media blog

Known the world over for the quality of their acoustic guitars, Taylor has recently introduced a new line of solidbody electric guitars. Now, I haven’t “lusted” after a guitar in ages but after seeing the new Taylor Custom with it’s sapele wood body, walnut top and mahogany neck, I’m definitely placing the guitar on the top of my want list for 2008. With their long standing reputation on the line, I’m sure Taylor didn’t want to simply enter the electric guitar market without bringing along some innovations and fresh designs into the mix. And fortunately they did. The new line of guitars feature custom designed humbuckers, a 5-way pickup selector, a T-Lock single bolt neck, an original all aluminum bridge and a smooth and elegant body design.

I have to say that I just love the way theTaylor Custom looks. It seems to be a mash-up between the classic Les Paul design and Taylor’s own T5 acoustic-electric guitars. One of the interesting things about the Taylor Custom is that it’s NOT completely a “solidbody”. The guitar is strategically chambered for tone as well as to reduce some of the weight from the sapele wood. Reading all the positive reviews and watching the various online videos about the guitar, it’s obvious that Taylor has managed to HIT this one out of the ballpark!! Head out to your local music shop to see this new guitar for yourself.

Taylor Custom Specs:

Scale length: 24-7/8″ Taylor short scale

Neck joint: single bolt T-lock neck joint

Neck: traditional Taylor neck

Frets: 22

Bridge: Aluminum Taylor-designed

Pickups: Taylor-designed humbuckers

Pickup control: 5-way selector

you know, it has been fun seeing Paul McCartney keeping such a busy schedule at this stage of his long running musical career. There’s really no stopping him. Now with the divorce from Heather Mills behind him, it seems that Sir Macca is up for just about anything. Even a sloppy duet with Kylie Minogue on New Years Eve. Well, maybe someone should have informed Sir Macca beforehand that Kylie really can’t sing… check out the performance from the Jools Annual Hootenanny New Years special up on youtube. listen to Kylie as she has some difficulty singing along in harmony. ouch, my ears, my ears!!

Do we really need another youtube clone? That’s what kept coming to mind while I initially started browsing through Hulu, an online video sharing website. Currently still in beta, I fortunately received an invite to test out the site and I thought I’d share some thoughts about Hulu here on the blog.

Dissatisfied with the way things were done on youtube, NBC Universal along with News Corp. (FOX) set out to build their own website where they’d have more control over content. the result is HULU which offers full length episodes from NBC and Fox as well as their various sister stations which includesBravo, Sci-Fi, FX, Style, Sundance and Oxygen channels. Visitors will have no problem navigating the website since it’s basically modeled after youtube. so what’s the big deal, you ask? well, obviously it’s the convenience of being able to view full episodes of your favorite shows on one website. Currently major hit shows like The Office, Heroes, Family Guy, The Simpsons and 30 Rock are all available here along with a bunch of others from the participating networks. You can simply browse through the “most popular” or “most recently added” titles or search by keyword. Hulu also conveniently lists all available videos categorized by network on a separate page.

So, what can you do as a member? - pretty much the usual stuff: rate videos, post comments, save videos to “your playlist” and subscribe to your favorite shows (new episodes get automatically added to your playlist). current limitations- The major limitation at this point is the amount of videos available. But they’re adding new titles regularly and hopefully expand to other networks/companies other than NBC and Fox. Also, the videos are only viewable in the U.S. at this point. It has been reported that Hulu will have to cut through a bunch of red tape to get worldwide clearance for these videos. I’m sure it’ll be a huge undertaking but hopefully they’ll be able to work something out.

Video Quality? - For the most part, the video quality is very good. it varies between different networks and shows but the NBC stuff (i.e. The Office, 30 Rock, Heroes, etc.) look great and loads pretty quickly. the negatives - Obviously the commercials. Ads are inserted at various times during the course of a full episode just like broadcast TV. (although the commercial breaks aren’t as long as broadcast TV thankfully!) Also, there are a couple of movies available right now but they’re “edited for broadcast viewing”. (please see the movie “Sideways” as an example further down the page). and lastly, there isn’t a “quick” way to browse through the available video titles at this point. hopefully they’ll fix this. there’s just a limited scroll bar on the page of a particular show. and if there’s a long list of available episodes, it gets a bit cumbersome to scroll through it all in a timely manner.

But overall, I have to say that I like what I’m seeing on Hulu. Hopefully they’ll take the time to work through these kinks before opening the site to the general public. There’s a lot of potential here. oh and one more thing about Hulu. members can share links to their favorite videos (just like youtube) as well as embed them on their blogs. So, I thought I’d share a couple Hulu videos here on retroblog so that you all can get a taste of what they have to offer.