Entries tagged with music - Channel 10

MixViews and Genius Lists

Larry — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 17:04:00 GMT

No doubt you've heard that both Apple and Zune have come out with some new players and new client software. Both include some interesting features to help you find new music that you'll probably like using various methods of smart logic and social networking.

How do they work? What makes them different? What are the strengths and weaknesses of either? We'll let Katherine Boehret on Uncle Walt's blog give you a third party independent look at the two and what each are capable of.

Zune 3 News

sarahintampa — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 05:10:00 GMT

Beginning September 16th, Zune owners will be able to access the latest firmware update: Zune 3. This update will be available to all Zune devices...even all the way back to the original Zune! This unexpected (but seriously cool) feature is sure to please the Zune early adopter crowd. However, the real excitement for Zune owners involves what the Zune 3 update will offer: some amazing features you won’t find on any other mp3 player today.

Buy From FM

One of the new features of the Zune 3 firmware will let you wirelessly stream and download millions of songs on the go any time you’re in a Wi-Fi hotspot. This feature, called “Buy From FM” is designed to take advantage of the built-in FM tuner in the Zune. You’ll be able to tag and purchase songs you hear on FM radio and download them directly to your Zune. If you’re in a Wi-Fi hotspot, the download will be immediate. If Wi-Fi isn’t available, the songs will queue up to be downloaded the next time it is or the next time you connect your Zune to your PC.

Wi-Fi Store

You’ll also be able to connect to the Zune Marketplace music store whenever your Zune is in a Wi-Fi hotspot or on your home wireless network. On the device itself, you can browse through new releases, top songs, top albums, or type on an on-screen keyboard to type in the song of your choice.

Recommendations & Channels

Another feature included in the Zune 3 update is the new recommendation feature. Using the combination of recommendations from the Zune service, the online music community, and your own play data, you’ll be recommended personal suggestions as the Zune software learns what you like. You’ll see these recommendations in a new area of the Zune Marketplace called “Picks.”

Zune Pass subscribers can also discover new music through Channels. These Channels are created by experts in the music community. Here’s you’ll find channels like the Billboard Top 100, the FADER magazine channel, the KEXP radio channel, and even channels designed for listening to while you workout. You’ll also see personalized channels that are based on your favorite artists and genres. Zune owners who don’t have a Zune pass can purchase new Channels a la carte.

Zune Cards

For Zune Pass customers, the new firmware will also offer an updated way to use the Zune Card functionality. Zune Pass subscribers can share Zune Cards with each other wirelessly when on-the-go. All Zune owners will be able to share the Cards with friends when they’re on the web.

Cool Software!

Also included in the update are some new visual effects: Mixview and Now Playing. In Mixview, you can select an artist, album, or Zune Card and see a visual mosaic of related music and listeners. As you click on the mosaic, you’ll be taken in new directions, allowing you to discover music in a visually appealing way.

Image credit: Wired

The “Now Playing” view has also been improved to display artist imagery, colorful effects, artist bio info, and data from the Zune community in a full-screen view.

Games & Audiobooks

The firmware update will offer two free games - “Hexic” and “Texas Hold ‘Em.” It will also feature audiobook support from both Audible.com and OverDriver.com.

New Zunes

Of course, the Zune lineup is being expanded, too. The lineup will feature 16GB and 120GB Zunes and new blue-on-silver and all-black color schemes.

Here’s the pricing info:

120 GB: $249.99

80 GB: $229.99 (3)

16 GB: $199.00

8 GB: $149.99

4 GB: $129.99 (3)

CrowdFire: The First Crowdsourced Digital Concert Experience

sarahintampa — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 14:38:00 GMT

At the upcoming Outside Lands Music & Arts Festival that takes place in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco on August 22nd through 24th, concert goers will be able to participate in an online community where they can share photos, videos, and interact with each other via text message. Thanks to a number of CrowdFire kiosks that will be installed at the event, the participants will have easy access to content creation and social networking tools so they can upload media mashups in real time and have those creations displays on screens at the festival as well as on the CrowdFire website.

