Emtec  has a line of USB flash LCD drives that can be loaded with your own logo on a flashing 4 color LCD screen.  I've mentioned this product before but since we are receiving more and more inquiries I decided to show it again:

 Product specifications:

1. Original LCD panel with solar captors
2. Universal compatibility with USB 1.1 and USB 2.0 interfaces
3. Operating systems: WIN 2000, WIN ME, WIN XP, Vista, MAC 8.6, OS 9 et OS X
4. Read speed: up to 7 MB/s
5. Write speed: up to 4 MB/s
6. Image Size: 26.5*12mm
7. Image Resolution: 300dpi
8. Image File Format: PSD/ TIF/ EPS/ BMP/ AI/ JPG
9. USB 1.1/2.0 compliant
10. Hot plug & play
11. No external power is required,it's solar powered
12. 10 years data retention

This is a great promo product for companies, groups and bands.  The key comes preloaded with your logo; each key can also be preloaded with presentation data as well.

Normal turnaround time is about 2 weeks after the artwork is approved.  Right now capacities available are 1GB, 2GB and 4GB.

The minimum order on the custom logo LCD drive is 200 pcs.  The item is available with a preloaded Emtec logo in singles; custom logos require the 200 minimum.

You can see complete specs on the Emtec site as well. 

As a former band member I sometimes wonder whatever happened to all the musicians I've come into contact with over the years. My first business was a real-time cassette duplication company in Burbank, CA called ProSound Audio Labs.  Our racks of 30 Nakamichi MR2B cassette decks

were kept busy with tons of L.A. metal and alternative bands.  The walls had framed 8 x 10 photos of many clients, from rock heavyweights like Ronnie James Dio & Craig Goldy to friends in bands that let us duplicate their demos:  The Miss Alans,  Wednesday Week and Lost Luggage.  From everyone I came in contact with I can name on one hand those who have made a career out of playing music.  

Bass players always seemed to be the hardest to find but I had the privilege with working with three of the finest musicians and people out there:  Justin Meldal-Johnsen, Heidi Rodewald and David Nolte.  All are full time musicians still as far as I know.  I have not spoken to Justin in at least 2 years but with all his gigs from Beck to IMA Robot and beyond I have no doubt he is a busy guy.  He is someone who always had the right attitude and more talent than we deserved.  Heidi is a great player and writer who is currently performing in the musical Passing Strange in NYC with Stew and company.  She has always found a way to let music be her career.  David is another guy who could do whatever was needed.  He filled in on bass for us while we tried to replace our bass player who had quickly fled L.A. after deciding it was not his kind of place.  David has traveled the world with the likes of David Gray & Ray Davies and odds are he is still doing music full-time. 

Personally I made more money playing parties at Clemson University than slogging it out in the Los Angeles clubs.  We were lucky enough to record two demos for A&M Records in studio C at A&M Studios; too bad we didn't make the cut.  We had fun with Jonathan Anderle trying to get things going for us at the label but that record deal we were trying for did not happen in the end. 

Bands starting out in 2007 seem to have more of a chance of getting heard with music production costs being lower and distribution via the web being limitless.  The world of major record labels being the only source for large distribution has definitely changed along with recording budgets.  An artist now can record a decent set of songs and actually make some money without going into a 10 year debt plan.  I did a search at amazon.com for "music business" and the first page had 16 different books on succeeding in that industry, many of which deal with doing in on your own.

It would make a great book if somehow I could interview everyone I've met over the years who  shared the same goal of music for a living..  I know there are some great stories out there.  Odds are many are still involved somehow as producers, staff writers or teachers, etc. while others are 110% removed from that world.  If days ever get longer than 24 hours maybe I'll take on that project....  

I just saw the first shipment of LTO-4 tapes hit the warehouse. Currently Maxell part number 183906 is available.

Here is the Ultrim roadmap as shown on the ultrium.com website:

We expect more product available soon from Imation, TDK, Sony and Fujifilm. 

Avastor has been making the news again lately by teaming up with pros like SADiE and
Guy Charbonneau's Le Mobile Remote Recording.  Company co-founder Richard Wilson does a great job explaining their HDX products on a recent tradeshow podcast.

For the month of May Encore Data Products is running an Avastor promotion:  FREE 2nd Day Air delivery AND a FREE AVASTOR T-Shirt with every Avastor hard drive purchase.  We will automatically upgrade your shipping from free ground to FREE 2nd day air.  Our T-Shirt supply is good but once these run out that part of the promo will be done.  

