IDEA TIME: Let’s stop talking about iPads and shit for a minute, yeah? Yeah. Let’s just rap about this and then I swear I’ll show you a cool case or something, alright? Just settle down, we’ll get back to your regularly-scheduled mobile-and-mobile-accessories in a second. Y’know the Large Hadron Collider, that thing that was supposed to kill us and end existence (and, depending on your school of thought, may have already done so)? As much as the LHC is all about quantum death, it’s also about beautiful music. Check it, and behold a series of pieces performed by the LHC’s Atlas detector, which, in…

Playlistify is one of those unfortunately rare products that does exactly what the name suggests. That’s right, Playlistify “playlistifies” your playlists. As creator Roeland Landegent explains in the video above, Playlistify allows you to take lists of songs from anywhere – iTunes, Winamp, Last.fm, any XML-based songlist and convert it to a playable list of songs. The website, playlistify.org simply processes the songs, and passes the list to Spotify, so unfortunately this means that Playlistify is essentially useless in the US and Canada. Spotify is available in Finland, Norway, France,…

The 1-Bit Symphony is not a recorded album in a traditional sense, it instead adapts to create the music right in front of you; essentially a live show in a music case. Tristan Perich has composed an electronic composition in five movements on a single microchip. A complete electronic circuit plays the music through a headphone jack mounted on the side of the case itself. The whole thing is programmed by the artist and assembled by hand. 1-Bit Symphony works by utilizing on and off electrical pulses, which are then synthesized by an assembly code and routed from microchip to speaker (or in this case,…

Google seems set to stick it to iTunes in an attempt to carve out its own slice of the music market, hoping that by linking music sales up with its dominant search engine it will be able to achieve a content ecosystem designed to support sales of devices powered by its browser-based Android-one-day-Chrome OS. The company is thought to be closing in on launching a music download service, offering tracks for sale and download. This will be followed by the introduction of a subscription-based music service next year (2011), at least, that is what the Wall Street Journal claims. Negotiations aren’t…

The format wars are largely a thing of the past, and thank god for that. Now we’re less concerned about the shape or size of the piece of plastic we insert into drives with complex moving parts, and more concerned with moving bits and bytes around the web onto servers and hard drives. The one format that has always seemed immune from progress though is vinyl. Even audiophiles can’t explain pop culture’s ongoing love affair with tired old plastic discs, but the attraction remains nonetheless. Jeff Mills knows you shouldn’t have to choose. His latest music release is a double-sided CD and vinyl hybrid,…

I used to be so good at Guitar Hero. Back in my day we were scoring our own tracks for GH2 to run on a hacked Playstation 2 and rewiring our controllers with extra strum buttons on the fretboards for wicked awesome two-handed solos. This is the most interested I’ve been in a Guitar Hero clone since then. Having little if anything to do with guitars (nor heroism), Street Orchestra is an app developed by Swedish devs HiQ in a tag team with equally-Swedish ad agency SCP, in an attempt to get the younger generation interested in classical music. Says SCP’s interactive producer Russel Clark: “The mission…

As the big boys in tech continue to eat into each others business models, is it really that surprising to hear Google is considering getting into the music distribution business? Apple’s iTunes Music Store has been the poster child for showing the music industry that suing and harassing its customers might not be the only way to make money in the 21st century. But the record labels have been nervous about putting all their eggs into Apple’s basket, always looking to spread the risk amongst digital distribution services, such as Napster, Coke’s iMusic effort and a number of other largely unsuccessful…

Justin Bieber. His name alone has become synonymous with levels of rage and annoyance previously unheard of amongst internet users worldwide. For every hater, however, Bieber has an army of preteen girls to defend his honor. Born on March 1st, 1994 in Stratford, Ontario, Bieber is now 16 years old. While he’s known for his pre-pubescent, high pitched voice, he is also capable of playing drums, piano, guitar, and trumpet. If you’re reading Techi, I’m going to go ahead and assume you’re not a fan of his work. Nevertheless, his musical aptitude cannot be denied. Now, talent is great and all, but…

The irony of this situation is not lost on me. The founders of Skype, your favourite instant messaging alternative, have decided to jump on the music streaming/subscription bandwagon with Rdio. The irony here is that said founders, Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom, are also the founders of Kazaa, one of the early applications that crippled the music industry. The confusingly-titled Rdio (AR-dee-oh (R-D-O)) is their attempt to help resuscitate it. As with all things these days, Rdio of course is cloud-based, meaning you can play your library on any device, anywhere – for a fee, of course. Ten…

With personal devices becoming more widespread, and nanotechnology evolving in leaps and bounds, the way we interact with our devices is becoming more personal and more intuitive. This seems like a big step forward in this area. Designer David Boyce’s innovation is a set of speakers that you can hold, squeeze and shake. Essentially flOw Wireless Interactive Speakers is an iPod speaker dock, but the cool part is that you use tactile feedback to control volume and playlists. Squeeze the speaker to pump up the volume. Turn the speaker upside down to ‘pour’ away the volume. Shake the speaker to jump…