The Swoop project is said to be “great for kids” on the product’s official website, but it might appeal to adults, too, since apparently a whole lot of us sleep with our devices anyway. This just means you can keep it even closer, and in fact even rest your face against it so that you never have to worry about missing a late-night email again.

Swoop isn’t a reality just yet. The project’s creators still have a ways to go before they meet their modest $7,500 goal. A $25 pledge on Kickstarter qualifies as a pre-order, so if you feel like the only thing your iPhone is missing is slightly softer edges, this might be the project for you.

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The weekend has arrived, bringing with it the opportunity to reach that perfect state of iPhone-related relaxation: open the App Store and get ready to download the latest recommendations.

Before we get to the weekly picks, it’s time to take our usual look back at Apple news for the past seven days.

First up, more odd goings on with Apple’s utterly inconsistent App Store approvals process. This time round, Apple has chosen to banish Google Voice from the App Store. This means apps that allow users to access the Google Voice service, such as GV Mobile and Voice Central, have been disconnected from iTunes. An incredibly disappointing decision on Apple’s part.

It seems that some over-enthusiastic Chinese peripheral manufacturers have produced cases for Apple’s unannounced forthcoming Nano and iPod touch updates. As expected, we’re going to be seeing a camera-integrated touch and a Nano with a wider screen and smaller wheel. And let’s not forget the usual weekly rumor about Apple’s tablet too.

Staying in China for a moment — Chinese Apple fans have cause to celebrate this week as China is finally getting an official release for the iPhone. The device will be released via China Unicom, a carrier with over 135 million subscribers.

Our own David Appleyard posted a truly wonderful tutorial for those interested in customizing their Macs. David introduces BootXChanger, an application that allows you to change the default OS X Boot Icon. It’s an incredibly simple and potentially visually-yummy hack. So simple in fact that I’m considering replacing my Apple boot logo with Katamari Damacy.

From an unexpected corner of the portable media player galaxy comes news of the Zii Egg. The device, a handheld StemCell Computer running Android, is being touted as a serious competitor to the iPhone and iPod touch. It looks gorgeous and the specs are certainly up to par, however it’s worth remembering that it’s the content — namely the apps — that makes a device, not the hardware.

And finally, in its ongoing battle with the iPhone jailbreaking community, Apple has announced that jailbreaking could disable transmission towers. I’d have to side with Darrell that this sounds much like sensationalist scare tactics.

Moving on to the picks, this week I’ve been looking at Ghostly Discovery, Let It Sleep, The Secret of Monkey Island and Space Invaders Infinity Gene.

Ghostly Discovery (Free)
Ghostly International, electronic record label extraordinaire, just keeps pushing it forwards, signing Internet-electronica superstar Tycho, releasing a compilation album with Adult Swim as a free download and now creating their own music streaming app. The app allows you to decide what kind of music you hear (all of which is from Ghostly’s catalogue), based on your mood or how digital/organic you’d like the tracks to be. Best of all, this gorgeous-looking streaming music box is absolutely free — for folk who like their ambient synths, glitches and bleeps and other electronic noises, this is an absolutely essential download.

Let It Sleep (99 cents)
Occasionally an app comes along that’s a bit of an oddity, and Let It Sleep falls in to this category. It’s not genuinely useful, but it is functional in a charming kind of way. Wrapped in John Lennon-inspired artwork (a reference to Let It Be), the app allows you to record your nocturnal noises. Using the iPhone’s mic, the app will start recording if you trigger the sound sensor. It’s very sweet and, for only a buck, certainly worth downloading. Especially worthwhile if you’re curious as to what goes on at night while you’re sleeping.

The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition ($7.99)
A classic of the point ‘n’ click graphic adventure genre, Monkey Island is fondly remembered by many for its painfully obscure puzzles, wit-infused sword play and laugh out loud script. Sure it was horrendously difficult for most kids (and many adults too), but it was all about the journey: becoming Guybrush Threepwood, grogging it up with pirates and locating Monkey Island. Now the original game has arrived on iPhone complete with the same bizarre puzzles. The control scheme is disappointing, given the potential for re-designing the interface around the iPhone, but it’s still the same classic adventure.

Space Invaders Infinity Gene ($4.99)
Another classic video game in this week’s App Store picks, except this one has been totally re-imagined and re-equipped for the iPhone. This isn’t your daddy’s Space Invaders as Infinity Gene packs in gorgeous vectorized graphics and an armory of fresh weaponry too. The game stays true to its roots though. It’s still 2D, the invaders are still as iconic as ever, but now the gameplay and visuals evolve as you advance. Japanese game shop Taito have built something special here, capturing the essence of the retro shooter while blending it with modern gameplay conventions.

That’s all the picks 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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Photo by Flickr user Jinho.Jung

Over in London, the experimental electronic music scene is positively flourishing.

Having lived in the UK’s capital city for the latter part of 2008, I discovered a bubbling sonic subculture — a community of creatives hijacking ice cream vans, reappropriating medical EPGs, and hacking instruments out of scraps of junk, all for the purposes of audio experimentation.

Particularly interesting is that, among these esoteric technologies, the iPhone seemed to be emerging as a burgeoning platform for sonic exploration. Since leaving London and moving to Helsinki, things have advanced even further as, in what is perhaps a world first, the iPhone orchestra (conducted via Wii controller, naturally) has been established.

The London Geek Community iPhone OSCestra’s inaugural performance was May 8 at Open Hack London, a one-day event supported by Yahoo! that brought together ultra tech-savvy hackers for a day of coding and communicating. The orchestra, a crew of eight musicians, opened with an impressive (and deliciously geeky) performance of the “Doctor Who” theme.

