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Chimp GPS
Like we needed a New Scientist article to confirm that chimps have built-in GPS.
26th Mar 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
Rip! A Remix Manifesto
copyrights and wrongs film Rip! A Remix Manifesto is a doc about the world of the mashup, following Girl Talk etc and elaborating on the whole issue of ownership in the information age. they're also into open source cinema, and want you to remix the film etc and send it back to them. that's going to be one dvd with a whole lot of extras...
26th Mar 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
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iPhone 3.0
The next iPhone OS update is coming w cut, copy & paste and pic messaging...
18th Mar 2009 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
Party free-for-all
iTunes has had a number of features added with the recent bump to version 8.1, including an opportunity to open control out to the floor. Anyone with an iPhone can queue up tracks for a potentially democratic/disastrous desert island disco. Wired has the details.
17th Mar 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
Instatorrent
The problem with this phone/barcode scanner/download instigator is you actually have to go to a shop to scan the barcode. How tedious.
16th Mar 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
Dude Turns to Twitter As Guy Breaks In His House
Gawker's title says it all, with an added WTF.
12th Mar 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
Look Ma, No Buttons! Yes, it's another new iPod
New iPod shuffle - "the first music player that talks to you" or "the first music player that makes you keep their uncomfortable headphones because that's where all the ffwd buttons are..." - class, it's over to you: discuss!
12th Mar 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
Area Man Alert: New Sky+ HD EPG coming
well, some of the men in my area will be pleased anyhow... new SKy+HD EPG being rolled out, although for some reason, Chimp Towers seems to have been left out of the first batch...
11th Mar 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
Kindling for the Master
It's US only for now, but Amazon has released an iPhone interface for their Kindle online bookstore, allowing mobile users to buy, download and read a huge range of books on the go. I still need convincing that the screen will be big enough, but we'll see.
If you can't wait, you can always head over to Google books and read Mad Man Don Draper's favourite Meditations in an Emergency right now.
9th Mar 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
Wireless Hot Spotify
Despite a minor security scare, Spotify is continuing to gather a major following after their UK launch - with a load more labels now getting on board (most notably Sub Pop). Still a few big names missing (The Smiths anyone?), but it's fast become a totally viable storage-free alternative to iTunes.
The obvious drawback remains not having the files on your iPod, making listening on the move a problem - but the big news hitting the nets is a possible mobile client, and as shown in the video an iPhone client (More info: Wired / Techcrunch). The best feature? The app is designed to cache music you have lined up, meaning there's music available when you drop out of signal range.
Of course, Apple may not allow the app onto the iTunes store, but they do allow Last FM on there - and even highlight it in their iPhone adverts on TV. Apple could, of course, launch a similar service themselves - and have recently begun offering season pass-type subscriptions, similar to Top Spin's business model. They'd probably need another round of negotiations with the labels, but with many indies now working as a fifth pseudo-major label that shouldn't be all that complicated (p.s. note, Merlin have our inside-man Matthew Herbert as their poster boy).
Some bands are even taking the matter into their own hands, with No Doubt giving away their entire catalog when you buy a tour ticket and The Presidents of the United States offering four of their albums in a handy app for $3. Ex-President Dave Dederer has even gone so far as to become involved in a company offering such apps, as well as the Nutsie service - which promises to deliver your iTunes music to your phone, other PCs and even Facebook.
That social networking aspect is integral to all these services - and sites are springing up all over the place allowing you to share your playlists and so on (1,2), but none can beat this old-school front end for actual browsing.
Exciting times.
6th Mar 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
The Humans Are Dead!
Great article over at The Big Picture to bring you up to speed with the current status of the robotics industry.
5th Mar 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
FlickrSync
It's not just Mac with iPhoto that are feeling the Flickr-sync love. Check out the aptly titled FlickrSync app for PC's that marries folders of photos on your machine with sets uploaded to your Flickr account.
26th Feb 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
What's With The Matter?
Jet packs, re-useable spaceplanes - what's next, teleportation?
25th Feb 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
Get Spotify. Now.
