GigaOM » Apple

25 iPads Combine to Form Giant Interactive Display

Darrell Etherington — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 17:35:55 +0000

At this year’s Tokyo Designers Week, one of the most interesting installations was a giant screen made up of 25 synced iPads (via Tokyo Tek). The display, called iProject 25 and commissioned by the Environmental Ministry of Japan, was intended to reflect the impact of humans on their surroundings.

The iPads start with video and music synced wirelessly on all devices, with each individual tablet displaying one part of the greater picture. Audience members are then invited to interact with the display. They can change the playback speed of both audio and video on each iPad, and also adjust screen brightness and choose what melody is being played. The experience essentially puts individual audience members in the role of DJ.

As people interact with the installation, video and audio get out of sync. The challenge is then to try to work together to get it back to its original state, just like how humans have to work together to try to negate some of our effect on the environment. Of course, the iPad itself uses some pretty toxic materials in its construction, isn’t user upgradeable, and can’t be recycled locally, and the project uses 25 of them, but who’s counting?

iProject25 was created by Taq, a composer who worked with Konami on the game BeatMania and his friend Simon Mayer, who heads a German design firm. Programmer Mui Iwase handled the iOS coding of the app used on the iPads. It’s a great example of the iPad being used for artistic purposes, but its creators believe it also demonstrates another way businesses might take advantage of Apple’s tablet for promotional efforts. What do you think? Wouldn’t you want to play with a giant wall of iPads if you ran into one in your local mall, for instance?

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Art or Virus? Symantec Villifies Spoof Apple “Trojan”

Darrell Etherington — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:50:20 +0000

Security firm Symantec is warning computer users about a new Mac-specific Trojan that deletes files on the user’s hard drive, according to Techworld.com. It has dubbed the piece of malware “OSX.Loosemaque,” and uploaded a YouTube video of how it goes about its nefarious purpose.

Basically, it’s a Space Invader clone wherein when you kill an alien, a file in your home folder is deleted. It looks like it’s evil — and designed to perform such a task without the knowledge of the Mac owner on which the program resides. But it isn’t. It’s an art project that clearly advertises its purpose and nature to all who would wish to use it.

The game, dubbed Lose/Lose, is the brainchild of Zach Gage, who created the program as part of an online art installation and released it for public download in September. It’s intended purpose is not to dupe unsuspecting gamers, but to pose questions about the relationship between killing in video games and real-life moral issues. Gage says as much in a statement on his web site:

By way of exploring what it means to kill in a video-game, Lose/Lose broaches bigger questions. As technology grows, our understanding of it diminishes, yet, at the same time, it becomes increasingly important in our lives.

Even if a user were to download the game from a different, less well-intentioned place, the game itself warns users right when it opens, stating that “Killing in Lose/Lose will likely result in files on your hard drive being deleted. You have been warned.” Of course, that doesn’t mean that an intelligent programmer couldn’t remove or change said message, and redistribute the game themselves with the intent of causing harm.

That’s what Symantec’s worried about, and why the firm decided to issue its warning about the so-called Trojan. Of course, the company took the opportunity to recommend installing security software as a means to protect against this kind of dangerous artistic expression, seeing as that’s the business it’s in.

Should you worry about this game or threats derived from it? Not unless you are one of the slim few whose retro Mac gaming addiction is so acute that you feel the need to hunt around the digital frontier in suspicious and shady locations looking for independent games of questionable quality and without any sort of legit distribution channels. Or if you happen to be a devoted patron of the arts, and therefore can’t resist the urge to download software you know full well will harm your computer and destroy your files, all for the sake of the artistic effect it has. In either case, anti-virus software won’t help.

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Weekly App Store Picks: Aug. 29, 2009

Olly Farshi — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 16:00:06 +0000

Snow Leopard isn’t the only exciting release this week, as ever there are tons of new additions to the App Store. Here are my top picks from the week’s releases.

This week I’ve been looking at iWound, Star6, Gangstar: West Coast Hustle and Tasker.

iWound ($4.99)
If I’m not in the mood for gaming or tweeting, I tend to head over to the ‘reading’ section of my iPhone. Amongst others, I can keep up with the latest global happenings using the official New York Times app, pore over the pages of a classic book with Kindle or jump headfirst into an adventure with Comics. However, there’s nothing there to sate my creative appetite if I’m looking for a little art, fashion, architecture or design. Created by Wound, this app presents the perfect platter of visual creativity, a feast for the eyes and nourishment for your brain, all packaged in digital magazine form. The app’s current theme is ‘La Grande Illusion’, a concept which manifests itself by exploring awesome electro lady Peaches, New York artist Amy Bessone, London designer Marios Schwab and David Rockwell, award winning architect behind the Kodak Theatre.

