Subject: Software

• Tax Rhyme

  April 2, 2007

• Flying Dog Brewery Wants Beer to be Free

  May 31, 2007

• Finland 1, Colorado 0

  June 12, 2007

• Hey, I Can See My House From Here!

  August 14, 2007

• Haunted DIA Strikes Again, Befuddles David Byrne’s WiFi

  February 13, 2008

• Curb Your Enthusiasm

  March 4, 2008

• Net Profits

  Online music distributors are banking on indie musicians' lack of business savvy.

  December 16, 1999

• Top 10 Country Albums of 2008

  Photo by Michael Alan GoldbergOver the next couple of weeks, Backbeat will feature some Top Ten lists from around the Village Voice Media chain. Click here for previous year-in-review coverage from Backbeat and VVM. Two young blondes with toothy smiles and hard-core work ethics, Taylor Swift and Carrie Underwood, helped country expand its fan base in these years of shrinking music sales. Meanwhile, Kenny Chesney, Rascal Flatts, Alan Jackson, Toby Keith, Tim McGraw, Brad Paisley and George Strait

  January 2, 2009

• Boulder County used "open-source" software for post-election audit?

  To review the accuracy of the last election's vote count, Boulder County conducted an audit of ballots using a groundbreaking software program that was developed through open-source methods. This is computer geek-speak for a collaborative design approach based on the sharing of knowledge and technology between various creators, essentially opening the book of programming secrets to further a common goal. While the idea of using election software whose programming intricacies -- and weaknesses

  December 30, 2008

• Best morning radio show

  June 29, 2000

• Best Bus Schedule

  April 4, 2002

• Good Morning, America. Today's the Fray

  It's here. The day of reckoning for Denver's most high profile band. Five years ago, they were four unknown guys dreaming, wondering, hoping -- hoping that their music could break out of a city that most people in this country would've had a hard time finding on a map. Today, all eyes are on the Fray. Will the band's self-titled sophomore album, released today, live up to the expectations set by their multi-platinum debut? Will it leave as big an imprint on people's lives? Hard to say. If it doe

  February 3, 2009

• Best Music Software

  March 27, 2003

• Best Place to Not Get Lost

  March 27, 2003

• Holding on by letting go, part one

  Bands in Denver are lucky. Getting gigs and building a fanbase locally are actually pretty easy. There's no shortage of small and midsized venues where a nascent group can cut its teeth, build the buzz and start to plot its graduation to theaters. But how do you get your music into the hands and ears of people who don't breathe our thin air? How do you tangle with the machinery of the music business? Do you have to? In my conversations with Denver musicians, this question comes up

  February 19, 2009

• Best Ladies' Night

  March 25, 2004

• Only in 21st-century America: Warring fartlords head to court

  An image from the ifartmobile.com website. There's a flatulence flap a-brewin' in Denver's U.S. District Court. Loveland-based software developer InfoMedia, Inc. -- creator of the Apple iPhone app iFart Mobile -- has asked a judge to rule that it can use the phrase "pull my finger" in its marketing without infringeing on the trademark of another fart-noise app called, you guessed it, Pull My Finger. The history of the fart-app war is explained in what is possibly the funniest court filing eve

  February 25, 2009

• Best Move by a Former CEO

  March 25, 2004

• The Hundred Days' War

  How hard is it to find 90,000 citizens who want a tax cut? Ask Douglas Bruce.

  January 13, 2000

• Monkey Around

  The Internet is a funny place for singer Jonathan Coulton.

  January 15, 2009

• Jonathan Coulton is what happens when a computer geek starts making music

  January 15, 2009

• The Gundersons get us ready for Basil, the robot of our dreams

  December 18, 2008

• This Does Not Compute

  Hey, Sparky, think it's time to pull the plug on the Bowl Championship Series wizards?

  December 18, 2003

• The Blogtrotters

  What's the next big trend? Follow the bouncing ball.

  January 25, 2007

• From Russia, Without Love

  Hackers are selling rape porn through university websites -- including student pages at UCD.

  November 2, 2006

• Black Pegasus

  Fuck Yo! Radio (The LA Underground)

  October 26, 2006

• Coming Zune

  Once again, Microsoft is chasing Apple in the hipster-hardware game. Will it make sweet music this time?

  October 12, 2006

• By the Book

  A new project could revolutionize the way students learn.

  July 27, 2006

• Broken Code

  Video Professor promises computer fluency in a snap. I test the theory.

  April 20, 2006

• Hacked

  Harrison Ford runs smack into a Firewall, poor guy.

  February 9, 2006

• Club Scout

  John Acquaviva

  May 13, 2004

• A Click in Time Saves Minds

  The cyber-brawl over Scientology spreads to search engines.

  October 4, 2001

• Obliqand Proud of It

  The men behind a new electro label aren't all that interested in dancing.

  May 27, 1999

• Disconnected

  As US West pulls strings at the legislature, it could cut the lines to competition.

  April 8, 1999

• The Poison Pill

  An internet venture goes bust, leaving some of Colorado's biggest business names with a major headache.

  September 10, 1998

• Profits of Doom

  How a costly computer glitch turned into a once-in-a-millennium bonanza for high-tech companies.

  February 12, 1998

• The Word Is Out

  The behind-the-scenes skirmish over transcripts for the bombing trials.

  December 5, 1996

• BUGGING THE POLICE

  A FEDERAL HEIGHTS MAN TUNES INTO THE COPS, TURNS ON HIS FANCY RADIOS AND GETS BUSTED.

