In what could be another step forward towards a new way of promoting and distributing music in the digital age, Nine Inch Nails released their new album for free on their website. Lossy and Lossless versions of “The Slip” are making their way around the world as eager fans count down the kilobytes remaining on their downloads.

So is this album any good? After listening to Nine Inch Nails since my self-imposed troubled adolescence, through album after album, and tour after tour, it would appear NiN has evolved much like a finely-aged wine. Their new recording demonstrates experience in their well-placed rhythms and notable lyrics. The opening track, 999,999 appears to be little more than a symbolic placeholder with no musical representation. It does, however flow nicely into 1,000,000 which has a classic NiN tone blended into an energetic rhythm. Letting You has a very fast and over-distorted quality about it, reminiscent of their late 90s sound.

Discipline is a great track, which brings me back to title tracks like Closer. At this point it becomes somewhat apparent at the nostalgic qualities of this recording, and how it blends many of the things that made Nine Inch Nails work, while leaving out qualities that fans are happy they left behind. Echoplex starts with a cheesy drum beat that sounds as though it came right off an old keyboard. This eyebrow-raising moment is quickly rescued by Trent’s best vocal piece on this recording. Head Down began as my least favorite piece, sounding seemingly thrown together and sloppy. This track grows on you near the middle, giving you a mix of tone and fuzz that leaves you almost wanting more. Towards the end, it levels out and has a steady rhythm.

Lights in the Sky brings back memories of hearing Hurt for the first time. The lyrics are hard to hear over the piano playing, which is quite intentional and delightfully entangling. It’s is as immersive as it is disturbing, and the following track Corona Radiata gives an eerie sense of what’s to come. The Four of Us are Dying emerges from the mellow track and into a river of sound and ambience.

Demon Seed is a great ending to a solid album that gives listeners a blend of virtually every sound and mood from the tracks it follows.

Overall, this is certainly a recording worth listening to, and the price can’t be beat. When the CD goes on sale this summer, I’ll certainly pick up a copy in thanks for this wonderful opportunity to experience a new era for Nine Inch Nails. You can get your free copy of The Slip at NiN.com

Matt Ryan and Kali

When you hear the term “Triple A” you are often reminded of the friendly folks that come to your rescue when you’re stranded on the side of the road. In this case, Triple A refers to an open source Axis and Allies clone available for free download on SourceForge.

When you consider gaming on an open source platform, you may be under the impression that the game has to have horrible graphics, mostly-text interface, and simple open and close windows. This is, thankfully, not the case with Triple A. Granted, you won’t see 3d environments or realistic sounds, but you will find an intuitive and easily understood interface that holds true to the rules of the board game.

In addition to the classic version of Axis and Allies, custom maps and setups are also available for you to enjoy including extra countries, allies, and axis organizations. This is in addition to network and internet enabled play.

The downsides include a slightly buggy multi-player experience, causing a need for occasional saving during gameplay to avoid any loss. This problem presented itself in two out of six multi-player games I tested. Thankfully, because it is an open source project, most bugs are usually solved after a reasonable period of time.

Today we’re discussing graphics cards and what to look for if you plan on purchasing a new system. There are two main variances in graphics cards to look for, integrated and dedicated. Many manufacturers will try to trick you into one or the other using terminology that can be rather confusing.

Let’s start by breaking down exactly how the two are different. Integrated cards are built in to the motherboard of the computer. This means that in addition to having your processor, your memory, and possibly your sound and network adapters, your system also has your graphics processing unit, or GPU for short, built right in. As a result, the GPU will not have its own memory to work with, except in very few exceptions. It will sacrifice features and performance and rely on your systems main memory to operate. This means your system will, if even for a tiny amount, suffer overall performance decrease as the graphics are taking away from your systems primary resources. The result is bad performance, and a cheap integrated setup will hurt your overall experience. Windows Vista Aero is a great example of this, as a good integrated setup will allow you to switch between windows just fine, a cheap integrated setup will cause slow, choppy performance with even the simplest of tasks.

