Disqus - Latest Comments for markedwards

Re: WinTools.Info - Contact

MarkEdwards — Wed, 26 Apr 2023 19:01:25 -0000

I've used your software for some time and it has been a lifesaver as I am legally blind. I appreciate the ability to control things more than Windows will allow me to. I do have one question, I have upgraded to Windows 11 and it doesn't seem like the program is loading correctly. After boot up, it's in the tray with other programs, but when I try to activate it by picking a profile and using the load command from the menu, it crashes. Am I doing something wrong? thanks for any information you can share.

Re: Xiaomi 12T Pro announced: Xiaomi's first 200MP phone is here

MarkEdwards — Tue, 04 Oct 2022 17:07:22 -0000

Will these phones be commercially available in the United States? I know I can bring them in from another country, I'm just wondering if I can buy them through a United States dealer.

Re: Batten Down the Hatches for 2019 – A Media Storm Is Coming

MarkEdwards — Sun, 30 Dec 2018 22:36:37 -0000

Tremendous writing and completely spot-on. Some people see what is coming down the road, you are clearly one of them. It's unfortunate that so many people don't see the future and will get caught up in a very unpleasant storm in 2019. Hopefully they will read your thoughts and take them to heart.

Re: Radio: Don’t Get Burned By Playing “Baby It’s Cold Outside”

MarkEdwards — Tue, 14 Nov 2017 12:16:25 -0000

I've seen that version, as well as one with Lady Gaga as the "wolf" and a guy (sorry, I don't remember who) as the "mouse". It's a tough call, but as a programmer, I'd probably pass on any version. That's because I want to protect my station. As an individual, I know to take ANY version of the song in the historical context of the world being a very different place 73 years ago.

Just to be clear, the blog post is about how to program a radio station, not what any individual (including me) chooses to listen to. What I have in my personal Christmas playlist https://open.spotify.com/us... is someshat different than what I'm recommending to my clients for their radio stations.

Re: Billionaire Owner Joe Ricketts Shuts Down DNAinfo, Gothamist After Union Vote

MarkEdwards — Thu, 02 Nov 2017 18:33:02 -0000

I think there's a bigger issue/story here. Hyperlocal news sites still don't have a sustainable revenue model. You can turn out great product, get tons of views and clicks, but if you can't make enough money to break even or (gasp) turn a profit, all bets are off. The DNAinfo sites are just the latest casualty in a form of online media that people clearly want to consume, but advertisers can't or won't support. I'm not trying to defend anyone here, just saying that the concept of hyperlocal online news is great. Making enough money to keep the sites up, not so much.

Re: Is Radio Dying A Slow Death? It CAN Be Avoided

MarkEdwards — Tue, 05 Sep 2017 16:31:49 -0000

HI Robin! I know about all of the issues with having to cover up spots, but we've been facing those issues for years. I'm still amazed and chagrined that many broadcasters haven't learned the tricks needed to make clean transitions in and out of breaks. I'm sure your product will take care of that issue better than most services being used now.

Re: Fox, Blackstone in Talks To Jointly Outbid Sinclair for Tribune

MarkEdwards — Sun, 30 Apr 2017 22:18:56 -0000

Major factual error. Tribune no longer owns the newspapers. The only thing they have are the TV stations and one radio station. You might want to update the article just a teeny bit.

Re: Breaking News is shutting down

MarkEdwards — Thu, 08 Dec 2016 17:13:46 -0000

Breaking News was a rare beast, quick, accurate, curated to add both official news sources and citizen journalists to its feed, and more than anything, reliable. I understand the issue of monetization, but can only hope that the big thinkers at NBC News see the shuttering of this app as a reason (or a way) to boost their lackluster and unreliable push notification products.

Re: Radio’s Problem After the iPhone 7

MarkEdwards — Tue, 20 Sep 2016 07:53:50 -0000

I could probably write half a dozen paragraphs agreeing with The things you brought up here. But let's stick to the big one. As much as I consider the people involved in the project my friends, I think it's time to admit that FM radio in cell phones is, for all intents and purposes, dead.

When I was watching the Apple presentation, the very first thing that came to my mind is if you have a wireless audio delivery system, you've now disconnected the FM antenna. No antenna, no signal. And no chance any manufacturer is going to take up the space in the inside of a phone for an FM antenna. The product cycle from drawing board to consumer use is 3 to 4 years for a brand-new from scratch cell phone. Adjusting a current design to remove the headphone jack and improve Bluetooth can be done significantly quicker than that. So it will take a while before wireless headphones become ubiquitous, but it's going to happen and the forces that want to put radios in phones will lose by the sheer weight of the consumers who are tired of untangling chords.

The consumers in the market place rule. I promoted and supported AM stereo. I kind of liked quad FM. And for a while I really truly believed that HD Radio could solve some of our industry's problems. But unfortunately I think we need to add a radio in every cell phone to that list of good ideas that the consumer didn't care about.

