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Joué's MIDI controller adds tactile fun to music-making
The Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) arrived in the '80s to help digital instruments communicate with each other. Nowadays, with much of the action on computers, a new breed of MIDI controllers has emerged. Many of today's designs include built-in pressure sensitivity to provide a semblance of analog expression when played, but Joué is a bit different. It was developed to free digital music artists from the lockstep confines of keyboards, button rows, glowing displays and marching lights, while providing modular flexibility and, above all, fun. The name Joué, translated from French, literally means "play" or can be interpreted as "I play," and the company would like you to approach the device with an open and creative mind. It's a USB-powered pressure-sensitive board that works with a variety of soft -- and occasionally squishy -- pads that are detected and uniquely identified through embedded RFID tags. You map portions of each pad to any MIDI-capable program like Ableton Live, Apple Logic, Garage Band or iPad apps to help bring your music to life. They're swappable on the fly, and the tactile interfaces offer an alternative to high-tech distractions. The device is currently on Kickstarter; the company is raising funds to move from industrial prototype to final product, and as usual, early bird deals are available. You can buy a Joué board and starter pack of pads for just over $300, with the eventual retail price expected to be under $500.
The Daily Grind: Why do you love your favorite game?
Yes, we know what's coming. But we don't want the next few days to be a cavalcade of sorrow because this is a site and a community built around our shared love of MMOs. So let's spread some cheer today. Why do you love your favorite game? I make no secret about my affection for Final Fantasy XIV, obviously. It's a great game that fuses progress organically with stuff that you'd have fun doing anyway and gives you no shortage of freedom in what you want to do in the game. It's a great time. But my favorite game might not be yours. So let's share. No bashing, no whining, no complaining; let's make this a positive time for everyone. Why do you love your favorite game, be it a critical darling or a title you feel doesn't get nearly enough love? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Take an 18-minute look at how to fool Touch ID with Tested and fake fingers
It's possible to fool Touch ID but, as we've been saying since it came out, it isn't easy. The folks at Tested were curious about new methods of fooling the sensor and set out to find the perfect tool, a fake finger to trick them all. Their end results prove our original findings, that fooling Touch ID is still an incredibly difficult prospect. Of course largely failing to bypass the system doesn't mean their efforts aren't incredibly interesting. Using photos, finger prints, silicon pressings, etching, and computers Tested shows exactly how much effort it takes to make even the most ineffectual solution to "hacking" Touch ID. Obviously we wouldn't be sharing this video with you if we thought it would actually teach you how to break into someone's phone. Rather this is merely a fascinating look at the science of testing out mobile security features, a gift for those of you who want to debunk your scared Uncle who believes Touch ID can be easy fooled. Enjoy.
Video: How to build a Lego Apple Mac Computer
Legos are for children of all ages, so whether you're an actual child or just having a little building fun as an adult here's a great video for your holiday week. YouTube user Isaac Ray specializes in making Lego animation videos and his latest shows you how to build an Apple Mac Computer (looks like an iMac) out of spare Lego parts. It's adorable, well shot, and something we're going to try to build this weekend while visiting family. You can, and should, check out the rest of Isaac's videos here.
Adorable cat goes fishing with his iPad
We've all seen videos of animals playing with technology, and with good reason. They're adorable. Today we bring you Cassie the cat, enjoying a lovely lazy Sunday with her iPad and a pond of fish. Cassie gets tired quickly, but it's alright. She's got a nice soft couch to nap on. Enjoy a nice break for an adorable cat today.
Apple Watch revolutionizes emojis with live edited expressions
Apple Watch is already a groundbreaking device, but for those of you who text, there is obviously one feature that's even more important than biometrics or interactivity. We're speaking, of course, of the real-time emoji editor. With Apple Watch you'll be able to edit your emoji's expressions in real time using your finger to match exactly what your mood is. Maybe you want an emoji that's half furious anger, half explosive with joy? Just swipe your finger a few times to create the perfect mashup of your emotions. There's no word yet on if you'll be able to manipulate more than just the traditional yellow smily face emoji, but considering the breadth of emoji options Apple offers, we can't wait until the day every emoji can be manipulated. Yes. Even this one.
