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Aviary launches free online loop creator
Creating digital audio has long been one of the best arguments for using locally installed software rather than a cloud service, but that's beginning to change. The latest entrant, launched Thursday, is a program called Roc, which lets you create simple 8-beat loops from a library of hundreds of sounds, all without leaving your Web browser.
Roc is the latest creation from Aviary, which offers a free set of Flash-based online applications for creating and editing content. Most of Aviary's tools are for graphics, but in September it launched the Myna audio editor, which lets you record and … Read more
Buzz Out Loud 1247: Inside the Coke Zero and Mentos rocket car (podcast)
On today's show, size matters. You're going to hear that a lot. So, apologies in advance. Also, we have a great interview at the top of the show with Stephen Volz and Fritz Grobe, otherwise known as the Coke and Mentos guys. They've got a rocket car, a Coke Zero contract, and a dream. Also, Goatse wants to clear up some things, Mortal Kombat is back, and once again? Size matters.
Subscribe: iTunes (MP3) | iTunes (320x180) | iTunes (640x360) | RSS (MP3) | RSS (320x180) | RSS (640x360)… Read moreRock Band 3 gets its keytar
Thanks to a Green Day Rock Band tease, this was one of the least-kept secrets leading up to E3, but nevertheless, here's the visual proof: Rock Band 3 is getting itself a keytar. We felt certain enough to make it one of our "lock" predictions at this year's E3. Well, check that off the list.
EA/MTV/Harmonix's franchise already has 2,000-plus songs, a variety of discs, and a band full of instruments including guitars, bass, three-part microphone harmony, and drums. The newest game will have 83 songs from 83 bands and support for … Read more
Ralink squeezes dual-band Wi-Fi, Bluetooth in one chip
Wi-Fi (or WLAN) and Bluetooth have been the most popular technologies to connect devices, especially portable ones. Generally, to support these two, your device needs to have two separate chips, one for each.
Ralink, a Taiwanese network chipmaker, however, announced on Tuesday a new chip, model RT3592BC8, that can handle both at the same time. The company claims this is the first chip that's capable of simultaneous dual-band wireless-N and Bluetooth 3.0+HS operation.
The chip comes in the half MiniCard design and can be used in desktops, notebooks, Netbooks, and other mobile devices. It is slated to … Read more
Update: Apple seeds latest developer build of Mac OS X 10.6.4, no known issues
Apple has seeded the latest developer build of Mac OS X 10.6.4 to developers. The build, version 10F54, is reported to have no known issues.… Read more
Securemart.com has the Netgear RangeMax WNDR3700 Dual Band Wireless-N Gigabit Router for $139.45, after $76.55 savings.
Indaba updates online-recording app
Last year, Indaba Music became the first company to offer a full-fledged digital-audio workstation in the cloud. This is a pretty remarkable piece of programming: digital-audio workstations like ProTools and Cubase are the tools of the trade for professional recording, and free equivalents like Audacity and Apple's Garage Band offer beginners a simple way to get acquainted with the basic ideas of multitrack recording. But all of these programs run locally and rely on local computing resources, including storage.
Indaba takes the whole concept and moves it online, letting you record and manipulate files from a Java application in … Read more
Engineer breaks Rock Band 2 world record
I happen to have become somewhat familiar with the campus at the University of Texas. It's a long and somewhat unbelievable story of how that came to pass, but it involves business, pleasure, and dinner at a restaurant called Vespaio.
I have, therefore, several times enjoyed the rather intimate rooms at the Mansion at Judges Hill, just on the campus outskirts. From my window, I have seen and heard drunken, hairy people, all dressed in brown, offering their most interesting and harmonious proclamations about the state of Texas, the world and their personal future, as they returned to their … Read more
Get your unsigned band onto Slacker Radio
Slacker Radio, the personalized radio service that's available as an app for the iPhone and other mobile platforms, announced that it will let unsigned bands create their own dedicated radio stations on the service.
The mechanics are handled through a partnership with Hello Music: artists create a profile with their name, picture, and bio, then upload a few of their tunes. (Hello Music allows a wide variety of compressed and uncompressed formats.) Hello Music will screen the songs for potential copyright issues--no Zeppelin recordings, please--and recording quality, and submit the necessary information to Slacker. Then Slacker will create a … Read more
