Audiotool 2.0 ? Music-making on the Web just got serious

When I first started looking into Web-based music sequencers and digital audio workstations last year, Audiotool was one of the first I came across. I was instantly impressed by this slick, Flash-based tool and the features that the team of Cologne based developers had already packed into it. I?d even go as far to say that it was a big contributing factor to me deciding to cover this kind of tech in-depth over at Audio Silver Lining.

Audiotool is essentially a Web-based sequencer tool that lets you create music, remix and collaborate with others all from within a web browser. It launched with a pretty impressive range of digital emulations of drum machines (essentially copies of Roland?s classic 808 & 909 boxes), a 303 style bass synth and a versatile analog synth, as well as an impressive range of FX boxes and loops.

Additional elements such as a sample based drum machine and rather cool sound mashing tool called Rasselbock have been added over the past year and, after a period of beta testing and seemingly hardcore development, a major new version ? Audiotool 2.0 was released this week.

This new update introduces some essential features for music makers who have traditionally used non-cloud based applications ? namely MIDI and the ability to record your own samples. There?s also a new site for the tool itself, which includes some great music discovery features for people looking to listen to and remix existing users tracks. Although this doesn?t quite bring it on par with applications such as Reason or Ableton, it does offer something that they don?t in the form of a music production tool that can be accessed from anywhere with an internet connection and one that promotes easy collaboration with other music producers.

Beyond its rather impressive, browser-based functionality, one of the things that appeals to me the most about Audiotool is that it allows pretty much anyone with an internet connection to start making electronic music for free and with relative ease. Bearing in mind that even entry-level music production software is still well out of the price range of the average teenager or casual beginner I think that any platform that offers this degree of creative freedom with zero investment should certainly be applauded. Try it now.

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Source: http://thenextweb.com/apps/2011/03/26/audiotool-2-0-music-making-on-the-web-just-got-serious/

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Iowa May Turn G.O.P.?s Focus to Social Issues

Here in Iowa, whose caucuses next winter will open the campaign, social and religious conservatives are pressing the likely candidates on issues like same-sex marriage and abortion rather than on jobs, the budget deficit and other economic concerns that leaders of both parties expect to dominate the general election.

The development provides opportunities for candidates like Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota and former Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, who have a following among social conservatives. But it could make Iowa even more difficult territory for, among others, Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, who has yet to visit the state this year.

More broadly, some Republicans say, it could muddle the party?s message as it seeks to defeat President Obama.

?We look like Camp Christian out here,? said Doug Gross, a Republican activist and former nominee for governor. ?If Iowa becomes some extraneous right-wing outpost, you have to question whether it is going to be a good place to vet your presidential candidates.?

While social conservatives have long wielded a greater influence in Iowa than in many early-voting states, a bitter fight here over same-sex marriage and rivalries among some of the state?s conservative leaders have amplified the issues and might help define the message of Republican candidates in ways that could resonate nationally.

No events have focused solely on the economy, job creation or even the health care law that is widely reviled among Republicans. Instead, the most prominent platforms for candidates to introduce themselves have been a number of forums ? three last week alone ? before socially conservative audiences in Iowa.

Several Republican prospects appeared here Saturday at the Conservative Principles Conference sponsored by Representative Steve King of Iowa, one of the party?s firebrands in Congress, who argues that ?culture, not the economy, is the most important thing? in choosing a nominee. He said he planned to endorse a candidate ?who can be an effective constitutional president.?

All prospective contenders are trying to glean lessons from the 2008 Iowa caucuses, when former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas scored an unexpected victory, in part by winning over evangelical Christians. Four years ago, he was the only candidate to address a forum of Iowa pastors called Rediscovering God in America. But Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi and former Speaker Newt Gingrich were among those attending this year?s event.

A balancing act has been on display all weekend.

In an appearance before pastors on Friday, which was closed to reporters, Mr. Barbour criticized the president for supporting abortion rights and pledged to do ?everything that we can to stop abortion.? He did not raise the subject when he addressed Mr. King?s conference on Saturday, and urged Republicans to focus on the Obama administration?s policies.

?It is absolutely critical that we elect a new president,? Mr. Barbour said. ?I think the best way ? perhaps the only way ? is for us to make sure the 2012 campaign is focused on policy.? He added, ?The American people agree with us on policy.?

