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This is interesting. Sony Music's The Remix Project is a contest on Facebook where music fans can create their own remix of Dylan's "Subterranean Homesick Blues" using the song's original 4-track "stems"--the individual vocal, guitar, bass, and drum tracks.

Fans can mix and match the components of the original, with new versions of the classic that have been recorded for the project by Sony Music artists, including The Ting Tings, 2AM Club, and more. Best of all, fans can record and upload their own covers of "Subterranean Homesick Blues," and … Read more

Though it's not as blasphemous as talk of Justin Bieber supposedly playing Marty McFly in some ill-conceived "Back to the Future" remake, the fully licensed video game does seem like a promising extension to the classic story of Marty and Doc Brown.

Developer Telltale Games (Sam & Max, Tales of Monkey Island) plans to episodically release five chapters of Back to the Future: The Game, the first of which is titled "It's About Time." Not much regarding the game's actual gameplay has been disclosed, but the debut trailer does hint that Marty will … Read more

REDMOND, WA.--Microsoft is betting big on the cloud and wants businesses to do the same.

After two years of building Windows Azure, Server and Tools President Bob Muglia said yesterday that the cloud operating system is ready for business customers of all sizes to give it a try. At its annual Professional Developers Conference, Microsoft announced several new Azure features including the ability to move existing applications and virtual machines into Microsoft's hosted service.

In an interview with CNET, Muglia talked about the new cloud advances, small business server products, as well as the impact on Microsoft of … Read more

Professional skateboarder and entrepreneur Tony Hawk is back on CNET's The 404 Podcast to show off his newest video game Tony Hawk: Shred, a biography written with his sister, the Tony Hawk Foundation Stand Up for Skateparks events, and much more!

It's been almost a year since Tony Hawk first came on The 404 . Obviously a lot has happened since then, and Tony updates us with a legendary story about the aftermath of the pelvic injury he suffered earlier this summer while headlining the Action Sports Weekend at Disneyland.

Getting up after falling off the skateboard has always been an important lesson to Tony, and he talks about that central theme a lot in his new book, "How Did I Get Here: The Ascent of an Unlikely CEO." Written with his sister, Pat Hawk, the book details his rise to success in the skate industry, and Tony is certainly a pioneer in terms of bringing skateboarding to new media.

The original success of the Tony Hawk: Pro Skater brand obviously paved the way for skate gaming, and Tony's back again with a new game called Tony Hawk: Shred. Shred takes a new angle on the franchise and aims for the younger market.

It features similar motion-sensing board control as Ride but transformes the experience with impossible skate and snowboarding tricks, building jumps, and cameos from pros like Louie Vito, Geoff Rowley, Corey Duffel, and more. And like all the Tony Hawk video games, the soundtrack features a variety of genres and artists, including Rival Schools, Jimmy Eat World, OK Go, and more. Tony Hawk: Shred comes out next Tuesday, October 26, for Wii, Xbox 360, and PS3.

After the break, Tony describes the importance of giving back to the skating community and his two charity events called Stand Up for Skateparks. The huge parties galvanize BMX riders, skaters, celebrities, and fans alike in an effort to raise money for high-quality public skateparks in low-income areas throughout the country.

Tony stresses the importance of not only making sure kids are safe in the parks, but also that the parks maintain a level of Tony Hawk quality. The next party is happening in Las Vegas on November 6 and will feature a performance by DJ Z-Trip--tickets are still available here!

There's plenty more to talk about with Tony, including some of his favorite skate videos, tips for future skate entrepreneurs, and the truth behind his involvement in the original "Back to the Future" movie!

"The Witmark Demos" two-CD (or four-LP) set features 47 Bob Dylan songs recorded for his music publishers, Leeds Music and M. Witmark & Sons between 1962 and 1964. Fifteen songs have never been officially released until now. All of the songs on "The Witmark Demos" were written and recorded before Dylan was 24 years old.

Some of the earliest songs on "The Witmark Demos" weren't first heard on Dylan's own albums; they were covered by others, including Peter, Paul, and Mary, Stevie Wonder, Judy Collins, and the Byrds. In 1962-3 Dylan was primarily known as a songwriter, and the demos were made in hopes of getting more artists to cover his songs.

The demos weren't recorded at official Columbia Records sessions, so there's no fancy production or sweetening, just Dylan singing and playing his guitar in a tiny 6-by-8-foot studio at Witmark Publishing on 51st Street and Madison Ave. in NYC. "The Witmark Demos" contains Dylan's very first recordings of songs like "Blowin' In the Wind" and "The Times They Are A-Changin'," so it's almost as if you're hearing them at their moment of creation.

