On Air

This past Saturday, I participated in a WDR 5 broadcast about Web 2.0. The format is called Profit and touches on all kinds of business aspects. This time, anchor Frank Wörner and I talked about the new Web 2.0 bubble (if it is one), new business models, YouTube, MySpace, Flickr, and the Google-Microsoft battle. If you're able to understand German (or otherwise want to expose yourself to a foreign language), you can find a downloadable podcast.

The interesting thing for me was the fact that I didn't have to go to WDR headquarters in Cologne, or even our local broadcasting company, NDR, but only to some tiny (half a closet, really) private studio here in the city, only 10 minutes from my house. First I thought I was in the wrong place, going up stairs in a very old appartment building. But there it was, on the third floor, the "studio", including control room and soundproof box, both separated by a car's windshield (I'm not kidding). The owner explained that the curved surface of the glass would do much better to diffuse sound reflections. Well, it must have worked, because the sound technicians in Cologne didn't complain. The sound connection to WDR was the surprising bit. I expected some sophisticated mechanism to establish the voice connection between Frank and myself, which sounded as clear as we were sitting next to each other. Apparently, a single ISDN line is all you need. By having a Codec on each end (in this case an old CDQ 1000) talk to one another, the analog signal easily gets transferred via a standard 64k line. Amazing. I need to upgrade my home studio....