Concert Vault app streams thousands of live sets

With three top-name acts from the seventies coming to the Louisville area this week -- Fleetwood Mac, Janis Ian, and Karla Bonoff -- it seemed like a great time to open the vault.

I'm talking about Wolfgang's Vault. Wolfgang's website lets you listen to and sometimes watch thousands of concert recordings stretching back to the 1950s. The Vault's archive contains about 4,500 concerts ranging across all genres from rock and blues to folk, jazz and country.

In addition to the web, the shows are also available on Apple and Android mobile apps called Concert Vault and now there's a new app specifically for Apple's iPad.

    

The service charges a membership fee of $3.99 a month or $39.99 for a year. Members can stream concerts or individual songs and download two full concert downloads each week. New app users get a free 7-day trial to check out the service.

I found show recordings for all three of this week's performers:

•     Janis Ian at New York's Calderone Concert Hall in 1975
•     Three Karla Bonoff shows from 1977 at The Bottom Line
•     Seven Fleetwood Mac concerts between 1968 and 1975

You can hear Stevie Nicks' "Rhiannon" and "Landslide" on the 1975 set from the Capitol Theatre in Passaic, N.J. But long-time Mac fans will also appreciate hearing the Christine McVie numbers like "Sentimental Lady" and the Bob Welch tunes like "Hypnotized." Those are songs they are not likely to hear at the live show at the YUM! Center.

By: Ric Manning On 4/08/2013

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Jawbone's revamped UP is ready for a walk

Tracking your activities tends to make be more active. I found that out last year when I got the Fitbit pedometer. Once I set a goal of 10,000 steps a day, the Fitbit's reports pushed me to keep walking more.

The problem with the tiny Fitbit is it's too easy to lose. My first one disappeared somewhere near my house. When the replacement failed to make it home from a trip to Las Vegas, I gave up on the Fitbit.

My prospects to holding on to the UP from Jawbone look much better. Instead of a paperclip design, the UP is a thin wristband made to be worn 24/7. It tracks your your steps and your sleep. If you take the trouble to enter your food, it will also help you manage your diet and calorie intake.

Jawbone says the UP's battery will last for 10 days and that it has alarmks that will wake you after a 25-minute power nap and nudge you if you've been awake but inactive for too long.

The first version of the UP released in 2011 was plagued by technical problems and units were eventually recalled by Jawbone. The new version release late last year is getting mucyh better user reviews.

The new version works with a free iPhone or Android app that makes colorful graphs of your activity and sleep patterns. But unlike the Fitbit, it doesn't use Bluetooth. You have remove a cap from the bracelet and plug it into your mobile phone's headphone jack. That's a pretty simple step, but you don't get the immediate gratification that comes with a wireless link.

The UP's price isn't very gratifying, either. It costs about $130 just about anywhere you find it, including Verizon stores and verizonwireless.com.

By: Ric Manning On 4/07/2013

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Andrew Prell readies second season of Startup Icon

When I first met Andrew Prell in the 1990s, he was living in Louisville and pursuing his dream of building a virtual reality arcade game. By 1993 he had arcade games in several high-profile locations, including the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.

But while his games never matched the popularity of Ms. Pac-Man or Space Invaders, his quest brought him into the orbits of several high-powered entrepreneurs. His company, Agora Interactive, counted among its backers Computer Associates founder Charles Wang and Nolan Bushnell, the legendary founder of Atari.

Today, Prell divides his time between Louisville and Silicon Valley where he is the brains behind Startup Icon, a project that merges business and entertainment in a web-based competition that has been called an "American Idol for startups."

I ran into Prell at the Consumer Electronics Show in January and caught up with him again last week at a Highlands coffee shop. He filled me in on his plans for the second season of StartUp Icon, which is currently lining up contestants for this year’s competition. The playoffs will start later this spring. 

You don't have to be an entrepreneur to participate. Anyone can sign up to try out the competitors' apps and products and provide feedback in the website forums. Once the playoff is under way, the audience can also get in line for gifts and prizes.
 
To get more details about the show, check out my interview with Press at High Gain Blog.

By: Ric Manning On 4/01/2013

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Getting nostalgic for some great gadgets

Pioneer's Supertuner car stereo.

The organization that runs the annual Consumer Electronics Show recently asked its Facebook followers what was their favorite among all the gadgets they have owned. Most people said their iPad, iPhone, satellite radio or some other device from the past decade.

