The iPad looks quite good, and it seems harmless enough, but why did Apple choose to show The New York Times on the iPad screen in the introduction to the long awaited Apple tablet.  I”m sure Steve Jobs would have approved the choice.

An article in The Age online newspaper stated today:

The Apple chief gave credit to Amazon for doing a great job, adding: ”[But] we’re going to stand on their shoulders and go a bit further.” Books – including textbooks – will be able to be downloaded from Apple’s new online iBookstore shop and read using a new application.

Mr Jobs said five of the world’s leading publishers – Hachette, Penguin, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster and Macmillan – had already signed up and that more would follow.

Among other content partners in the presentation was The New York Times, which demonstrated a rich and interactive digital version of the paper, using an iPad application.

The paper’s head of digital operations, Martin Nisenholtz, said he was delighted to help ”pioneer the next version of digital journalism”.

Note the reference to  The New York Times being a content partner involved in the presentation by Steve Jobs and the comment by the paper’s head of digital operations.   I’m sure the newspaper didn’t come on board at the last minute before the presentation.   But I haven’t seen any mention this week of a report last week:

(Reuters) – The New York Times Co Chairman Arthur Sulzberger is close to announcing that the paper will begin charging for access to its website, New York Magazine reported on its Web site citing people familiar with internal deliberations.

TECHNOLOGY

A final decision could come within days and a plan could be announced in a matter of weeks, Nymag.com reported.

“It will likely be months before the Times actually begins to charge for content, perhaps sometime this spring,” the report said.

Apple Inc’s tablet computer is rumored to launch on January 27, and sources speculate that Sulzberger will strike a content partnership for the new device, which could dovetail with the paid strategy, the magazine reported over the weekend.

“We’ll announce a decision when we believe that we have crafted the best possible business approach. No details till then,” the report quoted a Times spokeswoman as saying.

The New York Times went through a period where it charged a subscription fee which I thought was far too high in $A terms  for a newspaper that I might only visit now and again, because it’s free.  It might be different if I lived in New York.

The question is:  Were the NYT considerations to start charging for access to its website because of the impact that they thought the iPad would have on readers?

There is a very interesting article in The Age here about what former NSW premier (and a director of Dymocks bookstores) has to say about the effect of digital reading devices on book sellers in Australia, because of the over-pricing of books here.   Some of the reader’s comments are very interesting, as there is a discussion about the type of screen that the iPad uses compared with the Kindle and its readability and effect on eyesight.  Mind you, those comments are all “off post” (not what the article is about), so while I’d take all their comments into account, I wouldn’t base a purchase decision on them.

Former NSW premier Bob Carr says the arrival of digital book reading devices such as Apple’s iPad make it imperative for the Federal Government to lift bans on book sellers from buying cheap stock overseas.

And if you didn’t know already, she was NOT the partner of one of the young footballers, but of Dr Geoffrey Edelesten.  As you may know, Dr Edelesten was famous at one stage for owning the Sydney Swans in the time of Warwick Capper.  On The Spearman Experiment tonight on TV – a 20 to 1 type program based on viewer polls, Warwick Capper was voted as the #1 cashed up Bogan in Australia.  The hostess, Magda Szubanski, defined “Bogan” for viewers in other countries.  For the USA she said “white trash or trailer park trash.”

She’s 26, and he’s 66, and they’re getting married in November.  Good luck to them.  She’s a fitness instructor from California, by the way.  She looks fit.

Today was a very quiet day for me.  I stayed at home and did my usual Saturday weekend wash and computer housekeeping chores.  But the day didn’t go quite as planned when I got up.  When I checked my emails, I found the second one from Cakewalk this week announcing the release of Sonar 8.5 digital audio workstation (DAW), and urging me to upgrade.

I bought Sonar 5 Producer Edition fairly early in my retirement, thinking that it would be great for my music endeavours on the computer which began on my Amiga in 1990 with a Korg M1 and various music software in the following five years such as Dr T’s  programs, Bars & Pipes, Music X and other great programs.

I didn’t take to Sonar 5 at all, and the audio rarely worked for me.  The next year with optimism, I upgraded to Sonar 6, but it still did nothing for me, and rarely worked with any audible sound.  Another year later, Sonar 7 was announced, but I was very sceptical, and it took six months before I decided to upgrade.

To my surprise, and delight, the new version worked like a treat, and Sonar 7 became part of my musical arsenal.  Sonar 8 was even better.  Sonar became a major contributor to what I could do with music.

This week the Sonar 8.5 Producer Edition upgrade became available and I didn’t hestitate to upgrade once I saw and considered what it offered.

I bought the upgrade at about 1.15pm today, and then started the download at about 1.30pm.  The download of the 2Gb file didn’t finish until 7.50pm.

The installation took quite a while, and then I had to install the patch update.

It was a long day to upgrade to Sonar 8.5 Producer Edition.

Was it worth it?  All I can say is that I produced a short music track I played on my Korg OASYS keyboard and recorded in Sonar 8.5 and mastered in Sonar.

Here it is:

and a bonus, also played on the Korg OASYS:

The first is a tribute to Susan Boyle. It’s a studio recording of her singing the song that made her famous -I Dreamed a Dream.

The Scottish sensation of “Britain’s Got Talent” will make her U.S. TV debut on the season finale of “America’s Got Talent,” according to a person close to the series.  The two-part finale of “America’s Got Talent” airs Sept. 14 and Sept. 16 on NBC, both at 8 p.m. EDT.

The second song is Roberta Flack singing The Impossible Dream.  It’s one of most loved songs, but there are only a few recordings of it that I really like.  This is one of them.

A Canon XH A1 HDV video camera was used for the production, Adobe Premiere Pro for editing, Adobe After Effects for motion graphics, and Adobe Encore for the DVD master. It’s a beautiful looking camera.

I understand that an HP Windows quad-core PC was used for the production.

Sonny wrote that he was unable to watch the video links because he got a Yahoo!7 message “The content you are trying to view is only available in certain areas.”

I’ve sent him new material today which I hope overcomes that problem.

But goodness gracious me, as Peter Sellers would say (as an Indian doctor), when singing to Sophia Loren – why on earth would Yahoo!7 block the video to viewers in the USA.

And now for something completely different: