Acme Voiceworx

The November issue of Radio & Production magazine features my review of Sony Software’s latest release of Sound Forge, labeled Pro 10. You won’t find a lot of new features, but there are a couple that are compelling enough. No, the major improvements are in workflow and in the user interface, and these are substantial. I like it.

What’s kinda funny is that Sony pulled a quote from my review and used it in an email campaign advertising a free webinar on Forge 10:

Steve Cunningham, (Radio and Production Nov 2009) writes “Sound Forge Pro 10 is to version 9 as a 2010 Ford Mustang is to a 1969 Boss Mustang… still wicked fast, still sounds like business, but so much easier to drive.”

Don’t misunderstand me… I like publicity as much as anyone, and the pull is a direct quote — yup, I wrote that. What’s amusing is that at no time did I ever speak to anyone at Sony Software, either before or after I wrote the review. Furthermore, I bought the upgrade and paid for it myself (which I think is as it should be). But my contact info is in there at the end of the article. I’d have thought they’d send a note asking if I objected to their use of it, or at least telling me they were going to use it.

Makes me go “hmmm…”.

The 2009 Audio Engineering Society Convention (aka the 127th AES) in New York City got underway today in the Jacob Javits Center. Early reports from attendees include comments about how much smaller the show is than in the recent past — less than half the exhibit space — which is understandable in the current economy.

We all know that the recording industry is undergoing a painful transformation into, well, many of us are not sure exactly what it will become. But times are definitely tough… one observer sent me a picture of what they consider the most exciting announcement to be seen so far, shown here.

It speaks volumes, doesn’t it?

Microsoft is comparing their new, upcoming Zune HD to Apple’s iPod Touch. In an interview with c|net’s Ina Fried, the GM of Zune global marketing went so as far as to say “This device is created to go head to head with the iPod Touch.” That’s debatable, according to Christopher Breen writing in MacWorld online.

I say, big deal. So the Microsoft Zune flack gets dissed by the iPod/iPhone/iSteve flack. Whatever. What is interesting is the one Zune HD feature that Mr. Breen thinks not much of a feature at all:

Radio. HD Radio, at that. Here’s his quote:

“…Microsoft, from all appearances, is jamming its fingers in its ears and sing-songing “iPod! iPod! iPod! We have radio, iPod doesn’t!” as if radio, of all things, is the killer app (which, if you really want it on your iPod touch, can be had via one of a handful of apps).”

The inference is clear and comes right out of Jerry Del Colliano’s playbook. Radio? That old thing? What’s next? A built-in ashtray and cigarette lighter? Goodness, why did Microsoft even bother?

This devaluation of radio is not surprising, coming from an iPod fan. However, what I find jarring is how quickly radio has become just one of 10,000 other 99 cent apps that can be installed on your iPod.

That is, if you really want it in the first place.

According to this article in c|net, Symantec’s MessageLab released a report last Monday that claims just over ninety percent of global email traffic is now spam, after a five percent increase from April to May 2009. The report also indicates that older, established sites are now being used to host various types of malware more often than newly-minted sites. Spammers are attacking these older and more trustworthy domains, compromising them so that they become hosts and distribution points for malware and spam content.

Contrary to some popular notions, this report claims that spam originates evenly from three geographic areas: the Americas are responsible for about 35% of spam, versus 32% from Europe and 28% from Asia. About 58% of all spam comes from known botnets evenly distributed around the globe, although the botnet known as Donbot is alone responsible for 18%. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s my belief that a lot of voice actors actually fear Digidesign’s Pro Tools for recording and editing voiceovers. Often, VO artists have taken one look over some engineer’s shoulder and muttered “Nope, that’s not for me, it’s too (fill in the blank).”

No wonder — the engineer is probably focused on how many whizzy-cool features s/he can invoke per second, and this can be give the talent a false impression. So here are the top ten objections to Pro Tools and my response to each. Read the rest of this entry »

Help me, Obi Wan!

