cooltunes

How Shazam works, via Slate.

It used to be a pain to try and listen to tracks of a CD. I never had the right player, or the right version of the player. In time, I gave up, doing my sample listening elsewhere.

Today, I checked out the Alison Krauss/Robert Plant album Raising Sand (see previous post for one of the tracks), and found that when I clicked on ‘listen to samples’, it took me right to track 1 where I could indeed hear it. Kudos for a much-needed feature!

A family member was given both by family members who were unaware of what the other was doing. Mine was the loaded iPod.

A theory about the massive Zune failure is here.

Not having an iPhone (yet), I’m not in touch with a lot of stuff. Here’s the story on Tapulous and its popular game. Sounds like I’m missing a lot of fun.

A family member has remarked that attending a concert that consists solely of the performer onstage with his laptop lacks a certain visual excitement.

In the world of classical music, technological advances are moving the usual group-of-musicians-with-conductor scenario into a more futuristic realm. Nowadays, a concert-goer might see the conductor decked out in a specially wired jacket that allows a Wii-minded directing of an orchestra.

This orchestra would include a section that is not visible to the audience, but gleaned from a database of digital sounds that gives an unprecedented depth and range to the listening experience.

When experts listen to samples of computer-generated music embedded in a Beethoven symphony performance, they find it difficult to tell the difference from the real thing.

Incoming freshman in the fall will receive new tools to help them through their college years. Other university reps attending the ACU information officer’s presentation at Apple headquarters in Cupertino include those from UCLA, Oxford, Princeton, MIT, Yale and Harvard.

Talk about a nifty welcoming packet.

Info via Briefing.com

Scientists discovered fairly recently that materials can be made that force light beams go around an object, thereby rendering the object invisible. In the next logical move, a team of researchers has found that such an ‘invisibility cloak’ can be applied to sound. The project of bending soundwaves is proceeding at the Polytechnic University in Spain.

I could have used such a cloak in the last few weeks when a family member developed the high-decibel cough of a current bug making the rounds. My headphones are not the noise-cancelling kind, and even when I went outside to the front yard, the cough could still be heard. Now I’ve learned that this could go on for a full six weeks.

Surely, almost everyone could use the technology at some point in their lives.