Star6 ($6.99)
It’s always a good week when a new sound toy worthy of recommending is released on iPhone. While RjDj and Bloom have the artistic sound-installation side of things covered, Star6 has arrived twirling its glow sticks and stomping its feet — this is a sound toy for folk who just want to dance. The app packs in a stack of samples, alongside an array of different options for manipulating the onslaught of audio. Although you can upload and play with your own samples, there are six sample packs included, covering hip hop, drum and bass, electro and other mild headache-inducing (yet sonically adorable) sound effects. Those familiar with music production and sound manipulation will be pleased to hear that there’s a granular synthesis-powered audio engine, allowing you to control pitch, speed, gate, sample order and randomness. However, even the last sentence sounded like jargon to you, you’ll still find it’s fun to open the app, start tapping buttons and see what kind of weird rhythms you’re able to generate.

Gangstar: West Coast Hustle ($6.99)
A few months back Payback was released for iPhone. The app did a convincing enough impression of GTA 2 to warrant recommending, however after extended play it left me wanting so much more. With the release of the iPhone 3GS, games can now push previous technological boundaries even further. Gangstar uses the iPhone’s usual touch ‘n’ tilt interaction, but takes advantage of the iPhone 3GS — a faster device that’s packing better graphics than its predecessor. What results is the iPhone’s answer to GTA3: a fully 3D, free roaming, automobile heist adventure. The game includes 50 missions, an armory of weaponry, and an entire city to cruise around in — more than enough for a lazy Sunday of iPhone gaming.

Tasker ($2.99)
If you’re all about productivity but you’ve got a hectic on-the-go kinda lifestyle, Tasker may be just the app for you. The app touts itself as a “simple, yet powerful task manager”, yet it’s so much more than that. By keeping the app’s focus solely on task lists, the app’s designer, Scott Sykora, has excelled in creating a task manager that’s easy to use and incredibly powerful. Tasks can be ordered by date or place, allowing you to drill-down to a specific day and plan out your schedule on a map, viewing and sorting tasks in specific locations. As if that wasn’t enough, task-entry has been refined into a fast, yet effective process. There’s a variety of tools out there for managing your tasks via the iPhone, Tasker is certainly worth considering for it’s simplicity and potential effectiveness.

That’s all for this week. I’ll be back in seven days with more news from the week and picks from the App Store.

In the meantime, what apps have you been using this week?

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OS X Tips: Taking Charge of the Color Picker

Christopher Ryan — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 20:00:36 +0000

The infamous color picker is present among many of the built-in OS X applications and is quite a powerful tool once you dig into it. With the ability to store your favorite colors in “wells” and use them between applications, the color picker can quickly become an indispensable tool in your daily workflow. Here’s some tips and plugins to supercharge the color picker.

Color Picker Basics

Not all applications support the OS X color picker, but to see if one does, look in Format, View, or Window menus for an entry called “Show Colors.” The color picker is not just limited to the Apple-developed applications, as third-party apps such as Coda, Billings, Daylite and others also include support.

The color picker features “tabs” across the top dividing it into the standard color wheel, color sliders (allowing to you fine tune a color by RGB, HSB, CMYK, or Grayscale sliders), color palettes, image palettes and crayons.

You can pick custom colors by tweaking them in the color picker, or by using the magnifying glass to “pluck” a color from anywhere in the system.

To apply a color, simply highlight text and click the color you want. Or drag the color onto an object.

As mentioned earlier, you can organize your favorite colors by dragging them into one of the wells at the bottom of the picker. If the default amount is not enough, simply click the dot and drag down to allow for a total of 250 places to store your color swatches.

Add Some Kuler

Users of Adobe’s Kuler service are quick to tote how great it is to be exposed to a wide array of beautiful color schemes shared among the Adobe community.

Using a free plugin called Mondrianum by Lithoglyph, users can now add Kuler integration to the standard OS X color picker. With quick access to search color schemes by keyword, browse them via Cover Flow, or quickly set them as your desktop background, Mondrianum is a great tool to add to your color picker.

Want a True Artist’s Approach?

