Artist #Talk from HP and ArjanWrites explore the personalities behind your favorite music [Sponsored]

Ever heard a song and felt as though the artist wrote it for you?

To explore that question, HP partnered with Arjan Timmermans from ArjanWriteom . Part tweet up, part cocktail party, part “Inside the Actor’s Studio,” Artist #Talk is an interview series hosted by Arjan where artists tell the stories behind their music.

Many factors impact how we form an emotional connection with a song. The lyrics and the story the song tells are a huge part of it, but lesser known are environmental factors like sound quality.

Jimmy Iovine, chairman of Interscope Geffen A&M Records and Beats Audio founder, said it best,“Music is emotion. If it sounds better, it will feel better.” That concept was the basis behind Beats Audio™, a technology HP developed with Jimmy Iovine and legendary artist Dr. Dre. Together they re-engineered the laptop to improve audio quality. (More on the Beats Audio story here .)

Beats Audio™ technology is now in many HP premium computers, from laptops like the HP ENVY 14 and the portable, but powerful Pavilion dm1 to the touch enabled HP TouchSmart . If you’re a music lover, or someone close to you is, check out the full Beats Audio™ portfolio at HPom/Beats .

And now back to the music. In the latest installment of Artist #Talk, UK artist VV Brown explains how her family, romances and exploration of different music genres influenced her new album.

http://youtu.be/_cI4TqN3c7w

Maroon 5 Kicks Off Windows Phone 7 Launch

After months and months of anticipation, Windows Phone 7 finally made its official launch in the United States. In celebration, Microsoft hosted two free events that took place in New York City and San Francisco that featured not only some of the smartphones avaliable at launch but also two huge musical acts. In New York City, Katy Perry took the stage while out in San Francisco, Adam Levine and Maroon 5 played a fantastic set at the historic Fillmore.

Seriously, it was fantastic and the fact that it was free made it even better.

However, while the music was the big draw, Microsoft also had some demo booths set up showcasing their 3 launch devices which include the Samsung Focus, the HTC HD7 and the HTC Surround. The HTC Surround and the Samsung Focus are both available on AT&T for $199.99 after two year contracts and the HTC HD 7 is now avaliable  for the same price on T-Mobile.

Of the three, the Samsung Focus really felt like the most polished of the three and the fact that the HTC HD7 doesn’t run on T-Mobile’s HSPA+ network makes it a tough sell even if the software is pretty enticing.

So, cheers to Microsoft and let’s hope Windows Phone 7’s run is as stellar as the music was tonight.

Nokia X7-00 shows up on video for the first time

Before you feast your eyes on this video, keep in mind that this is just rumored to be Nokia’s latest and greatest device, the X7-00. However, if you’re a betting man or woman, it’d be a safe bet to throw your money on the device in this video being just that.

Here’s what we gather from the video courtesy of Mobile Bulgaria .

The device has four homescreens, meaning it’s not running the current version of Symbian^3 which only supports 3 homescreens. It also apparently has 4 speakers,  an 8 megapixel camera and it runs games very smoothly. Most of the video is a demo of the device running Need for Speed and it looks pretty impressive.

It looks like a pretty slick device and if you’re into the whole Nokia thing, you probably want to give it a quick watch.

What do you guys think?