Metafilter user Mr. Zarquon has taken the hilarious Microsoft Research application Songsmith (previously profiled in this Cult post from Giles) and used it to transform the vocal tracks of David Lee Roth from Van Halen’s “Running With The Devil” into a song all its own.
This… this might be the future of music.
News Monday that CES attendance figures for 2009 are down 22% comes as no surprise to anyone who has been paying attention to the big picture in the past six months..
In the wake of Apple’s decision to abandon Macworld, and despite rumors the Cupertino computer maker will join the big consumer electronics circus in Las Vegas next year, the fact remains the global economy is in a tailspin.
It says here expecting corporations to continue sinking major investment into expensive trade show PR going forward is a bad bet.
Which is not to say that innovation will come to a halt, or that producers of technology and electronic gadgetry are about to vanish from the landscape.
In the spirit of the relative dispersal of brick and mortar distribution outlets for any number of goods among an increasing web of online marketing vehicles, this writer believes it only makes sense that in a contracting economy, chances are the standard-bearers of communication and computing and entertainment will soon focus marketing budgets less on trying to woo live bodies to vast acreages of real-time exhibition space and more on leveraging the enticements of Web 2.0 and unified communications capabilities to rely on drawing eyeballs and attention to virtual marketing platforms.
In the coming year, look for fewer big-time confabs and more small-town events. Fewer shows at the Garden and more online specials.
It’s a brave new marketing world. Think different.
Recently-released movie “Bride Wars” stars Kate Hudson and Anne Hathaway squaring off as two BFFs who stage competing weddings on the same day at New York’s Plaza Hotel.
Candice Bergen, who plays the wedding planner caught between the pair of bridezillas, is shown in the trailer using Macs in a couple of shots.
Early reviews warn “Bridal Wars” isn’t worth the 90-minute commitment, citing, among other things, the onslaught of product placement.
A lot of leading lights in popular music went to public schools in the windy city: Kanye West, Jennifer Hudson, Chaka Khan, Lou Rawls, Bo Diddley, Curtis Mayfield, Quincy Jones and Nat “King” Cole.
54 of these Chicago-themed tracks are on an iMix playlist on iTunes. The playlist was the brainchild of Brad Harbaugh, who runs the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) alumni website. Struck by the number of famous musicians when he was going through the alumni’s honor roll, he drew up a list of Chicago’s best.
CPS doesn’t profit directly from the sale of the $0.99USD tracks, but it is a nice way to promote schools and a cool idea for Chicago lovers in general. You can also see a list of the tracks, as well as exactly where the artists went to school in Chicago and when, on the alumni site.
There are a few unexpected tracks on the Chicago playlist like “A Boy Named Sue” by Shel Silverstein, “City of New Orleans” by Steve Goodman and “Rawhide” by Frankie Laine alongside the Jones’ theme to TV show “Sanford and Son,” “Change Gonna Come” by Sam Cooke and “Chuck E’s in Love” by Rickie Lee Jones.
On the downside, some alums whose lyrics were too deemed too explicit like Rhymefest and DaBrat were kept off the playlist.
More than just hot air, the idea is that music is an important part of the curriculum at Chicago public schools. Students from 50 high schools perform in a solo and ensemble concerts every spring at various high schools and elementary schools. The program, in its 84th year, is said to be the longest-running public-school concert series in the country.
The Chicago playlist is also a work in progress — if you know for sure what school Lupe Fiasco went to, let them know.
A nice idea for a “retired” Mac: new life as clocks.
Here are two versions using the side panel and front cover of a G4, which sort of looks like a giant Swatch but has an operating CD drive door and zip drive opening.
The creator is a guy (handle: pixelthis) with a fondness for all things Apple who has been taking things apart since the day he could walk and occasionally putting them back together.
These Mac clocks run about $60 each, available on Etsy.
His other clocks made from computer hard drives, bike wheels and bike gears are also worth a gander.
Some Nebraska state senators will go back to work with new MacBook Airs.
