Joel Johnson

Optimus Prime USB Speakers are more than meets the ears

If the horrendous Michael Bay movies haven't already sullied your love of Original Flavor™ Transformers, you'll be able to plop this Optimus Prime head that conceals USB speakers in its flapping ears for $50 in July. Except it's July right now, so I guess they mean more July than now. [via Coolest-Gadgets]

Rob Beschizza

"No excess on the outside" for Sony's $1,000 iPod Dock

The $1,000 Z200iR is a 20W iPod dock with a stunning remote control itself larger than the iPod. Interesting, however, is the fact that the control is DLNA-certified, meaning it's designed to work with other equipment, such as media servers, desktop computers and so on. Home slaughtermation! [Sony Press Center via Engadget]

Rob Beschizza

Sony X-Series Walkman available

Sony's OLED walkman is now on sale. If you have so far avoided Apple's portable ecosystem, this is the last best reason to stay that way. [SonyStyle via Engadget. Pic from Akihabara News]

Joel Johnson

Portable Radio

Xeni Jardin

Hess is More: music video shot with bad-ass body-mounted cam

Boing Boing Video today debuts a new music video: "Ssshhhh," by Hess is More, from the new album "Hits," produced and directed by m ss ng peces. "Playful techno" artist Mikkel Hess hails from Denmark, and currently calls New York City his home -- and that's where these guys shot this quirky, colorful video, using some interesting camera gear.

Ari Kuschnir, Producer and co-founder of m ss ng peces, on the shoot:

"Ssshhhhh" is such an intense, infectious beat -- we wanted the video to complement the arc of the track. I've been a big fan of HESS since 2006, and we've collaborated on a number of projects. Knowing that the single and album were his official US debut, we wanted to show HESS running through new york and training to earn his 'spot' in the US charts.

We chose to shoot at 59.97fps on the Panasonic HPX-170 to give it a crisp 'video' look. The Bodymount (by Doggicam) we attached to HESS for a number of scenes was brought in to match the energy and tempo of Shhhh.

The first time i heard "Shhhhhh," I was experiementing with a resistance work out using large rubber bands. I imagined HESS using the same workout, training his arms to be a great drummer. The music video format is a lot of fun to play with. Right now, we're putting the finishing touches on our next music video for DFA Records' outstanding new band Free Energy.

NYC folks: Don't miss Hess is More's upcoming live shows in Brooklyn at Coco66 and the Sycamore. Details here.

Below, another use of the body-mounted camera chosen to create the unique look and sense of motion in this video. - XJ

Xeni Jardin

BB Video: Day in the Cloud - Google + Virgin America + Boing Boing + netbooks + mile-high networked fragging

(Download MP4 / YouTube)

Google Apps and Virgin America are teaming up for a day of cloud computing in the clouds: "Day in the Cloud," Wednesday, June 24.

Boing Boing will be on board -- me (Xeni), Rob Beschizza from Boing Boing Gadgets, and our friend Jane McGonigal, of Avantgame and Institute for the Future.

In this Boing Boing Video episode, I speak with Porter Gale of Virgin America, and Jen Mazzon, a "digital mom" from Google, about the in-flight game smackdown planned (one plane competes against the other to win a litter of brand-new netbooks), and about how always-connected data experience could change our lives.

Folks at home are also invited to play:

All you'll need is a net connection, a Google Account, and the warm, comforting glow of your computer screen. Become one of the top scorers and we'll set you up with your own personal "Year in the Cloud," complete with a brand-new HP netbook and 1 terabyte of Google Account storage for your photos and mail--all of which will come in handy when you fly free for a year on Virgin America with complimentary WiFi.

Virgin produced a short, funny promotional video for Day in the Cloud which is also worth a watch, below.

Sponsor shout-out

Rob Beschizza

Wood iPod Mini

Rob Beschizza

Timbaland finally sued over chiptune plagiarism

Finnish music label Kernel Records is suing Timbaland and Nelly Furtado. In 2006, Timbaland infamously sampled most of Janne Suni's Acidjazzed Evening, and overlaid it with new instrumentation and lyrics to create Furtado's Do It. From MusicRadar:

In the lawsuit, filed in Miami-Dade Division of the US District Court Southern District of Florida on 11 June, Kernel Records Oy alleges that Do It was recorded using the "original and central identifying melodic, harmonic and rhythmic components" of the song Acidjazzed Evening, which the Finnish label Kernel Records acquired in 2007.

Most examples of alleged plagiarism involve a bar or three of copied notes: the Timbaland-produced track appears to be a copy of Suni's, garnished with a quantum of additions and Furtado's vocals. YouTube videos demonstrated the lift, splicing the two tracks together and comparing sections side by side.

