The 70’s European motoring experience involved me sitting in the back of my (well, technically my parents’) rare 2-door Audi 100 LS as they sped me around Belgium, France, Switzerland, and Italy. One everpresent prop was Michelin marginalia–the red guide, the green guide, and wonderful yellow-jacketed maps that marked even the smallest roads in those bright optimistic colors that made you want to drive down them. Michelin has finally brought all these resources on-line, and the result is a slow site that nevertheless exhaustively lists all the best restaurants in all of Europe, and detailed maps of the entire European continent and its cities–www.viamichelin.com
One thing I freely admit sucks about New York is its music radio stations. Until recently, streaming internet music was not an alternative to the local hollering via radio waves, as throughput on the internet was just not high enough. 20kbps is AM quality, but being on a par with FM requires at least a 128kbps stream. URGent, the University Radio of Ghent (get it?) radio station in Belgium now has gone completely overboard, providing a 192kbps MP3 commercial-free stream of great edgy modern stuff to listen to via iTunes on your Mac (or somehow on your PC) while you’re doing the dishes. The sound quality is simply much higher than the best FM radio reception, as long as you have a T1, cable or DSL and great speakers.
[Sat, Nov 24 2001 – 12:34] Felix (www) (email) Stefan, if you honestly think that playing MP3s over computer speakers can ever produce sound quality “simply much higher than the best FM radio reception,” you either need your head or your ears checked. Radio 3 in the UK has FM broadcasts of such legendary quality that audiophiles regularly record its live broadcasts onto reel-to-reel audiotape: the sound quality thereby obtained is much higher than any subsequent CD release. In general, working up the scale of sound quality, we get: normal MP3s, audiocassettes, high-quality MP3s, CDs, non-digitally-recorded vinyl, FM radio, reel-to-reel audio tape, live music. You need to check your tuner.
[Sun, Nov 25 2001 – 11:11] Stefan (www) (email) I obviously stand corrected. Perhaps I should have qualified my statement by adding “… beyond a 10-mile radius around Radio 3 studios, where I’ve never heard an FM broadcast without background hissing of some sort.”
[Wed, Nov 28 2001 – 22:39] Sven Forkedbeard (email) That Audi 100s looks like an Alfa GTV6. Like the site and the Scrabble movie.