If you're not on board already, head over and register for a free account at Spotify and download their player now. Building on Nokia's badly presented, but solid concept of 'comes with music', the program works like iTunes, or a totally unlocked Last FM - but stores no music on your hard drive. Music is all delivered legally over the www as and when you play it, at a bitrate comparable to decent mp3 compression. A basic account is free, with the only concession being the occasional advert. And currently that is occasional - with only about 3 ads playing over 8 hours of continuos use at the moment, and most of them were for Spotify's own premium service. For that premium service you can pay 99p a day, or £9.99 a month for advert-free listening - which is hardly extortion.
The concept has come a long way since I last checked in, with the selection now being pretty thorough. Some of the usual cautious big-hitters (Beatles, Led Zep, Pink Floyd, Metallica) are absent, and a few labels are obviously not quite there yet (e.g. Sub Pop, Jagjaguwar) but on the whole the catalogue is on a simlar footing to iTunes - and they even have a few exclusives, like a one week heads-up on U2's new album.
Search for an album, press play and you're off. So easy it's ridiculous.
We're already using it heavily at Chimp HQ - particularly thanks to the built in support for Last FM, which lets us keep our charts up-to-date with minimum hassle - and I dare say this app (or at least the concept) will undoubtedly define the future of music, just as Napster, iPods and iTunes all have. You have been warned.
23rd Feb 2009 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
Pirate Tweet
you've got to admire Pirate Bay's commitment to tech: here's a tweet from INSIDE their recent court case...
23rd Feb 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
The BBC's RAD Future
the BBC are developing more cool iPlayer + stuff
20th Feb 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
Portable Bike Lane
Loving this light that throws up the lines of the bike line for approaching vehicles ....can't help but think of those portable holes they always had in Roadrunner.
16th Feb 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
A Bright Idea For WIFI
Sounds like a sure-fire recipe for a headache to me, but Wired has an article about a possible future WIFI development which will use flickering lightbulbs to transmit the data - limiting access to that data to the throw of the beam and securing places like the White House from nosey bandwidth thieves who happen to be having a muffin in a nearby coffee shop.
13th Feb 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
iPhoto '09
I've got my mitts on a copy of the latest version of iPhoto - Apple's photo management software, and I'm loving it. It's got three great new bonus features: Maps, Syncing and Faces.
Geotagging has been picking up momentum for a while now - and with more and more phones and cameras coming with built-in GPS, it's only going to get bigger. Geotagged photos are now all pulled together on a map, with the co-ordinates reverse coded to show location names, allowing you to search for places and find photos taken there. Pretty nifty. Adding locations isn't a big feature yet, but any locations added in Flickr can be synced using the next new feature.
Just when PhotoCopy had launched their excellent Flickr syncing program, Apple have added Flickr-syncing to the mothership - and it works perfectly. Any set of photos can be used to create a Flickr set, which then uploads to your chosen account. Any changes made to the set or the photos (adding tags, changing title etc) are automatically updated online, and even more impressively any changes made online are synced back to the program.
With more and more services becoming available to run sophisticated photo sites using Flickr (1, 2, 3), anyone can now manage a detailed photo site using just iPhoto.
Here's an example using the Chimp surveillance data.
Finally, iPhoto now uses facial recognition. If you saw this on CSI you would dismiss it as implausible, but it actually works incredibly well. As you first set it up, it scans through your library and marks any faces it thinks it has found. You can then click these and add a name - and as the names build up, the program quickly suggests other photos with that person in. It's right maybe 70% of the time, which makes tagging these photos super easy. You can then search your library for a name, and bingo - all the photos of one person in one place. The tagged photos work pretty much like Facebook's photo tagging, so as expected you can now upload directly to Facebook, keeping all that data in place.
I wasn't intending this to sound like a software review, but there's no denying how it's turned out. The best photo management album out there just got way better.
CSF - 4.5 Stars
2nd Feb 2009 - 2 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
Best Jobs
With Apple calling time on the high-turnover pressure of the annual Macworld Expo, check out this greatest hits of Steve Jobs reality-distortion field in action.
20th Jan 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
Erased From Existence
Not sure I even know anyone who even still uses it, but it looks like VHS is officially being given the last rights. The now unwatchable format put in a fairly healthy innings of around 30 years, but with the rise of DVD / Tivo / Internet it is no longer needed.
16th Jan 2009 - 5 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
Mapple
Think different, suckers.
If you are a Mac fan, don't worry about the haters - just check out the genius new wheel book.
14th Jan 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
Photocopy
If you can't wait for an updated version of iPhoto, Photocopy is a pretty tasty way of synchronizing your offline photo collection with Flickr. You select which albums you want to sync, then any changes made offline are automatically updated with your online sets.
14th Jan 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
The Future Is Neural
First moves are afoot to record human experience, and now Japanese scientists claim to be able to output images from human brain. Plug a pocket-sized projector into the back of your head and the future has arrived.
14th Jan 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
Picassa Beater
So, no Mac Mini from Macworld, but a new 17" Macbook Pro arrived, as well as the DRM-free iTunes and a new version of iLife. The highlight of that has to be iPhoto, with a handful of Picassa-beating features, including Google Maps integration and easy syncing with Flickr and Facebook.
Incidentally, you can head over to iTunes and upgrade any DRM-locked tracks you might have for 20p per track.
7th Jan 2009 - 2 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
Picassa for Mac
While iPhoto offers a pretty nifty set of features, there's something to be said for the speed and ease-of-use of Google's Picassa photo-management software, which is now available for Macs.
It also integrates nicely with some of friendly-Monopoly Google's other services, such as Web Albums and Blogger.
6th Jan 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
Macworld
Big boss Steve Jobs may be out for at least this year's event, but the Macworld expo soldiers on - with the big keynote today (9am Pacific time) being addressed by #2 Phil Schiller. Likely announcements include a more media centre friendly Mac Mini, and DRM free iTunes with a more varied pricing structure. A 17" Macbook Pro also seems certain.
Less likely announcements include a mini iPhone, and a netbook Mac - but you never know.
(there's also this revolutionary keyboard-free MacWheel)
6th Jan 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
iMacPlayer
The BBC have released a Mac version of the awesome iPlayer, so you can now download higher-quality versions of the week's shows - in addition to the already excellent web-based version.
19th Dec 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
3D HDTV
it's coming... but you've still got to wear 3D glasses to make it work
18th Dec 2008 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
Roboguitar
It's not quite The Empire Strikes Back, but Long Blondes guitarist Dorian Cox has been working with a robot hand to hopefully enable him to start playing guitar again, after he suffered a stroke.
3rd Dec 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
No Signal
Interesting run-down over at TidBits about how a mobile phone network actually works, allowing a call to a single number to find you pretty much anywhere in the world. Except the area around the second floor of my house.
27th Nov 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Shake It Like A Fuji Instax Picture
Doesn't quite have the same ring about it as "Polaroid" really, but Fujifilm and Tomy are hoping to sweep up the instant picture void with their new cameras
27th Nov 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
The WaterMill
new product that could help get rid of the bottled water madness: "Technically speaking, the WaterMill is an atmospheric water collection device that condenses water vapor and purifies it. In English: It's a home appliance that makes drinking water for your whole family - using only air."
26th Nov 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Word Could Not Fire Event...
...and sadly, I could not fire Word.
26th Nov 2008 - 3 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
Jet Pack Man!
at last, been waiting for my jet pack for ages
25th Nov 2008 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
iZagat
The indispensable Zagat restaurant guide has finally popped up for the iPhone. The £5.99 app provides all the 2009 results, in the same manner as their Blackberry-centric version, Zagat To Go. It also uses the GPS of the phone to hook you up with the nearest listed restaurants, hotel and bars - with results you can order by rating, type, cost etc.
Get it here.
While the service has had a mobile phone version of their website for a while (zagat.mobi), for that you still have to be a website subscriber, which is a $25 annual subscription.
It's also worth getting the free Open Table app, which allows you to make restaurant bookings over the air, and ties in with the Zagat app.
AppleInsider has a more detailed write up of both apps.
24th Nov 2008 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
Where You At?
You probably don't want to delve to deeply into the potential invasion-of-privacy issues, but recent developments are now allowing browsers to access your position, much like a GPS enabled phone browser - meaning websites such as Last Minute's Radar can provide you with location-centric data.
Google's Gears is one way of enabling such services, recent builds of Firefox include similar tech.
21st Nov 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Life Begins At 40?
Not quite, apparently. It seems more likely to be all downhill from 39...