A few minutes later, Mr. Gingrich signaled a different approach. He ranked values above the economy and national security in a three-point priority list for voters.

?Some people may say we should stay away from values, stay away from social issues.? Mr. Gingrich said. ?I?m here to tell you that if you don?t start with values, if you don?t start by saying who we are as Americans, the rest of it doesn?t matter.?

Ms. Bachmann, also pledged to keep social issues at the forefront. To booming applause, she declared: ?We?ve been told that we need a truce on social issues. I highly disagree with that. Social conservatism is fiscal conservatism.?

Mr. Romney was invited to the forum but has not attended any events with other candidates this year. Former Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota did not attend because of a family commitment.

For Republican candidates, social conservatives have the only established political structure in Iowa, with churches, home-schooling groups and a variety of competing organizations providing ready-made lists of voters. There is no comparable network for fiscal-minded or moderate Republicans.

Yet many contenders could split the social conservative vote, opening a path to victory for more business-minded conservatives like Mr. Barbour, Mr. Pawlenty or even Mr. Romney, who has played down his plans to compete in Iowa even though he has supporters quietly working on his behalf at the Capitol and is the only candidate with a network in all 99 counties.

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Geraldine A. Ferraro, First Woman on Major Party Ticket, Dies at 75

She was 75 and lived in Manhattan.

The cause was complications from multiple myeloma, a blood cancer that she had battled for 12 years, her family said in a statement. She died at Massachusetts General Hospital, where she had been undergoing treatment since Monday.

?If we can do this, we can do anything,? Ms. Ferraro declared on a July evening to a cheering Democratic National Convention in San Francisco. And for a moment, for the Democratic Party and for an untold number of American women, anything seemed possible: a woman occupying the second-highest office in the land, a derailing of the Republican juggernaut led by President Ronald Reagan, a President Walter F. Mondale.

It did not turn out that way ? not by a long shot. After the roars in the Moscone Center had subsided and a fitful general election campaign had run its course, hopes for Mr. Mondale and his plain-speaking, barrier-breaking running mate were buried in a Reagan landslide.

But Ms. Ferraro?s supporters proclaimed a victory of sorts nonetheless: 64 years after women won the right to vote, a woman had removed the ?men only? sign from the White House door.

It would be another 24 years before another woman from a major party was nominated for vice president ? Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, the Republican running mate of Senator John McCain, in 2008. And though Hillary Rodham Clinton came close to being nominated that year as the Democratic presidential candidate, a woman has yet to occupy the Oval Office. But Ms. Ferraro?s ascendance gave many women heart.

Ann Richards, who was the Texas state treasurer at the time and went on to become governor, recalled that after the Ferraro nomination, ?the first thing I thought of was not winning in the political sense, but of my two daughters.?

?To think,? Ms. Richards added, ?of the numbers of young women who can now aspire to anything.?

In a statement, President Obama said Saturday, ?Geraldine will forever be remembered as a trailblazer who broke down barriers for women, and Americans of all backgrounds and walks of life.?

As Mr. Mondale?s surprise choice, Ms. Ferraro rocketed to national prominence, propelled by fervid feminist support, a spirited and sometimes saucy personality, canny political skills and the calculation by Democratic strategists that Reagan might be vulnerable on issues thought to be more important to women.

But it proved to be a difficult campaign. The incumbent Reagan-Bush ticket presented a formidable enough challenge in and of itself, but Ms. Ferraro found herself on the defensive almost from the start, answering critics who questioned her qualifications for high office. Then there were damaging revelations about the finances of her husband, John Zaccaro, forcing Ms. Ferraro to release his tax returns and hold a marathon news conference in the middle of the general election race. Some said she had become a liability to Mr. Mondale and only hurt his chances more.

Quick Study as Candidate

A former Queens criminal prosecutor, she was a vigorous but relatively inexperienced candidate with a better feel for urban ward politics than for international diplomacy. But she proved to be a quick study and came across as a new breed of feminist politician ? comfortable with the boys, particularly powerful Democrats like the House speaker, Thomas P. O?Neill Jr., and less combative than predecessors like Representative Bella Abzug of New York.

She was also ideal for television: a down-to-earth, streaked-blond, peanut-butter-sandwich-making mother whose personal story resonated powerfully. Brought up by a single mother who had crocheted beads on wedding dresses to send her daughter to good schools, Ms. Ferraro had waited until her own children were school age before going to work in a Queens district attorney?s office headed by a cousin.

