Calling Mac Devs: Audacity needs your help!

Filed under: Audio, Software, Open Source, Podcasting, Developer

Audacity, the free and open-source audio editor (also available for Windows and Linux) is in need of some Mac-love. Whilst Mac OS X users can get themselves either the stable v1.2.6 release or a 1.3.3 beta version, development going forward is a little uncertain at the moment. According to the Audacity forum, there are no active developers on the project with Macs, and the latest beta (v1.3.4) is not going to appear on the Mac platform until "someone [with a Mac] volunteers to compile it, and sort the remaining bugs out." Yikes!

If you're interested in working on the project, then you'll want to head over to the Audacity 'Get Involved' pages for more information on how to get your hands on the code. Even if you're not a developer, if you're able to contribute via another means (such as with documentation, testing or donations), I'm sure the Audacity team would welcome you with open arms.

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HP announces complete range of new desktops

It's always shocking when you realize the full breadth of HP's desktop product launches. Out of HP's four new desktop series, we count 10 new desktops set to hit stores in February. And that doesn't count the customizable counterparts at HP's Web site. All of these systems use chassis and hardware we've seen before, but what's most exciting is what you get for your money. We'll go over the highlights briefly:

(Credit: HP)

HP PAVILION SLIMLINE S3300 SERIES (INCLUDES THE S3300F, THE S3320F, THE S3330F):

HP's small form factor PC will range from $549 to $949. Not much has changed since we first saw this scaled down computer last year. All come with dual-core CPUs, wireless networking (802.11b/g, no N or Bluetooth, disappointingly), and at least some degree of expandability. The most exciting news in this series is the $949 s3330f, which comes with a hybrid Blu-ray/HD-DVD drive. We gave a strong recommendation to the similar Pavilion SlimLine s3200t, which cost $1,540 this past November. That you'll be able to get a similar system for $500 less in a month makes that particular model especially enticing as a small-scale home theater PC.

(Credit: HP)

HP PAVILION DESKTOP A6300 SERIES (INCLUDES THE A6300F, A6330F):

The Pavilion Desktop remains HP's everyday PC that's not quite a budget system but doesn't aspire to any gaming or digital media editing heights. Starting at $549, you'll find dual-core CPUs in the various configs, as well as 500GB hard drives and 3GB of RAM in the higher-end model. Don't expect quad-core CPUs at this price range (at least in this half of 2008), or wireless networking or HD optical drives. Instead these systems offer the basic Windows computing experience, with a few HP-specific extras thrown in, such as its Photosmart Essentials software.

(Credit: HP)

HP PAVILION MEDIA CENTER PC M8330 SERIES (INCLUDES M8300F, M8330F):

Coming soon: A notebook with a terabyte

It's the notebook for neurotics.

Asus, the Taiwanese computer maker, will come out with a notebook that sports two 500GB hard drives from Hitachi Global Storage Technologies. Combined, this will give a fully configured Asus M70 notebook a terabyte of storage.

Put another way, the notebook will be capable of storing 1,000 hours of video, or more than 350 feature length movies, or 250,000 four-minute songs. That will probably tide you over for even the worst airport layovers. A terabyte also holds about the same amount of data that could be stored on the paper from 50,000 trees.

Asus will also release notebooks with a single 500GB drive.

Hitachi's Travelstar 5K500 drive, coming in February, is the highest capacity 2.5-inch drive to date, according to Hitachi. The drive, like most cutting edge drives being made these days, features perpendicular recording, which allows the drive to hold more data into a square inch than conventional drives.

The drive will come out in the second quarter. Hitachi will also come out with a 400GB version in the first quarter. These drives record data on three platters. The prices on the drives and the notebooks were not revealed.

A few years ago, a terabyte of storage was an astronomical amount of storage. Sony showed off a home storage device at Ceatec in Japan in 2004 with a terabyte of storage. The unit cost about $5,000.

Hard drive manufacturers, however, have managed to double the amount of storage on their drives about every two years. (During the late 1990s, they were doubling storage capacity annually.). Thus, the astronomical becomes conventional pretty quickly. Desktop terabyte drives with larger 3.5-inch-diameter platters started appearing last year. (Hitachi came out with the first.) These drives sell for around $400.

Analysts and self-employed experts often scoff at the increase in storage, claiming customers won't need more storage. Drive execs, however, note that the public continues to gobble up as many gigabytes as they can shovel out the door. The advent of high definition video and digital video recorders has been a boon for hard drive makers.