In the case of a dedicated GPU, the graphics processor has its own board, and runs independently of the main system. This usually comes with the bonus of having its own memory, keeping in mind that some dedicated cards have hyper threading and Turbo Cache features that allow it to borrow some of the system resources in addition to built-in memory. You’re going to find, in general, better performance and reliability. The downside to this is that you can expect less battery life as it has to power an extra card, processor, and memory.

Bottom line is this, when shopping for a notebook or a budget PC, take the time to look at the video card. Many people stop at the processor and believe that is the best way to determine a computer’s capabilities. When it comes to gaming, your video card is more important than the processor these days. If you get stuck with integrated video, you can expect a machine that will work for playing DVDs, solitaire, and day-to-day tasks. Dedicated graphics cards will give you the performance you need to enjoy 3d graphics-intensive games and grant you an overall better experience. Just remember to keep an outlet handy.

If you thought Rock Band and Guitar Hero were the pentacle of geekness in the music world, you were wrong. Gibson has gone high tech and released two new versions of its record breaking Robot guitar.

With a Robot Les Paul and a Robot SG hitting the market soon, the idea behind a self-tuning guitar seems to be paying off for Gibson in a big way. One of the most frustrating things about playing a guitar is keeping the thing in tune, especially when you’re playing a set in front of an audience. Gibson has taken the effort out of this by introducing a technology that literally turns their guitars into robots.

Here’s how it does what it does. The Gibson Robot has a push-pull master control knob which can be pulled out and turned to highlight a given key. Once you select the desired key, the knob goes in and your job is simply to strum the guitar as robotic knobs set the strings to the perfect pitch. There are sensors which pick up the vibrations of each of the strings in order to accurately detect the strings current tone.

This is a pretty interesting technology, and worth checking out… if you have a lot money bank that is. The Les Paul version goes for $3,999 dollars US while the SG rings in at a slightly less costly $3,599.

Today I’m going to split from the normal topics and discussion on the show to discuss a matter that is spreading through the press and blogs. There was a cheerleader that was assaulted by a group of 8 high school students after being lured to a house. She was knocked unconscious and then repeatedly beaten by the teenagers, driven away from the scene, and threatened not to go to the police.

The discussions that took place on the tape released to the public are typical of what you might find in a high school argument. The girl was beaten after giving a quote unquote wrong answer to the question, “Why don’t you like April?” This is childish crap turning violent and possibly life threatening, and is an example of society in its current state. This is how high school was when I went there in the late nineties to two-thousand and one. This is how high school has been for possibly decades.

The parents of the victim and the sheriff of the town the assault took place are blaming MySpace and YouTube for this incident. This is where the adults in the situation are being unreasonable. YouTube has been a hub for videos of all types, and yes though they may include questionable and sometimes unethical content, I don’t see how placing the blame for senseless violence can be set on one of hundreds of video hosting sites. YouTube doesn’t promote violence, and has never featured anything like this before. YouTube features video podcasts, musicians, interesting video art projects, and dogs on skateboards.

MySpace is a social network, and as such is a reflection on its users. Many users, including politicians, musicians, actors, actresses, scientists, educational institutions, and yes even Christian evangelical preachers use the site to promote themselves and their message. If users use MySpace for senselessness, then the content produced by the users is the fault of the users and not the fault of hub by which they voice their message. Free speech is a funny thing. If high school students chose to speak negatively about each other at the mall, then banning malls across the country is somewhat idiotic. Yet every day the mall is just as much a place for spreading gossip and making enemies as MySpace has ever been.

My point here is that we need to stop blaming technology for our kids moronic outbursts and start parenting by perhaps either setting up reasonable rules as to what your kids can and can’t do online, or if you do allow them the privilege of setting up a MySpace, Facebook, twitter, or a Pownce, or any other social network page, that you take the time to learn your kids user names and check up on what their up to from time to time. Guess what, parents need to evolve, technology isn’t going to stand still because a parent is incapable of controlling their children’s actions online.

This was a tragedy, and the kids involved deserve punishment to the full extent of the law. I have a sad feeling that Myspace and YouTube are going to be brought up in a senseless lawsuit brought on by concerned parents. Blame the idiots, not the unwilling third party technology that they use to be idiots. Blame parents that apparently have no control or idea what their children are doing online. It is the responsibility of the parent, not Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Facebook, MySpace, or Google executives.

