Tag Archive for mixtape

| July 13, 2019
Comments Off on Walkman is 40

Walkman is 40

Updated 09/14/2019 – Sony is releasing a new Walkman. CNN says the 40th anniversary Walkman NW-A100TPS commemorative version is powered by Android. It has a USB-C port and up to 26 hours of battery life. That is more playing time than most smartphones can provide. It comes with a bunch of audiophile features including; S-Master HX digital amplifier, a DSEE HX processor, even a vinyl processor to give digital tracks the character of vinyl.

There will be a standard version, the Walkman NW-A105 for us mere mortals who can’t or won’t pay the commemorative. Price. cost and release date haven’t officially been announced.

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Walkman is 4040 years ago Sony (SNE), not Apple, revolutionized the way we listen to music. The blue and silver Sony Walkman TPS-L2 was introduced in Japan on July 1, 1979. The original Walkman sold for around ¥33,000 ($150). For the first time, the Walkman let us take our music with us without bothering our neighbors. It replaced boomboxes and portable radios.

Walkman TPS-L2The Walkman wasn’t the first. It was the first affordable and manageable portable music player. German inventor Andreas Pavel’s Stereobelt was too clunky and expensive, so they never took off. Sony sold more than 50,000 in the first two months. CNN reports that in its heyday, the Walkman was as synonymous with portable music players as Kleenex became to tissue and Xerox was to copy machines.

The Walkman came to the US in 1980

The Walkman was introduced to the U.S. in 1980 and continued to sell well even through the CD era. Innovation kept Sony on top of the market. The 1981 Walkman II was barely bigger than a cassette tape. 1984’s Discman helped Sony stay on top of the portable music world. Sony sold 385 million units between 1979 and 2009 Walkmans.

WM-F5 Sports Walkman

My Walkman in college

Some argue that the Walkman finished off vinyl records. By the time the Walkman made its U.S. debut in 1980, the cassette was well on its way to overtaking vinyl. By 1983, cassettes were officially the best-selling format. Chaim Gartenberg at the Verge writes the Walkman was originally ridiculed for lacking the ability to record tapes. It was designed to play music. You could make a mixtape for your high-school sweetheart and listen to it together. The Walkman offered two 3.5mm headphone jacks (the same hardware that, until recently, found on the iPhone) in lieu of a speaker.

Apple iPod

The Verge notes that the Walkman’s popularity began to fade with the arrival of CDs. Its popularity was further eroded in 2001 after the introduction of the Apple iPod and digital downloads began to dominate. Tech historian Stewart Wolpin told USA Today that Sony could have dethroned Apple iPod and iTunes. He explained that Sony’s boss Sir Howard Stringer had completely siloed the company’s divisions so that the electronics business was kept separate from Sony’s recording and film divisions.

This kept Sony from building an iTunes/iPod-like integrated music player/music store solution … Sony would have been the only potential competitor to Apple had the Sony hardware and Sony content people been able to talk to each other.

 

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The 40th anniversary of the Walkman is not about nostalgia. The Walkman is important because before there was the Internet to change what people expected from life, there was the Walkman.

Music that was too daring for commercial radio or my parents in the early ‘80s made its way to me via cassettes made by other kids. Without the Walkman, I probably would never have learned of the B-52’s Rock Lobster, Black Sabbath’s War Pigs, or Iggy Pop and the Stooges‘ Raw Power. The rise of the Walkman is the first loss of control that the recording industry still complains about.

Vintage Bang & Olufsen audio system.The Walkman also inhibited our social skills. It predicted the rise of iPhone culture, a world where eye contact is as obsolete as a Bang & Olufsen audio system.

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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

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| July 2, 2019
Comments Off on Groovy Grillin’

Groovy Grillin’

Groovy Grillin'SUMR HITS 5000 may be the name of the mixtape you made for your high school sweetheart – it not. Just in time for the July 4th marketing run-up spice company, McCormick introduced SUMR HITS 5000. The SUMR HITS 5000 is a gas grill with an integrated DJ station. Now you can dance with your Delmonico or rumba with your ribs.

McCormick Unveils First-of-its-Kind Grill The SUMR HITS 5000 grill augments your everyday cook-out with custom hardware and machine learning. The custom-made grill technology allows the griller to decide when and what sounds are added to their music track. You can “create custom music tracks” on the grill. The tunes change as food is placed on the grill and which spices and sauces are used.