In the 1984 race, many Americans found her breezy style refreshing. ?What are you ? crazy?? was a familiar expression. She might break into a little dance behind the speaker?s platform when she liked the introductory music. Feeling patronized by her Republican opponent, Vice President George Bush, she publicly scolded him.

With Ms. Ferraro on the ticket, Democrats hoped to exploit a so-called gender gap between the parties. A Newsweek poll taken after she was nominated showed men favoring Reagan-Bush 58 percent to 36 percent but women supporting Mondale-Ferraro 49 percent to 41 percent.

For the first time a major candidate for national office talked about abortion with the phrase ?If I were pregnant,? or about foreign policy with the personal observation ?As the mother of a draft-age son....? She wore pearls and silk dresses and publicly worried that her slip was showing.

She also traveled a 55,000-mile campaign trail, spoke in 85 cities and raised $6 million. But in November the Democratic ticket won only one state ? Mr. Mondale?s Minnesota ? and the District of Columbia.

And to the Democrats? chagrin, Reagan captured even the women?s vote, drawing some 55 percent; women, it appeared, had opposed, almost as much as men, the tax increase that Mr. Mondale, a former senator and vice president under Jimmy Carter, had said in his acceptance speech would be inevitable, an attempt at straight talking that cost him dearly at the polls.

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Weekend Open Forum: Hobbies away from the PC

The First Plastic Computer Processor

Silicon may underpin the computers that surround us, but the rigid inflexibility of the semiconductor means it cannot reach everywhere. The first computer processor and memory chips made out of plastic semiconductors suggest that, someday, nowhere will be out of bounds for computer power.

Researchers in Europe used 4,000 plastic, or organic, transistors to create the plastic microprocessor, which measures roughly two centimeters square and is built on top of flexible plastic foil. "Compared to using silicon, this has the advantage of lower price and that it can be flexible," says Jan Genoe at the IMEC nanotechnology center in Leuven, Belgium. Genoe and IMEC colleagues worked with researchers at the TNO research organization and display company Polymer Vision, both in the Netherlands.

The processor can so far run only one simple program of 16 instructions. The commands are hardcoded into a second foil etched with plastic circuits that can be connected to the processor to "load" the program. This allows the processor to calculate a running average of an incoming signal, something that a chip involved in processing the signal from a sensor might do, says Genoe. The chip runs at a speed of six hertz-on the order of a million times slower than a modern desktop machine-and can only process information in eight-bit chunks at most, compared to 128 bits for modern computer processors.

Organic transistors have already been used in certain LED displays and RFID tags, but have not been used to make a processor of any kind. The microprocessor was presented at the ISSCC conference in San Jose, California, last month.

Making the processor begins with a 25-micrometer thick sheet of flexible plastic, "like what you might wrap your lunch with," says Genoe. A layer of gold electrodes are deposited on top, followed by an insulating layer of plastic, another layer of gold electrodes and the plastic semiconductors that make up the processor's 4,000 transistors. Those transistors were made by spinning the plastic foil to spread a drop of organic liquid into a thin, even layer. When the foil is heated gently the liquid converts into solid pentacene, a commonly used organic semiconductor. The different layers were then etched using photolithography to make the final pattern for transistors.

In the future, such processors could be made more cheaply by printing the organic components like ink, says Genoe. "There are research groups working on roll-to-roll or sheet-to-sheet printing," he says, "but there is still some progress needed to make organic transistors at small sizes that aren't wobbly," meaning physically irregular. The best lab-scale printing methods so far can only deliver reliable transistors in the tens of micrometers, he says.

Creating a processor made from plastic transistors was a challenge, because unlike those made from ordered silicon crystals, not every one can be trusted to behave like any other. Plastic transistors each behave slightly differently because they are made up of jumbled, amorphous collections of pentacene crystals. "You won't have two that are equal," says Geneo. "We had to study and simulate that variability to work out a design with the highest chance of behaving correctly."

The team succeeded, but that doesn't mean the stage is set for plastic processors to displace silicon ones in consumer computers. "Organic materials fundamentally limit the speed of operation," Genoe explains. He expects plastic processors to appear in places where silicon is barred by its cost or physical inflexibility. The lower cost of the organic materials used compared to conventional silicon should make the plastic approach around 10 times cheaper.

