'Asteroid' / Q97 is the leaked Apple audio interface that has started a firestorm over blogging, journalism, and privacy. A preliminary ruling today declared that bloggers aren't protected as journalists, and can't protect confidential sources (see BBC News) — potentially a major blow for online journalism and even traditional journalists using email, says the EFF. […]

Circuit-bending, the art of creating new instruments from old ones by creatively 'damaging' them with what would normally be no-nos (like short circuiting them), is spreading. Noah Fleischman of Roil Noise wrote in to talk about the resources that had been helpful to him getting started, a letter CDM published February 5. Circuit bender Reed […]

FreeFrame is an open-source, free, standard plugin format for video and VJs, an open means of developing your own real-time video effects. It's supported in a wide range of VJ and interactive video applications, and even in big-league applications like Director and After Effects via a wrapper. Even if you're not a programmer, check the […]

Rosegarden, the free Linux digital audio workstation with multitrack audio, MIDI, and notation features, is pre-release software no more. Version 1.0 has gone gold, available for download for Linux or as part of Fervent Software's Studio-to-Go CD, which will run on Windows PCs without installation. Fervent has helped support Rosegarden's accelerated development, and if you […]

As we've reported here before, circuit bender Noah Fleischman is a mad scientist of electronics destruction. We've seen software manglings like the Flash-powered software Speak & Spell, but Noah has continued . . . destroying things . . . from toy keyboards to a device created by grafting a cassette Walkman to a 5.25" floppy […]