Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

Do you remember HDtracks?  Well, if you don’t, it’s an online store that sells music and albums in high definition format, meaning the audio clarity is a lot better than normal music.  Unfortunately, this music doesn’t come cheap, an album would cost $15.98 and a single song would cost $2.49.  However, HDtracks and Gibson (a company that manufacturers instruments and famous for their guitars) have partnered up to offer an exclusive album for free in high definition. 

The album is called Gibson Presents: Hot Tones and is available on the Gibson website, but is available on the HDtracks website for free in high def; the album on Gibson is only available in normal format.  Within this album, performers such as Johnny A, Michael Burks, Billy Burnette, Arlen Roth with Sonny Landreth, Chris Cain, Neal Schon, Nick Colionne, Eric Johnson,  Tinsley Ellis, Big Bill Morganfield, Peter Karp, Kenny Neal and Johnny Winter have all put forth their music.  In addition, this album features a never-before-heard instrumental track with performers Abraham Laboriel Sr. and his son with Slash. 

Unfortunately, this album will only be available for a limited time.  It is available right now, but on December 6, 2008, it will be taken down from both sites and they will not be made available after that.  Continued after the break.

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The night after Obama’s election was a time for celebration for most people (although obviously not John McCain) with parties, drinking and general fun.  However for one British journalist the night became a bit of a nightmare when he became an overnight star on YouTube.

Sitting in a corner on a laptop he is approached by a cameraman, who asks him a few questions about himself and the election.  Adam Smith (the journalist) is obviously quite drunk, but talks fairly coherently about why he is there and who he works for (Birmingham Mail in England), but then it all went wrong.  When asked about an article he is writing at the moment he says that he has copied and pasted it off the BBC website, and then goes on to resign from his job.

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You’ve got to feel bad for YouTube.  After becoming the Internet’s darling for such fun gags, it wants to get a day job.  No longer content with just the clearing house for pranks and short clips, it wants to be in the full length movie business as well as the TV show business. 

YouTube served up this kind of content at one time but was forced to take most of it down over copyright claims.  Now YouTube is working with Hollywood to gain their trust and their content.

But it isn’t an easy road.  Sure YouTube has the traffic, 81 million folks in September but they also have the baggage.  And it’s more than just past indiscretions.

Find out what’s next for YouTube.

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If you’re a fan of online video, you’ve probably heard of Revision3.  Plenty of people are calling the company “RevisionG4” in light of the recent changes. 

Primer

If you’re unfamiliar with Revision3 here’s a quick primer: The company started as a vehicle to produce podcasts like thebroken, systm, and Diggnation.  Many new shows followed and lots of familiar faces were added to the mix.  Those of us who missed TechTV were comforted with the arrivial of Revision3 along with TWiT.

The shake up

Recently, there have been big changes over at Revision3. Cancellations of shows, distribution deals dropped and personnel changes.

Has Revision3 turned into RevisionG4?  Keep reading.

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Look out Apple, there could be a company in town with a player to kill the iPod.  In all seriousness, MySpace might enter the MP3 player department, a place where Apple’s iPod has dominated for quite a while now. 

At the Web 2.0 Summit meeting on Thursday, MySpace co-founder and Chief Executive, Chris DeWolfe, shed some light on the fact that MySpace could develop a music player, but nothing is set in stone. 

MySpace has used music a lot to make their site bigger and bigger.  Many small (and large) bands use MySpace as a way to share their music.  They even launched a new service, called MySpace Music, which works with popular music labels including Sony BMG Music, Universal Music Group, and Warner Music Group.  More after the break.

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I came across the chart above thanks to betfair.com.  The chart shows “the most accurate, up-to-the-minute prediction of who will win the U.S. Presidential election based on millions of wagers placed in the world’s largest betting exchange.“  Neat stuff.

But look closer and you see a divergence on September 15th (a Monday).  Something happened on this date that reversed both Obama’s downward trend and McCain’s comeback.

Find out what I theorize this to be and how YouTube has political blood on its hands.

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According to a source, you can opt into the new Netflix Watch Instantly movie player.  The source is The Official Netflix Blog, so it’s probably accurate.  This brings Netflix’s movie player to OS X for the first time (without running Windows) by using Microsoft’s Silverlight.

If you’re a slider and you use both Mac and Windows machines, once you opt into the Silverlight experience, you’re locked into to it for both platforms.  If you’re a Windows-only user, you may wonder why bother with opting in at all?  Well, maybe you hate Internet Explorer and you’ve always wanted to watch Netflix in Firefox.  This is your chance.

However, there is no opting out yet.  If the experience sucks, you’re stuck.  It’s a beta, so you know what that means.  I’m using it now and have already been hit with some errors.  Some movies that used to work don’t play Silverlight yet (mostly Starz offerings). 

Go for it!  [Netflix opt-in link]
Read more at the [The Official Netflix Blog]

• New MacBooks and MacBook Pros require HDCP for some iTunes videos
• Colombia orders up Windows XP based XO laptops
• Mozilla wants you to Fashion Your Firefox

You don’t even have to be illegally sharing your files to have the gaming firms after you apparently.  Just ask Gill and Ken Murdoch. 

They’re senior citizens who don’t even play computer games and had never even heard the term “peer-to-peer” until they got a letter in the mail telling them they were being accused of sharing the game Race07 by makers Atari.  Their case was eventually dropped, but there are still hundreds of people this is happening to according to a Which? Computing magazine investigation.  More details after the break.

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It was a feature that Blackberry users have been longing to have on their handsets.  Finally the wait is over as video web streaming service Qik has just released the alpha version of its mobile video streaming client for Blackberry devices.

The new Qik mobile video streaming app will let you live stream your video from your mobile phone to Qik.com and major social networking sites including Facebook, MySpace as well your personal blogs.  Download the application from http://qik.com/dl/165.  After installing the app on your Blackberry device, you can start streaming live videos by simply pressing the Stream button that will appear when you fire up the application on your Blackberry device.

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Samsung and Netflix have just announced a new partnership that will bring Netflix video streaming to a handful of Blu-ray players.  The models that will be compatible are the BD-P2550 and BD-P2500, both of which are currently available and retail for $399.99. It was also stated that in the future they hope to bring Netflix support to a “range of home entertainment products,“ of course they did not go into any specifics.

The Netflix support for both players will come courtesy of a free update from Samsung. Both the BD-P2550 and BD-P2500 offer similar functionality and specs, however the BD-P2550 will also be able to use Pandora Radio as part of this free update.

Overall, Netflix seems to be making quite a push into your home entertainment center with these recent “Watch Instantly” additions.  In the beginning support was limited to a PC, however we also saw the introduction of the Roku Netflix Player a short time ago, then most recently we saw the LG BD300, which is another Blu-ray player that offers Netflix streaming capabilities.

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