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The inventor of the cassette tape has died
Lou Ottens, the former Philips engineer who gave the world its first compact cassette tape, has passed away.
The Japanese ensemble making music from old tape reels
Open Reel Ensemble doesn't play conventional instruments, like guitars, drums and keyboards. Instead, the Japanese band uses reel-to-reel tape recorders built by Pioneer and TEAC in the 1970s and '80s. They weren't designed, of course, with musical creation and manipulation in mind. Ei Wada, the leader of Open Reel Ensemble, discovered their performative qualities by accident. More than 15 years ago, he was given a couple of tape recorders by a friend of his father who worked at a radio station. He tripped over them one day and, in a mixture of panic and sadness, tried to rotate the broken reels with his hands. To his surprise, the sound changed.
Sony and IBM created 330TB data tapes for a massive analog archive
Storing data on magnetic tape is back, baby. Sony has announced that thanks to a partnership with IBM Research in Zurich, the pair have developed a magnetic tape cartridge capable of storing 201 gigabytes of data per square inch for a total of 330 terabytes per cartridge. Previously, IBM's analog storage maxed out at 123 gigabytes per square inch.
Tech Hunters: How the Walkman changed the way we listen to music
Today, billions of people have access to portable music, mostly thanks to smartphones. The world's music catalog is at our fingertips thanks to Spotify, Apple and Amazon's online store, but it's not always been that easy. It wasn't until 1979 that music lovers could finally get their hands on a true portable player: the Sony Walkman. Even though Sony wasn't the first to introduce magnetic cassette technology, the Walkman was the device that made it popular. The introduction of the Sony Walkman TPS-L2 allowed consumers to carry their pre-recorded tapes -- which were normally bound to car stereos or home music centres -- and place them inside a stylish 14 ounce, bluish-silver player with big buttons that could be strapped to their belt. Initially, Sony believed it could sell 5,000 units a month, but it smashed all expectations by shifting more than 50,000 in the first two. Fast forward to 2010 and the Japanese electronics giant had sold 200 million of the things, with cassettes easily surpassing vinyl record sales on the way. Although the Walkman brand is still alive today, thanks to an updated range of digital music players, it was at its most popular in the 80s and 90s (so much so that the word "Walkman" entered the Oxford English Dictionary in 1986). It's a design classic that revolutionised the world of music, at least until Steve Jobs reinterpreted it for the modern age. Julia Hardy hits the audio highway to find out what a good Walkman can cost now.
Of course the 'Stranger Things' soundtrack is coming to cassette
Just when you thought Netflix's sci-fi horror series Stranger Things couldn't get any more retro, a new version of the original soundtrack is due to be released on cassette. To celebrate its one year anniversary, Lakeshore Records announced that both volumes of the Season One soundtrack will be available on red cassettes, which come inside cases that look like mini VHS tapes.
Metallica is releasing a remastered 1982 demo... on cassette
Dust off your tape players, folks: cassettes are still making a comeback. A number of independent artists have already leveraged the classic format, and Metallica is looking to join the bandwagon. The metal act recorded the seven-track No Life 'Til Leather demo back in 1982, and the effort will be released on April 18th as a limited-edition cassette. If you tossed out that boombox a long time ago, the remastered tunes will be available on CD and vinyl this summer. This is the first time that any of the band's demo material has been officially released, and it's the first in a series of reissues planned through Blackened Recordings, a Metallica-owned label.
Sony's 185TB data tape puts your hard drive to shame
It's hard for magnetic data tapes to stand out from the crowd in an era when it's easy to load up on legions of hard drives. However, Sony might have managed that rare feat with nano-sized tape tech that stores much more than off-the-shelf hardware. By optimizing how it sputters argon ions on to film to create magnetic material, the company has produced "nano-grained" tape that's 74 times denser than what you see today; at 185TB per cartridge, it makes even a 5TB hard disk seem quaint. Sony's breakthrough won't come to your home PC, but it could prove a big help to supercomputers and your favorite internet services -- many of them need high-capacity tape storage just to keep up with demand. [Image credit: Theilr, Flickr]
Compact cassette turns 50, puts a tear in Soundwave's eye
Forget the MP3 player, or even the Walkman -- the real instigator of the portable audio revolution is the compact cassette, which just marked its 50th birthday. Philips formally launched the format on September 13th, 1963, bringing recorded sound to a truly portable (and more accessible) form factor. The technology didn't just kickstart the markets for media players, field recorders and boomboxes; it led to bootlegs, mixtapes and other ways to shake up the audio status quo. The cassette has largely disappeared outside of nostalgic reissues and transforming robot toys, but its effects are still visible after half a century of progress. [Image credit: Tony Unruh, Flickr]
YouTube lets you relive the old-school look of VHS -- in HD
Sure, watching YouTube videos in HD is great when you want clarity, but maybe you've been yearning for that grainy, tape-recorded look. Marking what's apparently the 57th anniversary of cassette-based video recording, the YouTube team has snuck a VHS tape-shaped button on select videos. Clicking it will throw a filter over the content, providing a highly distorted and nostalgic feast for the eyes. There's no official list of compatible content, but the option seems to be available on most of the videos on YouTube's native channel. We have a feeling at least one VCR enthusiast will be quite pleased.