20th Nov 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Format 22
YouTube is quietly testing a further improved format, according to The Times. We tipped you off to Format 18 a while back, but now they've bumped it up even further with Format 22. I'm guessing that the same trick (add&fmt=22 to the URL) will work nicely, although the original video will need to have been uploaded in a suitable resolution. Try the sample clip in fullscreen.
19th Nov 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
How Lightsabers Work
...I didn't realise they were adjustable. You never see anyone using a half length lightsaber.
19th Nov 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Speak Into The Microphone Squidbrain!
Google's new voice-enabled search App should have hit the iTunes store by the time you read this. Versions for other platforms coming soon.
18th Nov 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Data Protection
By sheer coincidence, and a determination to distract myself from some tedious essential tasks today, I stumbled accross hard evidence of two products that I have had long designed in my daydreaming mind. First up, the pocket video projector.
At art school I mated a portable tv with an overhead projector, before evolving the idea with a magnifying glass and a video iPod a couple if years back. Both ideas were solid, but the brightness of the source let things down. Now Texas instruments have developed the concept more thoroughly, bringing out a pocket sized projector, which can throw a 60 inch screen onto a nearby white surface. Perfect for when you find yourself flying air India, or you need to show Ari Gold your reel while he's stuck in line with the valet. The 480 pixel resolution is nothing to write home about, but it's better than some of the studio previews we're screening at the ranch this Thursday.
Next up, as previously noted, digital photography is finally entering the mainstream of film production in a major way. I've often wondered what was holding video back from the high-end goodness enjoyed by the digital SLR world for quite some time. Red have taken that idea to a certain point, but now Canon have stepped in with a new digital SLR that can shoot full 1080 digital video (barrage of tech data here).
As it's a regular Canon body you have a huge choice if easily available lenses, which keeps the cost low and the f stop even lower. Check out Pulitzer winning photographer Vincent Laforet's dummy shoot for some sample footage. The clip was shot using the cameras low-light capabilities (+ helicopter + Moby soundtrack), and doesn't feature any post-production to enhance the colours and whatnot. Canon has some clips of their own here, some stills here and even a making-of video.
Michael Mann's not going to be able to sleep.
The concept's certainly building steam (witness this bulked-up camera kit) and Red themselves haven't been snoozing in this marketplace however - and a specs announcement Is due tomorrow on their new 'Scarlet' product, which is said to have radically moved on since initial word got out. Low light, plus low price and slow- mo goodness. Yum.
As a cryogenically suspended filmmaker, both of these technolgical advancements light my fire... and I'm happy to withdraw any claims on the technology.
12th Nov 2008 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
Feature Films Coming to YouTube
Thanks to the success of Hulu.com (a US iPlayer style site that has generated 3x the ad-revenue of YouTube), Google have re-negotiated some of their relationships with Hollywood, and MGM will be the first studio to offer feature films on YouTube. Hopefully that's all going to lead to the watch-anything-whenever holy grail that has been slowly evolving, as online movies follow the lead of the audio revolution.
CNET has the details.
10th Nov 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
OS Snow Leopard v Windows 7.0
The Onion's done the breakdown for you
10th Nov 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Four Track Is Back
4 track recording may be making a come back with the new iPhone App, cleverly entitled Four Track. By feeding a line in, or even using the built-in mic, you can use your phone to lay down those future re-release rarities demos - perhaps while you sit in Starbucks sipping a Latte.
There's a 'special introductory price' of $9.99/£4.99 attached however, which may be enough to stop a fair few people giving it a whirl. More details at Wired.
The maker, Retronymns, also make one of my favourites - the excellent Recorder app, which turns your phone into a fully-functional dictaphone.
While we're talking apps, check out Classics too. A mini library of classic books (including Huck Finn, Hound of the Baskervilles and Robinson Crusoe), all included with the app.
7th Nov 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Poladroid
With Polaroid film wrapping up production and disappearing fast, check out Mac program Poladroid as an even more useful alternative.
Drag any image onto the fun, floating program and it spits out a polaroid, which develops in real-time. Once it's finished, you'll have a muddy brown, hazy, nostalgic version of any photo.
31st Oct 2008 - 2 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
Free Stuff 0011010100100100100111
Codeweavers are offering all of their software FREE for today only. If you are on a Mac or Linux, get yourself a free copy of their CrossOver program, which allows you to run Windows programs.
28th Oct 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet