Techno Tree

Missed this Ryan Montbleau show in Troy, New York? You can listen to every performance nightly at RMBLive.com.

Mike Wren

Concert taping is at least forty years old—the First Free Underground Grateful Dead Tape Exchange formed in the early 1970s after all. It was an informal network of Deadheads willing to share tapes with each other in person or via mail, some described it as the original Napster. Les Kippel remembered smuggling in extra batteries, tapes, and microphones so he could capture an entire evening. He started out with a Japanese portable tape machine but insisted the real quality recordings didn’t come until ’74, when Sony came out with the 152 and the ECM-99 stereo microphones.

Today, firsthand concert audio can be accessed much easier. It’s among the first results on any YouTube song search, venue partnerships exist such as NPR’s “Live In Concert” series, and you can always find modern incarnations of the tape exchange (like the popular NYCTaper.com).

“As long as we’ve been a band, we’ve had a good relationship with tapers,” said Jason Cohen, keyboardist for blues outfit, The Ryan Montbleau Band. “We’ve always tried to get good, quality recordings out there. But what’s out there tended to be a pair of mics at the back of the room and it didn’t sound that great. So we wanted control.”

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The US International Trade Commission today ordered an import ban on Motorola Mobility Android products, agreeing with Microsoft that the devices infringe a Microsoft patent on “generating meeting requests” from a mobile device.

The import ban stems from a December ruling that the Motorola Atrix, Droid, and Xoom (among 18 total devices) infringed the patent, which Microsoft says is related to Exchange ActiveSync technology. Today, the ITC said in a “final determination of violation” that “the appropriate form of relief in this investigation is a limited exclusion order prohibiting the unlicensed entry for consumption of mobile devices, associated software and components thereof covered by claims 1, 2, 5, or 6 of the United States Patent No. 6,370,566 and that are manufactured abroad by or on behalf of, or imported by or on behalf of, Motorola.”

ITC rulings such as this one are subject to a 60-day Presidential review period, during which time Motorola is required to post a bond of 33¢ “per device entered for consumption.” Motorola is on the verge of being acquired by Google, with the acquisition having been approved by every jurisdiction except China.

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Police in London have adopted a new system that will allow them to quickly extract data from suspects’ phones.

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Valve and Blizzard have decided to let cooler heads prevail and have come to an amicable agreement…

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Looking for a USB-shaped PC? One has already hit the market while a beefier, more costly offering is on the way.

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Get your best deals on computers and gadgets.

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Diablo 3′s auction house is expected to launch by the end of the month.

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Anonymous source talks Galaxy S III pre-orders.

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Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have found a way to exploit the harmless kind of organisms that usually make you sick to charge your gadgets.

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Nvidia provides an official response to the reported v-sync stuttering issue with its GeForce GTX 600 Series

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