Avastor has become a world leader in professional A/V hard drives.  Their drives are designed to hold up to the rigors of music, TV & film production.  Don't settle for less...there are cheaper drives out there but you get what you pay for.  A crashed hard drive can really throw a wrench in the works when you are in the middle of a session; you might save some cash up front with a "no fan inexpensive consumer drive" but why take that chance.  

Feel free to call us if you are looking to stock up on Avastor; I would love to provide you with a quantity quote:  866-926-1669 . 

Here is a little device that can change your world.  The NeatReceipts Scanalizer was created to make your life easier by organizing all your receipts and getting rid of that paper clutter.  According to the manufacturer "It’s the easiest way to say good-bye to messy paper clutter and hello to an efficient, paper-free life."

NeatReceipts has an online interactive demo if you are interested is watching it work.  We have been offering this brand for awhile and the versions keep getting better.  There is even a user forum on the manufacturer site for future & current users to find out everything.

Pick one up today and start scanning... 

Travan, SLR, MLR and QIC tape media formats have been around for a number of years.  Tapes  eventually get replaced by faster, higher-capacity versions or completely different formats.  Based on the requests we receive there are companies all over still using their Travan, SLR/MLR or QIC tape drives.  Manufacturers have started raising prices on formats as the supply chain gets smaller; fewer and fewer firms are manufacturing these formats.  At least for now you can still find a 150MB QIC tape cartridge if you really need one.  The bigger capacity tapes like Tandberg SLR140 should be around for awhile until the laws of supply and demand take their course. 

We will continue to offer all the formats as long as they are available.  Eventually the higher capacity formats like LTO-4 (1.6TB compressed capacity!) will be the EOL products we are starting to see now is the QIC formats.

I am more than happy to track down any older formats you might need...call us at 866-926-1669; we can often locate product that might not be listed on our site. 

Analog tape is definitely back. Product was never completely gone but it was close. I caught up with Doug Bernhardt, western regional sales manager for RMGI North America, our source for RMG tape in the United States.

He was kind enough to answer a few questions I had about the current state of tape:

What has the response been to being the only active pro analog tape supplier in the U.S.?

Everyone has been very supportive, and in fact enthusiastic with the reintroduction of the analog tape products. People want to know the history of RMGI from its roots with AGFA, BASF, and EMTEC. They want assurances we will continue the analog product. And our job is to create that comfort level that RMGI is here to stay.

I know there have been some issues with earlier reels of tape....what's the latest?

RMGI expected some initial issues with the move from Germany to Holland, and we have had some issues. But to their credit RMGI has been extremely responsive to our problems here in North America. They have made the necessary corrections to the product and the current inventory is performing to the high level we all had expected. There are still isolated issues, but we are dealing with them as quickly as we are aware of them. And would ask users to contact us immediately if any problem, no matter how small crops up.

Different markets are using the different formulations...what tapes are being used in your main markets?

The SM900 has been the main product of choice in the studios, as it was when it was produced by EMTEC. The SM911, which is the equivalent of the discontinued 456, has had a resounding increase in sales. And even the original AGFA 468 has been getting new users to its fold. But SM900 is still the major player in the analog world. How is the current supply in the U.S.? Our first inventory levels were based on a shared market with Quantegy. So, we were caught a little short with their discontinuation, but we again have had excellent support from RMGI. Along with an increase in our ship containers, they have been shipping by air critical product to us when needed. We seem to be working on a JIT (just in time) inventory, but we fully intend to have at least a 30+ day inventory of all required product for our dealers. We are getting close, but not quite there as yet. Demand has been intense for 1/2" product, and we are working hard to maintain inventory for immediate release.

Any parting comments?

I can't say enough about the dealers and clients positive attitude with all the changes in the analog market the last few months. We hope everyone understands we are doing all we can to satisfy all concerned. And we hope that with a little patience from all we will get back to a stable market. Where one can order, receive and record on the analog product and concentrate on just making music.

Thanks Doug for taking some time with us. We are looking forward to supplying studios and musicians with RMG...long live analog!

DLT, LTO, AIT, CD, DVD, Optical, 1/2" tape, hard drives...you name it and there is a Turtle Case by Perm-A-Store built to store and transport your media. I am mentioning the cases today to remind our readers that the cases you buy from Encore Data Products have FREE SHIPPING just like everything else we sell. These cases can get heavy so our free shipping can save you a ton.

