News out on Friday that Google has acquired Doubleclick for $3.2 billion. Probably pocket change for the big G but enough to make the other contenders round the table drop their cards. Why does Google value Doubleclick so highly?

This probably has as much to do with the value Google adds to the Doubleclick service, as opposed to the more usual counter theory. Let me give an example. We advertise on Google because we want visibility in search. We hardly use the content network because relevance in the B-to-B space is poor. We know that display ads and audio ads are available but haven’t really scratched the surface with these. There are other parts of our field marketing organization that run banners from time to time, primarily on Java forums and lately we’ve been trying to educate them on how we can measure the efficiency of these.

Google hooking up with Doubleclick essentially merges my work with that of field marketing. There are many advantages to this. A couple that come to mind immediately are more detailed stats (a la Google Adword reports) on their banner ad campaigns (possibly tracking right through to conversion using Google Analytics) and a single advertising console to learn. Think the Microsoft Office Suite for the advertising world.

Eric Schmidt talked to John Battelle about this recently at the Web 2.0 Expo. 

Other topics included the new presentation service to be added to Google Docs, mobile services, net neutrality and the issue of copyright in a collaborative content environment.

As news feeds become a more accepted way of accessing information on the net, services such as Google News have moved to the fore.

Google News in particular has become a popular trusted source of up-to-date information.

Where does Google get its information from?

Key sources are major online news sites (which include the online sites of major print newspapers) - with one caveat: the site needs to have its content readily accessible and not hidden behind a subscription wall. Interestingly, partly because of the success of the advertising model used for content by the likes of Google (ie. all content given for free to increase market share and distribution, costs recouped through on-page advertising) many online news sources are public. 

Can I get my news source into Google?

If you monitor Google News closely, you’ll notice that information can actually come from a multitude of sources. In one instance, I’ve seen the newsy blog of an SEM company listed in Google News. How is it done? 

The article ‘Getting into Google News Revisted‘ on the SEO Roundtable sums it up pretty well. Check it out if you see yourself as the next Murdoch (Rupert - not the guy from the A-Team).

It’s hard to find a steady path to tread between the nay-sayers and hyper-evangelists in this ever-changing world. Never more so than in the world of DJ’ing, where it appears, after more than 20 years, we could be coming towards the end of the 1210 era.

After vinyl: the CD?

But what will come next? While the Pioneer CDJ 1000 seems to be adopting the same position in the CD DJ market that Technics held with vinyl, can we really expect the CD to enjoy the longevity of the black plastic 12″? After all part of the reason vinyl stuck around so long was due to distribution: it was the medium of choice for specialist dance music shops. For the digital DJ unconcerned about looking cool with a record bag round the Boho district of town, shopping online is an attractive proposition. High-quality mp3s can be purchased from anywhere in the world relatively cheaply (forget the exhorbitant ‘import’ price tag).

Even though the latest CD players (inc. Pioneer’s) can handle mp3 playback allowing you to take a whole night’s worth of records on a handful of CDs, you have to be prepared to go through the act of burning CDs (two copies of each if you want the possiblity to mix from any track to any other).

The pure digital DJ

If you’re thinking there’s enough plastic in the world and have no romantic attachment to the 11.5cm CD, then another option is to go down the complete digital road. Although this industry is still in its infancy, innovators such as Richie Hawtin, Coldcut and Sasha have been championing this technology for some time.

A common setup is to have some kind of USB midi controller that you connect to a laptop via a standard USB cable. The controller can be anything from faders through to a time-coded piece of vinyl that sends a control sound back to the computer. For the software, there’s custom DJ software, or the more advanced sequencers such as Ableton Live. Across the board, what you end up with is a package that can be highly mobile - you need little more than a laptop loaded with all your mp3s and some form of controller.

Hardware controllers

What controller you use largely depends on how you mix. If you’re more into seamless beat mixing, then faders will probably do, for the turntablist, a time-coded piece of vinyl on a regular deck may fit the bill.

