The MT9 format has six user-controllable unmixed channels of sound - chorus, vocals, bass and drum, guitar, and piano. What this translates into is a format that allows the user to have control over how the file is heard, for instance, say you hate the sound of Britney Spear’s voice but just love the production values? You can mix down the vocal channel and have an instant karaoke version. You could create an a capella version of the last Kanye Album, or cut out the guitar on a Green Day song and play along with your guitar.

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New York State legislature recently included a provision in the budget passed in April, which could result in about 50 million dollars coming in from a tax from online retailers, mostly coming from e-tailer Amazon.com. Some opponents say that electronic commerce will be stilted by the tax and that state and local laws are too complex for online retailers to deal with. But others point to smaller online merchants commonly which use services like Yahoo Stores, Paypal, or Google Checkout to process transactions which allow specific tax rules to be set. Proponents argue that the tax levels the playing field for traditional bricks and mortar stores and that the increased tax revenues for the state would be a reasonable benefit. But taxes are usually only required to be collected from businesses that employ agents or representatives within a state, how exactly does Amazon qualify as a physical presence in the state?

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Mario speaks with Bob Cringely, host of the the tech documentary The Transformation Age airing on Public Television. The program explores the office, the marketplace, media, finances and our digital lives as they take new forms and remove the barriers of time, distance, wealth, education and even age. You can find out more about the program and when it airs here.

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Unemployment is going up in the U.S., but nearly a quarter of employers are struggling to find talent, at least when it comes to employees in the engineering fields.  Fewer than ten percent of graduating college students in the U.S. are studying engineering. In order to increase interest in the science and engineering fields, the Discovery Education 3M Young Scientist Challenge was created in 1999 for  students in grades five through eight. Ten finalists receive an all-expenses-paid trip to Washington, D.C. with the winner receiving the grand prize of a fifty-thousand dollar savings bond. Dr. Alex Cirillo from 3M talks about the specifics of this competition.

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The American government is scheduled to be text messaging you in a couple of years, but these messages obviously won’t resemble the majority of the estimated 48 billion or so text messages that are sent each month. The Commercial Mobile Alert System or CMAS, has been approved by Federal regulators to utilize text messaging to send emergency alerts.

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Have the tv networks got a hit with their new video content site, Hulu.com? Time will tell, but so far they've managed to sell out their advertising inventory. Plus we can now watch episodes of Welcome Back, Kotter anytime we want online.

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Kai and Charles Huang, the founders of Red Octane, talk about how they went from working in consulting and international trading to creating one of the hottest and influential video games of this era.

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InterAction Laboratories sat down with Mario to talk about how kids have been getting off of the sofa and more physically active while playing video games.

Enclosure

There's a new breed of laptops powered by open source software. Heard of the Asus EEE, the OLPC XO, the HP 2133, or the Everex Cloudbook? Many of these are subnotebooks, designed to be very portable, weighing under 3lbs, and powered by Linux to keep costs down and surf the the web and perform basic productivity tasks more efficiently.

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In November of last year, the Maryland General Assembly passed the Tax Reform Act of 2007, which would expand Maryland’s six percent sales and use tax to “computer services.” This tax is planned to go into effect on July first. There is concern that, with the mobility of IT services, that IT jobs will relocate to neighboring states such as Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Virginia to avoid these taxes. Mario speaks with Tom Loveland, CEO of Mind Over Machines, and founder of the Maryland Computer Services Association. Find out more at Fight the Tech Tax.

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A video game industry political action committee is planned to be operational by the end of March. Part of its mission includes mobilizing the 100,000 plus gamers that are a part of the  Video Game Voters Network, which seeks to defend the rights of the industry and the consumer and to generally receive the same First Amendment protection as books, movies, music, and cable television programs.

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The Webby Awards are widely heralded as the "Oscars of the Internet." Executive Director David-Michel Davies provides his perspective on upcoming trends and developments.

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The Internet has played a large roll in disseminating poltical information quickly. According to the Pew Research Center, nearly a quarter of Americans say they regularly learn something about the campaign from the internet, more than double the amount of people from 2004 and forty-two percent of those aged 18-29 regularly learn about the campaign from the internet, making it the number one information source for that age demographic. We’ve seen a candidate like Ron Paul, who gets the least exposure on television, raise the most amount of money during the last quarter. He is also the only Republican candidate to increase his fundraising totals in every quarter of 2007 thanks in part to his supporters’ use of social news sites like Digg and viral videos. Additionally, new sites like Maplight.org are allowing users to examine the connection between campaign contributions and legislative votes, going beyond the official politican blogs and online videos to portray a more transparent view of the candidates.

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Regular blogs are too much work you say? Mario speaks with David Karp, 21 year old founder of Tumblr.com,  and David agrees.

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Two recent sites are taking online dating to the next level. CrazyBlindDate.com allows users to set up a date with a total stranger on short notice. UK-based IceBrkr.com allows a user to text message an attractive stranger in a public place (as long as they are a user) before they make face to face contact.  Lux Nightmare, editor of sexuality, dating, and culture blog Boinkology.com offers her insight and gives some online dating tips.

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Pound of Cure-MD provides mobile clinical diagnostics, health risk assessments, and chronic disease prevention screenings to individuals, communities, employers, and organizations. How is this different from getting a preventative screening at a physician’s office? Mario speaks to Audrey Whetsell, co-founder of Resource Partners Healthcare, Inc., the parent company of several companies that provide health care technology solutions.

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A sampling from Mario's holiday wishlist.

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Donald A. Norman, Professor of Computer Science at Northwestern University, partner in the Nielsen Norman Group Consulting Firm, and former VP of Apple’s Advanced Technology Group speaks about the problems facing us as we move towards an increasingly automated future.

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Generation Y, the Internet Generation, the Nintendo Generation, and the New Millennials are some of the various names for those born between 1980 and 2000. They are literally the future, and as many of them have recently begun entering the workplace it’s evident that they have very different expectations of work culture and on a generational level, communicate very differently. Mario speaks with Baltimore native Jakob Lodwick, inventor of the "lip dub", and partner in Connected Ventures, a New York based firm that runs CollegeHumor.com, BustedTees.com, and Vimeo.com, a video sharing service that preceded YouTube and is the first to offer streaming HD-quality video.

Here's the lip dub video that acted as an indirect commercial for the company and resulted in hundreds of unsolicited resumes. 

Lip Dub - Flagpole Sitta by Harvey Danger from amandalynferri on Vimeo.

An exclusive behind the scenes tour of Connected Ventures.
Connected Ventures Tour courtesy of Jakob Lodwick from ProducerSong on Vimeo.

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How have the music industry, musicians, and tech startups reacted to the rising popularity of the MP3? The answers were found at this year's College Music Journal Music Marathon in NYC.

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