This is just an opinion article
Matt Ryan of The Daily PWN

Over the past year and five months, I have seen virtually every kind of negative review possible for Windows Vista. I’ve heard it compared to Windows ME, BOB, and other failed projects. As the pundits continue to refer to Vista as an obvious disaster, I take a look at my laptop and wonder what all the fuss is about.

The day vista was released into the public, I went to my local Fry’s and picked up a brand new HP Pavilion dv6000z. I picked the laptop with AMD processors, integrated video, and overall minimum requirements. It came with Windows Vista Premium. I immediately started using some seriously intensive programs such as Second Life, Half Life 2, and the Adobe Suite. I discovered quickly that RAM wasn’t going to cut it at 1gb so I upped it to 2.

I’ve spent a year now on this laptop running Vista through test after test, trial after trial. I’ve recently started live streaming from it hoping that would wake up some of these hidden “problems” that I keep hearing about review after review. I haven’t found these outrageous issues. Infact, my Samson C01u condenser USB microphone only works on Vista, and not on XP. Webcams I’ve tested plug in and self-install just fine on Vista, not on XP.

I’ve tried hooking up old printers, and found that they install easier on Vista than XP every time. Networking took some figuring out, which I’ll grant was a headache at first. Getting Vista to shake hands and play nice with XP took a little getting used to.

Of the hundreds and thousands of problems pundits continue to throw at consumers concerning the horrors of this operating system, I have stumbled across one or two. This is why my advice to anyone concerning Vista has been and will continue to be to upgrade if you’re getting a new PC. Old PCs may have a thousand issues, however the ones I’m coming across with Vista pre-installed for the most part seem to function just fine. Yes, Vista takes more system resources. That is a sad thing, though something I’d expect from any Microsoft release.

I’m only writing this because I can’t switch to a mac….

-Matt of The Daily PWN

Web cams aren’t usually known for their astonishing clarity, great frame rates, or their high definition images. They tend to be muddy, sub-par imaging devices used to transmit a reasonably low-bandwidth intensive image to the net. When you find a web cam that boasts 90 frames per second, two megapixel video and six megapixel still images, you tend to take notice. This is the case for the Philips 1300NC. This web cam advertises all of the previously mentioned features and comes with a hefty price tag of around eighty US dollars.

I decided to purchase one for the purpose of using it on Matt Ryan TV as well as another tech video podcast we have been working on. My initial reaction was pleasant, finding the web cam could live up to all the promise given on the packaging. It was fast, responsive, and the software wasn’t half bad.

To my disappointment, however, I discovered a half dozen “hot pixels” strewn across the image. Blue dots lit up like stars, screaming for attention. This is a rather unpleasant setback, considering how many features on the camera were so well implemented.

I took the camera back and got a replacement, hoping that the original was a fluke. Sadly, the replacement had the same unfortunate problem. Hot pixels all across the image that would not go away even with a switch of systems.

Overall the web cam was acceptable, having more features and better frame rates than others in its price range. However, the problems with the sensor dampens the wow factor considerably. It would work fine for most users, however you may be better served by a less costly Logitech or Microsoft product.

The DOJ announced that after investigating the joining of Sirius and XM, they would take no action to stop the merger.

Official statement:

“After a careful and thorough review of the proposed transaction, the Division concluded that the evidence does not demonstrate that the proposed merger of XM and Sirius is likely to substantially lessen competition, and that the transaction therefore is not likely to harm consumers. The Division reached this conclusion because the evidence did not show that the merger would enable the parties to profitably increase prices to satellite radio customers for several reasons, including: a lack of competition between the parties in important segments even without the merger; the competitive alternative services available to consumers; technological change that is expected to make those alternatives increasingly attractive over time; and efficiencies likely to flow from the transaction that could benefit consumers.

