She Rocks Awards at NAMM 2015

She Rocks Awards at NAMM 2015

by | Feb 17, 2015

At the NAMM Winter Conference, the She Rocks Awards moved from their daytime subdued event to a full nighttime gala event with red carpet. The 2015 She Rocks Awards were hosted by the founder of WiMN Laura B. Whitmore and performer Orianthi.

The show opened with an opening performance by the fast rising group SHEL. The four sisters who make up the group are touring the US and Europe between recording new albums and music for television, film and commercials. Continuing the theme of celebrating Women in Music the award ceremony featured an all female house band. The house band was led by guitarist Gretchen Menn and included Zepparella members Angeline Saris on bass, Clementine on drums and guest keyboardist Jenna Paone.

The show had one non-female winner – Rob Christie was recognized for the Champion Award.

The highlight was the “ICON” award winner as major contirbutors to the field of Women in Music. This year’s award was given to The Bangles – Vicki Peterson, Debbie Peterson and Susanna Hoffs who also performed that evening with the host and house band.

Spanning all varieties of music, the “Mad Skills” award was given to Mindi Abair. Berklee College of Music graduate Mindi is receiving multiple recognitions in addition to the She Rocks Award with several Grammy nominations and increasing demand for her unique saxophone style and sound. Mindi addressed the crowd with the fact that in her music career a lot of her success is due to the support from her family and teachers who encouraged her to follow her own style and sound, and that she did not have to conform to “sound like someone else” she “can create and define her own sound”.

The “Legend” award was given to Capitol studios manager Paula Salvatore who in her 24 years at Capitol has been an integral part of recordings for some of the industry’s most iconic artists.

The “Inspire” award was given to Debbie Cavalier. Debbie is currently the Vice President for Online Learning and Continuing Education/CEO for Berklee’s award-winning online continuing education program, Berklee Online, and is also the leader of the award-winning kids/family band Debbie and Friends. She has also been the recipient of the 50 on Fire Award, the 2013 Education award, and also composed and recorded a song featured on the 2011 GRAMMY Award-winning CD for Best Children’s Album through her work with Debbie and Friends.

The “Excellence” award was given to Craigie Zildjian the first female CEO of the 400+ year old Avedis Zildjian Company. She has also sponsored the Zildjian Family Opportunity as well as the Zildjian Percussion Facility at Berklee College. Additionally, Craigie developed the American Drummers Achievement Awards, an event that honors drumming legends. She also is an active member in the musical community with past service on the Board of Directors for the International Music Products Association (NAMM), the Board of Advisers of the International Association of Jazz Educators and the Board of Overseers at New England Conservatory. Currently, she Chairs the Zildjian Board of Directors and is a Trustee Emeritus of the Berklee College of Music.

The “Video of the Year” award was given to performer Colbie Caillat. Colbie is a two time Grammy Award winning singer-songwriter who has sold over six million albums and ten million singles worldwide. Caillat released her fourth studio album Gypsy Heart, which features her hit single “Try” which was co-written by legendary producer and singer-songwriter, Babyface. The companion video for the song has become an online phenomenon, quickly amassing 30 million views. As was the video recognized with this award.

The “Next Generation” award was given to Katie Kailus. Katie Kailus is the editor of Music Inc. and UpBeat Daily magazines. She started at Music Inc. as an intern and was soon appointed associate editor. In January of 2014 she was named editor. She is one of the first women to ever be named editor of a musical instrument trade publication.

Also being recognized were Gayle Beacock and Amani Duncan. Gayle is co-owner of Beacock Music Company in Vancouver, Washington. Their Education Center is widely regarded as one of the top in the country. Amani is the Vice President of Brand Marketing for C.F. Martin & Co. A 17 year music industry veteran, Duncan’s experience runs the gamut from artist relations to visual marketing, digital and social media, campaign creation and strategic partnership negotiations.

Fujitsu ix500 wireless scanner

Fujitsu ix500 wireless scanner

by | Feb 2, 2015

The current trend is to eliminate wires from all the computer peripherals and also allow the same access to mobile devices as you would have with a full computer.  While the direction has been successful for most products, this success has come with the cost of speed, productivity, limited battery operating life, and reduced features to add the power and the extra parts to bring wireless capability.  The wireless devices that dominate the market are also an added burden and SMB and SOHO locations that have limited, consumer oriented networks.

Addressing this trend is a new product in the marketplace that took a different approach.  The Fujitsu ScanSnap ix500 is a business class, high productivity scanner that added wireless capability, rather than throw out features to bring in wireless.  The 25 page per minute full duplex (simultaneous both side scanning) color scanning feature has simultaneous multiple feed paths that are set for full standard pages (8.5” x 11” and A size sheets), a receipt width path and a business card path.  To supplement the scanning and simplify the results in the output, they added a hardware chip that incorporates a licensed Adobe PDF generation engine, that takes the raw scan and creates fully annotated and OCR compatible PDF files in the time most system provide a JPEG.  The interpretation engine is smart enough to re-orient documents in case pages are upside down or sideways, so all the results are usable and readable.  The business card section is also smart enough to “bind” the front and back of a double side card as one set of information for use in importing the cards to your contacts manager.

This high speed and built in PDF engine now allow professional and business level scanning of documents to connect to a mobile device.  When the output is directed to a mobile phone or tablet, the result is a single file with a fully functioning PDF document on the mobile device with no delay for processing and using the limited computing power of the phone/tablet – the document is just usable.  This allows for the ability to take full reports that you may receive on paper, scan it, and have a readable document directly on the phone/tablet in seconds with no other programs needed – just the existing Adobe reader on your phone/tablet.

The scanner is plugged in the wall for power, so it is a 24/7 available device – not limited by battery time.  Since it is plugged into the wall, it can be placed in a central location to be shared by many people, so it is not a 1:1 accessory to person device. To enhance sharing among people, the device works as a full wireless client device in a network.  It has a simple setup for joining an existing wireless network, and can be addressed by any device on the network.  Each of the devices that talks to it needs to have software to “request” getting a scan from the device, and one can be designated as the “default” device.  In default mode, any pages that are placed in the scanner, and the scan button pressed on the unit, will send the results to that computer.

A big difference in this scanner versus other wireless devices, is the ability to switch to “wireless direct” mode.  The unit has WiFi host adapter electronics that let the scanner directly connect to just one device – a laptop, phone or tablet – if you are in an area where that device is not part of the main wifi network.  This is especially useful when someone is visiting the office, and you do not want to give them access to your business network.  You just select the option on the menu for the scanner for direct connection, open the app on the mobile device and select the scanner as the wifi network, put in the password for the scanner and all the results from the scanner are sent to that device wirelessly and securely up to 25ft away.

The devices comes with Adobe Acrobat Standard software for the PC & Mac that allows you to manage and manipulate the output of the scanner. This saves the cost of purchasing an additional software product to be able to merge multiple scans into one document of break up a big scan into several files.  As the unit is a full color scanner, it also allows you to pull out a high resolution scanned picture from a scanned page that may have text or other photos on it, without and additional programs.

The scanner is currently available from Fujitsu and its retailers.