Audio Video News

This past week Harman International quietly released a public beta of How to Listen, a freeware application used in-house at Harman as part of a listening course for train staffers in product research, development, and testing.

Both Showtime and Starz have announced that they will withhold shows from Netflix.

"Now," says Bill Carr, Amazon's veep for movies and music, "whether at work, home, or on the go, customers can buy music from Amazon MP3, store it in the cloud and play it anywhere."

That doesn't mean Best Buy is giving up on its brick-and-mortar stores, which allow consumers such niceties as salespeople and the ability to pick up items purchased online. But the store is reconsidering its square-footage requirements and "redefining the optimal big-box store size," CEO Brian Dunn said in a phone conference with analysts.

Back in NYC - after 9 days and nights of SXSW Music, Film, and Interactive in Austin, Texas - I finally have time to mull over the 21 acts I managed to see during the music portion of the festival.

That perfect 21 might suggest that I had a lucky hand at SXSW this year. But as is the case every year, I heard much that was good and some that was . . . not.

Since it appeared in the seventeenth century, the guitar has been a work of visual art in its own right, as well as a powerful influence on artists in other media.