LATEST ADDITIONS

<a href="http://www.ericswanson.com/">Eric Swanson</a>, the man who makes our covers look so awesome, is visiting from Santa Fe, New Mexico. He’s in NYC to attend the <a href="http://www.photoplusexpo.com">PhotoPlus Expo</a> at the Javits Center, but was able to drop by our office today and treat me to lunch. I’ve had the pleasure of working with Eric for about four years, but had never met him in person. We’d only communicated via e-mail and over the phone. I always thought, by the sound of his voice, that he’d be a kind and thoughtful person. I was right.

“Are these things on?”

I really love the comments tool, but I wish it would notify me of when new comments are left for old blog entries. Because it doesn’t, I have to scroll through each entry and check. This isn’t such a big deal, but it does mean that I’ll miss a few comments every now and then, or that it’ll take me a few days to get around to them. And that’s not cool because web-time flies.

Good Guys, the California A/V retailer that overextended itself in an aggressive build-up plan that maxed out at 71 stores, is not long for this world. CompUsa, which acquired the chain in 2003, closed six free-standing Good Guys stores and another five CompUSA/Good Guys megastores in late September. CompUSA will close the remaining 25 stores and three regional distribution centers within 80 days&mdash;following <A HREF="http://www.goodguys.com/canv.htm">liquidation sales</A>.

Ray Samuels Audio, long well-regarded for its tube-based home audio components, is developing a reputation for its portable designs, too. After reviewing the <A HREF="http://stereophile.com/headphones/905ray/">SR-71</A&gt;, I figured Samuels couldn't make things any smaller.

Efforts to restrict the ways consumers use music they have purchased continue unabated. <A HREF="http://www.sunncomm.com">SunnComm</A&gt; (along with its sales and marketing arm <A HREF="http://www.mediamaxtechnology.com">MediaMax</A&gt;) has announced that its "newest patent-pending passive technology makes it even more difficult to bypass or 'hack' the copy protection structure contained on the MediaMax CDs."

Is it a trend or just a fad? That's what some of us want to know when we stumble over a new way of doing things, the implication being that a trend is somehow better than a fad.