With Painter’s Picker ($19.95, with a demo version here), you can add an artist’s color wheel to the color picker, giving you the ability to quickly choose complementary colors, analogous colors, and the like. More advanced options allow for precision modification of the brightness, saturation and more. As someone who moves between different types of media (web to print), I enjoy the ability to see the nearest CYMK colors and nearest web safe colors when working on projects.

What the Hex?

Developers out there will love the “Developer Color Picker,” a free plugin from Panic that quickly allows users to convert selected colors to NSColor, UIColor, CGColorRef, HTML or CSS declarations. The plugin itself is very barebones in style, but is priceless in terms of functionality.

Shades, Schemes and More

Shades ($18 from Chromatic Bytes) is another great plugin for the standard color picker, allowing users to quickly see related color shades. In the words of Chromatic Bytes, “you choose a center color, a step size and a color coordinate to hold constant. Shades then draws a grid of related colors.” This gives you something more akin to traditional paint chips and is useful for finding similar colors.

Another great application for creating and managing color schemes is Color Schemer Studio. While it does not run as a plugin to the OS X color picker, it is a very powerful standalone tool and a great compliment to some of these other plugins. A great feature of this application that really stands out is its ability to extract a simplified color palette from a photo. That’s just the tip of the iceberg and for more details, read our review of Color Schemer Studio here. This application is $49 and more information (including a demo version) is available from its website.

Color Pickers Everywhere

Most modern OS X applications support the color picker, but for those applications who are in the dark, you can use a little AppleScript trick to run the Color Picker as its own application.

Open up the AppleScript Editor (inside the Applications → Utilities folder) and type in the following code:

choose color

Then save this as an application. Now when you run it, your traditional OS X color picker will appear. Drag and drop colors around to your heart’s content!

If you have any other tips or tricks to share about the color picker, I’d love to hear them!

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Weekly App Store Pick: April 25, 2009

Olly Farshi — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 16:00:49 +0000

What’s that on the horizon? Why it’s none other than the latest picks fresh from the App Store, coming to brighten up your weekend!

Though before I run you through my latest selection of newly released apps, it’s time to indulge in a quick refresher of some of this week’s Apple news.

We started the week not with a bang, but with a tweet. In the early hours of Monday morning, Loren Brichter (otherwise known as iPhone developer Atebits), launched Tweetie for Mac, a desktop version of the immensely popular iPhone Twitter client. Those of you who have taken to summarizing your life as a series of hastily written 140 character messages, should check out my in-depth look at Tweetie.

The iPod touch is apparently growing in popularity with the U.S. Army. It was revealed this week that deployed soldiers are able to use the touch for ballistics calculation and translations, among other things. It’s not clear if voice recognition, a rumored feature of the new iPhone 3.0 update, will also be making it to the iPod touch.

On Thursday, Apple held their second-quarter conference call. In terms of finances, total revenue for the period came to $8.33 billion, up almost $1 billion over the same quarter last year. Aside from the colossal amount of revenue generated, Tim Cook — Apple’s acting CEO while Jobs takes a leave of absence — attempted to quash any rumors of an Apple netbook.

But before the celebratory balloons could be inflated and party poppers popped, Apple was duly taken down a notch with a controversial addition to the App Store. The app in question, imaginatively titled “Baby Shaker,” encouraged the user to shake the iPhone, as if it were a crying baby, until said baby died.

This week I’ve been looking at Knee Cap, Silent Scope, and Assassin’s Creed – Altair’s Chronicles.

Knee Cap (99 cents)
Released back in January, so not strictly the freshest of the picks this week, however, it’s certainly the most useful. Knee Cap is a loan tracker, allowing you to stay on top of cash you owe and — perhaps more importantly — cash owed to you. The app also has the sort of prim ‘n’ proper polished look that you’d expect from a financial tool you’ll be using regularly. Notably, Knee Cap integrates fully with the iPhone’s onboard Address Book, making it a cinch to track loans with your contacts.

Silent Scope ($5.99)
A few years back, six bucks would only get you a few minutes of sniper action on Konami’s Silent Scope arcade game. Now for that same six bucks you can dive straight into this intense sniper time-trial whenever you like. The controls have been seriously refined for iPhone, but the game still retains the tension and focus on accuracy of the arcade original. This version also features a tutorial mode, alongside Story, Shooting Range and Time Attack mode. For fans of the original, Silent Scope on iPhone is unmissable.