Accused, Timbaland mocked and the original, claiming that it "was from a video game, idiot." Timbaland's studio, however, contained a SIDStation, a machine designed to play music made with old computers, suggesting he's not so naive of the chiptune scene. He may also come to regret his odd explanation of why sampling an entire song is O.K, even without licensing it:

"Sample and stole is two different things. Stole is like I walked in your house, watched you make it, stole your protools, went to my house and told Nelly, 'Hey, I got a great song for you.' Sample is like you heard it somewhere, and you just sampled. Maybe you didn't know who it was by because it don't have the credits listed."

Xeni Jardin

Tibetan Exile Group Seeks Your Used Audio Recording Gear

At left, a photo I shot of Phuntsok Dorjee with a fellow volunteer, setting up a wireless network relay point inside a tribal family's barn on the top of a mountain at the southern edge of the Himalayas. Goats and routers, under the same roof, not far from the Tibetan Government in Exile's home of Dharamsala, India.

Phuntsok says,

"We have 10 students in the radio team but have only 2 Sony IC voice recorders. A friend of the organization will be in San Francisco sometime in early July on his way to India and he can bring for us the voice recorder if we manage to get some."

Got any used voice recorders, or related gear you're not using? Email him at: phuntsok at tcv.org.in. These are good folks, doing innovative work without a lot of resources.

Related: A Wireless Network for 'Little Lhasa' (Xeni on NPR)

Rob Beschizza

Stump Speaker

It looks so natural.

Product Page [Smarthome via Red Ferret]

Joel Johnson

Radio Valerie

Lisa Katayama

Review: Plantronics Discovery 925 bluetooth headset in Heidi Klum Gold

It's funny how the right celebrity can make a product suddenly seem more sexy. I'm not 5'9" with hazel eyes, but Heidi Klum is, and we both use the same bluetooth headset: the Plantronics Discovery 925 in glittery gold. It's actually a great piece of equipment &mdash it's lightweight, the battery lasts forever, and it's simple v-shaped design is easy to stick in and out of the ear. It also comes with a really pretty rectangular gold case that doubles as a charging station. $150 might sound like a bit much for an earpiece, but it's nothing compared to what you'd have to pay to replicate the rest of Heidi's outfit, even if she's just hanging out a white sweatsuit.

Product page [Plantronics]

This post is part of a theme day: BBG on Fashion

Rob Beschizza

Randy Sarafan's Simple Sequencer

Randy Sarafan writes:

One of the keys to making good music is mindless repetition. That is what the simple sequencer is great at. It does the same thing over and over again in an eight note sequence. You can adjust the frequency of the note, the duration of the note and the pause between notes. If you get really good, you can anticipate the next note and change things up on the fly. This little box is sure to provide endless hours of fun.

Build one yourself with the instructions. [via Make]

Rob Beschizza

The Story Drawer

The Story Drawer is an MP3 player with a difference: when you put an item inside it, it detects its presence with RFID and tells a story. Inventor Matthew Simpson:

Story Drawer has been designed as a counter to the current culture of products with heavy emphasis on the technology. I believe interactions with products should be more evocative and less convoluted. Story Drawer reflects this by combining refreshingly eloquent function with clean and refined aesthetics.

Check out the flickr gallery charting its development.

Joel Johnson

The Kindle Boondoggle

Eldritch Weaselsnake:

So, when the Kindle store was first introduced, the prices were a breath of fresh air: finally some reality in ebook pricing. In-print hardbacks were never more than $10.00. Paperbacks were deeply discounted from list price (30 to 60 percent or so). But since I've bought my Kindle, I've been dismayed to see the price rise steadily. Current hardbacks probably average $16 to $21 dollars, often more than the price Amazon sells the physical copy for. Paperbacks, the majority of books I'm interested in buying, have seen an even more extreme and nonsensical increase in price: the Kindle price is almost always more than the physical list price. Let me repeat that: MORE than the list price.

Joel Johnson

Number-two MP3 player maker declares, "You can't out-iPod the iPod"

Fortune:

So is SanDisk sitting pretty? Not really. While Harari's flash evangelism has yielded some impressive results, it hasn't addressed his main challenge: SanDisk's core flash memory business is dizzyingly volatile. Because so many companies manufacture flash storage chips, and because the fast-evolving technology has a brief shelf life, the flash market lately has suffered gut-wrenching price swings and whipsawed SanDisk's stock price in its wake.

Xeni Jardin

BB Video: "Olé Cordobes," a 1966 Scopitone (via Oddball Film + Video)

(Download MP4 / Watch on YouTube)

Today's episode of Boing Boing Video, via Oddball Film + Video, is a 1966 Scopitone that tells the romantic tale of a Spanish bullfighter, with help from an Amy Winehouse lookalike and mustachioed Flamenco dudes bearing overwrought facial expressions. The song is "Olé Cordobes," the credited artist is Miguel Cordoba.

