The latest buzz buzz in FM music formats is Jack-FM, a nationally syndicated format that eliminates DJs and replaces them with essentially random shuffle-play (the rough transitions between radically different songs is part of the charm). The playlist is pulled from a library of around 1,200 songs, about 3-4 times that of a traditional station, though all songs have to have been in the top 40 in the last 40 or so years. Jack-FM’s website attributes their success to the iPod making people comfortable with shuffle-play:

Random acts of greatness “jack” radio. Several kajillion iPod™ users can’t be wrong. Thanks to the shuffle feature, hearing different styles of music one after another feels completely natural, and desperate radio programmers have taken notice. The “Jack” format—so named for its Everyman inclusiveness—is popping up in every market to save commercial radio from obsolescence.

I’m skeptical about Jack “saving commercial radio from obsolescence” — it sounds more like the blowing of taps to me. Way back when, before the days of top-40 or Clear Channel, DJs actually added value through their extensive record collections and expert knowledge of who the hot new groups were. But that was then, and by eliminating DJs altogether, Jack is declaring that the job music-radio DJs do today can be done just as well and more cheaply by a random-number generator.

That may be true, but I have to wonder if the radio stations embracing this format have thought this cynical line of thinking all the way to its conclusion. If Jack is so wonderful because it emulates my iPod on shuffle play, then why the heck do I need their advertisement-filled, frequency-hoarding broadcast at all? Sure, 1,200 songs is better than 300, but my iPod holds over ten times that many songs, lets me skip songs, lets me pick my own formats and lets me share my playlists with my friends — all ad-free. The only advantages broadcast has over the iPod are expert DJs (which they’re eliminating), installed base of radios (which iPod-like technology will eventually match), and the arcane copyright laws that give radio broadcasters a way to legally broadcast without needing to pay the RIAA or recording artists (though they still pay song writers through BMI or ASCAP.) Even in the slow and bloody copyright wars, that third advantage is also slipping away. Today I can fill my iPod from an all-you-can-eat subscription service, from Creative Commons and other legal free-download sites, or from a number of less legal sources, and other sources keep rising. Once it becomes ubiquitous, why would we as a society keep granting exclusive rights to scarce public radio frequencies for such an archaic way to transmit music?

Siemens is showing off a paper-thin electrochromic display that they hope will eventually lead to an all-in-one device that uses printing technology to lay down the display, circuits and even the battery. According to the New Scientist:

The display is controlled by a printed circuit and can be powered by a very thin printable battery or a photovoltaic cell. The goal is to be able to create the entire device – the display and its power source – using the same printing method, so that manufacturing costs would be as low as possible. Siemens expects to achieve this by 2007.

Also impressive is that the display cost about £30 (just over $50) per square meter of materials.

Update 5pm: added link to Siemens announcement.

To the surprise of few, today Steve Jobs announced a Video iPod at his “One More Thing” press conference today. The main iPod now supports H.264 and MPEG-4 video formats, with a capacity of around 150 hours worth on the 60GB. You can also download movie trailers and purchase music videos at the iTunes Music Store for $1.99 each, and it looks like ad-free episodes of shows from ABC and Disney television are coming soon.

(As is traditional after Apple announcements (regardless of how good the news), AAPL is down five and a half percent so far today.)

Update 3:09pm: TV-show purchase is now up, with episodes for $1.99 and a full season for $34.99. And they’ve got Pixar shorts up for only $1.99 too! (Not sure if JHymn will work with video like it does with audio — I’ll try it out tonight.)

There’s been a lot of buzz about Yahooo!’s new Podcast search engine, and what it means for the “new medium” to have a major search engine buy in like this.

Ignore the fact that podcasting isn’t a new medium (it’s called audio guys, it’s been around a while). It’s also not that different from seven years ago when people just linked to MP3s on their webpages, and search engines like Scour.net and Lycos MP3 Search would find them for you. Technologically the only difference is a little bit of XML to help machines know what’s being linked, plus a few tweaks (like RSS subscription) that make the experience more user-friendly.

What I think has changed in the past 7 years is the number of people producing and distributing their own amateur and semi-pro content, and the accompanying infrastructure to support them. In 1998 almost all the MP3s available on the web were copyrighted songs people had ripped from their CD collection, and so the RIAA and other members of the content cartel could squash whatever infrastructure cropped up in the name of stamping out piracy. Today there’re countless MP3s online that are completely legal to download, and that primes the pump for for inventing the infrastructure to make it even easier. Moreover, piracy has largely gone to the P2P networks, so now MP3s on the web are harder to paint with the sweeping “it’s all piracy” brush.

And that all leads to podcasting, which I’m hearing the media describe as “making your own radio programs for broadcast over the net.” This is, of course, the big long-term competition for the content cartel — their big-advertising, mass-produced one-size-fits-all model will have trouble competing with thousands of niche narrowcasts that each have a small personal audience. More importantly, podcasting is online audio that finally isn’t being linked with piracy — it’s good, happy audio on the web, not at all like those nasty pirated MP3s in the previous decade.

And just think, it only took us seven years to get here…