Assassin’s Creed – Altair’s Chronicles ($3.99)
From one successful video game adaptation to an utter atrocity by comparison. Mobile gaming giant Gameloft’s latest release is an adaptation of the Nintendo DS version of Assassin’s Creed, which in itself was an ineffective re-telling of the original and successful console version released back in 2007. To Gameloft’s credit, they have indeed enhanced the DS-version of Assassin’s Creed, however the game still doesn’t capture the spirit of what was an excellent sandbox stealth adventure.

That’s all the picks we’ve got time for this week. As ever, I’ll return next week with more news from the week and picks from the App Store.

In the meantime, what apps have you been using this week?

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9 Year-Old App Developer More Than Just a Feel-Good Story

Lisa Hoover — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 20:53:14 +0000

Here’s a story that gives new meaning to the term Apple fanboy. A 9-year-old youngster from Singapore, prompted by his younger sisters’ love of drawing, created an application for the iPhone called Doodle Kids. Budding artists create pictures by dragging a finger across the screen and then shake the phone to return to a blank canvas.

According to news reports, fourth-grade protege Lim Ding Wen has been using computers since he was two and already knows six programming languages. Doodle Kids might be his first app in the App Store, but it won’t be his last. Wen is already working on a sci-fi action game for the iPhone called Invader Wars.

Of course, the story of a 9-year-old whiz kid is great to hear, but it also illustrates a larger point about the development process of iPhone apps. It’s clear that we’ve gotten to a point where technology is becoming less mystical and more approachable.

A mere decade ago, computers themselves were still viewed as elusive gadgets and programming was left to people with only the highest levels of geekery in their bloodstream. Now we have kids programming smartphones before they’re old enough to drive a car.

Stories like this — and the proliferation of apps in the App Store created by people with no special training — are a great testimony to the aptitude of the mainstream consumer. Apple offered its user community the opportunity to participate in the development process and people have taken to the idea in droves.

Apple deserves a lot of credit for its willingness to open the App Store for people who want to share the applications they create. Of course, Apple isn’t the only community that develops home-grown apps for its platform; and of course, Apple gets something out of the deal as well. It’s great, however, that Apple has created an ecosystem that encourages developers of all ages and skill levels.

It’s tempting to assume that young Lim Ding Wen is an exception among app developers. While he may be one of the youngest people to have an app in the App Store, he isn’t the only one interested. Just this week my 9 year-old son came to me clutching a wish list for his birthday next month. Number two on the list (right after a brand-new Wii game)? The iPhone Software Development Kit.

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Stand Out From 13M Others With Infectious iPhone Art

Omar McFarlane — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 22:00:50 +0000

Since the Zunes inception, for all its faults, one thing that it did that seemed worth emulating was its Originals line, which are devices etched with original artwork from an array of designers. There’s no doubt that, even before comparing it to the Zune, or even the iPod nanos for that matter, the iPhone doesn’t offer a lot in the way of expressing ones individuality.

Thankfully, Infectious (see disclosure at bottom) is happy to fill that lack of identity with its line of iPhone Art adhesive decorations. Featuring artwork from well known illustrators and graphic designers like David Lanham, Jeremy Prasatik (aka JP33), Emil Kozak, and MAD, among many more, Infectious currently offers 38 designs to adorn your iPhone with. Each comes with a full and mini sticker that covers the full back of phone (with a cut-out for the camera lens) and the bottom portion of the front, respectively; as well as an Infectious logo sticker for good measure.

The stickers are made of a 3M durable vinyl material — Infectious estimates a three year life span — that makes applying and removing it a cinch. While in use, there is a protective laminate to reduce any scratching to your device, and when you are ready for a new design taking it off is an afterthought as there is no sticky, filmy residue to deal with.

iPhone Art is available now for $9.99, with a few prints carrying a $14.99 price tag. And, for the discerning buyer, all of the designs are offered as laptop prints as well, so your MacBook [Pro/Air] doesn’t feel left out.

Disclosure: Infectious is backed by True Ventures, which is also an investor in Giga Omni Media, the parent company of this network. Giga Omni Media founder Om Malik is a venture partner with True Ventures.

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Experience Sonic Sensations With RjDj for iPhone

Olly Farshi — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 23:00:42 +0000

Following in the ambient footsteps of Eno’s inaugural iPhone app, Bloom, comes RjDj. Developed by Reality Jockey, an Austrian dev outfit, they describe RjDj as, “the next generation of walkman or mp3 player… a digital drug which causes mind twisting hearing sensation.”

