Gearfuse

So, yeah, that big music service we were talking about earlier that Google was supposed to be launching? Turns out the truth of the the matter is slightly more anticlimactic than we had hoped. As it turns out, the Google Music service is actually going to be the One Box search engine, a search engine that will blend results from the likes of iLike and lala, allowing you to stream, sample and buy music directly from the search page.

So, are we looking at a Spotify killer? No. Could Google pull something like that off in the future? They’ve maintained on numerous occasions that their business is search, so that seems to be where they’re sticking for now.

While Spotify has taken the rest of the free world by storm, the U.S. remains without a solution for legally downloading or streaming music. According to several sources, Google is planning on launching a U.S.-bound music service, which might or might not be called Google Audio and might or might not be for downloading or streaming tunes or possibly both.

As you can tell the details are a little muddled, but according to TechCrunch, the launch of a Google Music service is imminent. Google has apparently secured deals with major music labels over the last several weeks to include their tunes in their new service. This might all be conjecture, but I can’t wait to see a working U.S. audio service.

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True audiophiles love everything about the art of music and the process of listening to it. They love to advertise their insane sound prowess, rather it be with snobby and ultra complex non sequiturs or t-shirts advertising their love for sound.

These Jack Plug Necklaces, available in 24-karat gold plating, would surely transmit some awesome audio, if they were made to do so. Instead, they are there just to show people how much you love the sound of a great song on a system which they could only dream of owning.

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About six months ago, I was reading up on music creation and the program Max/MSP, a graphical workflow environment for creating and manipulating audio and video. Very complex, but powerful stuff. The author of Max/MSP, Miller S. Puckette, later created a piece of similar, open-source software called Pure Data (pd). Pure Data is similar to Max/MSP except that it’s free for anyone to use and make stuff with.

In this post, we’ll go over what exactly I managed to do with PD. It involved using an M-Audio MIDI controller to manipulate videos in a real-time graphical environment. Sound too complicated or scary for you? It’s really not. C’mon, I’ll show you how it works.
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It’s no news that we’re Arduino nuts here at Gearfuse, but lately, we haven’t seen anything that has really pushed the boundaries of the popular microcontroller. Now some smarty pants named Martin has come along with a schematic that allows real-time audio processing with the Arduino. This means you can create guitar FX pedals, equalizers and a whole lot of digital instruments thanks to this setup. Says Martin:

The first set of examples alter an incoming audio signal and put it back to an audio output. We achieve effects like Reverb, Phasor, Flanger or Ringmodulator. The second set of examples are outputting computed waveforms like Sinewave, Bell and Xylophone sounds.

Think you can handle it, Mr. Programmer? Then get to it.

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OK, so take two parts awesome, one part iPod, add in a little bit of Bluetooth wireless connectivity and shake hard, very hard. The end result? The Miccus BluBridge for iPod. Just plug a small connector into your iPod and boom; you’re a streaming master, broadcasting tunes to any BluBridge audio setup. Did I mention the 330 foot range? That means you can chill with the chicks by the pool all whilst keeping the tunes blaring from your pocket. Very sweet.

At $59, you might as well plunk down another $129 and use the BluBridge mobile speaker. After all, your cousin borrowed $5000 last week for his latest “business endeavor” and you need to take a conference call with his investors. Thank goodness it doubles as a speakerphone for Bluetooth-enabled phones or we wouldn’t be here having this conversation. I’m serious. Way serious.

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It seems like only yesterday I was paying $20 dollars for every hot movie that hit store shelves in VHS format. Today, I can go into a store and buy three tapes for just a dollar. Whoever said that a dollar can’t buy you anything was full of shit. Ever since the creation of DVD, VHS has been on a steady decline. Now with the last major VHS supplier calling it quits, the final nail in the coffin of VHS has arrived.

“It’s dead, this is it, this is the last Christmas, without a doubt,” Distribution Video Audio co-owner Ryan Kugler told the L.A. Times. “I was the last one buying VHS and the last one selling it, and I’m done. Anything left in the warehouse we’ll just give away or throw away.”

Distribution Video Audio is now in the business of selling discount DVD displays for big-box retailers and its co-owner warns that in three or four years DVD will face the same fate as VHS. Looking to buy a movie for someone? Consider Blu-ray.

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I have to come clean for a minute. I haven’t purchased any Mac or PC software in well over three years. I’m a pirating machine and I’d like to think I do it very well. However, I recently got a demo of some software called MediaLink from Nullriver Software. It essentially links my Macs to my Playstation 3 out in the living room of my apartment. This allows me to stream all those pirated TV shows and movies to the big screen TV out in the other room. I can also stream all my iPhoto photos and iTunes music as well. Think of it as a godsend.

Well after using the demo, I said “Fuck it.” and plunked down the $20 for MediaLink. It feels nice to support a company making a utility that is indispensable to me. My roommates and I have been ghetto-hacking our TV for months, trying to get out movies and such to stream or playback. Now my PS3 does everything I’ve ever wanted: Next-gen gaming, Blu-ray playback, classic gaming, streaming audio, video and photos and Internet browsing.

If you have a Playstation 3, I highly recommend checking out MediaLink. You won’t regret it. Nullriver also makes a piece of software for the Xbox 360 called Connect360 that does the same sort of thing.

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It’d be super nice if we could all afford a $277,000 Ferrari Scuderia Spider 16M, but alas, the world is completely unfair. It’s unfair because despite Ferrari offering up a limited run of 499 of these Spiders, its new iPod Touch dock will cost extra.

The 16GB Touch will feature custom Ferrari sounds and themes, as it’s the usual practice of a luxury auto manufacturer to include cheesy gimmicks on a phone or DAP when purchasing a car. If you can actually afford one of these slick new Ferraris, be sure to let us know how that dock is working out. You know, the one you paid extra for.

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The boys over at iLounge have compiled an excellent list of iPhone apps that can be used to create music. Everything from piano to beats to guitar sounds can be had in the palm of your hand thanks to Apple’s magnificent phone. One particular piece of software, BeatMaker, looks incredibly complex and robust. Chances are you can really get some creative juices flowing with this app. Just make sure you use headphones, as we’d like to keep our hearing this time around.

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