BeatMaker, one of the apps Tom Freeman used to produce his mix album. Photo: Tom Freeman
Last week we reported on a director who shot a music video using only three iPhones. Now, Tom Freeman brings an all-iPhone production to the arena of sound with the release of his electronic soundscape, iMatik.
Take a gander at the clip up there. It’s been forty-odd years since Bobb Goldsteinn coined the term “multimedia,” but I think — and maybe you’ll agree with me — this is the first time I’ve felt that I could easily apply the word and think “yeah, that’s exactly what it is.”
In the clip, Alexx Henry of Alexx Henry Photography guides us through a behind-the-scenes peek at the production of an issue of online-only Viv Mag, tailored for consumption on the iPad. Along the way, you’ll see references to some of the other forerunners of this transformation that we’ve written about in the past, like Wired and Bonnier.
Probably the coolest way I’ve heard anyone yet sum up the new paradigm, from Alexx Henry, late in the clip: “We aren’t making moving pictures — that’s what movies do. We’re creating pictures that move.”
Ever been attacked by a voyeuristic hankering to see what images are being tweeted right now while, say, waiting for a table at the local steakhouse? Well, whip out the iPhone, because Swiss developer Nicolas Seriot has the scratch for your itch.
TweetyShow does for tweeted photos what Chirp Flow did for text tweets: displays a stream of images being tweeted — in this instance, to Twitpic — in realtime. There are sites on the web like PingWire that do the same thing, but Seriot says this is a first on the iPhone.
The app sells for a buck, and also has the ability to search for photos tweeted by a specific user.
You know spring has arrived when apps like this start making appearances: New from App Cubby is KaleidoVid, a dollar-app that turns the iPhone into a kaleidoscope.
Just point the camera at something colorful and KaleidoVid does the rest; the app then lets you unleash your creation on the world through email, Facebook or Twitter.
Seems like a great candidate for the Best Magic Brownie App Award.
About a hundred years ago, while I was still a Windows user and thought that a Mac was what you covered in a cheese and slurped down for lunch, I whiled away way too much time playing a DOS-based artillery duel game called Scorched Earth. Dot Matrix Interactive Designs have created their own version in the extremely polished, multiplayer KIL.A.TON — and it’s even more of a blast to play.
There must be a special space reserved at the table in Valhalla for any designer able to make a fat brick look hot; if that’s true, then there’s a seat reserved right next to Jonny Ive’s for the Vers 1.5R’s designer (and yes, both design heaven and design hell are Scandinavian. Don’t believe me? Take a look at an IKEA catalog; now, go experience a 1980s-era Saab).
It’s not like director Tom De Nolf doesn’t have 35mm film cameras and a bunch of other video-making tech at his disposal; no, De Nolf was so surprised by the video capability of his recently purchased 3GS that he chose to shoot the above music video using just three iPhones.
Drums are awesome; there’re few things as satisfying as making sounds by thumping something with a stick — even if that stick is virtual. Now, for a buck, the iPhone can be turned into a virtual museum of virtual drums, thanks to Vintage Drum by developer OutOfTheBit.
Awesome Note is a charming, flexible, free-form app that combines elements of both note-taking and todo apps. But like uncle Chuck at an all-you-can-eat Vegas-style buffet, trying to shoehorn too much good stuff into one thing can sometimes lead to messy results.
The iPhone 3GS is like a Formula One car: fast, sleek and a thrill to drive. And then, every hour or so, it has to hit the pits to refuel (only, unlike refueling an F1 car, it takes hours, not seconds). Now, imagine if every F1 car had button on the steering wheel that the driver could punch, and a fuel cell would drop from some kind of team drone-copter and refuel the car while it was rocketing around the track. Pretty cool, right? Well, that’s what using the TruePower iV Pro is like.
Sure, Apple stuffs the iPhone full of perfectly functional apps before they hit stockrooms. Ok, more-or-less functional. Look, who are we kidding here: Many of the iPhone’s native apps are about as functional as a box of matches; sure, I can get a fire started with it (maybe) — but if I really want to set something ablaze, I’d rather have a butane torch. Or a flamethrower.
Here in Arizona, the general rule is to keep our hands away from anything that sounds like it has even the remotest chance of being prickly or having fangs. Strange then, that my fingers seem magnetically drawn to the triadic snake emblem on the palmrest of Razer’s Orochi Bluetooth mouse. The little sleek black gadget is like crack for my hand.
Apparently, it’s an example of an alternate-reality iPhone the friend of blogger Steve Cassidy over at the UK’s PC Pro bought for £25 (about $38) — in a pub, no less. The dual-SIM, dual-battery thing apparently looks and feels much like an iPhone (apart from the icons, which look too bizarre even for a jailbroken unit), says Cassidy, down to the “iPhone” and Apple logo emblazoned on the back.
So, you think you have the legs to take on Lance Armstrong. One way to go about it would be to race against his time in the latest ingenious use of Twitter, the Twitter Time Trial (and for the cycling-illiterate, a time trial is where riders leave the start gate one at a time, in an attempt to set the best time over the exact same course and distance).
Well, turns out they actually come in two flavors, and we decided to put the Courier’s big brother — the Flap Jack Pack — through the Cult’s rigorous, uncompromising bag-testing procedures. The result was a demonstration of how applying the exact same design elements to a slightly different application can change things.
Who knows — soon, having to watch your cell minutes might just be a thing of the past, as more communication apps embrace VoIP over 3G after Apple nixed its no-Internet-calls-over-3G policy. The latest to do so is Fring, announcing today that calls — and video calls — can now be made over the 3G network (in addition to the already available wifi call/videocall function).
Last month, we wondered how many people would care about the iPad’s restrictive DRM shackles, which makes Apple the only available supplier of software for the iPad through the fact that users can only download software onto the gadget from Apple’s App Store (unless someone figures out a way to jailbreak it — which’ll probably happen within the first 48 hours after it ships, considering the fact that the iPad’s OS is based off the continually jailbroken iPhone, and the supposition that every genius hacker on the planet is spending every waking moment thinking about it).
There aren’t many games on the iPhone platform that can match games on the big 64-bit boxes for production value — but Electronic Arts Mobile’s Madden NFL 10 can, and does, fantastically. Unfortunately, it also has one gaping hole.
I’ll admit, the first alarming thought that shot through my head when I stumbled across this vidclip on YouTube of Cult jefe Leander Kahney, was that he’d created it as fun-yet-terror-inducing way of emphasizing the “dead” part of the word “deadline” to Cult staff.
Turns out it was actually created by app developer Toga Pit — btw, cute marketing there, guys — to promote their new, maniacal-laughter-inducing iTouchMyFriends app, which turns images of your friends into manipulatable puppets. Just the evilness of the name ran shivers of anticipatory pleasure down my spine as I secured a copy to explore. I wasn’t disappointed.