music + games

Just read that the new Splinter Cell game will feature music by Amon Tobin, a noted and respected DJ / sound guy whose stuff I always thought would be quite perfect for video games b/c of their subtly fractured nature. anyway, it got me thinking about how this is probably something that seems will become ubiquitous in the near future of games. As was discussed last night with dan winters, getting named talent is a huge part of publishing these days, and getting composers that come from the DJ / electronic world, the film world (Where is John Williams, Hans Zimmer...), and even, esp. for sports games, etc., your rockers and rappers, will be I think a big trend that has already started, but will probably only get larger.

Link to Tobin's website

vanity, thy name is camera phone

Lots to post today... in a posting mood, baby!

from an article on PICTURE PHONING, the top uses of camera phones by UK girls, according to a study done by Vodaphone.

-- 20 percent of mobile users send snaps of themselves in new outfits to friends to see if they like them.

-- 18 per cent take pictures of shoes or clothes on display for the same reason.

-- 5 per cent take pictures of snappy dressers that they see on the high street to copy their style.

-- 15 per cent frequently pull out their camera-phones to photograph the sides and backs of their hair,

-- 10 per cent use their camera-phones as a mirror to check their make-up.

-- 4 per cent even resort to getting the phone out in the middle of a restaurant after dinner - to check their teeth.

-- More than 20 per cent use their phone to capture details of a new property, and 15 per cent send pictures of new furnishings to partners to get their opinions.

laist

new (at least to me) L.A. Blog from the folks that brought you the gothamist

http://www.laist.com/

japanese camera phone stuff

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Been doing some interesting research recently into camera-phone applications, and came across some really interesting, crazy stuff in a couple phone magazines from japan. Most of this stuff is just simple photo frames, but it's remarkable how much more compelling even those are than any of the stuff I've seen from U.S. developers.

Link via ME

also check out wireless moment, a good news source for mobile phone stuff.

picture in picture at MSRDesignExpo

So Much Anger! Who Knew!

Kurt/Scott -- saw lots of pics on the wallop link, but do you have any other pics to post from the expo? Like ones of me getting yelled at by Joi, or perhaps that big red X that decided to make it's home in our powerpoint presentation?

Yellow Arrow

The way it works is “participants place arrows pointing at the locations and things that count most to them, their most cherished views of the city, the subway stations they frequent daily, their favorite bodegas and neighborhood parks. When placing an arrow, a participant sends a text message to YellowArrow.org with the sticker?s ID number and a brief story about why this location is important. When another person encounters an arrow in the city, he or she sends a message with the arrow’s ID number to YellowArrow.org and immediately receives the short message associated with it on their phone.”

Link via Coin-Operated

face of tomorrow

Istanbul based photographer Mike Mike is working on an open source web based project called the Face of Tomorrow. His idea is that if you could make a composite of all the faces in a city right now you would be looking at the Face of Tomorrow.

In each city, he takes 100 photos of people in one specific location, divide them into male and female and from these makes a composite face to create a prototypical citizen of a place at a moment in time or at some point in the future when notions of race and individuality are less important

kurt, I'm looking in your direction on this one.

Link via We-Make-Money-Not-Art

Tokyo Picturesque

Tokyo Picturesque (alpha version) is a site where people in Tokyo can attach pics taken with their GPS enabled mobile phone. The system then associates that image with the location on the map where it was taken.

link via we-make-money-not-art

Presidential Discombobulator

by Justin Manor. very nice. mix and match the respective peeps, v peeps and dems.

link

I'm blogging this

simple, nicely conceived flash game:

http://www.tonypa.pri.ee/pixelfield_e.html

Continuous Interface Blog

http://www.polarfront.org

input

hey, everything else is going retro, why not USB devices...

http://www.sealiecomputing.com/retrozone/

dev challenge for haptic device

SensAble Developer Challenge:

Win 10K for developing "the most compelling" app for the SensAble Phantom Series of Haptic Devices.

If we get our hands on one of these things, I'd love to get some people together and start playing around, maybe try and enter this competition. When you buy a device, they give you the SDK, so it's pretty sweet. Any takers? I guess we need to verify a purchase first, but at $800 each for a nice smooth haptic device, I think the question should be not if we get one, but how many.

Ed. Note: I spend long nights spending dept. money in my mind.

Link to Press Release

Link to SensAble

mobile dj

SSEYO, the company that brought us Vector Audio w/ KOAN, has now developed a system for mobile DJ-ing. Sounds pretty interesting, potentially -- similar to what I'd like to do w/ location aware music players. Fundamentally cool idea: collaborative / spontaneous music making w/ mobiles... a general goal.

Available for both Pocket PC & SmartPhone Microsoft Windows Mobile-based platforms, SSEYO miniMIXA is a revolutionary integrated multi-channel mobile audio mixer and recording studio. It allows the easy mixing together of content in many audio and MIDI formats, including microphone recordings, plus application of wide-ranging sound effects for the on-device creation and recording of stunning grooves.

This feature-packed application also lets you incorporate in your mix sounds generated live from music engines and modular synths (see “Innovations” below), for an unparalleled mobile mixing experience.

Oh, and I forgot to mention that this device is being used to DJ at ISEA 2004 by a group from FUTURESONIC on a cruise ship in the Baltic Sea. Perry's mobile audio project would have fit in nicely...

Via

sprawl typography

ok, maybe this doesn't have much to do with anything, but...http://users.pandora.be/brakkepie/brecht/font.htm