Technology News

RIP: Cassette Tapes Obituary

Source: Michael Ricci
July 30, 2008

Say So Long to an Old Companion: Cassette Tapes

There was a funeral the other day in the Midtown offices of Hachette, the book publisher, to mourn the passing of what it called a “dear friend." Nobody had actually died, except for a piece of technology, the cassette tape. The cassette will grow even rarer now that audio book publishers are dropping them.

Hachette's audio department recently held a “funeral" for cassette tapes. While the cassette was dumped long ago ...

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Mics Meet USB--the Universal Studio Bus

Source: All About Jazz
July 30, 2008

Not only have USB Mics come of age--so has the USB Bus

What's that? USB stands for Universal Serial Bus? Okay, but when you consider what it does in the studio, it's understandable some might think it has the alternate meaning in the title. Of course, there are so many USB audio and MIDI interfaces--as well as controllers--that we're not even going to go there. Instead, we're going to delve into USB mics, and sprinkle additional tips and ...

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Yahoo to Offer Refunds for Ex-Yahoo Music Customers

Source: PC Magazine
July 29, 2008

Yahoo will offer refunds to people who purchased individual tracks from Yahoo Music and who stand to lose access to that music when Yahoo Music is folded into Rhapsody in September. “We always intended to provide refunds," said Carrie Davis, a spokeswoman for Yahoo! Music. Yahoo announced last week that support for the Yahoo! Music Store will shut down as of Sept. 30, 2008 when Yahoo! Music closes its doors and becomes part of Rhapsody. The September switch will not ...

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Hands on with the New 'Cuil' Search Engine

Source: PC Magazine
July 29, 2008

Cuil isn't quite a Google killer yet, but give it a while and it could find a sizable user base. Cuilan old Irish word for knowledge, which is pronounced “cool"has indexed 120 billion Web pages. That's three times more than any other search engine, including Google. Cuil launched Sunday night. The search engine ranks pages based on relevance, rather than popularity based on link analysis, as Google does, and analyzes the context of the page and the concept behind queries. ...

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Cuil Hopes to be a Google-Killer

Source: PC Magazine
July 29, 2008

Stealth startup Cuil (pronounced “cool") is a next-generation search site that claims its index holds three times as many pages as Google, while requiring far fewer servers. Cuil co-founder and former Google project leader Anna Patterson told PC Magazine that Cuil's search index will debut with a 120 billion-page index, compared with Google's 40 billion out of the Internet's total of 140 billion pages. By dividing different topics among different servers, Cuil can utilize far fewer servers than Google and ...

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LG Cuts LCD Production to Boost Prices

Source: PC Magazine
July 29, 2008

SEOUL (Reuters) - LG Display Co Ltd, the world's No. 2 maker of liquid crystal display (LCD) screens, said on Sunday it would cut its panel output by around 10 percent until August because of weakening global demand. South Korea-based LG Display joins Taiwan rivals AU Optronics Corp and Chi Mei Optoelectronics Corp in the move to reduce production and ease an oversupply as market conditions deteriorate faster than expected. “The output reduction will be around 10 percent level," an ...

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How Bad Are Ipods for Your Hearing?

Source: All About Jazz
July 28, 2008

WHAT? Hearing loss is more common than ever before. About 16% of American adults have impaired ability to hear speech, and more than 30% of Americans over age 20 -- an estimated 55 million people -- have lost some high-frequency hearing, according to a new study published Monday in the Archives of Internal Medicine. The finding has got experts -- and concerned parents -- wondering anew: does listening to loud music through headphones lead to long-term ...

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The Taliban Now Has Ringtones

Source: All About Jazz
July 26, 2008

KABUL (Reuters) - The once media-shy Taliban have gone hi-tech with DVDs, mobile phone messages, ring-tones, emails and a website to publicize their exploits and lambast their Afghan and Western enemies, a think-tank said on Thursday. The Taliban hanged televisions and music tapes from trees in an effort to stamp out corrupting Western influences during their hardline Islamist rule of Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001. Their leaders had only one computer, Afghanistan experts say. But after U.S.-led and Afghan forces ...

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