festival

Contrary to predictions, Sunday in Seattle was sunny and warm, so I took my daughter down to the annual Northwest Folklife Festival, a donation-funded event at the Seattle Center.

Because of its focus on traditional forms of music, Folklife is an unusually low-tech festival. There was a Balkan dance band, Orkestar Zirkonium, with oom-pah tuba holding down the bass and various brasses, woodwinds, and string instruments weaving Eastern European melodies. There was a bagpipe/drum duet, Nae Regrets, that seemed to be playing a version of "Tom Sawyer" by Rush. There was a youth fiddle orchestra from British … Read more

Stereophile magazine sponsored the Festival Son & Image show in Montreal, Canada, that ran from April 3 through the 6th. The show was the largest ever, with over 120 brands represented. True, most are unknown outside of audiophile circles, but that's part of the appeal. These small companies aren't trying to dumb down their products to reach a mainstream market, no, they just build the best sounding speakers, amplifiers, CD players and turntables they can. Many are hand crafted, lavishly designed products. Point is, in a world where true quality, as opposed to marketing hype, is the rarest … Read more

If you live in the bay area (or plan to be here the weekend of August 22nd), get ready for the first annual Outside Lands music festival! The Bonnaroo-size line-up features some of the biggest names around, such as Radiohead, Beck, Tom Petty, Jack Johnson, Wilco, Primus and more (see below). Tickets go on sale this Sunday, March 30th at 10AM on Sfoutsidelands.com

The festivities will take place in Golden Gate Park August 22-24th, and it's being produced by Another Planet Entertainment, Superfly Productions, Starr Hill Presents, and the San Francisco Recreation & Park Department. It will be … Read more

Amazon.com is delving even deeper into the film industry, with subsidiary Internet Movie Database signing a deal to acquire Withoutabox.

Withoutabox develops online tools and operates a service to aid independent filmmakers in submitting their work to festivals worldwide and in promoting their films.

Withoutabox, based in Los Angeles, said it has worked with 150,000 filmmakers since its founding in 2000. The Internet Movie Database draws more than 50 million unique visitors each month with its searchable database of movies, TV, and entertainment programs.

The definitive agreement, announced Thursday, is designed to offer a wider selection of films … Read more

I had a great time over the weekend at the 10th Vintage Computer Festival, which took place in the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif.

In addition to the exhibits of vintage computers--including the largest collection of Radio Shack Pocket Computers I've ever seen--and the marketplace, where I managed to avoid buying any slide rules, Vectrix video games, or Cray supercomputer circuit boards--there were several notable presentations.

On Saturday, Tim McNerney spoke about his work to reimplement the Intel 4004 microprocessor, which led to a 130x-scale working model of the chip composed of individual transistors on a large … Read more

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--For an industry that's just 30 years old, personal computing has a lot of history.

Here at the Computer History Museum, just a stone's throw from the Microsoft campus in Silicon Valley, PC industry veterans, tech enthusiasts, and even a few kids came out for the annual Vintage Computer Festival.

The event is highlighted by seminars and panels on topics like "Deconstructing the Intel 4004" and "The Disk Drive Industry Family Tree," but the real payoff is the Exhibit Hall, in which hobbyists display their dusty, yellowed sets of two-decades-old computers, … Read more

I've been to a lot of computer conferences over the last 30 years-- my first was the mainframe-oriented National Computer Conference in 1979, and I've probably been to 250 more since then-- but one of my favorites is also the smallest: the Vintage Computer Festival, hosted by Sellam Ismail.

Over the years at these conferences (a collection of my badges as of 1998 or so is shown here), and in my own life, I've seen and used an awful lot of computer hardware.

I'm surprised that some kinds of systems that were very popular in the … Read more

RockMe. has got to the be the only five-day music festival where you won't pay for tickets. It is social-networking site Me.dium's attempt to rock your world, and the only thing you need to get in is your Web browser. (Of course, you still have to bring your own drinks.)

RockMe., which runs from September 18 through September 22, 2007, will feature bands, music video competitions, and the world's safest mosh pit--it's virtual. More important to Me.dium, the RockMe. festival will provide plenty of opportunities for band members and music lovers to swap fond memories of choice lyrics and drum solos using Me.dium's service.… Read more

Can you make a server sexy?

Short answer: No.

But you can still throw it a glitzy launch party.

Over the past week or so, I've been poking my head into various events at the Tribeca Film Festival in lower Manhattan, which runs through tomorrow. I've always thought of film festivals as sort of low-tech affairs, and in a lot of ways, it's true--at a screening of Edward Burns' new flick, Purple Violets, the producers apologized for the first reel being "too light," and at the premiere of Spider-Man 3 co-star James Franco's latest … Read more