Time to objectively look at the technology landscape and the dearth of compelling content and figure out how to make radio own a niche in consumers' minds.

Re: In TV’s Diversity Push, Let’s Not Forget People With Disabilities (Guest Blog)

MarkEdwards — Thu, 25 Aug 2016 18:24:40 -0000

First, I will be forever grateful to you for all the work you've done on behalf of the disabled. Thank you.

I agree with your thoughts, but would like to add another facet to the discussion. The industry absolutely needs to represent the disabled in front of the camera, but being disabled and getting a job BEHIND the camera, in almost any capacity, is still a practical impossibility. Skills, experience, and talent don't seem to matter if you don't fit "the mold".

Whether it be a well established media juggernaut or (especially) a "New Media" digital venture, there are strides being made in representing the disabled. You'll see them on your TV, phone, or theater screen. But finding them in the offices and other facilities of these companies, no matter what department you're looking in, is still almost impossible. The industry can do better.

Re: Latest Radio News, Talk Shows, Sports, Hosts, Personalities | AllAccess.com

MarkEdwards — Mon, 23 May 2016 15:45:39 -0000

Once again, I was robbed.

Re: Indiana station to cut ‘This American Life’ in response to Pandora deal

MarkEdwards — Tue, 17 May 2016 11:34:43 -0000

Some facts to consider. Purdue has an AM station with a decent, but not great signal and other pubcasters get into West Lafayette, so they may be losing a ratings battle. They are probably looking for ways to keep costs down, so dropping a show or two will help them pay the electric bill. And looking at their schedule, they'd have to drop a majority of their weekend and some of their weekday programming because that content is streaming somewhere, whether it be Pandora, Stitcher, other stations' websites, or NPR One.

Blaming your woes on streaming audio is like radio broadcasters in the fifties saying that TV would put them out of business. Let's get a grip and realize that technology and usage habits are changing, and there's still room for multiple distribution methods for almost any content.

Re: Latest Radio News, Talk Shows, Sports, Hosts, Personalities | AllAccess.com

MarkEdwards — Tue, 17 May 2016 11:26:28 -0000

I think the good folks at Purdue are more interested in no longer paying for the show. Blaming the dropping of a show on it being streamed would mean they'd have to take about half their programing off the air. Let's get real here.

Re: Netflix Is No Net Neutrality Hypocrite for Slowing Down Video

MarkEdwards — Sat, 26 Mar 2016 20:02:00 -0000

And don't forget, if Netflix throttles what they are sending out that means they are using less server power and less bandwidth to get that video out to the ISP. They're not exactly being mother Theresa and trying to save us from data caps. They are a large publicly traded company and they are trying to save money. The part about this that is so horrible is that they hid it from the world while they were throttling their feeds. Lack of transparency and honesty is a deadly sin in doing business these days and Netflix is quite guilty of that.

Re: Netflix Is No Net Neutrality Hypocrite for Slowing Down Video

MarkEdwards — Sat, 26 Mar 2016 13:22:12 -0000

I don't even know where to start with all the things that are wrong with this situation, and this story.

On Friday morning, I spent over half an hour on the phone with a Netflix customer service person asking what they were going to do to make this right. He was in the Salt Lake City call center and had absolutely no idea about the story. No clue the Netflix Was in the news for messing with subscriber streams, no idea that the company had admitted to their wrongdoing, and no idea what to do about it.

I then spoke to a supervisor who also had no idea about any of this, even though the story was almost 24 hours old at this point. I gave her links to various stories and even read her the statement on the Netflix blog admitting wrongdoing and she was quite taken aback by the whole thing. However, she had no idea what to do and suggested I write an email to the author of the blog post, which I did.

I did hear back from someone from Netflix Friday afternoon, but they are quite clearly in early crisis mode, have no real answers as to how they're going to make this right for a long time AT&T customers like me and I'm sure are spending the weekend digging through the mess that they made for themselves.

I've spoken with The FCC and they really don't have any authority over Netflix in this case, at least based on the net neutrality law. However, the FTC seems very interested in the situation, especially when I explained to them that all the settings I have access to have always been set the highest quality video and I haven't been getting that. There are issues of transparency, honesty, and clearly misleading customers into thinking they were getting a higher-quality Video feed than they actually got.

The premise of your story, in a wide view, is correct. However, the corporate responsibility, transparency, knowledgeable misleading of customers, and lack of training for frontline representatives makes Netflix very culpable in this situation and whether action is taken via regulatory agencies or in the courts, they will have to pay for their dishonesty.

Re: CBS to Explore Selling Radio Business

MarkEdwards — Tue, 15 Mar 2016 15:09:55 -0000

This comes as a surprise to, um, nobody.