Microsoft is sponsoring the CrowdFire pavilion, which will feature next gen PCs, an Xbox 360 gaming contest area, a Zune-interactive area featuring songs from the performing artists, as well as many other things. Additionally, Windows Live Alerts will keep the participants up-to-date with news and info about Outside Lands and Windows Live Spaces will be set up to feature detailed info on the festivals artists.

You can check out the action online during the festival at www.crowdfire.net.

Deep Zooming with HardRock.com

Tina — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 16:10:00 GMT

Adam Kinney stops by the Channel 10 Studios and takes us through the HardRock.com memorabilia site. It's built with Silverlight and we've seem glimpses before but now we're bringing you the whole tour. Check out the finger prints of your favorite musicians, the tires on Bono's motorcycle and a letter from Madonna. Cool stuff people.

BBC Radio Plugin for Media Center

sarahintampa — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 13:05:00 GMT

For Brits, or anyone else who enjoys BBC radio, there’s now a new plugin for Vista Media Center that lets you listen to BBC Radio from within Media Center: BeebMC. This plugin is pretty cool, but there are a couple of downsides that you should be aware of: 1) it uses Real Player to do the streaming (so you need to have that installed in order to use it) and 2) it doesn’t work with extenders. Both of these problems have to do with the fact that the BBC streams their radio via Real Audio, an unfortunate choice on their part considering how many different options there are today. Still, if you’re interested in listening to the British perspective on things, this could be a fun way to do so using your Media Center PC. You can download the plugin from here.

(via We Got Served)

Animoto: An Automated Video Creation Tool

sarahintampa — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 14:20:00 GMT

Have you seen this? A web app called Animoto is announcing “the end of slideshows” thanks to their automatic video creation tool. You don’t have to create anything yourself – just point it to your media on the web (or upload from your PC) and Animoto’s Cinematic A.I. technology will create a completely customized video for you including a background track!

After you sign up for Animoto and start creating your first video, you’re promoted to either upload your photos from your computer or direct the app to use images you have stored on an online photo service like flickr, smugmug, Picasa, photobucket, or even Facebook! If you have your photos organized into albums, you can configure Animoto to retrieve the images just from one particular album.

You have to wait for a moment while the application retrieves your images. Ideally, for their 30-second video, you should have around 15 images – more than that, and some could be left off. If you want to make a longer video it’s only $3 – regardless of how many images are used.

For the music selection, you can upload a track from your PC or select one from their online collection, which lets you browse by genre (top 40, indie rock, hip hop, etc.) to find something appropriate. Note: though “Top 40” is a category, I’m either officially old or these are unsigned artists.

Finally, you’ll have your end product – a customized video created with their unique technology. Their app analyzes and combines the images and takes into account every detail about a song – genre, structure, energy, rhythm, instrumentation, and vocals. Every video created will have a distinct set of motion. The video can then be emailed to friends, posted to your social network profile, downloaded to your computer, uploaded to YouTube, embedded on your blog, and more.

Animoto isn’t a new service – they’ve been in the works since 2005 and started receiving a lot of blog coverage last year. However, I personally had not tried the site for myself until today, and now that I have, I have to say I’m highly impressed. The app was fast, slick, and dead-simple to use, and the end product looks great. Looks like I’ll be pimping my MySpace page this weekend!

One Big Deep Zoom Thing

sarahintampa — Tue, 13 May 2008 21:12:00 GMT

Jason recently posted a cool link on his Mr Mobile blog - it was a link to One Big Weekend which is Europe's biggest free music festival (What? A free music festival? That's awesome!) The festival, sponsored by BBC Radio 1, has a website going at http://bigweekend.external.bbc.co.uk, where they deployed Silverlight to take advantage of that awesome deep zooming technology to display photos from the event. As you click the navigational links on the left for the various days/times of the performances, the photo collage updates to include pictures from the acts that performed then. Check it out here.

