News

Mobile Guitar Tuner

If you ever need to tune your guitar and all your have is your cell phone or some other device; check out howtotuneaguitar.org - which should redirect to howtotuneaguitar.mobi. I designed this mobile website sometime ago but totally forgot about it until tonight.

If you end up trying it out, drop me a line and let me know how it goes for you. Because wireless devices are kind of all over the place it will be interesting to know what works and what doesn’t.

I did make a back up simple tuner that should work on any wireless device…

JamLoop.com

JamLoop.com is a Vertical Search Engine that only searches new or used gear.

You can select whether you want to find new or used gear as well you can also compare different prices for different instruments.

It would be a really good tool even just to research gear before you start going out to stores if you prefer to buy locally and in-person.

FREE Mini Guitar Tuner

Do you ever sit at home wondering about how great life would be if you had a Guitar Mini Widget on your Myspace Page, Blog, or Website. Oh come on, I know you do! That is why I made a Mini Guitar Tuner for you.

Feel free to add this anywhere… It’s probably the smallest guitar tuner you will ever find.

Gibson Sues Guitar Hero

SAN FRANCISCO/LOS ANGELES, March 12 (Reuters) - Gibson Guitar Inc has told Activision Inc that its wildly popular “Guitar Hero” video games infringe one of Gibson’s patents, and Activision has asked a U.S. court to find the claim invalid.

Gibson said the games, in which players press buttons on a guitar-shaped controller in time with notes on a TV screen, violates a 1999 patent for technology to simulate a musical performance.

Read the full article at Reuters.com

Wednesday Afternoon Linkfest

Was just perusing some websites that I haven’t visited in a while, and since I’m taking a break from my daily demands thought I’d make a little linkfest post.

How To: Save the Planet (One Gig At A Time)

I was up at the local pub having lunch today and was reading the newspapers that were laying around and came across this good article from Exclaim! by Allison Outhit. You can read the full article online by clicking here.

In the wasteland of the music business, hundreds of truckloads of CDs wind up every year in the landfill. How does this happen? For starters, the practice is to manufacture in bulk, regardless of sales viability, because it’s cheaper. If half of the units manufactured actually ship to retail, a big chunk of those — perhaps half again — may end up coming back to the warehouse anyway. ‘

Add to this pile the promotional copies, many of which don’t even exit the shrink-wrap before getting chucked in the bin by whatever totally uninterested executive or editor they’ve been sent to… Well, that’s a mountain of plastic. A recent report in the U.K. Guardian claims that one million unsold copies of Robbie Williams’ last CD Rudebox will be shipped to China to be crushed (and hopefully used for road-surfacing). Dealing with product waste like this reportedly costs EMI millions of dollars a year.

Read full article…

Guitar Rising: Like Guitar Hero, But Real

There is a new kid on the guitar video game block - and this one looks quite promising in terms of actually helping people learn to play guitar.

Guitar Rising was recently unveiled at the Independent Game Conference in Austin, TX. At the conference’s Game Demo Night, players - both guitar newbies and hobbyists alike - strapped on a real electric guitar and fretted and strummed their way though introductory and skilled game levels. Unlike games like Guitar Hero, where gamers use a small fake plastic guitar, this one actually requires the gamer to use a real guitar. Check out the cheesy video ad below.

The New Gibson Robot Guitar

Gibson actually released their self-tuning guitar a few months ago, though I was too busy to notice, but I did come across this video tonight which shows you how the Robot Guitar works. It kind of looks like a ghost is tuning the guitar. I wonder why there are still tuning machine heads if the guitar is self tuning - is their really any need to have thumb pegs? They probably just left them in so the guitar would still look normal.

If your still “old skool” like myself you can still use a web based tuner. ;)

Attack of the Guitar Blogs

You may have noticed that I titled this section “Other Stuff”. And it’s simply because I hate the word BLOG. Despise it. It sounds like something you cough up or some type of horror movie character. “Attack of the Blog” or what have you. But that aside, this section is somewhat although I admit it reluctantly in all actuality a blog. Anyways that brings me to the point of this post, there are plenty of Great Guitar Blogs on the internet today, and if you look at the bottom of this post; I have supplied a link to a few great ones you might want to check out. But first, I’d like to give you a little lesson in technology, as keeping track of websites can often be a problem if you know of lots you like to stay updated on.

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Happy Halloween!

I hope it’s a good one!