Wrapped up as a cute little iPhone toybox, RjDj is actually a platform for Reactive Sound Art. The “reactive” bit means that the app responds to sensory input. In the case of RjDj, this could find you jiggling, touching, tilting, shouting, murmuring, wiggling and generally seeking out all sorts of noises to generate entirely strange sonic experiences.

The app is split in to several different ‘scenes’, which are in essence very simple iPhone apps, providing different ways to create and interact with a selection of bold new soundscapes. Each scene handles your input in a different way; for example, Gridwalker plays an evolving, twinkling 8-bit melody, depending on how loud or quiet your environment is, while WorldQuantizer grabs noises and recycles them in to an organic rhythmic groove. There’s also a record function enabling you to hang on to your favorite RjDj sessions for future listening.

A typical Pure Data patch

Most exciting for burgeoning coders is the opportunity to create and submit your own scenes to be featured in future RjDj releases. The scenes are coded in an open source programming environment called Pure Data (PD). The really special thing about PD is that, unlike traditional text-based coding, it’s a visual modular language, meaning that creating a scene is somewhat like building a fairly complicated Lego model out of very sophisticated bricks. To the beginner it would take practice, but it’s certainly achievable (and a fun starting point leading to more advanced coding). If PD tickles your creative fancy, you can download it for free, right now.

With RjDj, you really get out of it what you put in — the packaged scenes seem to be most effective wandering around a city and hearing different sounds swirl about your ears, re-jigged by this smart little app. Effectively, RjDj is something incredibly clever masquearading as a bit of fun. And while it is indeed bags and bags of fun, if Reality Jockey develop the concept carefully, RjDj will become an effective sub-platform for distributing some of the most exciting experiences available on the iPhone.

Two versions of the app are available for download now: RjDj Single (free) and RjDj Album ($2.99), the latter of which features six different ‘scenes’ while the former is a one scene freebie.

Reality Jockey’s iPhone app certainly makes for weird listening, if you do download it leave a comment below describing your RjDj experiences.

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Godfather of Ambient Creates iPhone App

Olly Farshi — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 22:25:11 +0000

Seemingly not content with having fathered an entire musical genre, pioneered generative music, produced U2′s Where The Streets Have No Name, collaborated with Bowie and generally rubbed-shoulders with a raft of modern music legends, Brian Eno has now released his first iPhone app dubbed Bloom ($3.99).

Developed by Peter Chilvers, in collaboration with Eno, the app is described as, “Part instrument, part composition and part artwork…” The idea is that anybody can play with Bloom and coax gentle melodies and ambient soundscapes out of their iPhone. Having downloaded the app, plugged a pair of speakers in to my iPhone and cranked up the volume, it took only a few moments to compose an authentic ambient piece that sounded like a convincing out-take from Eno’s Music for Airports. It works and it is a joy to toy with.

Being a sound-based app, the screenshots on the store do it absolutely no justice, Bloom ends up looking somewhat staid. It’s in hearing Bloom and experiencing the ambience that it creates, that you truly understand how magical it is. According to the App Store product page, “… Bloom’s innovative controls allow anyone to create elaborate patterns and unique melodies by simply tapping the screen.” Setting aside the marketing spiel, Bloom is utterly unique — a truly enchanting experience, like nothing else I have experienced on the iPhone, this is an app that will make you smile.

Those familiar with Eno will have seen this app coming a mile off — he’s always been keen to exploit the latest technologies and platforms for his artworks, all the way back to creating Mac-compatible Media Art distributed on CD-ROMs. These days there are several Eno-inspired tools and toys available on Apple platforms.

Arty folk with a bit of a creative block may want to check out Oblique Strategies. Originally developed by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt as a deck of cards, each card features obtuse, odd and frequently stimulating tidbits of advice to re-energise the flow of creative juices; favorites include, “Not building a wall, making a brick,” and, “Move towards the unimportant.” The virtual Oblique Strategies decks are available both in widget flavor and iPhone/touch app flavor, for free.

Back on the desktop, TAB readers inspired by the ambient experiences offered in Bloom should investigate the joys of generative music a little further. For his seminal ambient album Generative Music 1, Eno made use of a piece of software called Koan to generate the album. With Koan, you’re able to feed the software a few basic variables and values and it’ll pumps out a piece of unique music at the other end. The software has long since evolved and is now superseded by Noatikl, available for OS X.

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