Backstage at Hard Rock Cafe

Larry — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 15:43:00 GMT

The incredibly nice folks at Hard Rock gave us a chance to peek behind the scenes at their memorabilia warehouse. Wow, what an experience. With 700 guitars, racks of clothes, shelves of gold records, pianos, cannons, electric chairs, and statues -- it was an incredible sight. I start at the Hard Rock Cafe with Jeff Nolan, who wrote the text for the Hard Rock Memo site. From there we go to the Hard Rock corporate office, and then take a look at the memorabilia warehouse. Going through the warehouse on video would have taken hours, so I put up 100+ of my favorite photos, Part 1 here, Part 2 here.

While I was sitting with Patrick Colbert looking at the photo of Jimi Hendrix's black Gibson Les Paul in the video I mentioned that I've never seen Jimi Hendrix playing a Les Paul. Later they showed me a picture of Hendrix playing a black Les Paul along with a story about who borrowed it from him at Woodstock. Of course. Hard Rock is the Smithsonian of music history. :)

Silverlight Music/Video Streaming Service Launches

sarahintampa — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 10:18:00 GMT

Unicorn Media, a Silverlight-based music/video-streaming service, launched at this year's SXSW conference. The service gives artists a way to offer their music and video content for high-quality streaming while participating in ad-based revenue sharing. The media that Unicorn Media offers will only be pro-quality or near-pro quality -no fuzzy videos here.

The bands and video producers featured on the site will be contacted by the company in advance and will have to sign a distribution deal to be featured, but it's non-exclusive, so the artists can still put their content out on other services, like iTunes, or on their own site.

Artists using Unicorn can upload as many high-def files as they want and the videos they upload will have integrated advertising. Because the ads are built with Silverlight, the content producers can determine how many ads they want and where they should fall. Once online, Unicorn sends artists a monthly check based on traffic and CPM for the ads.

Right now, the site is streaming only, but downloads will be available soon.

MySong: Sing to Your Computer to Write Music

sarahintampa — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 09:09:00 GMT

Writing music used to take years of experience, but not anymore. With MySong, a Microsoft Research Project, you can sing into a microphone and the software will automatically generates instrumental accompaniment for your song. As you sing, MySong chooses chords to match your melody, so you can write musical compositions, even if you don't have formal musical training. The technology was created by Ian Simon from University of Washington in collaboration with Dan Morris and Summit Basu from Microsoft Research and it is still under development, so you can't play with it just yet. However, you can visit the MySong web site and watch a video of the software in action. (via istartedsomething)

Windows Music

sarahintampa — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 17:15:00 GMT

This is one of those things you just have to hear to believe: a YouTube user going by username of "SomethingUnreal" put together a mix of Windows sounds to actually make some pretty decent music. The sounds used were taken from Windows 98 and Windows XP and are mostly what I would call the annoying "blips and beeps" you hear when an error occurs or Windows is giving you some other type of feedback. But the music itself isn't annoying at all...it's kind of catchy. You can watch the video here. There's a high-quality version and an extended version of the song available for download from that link, too.

TTNetMuzik.com It's here, listen to it...

nuric — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 17:52:00 GMT

TTNet, the largest ISP of Turkey with 99.1% ADSL subscriber market share, launched its Music download and stream service with 80.000 Turkish songs. The service, offering Windows DRM’d songs and only in WMA format in cooperation with MU-YAP and also powered by MOSS 2007. Songwriters will receive a commission fee from every downloaded piece of art. Subscribers with the cheapest package will be able to download only 10 songs in a month while upper packages offer the right for 500 songs. Only in first day, before even announced, 23.000 songs were downloaded from the service. You, too, can search (using MOSS Search), find and listen to your favorite songs. Log on to the service using your TTMail account and start using it now: www.ttnetmuzik.com

TRULY small MP3 players at CES 2008

Laura — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 15:42:00 GMT

We took a poll and you voted- what you wanted to see from the 2008 CES show was small, tiny gadgets. So I found what I think is TRULY the smallest MP3 player at the event. The added bonus is, not only is it small enough to wear as a necklace charm but its easy to use, affordable, stylish and has great audio quality.

