How I Plan to Taste Music [Music]

I haven’t attained new music very regularly in years since the days I actually respected FM content. Between the modern choice—buying tracks, subscribing to a service or stealing it—I’m just not getting enough exposure to try before I download. Last night, things changed in a way that I hope paves the way for the future of buying music.

Microsoft’s Zune team, of all people, are allowing subscription music buyers to keep 10 songs a month from their subscription downloads. Their whole collection. And 90% of the songs you keep will be DRM free, with the other 10% (wimps) coming along shortly I SHOULD HOPE. The cost is $15 a month, so $5 more than the cost of buying the tracks individually. It’s worth the cost of being able to really explore the musical landscape again while keeping the prospect of fully owning my music at the end of a day. All in all, though, it’s much like when we were kids and the radio was the focus of my musical world.

When I was younger, I listened to Z100 as we drove from Jersey to Queens and would later pick up cassette singles at the local mall. Maybe I’m just old and crotchety now, but to me modern radio is a corrupt clusterfuck owned by the RIAA and Washington DC lobbyists, attacking helpful companies like Pandora that try to recommend new music based on our existing tastes. Industry power struggles aside, satellite radio has the same problem. It doesn’t know that I hate the song it’s about to play three times in two hours on a roadtrip. I enjoy the control of digital downloads, but miss the constant exposure to radio coupled with the conversations I could have at the record store: Fresh, timely exposure plus the occasional music purchase.

Of course, the subscription model isn’t new. Subscription services combined with recommendation engines were a great idea, but ultimately not one that had many takers, because many people, including me, saw no reason to shell out money for music that would eventually and inevitably evaporate when the subscription ended. With this hybridized service, the new Zune Pass changes that. At the end of the day, you’ve got the structured presentation of iTunes/Zune software combined with the Mix recommendation engine with full access to an almost endless set of tracks that you can explore. And for the really special songs you want to play for your future kids, you can keep them forever and ever and play on any device you want, Zune or iPod.

The only problem I can think of is that 10 songs usually don’t equal an album, and some might prefer to get $9.99 worth of credit to use on 10 tracks or an album. And for some of you, this being on PC only and Zune only will be a dealbreaker. Which is why I’m hoping this hybrid music sub/buy model spreads like wildfire.

Before that happens, I’m going to get Parallels/XP on my Mac and I’m switching to a Zune. But I hope other companies pick up this model, too, so I can use new and different ways to explore full music collections without paying a dollar for every track along the way.

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Dealzmodo: Samsung 67″ DLP (LED) HDTV for $1800 This Sunday [Dealzmodo]

The folks at HD Guru are reporting that Samsung will be deeply slashing prices on their 2008 line big-screen DLP HDTVs starting this Sunday. We’re talking discounts of up to $600 (maybe even more if purchased with an online discount). That puts the 67″ (HL67A750) 1080p LED-lit DLP at $1800 after the $600 price cut. Obviously, there are compromises with rear projection, but personally I would rather have both good picture quality and the wads of cash I would blow on a thinner LCD.

A list of old and new MAP prices on Samsung DLPs:

•HL61A650/61” (Lamp) $1299.99 ($300 savings)
•HL61A750/61” (LED) $1699.99 ($200 savings)
•HL67A750/67” (LED) $1799.99 ($600 savings)
•HL72A650/72” (Lamp) $2199.99 ($600 savings)

[HD Guru]

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Filed under: Portable Audio, Robots

Oh Rolly… we know you’re an overpriced, 2GB dancing robot with convoluted controls and questionable sound quality. But dammit, your impractical, big-corporate ways have gnawed a soft-spot deep into the noxious cesspool we call a heart. Now this: Rolly model SEP-50BT with Bluetooth control from your cellphone or laptop. Shipping in Japan on November 21st for an expected ¥40,000 or about $427. Sold. Watch it all unfold in the video after the break.

