Education & Technology

these days it is hard to avoid the continuing debate
that surrounds the ‘future of music’ and the formats
that bring it to us. however this so called ‘digital age’
isn’t the first time that new music formats have created
such a stir, some time not too long ago it was cassette
tapes that were causing the music industry concern.
the design of the cassette tape was resolved in the
1960s by the dutch electronics company philips
as a portable alternative to the large vinyl formats.
having not been patented the cassette tape design
was quickly copied by many manufacturers leading
to its widespread use. during the mid 1980s
cassettes were at their most popular accounting for
more than half of the worlds total music sales.
alongside the attraction of music on the move, the
cassette tape offered the opportunity for people to
edit and customize their music easily for the first time.
the DIY ethic of the tapes didn’t stop with home
recording though, as many people often created
their own artwork for their mixes.
—
investigation recording
twenty years on from the hight of their popularity
cassettes are all but forgotten by the music industry,
but still very much in use in police interview rooms.
despite the march of new technology such as
digital recording, which makes analysing individual
words and phrases much easier,
the humble cassette still reigns when it comes to
recording evidence. the UK’s police forces, for example,
use about 500,000 audio cassettes a year for interviews,
half of the estimated one million tapes sold in the UK
each year.
—
cassette collecting
is surprisingly popular, particularly in germany.
a single teac cobalt (with reel-to-reel spools
inside) is worth more than 200 USD, but the top for
cassette collectors is the sony super metal master
from 1990, with a ceramic shell and a magnesium case.
read more
—
transformers
early japanese cassette tapes that transform into dinosaurs,
or those released by hasbro in 1984, the generation 1 transformer
transforms from tape cassette, to robot, animal etc and back.
via toybin

—
turn the obsolete into …
the craze for cassettes as music messengers may
well be gone, and hundreds of millions of tapes are
out there unused, but two current trends have brought
them out for a second play. with 80′s nostalgia rife
in the visual world and recycling and sustainability
mentioned just about everywhere, the humble
cassette has undergone several unlikely
re-incarnations in the last few years. wether it be
the retro graphics adorning them or the reels of
tape inside them cassettes are finding their way
back into the hands of the ‘cool’ crowd.
cassette wallets
the hand made wallets by marcella foschi were
designed especially for the designboom mart in
tokyo, november 2006.
the italian designer dismantles old cassette tapes,
removes their insides and then joins the plastic
sides together with a zip. each design is usually a
one off leading to a high demand for the wallets.
available via the designboom shop.

a different version is the DIY cassette wallet
via crafster

tape crochet
whilst some designers are more concerned with
the outer appearance of cassettes others use
the tape itself as the basis of their designs.
a shortlisted entry of designboom’s competition
‘Re-think + RE-cycle (october 2004) by alyce santoro
shows dresses and furniture covers fabricated from
weaving cassette tape.

belt buckles
another accessory of the tape kind is the cassette
belt buckle. old tapes are simply fitted with a standard buckle
on the back. created by chandra sweet and available
via honorable mention

another belt design is a 15K gold cassette buckle
via etsy
cassette necklace pendant
one quick way to re-cycle old tapes is to simply
attach them to a necklace. although it is probably
more suitable to use mini cassettes.
via etsy

cassette bag
one slightly annoying aspect of cassettes is the
unravelling of the tape – many mixes would meet
their end, by being chewed up in the player. this
obviously had a serious affect on the makers of the
‘tape bag’. the tote bag features colorful graphics and
two straps that mimic unravelled tape.
USB memory stick
‘all in all, 2 hours of work and thinking, for a very simple,
but I think rather cool mod for my old usb stick.’
see the photoset found on flickr
your name on tape
just enter text and click the ‘go’ button.
a picture of a cassette will be generated for you.

tape dispenser
this easy to use tape dispenser might not re-use
existing cassette tapes but it certainly doesn’t mess
about when it comes to it’s design:
‘it’s a tape, it dispenses tape.’

record racers
one project that doesn’t so much re-cycle obsolete
cassettes as the machines that play them. the german
event ‘record racers‘ invites participants to transform
their old walkmans into small ‘racers’ by using the players
motors to make them move.
on your marks, get set, press fast forward!

—
see also
BBC news article : 10 uses for audio cassettes (may 2007)

a survey of recordable magnetic media (december 2003)

An ambitious project to create an online catalogue of every book in every language ever published is under way. Public goodwill is not in doubt, but some libraries remain to be convinced. A few years ago, the idea of getting random people around the world to write their own encyclopaedia would have been madness – but that didn’t stop the founders of Wikipedia doing just that, and it has turned out to be one of the most successful web projects of recent years.

