Hasta La Gadget!

This is Part 2 of a list of my favorite sounding CDs of late, in no particular order. My preference is for realistic-sounding recordings, recordings that allow the band to sound “live.” And sure, I still like a lot of recordings that are heavily processed, but I wouldn’t by any stretch use them to “test” the naturalness of a speaker.

The first half of the top 10 CD list appeared in the previous Audiophiliac.

A different kind of heavy metal music.

Savage Aural Hotbed, “Wreckquiem”

Talk about heavy metal, Savage Aural Hotbed is a (mostly) industrial percussion group. They rhythmically hit, scrape, or smash pipes, barrels, tenor and baritone snorkelhorns, electric power tools, and drums. I love SAH records for their dense textures and searing dynamics and this new one will give your system an aerobic workout while dazzling your ears with its mesmerizing charms.

Ms. Cash at her best

Rosanne Cash, “10 Song Demo”

OK, this one’s from 1996, but it’s withstood the test of time. True to the title, it’s just Cash accompanied by a small group of players, Production is minimal, so if your system is good enough the music can sound very, very real. The music’s a perfect 10.

Jazz that'll rock your world

Gerald Clayton, “Two-Shade”

Clayton’s nimble piano trio delivers hard-driving pieces and explosive improvisations that’ll push your hi-fi to the limit. The piano, bass, and drums balance is, musically and sonically, as good as it gets. It may be Clayton’s trio, but it’s a band of equals. The stereo image is set back, behind the plane of my speakers, so it doesn’t have the claustrophobic, up close perspective of most contemporary jazz recordings.

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Originally posted at The Audiophiliac

Remake It is a book on a subject dear to us at Gadget Lab: hacking. Not the computer kind, though, but the make-do-and-mend kind we do every day. The book, written by design-geek and Wallpaper editor Henrietta Thompson, gives illustrated, step-by-step instructions on turning old CD spindles into bagel-holders, old Macs into aquariums and garden hoses into, well, you’ll find out.

If some of those sound familiar, that’s because they are. Henrietta is an old friend and hit me up for some suggestions. Apparently there’s a project to do with old inner-tubes in there, my signature material. Even the book itself can be transformed into something else. Henrietta says that “You could buy it. We hope you will like it. But even if you don’t you can always repurpose it as a trivet.”

I’m looking forward to seeing it when it comes out in November, and it’s nice to see this kind of home-style hacking going mainstream with some decent design instead of the usual blurry photos. The most ironic thing is that this new repurposing craze is exactly the kind of thing your grandparents would have done when they were young, every single day. $20.

Product page [Amazon. Thanks, Henrietta!]
Product page UK [Amazon]

Everyone’s trying to pinpoint exactly what pushed Eric Schmidt to leave Apple’s board—or Apple to oust him—but whether it was Google Voice or the FCC doesn’t really matter. Eric Schmidt shouldn’t have been there in the first place.

Schmidt’s presence the Apple board of directors has been conceptually weird from the start, but in the last year or so, he’s been treading in dangerous territory. Many saw these concerns crystallize when the FTC invoked a century-old antitrust law that prohibits “interlocking directorates”—essentially, the sharing of leadership between two competing companies to investigate the companies after Google announced Chrome OS (an investigation which is still moving forward, despite Schmidt’s exit). The NYT, discussing the issue in May:

Antitrust experts say that investigations of interlocking directorates rarely lead to major confrontations between companies and the government. Executives typically choose to resign from the board of a competitor if it poses a problem rather than face a lengthy investigation or a bruising legal fight.

The thing is, until just now, Eric Schmidt didn’t step down, nor did he seriously talk about it. He didn’t feel he had to, because of a disingenuous loophole:

Under the Clayton Act, interlocking directorates are not considered a problem if the revenue from products in which the companies compete is less than 2 percent of either company’s sales.

Google’s competing services are generally free, including Android and the upcoming Chrome OS, and therefore don’t directly account for much—or depending on how stubbornly literal you want to be about it—any of the company’s revenue. This should have be a clear cue to step the hell aside, but it wasn’t taken that way. Schmidt was comfortable staying, and wasn’t afraid to say so as early as last week.

In an interview printed in the Mercury News on Friday, Schmidt said “the board question can be solved by recusing yourself, which I do with the iPhone,” hardly talking like a guy who was about to walk away. He was comfortable with this relationship; the regulatory bodies, the public and, most importantly, Apple, were not. It’s hard to imagine Steve Jobs, or Apple’s various board members, taking kindly to the consistent surprises they were getting from Google. As they saw it, the iPhone begot Android, Safari begot Chrome, and in a small way, OS X begot Chrome OS. Steve Jobs didn’t waste any words in their press release on Schmidt’s departure, and made these concerns pretty clear:

Unfortunately, as Google enters more of Apple’s core businesses, with Android and now Chrome OS, Eric’s effectiveness as an Apple Board member will be significantly diminished.

Chrome OS was announced in May, and Android in November of 2007. To Jobs and Apple, Schmidt’s overlapping interests were old news; to Schmidt, it’s safe to assume they were ancient history.

The Google/Apple relationship has been steadily getting more awkward since people first started talking about it, and at a fast clip since Schmidt’s been onboard. The relationship was unnecessarily strained as it was, but now Schmidt’s company is giving Apple some serious headaches, all the while looking like the innocent party in a confusing PR nightmare that’s drawn the wrath of the FCC. Granted, they deserve it, but having a Google CEO to step over only muddles the issues. It bears repeating: nothing good could’ve come from Schmidt staying. He’d either be accused of collusion, sabotage or both—his presence was a lose-lose proposition. He didn’t seem to mind, but it looks like Apple finally did.

Drawing a thicker line between these corporate structures is good for everyone, no matter how this plays out. If Apple and Google turn into direct rivals, they need distinct management. If they want to continue working together, like they do on browsers, iPhone software, or some as-of-yet-unannounced project—Apple could sure as hell use Google’s help with their cloud efforts, for example—they need the exact same thing.

In Japan, the PS3 comes in silver, black, and white.

(Credit: Sony)

The rumors of the impending arrival of a new PlayStation 3 are growing more fierce as new hints seem to turn up almost daily in the blogsphere. The latest discovery to pop up is what appears to be …

“Our friends call us The Shack”. So claims the newly rebranded RadioShack in an attempt to be down with the kids. It’s almost embarrassing, like seeing your grandfather listening to an iPod and riding a single speed track bike. Wait, that actually would be cool.

The rebranding is part of a big Netogether promo (giant laptops and webcams. Sounds like fun) for the company and strikes us as being on a level with the recent Pizza Hut scheme, which renamed itself as The Hut (eat there and you’ll end up looking like Jabba). Sure, the store probably doesn’t sell as many radios as it did back in 1921, but a name is more than a description of a company, right?

Back at the beginning, brothers Theodore and Milton Deutschmann chose the name for their first downtown Boston store because it referred to the big wooden boxes that contained a ship’s radio kit, and that’s what they were selling. If the retailer was that honest today, perhaps the chain should be called JunkShack?

Still, it’s better than the fate of Tandy, the UK version of RadioShack. The stores disappeared and even the url redirects to some shabby-looking online shop called “UK Stores”. What a way to go.

The Shack Summer Netogether [RadioShack]

Photo: Caveman 92223/Flickr