Glitch Wizard is a fun way to make glitchy images and animation on your iPhone
Glitch Wizard creates animated or still images based on a series of pre-set "glitches" you can apply to your photos. You've possibly seen "glitch art" popping up around the web lately, with flickering GIFs of colorful digital weirdness warping ordinary photos. While they may be a passing fad like the Harlem Shake, they require a bit of work to create in a program like Photoshop. Enter Glitch Wizard, which is a simple but polished app that takes your photos and adds glitches and allows some basic animation of those glitches as you sequence the effects you add to the photos. The app is nicely designed with three icons at the bottom on launch: the standard camera icon at the bottom of the screen to either take a picture or use one from your photos. The app opens with a list of featured glitch artwork, which I assume is curated by the folks who make the app. You can get to these later by tapping the star icon. I found this interesting on first launch as a sort of example of what the app can do, but ignored it later. Then there's a grid of the glitches you've saved when you tap the grid of squares icon. To create glitches, grab a photo and you're taken to a composition interface, with an area showing each glitch, a playback button, settings and a series of effects each categorized into four groups. I won't go into each group of effects, as part of the fun of Glitch Wizard is seeing what each one does (and it can be wildly different depending on the image you start with). Suffice it to say there are a lot of options for making truly wild images and animations. Some effects allow you to tweak them, but most are simply applied and can be a bit random, as is the nature of glitch art. Also, you can keep adding effects to further glitch your images. The progression is often really fun to see animated. What I enjoyed was playing around with the effects, then seeing how progressing them would make an animation smoother or weirder. In all, it's just a lot of fun. While I'd like more editing options I realize there's little here I couldn't do in Photoshop with filters. But that's not the point -- this is designed to be quick and fun. You can delete individual frames, but I couldn't find a way to re-order them. You can also change the speed from slow to medium to fast, and set the animation to ping-pong back and forth or just loop. Once you're done you have a variety of sharing options, which I found interesting in their end results. On Twitter, for example, you can post a "native GIF" aka a GIF that Twitter has tuned for consumption on Twitter (and is no longer really a GIF). Although Twitter supports animated GIFs, I found it was easier to share them via this app than pulling them from my camera roll because Glitch Wizard doesn't actually save GIFs to your camera roll. Moving on, Instagram and Facebook posts are converted to videos. The thing about glitches and web video, however, is that compression relies upon sameness from frame to frame (generally speaking). My glitches looked really fuzzy if they were really wacky glitchy GIFs to start with. This isn't Glitch Wizard's fault, and frankly I appreciate the fact that it creates a video versus posting some lame link to a page that will inevitably break years later. Kudos on the sharing options for Glitch Wizard, as it's one of the best models I've ever seen in an app. Too bad Facebook compresses them so horribly. I found Instagram posts to have fewer artifacts and hence more clarity. Yes, you can save your creations to your camera roll, among other options (like tumblr, although one of my GIFs didn't post as animated when I tested it, so this could be a buggy area). My only complaint here is it's too easy to lose your creation. If you don't save to your glitches in the app or to your camera roll, however, your creations are lost forever. Also, it's a little odd that the app doesn't actually save a GIF to your camera roll, but rather an .m4v file. If you pull this onto your Mac you'll have to use another application to convert to GIF. If you want the GIF itself, the only option is to email it to yourself. Glitch Wizard is a simple but fun app that creates crazy glitched artwork from your photos. That's really all there is to it, although it's wrapped up in a great design and works very well. It's currently on sale but I'd recommend it at the full US$1.99 if you enjoy making glitch art.
Celebrate the 4th with slow motion fireworks captured by an iPhone 5s
On July 4th the United States celebrates Independence Day, and there isn't much news to report. Hot dogs are cooking, families are gathering, and people are watching Netflix. It's a party! So, in keeping with the spirit of the holiday, we present you with this happy video of fireworks, shot in slow motion, with an iPhone 5s. The fireworks were shot over Lake Michigan on September 26th, 2013 by YouTube user john m foley. For those readers seeking a more traditional fireworks display we present with you this footage from the July 4th 2010 Macy's fireworks in NYC. It was shot on an iPhone 4 by YouTube user Manny M., and still looks incredible.
