By Andrew Beaujon, Tom Conlon, Jon Coplon, Victoria De Silverio, Ryan Dombal,
Josh Eells, Russ Heller, Craig Marks, Jody Rosen, Rob Tannenbaum and Mark Yarm
Best Technology
Best Absurdly High-End Speakers
MBL’s 101E Radialstrahler loudspeakersGerman
high-end audio-component manufacturer MBL’s 101E Radialstrahlers will
cost you nearly as much as two years of Harvard ($54,890 a pair). But
who needs education—or a car or food, for that matter—when you’ve got a
pair of speakers this sweet? The handcrafted 101Es have a unique
design—the thing that looks like a futuristic Fabergé egg is the
midrange speaker—but it’s the omnidirectional sound that realizes
audiophiles’ fantasies. The full MBL Reference System—the 101Es, a pair
of power amps, a preamp, a CD component and a digital-to-analog
converter—can be had for the take-out-a-second-mortgage price of
$199,000.
Best iPod AccessoryIon TurntableListening
to your rare white-label 12-inches on the bus can be a bit cumbersome.
Fortunately, there’s a solution to your (very pretentious) problem:
Ion’s LP Dock USB Turntable ($299), which easily converts vinyl tracks
to MP3s. Just dock your iPod (latest-gen only) on the table, spin the
album and the tunes record straight to your music player. Or use
special software that drops the tracks right into your iTunes library.
The device works with all record speeds, too, so Grandpa can finally
listen to his Glenn Miller Orchestra 78s on his nano.
Best Way to Make New FriendsSimplify MediaIn
the Dark Ages, the only way to share music with friends was with a slab
of blank TDK cassettes and some dual-deck dexterity. Nowadays, it’s as
easy as installing Simplify Media (simplifymedia.com) on your Mac or
PC. Whether you’re loyal to iTunes or Winamp, this free download lets
you stream your entire music collection to up to 30 friends over the
Net. Share with a pal and his tunes become playable on your computer,
too, with only the slightest of load lags before each song. Or run
Simplify from the confines of cubicle land to access your home library
while “working.” Coming soon: a mobile version for the iPhone and the
iPod Touch.
Best New Rcrd LblRcrdlbl.comThe
Web site RCRD LBL is pronounced record label, but as the missing vowels
suggest, it’s not exactly a full-fledged label. A joint venture of Pete
Rojas, the founder of tech blog Engadget, and Downtown Records, the
home of Gnarls Barkley, Art Brut and Cold War Kids, RCRD LBL is
something different: a blog-label hybrid. The ad-supported site
partners with other labels to give away exclusive free tracks from
indie acts like Justice (collaborating with Mos Def and Spank Rock),
José González’s band, Junip, and Sam Champion; some artists get paid
advances for their exclusive songs and receive a cut of any money RCRD
LBL makes from licensing them for, say, TV shows. “The old way of doing
business is in trouble,” Rojas says. “We’re trying to do something
positive, rather than sue our way out of our problems like the major
labels.”
Best Big-Brother TechnologyGracenote Music MapKnow
how you put a CD into iTunes and iTunes automatically brings up the
song names? That’s thanks to Gracenote, whose track-list database
iTunes (and other music applications) taps for information. Now, using
the satisfyingly sleek interactive map at gracenote.com/map, you can
find out who are the most popular artists throughout the world—based on
iTunes play—at any given moment. Span the musical globe full of unknown
superstars (Portuguese hip-hop squad Da Weasel, anybody?) and unlikely
upsets (in Russia, Justin Timberlake has nothing on … Zamfira!).
Best Portable Time-SuckPhaseFrom
the people who brought you the original Guitar Hero comes a similar
rhythm game, developed for your iPod, that lets you click and spin your
flywheel in time with any song in your library, for jollies (and
points). As you cruise down a highway, notes roll into sight (à la the
notes on the Guitar Hero fret) and brightly colored
animations—taxicabs, construction workers—hypnotically whiz past,
helping to drive home Phase’s overall vibe of diversionary stupor.