SUMR HITS 5000 grill creds

In order to give the SUMR HITS 5000 grill some cred, McCormick signed up some talent. They signed up award-winning Pitmaster Myron Mixon and hip-hop legend DJ Jazzy Jeff to sell the product. McCormick Creative and Digital Marketing Director at Alia Kemet said in a presser,

McCormick wanted to explore innovative ways our fans could spice up and enhance their summer grilling, Music plays an important role in enjoying food, flavor and the overall experience. The SUMR HITS 5000 creates the intersection of expressing one’s passion for flavor through original song, and we think it’s the perfect blend of mixing taste and art

Engadget says the SUMR HITS 5000 grill uses a mix of technologies. The grill uses capacitive touch sensors, (the same thing as your phone) computer vision (that drives autonomous vehicle), and machine learning :

  • The grill grate has capacitive touch sensors. Move a burger from one spot to another, and that triggers a sound. Remove a condiment from its assigned spot, and you’ll hear another.
  • The grill uses computer vision algorithms, powered by a standard webcam that could detect human poses. Shake some spice over your food, and you’ll literally hear what sounds like a powder shaking.
  • The knobs and condiment holders are lit with neon blue LEDs.
  • The grill uses a 3.5mm audio jack to plugin for sound, with no built-in speakers (the one Apple got rid of).

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CheeseburgerI like to grill – even in the snow – but this is a bit much. Maybe if Will Smith ran the grill, and they added a beer tap – that would be a party!

The SUMR HITS 5000 is a concept grill, so you can’t run out and buy your own in time for your Independence Day festivities. But you can see it in action here!

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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

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| October 30, 2012
Comments Off on Mix Tape – The Future of Big Data Storage

Mix Tape – The Future of Big Data Storage

Mix Tapes - The Future of Big Data StorageThe mix tape is about to make a comeback, in a big way according to New Scientist. From the updates posted by Facebook’s (FB) 1 billion users to the medical images shared by healthcare organization worldwide and the rise of high-definition video streaming, the need to store massive amounts of data is greater than ever. Hard drives have been the workhorse of large storage operations for decades. However, a new wave of ultra-dense tape drives is set to the replace the HDD. The new tape drives pack in information at much higher densities, while using less energy in the size of a 1980’s mix tape, according to the article.

Researchers at Fuji Film (4901) and IBM (IBM) have already built prototypes that can store 35 terabytes of data. The cartridge which measures 10 centimeters by 10 cm by 2 cm, can store  about 35 million books’ worth of information. This is achieved using magnetic tape coated with nanoparticles of barium ferrite. The coating stabilizes magnetic storage media by keeping moisture and oxidation (rust) from damaging the surface of storage tape.

But the real début for this technology, the author speculates will be with the Square Kilometre Array (SKA). The SKA will be the world’s largest radio telescope when it is completed in 2024. SKA will consist of thousands of antennas across the southern hemisphere. Once it’s up and running, the SKA is expected to pump out 1 petabyte (1 million gigabytes) of compressed data per day. If the SKA data archive was built using today’s 3-terabyte HDD’s, the telescope would fill an unmanageable 120,000 drives a year.

Data recovery100 terabytes on a cartridge

That annual archive growth would swamp an experiment that is expected to last decades, says IBM Fellow Evangelos Eleftheriou, who is part of a team working to build tapes for the SKA. The IBMer says that by the time the telescope comes online, they  expect to be able to store 100 terabytes. They plan to store that much data by shrinking the width of the recording tracks and using more accurate systems for positioning the read-write heads used to access them.

Using tapes should cut down drastically on energy use, too. A 2010 study by Clipper Group found that data centers with disc drive arrays use over 200 times more power than would a tape library of similar size. Disc drives in large arrays tend to stay powered-up, so their platters spin continuously, in case data is required, says Jon Hiles of Spectra Logic, a digital archiving firm in Boulder, CO. But tape drives only use power when they are being read or recorded on, he says.

The downside of tapes

The downside of tapes is that they are slower to access than hard discs. Tapes have to be fetched by a robotic mechanism, inserted in a reader and spooled to the right point. But the Linear Tape File System, expedites this process to make it comparable to disc drives, Eleftheriou told the blog. As storage needs skyrocket, hard drives won’t be able to keep up and keep power down, Eleftheriou says. Density improvements in hard drives are facing physical limits that mean they can only add more power-munching platters. “It’s time to take advantage of the low power and low-cost of tape,” he says.

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It is unlikely even the largest firm will need the kind of capacity SKA’s IT staff will have to deal with every day. But it is likely that every organization that stores big data on-site will be looking for low-cost, high-capacity alternatives to disk. However I would not want to trust 35 TB (or more) of data to a cassette which can be easily destroyed. Do you think the 80’s mix tape cassettes  are the future of big data storage?

Do you think cassette tapes are the future of big data storage?

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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him at LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

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