  April 19, 1995

• THE PLAN THAT FELL TO EARTH

  CITY BUREAUCRATS SEE THE SPECTER OF DIA IN A GLITCH-RIDDEN "RECLASSIFICATION" PROJECT.

  October 5, 1994

• CELL, CELL, CELL

  BARS DON'T STOP AN INMATE FROM PRODUCING A SONG, DRUMMING UP TV EXPOSURE AND PROMOTING COMPUTER SOFTWARE.

  January 19, 1994

• The latest pitch from Tom Martino's pay-to-appear Martino TV

  An excerpt from a "Martino TV" PowerPoint. A blog yesterday shared sales documents associated with Martino TV, an upcoming program starring self-proclaimed "Troubleshooter" Tom Martino. The show charges businesses to receive the de facto endorsement of its star, who appears in regular consumer-advocacy reports during Channel 31 newscasts (although he's not a journalist -- he swears). Now, something even more graphic: a detailed PowerPoint offering facts, figures, demographic information and pl

  May 14, 2009

• Hiking the Colorado Trail? Try it on Google Earth first

  ​If you're thinking of hiking the Colorado Trail, a 500-mile hiking trail that stretches from Denver to Durango and covers almost every type of terrain our fair state has to offer, the first step you take should be online. Thanks to the efforts of Jerry Brown of Bear Creek Survey Service, who provided the route information, you can now fly along the entire epic length of the trail via Google Earth. A full fly-by of the trail can be done in less than seven minutes, or you can click on any p

  August 5, 2009

• Q&A with Josh Weinberg of The Website is Down

  ​If you spend a lot of time surfing the Internets for lulz or work in any sort of IT-related field, you've probably come across the Webby-award winning web series The Website is Down. It's a hilarious look at the point where the people who understand technology and make it work interface with those who do not understand it, but rely on it to do their jobs. This eternal struggle is eloquently captured in the premiere episode, "Sales Guy vs. Web Dude," wherein poor communication and a misund

  August 10, 2009

• Free Ableton Live workshop at Beta Friday

  ​The fine folks at Basslab are offering a free workshop on the popular DJ/production/performance software suite Ableton Live at 6:30 p.m. Friday, August 14 in the Beta VIP lounge. Three twenty-minute sessions dedicated to using Live for the specific tasks of DJing, producing tracks and mixing down will be followed by an open, one-hour Q&A and hands-on help session. You'll want to bring "your manners, headphones, headphone splitters (male 1/8 inch to two female 1/8th inch), your computer lo

  August 11, 2009

• Denver Public Library: Hooking you up with downloadable movies, audiobooks and eBooks

  Number 5 is alive, downloadable and free....​If you're stuck at home, poor and bored, the Denver Public Library has got you covered. Forget going into the library for your fix of books and movies -- that's so 20th century. Thanks to the digital revolution, these days there's no reason to leave the couch, much less the house. And while the lawless hordes have been enjoying free downloads forever, us law-abiding types have lagged a little behind. No more. All you need to get going is a libr

  August 14, 2009

• Coathangr goes mobile with release of iPhone app

  ​Denver-based Coathangr, a social media service aimed at the fashion conscious (read about it here), has just made it easier than ever to collect your friends' opinions about that pair of pumps on sale -- or to let them giggle at a distance when you spot a fashion disaster out and about -- with the release of their free iPhone app. The app lets you quickly and easily snap a pic from your iPhone and send it to Coathangr for your friends to comment on. Perhaps just as handy, you can use the

  August 19, 2009

• Social media search with OneRiot

  ​You want to know what's hot right now on social media? Just ask OneRiot, a Boulder-based tech company aiming to offer a new way to search the web. As opposed to Google, which tries to provide the authoritative result to any search query, OneRiot is more interested in providing the "buzz" result -- the stuff that people are blogging, tweeting and Digg-ing right now. If you'll permit me an analogy, it's the difference between asking the teacher for the answer to a question (Google) and aski

  August 31, 2009

• Monolith Q&A: The Glitch Mob

  ​The Glitch Mob started out as a Los Angeles-based DJ collective that pooled its collective talent to make a more collaborative music with expanded sonic possibilities. As individual artists, Ooah, edIT and Boreta have released solo albums of cutting edge electronic music but it is as a team that they have put out some of the most interesting remixes being done today. Those familiar with improvisational band Sound Tribe Sector 9 will hear an entirely new band through the ears of the Glitch

  September 10, 2009

• The taxing problems related to Denver's Frontier offer

  ​ The city's offer to Republic Airways Holdings -- an effort to keep as many Frontier Airlines jobs in Colorado as possible -- doesn't represent the final word on potential lures. "They're in negotiations," says Tom Clark, the Denver Economic Development Corporation's executive director, "so that means there's wiggle room." Nonetheless, Clark concedes that sweetening the deal won't be easy due in part to delinquent payments that were part of Frontier's bankruptcy filing, plus a "parts tax"

  October 9, 2009

• Five changes Facebook needs to make

  ​Facebook, we need to talk about our relationship. But don't freak out -- I'm not dumping you. Yet. Look, I like you. I really do. I mean, when we first met, I was really into you. You were so much less gaudy and stupid than MySpace. You helped me get in touch with at least a dozen friends I had lost contact with. And you had some nifty features that I really enjoyed. But now, the magic has faded. You're still useful, but newer, simpler services like Twitter have taken your place in my he

  November 5, 2009