“The Division’s investigation indicated that the parties are not likely to compete with respect to many segments of the satellite radio business even in the absence of the merger. Because customers must acquire equipment that is specialized to the satellite radio service to which they subscribe, and which cannot receive the other provider’s signal, there has never been significant competition for customers who have already subscribed to one or the other service. For potential new subscribers, past competition has resulted in XM and Sirius entering long-term, sole-source contracts that provide incentives to all of the major auto manufacturers to install their radios in new vehicles. The car manufacturer channel accounts for a large and growing share of all satellite radio sales; yet, as a result of these contracts, there is not likely to be significant further competition between the parties for satellite radio equipment and service sold through this channel for many years. In the retail channel, where the parties likely would continue to compete to attract new subscribers absent the merger, the Division found that the evidence did not support defining a market limited to the two satellite radio firms that would exclude various alternative sources for audio entertainment, and similarly did not establish that the combined firm could profitably sustain an increased price to satellite radio consumers. Substantial cost savings likely to flow from the transaction also undermined any inference of competitive harm. Finally, the likely evolution of technology in the future, including the expected introduction in the next several years of mobile broadband Internet devices, made it even more unlikely that the transaction would harm consumers in the longer term. Accordingly, the Division has closed its investigation of the proposed merger.”

Matt Ryan

If you’ve been anywhere around a social network over the past year, you’ve likely heard of Twitter. Twitter has started working its way into the backbone of many social networks as an integrated tool. Bloggers use Twitter to promote their latest post, community leaders use it to make announcements to their members, news organizations post their latest stories, and so much more. The opportunity for this micro-blog to grow is seemingly endless.

Most of all Twitter is an excellent promotional tool. You may find it as a fast and easy way to get your content out there to more eyes as the scroll of tweets flies by the screens of anyone that may either be following you or looking for someone interesting to follow. Currently, the top Twitter position is held by a politician with everything to gain from having such a large audience of followers on this growing social network.

If you haven’t checked out Twitter yet, I recommend you at least get your name registered while you can. This is a network that is growing fast and doesn’t show any signs of slowing down any time soon.

~Matt Ryan of The Daily PWN~

1: Reduce echo and background noise by lowering the volume of your microphone and amplifying it later while editing. This can greatly improve the overall track and comes with an interesting side effect of making for a deeper more radio-like vocal presence. If you are using a hyper-sensitive microphone, background noises can often drown out even the most projective of speakers.

2: Find an audio editor that allows for noise cancellation and normalizing. When editing your podcast, make sure that you are using a program that has a noise cancellation filter. When using this filter, make sure to record 10-15 seconds without speaking or making any sounds so that your ambient noise may be reduced used in this filter. Normalizing can give you a consistent volume throughout your entire podcast and helps especially when you’re using a stationary microphone as you tend to move closer and further away during the recording.

3: Chose a microphone that suits your voice and needs. Not every podcaster out there really needs an expensive professional microphone. At the same time, you should avoid using a cheap mic as well. Desktop microphones that plug directly into your computer’s audio port, or built in microphones that are found on your webcam or laptop are best avoided. These microphones tend to pick up a lot of background noise and create a lot of static that can ruin an otherwise good recording. A good USB headset or USB condenser microphone can sound as good as much of the more expensive professional equipment on the market. A good example would be the Samson C01U which I and I believe Chris Pirillo uses to record with.

4: Be aware of your breathing. Professional broadcasters tend to speak with their mouths aimed slightly away from the microphone for a very good reason. This keeps their breathing out of the audio track and improves their volume levels. This can also reduce the pop sound that people make when they pronounce the letter “P”. A pop filter is also a good idea if you decide to go with a stationary microphone.

5: Add an audio track under your speech to hide breathing and unfiltered static. If you edit your podcast and apply all of the recommended filters, but still notice not only your breathing but a hint of static, a good idea would be to use a podsafe instrumental track at very low amplification under your speech. This has been shown, through several studies, to have dramatic effects on someone’s attention levels to your content. Somewhere in the human mind, if there’s music that is just out of the range of clear perception, a person will concentrate on the presentation more subconsciously in an attempt to take in and understand every part of what they are hearing. This is a method that many teachers are starting to use in classrooms by playing a very low volume radio while they give lessons.