Wait -- what's a Scopitone, you ask? Well, basically -- 1960s video jukeboxes. As Pesco blogged earlier this year on Boing Boing, "Scopitones and Cineboxes were first introduced in Europe in 1959-1960 and came to the US a few years later. The coin-operated machines were quite popular but were swept into the dustbin of dead media by the 1970s."

More required reading, if you're interested in the history of these primordial music video jukeboxen:

* Scopitone Archive
* Wikipedia entry
* NPR: Rise and Fall of the Scopitone Jukebox
* Scopitone of the Day

The video comes to us as a special courtesy of Oddball Film + Video, a San Francisco stock footage company that maintains a truly amazing and extensive archive of weird old moving images. They do regular screenings in San Francisco. BB Video will be bringing you more from their superbly surreal collections in the weeks to come.

Where to Find Boing Boing Video: RSS feed for new episodes here, , subscribe on iTunes here. Get Twitter updates every time there's a new ep by following @boingboingvideo, and here are blog post archives for Boing Boing Video.

(Thanks to Boing Boing's video hosting partner Episodic, and to Robert Chehoski and Stephen Parr of Oddball Film + Video)

Rob Beschizza

Ohm64, the open-source music mixer

Create Digital Music explains why you want this instead of an Akai APC40: free software, custom Midi assignments, and more buttons and knobs and things to twiddle. It even runs on USB power alone. Not sure about those pads, though.

Rob Beschizza

Palm Pre could masquerade as iPod to work with iTunes

John Gruber writes that if the Palm Pre's iTunes compatibility is achieved by circumventing Apple's hardware lockouts, it would be "unbecoming" and "duplicitous."

Hardly, unless you're prepared to accept the recasting of shaky legal doctrines--the Digital Millenium Copyright Act's anti-circumvention provisions--as moral principles. Remember the attempts of Lexmark and Chamberlain to prevent generic printer ink and garage door openers? They believed that the DMCA meant that competitors couldn't defeat hardware locks to make products compatible with their own. It's a legal artifice, and in those cases, even the courts didn't buy it.

So why should you? Why shouldn't Palm circumvent Apple's consumer-restricting locks, if it can? This isn't DRM hacking, such as Real attempted a few years ago: it is merely the Palm Pre convincing iTunes that it's an approved device. Palm says it will work only to sync DRM-free music.

Gruber thinks Palm "could be faced with the public perception that they've stolen Apple's IP." But the "Intellectual Property" at hand is just an arbitrary mechanism contrived to prevent the bleeding obvious: copying files from one computer to another. Describing such mechanisms as "property" in the first place is why most people shouldn't trust the relevant portions of the DMCA: they're there to limit what you can do with the products you buy.

Rob Beschizza

New Belkin TuneBase answers iPhone calls in-car

Available later this simmer, Belkin's new TuneBase FM ($90) and TuneBase Direct ($70) let the user "pick up a call on your iPhone while in the car, hands-free, and also play your music through the car stereo." [Belkin]

Joel Johnson

Official: Last.fm not coming to Zune

Despite both Zune and last.fm now sharing space on the Xbox, a Microsoft spokesperson has confirmed to BBG that last.fm will not be coming to the Zune platform.

Rob Beschizza

ThumbTacks Microphone for iPod Nano

Yes. For real. [via RGS]

Joel Johnson

Video: Spotify music app for Android

Eliot Van Buskirk: "If I were Steve Jobs, the video...would scare me senseless."

Spotify is a streaming music service that also now allows caching on supported mobile devices. It is currently limited to Finland, France, Norway, Sweden, Spain, and the UK, due to licensing issues.

Every song ever instantly available for free. It's getting awful close.

Joel Johnson

8 Questions (and answers) about the Zune HD

⌦ Why announce now, when you're not releasing the Zune HD until the fall? –"Honestly, the disclosure timeline was shook up a little bit," says Brian Seitz, Marketing Manager of Zune. "We've been weathering a round of rumors over the last couple of months. In my job particularly it's painful to not be able to talk to our customer."

Seitz says Microsoft is building the final firmware, so features are not yet set in stone. But with a full reveal of many of the Zune HD's video marketplace features and their integration with Xbox Live at E3 next week, it seemed like the time was right.

⌦ Why would someone care about HD Radio? – Besides higher quality audio, it's all about subchannels. "A country station could have a subchannel of bluegrass or new country," says Seitz. One of Seitz's local NPR affiliates switches to BBC broadcasting at 8PM—but runs the full BBC Radio stream on a subchannel 24x7.