Native Instruments produce high-end digital equipment and software for musicians, producers and DJs. The Traktor Scratch is based on technology they originally produced for Stanton. It’s essentially a box that sits between the turntable/CD deck and the laptop that receives a signal from time-coded CD/vinyl. As you scratch, or alter the pitch, the signal sent to the box changes, and this is used to adjust playback. So for instance, using an existing pair of 1210s it’s possible to directly control mp3s on your laptop.

Rane’s Serato Scratch offers essentially the same, although this product has attained a high following in the hip hop world.

M-Audio’s X-Session Pro offers knobs and faders to control playback. More aimed at the more value-conscious end of the house music playing market, the contoller is ideal for performing long fades and mucking around with EQ levels.

A newer entrant on the scene (released early in 2007) is the VCI-100 DJ Midi Controller from Vestax. This hybrid device contains both jog wheels and faders, and is no wider than your average laptop. Vestax has long been a producer of high-end DJ gear including turntables and mixers so you can expect this equipment to live up to their high standards.

Software contenders

For the DJ, the software market can be less confusing. You have the choice of the bespoke DJ products, or to use a specialized sequencing package. Your options can be limited depending on what hardware you choose.

Tracktor DJ Studio is, as the name suggests, built squarely for the DJ. The interface can be cumbersome, but is packed full of features, with a mixer modelled on the Allen & Heath Xone:92. Many controllers ship with the lite version of the product which will help Native Instruments in its quest to dominate this market.

Virtual DJ produced one of the first products to put the waveforms side-by-side, making it instantly easier to mix by sight, as well as by sound. The interface is generally well laid out and the performance of the software is one of the highlights.

Ableton Live is a multi-track editing tool that revolutionized the industry by introducing a different way of interacting with samples - the ability to quickly move the blocks around a vertical grid. No more messing around with tricky waveforms. This product is squarely aimed at sample-driven dance music and hooking it up to a midi controller has become the kit of choice for many digital DJs including John Digweed and Laurent Garnier.

The future

As with any new industry, it can be worth waiting to see what wins out as the king pin - the de facto industry standard. Pick your bandwagon before you jump. After all, is it really worth a vinyl DJ training on anything other than a pair of Technics given that this is what you’ll be presented with in most bar/club settings?

However, the digital DJ space can remain a lot more open allowing different DJs to pick their tools of choice. After all, if it’s just a laptop bag and a controller you need to hook up to the club’s amp, you can get out on the road with any kit you like. With different setups allowing you to interact with sounds in a different way, the emergence of the digital DJ could well signal a true revolution.

There’s no shortage of internet radio channels/bedroom producers peddling their wares on the internet.

How many of these do you have open access to? Well, that all depends on how the music is streamed. Some, such as Flash players (such as those favoured by myspace) make it difficult to record. Around the most accessible are Shoutcast streams. A Shoutcast server essentially just streams mp3’s via the common m3u format (a simple text file that just tells your music player where to get the sound from). The advantage of this approach is that you can get rippers that will just access the stream directly, and if each mp3 is tagged, will just dump the individual mp3’s into and directory you wish.

Finding rippers

I can personally recommend Castripper as I’ve been using this refreshingly small piece of software for the last couple of weeks.

All you do is tell it the address of the stream you want to record (the easiest way of getting this is by opening the stream in iTunes and looking at the properties), where you want to save it, and whether you want to divide the stream up - eg. by song.
And then let it rip.

For this simplicity you lose the ability to save the stream name and locations for future use, as well as the ability to schedule recordings, but why not just keep things simple anyway?

Check out Castripper

More recently, I’ve come across All Streaming Media which lists a number of Shoutcast rippers, as well as tools to record just about every type of multimedia format. Not the easiest site to navigate, but there’s a lot of information there.

Check out All Streaming Media