Welcome to the shiny new Kickstartnews/KSN home page

We decided to jump on the bandwagon — Web 2.0, blog-like, easier for us to edit (very important!). Therefrom springs this easier to use, faster loading, and easier to update home page. Let us know what you think. Please. New reviews can be found in the left column. Daily tech product news can be found in the center column. Interesting site links, Daily Tech archives, Amazon and Google links can be found in the right column. Hope you like it!

Cool Steampunk Keyboard

Reading both Engadget and Gizmodo, I was fascinated by their coverage of a garage based project to create a keyboard that looks like it belonged in a Steampunk world. The Keyboard looks very cool and is only let down by the soft backing and the poor implimentation of the spacebar. The keyboard was created by The Steampunk Workshop, and the process of creating it from an IBM Model M "Clicky" keyboard, is detailed here. The above images are from their final unit. Below I have re-engineered the image in photoshop to reflect what I think the unit should have looked like with a spacebar to match.

Music, Media & Money

I'm both fascinated and annoyed at many of the approaches the music companies are taking at making money. They bitch and complain about piracy and to be honest they are probably right to certain degree. However, I've been buying music for a long time, and much of my music until about 10 years ago was on vinyl. Every time a new device or media technology is announced, I cringe and think "does this mean I'm going to have to buy all the music in my library again". I've previously bought music on LP's, Tapes, CD's, DVD's and even the odd piece of digital music online and on memory card. I love gadgets like many others, however I can tell you this, I won't be jumping to, or spending a lot of money on new mediums. I'll continue buying CD's and then ripping them to my media players. I'm happy enough with that. Stop re-inventing the wheel ... Frankly I'm sick of spending my hard earned money to make some fat cat music executive or lawyer rich. If you want me to buy music I already have, you've got to offer me a lot more than a new package or a "remastered" version. Invest some money in value added content and pay the artists more ... you media moguls can certainly afford it. In case you're wonder why I'm so pissed I sat down recently and figured out how much it would cost me to replace my record collection at £15 a CD ... I freaked. Think about this a moment ... the record companies sue the hell out of copyright violators and yet when it come to paying the creators of that same music, they drag their heels and cry saying the music business is expensive. Yet the RIAA and other organisations with similar interest have been trying to change the law as regards to royalties so that they dont have to keep paying the creators of the music they're selling. Read this article over at IGN for more, it details that the RIAA recently petitioned Judges to lower the royalties so that the record companies can make more money... For another take on why the MPAA thinks piracy exists read another article again at IGN, it made sense to me.