It seems that the iPhone is the perfect augmentation to any serious sonic-hacker’s audio artillery. Alongside its audio capabilities, touchscreen and Wi-Fi, the device can run third-party apps natively. Apple has made coding for the iPhone a breeze (even if getting your app approved isn’t so easy). Most importantly, though, the iPhone is readily accessible and relatively low-cost.

While it’s not clear when the The London Geek Community iPhone OSCestra will perform next, it’s actually surprisingly easy to get started making music in the same way. In particular, the musically minded among you who have been inspired by the iPhone orchestra will be pleased to hear that a combination of free iPhone and desktop tools were used for their performance.

The orchestra downloaded mrmr (free) from the App Store, an app that allows you to create highly customizable audio controllers and send the data to other devices using OSC (Open Sound Control). A controller could be a piano-style keyboard, a bank of faders, or an array of twisty knobs and flashy buttons — essentially interactive widgets that allow you to control sound and music.

Free desktop application OSCulator caught all the data, beamed wirelessly from mrmr on the iPhone, and sent it to Ableton Live. Live is my musical tool of choice, an incredibly powerful performance and production platform. In this instance, the orchestra performed using a bank of synthesizers running within Live. If you’re interested in going beyond Garage Band and making music on your Mac, it’s worth checking out the Live demo.

Thanks to the iPhone and, in particular, the growing number of sound toys and audio tools in the App Store, it’s becoming easier than ever for listeners to become performers. Drop by the comments, and let me know if you’ve been using your iPhone to make music.

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Learn to play the leaf trombone, perform your repertoire before a global audience, and prepare to be judged.

Since the App Store’s launch last year, Smule has been steadily building an impressive portfolio of sound-based social apps for the iPhone. With Dr. Ge Wang — an assistant professor in Music and Acoustics — at the helm, among a smattering of clever and fun sonic toys, their biggest hit to date has been the multi-award winning Ocarina.

Smule’s latest app, Leaf Trombone: World Stage, is a social musical instrument designed specifically for the iPhone. Players can download new songs and perform before a judging panel of other leaf trombonists.

Leaf Your Troubles Behind

In terms of igniting the musical imagination of touch and iPhone owners around the world, Smule’s standout moment has been the creation of Ocarina. The app is an enchanting recreation of the palm-size wind instrument, incorporating several features that take advantage of the iPhone’s tech to connect instrumentalists around the world.

Leaf Trombone: World Stage takes the wind instrument concept even further than before. For musical beginners, Ocarina was a serious toughie, whereas playing the leaf trombone is a breeze for musicians and fresh starters alike.

There are two methods for tooting on your leaf trombone. For beginners, there’s touch mode. Simply tapping and holding on one of the vertical note-markers plays the note. Advanced players can take it further by blowing in to the iPhone microphone — ideal for adding nuance to a performance.

Song Selection

Despite having just been released, there’s already a stack of tunes ready to toot in the song library. The selection on offer is constantly growing, too, as Smule’s provided a song composition and submission platform on their site.

There’s something for everyone in the library. Classical picks like “Ave Maria” and “Auld Lang Syne” sit alongside rock and metal renditions, such as “Iron Man” and “Through The Fire And The Flames.” Notably, there are video game tunes in the mix, too, with several pieces from Legend of Zelda already on offer. The only major drawback with the library is that there’s no way to differentiate between pieces for beginners and more accomplished players.

If you’re familiar with rhythm action games like Rock Band or Tap Tap Revenge, it’s easy to get your fingers around performing the songs. Once the track begins playing, accompanied by a dainty Mario-esque music box, leaves begin floating towards the different note-markers. The note-markers glow when a leaf collides, meaning there’s a clear guide to playing the correct note at the correct time.

There is, like any musical instrument, an initial period of getting comfortable holding and touching the leaf trombone and familiarizing yourself with the interface. However, actually playing a complex score should be surprisingly intuitive, even for non-musicians.

World Stage – Judging & Performing

Fire up your leaf trombone for more than a few minutes and there’s a good chance that your solo soliloquy will be interrupted with an invite to be a judge on the World Stage. As a judge sitting on an “American Idol”-esque panel with two other players, picked from across the globe, you’ll critically appraise a fellow leaf trombonist’s performance.

Represented by three smiley-styled emoticons, the judging panel listens to the performance — posting comments and changing the emoticon to reflect opinion and mood. At the end of the song, you’re invited to score the performance and provide closing thoughts.

Playing the role of judge is an excellent twist on traditional multiplayer gaming. There’s something deliciously addictive and downright fun about judging — whether you’re praising, encouraging, or just laughing at someone’s trombone tooting.

Judging a performance also earns you Leaf Tokens, the currency of the budding Leaf Trombonist. Each performance on the World Stage costs one Leaf Token, an exceedingly cunning solution, on Smule’s part, to ensuring players are involved in both performing and judging, and also encouraging performers to practice a solo before playing online.

Performing works slightly differently compared to the judging. After selecting a song from the library, you’ll perform alone. Once you’ve completed your performance, the judging panel is then selected to appraise it — meaning you’re able to initially perform without being distracted by a shower of praise, or worse, an onslaught of criticism.

Summing Up

Leaf Trombone: World Stage is everything we’ve come to expect of Smule. The instrument part of the game draws non-musicians in — it’s so easy to get satisfying results and is enjoyable to play (plus endearingly individual with its comedic tooting and parping).

And it’s daring, too, linking players up for social fun a refreshing way: Being part of the judging panel is compelling fun and performing on the World Stage — and getting right — just feels good, too.

Leaf Trombone is a wonderful instrument and an incredibly accomplished social toy. Furthermore, like any musical instrument, it’s something that you’ll delight in playing and growing with over time. Smule’s ability to manifest pure gold out of a downright silly concept, earns this app TheAppleBlog Gold Award.

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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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