One hundred years ago today, on 31st May 1911, the hull of the RMS Titanic was launched (see feature photo on home page).   And on this day in 2011 The Age, Melbourne’s daily broadsheet morning newspaper, launched its new iPad app – The Age for iPad.  A similar app for the iPad was also launched today for the Sydney Morning Herald.  The above photo of the fully fitted-out ship  is from today’s edition of The Age iPad app  in the photo section devoted to 31 May over the years.

Also in the photo section is a series of stunning HDR photos of Melbourne.  The HDR photo that follows is a view of the city by night. I’m not sure from where the photo was taken, because the twin Rialto towers are on the right – so perhaps it’s a view from the west, or the north.

Here’s another photo from the HDR series. I know from where this photo was taken, and I’m sure most Melburnians will too – and most visitors will have seen the clocks above the main entrance to Flinders Street Railway Station.   This is a view from just inside the entrance – looking out to St. Paul’s Cathedral (Anglican) on the corner of Flinders and Swanston Streets.

I’ll be following the The Age iPad edition with a great deal of interest to see if it will maintain the impressively high standard of the first edition. The app and its content are free until December.

The Age also has another iPad app which I have subscribed to since the week before Christmas last year.  It’s called The Age Newspaper App.  It’s a full replica of the printed version of  The Age, page by page, including all the magazine supplements, and masses of classified adverts in The Saturday Age issue which reaches about 460 pages most weekends.  The new app launched today is designed especially for the iPad and includes videos and great photos.

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.

If you didn’t know already, she was not the partner of a young footballer, but of Dr Geoffrey Edelsten, who was once famous for owning the Sydney Swans in the time of Warwick Capper.  On The Spearman Experiment tonight on TV – a #20 up 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 overseas viewers.  For the USA she said it meant “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 does look 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 my 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.