rock

Make music with your messenger bag

Plenty of musical gadgets have popped up in the news recently. None of them, however, lets you shred guitar notes on a messenger bag.

That's where the Electronic Rock Guitar Bag comes in. It combines a typical everyday bag with an electronic guitar.

To start using the "guitar," you'll have to press one of the three frets located along the guitar's neck. These act as buttons to select pretuned chords that you can strum to. This means you won't need to have a music background to start playing songs from Bon Jovi.

Turn on the mini amplifier (located at the bottom right of the bag), and you're ready to start making music.

The bag--which sells for $49.99 on ThinkGeek--is big enough to store a 17-inch notebook and various other accessories that you need in school. We're guessing it'll be pretty funny if you start jamming in the middle of lectures--just don't blame us if you get kicked out of one of them. … Read more

Your dad wants to fight for the right to paaaarty!

Forget the tools and ties for dear old Dad this Father's Day. What he really wants is the Beastie Boys' new tunes on vinyl--or so the message goes from a new video uploaded to YouTube by the band on June 15.

Because of an Internet leak of the Beastie Boys' "Hot Sauce Committee Part Two" album, the band was forced to stream the entire thing (the explicit version), on its Web site before the actual June release date. By the end of April, the CDs and digital downloads of the album were (and are) made available on iTunes, Amazon, and Best Buy.

The focus for this new video, however, is on the sale of the vinyl format, which Mike D. says "...will be slightly different than the other formats. But please know that our corps of engineers and experts have been on this, making sure the wait is worth it and that I can personally tell you that in my humble opinion, the test pressing of the vinyl sounded banging on my home hi fi." … Read more

Crave 43: Meeting the Makers (podcast)

What better venue for an episode of Crave than the annual Maker Faire in San Mateo, Calif.? We rub elbows with robots, learn the art of making a Master Chief costume, and meet a group of teens who take Rock Band to its fiery extreme.

Subscribe in iTunes SD Video | Subscribe in RSS SD Video… Read more

RockMelt makes an iPhone grab

Social networking Web browser RockMelt expanded its reach to the iPhone today, debuting a browser that synchronizes the desktop versions' features to your iPhone. These include the new Read Later option for saving URLs to be read in the future, as well as RockMelt's full Twitter and Facebook management tools.

This means that in addition to Twitter and Facebook basics, such as retweeting and wall posting, you can add photos, geotag, and open links on the fly. This last feature is unique to RockMelt for iPhone. When you tap an update from a friend on either service that contains … Read more

The 404 793: Where Wilson's back with a vengeance (podcast)

The Bubble Boy gets released from quarantine and joins us back on today's episode of The 404, where we're chatting about Dish Network grabbing Blockbuster for $228 million; a Canadian service that could mean the end of missed packages; a girl who can't close her mouth; and the end of one of our favorite TV shows: "30 Rock."

The 404 Digest for Episode 793

Dish Network wins bidding war for Blockbuster Video. The BufferBox may signal the end of missed packages. Just for fun, here's the delivery guy spoof scene from "Ace Ventura: Pet Detective." Nurse uses Popsicle sticks to reset a jaw in mid-yawn. News anchor falls for Shock Top app prank. "30 Rock" will end next season, according to Alec Baldwin.

Episode 793 Subscribe in iTunes (audio) | Subscribe in iTunes (video) | Subscribe in RSS Audio | Subscribe in RSS Video… Read more

Bookmarks resurrected in new RockMelt beta

Less than a month after RockMelt threw open its doors to anybody from the public interested in its Chromium-based browser beta, RockMelt is set to break ground on its second beta today as it hopes to continue attracting new users and developing features.

RockMelt beta 2 (download for Windows | Mac) comes with four noteworthy improvements: a new method for integrated bookmarking that will be strikingly familiar to Instapaper and Read It Later fans; a revamped Twitter interface; a new chat notification bar and better support for multiple, simultaneous instant messages; and upgrading the browser's core to Chromium 10.

The … Read more

After Guitar Hero exit, Rocksmith to take the stage

Music games might be down, but they aren't out just yet.

Game developer Ubisoft is planning to release a new guitar game, called Rocksmith, later this year. In a statement today, Ubisoft's senior vice president of marketing, Tony Key, said that the new title will prove to be "the most authentic and addicting music game ever created."

Ubisoft hopes to achieve that lofty goal by putting a real guitar in the hands of gamers, rather than the plastic guitars with buttons used in Rock Band or Guitar Hero. The title will launch with a "sizable … Read more

The 404 774: Where we survive the test of time (podcast)

Are viciously negative Yelp reviews putting an unfair stigma on small businesses? Today's two-part episode of The 404 Podcast weighs the effect of crowd-sourced review sites like Yelp and Zagat on independently owned establishments, and asks the question: will future generations understand topical shows like "The Simpsons" and "30 Rock?"

Part one: this insightful article in The Atlantic magazine questions the legitimacy of online reviews and the misplaced responsibility that Yelp bestows on citizen journalists with little or no training in voicing their opinions.

The piece calls out six distinct types of crowd-sourced reviewers who make us all look bad. Our least favorite is the "Hater's Ball," but we prefer to call them trolls--people who make scathing, borderline vindictive criticisms online about the most minor offenses at restaurants that they would never voice in person.

How many negative Yelpers do you think actually call the manager over after a meal to politely voice concerns? Most of the time, Yelpers don't think about how a single bad review can springboard a series of negative press that could potentially shut down an independent business, so make sure your complaints are legit before you post!

Don't forget that there are always real people behind the keyboard...and sometimes they have access to weapons.

Part two: This Salon.com article raises an interesting question about future generations understanding the pop culture references in topical television shows like "The Simpsons" and "Glee."… Read more

RockMelt tiptoes into public beta

RockMelt boomed onto the alterna-browser landscape last November, grabbing some notable attention from social browsing competitor Flock but then fading from the limelight. After four months, RockMelt announced today that it's ready for the next step: entering into a public beta. That's right, this entire time the Marc Andreessen-backed, Chromium-based RockMelt beta (download for Windows | Mac) has been restricted to invitation-only.

A TechCrunch story reported that RockMelt is claiming "hundreds of thousands" of active users and that about 20 percent to 30 percent of users who downloaded RockMelt have used it at least once every seven … Read more