Word: plastic
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Even more industry buzz these days surrounds Plastic Logic, a Silicon Valley stealth start-up just north of Apple. Everything in the reader it's developing will be made of plastic, from its non-LCD screen to its transistors. Recently I got a look at a Plastic Logic prototype. Like the iPhone, it's little more than a touchscreen, 8.5 in. by 11 in. (22 cm by 28 cm), linked wirelessly (like the Kindle) via a high-speed cellular network to a store that will support on-demand transactions of under a dollar. There are just two problems. Because everything...
Other sonic tricks have had their moment--notably Peter Frampton's "talk- box," a plastic tube that made his guitar sound as if it were talking--but in skilled hands, Auto-Tune is the rare gimmick that can lead to innovation. On T-Pain's latest album, Thr33 Ringz, tracks like "Karaoke" and "Chopped N Skrewed" literally bounce between notes, giving the record a kids-on--Pop Rocks exuberance. Using the same program, West's 808s & Heartbreak is the complete opposite--angsty, slow and brutally introspective. West sings throughout, and while he couldn't have hit most of the notes...
...computer and map out songs on a visual grid. You can cut at one point on the grid and paste at another, just as in word-processing, but making sure the cuts match up requires the even pitch that Auto-Tune provides. "It usually ends up just like plastic surgery," says a Grammy-winning recording engineer. "You haul out Auto-Tune to make one thing better, but then it's very hard to resist the temptation to spruce up the whole vocal, give everything a little nip-tuck." Like plastic surgery, he adds, more people have had it than...
...doubt, the dumbest part of that video game is the character customization, which allows me to buy new accessories and haircuts for my onscreen persona and completely change its appearance. But the last thing I care about when I’m slack-jawed and repetitively strumming my fake plastic guitar is the outfit my stupid pixellated avatar is wearing while spasmodically strumming his fake virtual guitar. I also care very little about aptly named Hoobastank; no surprise, then, that in the video for their new single “My Turn,” the band members seize upon...
...whom she variously describes as vulgar, avaricious and (gasp) boringly predictable. "His energy is impressive, but he really is a show-off," Royal says, claiming Sarkozy's quest for money and power leaves him looking ridiculous once he's attained it. "With his little sheriff's star and his plastic gun, his cowboy outfit, it's as if he had climbed up on the biggest horse in the merry-go-round and plucked down the prize...