"You can imagine an organic gas sensor wrapped around a gas pipe to report on any leaks with a flexible microprocessor to clean up the noisy signal," he says. Plastic electronics could also allow disposable interactive displays to be built into packaging, for example for food, says Genoe. "You might press a button to have it add up the calories in the cookies you ate," he says.

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Weekend Open Forum: Hobbies away from the PC

Apple didn?t violate Nokia?s patents, according to the FTC

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has ruled today that Apple didn?t violate any of Nokia?s patents with the iPhone and iPad 3G.

Nokia claimed that Apple had included a variety of its patents within the iPhone and iPad 3G including enhanced speech, data transmission and ?innovations? made to the antenna configurations.

Back in July we reported that Apple was being sued by Nokia over 5 patents that apparently infringed on its copyright. In a press release Nokia stated:

The patents in question relate to technologies for enhanced speech and data transmission, using positioning data in applications and innovations in antenna configurations that improve performance and save space, allowing smaller and more compact devices. These patented innovations are important to Nokia?s success as they allow improved product performance and design.

This is ought to be a huge bummer for Nokia but it won?t be the last we hear about this patent battle. On a weekly basis, it seems that Apple is either being sued or going after another manufacturer for infringing on its patents. In October of 2009 Nokia sued Apple for infringing on 10 patents trying to grab royalties on every iPhone sold.

Apple has made no official comment as of yet but a Nokia spokesperson issued a statement saying ?While we don?t agree that there has been no violation, we?ll wait to see the details of the ruling before we decide on any next steps,?. We?ll have to wait to hear the reasons behind the ruling to give Nokia and Apple a chance to censor confidential business information that may be included within the document.

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Source: http://thenextweb.com/2011/03/25/apple-didnt-violate-nokias-patents-according-to-the-ftc/

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Gaming 23 - The Touch of Gordon

Gaming 23 - The Touch of Gordon

Posted on 21st Mar 2011 at 11:43 by Podcast with 9 comments

This weeks gaming podcast sees Harry, Paul, Joe and Clive sit down to discuss some of the games we've been playing and reviewing lately. First up for the bit-tech treatment is the Crysis 2 demo which Harry has been playing. It's only a small part of the multiplayer portion of the game but it's an interesting window into what direction the rest of the game will take.

We also discuss Clive's review of Shogun 2: Total War and what he liked and disliked about the game. After that Joe takes us through his experiences with Dragon Age 2 and why he doesn't like the game, but still gave it a 7/10.


As always, we've also set up our weekly competition too, the lucky winner of which will walk away with a Mionix Propus 380 mousepad. This beast of a mouse mat should provide the perfect tracking surface, whichever mouse you choose to use.

As ever, the bit-tech hardware podcast features music by Brad Sucks, and was recorded on Shure microphones. This edition of the podcast was also sponsored by Darkspore. You can download the podcast direct, listen in-browser or subscribe through iTunes using the links below. Also, be sure to let us know your thoughts about the discussion in the forums.

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Gaming 23 - The Touch of Gordon

Gaming 23 - The Touch of Gordon

Posted on 21st Mar 2011 at 11:43 by Podcast with 9 comments

This weeks gaming podcast sees Harry, Paul, Joe and Clive sit down to discuss some of the games we've been playing and reviewing lately. First up for the bit-tech treatment is the Crysis 2 demo which Harry has been playing. It's only a small part of the multiplayer portion of the game but it's an interesting window into what direction the rest of the game will take.

We also discuss Clive's review of Shogun 2: Total War and what he liked and disliked about the game. After that Joe takes us through his experiences with Dragon Age 2 and why he doesn't like the game, but still gave it a 7/10.


As always, we've also set up our weekly competition too, the lucky winner of which will walk away with a Mionix Propus 380 mousepad. This beast of a mouse mat should provide the perfect tracking surface, whichever mouse you choose to use.

As ever, the bit-tech hardware podcast features music by Brad Sucks, and was recorded on Shure microphones. This edition of the podcast was also sponsored by Darkspore. You can download the podcast direct, listen in-browser or subscribe through iTunes using the links below. Also, be sure to let us know your thoughts about the discussion in the forums.

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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/bit-tech/blog/~3/rTAMT3txK-k/

issaquah school district the game tv show lasso of truth terrence j most popular thanksgiving side dish the game bet lights out nyc school closings scelestious stephanie seymour and son