Stick and Rudder: How complex is too complex for Star Citizen?
I've taken a little while to let Chris Roberts' recent flight model manifesto marinate. In that time, my opinion has run the gamut from "funk yeah, simulation!" to "hmm, I hope I'm able to enjoy this title" and back again. I waffled because as much as I'm salivating over Star Citizen and everything it represents, it's still one game out of dozens that I'm following. And as much as I'd like to, I can't realistically devote all of my free time to a single title!
The MotorMouth lets you tell the world exactly what you think
Social media was supposed to help us connect, but as anyone with a smartphone and Twitter can tell you, it's largely screaming out into the clouds. Unless you're talking about Game of Thrones or some other trending topic, most of what you say or recommend isn't going to be heard by the people you want to hear it. Everyone has a voice, but no one is heard. The MotorMouth is a social media app that works by literally sharing your voice, allowing users to leave geolocated voice messages for other travelers who may pass by. When users activate the app nearby where you left your message, they'll see a pin on their local map indicating where you left it. The developer urges people to use the app as a vocal version of Yelp, recommending landmarks to visit or restaurants others should try out. In my hometown of Atlanta, I found notes from one user urging me to visit both the Andrew Young School of Policy Solutions and Magic City, an infamous strip club. That's sort of the charm of The MotorMouth. Since submissions aren't curated, you end up with sort of an unedited Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. You might just find out about a cool new dive bar, or someone could tell you about their odd cult. Welcome to adventure! It's easy enough to block users who provide information you don't want to hear, making for a optimizable experience. The search function allows you to specify how far away you'd like to find messages, from within a half mile to all the way around the world. It makes it easy to cutting through the noise when you're trying to find specifics. The only downside is the app's currently small user base, meaning if you're casting only a local net you'll probably run out of stuff to listen to very quickly. Of course, that can be easily fixed if everyone who reads this article picks up the app and leaves some messages. You don't even have to leave recommendations -- I don't. For example, this week I'm going to be driving from Atlanta, GA to Omaha, NB for a comedy festival. On my way I'll be leaving notes all around the country that have nothing to do with the businesses I pass by. They may be jokes, brief songs, or if I get really desperate, maybe a review of where I eat lunch, but my goal is less information sharing then pure fun. The idea of The MotorMouth excites me as a traveler; as I'm driving around bored out of my mind I may be able to discover a hidden message that I'd otherwise miss if I hadn't been literally in the right place at the right time. There are tweets you miss because you weren't checking your feed at the right time. I like knowing that as long as The MotorMouth is viable, anyone who checks in at a roadside dinosaur world attraction will get to hear me try to recreate every dinosaur noise I can think of. As useful as the app is, The MotorMouth is equally delightful for finding odd treasures as you travel, like the woman I discovered in a nearby state who only sings clips of gospel songs. If you're a traveler, I can't recommend The MotorMouth enough as a way to pass the time and share information. It's been interesting to learn what the people in my home town who use the app find important about Atlanta, and I can't wait to try it out in new cities around the country. I plan on trying it out at every dinosaur-themed attraction I pass by on my travels. You find The MotorMouth for free right now in the iTunes Store. Leaving and listening to messages is free, but you do need to register an account before they'll let you post. Join the odd audio scavenger hunt.