The government paid a discount price of $1,524 each for 70 laptops (49 of them go to lawmakers, the rest to staff), causing some to complain about expenses for “designer” computers:
Senator Tony Fulton of Lincoln questioned the purchase saying the Legislature could have managed with less than “designer laptops,” particularly during these tough economic times, according to the Omaha World Herald (The story didn’t specify which model was purchased.)
The state might have been able to buy laptops for $400 to $500 each, said Fulton, an engineer. “The decision was made with proper authority, and I’ll accept it,” he said, “but I don’t like it.”
A handful of other laptop models, in prices ranging from $1,100 to $2,200 were reviewed before deciding for the MacBook Airs. The Macs replace four-year-old Fujitsu Lifebook laptops.
French cell phone carrier Orange is reportedly “satisfied” with December iPhone sales that hit 210,000 – triple the 70,000 handsets the France Telecom-owned company sold during the same period in 2007.
The news comes from French newspaper La Tribune, which quoted unnamed sources within Orange and SFR. If true, the iPhone sales would appear to counter worries that a recent French competition decision would dilute the cell phone market.
France’s competition body recently temporarily ruled against Orange’s exclusive iPhone deal, permitting rival Bouygues to also offer the Apple handset.
Apple’s move to CES from Macworld Expo “is a done deal,” AppleInsider reported Monday, confirming last week’s Cult of Mac story breaking the news.
AI cited unnamed “sources close to” Apple.
The move is designed to provide a greater contrast between Apple and its rivals, including Microsoft and Palm. Leaving Macworld also marks Apple’s departure as only a computer company and positioning itself as a larger consumer electronics player involved in cell phones, gaming and software.
If you can’t afford to enroll in the iPhone application programing course at Stanford, you may want to take a look at a couple of new 4 day iPhone development courses being offered by Saratoga, CA-based Edison Labs University.
I ran into Edison’s Chief Scientist, Owen Rubin, at Macworld last week, where he was very excited about the prospects for future app developers learning to work with both iPhone and Android, for which his school also offers courses. “This is an exploding field of software development,” Rubin told me, “and I think there’s a great opportunity to help people who want to pursue the path get a strong foundation in the knowledge they’ll need to be successful.”
Edison’s introduction to iPhone app development is focused on enabling a developer to build applications using the iPhone SDK, the iPhone simulator, and to download, test and debug applications on an iPhone and iPod touch device. The school plans to offer soon classes for novice developers who need to get a foundation in Objective-C and object-oriented programming as well.
Each 4 day training costs approximately $2000, which, when you consider the potential riches of a runaway AppStore success, seems like a pretty decent investment.
It’s not surprising that iPhone app training is beginning to spring up in the Bay Area, given our proximity to Apple and Silicon Valley. We’d be curious to know about any iPhone developer courses available in readers’ areas, how much they cost and how they are structured. If you’ve seen any, be sure to let us know about it in comments.
Viximo, creators of a Cambridge, MA based platform for creating and distributing virtual “goods” and art for social networks and mobile applications, has released a development platform called VixML that the company hopes may soon become an important tool for novice iPhone developers.
Lack of Objective-C knowledge and unfamiliarity with the mysteries of the iPhone SDK have kept many designers from reaching for the brass ring available to the likes of some fart app developers and ring tone merchants. Viximo seeks to remedy such an imbalance in the force with a programming language using a number of pre-designated tags, the VixML WYSIWYG SDK and emulator. Designers can use these tools to create in a matter of days rich, multimedia mini-apps that would have previously taken weeks or months of programing.
The catch is that Viximo is positioning itself as a pre-gatekeeper, initially requiring any app developed using VixML to be part of the company’s True Flirt application on the AppStore.
Viximo is currently not releasing details about its revenue sharing arrangement with potential developers, a wall that will likely have to come down if app developers are to adopt VixML in any significant numbers.
Via TechCrunch
There are several “serenity” apps on the AppStore, though none may have the cache of Buddha Machine, an iPhone/iPod Touch version of the cultural icon brainchild of Beijing-based musicians Christiaan Virant and Zhang Jian.
