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Communications Enterprise 2.0

The Chiswick Gardener – gardening on an iPod

I’ve recently set up a blogging site for a friend of mine – The Chiswick Gardener. The site’s owner Andrew does what it says on the tin – garden maintenance, gardening and gardens in Chiswick and the surrounds of W4. The site uses a standard WordPress template and I’ve installed YAPB – Yet Another Photo Blog to manage the photographs. 

thechiswickgardenerThere are literally hundreds of photos available for the site and to get the site started I’ve just uploaded a handful to begin with. And this photographic aspect is where its potential is already demonstrated. Yesterday I visited High Road House with Andrew and he was able to showcase the site on his iPod using the House’s free private members’ WiFi. This was something to see, an epiphany for me. I’d seen the site as a portfolio of gardening work done for people in Chiswick but I hadn’t quite seen the mobile potential.

What I realised sitting in the subterranean rooms at the House was that this site provides a mobile digital portfolio of Andrew’s work. So long as there’s a WiFi connection, and most of Chiswick High Road has that, Andrew can connect up to the net and showcase his work. Thechiswickgardener.com looks great on an iPod – the colours of the gardens comes through brilliantly and one gets a real sense of the work done – even in a completely windowless underground room.

In one of the predictions for 2009 someone mentions mobile broadband overtaking wired. I cannot comment on the logistics here but I can now see the transformative nature of this. Everyday items such as an iPod become connected cultural artifacts, showcases of a life and works, as well as annoying music devices…

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The CD is dead, long live the…

Those creators of the future Gartner have posted a valediction for bidding mourning for the CD. The precogs say that this should be the last christmas for the format: 2008 Should Be the Last Christmas for Retail CDs. Having spent a most pleasant time with the people at Dada Records in Chiswick just before said Xmas I do hope not. Whilst Dada specialise in CDs, there is still a certain pleasure from actually going shopping for music and one amplified by the vinyl shopping trip. But say Gartner, the profits of physical media spell the end of industry practices:

As a percentage of total revenue in the U.S. market, physical media (CDs, LPs, DVD-A and so on) have gone from 91 percent of revenue in 2005 to 77 percent in 2007 and there is also evidence that physical retailers are even reducing the physical floor space dedicated to CDs.

Instead Gartner say, the makers of CDs should abandon the traditional launch, release digitally first and then burn content to order. But what then of the LP? I wish too, but does Gartner’s bell toll the final end of vinyl and the arrival of digital lossless formats such as FLAC? Nano technology aside, LPs are of course still beng released and are getting heavier – 200g plus Japanese imports. Manwhile lossy MP3s still dominate in the overall market.

So what’s going on? Maybe the best barometer is a site such as Linn Records. Linn are offering music in 3 formats – CD, Vinyl and Download. As a hifi manufacturer Linn produce the whole top-end gamut from record players to digital streamers. My Well Tempered turntable already hosts a Linn Archive cartridge (now the Arkiva) and if I ever had to replace the Tempered deck then the Sondek LP12 would be top of my list. Top of my wish of wish lists would be the Klimax DS.But, a big but, at $20,000 a pop, it’s not likely to be in next year’s Xmas goody bag. For this year, I’ve still got some £5 blues CDs to listen to, courtesy of Dada.

Are Gartner right? This is my precog moment…All said, vinyl aint about to disappear, it’s far too high fidelity. Digital will prevail. But the CD? The death knell for the compact disk is when network distribution takes its next leap into uber-broadband and the home becomes a network. People will want HD quality video as downloads and easy streaming across their living spaces. Given the currently immense bandwidth that this takes it will still need a choice jump in bandwidth to become fully effective and accepted. This will/is happening. For musical formats this is fab as it heralds FLAC etc as transportable. All we need then is storage tech to continue its unstoppable trajectory and the 1st fully lossless iPod will be out. A few thousand albums stored in FLAC on a portable player will be fun. That then will see the final end of the MP3. What will be of note at that point, will be the reaction of all those who realise that their entire music collection is in a legacy format. Possibly, maybe, they won’t believe their ears.

Dada Records phone number: 020 8747 9790