Toshiba showed a DVD player with advanced upconverting capabilities last week, following through on an idea mentioned by its CEO five months ago in the wake of HD DVD's demise.
Best Buy Express is the name of a program that will put CE retail kiosks in airports. If you're waiting for a plane, would you like to buy a digital camera? Cell phone? Flash drive? Music player? Headphones, speakers, gaming portables? Surely a travel adapter or charger!
If you live anywhere near the Wedge Gallery in Asheville, North Carolina, check out the paintings of Ruth Whiting. She's every nerd's dream--a painter who finds inspiration in cables! Says Whiting: "My work can be seen as a product of my fascination with the sublimely ordinary. For some time now I have set myself the task of revealing the beauty and heroism of mundane objects. I think of my paintings as lenses through which insignificant items, usually thought of as nothing more than functional, can assume the roles of heroes. My paintings do not attempt the illustrative role of myth, and yet there is a level upon which a giant orange extension cord that writhes through the nave of a quiet church demands a mythic justification. Thus, rather than propose a narrative, I attempt to create a situation that calls for an explanation. Electrical cords are like the connective tissue of our technological lives yet most of the time all we do is trip over them. This is a show dedicated to glorifying the dreams of extension cords." See showrooms here and here. This page includes clickable larger images. All oil on paper, the paintings are for sale at prices ranging from $130-500.
Recorded music is a cozy conspiracy between conventional speaker technology and listening expectations. Most speakers are made of cones and domes, so we’ve gotten used to their particular dispersion patterns and regard them as a normal part of music. The first experience of planar speakers, like BG’s Z-62, can come as a shock to the listener who’s never heard a planar tweeter before.
Four major labels dominate the recording industry and Sony BMG has been one of them. But until now, Sony has controlled only half of the company. The other half was owned by Germany's Bertelsmann, which brought the historic RCA Records catalogue to the party, among other things. Well, Sony is buying Bertelsmann's 50 percent stake in the company, giving it total control of what will now become known as Sony Music Entertainment.
Critics of the music industry often say we wish the major labels would quit bellyaching, forget the lawsuits, and just offer a better legal-download product. That's the best way to fight illegal downloads, and that's what the Universal Music Group is doing with its new Lost Tunes download service.
My boss Shane Buettner has been taking the heat recently for eliminating our product review rating system. In addition to the comments on his blog of last week, he's also been reading a torrent of opinion in the magazine's regular stream of reader mail. When Shane notes that he dropped the ratings with the "complete support of HT’s staff," that definitely includes me. I had been trying to persuade my editors to kill the ratings long before Shane took over.