Calling themselves FM3, the two pioneers of electronic music in China have brought the idea of their simple, palm-sized box to iPhone and iPod Touch with a $4 app that offers 9 different ambient loops and a zen-like 3D depiction of the real-life Buddha Machine in 7 different colors activated in sequence by simple swipes of the touchscreen or randomly by shaking the device.
Virant was kind enough to offer me a promo code to check out the app and as with many things related to Buddha nature, its simplicity is both disarming and fascinating. The nine ambient loops, ranging in length from five to forty seconds, amazingly synced with the natural rhythm of my breathing, perfectly complementing a meditative mood or providing welcome refuge from modern urban distractions.
FM3 released the first corporeal Buddha Machines, each of which is said to contain a little Buddha, in 2005. Recently released 2.0 versions sell for around $20 and feature 9 new loops and a pitch control. Virant says he is working on an app version for the Buddha 2.0 with new sounds as well as pitch-shifting and a few other functions. It should be released in a month or two.
There are a bunch of guitar-oriented apps on the AppStore but the one demo’d in the video above, from developers at Frontier Design Group seems to have a lot of promise.
Called, simply, Guitar, unlike many of the instructional apps or glorified tuners out there, this app focuses on playablity. Chords and scales are easily assigned to its fretboard buttons, making it possible to strum chords, play melodies, or both. With over 1500 built-in chords, and a built-in chord editor to create custom chords, Guitar relies on a variety of realistically sampled sounds to provide surprising depth and nuance to what a user can play.
The most recently updated version of this $4 app, compatible with iPhone and iPod Touch, lets users record performances or create backing tracks that can be played along with. Recordings can also be backed up over the web to the Frontier Song Server, where they can be shared between multiple devices.
Guitar may not be as huge a hit as Ocarina, but it serves notice that Apple’s mobile gadgets are limited only by their users’ own imaginations.
A working 3rd party application enabling MMS on the iPhone is now available as a free download on the UK AppStore, according to one report. Ross McKillop and Ed Lea appear to have addressed the lack of MMS in the UK with an app that remedies one of the most widely decried shortcomings of the iPhone outside the lack of copy & paste functionality.
The pair’s app makes it free to receive MMS messages and its UI fits perfectly to Apple’s iPhone interface, according to the report. It works by prompting for a user’s O2 Mobile Number and the PIN that O2 sends when a subscriber receives an MMS message. The application then retrieves the MMS messages from O2.
The catch is that sending an MMS will cost you coin of the realm. The current charge is 10 messages for £3.79 which works out to nearly 72¢ per message.
Microsoft often gets a hard time from true Mac people — usually with good reason. For decades, MS apps for the Mac have been less full-featured than their Windows equivalents, and it’s only been in the last eight years that the Mac Business Unit has had the support to even try to make a decent version of MS Office.
The Redmond juggernaut is now trying harder, and they’ve really been speeding up their efforts in the last month or so. First, Microsoft’s beta program Songsmith was promoted in an unintentionally hilarious ad running on a MacBook Pro running VIsta, then MS released its first iPhone app, Seadragon. And today, MS has released a second iPhone app, Tag, which uses the iPhone’s camera to read special barcodes in order to access exclusive content off of posters, magazine ads, and more.
All that, and the beta version of the Hail Mary of operating system known as Windows 7 has been successfully installed on a Mac using Boot Camp, a positive sign for dial-booting Mac users for years to come. Granted, that one is more about MS not explicitly making Windows incompatible with Apple’s Intel-based platforms, but it’s still mighty handy.
What do you think? Has Microsoft finally made peace with the fact that it can’t win over true Mac lovers and started, you know, realizing that they can still make software we might want to use? Or is it all a trap?
Image via TechFlash.
Tag via My iPhone Place
Windows 7 Dual Boot from Our Coffee Stops via Engadget.