Start your own mosh pit with the Metalcore Breakdown Composer
Out in the sea of odd samplers and drum machines on the iOS platform there's one understandable blind spot for music apps; metalcore. Birthed out the hardcore punk and death metal scenes the sub-genre started promisingly before becoming incredibly repetitive. Depending on your tastes Metalcore Breakdown Composer is either a obnoxious parody of modern extreme music or a fun toy to pass time on your iOS device. Utilizing a soundboard of various drums, guitar tones, and vocals players can tap together breakdowns -- essentially the bridge of a metalcore song -- for your listening pleasure. Whether you're making fun of a friend whose a fan or you just want to create your own simple breakdowns this app is for you. Currently MBC lacks the ability to record or export the sounds you make which is the kind of oversight that keeps it from being easily recommended as a keeper. Still it's a funny idea that could provide the right open minded parent an afternoon full of bonding time with their metalhead child. You can watch Metalcore Breakdown Composer's delightfully surreal video below to get a taste of just how tongue in cheek the product in question actually is. You can pick up the Metalcore Breakdown Composer for free right now in the app store. Perhaps you can bring the whole family together by starting mosh pits of love in the living room.
Dark Shaman pull from anywhere
My Horde guild recently discovered something interesting about the Dark Shaman encounter, as you can see detailed in the video above. This interesting something is the fact that the Dark Shaman will, in fact, teleport to wherever you pull them from--including the roof of the Orgrimmar auction house. This could be a little challenging in a fight where positioning is actually quite important. Oops!
The Daily Grind: Do you still expect MMOs to be 'fun'?
Though the game is a bit out of our wheelhouse, Massively reader WNxArcticwolf tipped us off to a GDC talk this week about Assassin's Creed: Freedom Cry, in which the developers argued that games no longer have to be fun. Admittedly, the developers are were attempting to justify confronting players with hard choices and uncomfortable situations via the plot, but the brazenness of the statement struck me over here in MMOland too. How many MMOs actually promise us fun when they're rattling off their feature lists? They'll promise grinds and raids and PvP, but as players, we process those things as achievements and challenges, as activities that were satisfying to have done, not fun to do. In fact, fun is almost seen as a dirty word, something casuals might seek. Do you actually expect MMOs to be a fun experience, or are we playing for something else entirely? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
The 5 best pranks to play on anyone with an iPhone
Do you feel like having some fun at the expense of your iPhone-toting friends? There are a number of nasty things you can do to anyone with a mobile phone -- switching contact numbers, for example -- but there are a few special tricks you can pull on those with the iPhone, and here are the best of the best. Note: These tricks apply to iOS 7, so if your friend is still stuck on iOS 6 or earlier, you're out of luck. Auto incorrect This one has been around for a while, but it's still one of the most confusing for people who don't know about the iPhone's auto-shortcut feature. Grab the victims phone (preferably without them knowing) and head to the settings page. From here, go to "General" and then "Keyboard," and find the "Shortcuts" menu. Here you can manipulate your friend's text input to do pretty much whatever you want. You can set any single word to automatically change into another word or even an entire phrase. You can make some mild tweaks like changing "are" to correct to "our" and "there" to "they're," which will simply make your friend appear as though they never passed fifth grade English class, or you can get a bit more brutal... The old switcheroo This is one of the easiest to pull off and it takes just a few seconds. Under the Accessibility menu, invert the phone's colors and then back out to the home screen. Believe it or not, there are plenty of iPhone owners who don't even know that this feature exists, which will lead to a whole lot of confusion once they try to use their phone. Unclickable icons You're going to need at least a minute or two with the victim's phone for this, so make sure you won't get caught before you begin. Start by taking a screenshot of the user's home screen (home button + lock button). Then, hide all but one of the user's home page icons on another page or in a folder and tuck it away somewhere that it won't be seen unless searched for. Keep the top-left icon in place, or else the phone may push all the icons from the next page onto the home screen, which will ruin things. Now, set that home page screenshot as the home screen wallpaper. Ta-da! You've now made a home screen populated by unclickable icons! Note: If the user has the parallax 3D effect enabled, they might figure it out sooner than usual, but you should still get at least a few laughs out of it. The never-ending text This is a great trick you can play on an