Re: The Most Overrated Restaurant in St. Louis Is ... the RFT

MarkEdwards — Fri, 19 Feb 2016 09:47:07 -0000

I'm torn on how harsh I should be when responding to this post. Part of me wants to say something about how everyone makes mistakes and the will of the people is more important then the snarkiness of a writer and the other part of me wants to say that pulling the feature is gutless and spineless.

So I'm going with the second part of me. It is gutless and spineless to pull a feature about over rated restaurants. Are you afraid of losing their advertising? Are you allowing corrupt review sites like Yelp to continue to post inaccurate reviews generated by friends family and employees of restaurants? Or have you decided to make the RFT just as cutting edge as the daily newspaper in St. Louis?

I use recommendations from friends and my own experiences to decide of restaurant is good or bad. Every city has over rated restaurants and under rated restaurants. And yes, you can hit a restaurant on a particularly bad or a particularly good night and get a different experience then your neighbor. A lot of things go into what makes the restaurant, or any other business for that matter, good or bad. Yet some establishments are consistently underrated are overrated and deserve to be called out.

For a paper with the history of yours to wimp out on the feature as insignificant as what is an overrated restaurant is truly stunning. You're not spiking a story on corruption because you're afraid of getting your offices firebombed, you're not deciding to hold back on video of a state legislator doing something unspeakable with an underage girl, you're talking about a restaurant that has an unearned its reputation. For heavens sake, it's not exactly like you're trying to change the world with this article.

I remember when the term "Alternative Press" meant something. Clearly all that means is that I'm old because your paper has fallen in with the establishment media in wanting to keep everyone happy and not make waves as opposed to printing something that might hurt some advertiser or chef's feelings. Pretty lame if you ask me. And since you don't want to ask me what restaurants I think are overrated, I'm sure you don't want to ask me what I think of your style of "journalism".

Re: 7 Days of Giveaways (DAY 7)

MarkEdwards — Mon, 28 Dec 2015 10:53:53 -0000

Again, you've got us jumping through hoops of fire to do the work any marginal marketing department could do in their underwear with Hootsuite. And, to be honest, the prizes are kind of cheap. As my daddy used to say, "The juice isn't worth the squeeze".

Re: BBC Ships Adele Special Across World

MarkEdwards — Thu, 19 Nov 2015 12:07:39 -0000

I think the NBC show she taped at Radio City Music Hall earlier this week probably will keep this show from airing in the US. Just an educated guess.

Re: Bob Pittman 'We Shoouldn't Get Carried Away' Streaming

MarkEdwards — Tue, 10 Nov 2015 14:54:05 -0000

Was he serious? His own company has people out selling streaming inventory. Guess they can stop doing that now since radio is the only business that matters and streaming is some kind of fad.

Re: Missouri GOPer wants to force Planned Parenthood to build ‘Vietnam Wall’ memorial for aborted fetuses

MarkEdwards — Thu, 15 Oct 2015 17:52:04 -0000

I live in "muzzurah", and I'm proud of my elected officials spending their time on urgent matters like this instead of concentrating on improving education funding, fixing crumbling infrastructure, or crime prevention. Good to know the folks in Jefferson City have their priorities in order.

Re: CNN Host Accidentally Reports on ‘Boris Yeltsin’s’ U.N. Speech

MarkEdwards — Mon, 28 Sep 2015 15:53:54 -0000

She was just saying what we're all thinking subconsciously. A dead dude might be less of a problem for the US than Putin will be.

Re: Moto X Pure Edition Review

MarkEdwards — Mon, 21 Sep 2015 21:58:03 -0000

Thanks for a very thorough review. I do have one question that's been troubling me the last couple of weeks. Since the Nexus 6 has gotten so inexpensive, is it any kind of an option compared to the Moto X? I need a big screen, & I realize the Nexus 6 isn't that much bigger, but is there anything about that phone that makes it better than the Moto X? I really could use some help with this and any information would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Re: Amazon Has 6 New Devices—And an Actual Plan for Hardware

MarkEdwards — Thu, 17 Sep 2015 10:33:23 -0000

This is actually very good news, SOMEBODY has finally figured out that tablets are incredible consumption tools. And Amazon is bringing in what will be (probably) good enough items for the average media consumer that they can be successful. Here's hoping the new OS is more user-friendly as I'm guessing the kind of people who don't have a problem shelling out for a new iPad aren't always the same kind of people who can drop $149 for an 8 inch tablet to watch TV shows and movies on.

Now the question is, if he OS is as clunky as some of Amazon's earlier stabs at software, can the new devices be rooted?

Re: St. Louis, A Tale Of Two Cities, Again

MarkEdwards — Sun, 02 Aug 2015 09:04:54 -0000

St Louis is a Union town, but not in this case. If the cab drivers have a union they would have much better working conditions and business arrangements with the cab companies. It's really the cab companies who are running the show and they don't want to see anyone encroach on their business.