hall

Surround sound on the iPhone

3D Music Player Pro gives you some interesting options for enriching the sound of your music, and it does a pretty good job with only a few flaws. Upon launch, use the plus-sign button in the upper left to add a couple of songs from your music library and test the various effects. Once they're queued up, you can play a song and then touch the 3D Sound button to hear the basic audio enhancements in the app. We noticed a difference immediately in our testing, with the app adding a much fuller and warmer sound to our music.… Read more

Microsoft's home away from Hohm

Links from Wednesday's episode of Loaded:

Republicans in the House of Representatives are working to stop Net neutrality regulations

President Obama will take to Facebook for a town-hall meeting on April 20

Facebook wants to compete with sites like FlackList and ProfNet to connect journalists with sources and stories

Twitter may launch branded pages

Sprint launches a 3G/4G Mi-Fi for $79

Dish Network plans to scoop up beleaguered Blockbuster for just $228 million

Microsoft shifts the focus of Hohm from the home to the car

Hall of fame adds inventors of digital camera, barcode

The inventors of the digital camera, the industrial robot, public-key cryptography, and the barcode are just some of those being inducted into this year's National Inventors Hall of Fame.

Today, the National Inventors Hall of Fame announced its latest selections of the people responsible for some of the key technologies that we use and rely on today.

In 1975, a Kodak engineer named Steve Sasson built a device that was able to capture an image, convert it to an electronic signal, and then digitize and store that image, leading to the world's first digital camera, according to the … Read more

ZipcarU shares rides with even more college and university students

When you think of environmentally friendly transportation on college and university campuses, you usually think of bicycles. But in cold winter weather, or when going off campus for errands or hauling more than the average backpack around, a Zipcar fits the bill.

For $8 per hour or $66 per day, and an annual fee, 1.7 million students, faculty, and staff have 24-hour access to Zipcars. The company now has ride-share programs on more than 225 campuses.

"We know that college students quickly embrace the concept of car sharing. This is the same generation that buys music by the … Read more

Digital City 99: Social Networks, laptop tans, and dreams of PS3/360 friendships

Can you believe we're only one episode away from No. 100? We can't either, and we discuss our various plans for next week's very special podcast. But, while Dan is away in Texas, it leaves Joey, Scott, and Julie feeling restless in the rainy city.

Scott's finally seen "The Social Network," and he finds it oddly self-contained but very well-made. But, as Julie points out, where are the other movies based on computer pioneers? Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were relegated to a 1999 made-for-TV movie. We wonder what other tech endeavors deserve feature treatment...the Palm Pre story?

Also, we discuss "Toasted Skin Syndrome" and whether we fear hot laptops on our skin; Andy Rooney's latest rant goes off on car gadgets, but we find them useful; Joey wonders why PS3/360 multiplatform games can't play with each other (can't a person dream?); and Scott talks about some recently-released games he's played, including the potential sleeper Enslaved and Nintendo's latest Mii-fest, Wii Party.

See you next week on Episode 100!

… Read more

The 404 651: Where the two youts are giving me agida (podcast)

I've never been afraid to write a blog post for The 404 Podcast before, but I'm expecting a world of pain after this morning's broadcast. Full disclosure: most of the first half is Jeff and Wilson getting mad at me for a long list of classic movies that I stubbornly refuse to watch. After the ammo runs out, we also talk about the new Google movie just announced, a clever viral marketing campaign for "The Last Exorcism" exploiting pervs on Chatroulette, a turtle skeleton in King Bowser's likeness discovered 3,000 years later, and … Read more

At long last, a visit to Cooperstown

COOPERSTOWN, N.Y.--For a lifelong baseball fan like me, visiting this little town on the edge of Otsego Lake in upstate New York for the first time is like a political junkie's first-ever trip to Washington, D.C.

It turns out, of course, that my Road Trip 2010 project has afforded me both of those opportunities, and where my initial journey to D.C. earlier in the journey was a chance to finally see, firsthand, places like the White House and the U.S. Capitol, my first-ever passage through the doors of the Baseball Hall of Fame here … Read more

Three groovy sounding turntables

Sound & Vision magazine's Michael Trei recently tested three turntables: the Rega Research P1 ($395), Music Hall mmf 2.2 ($449), and Technics SL-1200MK2 ($699). And guess what: the most expensive turntable wasn't the best-sounding one!

Mike's an old friend and a major turntable guru in his own right. His knowledge of all things analog runs deep, and he regularly sets up finicky high-end turntables for the rich and famous, including the president of a major record company, here in NYC. Mike set up the VPI Classic turntable I bought last year.

The three turntables covered in his report, the Rega, Music Hall, and Technics are all excellent, but I was more interested in the belt vs. direct-drive aspect of the reviews. The Technics is a long standing DJ favorite, for its powerful, direct-drive motor, which is a big plus when you're back cueing and scratching records. Direct-drive 'tables never wowed the high-end crowd, they favor belt-drive turntables. The appeal is mostly based on the fact that the belt "decouples" the motor from the platter. So whatever noise and vibration the motor makes as it spins aren't directly transmitted to the platter, and therefore to the record. No wonder the vast majority of turntables sold to audiophiles are belt-drive designs.

Mike may be a hard-core audiophile, but he's not closed-minded about direct-drive turntables, and in fact owns a Technics direct-drive turntable (and many belt-drives as well).… Read more

What's next for Hotmail

SAN FRANCISCO--The next update of Windows Live is starting to take shape.

CEO Steve Ballmer last week previewed the new version of Messenger. Microsoft isn't quite ready to detail everything its planning for the next Hotmail, but general manager Brian Hall offered a pretty good indication of where the company is placing its bets.

"This release, while we are not going into any details right now, it is the one that places Hotmail back on top, especially for busy people who just want an efficient e-mail," Hall said over lunch on Monday. Hall was here to check … Read more