We are adding some more cases soon!  Give us a call at 866-926-1669 if you need an item not currently on our site.  We sell everything the manufacturer makes. 

Sun has a section dedicated to all things T10000 (or T10K).   You have to love a tape that can hold 1TB of compressed data.  For a complete spec sheet visit the Sun link here.  The T10000 tape products are designed for the Sun T10000 tape drive:

Looking for tape and barcode labels?  Our ongoing Sun promotion gets you FREE barcode labels with any T10000 tape order of 50+ pcs.

Please call us if we can help out with you Sun media needs:  866-926-1669 

I have been working this week with Jeff Liu at Norco Technologies to get their direct attached storage and controller cards in place at encoredataproducts.com . Norco offers high performance storage products that are priced very competitively; no wonder the Norco market share continues to expand.  The newest hardware item is the DS-1220 RAID Storage subsystem that can hold 12TB + storage.

I asked a few questions this week about the company and here is what I found out:

1  Tell us a little about Norco Technologies...

NORCO, formed in 1991 through the merger of leading industry innovators, is the leading worldwide supplier of server rackmount, storage systems, network appliances, industrial PC parts and solutions distributed by 100 companies around the world. Headquartered in mainland China, NORCO has locations in the US, Canada, Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, China...."   Check out the ABOUT US on the manufacturer site for details.

2. Encore Data Products focuses on your storage product offerings.  What industries are using Norco storage products?

The biggest users are the server, movie and security industries.

3. Any new products on the horizon?

Yes.   We are working on a line of Network Attached Storage (NAS) products.

4. Anything else you would like to tell our readers about your products?

Our storage products are the biggest growing portion in our product lines. You get the same performance as the ones that cost you much more.

Thank you Jeff for taking the time to tell us about Norco!  

Readers call call me directly at 866-926-1669 if you need more information.  We will continue to add more Norco items this week.

4th generation Tandberg Data LTO drives LTO-4 FH (1640LTO) are now available. We added the LTO-4 tape media a couple of weeks ago and are happy to report the drives are available too.  The drives write LTO-4 and will backward write LTO-3 tape.  Backward read is available on both LTO-2 and LTO-3.

Tandberg Data part number 7202 is an external drive kit that comes with the External tape drive, black, Backup Exec QuickStart Edition, 1 Data Cartridge + 1 Cleaning Cartridge.  As always shipping is free; the LTO-4 tape is still at our LOW introductory pricing as well.

Ok...I know there are people today who have never held a vinyl record before.  I was bummed when the world of vinyl pretty much disappeared and CDs took over.  As a kid, searching through crate after crate of used albums was fun and I discovered some great bands that way.  Doing the same with CDs is ok but a full LP cover with great artwork does shrink well to a CD insert (or MP3 listing).  I discovered the best band of all time (in my opinion...) at a Flea Market (the Jockey Lot) in Anderson, SC by parting with $2 to pick up a copy of Remote Luxury by The Church.

  The guy selling records had boxes of radio station "promotional only" albums a local country station would not normally  play.   The  album great cover sold me so I took a chance based solely on the look and I have been a huge fan of the Church ever since. 

I still have boxes of records in the basement and for years I have talked about getting a turntable again.  Ion Audio has a product on the market now that is a USB turntable.

It converts your vinyl to MP3 or CD format.  I hope to start converting my albums sooner than later; it should be fun hearing stuff that never made it to CD format before.  There is also a 1/8" stereo line input which allows you to digitize music from cassettes and other analog sources.

We just added another item from Ion Audio: The IDJ dual IPod DJ mixer.

It looks like Ion has picked a couple of winners here; you get a big bang for your buck since both items have excellent prices and can really deliver.

I get this question from time-to-time: What exactly is scratch armor protection on the Delkin Archival Gold CD-R and DVD-R discs?

Scratch Armor is a thin  protective extra coating Delkin puts on the top layer of some Archival Gold CD-R and DVD-R discs.