[Via Impress]

Continue reading Sony’s Rolly learns the Bluetooth trick

Sony’s Rolly learns the Bluetooth trick originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 28 Oct 2008 04:27:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Via [Engadget]

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Filed under: Portable Audio, Robots

Oh Rolly… we know you’re an overpriced, 2GB dancing robot with convoluted controls and questionable sound quality. But dammit, your impractical, big-corporate ways have gnawed a soft-spot deep into the noxious cesspool we call a heart. Now this: Rolly model SEP-50BT with Bluetooth control from your cellphone or laptop. Shipping in Japan on November 21st for an expected ¥40,000 or about $427. Sold. Watch it all unfold in the video after the break.

[Via Impress]

Continue reading Sony’s Rolly learns the Bluetooth trick

Sony’s Rolly learns the Bluetooth trick originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 28 Oct 2008 04:27:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Via [Engadget]

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James Bond’s Weird World of Inventions Chronicles 007 in 1966 [Retromodo]

The James Bond series has always had gushing reviews of their gadgety goodness, even before Jesus’ take on Quantum of Solace. This January 1966 article, “James Bond’s Weird World of Inventions” look backs to the time when Sean Connery was filling 007’s shoes. Remember the Disco Volante, the110-foot hydrofoil floating fortress? How about the Bell jet-pack Bond uses in the opening scenes of Thunderball?

Most of the infernal devices never existed in the original Ian Fleming stories. “Our only excuse for using them” says screenwriter Richard Maibaum, “is that such devices are available and cry out to be buckled onto James Bond’s back.”

Interestingly enough, while most of the tech found in Quantum of Solace can possibly be made, Thunderball’s $500,000 budget imagined up a whole slew of inventions that had never been seen before. Have movie goers become addicted to portrayals of Bond more rooted in reality, or are our gadgets so advanced now that we don’t have to make them up? [Modern Mechanix via Neatorama]

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Microsoft gets official with Windows Azure cloud OS, platform

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops, Networking

Steve Ballmer himself first dropped word of this one earlier this month, but Microsoft has now finally gotten official about its new cloud computing operating system, and its name: Windows Azure. What’s more, the OS is apparently just one component of Microsoft’s larger Azure cloud computing platform, which will eventually be fully rolled out alongside Windows 7, and will encompass Microsoft’s existing Live services, SQL services, and .NET services, among other things. If that’s got you excited, you can find plenty more details at the link below, and even a few SDKs ready for downloading.

[Via Pocket-lint]

Microsoft gets official with Windows Azure cloud OS, platform originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 27 Oct 2008 16:03:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Windows 7 details galore: interface tweaks, netbook builds, Media Center enhancements

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

Microsoft’s Windows 7 announcement earlier today was followed up by an extensive demo of the new features during the PDC keynote, and since then even more info about the new OS has flooded out, so we thought we’d try to wrap up some of the more important bits here for you. Microsoft seems to have done an impressive job at this early pre-beta stage, folding in next-gen interface ideas like multitouch into the same OS that apparently runs fine on a 1GHz netbook with 1GB of RAM, but we’ll see how development goes — there’s still a ways to go. Some notes:

• Obviously, the big news is the new taskbar, which forgoes text for icons and has new “jump lists” of app controls and options you can access with a right-click. You can select playlists in Media Player, for example. Super cool: when you scrub over the icons, all the other app windows go transparent so you can “peek” at the windows you’re pointing at.
• Gadgets now appear on the desktop — the sidebar has been killed. That makes more sense for all those laptop owners out there with limited screen space, and you can still see gadgets anytime by peeking at the desktop, rendering all other windows transparent.
• Window resizing and management now happens semi-automatically: dragging a window to the top of the screen maximizes it, pulling it down restores; dragging a window to the edges auto-resizes it to 50% for quick tiling. Nifty.
• The system tray now only displays what you explicitly say it should — everything else is hidden, and the controls have been streamlined.
• User Account Control settings are now much more fine-grained — you can set them by app and by level of access.
• They demoed multitouch features on an HP TouchSmart PC — it was pretty cool, although the usual nagging “what is this good for / that’ll get old fast” concerns weren’t really addressed. The Start menu gets 25 percent bigger when using touch to make it easier to handle, and apps will all get scroll support automatically. There’s also a giant on-screen predictive keyboard. Again — could be amazing, but we won’t know until it’s out in the wild.
• We’ve always known Microsoft intends Windows 7 to run on netbooks, and we got a small taste during the PDC keynote: Windows SVP Steve Sinofsky held up his “personal” laptop running Windows 7, an unnamed 1GHz netbook with 1GB of RAM that looked a lot like an Eee PC, and said that it still had about half its memory free after boot. (We’re guessing it was running a VIA Nano, since most Atoms run at 1.6GHz.)
• At the other end of the scale, Windows 7 supports machines with up to 256 CPUs.
• Multiple-monitor management is much-improved, as is setting up projectors — it’s a hotkey away. Remote Desktop now works with multiple monitors as well.
• Media Center has been tweaked as well — it looks a lot more like the Zune interface. There’s also a new Mini Guide when watching video, and a new Music Wall album artwork screensaver that kicks in when you’re playing music.
• Devs got a pre-beta today; a “pretty good” feature complete beta is due early next year. No word at all on when it’ll be released to market apart from that “three years from Vista” date we’ve known forever.

That’s just the good bits — hit the read links for piles of more info and screenshots, and we’ll keep our eyes out for anything else interesting. Exciting times!

Read - Keynote videos on the PDC site
Read - Technologizer Windows 7 hands-on
Read - Ars Technica Windows 7 interface walkthrough
Read - Laptop Windows 7 hands-on
Read - Windows 7 Media Center revealed

Windows 7 details galore: interface tweaks, netbook builds, Media Center enhancements originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 28 Oct 2008 13:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Samsung Manufacturing 256GB SSDs, Just Like They Promised [Ssds]

It was nearly six months ago when Samsung laid out their plan to manufacture an affordable, super-fast 256GB SSD by the end of the year. It sounded a little bit optimistic at the time, but as of today, they’re here. Sort of. Samsung says that manufacturing has begun, but still hasn’t let loose on the most important nugget: price. They have, however, elaborated a little bit on their claims of “disruptive” performance: the news SSDs will offer speed “analogous to having a 15,000rpm drive, without all of its size, noise, power and heating drawbacks.” They also claim to have decreased the read/write speed gap to about 10% and dropped power consumption to a slight 1.1w. This all sounds great, it’s cost that’ll win the SSD war. [Akihabara]

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Zune Pass Subscription Service Adds Ten Free Keeper Tracks a Month [Zune Pass]

Microsoft’s $15 Zune Pass subscription service—a pretty sweet deal already—has just porked up their offer by giving you 10 free songs that you can keep every month. We’ve talked about Zune Pass in our Zune reviews before, but it’s basically access to all of the Zune Marketplace for only the price of a CD a month. Since most of their catalog (90% or so, including all the majors and a few indie labels) is already in MP3 format, you can load these free songs on any kind of device you want, like your iPhone or Android phone or PS3 or Wii.

They’re also announcing the addition of Universal Music Group and Sony BMG to the MP3 DRM-less format (DRM-less as long as you buy the music), the last bits to complete their “majors” MP3 collection. We think the deal is hotness as long as you’re OK with the fact that you’re renting, not buying; well, you’re now “buying” those ten tracks a month, in essence. [Zune]

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Treehouse Restaurant Built Around Redwood Like Beautiful Fungus [Treehouses]

So modern treehouses aren’t new, but the designers of this project in New Zealand have crafted something that blends fantastically with its host redwood tree. The fungus or chrysalis-shaped building—take your aesthetic pick—will be a smallish restaurant built by, of all people, the NZ Yellow Pages. It’s currently under construction from laminated pine, plantation poplar and redwood thirty feet up a giant tree in a place north of Auckland. Getting there’ll be fun when it’s finished though: entry is via a 120-foot high treetop walkway. [Contemporist via Born Rich]

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