⌦ Can you record HD Radio to the Zune HD to listen to later? – Nope, but you can "tag" songs for later purchase, similar to how it works with the current Zune's FM radio, although more consistent artist and song data from HD Radio stations make it more accurate than before.

⌦ How about that HD video output? – You can do it, but it'll take a "dock" that Microsoft is manufacturing. (Nothing that Seitz said implied there couldn't just be a simple cable, too, unless there is some sort of heavy-duty scaler in the dock itself.)

⌦ Will there be Flash support in the web browser? – Despite rumors to the contrary, Flash support is "still being worked out." The Zune HD's web browser may not ship with Flash support at all.

⌦ How much storage does the Zune HD have? And will there be more capacious hard drive variants? – The Zune HD will be flash memory-based, but Microsoft hasn't announced capacities yet. (I'd be shocked if it's under 32GB.) There aren't any plans for hard drive-based Zune HDs, nor should we expect any other touchscreen Zune devices before the end of the year. "This will definitely be our hero device for the next cycle."

⌦ Will there be games? – "We know that people like games on the go," and it sounds likely that a few casual, one-off games might be available on the Zune HD as are already available on older Zune. But there could be something more in the future: "There's definitely discussions happening. We would not be very smart if we weren't exploring those opportunities."

⌦ So what's this about Zune on the Xbox, then? – It's not games—it's video. "We're taking over the existing Xbox Live Video Marketplace. That will turn into Zune. And we're not just taking it over, but we're adding new features." What those features will be will have to wait until Microsoft's E3 keynote. Portable Netflix, perhaps?

Joel Johnson

If the Zune HD isn't a portable Xbox I will slap Robbie Bach in the teeth

Microsoft hasn't put the Zune out to pasture yet, announcing yesterday the upcoming availability of what is known, for the moment, as the "Zune HD". As far as portable media players go, it's a contender: a bright OLED screen, HD video output to larger screens, and most importantly, a multitouch interface with a version of the Internet Explorer web browser that can handle Flash.

The company will also be moving the Zune video library service to Xbox, finally wedding the two services that are already under the same corporate banner.

I suspect that also means the Zune HD will be Microsoft's foray into mobile gaming, first with casual 2D games from the likes of PopCap and other vendors that already provide downloadable games through the Xbox, as well as original titles designed to work specifically on the mobile device.

It would make sense, at least. Ever since Microsoft first dipped its toe into the gaming waters, many have wondered when the company would also try its hand at portable gaming. While idle speculation (including my own) isn't worth the phosphors it's written on, seeing the two biggest home entertainment brands that Microsoft owns (besides what it is arguably its biggest entertainment brand, Windows) being knit together certainly allows for the possibility. And it would be so dumb for Microsoft to let another market slip through its fingers.

Even without a do-all device like a Zune Phone to go up against the iPhone platform, the Zune HD could be a useful adjunct to those already heavily plugged into the Xbox. While I would prefer to see the full force of Microsoft's hardware and software development unified behind a single mobile platform, the millions of Xbox gamers provide Microsoft with at least a few million potential customers—a rare few who have had a generally positive experience with a Microsoft platform.

⌦ Would Microsoft make a handheld gaming system without a phone?

Joel Johnson

Rumor: Nano next iPod to get a camera?

According to iLounge: Yes. That'll mix things up a bit!

Joel Johnson

Eggshell Speakers

Joel Johnson

Why is in-car Bluetooth and iPod/audio support still a "premium"?

In his review of the Hyundai Genesis Coupe, Bill Howard makes a good point about in-car Bluetooth and iPod hookups:

Even if you don't buy one, raise a glass to toast Hyundai for forcing all the automakers to understand Bluetooth and a music adapter should be on every car. (Once an automaker turns it into an option, the connector costs more than your iPod or cellphone.) I had no problem hooking a couple phones to the car via Bluetooth, and connections were equally idiot-proof for an iPod, a music key, and a hard drive holding music. Unlike Ford's Sync, which uses the stupid term "user device," when you hook up an iPod, the display says "iPod." Hyundai makes it easier to see your music options because every car gets an in-dash LCD, even if it's monochrome on cars without navigation systems. That said, other automakers do a better job presenting the information on an LCD display.

Rob Beschizza

Von Slatt designs guitar amp

Nathan's New Amp [Steampunk Workshop via Make]

Joel Johnson

Howto make low-inductance speaker cables

DIY Audio Projects writes a DIY speaker cable project::

The cables use multiple stands of 16 AWG wire that is twisted together in alternating directions. The alternating cable geometry minimizes inductance. The multiple 16 AWG wires combine to create a cable with an equivalent cable gauge of 10, so resistance is also low. The result is a fine looking cable that delivers the performance of commercial cables at a fraction of the cost.