Microsoft has applied for a broad patent covering, among other things, using holography in remote meetings. That’s right, in the future according the MS, we’ll all be talking to holograms of our co-workers. How we’ll do it, what the hardware and software will look like, is still vague. But they’ll figure it out, and it will be so much better than what we have.

Videoconferencing? That’s so twentieth century. WebEx? Nah, that’s Twitter with pictures. Telepresence? Another Web-two-point-oh gee-gaw. Nope, MS looks to commercialize George Lucas’ ideas from a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. And they’ve filed a patent to cover it.

Can’t you see it now? A hologram of Dom Portwood appears outside your cubicle: “Yeah. It’s just that we’re putting new coversheets on all the TPS reports before they go out now. So if you could go ahead and try to remember to do that from now on, that’d be great.”

Gives a whole new meaning to the term “blue screen of death,” doesn’t it? But wait, there’s more: Why, we could have voiceover sessions where we’d actually have to look at the client! You’ll be able to read their body language as you finish the 14th take and wait for yet another line read completely different from the last one!

You can read about the future today (!) in this piece from Network World.

This month we take a look at several embedded audio players for use in HTML websites, as well as for those based on blogging software like WordPress. Nearly all of these players require MP3-formatted audio players to work, although some will play other formats as well. The players themselves are based on Adobe’s Flash technology combined with some Java scripting.

The reason for this is simple; nearly 97% of all online users have Adobe’s Flash player already installed on their computers, and almost all modern browsers know how to handle javascript properly. Using Flash insures that your clients will be able to hear your demos without the annoyance of having to stop and install yet another plug-in in their web browser.

A free tool that removes the iServices Trojan is now available, courtesy of anti-spyware developer MacScan. This tool removes both the OSX.Trojan.iServices.A and OSX.Trojan.iServices.B Trojan horse, and can be downloaded from this page.

As reported last week, the first remotely-controlled “botnet” created from Macintosh computers has been identified in the field. These Macs are infected with one of the above-named Trojan horse programs, which were identified back in January as being spread via illegal copies of Adobe CS-4 and iWork 2009 software.

MacScan’s removal tool is a stand-alone program that searches for these trojans and removes them if they exist. If neither Trojan exists, the program displays the dialog box to the left and you’re free to quit the program.

Mac users have been particularly fortunate, in that little in the way of malware has yet been aimed their computers. Clearly that has now changed, and given the potential of this malware to at minimum slow your Mac’s performance, and at worst to turn it into a “zombie,” there’s simply no reason not to download and run the removal tool.

The first botnet based on Macintosh computers is here, according to security researchers at Symantec and reported in Ars Technica. A botnet is a collection of software robots (so-called “bots”) which can act automatically and autonomously after being infected with (usually) malevolent software. Botnets consist of a number of such compromised computers known as “zombies,” and these can be directed by the originator of the bot software (the so-called “bot herder”) to perform various nefarious tasks, such as conducting organized DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks on servers, or sending spam emails. Botnets are commonly comprised of Windows computers, although this is the first known botnet comprised of Macs.

Mac users who downloaded pirated copies of Adobe’s Creative Suite CS4 or iWork 2009 may have got more than they bargained for, as some of these copies contained trojan horse software OSX.Trojan.iServices.A and OSX.Trojan.iServices.B. When the user unpacks the pirated software, the trojan is installed and becomes active, turning the Mac into a “zombie.” Since the trojan software was first discovered in January 2009, most anti-virus software has by now been updated to remove the trojan and its remnants. Still, the botnet was recently implicated in DDoS attacks on several servers.

This incident provides yet another reason to avoid installing pirated software on your computer. The success of this Mac-based botnet almost guarantees that more pirated software will be released that is infected, so it’s best to stay away… stay far, far away.

In the upcoming issue of Radio & Production magazine, I’ve explained the basics of SEO and how it can help clients find you. More importantly, I show you how joining and participating in social networks increases your visibility on the interwebz, which can be good for your business.

In short, you need good content and good participation from other sites (in other words, incoming links) to get good results from Google. Got that? Good.