We’ve been following the stories of Burrell Smith for a while now and gotten to know him and how he thinks. Of course, Burrell was not the only person invested in the Macintosh’s success. The sheer amount of work put into the project could not have been achieved by the team if it weren’t for Steve Jobs’ special brand of encouragement. Andy Hertzfeld’s stories describe Jobs’ powers of persuasion using an analogy to Star Trek: the reality distortion field.
Steve Jobs’ reality distortion field convinced people to agree to absurd deadlines, work much harder, and even agree to stay at Apple when they really wanted to quit. Burrell watched his colleagues at Apple try in vain to leave. Eventually, Burrell came up with the perfect plan to “nullify the reality distortion field” for when it was his time to quit:
“I’ll just walk into Steve’s office, pull down my pants, and urinate on his desk. What could he say to that? It’s guaranteed to work.”
Read on at Folklore.org for the exciting conclusion of Burrell C. Smith’s tenure at Apple: Are You Gonna Do It? [Folklore.org]
Check out this gallery of incredible art, a selection of the winners in a digital art contest sponsored by Macworld for the 2009 Conference and Expo that ended yesterday in San Francisco. Click on each thumbnail to get a full-size view of the image.
Please note, the images you see here I captured by photographing the original artwork that was displayed in the underground passageway between the North and South Halls at the Moscone Center, where Macworld 2009 was held. My images are handheld photographs made in sub-optimal lighting conditions and as stunning as I feel they are, they do not capture 100% accurate representations of the artworks themselves.
If you click through to each piece, you’ll find links to the original artist’s web page, where they provided one. You may also see all the winners at Macworld‘s website.
In this Monday night CBS sitcom about what happens when a pair of physics geeks meet the beauty next door, Apple products crop up first, as far as I can tell, for use by the distressed.
In the third episode of the first season (Big Bang is now in its second season) roommates Leonard and Sheldon are playing a MMORPG with friends. Though all the computers are covered with stickers, it looks like the only Mac user is Raj, another university researcher who is so flustered by Penny, the blond neighbor, that he is always mute in her presence.
At Manhattan’s $12 million new marriage bureau, one of the improvements to make civil weddings a little less no-frills is are in-house iPod docks.
A description of the first couple to get hitched during a press preview there describes them tying the knot to the strains of Vivaldi from an iPod.
In the old set-up in Room 257, the sound of wedding bells only rang out if the bride or groom remembered to bring their own speakers.
Image © 2009 Nik Fletcher
Despite nearly universal appraisals among the Apple press calling it “underwhelming” and “disappointing” and “lackluster,” Macworld 2009 proved to be a worthwhile and successful venture for many less well-known exhibitors, whose continuing support may determine the expo’s future viability.
I hit the floor for the final day of Macworld 2009 fully expecting to find an arena filled with weary exhibitors staring at empty aisles, counting the hours until they could pack up their booths and say goodbye, perhaps for the final time, to this seminal conference and expo dedicated to all things Mac and more.
Instead, the floors in both halls appeared to me to have as many people walking around, crowding into interesting demos and learning exhibitions as on any other day this week. Such interest is not traditionally shown on the final day at large industry trade shows such as Macworld, and may be even more notable in the case that that other big consumer electronics event got into full swing a day ago, several hundred miles away in Las Vegas.
Official attendance figures were not yet available for this year’s event according to a spokesperson in the Sales office for conference promoter/organizer IDG, but the participation of both attendees and exhibitors has been “in line with expectations” given uncertainties in the larger economy, and factoring in disappointment surrounding Apple’s decision to quit the event after 2009.
Follow me after the jump for the thoughts and impressions of several exhibitors whose enthusiasm may point to a less dire future for Macworld than some seem to expect.
New numbers out Friday suggest Apple’s iPod Touch may become a threat to sales of the pricier iPhone. The Touch is gaining fans while the iPhone may reportedly be suffering during tight economic times.
Ads sent to the iPod Touch nearly tripled in December, compared to November, mobile ad firm AdMod announced Thursday. The Touch was served 292 million ads last month, up from 86 million in November. The Touch is now the No. 2 mobile device in the ad company’s network.