Zune Social at CES 2008

Laura — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 16:47:00 GMT

During the Bill Gates keynote, Robbie Bach announced the Zune launch in Canada* in Spring 2008. The Canadian offering this spring will first include Zune players (including Zune Originals), Zune software and Zune Social, with the Zune Marketplace online store coming later this year. He also showed off some pretty cool functionality between Zunes and Microsoft Auto software with the "Sync My Ride" demo (check back soon for my interview with that team).

But still, after all that Zune love I felt there might be a little bit more. In this clip I chat directly with the Zune team about the new features on Zune marketplace and how much emphasis is being placed on perfecting Zune Online as a social networking site.

Gibson Guitars at CES 2008

Laura — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 19:08:00 GMT

I got a chance to talk to Henry Juszkiewicz, CEO of Gibson Guitars who is hosting a very cool concert setup at CES with some great musicians like Kevin Costner (uh, yeah - that Kevin Costner) and Peter Frampton. Gibson was showing off their new Robot Guitar, which has auto-winding tuning pegs. You can push a button and go from a standard tuning to a drop D, or any other tuning in a few seconds. This means no locking nut on the headstock, but since it keeps itself in tune - who cares?

Gibson may be one of the oldest names in electric guitars, but they are also an innovator. They were the first to stick a 100Mb ethernet port on an electric. Rock on, Gibson!

"HALF THE PLANET" USES MOBILES

barzych — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 09:45:00 GMT

There are so many mobile phones in use nowadays that it would be enough for half of our planet's population.
The first mobiles appered 26 years ago. According to the latest survey there are 3.3 billion phones in use worldwide today. Of course, it doesn't necessarily mean that every second person on Earth owns a mobile phone. The reason is that it is common to have two or even more devices per person in almost 60 countries while there are no phones at all in some parts of the globe.
People don't use their phones for-calls-only anymore. Also devices with Windows Mobile system are becoming increasingly popular.
When I'd visited Redmond campus (Microsoft headquaters) I was lucky enough to be introduced to the musician who composes ringtones for these mobiles. Benjamin Bethurum is one of the coolest and most energetic people I've ever met. You could've come across his music also on the Czech radio station - Radio 1 few months ago. Benjamin is going to release a new CD soon and it is going to compete also in one of the Czech hitparades.

Enjoy Music & Media on Your Smartphone

sarahintampa — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 18:29:00 GMT

A recent post on LifeHacker mentioned a little program called MPlayer, which allows you to play nearly any media file (like RealAudio/Video, Ogg, & M4A) on your Windows Mobile 5 or 6 phone. However, the post mentioned the program was a rough port of a Linux version of the app, and was somewhat of a killer on processor (and thereby, battery) usage. However, a commenter mentioned another program called Conduits Pocket Player, which they liked better, so I thought it was worth checking out. The Conduits Pocket Player, although not free (it's $19.95), supports all Windows Mobile devices and offers a myriad of features. The Pocket Player supports MP3, WMA, WMV1 2, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, WAV, Protected WMA, u-Law, A-Law, AU, &ADPCM WAV formats. It also has a Media Browser menu system with touch scrolling & gesture support; a Media Library with ratings, an auto-imports up to 1000+ tracks; an internet radio web guide for finding mp3 blogs & podcasts; voicemail playback as WAV attachments which integrates with your inbox; a skinnable player with visualizations and album art support; a playlist manager; bookmarks; a sleep timer; and so much more! If you're looking to do more with your smartphone, this looks pretty cool!

RCRDLBL.com: Free tunes for your Zunes

Larry — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 23:03:00 GMT

Peter Rojas of Engadget and Gizmodo fame has started a new record label which goes by the clever name RCRDLBL.com. RCRDLBL is a big shift from your typical record label in that the music is free... yes, free. Instead of track sales, the bands are paid from advertising on the site. That might not get you gold rims and a dedicated episode of Cribs, but it's a good incubator for bands who want to be heard.

The music is licensed under Creative Commons - NonCommercial, so you can freely download it to your computer and/or any of your devices (Zune, cellphone, or one of those pod-things), you can even remix the music into something new, so long as you're not making any money off of it yourself in distribution. RSS feeds for the site and for each artist are available, as well as various web gadgets (Vista Sidebar gadgets coming soon, or you could use Amnesty on the existing ones.)