Reissue producer Steve Berkowitz worked from the surviving original analog tapes and promo records. The amount of research that went into finding the best possible tapes and other materials from nearly 50 years ago was extensive. Even so, some tunes are distorted and downright fuzzy, and sound quality varies from track to track, but most are good, and some are the best, most natural sounding versions I've heard. The demo recordings are free of dynamic range compression so you really hear Dylan singing his guts out. "Boots Of Spanish Leather" gave me a new appreciation for Dylan's singing. He's really thinking about the words. … Read more

"The Original Mono Recordings" box set features Bob Dylan's first eight albums, available on CD and in their original release format, mono LPs (and on MP3, sans box). The set runs from his first album, "Bob Dylan," released in March 1962, to "John Wesley Harding" from late December 1967. At that time most people listened to Dylan's music over mono AM radios in the car, mono portable radios, or mono home hi-fi systems. Sure, stereo Dylan LPs were simultaneously released with the monos, but it's my best guess that Dylan and his production team listened to the mono mixes in the studio. Besides, mono LPs retailed for $2.98 in the early 1960s, and stereo LPs were a buck more, so most kids bought the mono, even if they had a stereo (that would include me). "John Wesley Harding" was the last mono LP from Dylan; after that all subsequent American releases were stereo only. So unless you have original 1960s-era LPs, chances are you've never heard the mono mixes.

I spoke with reissue producer Steve Berkowitz to get more details about how the transfers were done. He assured me the 96/kHz-24-bit resolution digital masters were made from the original analog master tapes, played on vintage mono tape machines, and that the LPs were cut directly from the analog masters. I was relieved to hear that; most, no, nearly all newly recorded or remastered old analog music that comes out on LP is sourced from digital masters. "The Original Mono Recordings" on LP are pure analog discs, with no digital conversions whatsoever in the mastering process. The LPs were cut here in NYC at Sterling Sound by George Marino, a true master of the record-cutting lathe.

Berkowitz stressed the guiding principle for everyone involved, including engineer Mark Wilder and producer Jeff Rosen, was to make the new LPs sound as close to the first generation American LPs as possible. Berkowitz said, "We went back and forth comparing the new mono LPs and CDs with the original LPs. They were the 'masters' we served to replicate." … Read more

PALO ALTO, California--It's hard to believe, but PARC is 40.

Known for years as Xerox PARC, the Palo Alto Research Center is now a wholly owned Xerox spin-off working for a wide variety of corporate clients after years of doing world-class R&D exclusively for the copier giant.

And on Thursday, with dozens of the research institution's alumni on hand, PARC threw itself a 40th birthday party.

For those not familiar with its accomplishments, PARC may best be remembered for its roles as the birthplace of the laser printer, the graphical user interface, Ethernet networking, and more. … Read more

If you were launching the first step into implanting your product permanently into someone's brain, would you employ Bob Dylan?

Oh, I know he's a very fine musician, autobiographer and performer at corporate functions. But does he still symbolize the idea that the times are a-changin' and your brain needs re-arrangin'?

This vexing question occupies the part of my mind normally reserved for baseball and scones because Google Instant, the search engine that tries to know what you want slightly before you do, seems to have done an ad featuring the original Robert Zimmerman.

To the tune of … Read more

What will happen when millions of electric vehicles plug into the grid at at the same time? If ZigBee Alliance's blueprints for the SmartGrid go according to plan, not much.

The ugly specter of mass blackouts caused by hoards of EVs rolling into garages and plugging in at the same time is just one of the many arguments EV detractors use against electric vehicles and plug-ins. But EV adoption is inevitable, and the smart grid should make sure that energy loads will be balanced and shifted as needed to recharge them without causing widespread power failure. And eventually, ZigBee predicts, electric cars and plug-ins will become part of the energy solution supplying power to the grid.

But let's back up.

If you haven't heard of the ZigBee Alliance, you're not alone. Before I started this article, I'd never heard of it until I was forwarded one of its press releases. Named after a little-known Nordic elf that has nothing to do with wireless networks or energy, the ZigBee is a standard for wireless sensor networks on which the Smart Grid operates. "And the domain name was available," says Bob Heile, who is chairman of the curiously named group and one of the founders of 802.11.

More than 300 metering, computer, chip processing, electronics, and automotive companies are members the ZigBee Alliance. By incorporating ZigBee's technology in their products, many of these companies are laying the infrastructure that will enable utility companies, networked homes and buildings, and appliances to communicate wirelessly and automate metering as part of the smart grid. That includes electric vehicles.

Electric and plug-in vehicles will undoubtedly be a significant drain on the smart grid--each plugged-in EV has the equivalent drain of another house for hours at a time. But they're also uniquely designed to be able to give back.

"They are essentially batteries with wheels," says Heile. "Ultimately, long after the EV infrastructure is in place and consumers adopt them, there will be opportunities to load shift."

This means that at peak hours people can sell the energy stored in EV batteries back to utility companies. But don't think you can offset the cost of a new Nissan Leaf or Chevrolet Volt by becoming a homespun energy trader of sorts--that technology is still years away.

The typical EV and smart meter rhetoric goes something like, "You can charge your car overnight when electricity rates are cheaper." But the technology isn't entirely there to support that rational. Right now if you don't own a smart meter (you would know if you do) and you plug an EV into an outlet, it doesn't know what the device is or who it belongs to, or when to charge it other than right now. But in the future, it will know who you are by the car you drive so that when you charge at a friend's house, you'll get the bill. Or so the theory goes. … Read more