Welcome To The Digital Guide

The word is convergence. In time, all we recognise as a PC, a mobile phone, a camera, a sound system, a radio and even a TV will merge into something we currently identity with as a palmtop. A small hand-held computer if you like but by then we won’t call it that. It is some time in the future, but all the IT and media industries are gearing up for it.

A Few Digital Topics

• Internet Radio - The next big thing?
• DAB Debate - We talk to the industry asking why DAB os so dire in the UK
• DAB Dashed? - The writing is on the wall...
• DRM - The world standard for AM Digital Radio
• Voice Over IP - The death knell for the telephone bell?

For now, we still have separate media streams. OK, somebody thought it might be cool to have a camera in a phone - the only real integration as I write this – then when they try to convince the public that this is what we want, we say we want something else.

We want the web in our hand. We envy the guy in the office who got wireless LAN with his laptop and Googles for car prices from the water cooler. Now we want that in the palm of our hand and if we call from that device to tell the chum in the bar he just paid too much for that roadster, all the better.

Much of our traditional short-wave content is already online. Stations have closed in favour of web delivery. These few pages represent a personal view. I’m just not sure how IP will reach a listener in the outback, even if he can afford the kit. Short-wave or standard AM does and always will, even if the techies condemned the 12-transistor radio he treasures.

So there is going to be a long time of getting the best out of what we have, trying to agree on standards and platforms while governments fight for and sell spectrum space. It’s going to be a bumpy ride…