N5M Filesharing by FM radio, and the viability of Wi-Fi for streaming broadcasts were hot topics on the first day of the Next 5 Minutes Festival of Tactical Media in Amsterdam.

N5M brings together hundreds of artists, activists and critics from around the globe and it's knowingly over-programmed. Frustratingly so: the sheer quantity of workshops, performances and discussions spread over three venues in the city center makes comprehensive coverage difficult. Shameless Plug #1: I'm here to take part in a panel on Saturday [12pm, Milkweg] entitled 10001 Politics of the Archive, where I'll be talking about some recent fun I've had with Googlephliacs. The N5M site is currently swamped because of traffic, but a 1MB PDF can still be downloaded here (http://www.n5m.org/n5m4/dox/N5M_programbrochure.pdf) - the Festival runs through until Sunday).

The emphasis on low-tech, or ingenious uses of technology for tactical and practical was well illustrated by the panel entitled Radio Space - Wireless In You Psyche. The session brought together Arun Metha (http://www.radiophony.com/html_files/promoters/arun.html), veteran Indian activist and Daoud Kuttub, founder of the Jerusalem Film Institute, with two radio activists in the affluent West.

Linus Torvalds, cited in a subsequent panel, has observed that it's society that changes technology (http://www.changex.de/e_a00288.html), not the other way round, and the radio session speakers noted that simply having the latest and greatest could be a curse.

"There are significant signs of a small bubble following the big bubble", said Pit Schultz, co-founder of the Net Time mailing list and more recently involved in Berlin's FreiFunk network. "Wi-Fi has this quality of being unstable."

"There's a desire to recreate the early Internet utopia with wireless - but skepticism is a good model," said Schultz.

Adam Hyde, whose projects have included a text-to-speech broadcast of the source code of the Linux kernel (http://radioqualia.va.com.au/freeradiolinux/), (one of many interesting projects at Radioqualia (http://www.radioqualia.net/) noted that peer pressure was often more of a practical nuisance than regulatory pressure. Having been granted a license for week long series of performance, he'd found himself under pressure from the established Pirate broadcasters.

Adam also pointed the audience to us to some real streaming media: H20/IP (http://www.mle.ie/~jonah//projects/streamingmedia.html), which as the name suggests, uses water at the transmission layer [more here (http://www.coin-operated.com)].

And this extraordinary gadget (http://www.neurosaudio.com/). It's a portable MP3/Ogg player and FM transmitter with a range of about 20 feet - more than the in-car FM amplifiers that are getting pretty common as accessories. And a little like our imaginary BluePod (http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/39/28467.html) - an iPod with Bluetooth that could allow you to stream and swap.

Given Apple's cosiness to the RIAA, there's little chance of a Bluetooth iPod ever being built. ®