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CES electronics will stop your heart?

PHOENIX--Guard your pacemaker! The afternoon presentations at i-stage got the heart rate up quiet literally. Okay, only one of them did but it is a doozy.

At CES this year, I will definitely be on the lookout for the KOR-FX. It looks a little like a cross between a vest and headphones for your pecs. It is two plastic pieces that sit on your chest and amplify audio signals into what the company calls accusto-haptic technology. You plug it into a standard audio-out jack and it sends audio signals into your body. It will work with any gadget like an … Read more

Reporters' Roundtable Podcast: Product launches

Should you launch your product at a trade show like Demo or CES, or should you try to drum up interest on your own? This week on the Roundtable, Revision 3 CEO Jim Louderback and Stage Two Consulting's Jeremy Toeman discuss successful and doomed strategies for introducing new products to the market.

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Today, we're talking about product launches. The reason we're doing this show now is that the Demo conference just ended, a week after the TechCrunch50 conference. One hundred and twenty products were launched at these shows. Is that smart? Is this how products should be launched? Is there a better way? To talk about this issue in some depth, I have two great guests....

As usual, watch or listen to the podcast for the content. The notes below are for those keeping score at home.

… Read more

Apple releases iTunes 9.0.1, and updates to Main Stage and Logic Suites

Apple has released a few updates to their audio programs, including iTunes, Main Stage, and their Logic Express and Logic Pro suites. These updates are available via Software Update or the links provided here, and address the following bugs and issues with previous versions:… Read more

Schiller plugs Apple's updated video, audio suites

Apple has a history of appealing to creative professionals and has reiterated its interest in these core customers with the release of two major suites.

On Thursday, Apple updated its high-end video production suite, Final Cut Studio, and its audio suite, Logic Studio.

Apple began bundling its professional apps together several years ago, differentiating them into audio and video suites. Doing so allows customers to work on several applications, while staying in one environment.

"We try to make things work together up and down the range of products," Phil Schiller, senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, told … Read more

Apple revamps Logic Studio audio suite

Apple released on Thursday the next major version of Logic Studio, the company's suite of professional audio applications.

I was given early access to the new version and have been using it for some time now. I can say the new features will not only improve your workflow, but will also improve the sound of your music.

Logic Studio consists of three main applications: Logic Pro 9, MainStage 2, and Soundtrack Pro 3. As part of the bundle you also get 80 Studio Effects plug-ins, 40 software instrument plug-ins, more than 1,700 sampled instruments, and over 20,000 … Read more

JBL On Stage 400P speaker dock plays nice with the iPhone

Though they are portable devices, the iPod and the iPhone can make wonderful sources for headphone-free music when connected to speakers. Of course, wading through the glut of iPod-ready tabletop speakers on the market today takes patience and know-how, especially if you have an iPhone, which requires a unit with magnetic shielding for optimal performance.

Luckily, well-established audio device companies like JBL are providing more and more models with that feature, such as the JBL On Stage 400P. This $250 tabletop speaker dock is the largest of the On Stage line and bests its smaller siblings in sound quality. If … Read more

Working overtime for venture capital funding

Editor's note: This is part of a series of stories about the recession's effect on the tech industry.

Entrepreneur Treb Ryan remembers in vivid detail the day the Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted nearly 700 points and dropped below 9,000 for the first time in years.

He was visiting a major computer maker on that day, October 9, waiting to meet with a potential investor about funding his start-up OpSource.

"I was about a half an hour early for the appointment and was sitting in the lobby, where they have a big screen TV," recalled … Read more

MSN Unsigned seems half-hearted

Covering Microsoft for the last eight years, I've seen this pattern time and time again. Internet trend comes along. Microsoft watches. Trend picks up steam. Microsoft watches. Some other company--usually a start-up--creates a site that perfectly crystallizes the trend and achieves a surprising spike in traffic. Microsoft creates a product team somewhere in the bowels of its online organization to come up with an answer. Six to eighteen months later, the imitation launches to general yawns in the press and perhaps some temporary spikes in traffic thanks to Microsoft's massive online reach. (400 million-plus registered users--that's the … Read more

Vote early, vote often...with OurStage for iPhone

In case you're just awakening from a coma, today's election day in the United States, and turnout's expected to set records.

But what about tomorrow? After the polling places have closed and the results are in, what can you do if you still hanker to cast a ballot and make your opinion count? OurStage offers you the chance to make or break thousands of independent artists by listening to and rating their songs.

The Web site's been around for more than a year, but last week the company added a free iPhone application as well. You … Read more