LEDs making their way to your house soon

My friend Andre from GreenTable was over the other day to borrow some gear, and he was telling me about some new LEDs that are starting to make their way into restaurants and other commercial settings.

They replace small halogen bulbs, providing the same amount of light with little or no heat, and with the added advantage of drawing very little power.

They’re still pretty expensive - in the 30-dollar range - but last 100 times longer than a typical halogen bulb. I’m looking forward to switching mine out for these when the price is right.

Meanwhile, one company hopes to bring much cheaper LEDs to market later this year…

The company, which specializes in light-emitting diodes, plans to reveal in about four months prototypes of a new style of white-light LEDs that would both cost substantially less to manufacture and provide more light than conventional LEDs.

Combined, the two advantages would enable light fixtures based on LEDs, which are now relatively expensive, to better compete with traditional lamps based on conventional glass bulbs and fluorescent lights, according to Cyberlux President Mark Schmidt. Full story at Cnet

UK - Higher Fees for Public, Less Money for BBC

Variety has a front page report on the funding situation at the BBC…

The BBC’s worst fears were confirmed Thursday as the British government announced the pubcaster’s funding for the next six years — some £2 billion ($3.9 billion) less than it had sought…BBC director general Mark Thompson said the deal was “a real disappointment” as media minister Tessa Jowell outlined increases to the current $258 fee payable by all U.K. households that watch TV.

The Fozzie Bear of Radio Shows

Lots of comments on the CBC blog about CBC radio’s upcoming changes.

Here’s one that’s succinct and to the point. If you don’t get the references, no worries, the pull quote is priceless:

Eric S. Smith Says:
January 18th, 2007 at 5:03 pm

So they’re ditching Brave New Waves, Global Village, and even Radio 3, but keeping “Go!”, which, I’m sorry, is the Fozzie Bear of radio shows, *and* giving us a Jian Ghomeshi OD?

Thanks for nothing.

If you follow the thread back what you won’t see is any kind of historical perspective on all of this. Basically, these changes complete a desire to purge CBC of programming and ideas that got a small toe hold in the late 70’s when pop music infiltrated the hallowed halls of CBC radio. Programs like 90 Minutes with a Bullet and The Great Canadian Goldrush originated from someplace other than Toronto (Winnipeg and Vancouver respectively) and put CBC on the map with a whole generation, despite the fact they weren’t on the air very long.

Brave New Waves came a bit later, but is the last remnant of that era. CBC Radio 3 is a virtual Johnny-Come-Lately having shown up in 2000, but had huge impact because of its forward thinking approach to the web and plugging into content creators directly.

Of course, none of these things should be on the publicly funded airwaves - far better to push them off to extremely limited penetration pay-services like Sirius and provide a sop to the rest of the audience by giving them an hour of podcasts every week. Meanwhile, a perfectly good FM network that stretches from sea to sea continues to serve a very select and particular audience.

Welcome back to the 60’s era public broadcasting in Canada.

Free is the New Paid

It’s the best quote I’ve seen in days…via the International Herald Trubune

After spending millions of dollars over the past decade fighting the free exchange of their products over the Internet, some media companies are now yielding. The best way to get something in return, they are deciding, may be to accept that consumers want to play but few seem to want to pay. If enough of them join the game, there can still be a payback — either from consumers themselves or, increasingly, from advertisers.

“Free is the new paid,” said Kenneth Parks, chief operating officer of Brilliant Technologies, a company based in New York and Melbourne that is developing a service called Qtrax, which will provide free music — legally — to Internet users.

Questions AND Answers

via LivingWithAnActor.com

Just Curious is a web site where you can ask a question and see who answers.

Here’s one about Actors…

Media, Meet Media

Accountability takes on many forms. From The New York Times, a story about bloggers making an impact with San Francisco media heavies…

via The New York Times

A San Francisco talk radio station pre-empted three hours of programming on Friday in response to a campaign by bloggers who have recorded extreme comments by several hosts and passed on digital copies to advertisers.

The lead blogger, who uses the name Spocko, said that he and other bloggers had contacted more than 30 advertisers on KSFO-AM to inform them of comments made on the air and to ask them to pull their ads.

Boarder Takes a Breather

Matthew and I had a great time chasing each other down Horizon this morning.

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