What's more fun that beating a dead horse? I don't know, I'd have to stop beating this one to find out, and I have just one more shot in me.

Although I promised myself I would write more about the technical details and design patterns of good websites in these next few weeks, the XM/Sirius merger (not yet approved by government bigwigs, of course) has been one of the few radio industry stories to get a lot of play outside of our world, and I wanted to take a swing at it.

The interesting thing about the merger is that most of the articles refer to it as a "satellite radio" merger. If you've been reading my columns the past few weeks, you know that satellite is only a delivery method, and in the next few years, delivery methods will become less and less important.

A bit over 25 years ago, Video Killed the Radio Star, or so we were told. Well, the tables have turned - or so The New York Times tells us. Yes, web based video is drawing quite a lot of attention in this Times article, and it is also drawing a lot of attention from website visitors.

Web-based video is big business (over $1.5 billion big if YouTube is worth what Google paid for it), and radio is in the game.

Peer to peer traffic on the internet has always gotten a bad rap. It has been associated almost exclusively with file sharing, or as the RIAA prefers to call file sharing - "The Destruction of Everything Good in the World, like Hugs... and America". But as I explained last week, peer to peer actually has a lot to offer the commercial sector, especially in the media industry.

The World Wide Web was built on the transfer of text files and linking them together. Back when everyone had 14.4 Kbit/s modems, viewing image-heavy pages was a pain. Web site visitors didn't have the bandwidth to download the images fast enough, so they were left waiting. As broadband connections came to home users, and the bandwidth hogs went from pictures to audio to video. Now the problem isn't on the user end, it's on the provider and server end.

This week all of us here at The Net Untangled will be looking at internet streaming for radio stations. Over the past few weeks, I've written about how it is time to get into the streaming game if you're station hasn't already. With wireless internet becoming more ubiquitous and soon available to pipe internet audio streams through car speakers, online competition will soon be making serious inroads into normally terrestrial radio turf.

So why shouldn't radio take the battle to their turf? Radio is already doing the heavy lifting of content production, why not make it available online?

Oh sweet Lord, I cannot possibly get enough news about the bomb "hoax" that threatened Boston on the day that will never be forgotten - 1-31-07.

For more info - visit Aqua Central. 

Basically, Aqua Teen Hunger Force is one of my favorite TV shows.  To explain it is almost impossible other than to say it is a surreal animated comedy about a box of French Fries, a milkshake, a was of meat and a hairy guy named Carl that takes place in New Jersey.  It is so bizarre asto be beyond explanation, yet the characters are extremely well-formed.  Frylock (the fries) is the parental figure, Meatwad (obvious) is the child with a fantasy world, Master Shake (the shake) is the belligerent teen, and Carl is the next door neighbor / loser who hates them all and loves the New York Giants (go G-Men).

My brother introduced it to me through the DVDs and I can't stop watching it.  It has a TiVo season pass and is my most anticipated movie since Borat.  See, the movie comes out in March - so to promote it, Adult Swim - the late night arm of the Cartoon Network and single handed savior of animated comedy (see Family Guy and Futurama - which it brought back both from the dead) put Lite Bright LED boards in major cities featuring the Mooninites (pronounced Moon - in - nights) brightly displayed giving the finger (their specialty).

The Mooninites hate, well, everything and spend most of their time trying to destroy/steal everything in sight.  As they leave, they often give the finger.  They are the highlight of any episode they appear in, along with Spacecataz - their pseudo-German brethren (I told you this makes no sense). 

Of course, the city of Boston spent $1 million in overtime and sent the city into a panic disarming these "bombs", which were nothing more than some LEDs and a few D-cell batteries on a black board.  Then, they threatened to take away Adult Swim's FCC license - which A) its a cable station, so it doesnt need one and B) they are a city and state, and the FCC is a federal board - they have no jurisdiction.