NO.  If you think about it for a second, you would realize that the average commuter has a 20 min drive to work each day.  In that time they are on the phone or drinking their coffee and  thinking about the work they have to do that day.  With that said lets knock the listening time down to 15 min each way.  There are plenty of radio stations and other devices such as CD’s and MP3 players that will deliver exactly what you want to hear with out spending the money on a new radio. The overwhelming majority doesn’t  listen to the radio at home. They have the TV on or are on the computer.  Does that really justify spending 200+ dollars on a new radio.  The improvement in audio quality isn’t to bad but definitely not enough to prompt me to buy a new radio.  They do sell an add on device to receive HD on your existing radio but who wants to deal with the extra display unit sticking out from your dash tethered to a cable.  I have one of those by the way and it sucks.  The only reason I have it is because I got it for free. So HD Radio was a move towards doing something new (sort of) but in my mind is going to fail horribly.  Good job guys on investing hordes of money into it.   If your still reading, the key sentence in all of this was “They are on the computer”.

So, where do I think radio needs to go now.  It is pretty obvious in my mind.  THE INTERNET!!!!!!!!!  Everything is going to the Internet and why should radio be any different.  The advances that programmers and developers have made in just the last few years on Web 2.0 have basically started the ball hurdling down the hill aimed at broadcast services along with many other things.  Now i know what a lot of people are going to say at this point, ” I listen to my local stations on the web while I am at work”.  This is true, many radio stations do have online web streams.  The stream you hear on your computer is the same as the one you hear on the radio.  Its just a rebroadcast. They need to start developing original content for the web-streams and start promoting them the same as their over the air channels.  Create web-streams with different music formats, talk content and data services.  Start pushing the technology to their advertisers in order to get them to spend money advertising on the web-streams.  Basically abandon the HD Radio medium and focus the same efforts and ideas on the Web.  The need to drive your listeners to the computer is now.  This is where the business is going to end up in less than 10 years. How and why you ask?

Radio companies are not the most efficient operations to run.  The costs involved to pay for and maintain facilities, transmitters, towers and staff are quite high.  Just think about the electric bill that it takes to run a 50,000 watt transmitter site when your transmitter is running at 60% efficiency.  Add this to repair and maintenance costs of buildings and equipment and it gets pretty high.  Now think about what you could do with the Web.   Centrally locate your facility in a large market and be able to broadcast via the internet to the entire world.  This means fewer facilities and less cost.  The inefficient transmitters would be no more. The possibility of an unlimited amount of programming and the only constraint would be available bandwidth.  Use geotagging in your commercials to sell and play local content to specific markets.  The most important reason would be the ability to have your content heard through devices such as cell phones, computers, Internet Tablets and anything else that can access the Internet today and future devices such as in car computers and Internet enabled car stereos.  Most of these devices people already have in their pockets and they already have the capabilities.  This eliminates the requirement of the listener  to spend anymore money in order to recieve your content.  You get better Radio and the broadcast companies get their listeners to drive their sales.  Sounds good!

This is where radio is going.  Most of the technology to make it possible is already provided to you through your computer or cellphone.  The missing pieces such as city-wide or nationwide Internet access is being worked on as I type.  Computers are already being installed in cars to bring you advanced data services such as the Microsoft SYNC system in Fords.  The SYNC system is an early idea that will be expanded in the very near future to include added functionality such as Internet access while you drive.  You will also start seeing competitors to the SYNC system being installed or offered by the major automobile makers.  Combine this with the technology already available to us and its not hard to see where the future of radio is.  The first broadcasting company to partner with a technology provider such as Verizon, Nokia, Apple, RIM, Sprint, ATT or Google to be a part of further developing this new delivery method is going to be the winner. Radio that costs less to produce, reaches more listeners, and provides better service.  Its not hard to see that this is where radio is going.

Just 2 days after the announcement by Seesmic of a standalone Facebook application that is built on Adobe Air just like TweetDeck,  Facebook now is integrated into TweetDeck.  You can post updates to Twitter and Facebook at the same time and retweet information in both directions.  The app is limited to posting updates only so you cant comment or reply to friends and have them show up on the other service, but is that really needed or wanted.  Other functions include the ability to see which friends are currently online and even includes the IM function in Facebook.

Installation is the standard 3 clicks and go, so no issues there.

This is now available for download but is still in Beta so there may be more functionality to come.  Really nice addition to Tweetdeck and makes my online social agenda so much easier.

Add the following code to the .htaccess file at the root of your site.

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www\.)?YourDomain.com/.*$ [NC]
RewriteRule \.(gif|png|jpg)$ - [F]

docx-converter FTW

The user interface appears to work just fine but, there are some issues with video and audio coding.  Check out the thread on Internettablettalk.

Read The Thread

From the website:

phpXplorer is an open source file management system written in PHP. It enables you to work on a remote file system through a web browser. By default it has got dialogs for editing HTML, PHP, image, Apache, compressed and email files. Its modular design makes it easy to build your own filetypes, property sheets, views and themes. phpXplorers permission manager enables you to restrict the access to the shared file system for multiple users in a detailed way.

I’ve been looking for something like this to setup a more useful file hosting site for my personal use for sometime. This looks to me to be the answer.

I could see this as a perfect way to setup a file sharing site for family and friends when you don’t want to have to explain how to use ftp. The security allows you to share only the directories that you wish while not opening up your entire system to everyone you grant access.

Screenshots: [1] [2] [3] [4] 

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“we will not allow you or anyone else to acquire the company for anything less than its full value.” and go on to say “We consider your threat to commence an unsolicited offer and proxy contest to displace our independent Board members to be counterproductive and inconsistent with your stated objective of a friendly transaction.”

That’s telling em Yahoo… give em hell. Microsoft, if you want to acquire Yahoo, you better come with some bigger checks. Otherwise you’re just hunting with a paint gun.