Some drive makers, notably Seagate Technology and Western Digital, are even making money, which can be rare in this business. (Hitachi, which bought IBM's drive business, often loses money and is looking at ways to sell of its hard drive division.)

Casinos are also big consumers of drives, according to hard drive execs. What do you think they store all that surveillance video on?

Songbird's growing pains

Social-networking manager Flock has really proven that there's a strong interest in browsers customized for specific users. The tools that it comes with are well-suited to helping people who spend their days navigating those networks. SONGBIRD is the hatchling of Firefox and iTunes, a Flock for music lovers.

Like Flock, Firefox-based Songbird combines music discovery tools with music management. When you fire up a page with songs available for download, Songbird will open a new pane at the bottom of the browser, listing all the songs on the page and purchase links for Amazon, iTunes, eMusic, and Amie St. Double-clicking on a song will download and play it, and there are also blog links next to the track so that you can learn more about what somebody else thinks of the track.

Songbird features large music playback buttons that dwarf their Web browsing counterparts.(Credit: CNET Networks, Inc.)

The new version features iPod synchronization and support for USB-connected external drives, a major step towards attracting audiophiles with massive music collections. The browser gives more prominence to music control, with big buttons for navigating playback and smaller ones next to the URI bar for stopping and refreshing Web pages.

During installation, it'll ask if you want to load your iTunes music directory or another media directory, or perform the task later. Processing 5000 songs took about three minutes, not a bad pace. It then asks you which of the pre-installed Songbird extensions you want to load. Most of these, like the iPod and USB device managers, only make the app stronger and are worth installing.

Songbird lets you playback, download, and purchase all songs it discovers on a Web page from an organized panel.(Credit: CNET Networks, Inc.)

The left sidebar provides quick links to bookmarks, downloads, your music library in an iTunes-style interface, and several music discovery Web sites to get your started. There's also a minimized mode that displays just the music controls, and a growing variety of skins. Most interestingly, there's a new development in this version that makes the various panes that make up Songbird extremely customizable, so users can dictate what kind of content goes into each one. This way, if you wanted to use the program solely for music playback, you could hide the browser window completely.

Songbird has a growing library of extensions, and support is slowly growing for those written originally for Firefox. Many of the improvements from the last version make for a dramatic change, but Songbird is definitely a buggy creation. At this point in its development, it will not provide a crash-free experience, and bugs abound. This becomes especially apparent when you start loading up extensions and add-ons, as they haven't all figured out how to play nicely with each other. So, caveat emptor.

Despite these problems, the new version is a dramatic leap forward from the previous one, and if the growing curve continues like this, Songbird could really take flight for the music-loving, Web-surfing fanatic in all of us.

A spy bot that's begging to be caught

(Credit: iiRobotics)

Apple presenting "secret" at Final Cut meet; Radiohead on iTunes

Final Cut Pro group meet provides clues to Apple's MWSF plans

When a collection of Final Cut Pro user groups assemble to hold a meeting at Macworld San Francisco later this month, Apple will have a surprise presentation for its guests, AppleInsider has learned.

The January 16th gathering, which follows a day after Apple chief Steve Jobs' Macworld keynote, will feature "something super secret" from the Mac maker, according to the announcement.

Despite the nature of the group, the Apple unveiling is unlikely to include an update to the Final Cut Studio video production suite, which was updated in April and has rarely been updated during the San Francisco show in the past.

Historically, Apple has at times used professional audiovisual industry gatherings to discuss its high-end computers, including the MacBook Pro, Mac Pro, and Xserve.

Radiohead makes its iTunes debut

Scoring a minor coup in its fight against Amazon, Apple today announced that the iTunes Store now carries

Lenovo launches three IdeaPad laptops

One of three new entertainment laptops, the IdeaPad U110 features a textured red lid.(Credit: Lenovo)

Getting a jump on the product-launch blitz that is CES 2008, Lenovo has announced a whole new brand of consumer-oriented laptops and desktops. Called IdeaPad and IdeaCentre, the lines are intended to complement the company's flagship business-oriented ThinkPad and ThinkCentre lines. While today's announcement does not include any specifics on desktop models, we learned plenty about the new IdeaPad laptops.

