New Florence. New Renaissance.

RIP, Dr. Amar Bose

Of course, the entire audio industry was roiled when the MP3 player came on the scene. But even then, Bose managed to put itself in just the right place. Indeed, the circumstances would almost uniquely benefit the company: In the absence of physical media (LP, cassette, CD), digital music didn’t require the complicated hardware that earlier formats did. That would spell trouble for phonograph and cassette-deck makers, but Bose wasn’t in those product lines—it just made speakers, and in the era of the iPod (AAPL), speakers were basically the only thing that mattered. Bose’s SoundDock became the fancy iPod (and, later, iPhone) dock for that key market of discerning-but-not-obsessive-to-an-antisocial-degree customers.

Bloomberg

Daft Punk

Time (sub required) on the band which has a new album Random Access Memories

"We never actually made music with computers," says one-half of Daft Punk, Thomas Bangalter, on the phone from their Daft Arts compound in L.A. This is surprising given the digital sheen that glistens over so much of their music. But he and his partner Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo made Homework in an "experimental lab, with wires everywhere," also known as Bangalter's childhood bedroom in Paris. "We used hardware and analog equipment that behaved in weird ways"--i.e., temperamental, largely Japanese machines attempting to mimic drums and bass guitars and failing into the future. Homework attracted attention from budding-genius directors like Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation) and Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind). The resulting videos embodied Daft Punk's synthesis of rigid structure and loose-limbed whimsy, featuring skeletons dancing on Q*bert platforms, tomato-sauce tutorials and lovelorn bloodhounds.

A music tuner app

It’s not necessarily the first tuner to incorporate visualization, but Sandler thinks (Tunable) has a good chance of being the first one musicians will find useful from the moment they open it. In addition to the pitch history, Tunable also includes a tone generator and a metronome--a fairly sophisticated little kit of tools--but there’s practically zero learning curve for figuring them all out. Much of that is owed to the app’s simple, sharp UI, which draws from an unlikely source of inspiration: an old Ideo concept for futuristic digital books.

FastCompany

Home theater with small room and budget

A 12x18 room, and a budget of $13,000 including installation and theater seats...from Electronic House

Dohman suggested a suit of Jamo D600 speakers mounted on the front wall with additional Jamo surrounds on the sides. Powering the speakers is a Pioneer Elite SC-61 7.1 receiver which offers 125 watts per channel. Because the receiver features both AirPlay and Bluetooth, the users have no trouble connecting their smartphones for music listening. A cable DVR and Sony Blu-ray player feed video into the room. All the components are housed on a component rack in the back of the room. The 12-foot wide wall is mostly taken up with a 112-inch 16:9 Severtson screen that gets lit up by a JVC DLA-X35 projector

Cool Valentine Tech Gifts

Consumer Reports recommends

Nikon Coolpix S100, $230

Roku 2 XS, $100

Nokia Lumia 920, $100

Apple iPad Mini (Wi-Fi, 16 GB), $330

iLuv iHP613 Sweet Cotton, $20 (photo below)

Next-gen Karaoke

From a Smart Planet interview with Tod Machover, composer and inventor

“About 15 years ago, I did a project called The Brain Opera. I’d been thinking a lot about the fact that there was music around all the time, either in your iPhone or Walkman headphones or on the elevator or in outdoor public spaces. I was really concerned about the fact that music was always playing as a background but nobody was really listening and actively participating. I made this Brain Opera as a way to say to people, “If you love music, you’ll love it even more if you touch it and make it yourself.” We made an orchestra of about 100 instruments designed so anyone from the general public could walk in from the street and play them without any instruction. That work led directly to Rock Band and Guitar Hero. It turned out to be all the basic software for those games.”

“I have a 15-year-old daughter, and she’s very musical. When a new song will come out by Lady Gaga or Björk or an orchestra or whoever, she and her friends will send it around and start making their own covers of it almost immediately. Then that’s what will get sent around. Then people will make variations of that. It’s sort of an homage to the original piece, but what kids are listening to most of the time now is not the original song at all. There may be a thousand versions out there. That’s how you share the sounds that are in the culture. The idea that people are only listening passively has actually broken down quite a bit. People are in there making things.”

Technology at the Grammys

I caught a bit of the Grammys last night. Loved Mumford & Sons. Bunch of tech at the show.

For the first time in the history of the Awards, a videogame soundtrack had been nominated – Austin Wintory’s Journey for Best Score Soundtrack For Visual Media category

Carrie Underwood’s dress changed patterns every few seconds

The Theia couture platinum ball gown, which was created by four people in 80 hours, features 10 yards of satin along with 100 yards of tulle and crinoline to support the skirt. The inside corset is hand-embroidered with thousands of Swarovski crystals, and the 4 1/2-foot-wide skirt was designed to seamlessly fuse fashion with projection technology.

FF to 3.20 to see the various patterns

 

Justin Timberlake made his return to live performances, and his  number was broadcast in retro sepia tones

One Man Orchestra

Jazz guitar legend Pat Metheny set out to create the ultimate electronic one-man-band performance when he recorded his 2010 Orchestrion album. Now, a 3-D concert of the album, The Orchestrion Project, opens in a handful of theaters on Wednesday, and comes to DVD on Tuesday.

In it, the 19-time Grammy winner uses his guitar to power a player-piano type orchestra of bottles, drums, vibraphones and other instruments.

USA Today

Sony’s alternate reality without Apple

Those were the glory days for Sony  - the Betamax, Walkman, Playstation success with no pesky Apple to worry about. Well, it is nice to own a movie studio and again create a world where Apple does not matter.

BusinessWeek

“Sony’s marketing blitz for The Amazing Spider-Man began even before the film hit theaters. Last month, Sony ran a television commercial featuring the superhero to promote the Xperia ion, a new smartphone available on AT&T’s (T) network. In the Spidey movie, the Sony product placements are ubiquitous. When Spider-Man ties up a thug and hangs him from an overpass, for example, a spectator records video with an Xperia phone. When two students watch an online video of Spider-Man’s antics, they do so using a Sony Tablet S. Even the film’s villain, played by Rhys Ifans, uses a Sony Vaio laptop connected to a Sony monitor in his underground laboratory (in photo below), while recording his experiments with a Sony Handycam camcorder.”