Tom Purves – Product Management, Fintech & AI

I’ve been using my desktop for a long time as my primary media source for some time having thrown out my cd changer and dvd drive a long time ago [though i’ve since invested in a record player which i love]. So I was interested to read about these new audio features of Vista (MS’s immenent, if long delayed next version of windows). Windows can use a microphone to calibrate your speakers for frequency response and room positioning etc.. And it can do this, correcting/tweaking on-the-fly all audio singals output from a computer, in software, by just stealing a few cycles of CPU along the way. Neat. yet another reason to start thinking about throwing out your home stereo components. Now if MS could just do something about the general mediocre quality of integrated soundchip hardware found in most computers…

in Vista, we have a perceptually tuned version of room correction. Because we don’t expect everyone to own an instrumentation microphone, we have designed it so that you can use [most any] cheap microphone costing a few dollars to do an excellent job. IF you have a more expensive microphone, you can calibrate your room very accurately. All of this is implemented in in-box Vista software, using less than 5% on 3GHz CPU. Our room correction will equalize frequency response, time delay, and gain between all of your main channels, as well as build a first-reflection-cancellation filter if one or more of your speakers are near a reflective surface. If you do have a high-quality microphone, the room correction system will also flatten the overall frequency response and adjust the subwoofer delay accordingly.

more here: link

at least from the perspective of traditional branded package good companies chasing evermore fractional audiences with too many at dollars. But on the other hand for Web-based brands, I could see a TV advertising as just the thing for developing brand awareness and especially brand credibility. If you can afford to drop the money on a television that you must be a legitimate company the implicit logic goes. Now you could go too far with this (Pets.com and every other web1.0 superbowl add) but really I do think that TV advertising should be great for Web properties. And not just poker. Although clearly it’s a killer advertising medium for poker. Explaining why 4 out of 10 television channels show even the most hastily produced poker shows at Every Hour of The Day.

What other Web brands could benefit from TV spots? would it work as well for business apps? what are your thoughts?

I met up with Don Tapscott and his team at Rodman at it this week has he was conducting a taping (cameras and lights everywhere). You can catch my coverage over on my flickr photo stream here.

Looking forward to his new book wikinomics.