Today's Top Stories:

  Apple: Third Party Apps Good to Go on iPhone
Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, didn't want to mince words, so he said it in black and white on the company's web site for all the world to see: "We want native third-party applications on the iPhone, and we plan to have an SDK in developers' hands in February." Apple seems to be expecting iPhone to be the 21st century equivalent of the original Mac - revolutionary and evolutionary. Thus a vibrant third-party developer community around the iPhone with hundreds of new applications for users is potentially one of the year's hottest stories (it made all the major cable news networks last Wednesday night). Why February? According to Jobs, this is a result of the company trying to do two diametrically opposed things at once - provide an advanced and open platform to developers while at the same time protect iPhone users from viruses, malware, privacy attacks, etc. That's a major (but necessary) undertaking since the iPhone is unquestionably a highly visible target (don't these people have anything better to do with their lives besides hassling the rest of us?).

  Apple Expands iTunes Plus and Drops the Price!
Speaking of Apple, the company has announced it has greatly expanded its iTunes Plus catalog to include over two million tracks (we dare you to count them all!) and then, they went and lowered the price of all iTunes Plus tracks to just 99 cents. What's more, all iTunes Plus tracks (all two million) are DRM-free with higher quality 256kbps AAC encoding. The iTunes Plus catalog is now the largest DRM-free catalog in the entire world - and probably all the other planets in our immediate solar system. And where else will you find recordings by Sub Pop, Nettwerk, Beggars Group, IODA, The Orchard, and many others, along with EMI's entire digital catalog? It's all there!

  New In Stock At Sweetwater

• Peterson VS-R StroboRack - Who doesn't need super-accurate tuning? Okay, that's a rhetorical question. Incorporating Peterson's patented Virtual Strobe Technology into a single-space rack format, the StroboRack is one of the most accurate rack tuners on the market with a staggering precision of just 0.1 cent. Unexcelled accuracy and pro-audio performance separate the StroboRack from the rest of the pack. There's a large, backlit Virtual Strobe display, plus a total of 24 Peterson "Sweetened" tunings for Electric Guitar, Acoustic Guitar, Bass, Dobro, Baritone, Steel Guitar, and Electric Violin. Now honestly, who else offers you all that? Yeah, it's a rhetorical question.
• Antelope Audio Isochrone 10M - For the OS X user that has everything but a Rubidium Clock, the Isochrone 10M is the new standard of excellence in audio master clocks and clock distribution. It is said to have 4x-6x less jitter and 100x greater stability than than other similar products. 100x - yeah, that's a lot! Technology, fueled by listening tests, in addition to advanced engineering, now allow all connected devices to achieve new levels of sound quality. Flexible connectivity and ergonomic design provides a simple, straight-forward solution to an otherwise complex task. Based on over 15 years of clocking research, from skilled engineers renowned for their accomplishments in the field.
• Fishman Loudbox Pro Acoustic Amp - The tri-amped, 600-watt, 2-channel Loudbox Pro takes a cue from commercial sound reinforcement systems, with three power amplifiers that deliver cleaner, less distorted sound through the speakers than any other acoustic amplifier in its class. The high-efficiency paper-cone woofer pumps out the bass, the polypropylene midrange driver handles the crucial mid frequencies, and three soft-dome neodymium tweeters top off the treble. The Loudbox Pro features a 12-inch paper-cone woofer driven by a 380-watt power amp, while the 6-inch polypropylene mid driver is pushed by 160 watts and the three 1-inch soft-dome neodymium tweeters also have their own 60-watt amplifier. Each component is housed in its own sealed enclosure and tuned precisely for acoustic stringed instruments.

  Guitar of the Day
Twang! If you're in the market for a historically accurate Gretsch hollowbody guitar, may we suggest you consider the Gretsch G6119-1959 Chet Atkins Tennessee Rose. This is actually a recreation of a 1959 Gretsch Tennessean, though this model made its official debut a year earlier, in 1958. It was meant to offer guitarists on a tight budget an alternative to the pricier Chet Atkins Model 6120 and the Model 6122, better known as the Country Gentleman. A unique black Lucite pickguard with the Gretsch logo radius engraved in white letters along with the Chet Atkins signature signpost, also in white, were standard for the years 1958 through 1961. At 16 inches wide and 2-3/4 inches deep, the Tennessean was a pretty big guitar. Like the original, this reissue is constructed of laminated maple - front, back, and sides - a maple neck with tapered heel and an ebony fingerboard with those instantly recognizable neo-classical pearl position markers. When this guitar was first introduced, it carried a price tag of $395, which was pretty steep for a guitar with one pickup, but you must remember that of the "Big Three" guitar builders in the U.S. back in the '50s and '60s, Gretsch had the reputation as being the best you could buy. This reissue has a finish called Flagstaff Sunset, a nod to the company's marketing campaign of the 1950s in which Gretsch guitars came with a finish that was "the color of a Flagstaff sunset," although back then it was called Amber Red. The nickel-plated TV Jones Power'Tron bridge position pickup is a specially voiced recreation of the original Filter'Tron, with a slightly hotter output. Naturally, no Gretsch is complete without a Bigsby vibrato tailpiece, and here we have the accurate B6 model (it wasn't until 1960 that all the Chet Atkins line got the newer "Gretsch by Bigsby V-cutout" tailpiece). All the hardware here is nickel-plated and the single-ply binding does not extend out onto the neck. Real f-holes wrap up this true classic, which ships to you via FedEx in a genuine Gretsch plush-lined hardshell case.