My nostalgia for great gadgets goes much farther back in my memory banks. Some of my early electronic devices were my first kisses in what would be a 40-year love affair with gadgets and gear.

Of course, they were all eventually replaced by something newer and shiner. I too love my iPad. But I'm also fond of several early gadgets that did their jobs well and earned their keep.

My first computer is good example. While my friends went for the inexpensive Commodore 64 or the Texas Instruments TI99 in the early 80s because they were good for playing games, I saved up to buy the costlier Apple II+. As I recall, I paid about $1,200 with one floppy drive and no monitor. I wanted it because it could do everything.

My daughter learned the alphabet playing Sticky Bear while I used a word processor and modem to write magazine stories and launch a newsletter. And it was still the best computer for playing games like LodeRunner, Choplifter and Wizardry.

What else did I like? Do you remember Pioneer's Supertuner car radio? How about Mattel's handheld football game?

Take a stroll with me down digital memory lane at MyWell-Being.com.

By: Ric Manning On 3/25/2013

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Three-way breakfast in a flash

A nice soft-cooked egg and a slice of ham or sausage patty slipped between two slices of an English muffin or a bagel.

Sound like a good breakfast? It's my favorite.

Trouble is, I work at home, so I don't want to drive to a fast-food restaurant to buy one. And I'm not all that slick with a skillet.

So, wouldn't it be great, I thought, if there was a machine that could crank out all the components of an egg-and-sausage sandwich with one flick of a switch? Imagine my surprise when I discovered there is just such a machine.It's called the West Bend Egg and Muffin Toaster and it costs $40 from sources like amazon.com and Bed, Bath & Beyond.

It has a pair of standard toasting slots that can take bread, English muffins, bagel slices, or even a sliced croissant. And hanging on the end of the toaster is a little steaming chamber. There's room in there for one egg -- poached or scrambled -- or for four eggs  to be hard boiled. A grill that sits on top of the egg chamber will warm a sausage patty or slice of good Kentucky ham while the egg is cooking.

And it's all done at once, with minimal human intervention. Push a single button and everything pops up hot and toasty in about four minutes. And that's a lot faster than a trip to the golden arches.  

By: Ric Manning On 3/11/2013

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Turtle Shell speaker is built for Spring Break

Want to take your tunes along on your spring break? Of course you do. Here's a Bluetooth speaker that built for serious beach time.

The Turtle Shell Wireless Boom Box is water resistant and built to keep rocking even in the rain or the surf. The speaker costs about $150 from Outdoor Technology.

The case has a screw mount on the bottom so you can attach the speaker to bicycle handlebars, a kayak or a beach umbrella. A claw-shaped clamp, sold separately for about $20, lets you mount the speaker almost anywhere you want it.

The speaker's shell has controls built into the surface and connectors tucked away behind rubber plugs. And the sound is deep and rich enough to replace those bulky old-style boom boxes left over from the 1990s.

By: Ric Manning On 3/05/2013

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ION gadget turns iPhone into a photo scanner

What's the easiest way to turn a shoebox full of old snapshots into digital images? It might be the iPics2Go from Ion.

The portable battery-powered scanner can create high-resolution images from 3x5- or 4x6-inch photos or 35mm negatives. And, it will do the job quickly with a minimum of trouble and bother.

But first you'll need an iPhone 4 or 4S.

The phone does two things. It snaps into a slot on the top of the light box where it shoots a new photo of the old photo or negative. And, it run's Ion's free app that brings the image into sharp focus, balances colors, and saves a copy to the iPhone camera roll, sends it to Facebook or attaches it to an email.

In my tests, I fed the iPics2Go a variety of photos: bleached-out snapshots, black-and-whites from the 1950s and old Polaroid instant photos. All of them came out as clear and crisp as copies I have made using the flatbed scanner on my printer.

But there were a couple of disappointments. One is the digital images are produced in the PNG format. That's fine for online use, but JPG images are much more common. Also, the device won't work with an iPhone 5, or an Android phone, for that matter. The slot for the phone if built specifically for the iPhone 4 or 4S.

But those are minor issues compared to ease and convenience of the iPics2Go - and its attractive price. The device has a list price of $59.99 but sells for less than $30 at amazon.com.

By: Ric Manning On 2/15/2013

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OUYA: The Developing Story

Engadget's Distro mag has a look at the open-source gaming console from developers who have their hands on the early version.

OUYA: The Developing Story

Download Distro, free for iPad

Ric Manning

By: Ric Manning On 2/11/2013

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