HERE IS WHAT DELKIN SAYS: 

"Scratch Armor's protective layer prevents scratches, scuffs, dirt, chemicals, and fingerprints; making it the best way to protect your precious memories, music, and important documents. The clear scratch resistant coating that comes on the Archival Gold media prevents damage from the daily grind that CD's and DVD's are faced with. Combined with Archival Gold's established reliability, Archival Gold with Scratch Armor also increases the quality and lifespan of your recordable media. Scratches, scuffs, dirt, chemicals, or fingerprints can leave your recordable media damaged beyond repair, but Scratch Armor insures the lifespan of your disc. Lasting 10 times longer than other recordable media, Scratch Armor's protective surface keeps your memories, music, and files safe. Multiple brands of recordable media manufactured by top competitors, and purchased at well-know mass merchandise chains, were subjected to rigorous laboratory testing in an environmental chamber to measure CD and DVD life expectancy. While Archival Gold media has consistently shown it can safely store your images for more than 300 years, popular competitors didn't make it past 6 months. Archival Gold CD-R's are made with a patented Phthalocyanine dye. When compared to Cyanine and Azo dyes found in the majority of CD-R's on the market, Phthalocyanine dye lasts significantly longer when subjected to the harmful effects of UV light, heat, and humidity. This combined with the non-corroding effects of gold make Archival Gold CD-R's the 300 year disc. Archival Gold DVD-R's have also been tested to last well over 100 years; both Archival Gold formats outlast their competitors by decades."

Scratch Armor protection goes above and beyond other archival gold media;  if your discs will be handled frequently and you want the absolute best protective coverage then the Delkin Archival Gold with SCRATCH ARMOR should be your choice.  Delkin offers their gold media with or without Scratch Armor; we stock only the discs with the extra coating.

Recording Speed Note:  The Delkin CD-R are rated 52X.  The Delkin DVD-R with Scratch Armor are rated 4X.

I have to throw in a Seinfeld reference every now and then.

Most of you will prefer our Big Sale over Elaine's big salad since this Memorial Day weekend you can save enough to buy everyone lunch.  We rarely put everything on sale but right now you can save on all orders over $100.  Save even more if your product total is over $199.  NO COUPON NEEDED.  Your discounted total will show up in the shopping cart before you start checking out.

Our manufacturer list keeps growing and now includes:

Altec Lansing, Avastor, audio-technica, Buffalo Technology, Certance (by Quantum),  Delkin Devices, Emtec Intuix, Epson, Exabyte, Fuji, Glyph Technologies, G-Tech, HP, IBM, Imation, Iomega, Ion Audio, Kodak, Lacie, Lexar, MAM-A Mitsui, M-Audio, Maxell, Maxoptix, Maxtor, Memorex, Microboards Technology, NeatReceipts, Norco Technologies, Panasonic, TurtleCase by Perm-a-Store, Philips, Pioneer, Plasmon, Primera, ProAVio, Quantum, Rimage, RMG International, Samsung, Sandisk, Sennheiser, Sling Media, Sony, Sun / Storagetek, Taiyo Yuden, Tandberg Data, TDK, TEAC, Telex, Toshiba, Verbatim, Verity Systems, Western Digital and Xerox.

 Our Memorial Day weekend sale ends May 29th so be sure to visit us soon!

Did you know Encore Data Products sells replacement ink and ribbons for Primera and Rimage printers and duplicators? Our inventory is all new and is the "real stuff"; no generics or used refill cartridges. Just need one ink cartridge? No problem...order as little or as many as you need. As always free shipping can save you lots.

If you are looking for the Primera or Rimage hardware we have a wide selection too:

Primera offers the Bravo SE, Bravo II and Bravo PRO publishers along with the Accent II disc laminator.  Rimage has the 2000i, 360i and 480i units.  Very popular are the Rimage CD and DVD Media kits:  A kit containing CD or DVD media, Ribbons and/or ink for your Rimage machine. 

It's the end of the month and we are running an incredible sale on Glyph GT050 Quad 500GB and 750GB hard drives.

Prices are almost 50% off list!  Don't forget the free shipping!

Ports:

FireWire 400 (IEEE 1394a) - One 6-pin port

FireWire 800 (IEEE 1394b) - Two 9-pin ports

USB 2.0 Hi-speed (device-side) port

eSATA - One port

These unbelievable prices are online until tomorrow at 3:00 PM.  

Surface technology looks pretty darn cool...the Microsoft marketing department did a good job on their presentation at least. If you have not seen this technology check out the Microsoft site to "Experience Surface".

Also visit the Popular Mechanics behind-the-scenes first look with video.

As you can see there are thousands of possibilities here; time will tell how well this technology will translate into the workplace and our daily lives.  How long until you can play Blackjack in Vegas on one of these?