Life@ITP

DJ Dangermouse

I don’t think what DJ Dangermouse did was really that wrong. He was just trying to express his creativity. If the record labels could just see it as an amazing art work rather than another way to financial gain I’m sure there would have been no problem. I’m not such a fan of hip hop, but I do like the Beatles and although I couldn’t really here much of John Lennon or any of the other Beatles in the Grey Album’s remixes I think it’s sorta interesting that someone was brave enough to remix/combine the Beatles with the world of hip hop music. In my opinion as long as the person who mashes the copyrighted music doesn’t try to make money of it, it’s fine.

I think DJ Dangermouse said it best in his RollingStones interview:

“If somebody like Ringo or Paul McCartney heard it, I think they would dig it,” says Danger Mouse. “If Jay-Z heard it and said, ‘This sucks, dude,’ then I’d be like, ‘OK, everyone please send me back their copies.”

I mean, if the artist themselves don’t have problem with it…why should the big shot corporate people who have nothing to do with the creative process make such a big deal of it?

The creator of Podcasting, Adam Curry

Podcasting is something relatively new to me. Ipods in Malaysia aren’t as widely used as they are here in the States, mainly because not everyone in Malaysia can afford one. I guess you can say it’s one of those luxury items with prices ranging in a couple of thousand Ringgit. Anyways it was interesting to come here and see that almost everyone had an Ipod.

Well back to my response to Podcasting, I for one truly would say that podcasting is one of the most exciting innovations to come along in quite awhile. I mean, it opens up an endlessly varied universe of audio content to anyone who wants it at any time. We live in a time where we are always so busy that we might not have time to catch our favorite shows or what not and having something convenient that notifies us when new content is available through some sort of aggregator and automatically download that content and have it put in a place where it can be put on a portable player for us to listen to at our convenience is amazing.

Definition of Podcasting from Wikipedia:

Podcasting is a means of distributing audio and video programs via the Internet that lets users subscribe to a number of files, also known as “feeds”, and then hear or view the material at the time that they choose. A feed is usually in the MP3 audio format.

Podcasting became popular in late 2004 with the spread of free software that enabled automatic downloading of audio MP3 files onto computers and mobile MP3 players.

“Podcasting” is distinct from other types of online media delivery because of its subscription model, rather than one-time delivery. A series of files are delivered because subscribers want to get the information regularly.

Subscriptions use a “feed” (such as RSS or Atom) to deliver the enclosed files. Podcasting enables independent producers to create self-published, syndicated “radio shows,” and gives broadcast radio or television programs a new distribution method. Listeners may subscribe to feeds using “podcatching” software (a type of aggregator), which periodically checks for and downloads new content automatically.

The word “Podcast” is often incorrectly used to describe any Web link to a media-player-compatible audio file. Some radio personalities post MP3 versions of their shows and call them podcasts even though they offer no subscription feed.

Most podcatching software facilitates copying podcasts to portable music players. Any digital audio player or computer with audio-playing software can play podcasts. From the earliest RSS-enclosure tests in 2000-2001, feeds have been used to deliver video files as well as audio. By 2005 some aggregators and mobile devices could receive and play video, but the “podcast” name remained most associated with audio.

“Podcasting” is a portmanteau that combines the words “broadcasting” and “iPod.” The term can be misleading since neither podcasting nor listening to podcasts requires an iPod or any portable player, and no broadcasting is involved.

Aware of that misleading association from the beginning, some writers have suggested alternative names or reinterpretations of the letters “p-o-d”, without winning much of a following.[1] One little-used alternative is “blogcasting”, which implies content based on, or similar in format to, blogs. Another is “audioblogging.”

Observation Project 2
The Weatherproof Umbrella

We had some problems, getting everyone in the group to meet up the other week, so we all decided after class that we had to get our act together and come up with something. It was a reaally horrible morning the day we met. It was pouring and even with an umbrella I got soaked! It used to rain in Malaysia all the time but I never remember getting to soaked! I guess the main difference between the rain here and rain in Malaysia is the wind. When it rains in Malaysia it pours, but the wind was never as bad as it was in NEW YORK! So as long as we had an umbrella in Malaysia we were fine…not in New York though!!

So naturally, Sam came up with this brilliant number right before we met up at ITP. Sam along with the rest of us didn’t like it when a gust of wind inverted our umbrella and exposed us to a vicious raindrop attack and we all agreed that the problem is and has always been the umbrella’s classic design. Yes, the design is good at shielding your body from rain, but because of its non-aerodynamic, parachute shape, it is constantly begging to fly away with a mighty wind. If you hold on tight and don’t let it fly away, it will bend out of shape, rip, expose eye-gouging spokes and ultimately become so warped it ceases to function as a portable rain barrier device. So on Sam’s long subway ride he came up with this solution:

Pressure sensors attached to each spoke ending of the umbrella will detect changing air pressure (wind) and trigger a mechanism that will shift the top towards the direction of the current wind. The umbrella shaft will have an adjustable joint of some sort (maybe a ball & socket) that will give it a maximum range of motion to compete with naturally changing wind directions. As of yet, we do not exactly know what mechanism we will use to accomplish this movement, but we do have a few options we would like to experiment with. Muscle wire or Nitinol (a nickle - titanium alloy) is great because it requires a very low voltage, is super-light and easy to manipulate. Muscle wire shortens in length when electrically stimulated and can lift thousands of times its own weight. Another possible candidate is the solenoid, which is an electro-mechanical device that when triggered can use a magnetic field to open/close metal levers. For powering purposes we can have a replaceable 9-volt inside the handle or a rechargeable battery that can be hooked up to a DC charger. We will experiment next week and see what works best. Of course, the entire unit must be water-proofed, especially whatever is not under the umbrella, like the exposed air pressure sensors.