The Real Geek Story

nhodge — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 05:25:00 GMT

At Podcamp in Perth, there was this wild looking man. In his face you could see a million stories.

My initial chat started along the lines of knowing a little about a lot. You know those people: they once were the kings of Trivial Pursuit. Wikipedia now trumps all comers, and makes trivia trivial.

Ross Buncle surprised me. He had a real Geek Story. Way pre-dating and out-depthing my malarkey.

Have a listen.

Guitar Hero III: Pushing the game to the limit

Laura — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 21:52:00 GMT

I had to see it to believe it, and still then I wasn't quite sure. What I love most about wizards of technology and gaming is seeing how a passionate person really takes something and uses it in ways the average level user might not ever imagine. Thats what Alex did with Guitar Hero. Between the legs, behind the back, eyes closed, jumping, sliding- all while barely missing a note. It was a thing of beauty and I'm not going to lie, I got a little choked up.

Zune 2: An intimate conversation with the Zune team.

Laura — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 19:12:00 GMT

Blogs are buzzing with the news of the upcoming Zunes we'll soon have our hands on. But some questions still remain and the information just wasn't easily found on any sites. So, Channel 10 decided to head straight to the source. In this clip I have a sit down chat with Cesar Menendez from the Zune team and ask him all those questions that my friends and family wanted answered.

The Zune 2 Arrives

Larry — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 16:28:00 GMT

Yes, the Zune 2 is real. While Laura Foy makes her way over to Bear Creek to talk to Cesar from the Zune team, let me tell you a little more. There will be two models, a 80GB hard drive based one, and a slimmer Flash based version that comes in 4GB and 8GB sizes. You'll now be able to sync your Zune over the air rather than connecting it to a dock - very nice. I'm looking forward to the new Zune button, which is touch sensitive as well as directional. The new Zunes support lossless Windows Media Audio and have glass screens rather than plastic.

My favorite feature has to be the integration with Media Center, so your episodes of the Jetsons can now be dumped to your portable device for watching on the road. And the Zune Social is getting some legs, a new feature called the Zune Card will allow you to have a gadget that shows others what you're listening to on your Zune (remember the wireless feature) at any given time, they will even be able to click on this gadget to listen to the same song. There are future plans for including this on social networks.

And finally in a move that has made a lot of people very happy, the new software features for the new Zune will be available in a firmware patch for the old Zune.

Plenty more to read on TechMeme, and watch for Laura's interview with Cesar coming tomorrow.

Rock Band at PAX

Laura — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 17:57:00 GMT

For those of you out there who have yet to see Rock Band in action, this is for you. And even for those of you who have, well here's your opportunity to watch me make a fool of myself! And for those of you have already seen that...well that covers pretty much everybody. Anyway, watch this clip and then read more about ROCK BAND here.

Rock Band will allow gamers to perform music from the world’s biggest rock artists with their friends as a virtual band using drum, bass/lead guitar and microphone peripherals, in addition to offering deep online connectivity. Built on unprecedented deals with the world’s biggest record labels and music publishers, the music featured in Rock Band will span all genres of rock and include many of the master recordings from the biggest songs and artists of all time.

Live Earth Concerts on MSN

Laura — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 17:54:00 GMT

A history making audience of viewers from around the world united together at http://LiveEarth.MSN.com to experience the excitement of the Live Earth concerts and to confront the threat of global warming. Since the start of the first Live Earth concert in Australia, MSN has delivered more than 30 million live and on-demand video streams of the concerts. During MSN's exclusive live coverage, more than 8 million people watched over 15 million streams, with peak simultaneous viewership of 237,000 people, making it the most-watched entertainment event in online history.

Ultimate Ears: In Action

Laura — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 17:07:00 GMT

Ultimate Ears personal monitors brings you music the way it was meant to be heard. Used by musicians across the globe its unbelievable the superior sound quality that these tiny little devise can bring you. With so much technology packed into a tiny little punch I decided I had to see how it was done. Check out my visit to their lab to see the technicians in action, and then check out my first report on Ultimate Ears to learn more.