Parental Advisory: Explicit Content!
(Credit: Jeff Bakalar/The 404)If you've ever sat around with friends and mourned the death of the mixtape, you'll certainly appreciate the first half of today's episode of CNET's The 404 Podcast. While Jeff was at home for the break, he stumbled upon a a collection of old cassette tapes including the Cool Side/Awesome Side mix you see up there. It's got a solid collection of '90s hits including "Mr. Jones" by Counting Crows, Soundgarden's "Black Hole Sun," and, of course, "Smells Like Teen Spirit."
I spy "Crazy" and something that starts with "Livin...," which I can only assume to be Britney Spears and Ricky Martin. Just kidding, Jeff, but seriously--we've all pulled some pretty embarrassing stunts in a pathetic attempt to win a girl's heart, so stick around to witness the humiliation.
(Credit:
Tech Crunch)
Speaking of death, we're (kind of) sad to see the demise of the CrunchPad. The brainchild of TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington and Fusion Garage, the CrunchPad was supposed to be an aluminum tablet computer with a 12-inch LCD screen running Ubuntu Linux and Webkit browser. Unfortunately, Arrington reported today that the CrunchPad project is officially dead. We're disappointed that we'll never be able to test the product ourselves, but we're sure that Arrington has something else up his sleeve.
We imagine that a lot of you guys will be traveling by plane for the holiday season, but what if you were forced to hand over your iPod to security agents to check it for pirated music at the airport? Sounds like a nightmare, but Wilson tells us that the Australian government is apparently proposing a plan to search iPods and other MP3 players for illegally downloaded songs, punishable by heavy fines or even jail time!
From a technological stand point, we're not even sure how the government plans on checking for purchased vs. bootlegged music. At the end of the day, it's always comforting to know that you'll NEVER get busted for listening to The 404, and isn't that the most important thing?
EPISODE 477
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(Credit:
Supermarket)
The music may be horrible, but if you rub a tape head over these ties you can actually hear jumbled sound collages recorded from the NYC metro system. This is possible because the ties are 50 percent audio cassette tape.
If you have $90 to spend on one of the ties, and you are willing to sacrifice an old Walkman for the project, you can make this a fixture of your formal wardrobe. Of course, walking around with a broken Walkman asking every one to rub you with it is not recommended.
This story originally appeared on Gizmodo.
No kid wants to be the one who blends into a crowd. That's why it's important to start young when setting your children up for a lifetime filled with the nostalgic irony that comes with being tragically hip. Of course, they may not like you when they grow older, but that's fashionable too, right?
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EPISODE 148 |
This Death Star cookie jar is fully operational
Cassette tape lamps light up your nostalgia
NES Controller Business Card shows you mean real geek business
Casio calculator watch. For realz. (Thanks, Sparkman!)
The iPhone’s best neo-retro game: Space Invaders Infinity Gene
Good Vibrations
The Vibrator Museum
A propos (of) nothing
Japanese auto-fogging glasses prevent eye strain
What the hell?
Microsmores (thanks, Sheala)
Kill Me
Wi-Fi scale notifies the internet of your lapsed diet
CNET News Poll
(Credit:
Steve Guttenberg)
What's wrong with you?
Doesn't everybody have at least one of these things? I'm just curious, is there anyone out there who flat-out refuses to buy an iPod or Zune or whatever? Are you just bucking the trend? Oh, and please tell us how old you are. I want to know if there are any iPod-less kids reading the Audiophiliac.
I don't care how much you love the '80s, no one wants to listen to cassette tapes anymore. The wretched things are noisy, they wear out, and unless you've got one of those super-duper cassette decks, skipping tracks means riding the fast-forward button until you feel lucky.
For all their faults, though, there is one bright spot in the history of cassettes: the mixtape. There's just something awesome about a curated mix of music, tediously patched together, song by song, onto a hand-scrawled tape. A robot could burn a CD, but only a human (preferably a lovesick one) can craft a legitimate mixtape.
Most of us probably have a shoebox somewhere in our home, filled with a jumble of old tapes. Most of them are only painful reminders of misguided music purchases from the '80s and '90s (yes, you actually paid money for that Paula Abdul tape). With any luck, hidden in your rubble of commercial pop music are a handful of mixtapes.
Maybe it's a tape you got from an old high school crush, or a personal mix of your favorite freestyle rappers from 1994--it doesn't matter. Whatever it is, you probably listened to that tape on repeat at least a hundred times back in the day, and whether you like it or not, it's a part of who you are. Anything that can induce that kind of instant flashback deserves to be saved. In fact, it deserves to be archived in it's raw form, hiss and all.