At $399, the iPod Touch is more expensive than the $299 iPhone, but the device actually costs less by avoiding monthly contract fees required by AT&T in the United States. AT&T charges between $69 and $130 per month for a required two-year iPhone contract.
Your iPhone could be displaying high-definition and three-dimensional graphics by as soon as 2010, according to a company partly owned by the maker of the popular touchscreen handset.
Imagination Technologies used CES to introduce its PowerVR SGX543 chipset, said to produce 33 megapixel frames at 30 frames per second. The speed could “produce reasonable 3D at HD resolutions,” according to one report.
The chip is also compatible with the Apple-backed OpenCL standard, expected to be used in the upcoming Mac OS X Snow Leopard.
Attempting to survive a post-Apple environment, Macworld Expo may pull up stakes and move after 2010, general manager of the tradeshow indicated in an interview published online Thursday.
“IDG is absolutely open to considering other venues and pricing structures after the 2010 Expo,” according to an Ars Technica interview with Paul Kent, Macworld Expo vice president and general manager.
Kent suggested the show will likely remain in the San Francisco Bay Area due to the dense number of tech companies. However, the Expo leader left open the possibility of moving from San Francisco’s Moscone Center after next year.
Of all the surprises to come out of the CES show this year, Palm’s revival as a serious player in the handheld device market is perhaps the biggest of all.
Most people – myself included – had long since consigned Palm to the dustbin, confident that it would never re-invent itself out of the hole it had fallen into, out-manouevred and out-featured by rival devices.
Not so.
The initial reports coming from CES are that the Palm Pre is an excellent device and offers the iPhone some proper competition.
And at least some of that success might be because the team at Palm has a few former Apple employees on board.
Robert Scoble spells it out:
“How Apple centric is the new Palm team? Well, Chris McKillop is director of Software at Palm … One of the PR people at Palm did PR at Apple. Jonathan Rubinstein, who runs the Palm Pre team and led off the announcement, was a key person in development of the iPod and lots of people followed him from Apple to Palm.”
Partly because my first ever PDA was a Palm, and I was a happy Palm user for many years. I don’t want to see the company fail. And partly because any serious competition for Apple is a good thing – anything that gets people umming and ahhing over whether they should buy an iPhone or a Pre will make Steve Jobs sit up and start paying attention when people ask for simple, basic stuff like copy/paste and syncable text notes.
UPDATE: I’ve just noticed that this post is very similar to another post by my esteemed Cult colleague Mr Mortensen not four hours previously. My apologies for the repetition. At least we can be sure that two great minds here think alike. I’m not having a good week, am I?
Shake with fear, GarageBand developers! Cower before us on your knees, Steve Jobs! Bow down and acknowledge how cool we are, Phil Schiller!
For we are Microsoft, and we make Songsmith, and now NOTHING CAN STOP US.
(What you DIDN’T know is that the above video is NOT an advert for Songsmith, but in fact a cleverly disguised ad for another new Microsoft product called Adsmith. With Adsmith, you think up the coolest, most amazing idea for an advert, for any kind of product, and Adsmith automatically generates a high definition video, using just your thoughts as a starting point! That’s right, you don’t even have to sing or talk to it, it just READS YOUR MIND.)
((What you DIDN’T DIDN’T know is that Apple spies have been operating within the Microsoft marketing team for some years now. Their job is not so much espionage but sabotage – they are not there to discover Microsoft’s secrets (Steve Jobs isn’t really interested in them), but to ensure that as many Microsoft adverts as possible contain video footage of a MacBook Pro.))
My other blog has gone Apple this week as we close in on the launch of our book Wired to Care. I’ve just gone live on the Empath-o-Meter with a poll to rate how widespread empathy is at Apple. By empathy, I mean the ability of people inside the company to understand the needs of the folks out in the world that they’re trying to serve. As a Macophile, I obviously feel very well-served by Apple, but I have trouble knowing whether it’s because the folks inside the company really get where I’m coming from — or just that Steve Jobs has an amazing intuition for what’s going to connect with people like me.
Check it out — I’m anxious to see your votes and your comments!