The first full line of entertainment-oriented Lenovo laptops to hit the United States (we saw one consumer model, the Lenovo 3000 Y410, sneak into the States last fall), IdeaPads include such welcome design touches as textured lid finishes and a sleek "frameless" screen that's ergonomically situated a bit farther away from the keyboard than most laptops. Also key to the IdeaPad look are touch-sensitive media controls above the keyboard and a bright orange button, called the Shuttle Key, which can be used on its own to control volume or in combination with the touch controls for additional functionality (somewhat like a Fn key). There's Front Row-like media software, called Shuttle Center, and Dolby Home Theater sound. Every IdeaPad is also outfitted with a built-in 1.3-megapixel Webcam, VeriFace software for biometric security via face recognition, and a ThinkVantage-like Novo key that provides quick system recovery should you ever encounter a data-destroying virus.

Tonight's announcement includes the first three laptop models in the IdeaPad line: the 17-inch Y710, the 15.4-inch Y510, and the 11.1-inch U110. Individual specs and details after the break.



A unique hinge on the Y710 makes for better ergonomics.(Credit: Lenovo)

First up, the IDEAPAD Y710, which Lenovo describes as "the 17-inch notebook for entertainment-focused users." Key specs include a 17-inch wide-screen display with a 1,440x900 native resolution, a 256MB ATI Mobility Radeon HD2600 graphics card, and Dolby Home Theater sound with a built-in subwoofer. The laptop can be outfitted with a Blu-ray drive (handy when paired with the laptop's HDMI output) as well as up to 500GB of hard drive space for your collection of media files. If those features don't provide enough entertainment, there's always the glowing Lenovo logo on the lid and lighting along the side bezels.

Early photos of the IdeaPad Y710 also reveal a feature called the Lenovo Game Zone, located to the right of the full-size keyboard. In addition to oversize directional keys for game control, there's an overclocking switch to control CPU speed and a secondary display to show performance information. I'm told this feature won't initially be available on models in the United States, but it is expected to appear on our shores early in the second quarter.

The IdeaPad Y710 weighs 7.9 pounds and measures between 1 inch and 1.5 inches thick, making it a relatively portable desktop replacment. Pricing starts at $1,199--though features like the Blu-ray drive will likely raise the cost significantly--and the laptop will be available this month at Tiger Direct.



The IdeaPad Y510 is best suited for general computing(Credit: Lenovo)

The IDEAPAD Y510, meanwhile, is aimed more at generalists. Its 15.4-inch display features a fairly typical 1,280x800 native resolution and its 6.4-pound case is stocked with mid-range components: a handful of processor choices topping out at the 1.83GHz Core 2 Duo T5550, integrated Intel graphics, up to 4GB of 667MHz RAM, and up to 250GB of hard drive space. The Y510's standout features are its Dolby sound, including a subwoofer, and an LED battery life indicator on the keyboard deck. The laptop also features an attractive "light weave" texture on its gray lid. With a starting price of $799, it should stack up favorably against similar sub-$1,000 laptops we reviewed last fall. The Y510 is available this month at various retailers including Best Buy, Newegg, and Tiger Direct.



We love the 'tendril' texture on the IdeaPad U110.(Credit: Lenovo)

Last but not least (unless you're talking about weight) there's the IDEAPAD U110, a 2.3-pound ultraportable with an 11.1-inch screen. Judging from the floral design on its textured, red, aluminum-alloy lid, the U110 is aimed at women who want a lightweight machine for personal use. Being squarely in that demographic, I'm smitten by this laptop's looks. Adding to its appeal: thickness that ranges from 0.7 inch to 0.9 inch.

Like the Y710 and Y510, the U110 features a "frameless" display plus the Shuttle Key, touch-sensitive media controls, and Dolby Home Theater sound, though it (unsurprisingly) lacks a subwoofer. To that the U110 adds support for a solid-state drive, which should provide faster access to data and--important in an ultraportable--lengthy battery life. Some configurations will also include Lenovo's Active Protection System, which protects the hard drive in case the laptop is dropped.

The IdeaPad U110 isn't scheduled to ship until April, which is why the rest of the details are sketchy. However, the laptop will likely incorporate low-voltage Core 2 Duo processors on Intel's latest Centrino Duo platform, 667MHz RAM, and up to 160GB of hard drive space. The official starting price has yet to be set, but given the inclusion of a costly solid-state drive, the IdeaPad U110 will likely cost around $1,800.