Metalab wires its Blinkenwall to run from Commodore 64, gives no word on the obligatory Tetris port (video)
We've seen some ambitious Blinkenwalls in our time. Nearly all of the attention is unsurprisingly focused on the wall, however, and not on the often clever hardware and software behind it. Vienna's Metalab wants to shift the limelight by kicking it old school. Instead of the thoroughly modern Arduino and Fonera hotspot that normally light up Metalab's 45-block glass wall, the team's Blinken64 project swaps in a Commodore 64 with a cassette drive and the unusual Final Cartridge III feature extender. Getting lights to strobe requires dusting off more than just hardware -- all the animations have to be written in assembly-level MOS Technology 6510 code that even our nerdy parents might forget. The result you'll see in the video after the break is a far cry from the relatively easy, web-accessible hardware that normally powers such blinkenlight creations, but it's also a testament to how relevant classic technology can remain when it's in the right hands.
Dinosaur Jr. reissuing first three albums on cassette, harnessing the latest jurassic technology
Forget your Google Musics and Spotifys -- J Mascis, indie rock's favorite guitar-shredding gray haired curmudgeon and the rest of Dinosaur Jr. are stepping into the format time machine to reissue their first three LPs on cassette. Yep, Dinosaur, You're Living All Over Me and Bug will once again be heard the way they were meant to be: on the terrible, tiny speakers of your dusty old RadioShack tape deck. The three tapes are being sold as the Cassette Trilogy, a $39 screen-printed box set, limited to 500 copies -- one for every working tape player in America. The box set follows the cassette release of 1988's Bug this summer. You can pick the box up online now, for the rock and roll luddite on your holiday shopping list.
3M Uniformity Tape improves lighting quality on LED edge-lit LCDs, lowers production costs
Ever seen a display like the one on the left? That's long been a pesky phenomenon -- known as "head-lighting" -- with many LED edge-lit LCD panels, and 3M's new Uniformity Tape wants to make sure it won't be around for much longer. Basically, the tape sticks onto an LCD's internal light guide, and its printed-on optical pattern disperses each LED's light path at wider angles. This allows for up to three times the distance between each LED, while still maintaining an even all-around brightness level across the panel. There are other benefits to this as well considering future LCD panels could use fewer LEDs -- cutting manufacturing costs, and raising eco-friendliness. Hopefully the tape actually ends up working as well as the photo illustrates, but for now, you can view the full press release by clicking past the break.
Sony pulls the plug on cassette Walkmans in Japan, makes epic mixtape
A cassette Walkman may now be nothing more than a puzzling artifact to some, but for those of a certain age it was the gadget of the day. Alas, it has long since been surpassed by other, more portable audio players that have replaced the fine art of the mixtape with "playlists," and it looks like even Sony has now accepted the inevitable. The company has reportedly ceased production of all cassette Walkmans and will stop selling them in Japan as soon as the current inventory runs out (expected to happen sometime in April). There will apparently still be Sony-branded Walkmans manufactured in China, however, although it's not clear how widely available they'll be. But let's not worry about that right now -- head on past the break for a brief look back at the Walkman in its heyday.
Samsung's 7-inch 'Galaxy Tape' to run Android 2.2 on 1.2GHz A8 processor?
More details about Samsung's new tablet have emerged courtesy of Tinh te and from what it claims is a highly reliable source. This time around, the Vietnamese site is claiming that Samsung's 7-inch Tab will be running Android 2.2 (Froyo) on an A8 processor clocked to a peppy 1.2GHz. It's all powered by a 4,000mAH battery that contributes to the tablet's 370-gram weight with 16GB of on-board storage and up to 32GB of microSD expansion. Oh, and the 7-inch panel is said to be of Samsung's Super AMOLED variety which should make it readable outdoors judging by its smaller sibs. Sounds hot, but we'll have to see how Samsung's TouchWiz UI holds up to being stretched across all that very expensive screen-estate. P.S. We've also been told that it'll be called the "Galaxy Tape," not Tab or S-Tab as previously rumored.