With that in mind, does it sound mad to want to try and build an online catalogue of every book ever published, anywhere in the world?

The Open Library, newly launched in the USA but global in scope, is designed to make that happen.

In the words of its creators, the idea is to build a virtual library that stores details of not just “every book on sale, or every important book, or even every book in English; but simply every book.”

Which would include The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, The Koran , the full text of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and of course Harry Potter .

But what’s the Open Library really for? Aaron Swartz, leader of the technical team working on Open Library, suggests that every book ever published needs a single authoritative page on the internet, a bit like a personal homepage.

“Right now, if you want to link to a book on the web, the main place people go is Amazon. It’s kind of a bad idea for one commercial site to be the definitive source for book information on the internet, so we want to have a site that brings together information from commercial publishers, reviewers, users, libraries, everywhere.

“This site will become the place where you can find interesting books and information about them, whether they’re in print, out of print, out of copyright or whatever.”

Such a library has to be virtual. No building would ever be large enough to house all books; no single group or government could afford to build it, or employ the necessary staff. If the Open Library is to succeed, it has to be a virtual space, and open to everyone, Wikipedia-style.

“There are tons of books out there and tons of information about those books. There’s no way even a large group of librarians is going to be able to collect it all. We think of it as an analogue to Wikipedia. There are some great encyclopaedias written by small groups of experts, but to get something as wide-ranging and varied as Wikipedia, you need to let everyone in.”

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer… online at the Open Library

To start things off, the Open Library is calling on other libraries to donate their catalogues. This alone presents huge technical challenges, since the data sets come in different formats and different languages, and each set comes with its own quirks, repetitions and errors.

What’s important is keeping the data in a structured form, so that the database working behind the scenes knows the difference between an author, a title and a publisher.

“We had to build this new type of wiki software which was an exciting challenge, because you had to set it up so that instead of just having one kind of page people can edit, we have lots of different kinds.

“People can edit authors, they can edit books, they can edit text pages, and so on. So there’s a lot of new stuff we had to build. And that’s just the infrastructure – there were also lots of things to import, and book data to merge and make searchable.”

Google similarities

An Open Library page is meant to be as comprehensive as possible.

There are data fields for every possible bit of information that could exist about each published work. If copyright allows, there will be a copy of the book to download, or links to copies of it elsewhere (such as the Gutenberg Project to digitise cultural works).

The British Library is sceptical about the project

For the time being, funding comes from the Internet Archive, another non-profit project that has the simple aim of keeping copies of the internet for the benefit of generations to come. But in future, the Open Library will depend on donations and taking a cut of any book sales it hands over to the big online booksellers.

Income will matter more in the face of commercial competition. The Google Books Library Project, part of the larger Google Book Search service, has broadly similar aims.

The Google Book Search Library Project sets out “to work with publishers and libraries to create a comprehensive, searchable, virtual card catalogue of all books in all languages that helps users discover new books and publishers discover new readers,”

Naturally, Google has its own commercial interests to protect and invest in. The Open Library’s approach is the opposite, committed as it is to the ultimate in freedom of information acts: not only can anyone browse, search, and read the books in its catalogue – they can re-write the catalogue itself as they go.

But while the rise of Wikipedia proves there is no shortage of enthusiasm among the public to build informative sites for general consumption, not all libraries are signed up to the Open Library ethos, including the British Library.

Malicious alterations?

Stephen Bury, head of European and American Collections at the British Library in London, has some reservations about contributing to the Open Library project.

“In the short term, I don’t think we will send them a copy of our catalogue. We only have limited resources and we need them to concentrate their efforts on our own digitisation projects,” he says.

“We have always supported digitisation, and the more the merrier. But there’s some scepticism as to whether one day the Open Library might become a commercial site with adverts and so on.”

Mr Bury was not keen on the idea of allowing ordinary people to edit library catalogues themselves.

“I think there’s a need for balance and some degree of control. You might get people maliciously changing things.”

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/6924022.stm

We’re certainly not holding our collective breath on this one, but according to an article put out by the Los Angeles Times, the cult classic DeLorean automobile just might be resurrected. Reportedly, the DeLorean Motor Company” is laying plans to bring the car back into limited production, and while it’d be easy to brush aside this whimsical scheme, 2007 certainly has been good to vintage automobiles made new. Apparently, the supply of cars suitable for rebuilding is quickly dwindling, and if everything pans out, DMC could possibly produce “20 or so cars a year.” Of course, there’s simply no way to tell how legitimate these expectations are, but here’s to hoping for a brand new gull-winged whip in the not-too-distant future.

Source: www.engadget.com