The Alesis TapeLink USB takes the sting out of archiving your tapes, but it'll cost you.
(Credit: Corinne Schulze/CNET)If you have the least bit of do-it-yourself spirit in you, the process of digitizing your old tapes to MP3 or CD is as simple as hooking up an old Walkman or thrift store cassette deck to your computer's audio card, and recording straight to a free audio program like Audacity. Another route you can take is to purchase an all-in-one product like the Alesis TapeLink USB ($199).
The TapeLink is a USB-connected dual-cassette deck bundled with an assortment of recording software. If you ask me, the whole package is pretty mediocre for the money, but it could be just the thing if you lack the tools and confidence to cobble together your own setup. To learn more about the Alesis TapeLink USB, you can read my full write-up over at CNET Reviews.
Before analog tape was invented, recorders like this used wire.
(Credit: Video Interchange)Legend has it that on December 4, 1877, Thomas Edison was the first person to record and play back the human voice. Maybe not.
The Video Interchange site notes that "a possibility exists that Edison himself, in fact, might not have been the very first person to have recorded and played back the human voice. This was most likely made by his two key assistants: Charles Batchelor, his chief assistant, and John Kruesi, his head machinist."
You can see Edison's machine on the Video Interchange Web site. And while you're there, check out a few of the fascinating but obscure audio formats on display.
Video Interchange offers transfer services for a vast range of ancient and recent audio formats. For example, Video Interchange can transfer 78 rpm records to CD.
This dictation machine recorded to vinyl records.
(Credit: Video Interchange)... Read more
We're kickin' it old school with some technology that might not be so modern, but you can't deny that this stuff is cool!
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EPISODE 113 |
Datamancer Ergo keyboard takes steampunk in an oddly comfortable direction
Teac LP-R500: The 20th century CD-LP-cassette geek re-education box
Retro plasma HDTV looks like an ancient TV set
Hand Crank Locomotives Are A Child's Dream Toy
Your MacBook is too classy to be wrapped in neoprene
NES-inspired Nike sneakers take us back to ‘85
$2,500 titanium tricycle seems reasonable
It’s About time (retro edition!)
Alarm clock lets you wake up a winner
Pink Watch
Calling all lady DJs--do we have a turntable for you
Hello Kitty Watch
Hello Kitty’s birthday! (Thanks, Dr. Karl)
FUG
Nintendo garter belt--sexy fun gaming times
Kill Me (I will kill someone edition)
The Keyboard for Blondes makes my blood boil
Kill Me (this will probably kill someone edition)
Burning hair remover lets your hygiene play with fire
(Credit:
Vavolo)
Apparently the nostalgia bug has a stronger grip on people than we'd thought, at least where the cassette tape is concerned.
Only a few weeks ago we posted an item about an MP3 player disguised as one of the old-school cartridges, complete with USB port, memory card slot, and headphone jack. Now we learn of the "Flexii Bluetooth Cassette Adapter," which can be used to connect wirelessly to a mobile headset, media player, or even a PC.
There are plenty of other Bluetooth devices that can provide the same kind of function, but this one is designed to actually slide into the cassette slot in the dash. Which makes us wonder if there's another reason it was invented: For surreptitious use by drivers in places that have banned phone use behind the wheel.
(Credit:
ThinkGeek)
While other car stereo makers are trying to disguise their systems behind faceplates of yesteryear, this music player is taking a different approach to the retro game. The "Cassette MP3 Player" from ThinkGeek looks like a regular tape circa 1976, but its real purpose is to house an SD card carrying digital tunes.
The ersatz device can be used in any cassette player, recharging and hooking up to speakers through its USB port. And it needn't be a dashboard version, by the way--we're certain that some poor souls will insist on reliving their glory days with a boombox. Or you can go solo with it as a portable, using its 3.5-millimeter headphone jack and built-in lithium battery.
If all this sounds like too much trouble, but you're still a fan of the old-school look, there's a happy medium: the iPod Nano cassette case.
(Credit:
Akihabara News)
It's one thing for Sony to reminisce about the good old days when they ruled the music world, but at some point it's time to let go. That was our immediate thought, anyway, upon seeing this dual cassette tape recorder. That's right--tapes.
Akihabara News says many people still use them, though we'll have to take their word for it because we haven't known any since about 1989. It also has a CD player in case they want to experiment with some of that cutting-edge stuff, as well as an AM/FM radio. We're still looking for the 8-track slots.