Japanese gurus unveil 50TB magnetic tape cartridges, are officially 'taking it way back'
It's comical, really -- we can't get a decently powerful Atom to save our lives, but the absolutely thrilling world of magnetic tape storage is bounding ahead at a record pace. Priorities, people. For the archivists and A-type pack rats in the crowd, you'll probably be atypically elated to know that Hitachi Maxell and the Tokyo Institute of Technology have teamed up in order to develop the world's most capacious tape cartridges. Back in January, IBM and Fujifilm celebrated a momentary victory by announcing a 35TB version of this same product, but this record shattering attempt takes areal density to spaces never before ventured into in order to hit the magical 50TB mark. 'Course, you'll probably never see one outside of your state's largest library, but at least that 3TB HDD you're drooling over for your next PC seems so much more bodacious now. Oh, wait.
Sony's last cassette-blastin' boom box is precisely how Ruff Ryders roll('d)
Sony may not shed a tear for the 3.5-inch floppy disk when it meets its maker in March, but you'd better believe the company's crafted a retirement plan for the format that propelled it to fame: the compact cassette. To be fair, the CFD-A110 CD / cassette boom box above isn't actually a new product -- it's a relabeled CFD-A100TV from 2003 minus the nigh-obsolete analog TV band -- but if you're rocking magnetic mix tapes we're guessing you'll welcome this blast from the past. For your projected ¥20,000 (about $215) you'll get a pair of full-range speakers, 14 AM/FM presets, an external microphone port for karaoke and a remote when it launches in Japan this June 21st. What that won't buy you, however, is an obnoxiously large gilded chain, a beefed up left shoulder for carrying it around, and a time machine needed to actually fit in while using this. Ya heard?
IBM and Fujifilm develop 35TB magnetic tape cartridges, unveil it in black and white
SSDs may be what's "next," but seriously -- magnetic tape storage is the real heat. This darn near antediluvian storage medium is amazingly still around and kicking, and what's even more incredible is that real advancements are taking place. Just under four years ago, IBM and Fujifilm were doing the Cha Cha Slide Tango as they introduced 8TB cartridges; today, the two are rolling out (quite literally, actually) a 35TB version into the wild, wild world that we call home. Nah, you won't find these on any Best Buy shelves, but your great grandchild's medical records may one day end up on something built in the year 2010. Just think about that. Think about it.
Scotch tape surprises everyone by producing X-rays
As far as we're concerned, sticky tape is mostly just for out-there modding projects, but scientists have confirmed another use for it: X-rays. After hearing word of research in that direction by Soviet scientists in the 1950s, researchers at UCLA peeled scotch tape at 1.18 inches per second in a vacuum chamber and found that X-ray pulses were emitted by the process. A human thumb has already been successfully X-rayed by this technique, and if future investigation proceeds swimmingly, paramedics and aid workers operating off the grid might be able to do X-rays without bulky and dangerous nuclear technologies. We'll admit it -- we never saw scotch tape X-rays coming, but then, neither did you, right?[Via Switched]
How to take notes on the DS? Magic!
So you'd like to use your DS as a notepad. You could: write stuff in Pictochat and keep your DS in sleep mode until you get home get a flash card (not necessarily just for this) and use DS Organize, or stick a bunch of tape to the top of your DS and write on it in pencil If the final option sounds appealing to you, check out this Instructables guide to "modding" your DS into a notepad. We actually kind of covered the whole elegantly simple process in our description, but you may need more detailed instructions. Apparently Scotch Magic Tape is, in addition to being sticky, an excellent surface for writing and erasing with pencils. Thus anything that can be covered with a layer of it, like a DS, can be made into a notepad. That is, anything light-colored enough for pencil lines to be visible -- sorry, Onyx DS owners.[Via Kotaku]
Work your Wiimote with your fingertips
An ingenious little hack enables anyone with a Wii, a powerful infrared emitter, and some reflective tape to control their Wii with their fingertips, as demonstrated in the creator's YouTube video. The "hack" involves sticking the reflective pads on your fingertips, and placing a Wiimote close to an infrared emitter, with the result being that the Wiimote thinks it's moving when in fact your fingers are. The hack won't work very well with your Wii -- can't press dem buttons! -- so it's limited to gimmicky Minority Report-style demos on your PC. Besides, isn't the whole point of couch potato gaming that you don't have to lift a finger?[Via Hackaday]