iPhone owner without ever needing to touch their smartphone. There's nothing that boosts an iPhone user's anticipation like the "your chat partner is typing" animation during an instant message conversation. The evil geniuses at Miscellaneous Mischief ripped that animation from the messaging app and created an animated gif out of it. Now you can send the image to your iPhone-owning friends and watch their frustration build as your "message" never comes through. Evil and easy; a perfect combination! Lock them in! This one requires access to the user's device and a few minutes of your time as well, but the results will definitely be worth it. First, go into the Accessibility menu and turn on Guided Access. Now go into whatever app you want to lock the victim into. Triple-click the home button to enable Guided Access, which will prevent the user from stopping the app or backing out to the home screen. The phone will prompt you for a passcode as well, so only you will be able to free your friend's phone from the app you have chosen. Want to really mess things up? Open a music app like Spotify, crank the volume all the way up, press play, then use Guided Access to block the areas of the screen that control the tunes. Now after you lock the app, there is no way to turn off the music. The phone won't respond to being put in silent mode or the volume controls on the side, and it also can't be turned off with the power button. Try this in a public place like a restaurant to really cause a scene. Or, you can just use the screen-blocking feature to write a cheeky message on the screen. [Header image credit: Siraf72]
The Summoner's Guidebook: My goals in League of Legends
Whenever I enter a League of Legends match, I have a few goals set in mind. Of course, winning is a goal, but that's not the only goal. My agenda tends to be a lot more long-term, relative to other LoL players. We've talked a lot about meta lately, and it tends to be a hot topic with Season 4's preseason patches shaking up the meta quite a bit. There are a lot of reasons to justify not playing meta. There are also a lot of reasons to take risky decisions that might not pan out.
Arcane Brilliance: Fun and frivolity for mages
Every other week, WoW Insider brings you Arcane Brilliance for arcane, fire and frost mages. Stacey Landry is the resident mage here, bender of space and time, conjurer of delicious confectioneries and expert at dressing well while setting things on fire. I know that some of you who read this column may not be full-time mages. Some of you may have mage alts. Some of you are warlocks - actually an alarming number of you are warlocks, I think that you secretly like us. That's okay, you could always make a mage and be eight billion times more awesome. We'll wait. That's not what I'm here to talk about today, though. I know that sometimes as a DPS player it can become easy to get caught up in numbers. Best in slot gear, logs, damage done - all of that. I'm not saying that doing damage isn't fun. It is ridiculous, enemy annihilating fun. But there's more to life as a mage than that. In the spirit of the holidays, I'd like to discuss some of those more lighthearted things. They should apply to long time mages and dabblers alike, unless otherwise noted.
Keezy updates allow for multiple soundboards, give users free Reggie Watts-made boards for fun
Keezy, the best free color-coded soundboard creator on iOS, has been updated with two much-needed additions that will bring even more joy and cheer to your life. For the first time, users can save and reload their soundboards, meaning you won't have to choose between recording new sounds and deleting your adorable cousins' clips from Thanksgiving. To celebrate this new addition, the update gifts you a few free demo boards created by comedian/beatbox Reggie Watts and Francis and the Lights. You don't even need to provide your own sounds anymore. Right out the box, you've got the ability to beatbox like Watts in the palm of your hand. Why are you not already downloading this app? Do you hate fun? The menu has also been updated to replace the text with new icons. It's a subtle change that is dramatically overshadowed by how much fun I've been having playing with the included soundboards today. Developer Elepath also announced in the notes of its iTunes update that it is aware its fans are eager for the ability to loop, share and export songs. This isn't a promise on its part, but at least the developer is listening. You can find the complete release notes below. Head over to iTunes to snag a download before these guys figure out they should be charging a dollar for this. As a treat, our friends REGGIE WATTS and FRANCIS AND THE LIGHTS made a few demo boards for you to play with! Tell us what you think! @keezy on twitter or keezy@elepath.com on email. Also new in 1.2: - Icons instead of text in the menu Things we know you want: * Looping * Sharing * Export a song * Bieber Happy Keezing! Pasquale and Jarod
Siri requests that make you want to fist-bump your iPhone
We love Siri. We love its constantly evolving snark and growing repertoire of silly responses. It's never the wrong time to highlight its interactions and introduce ones you may not yet be aware of. Today, we were in a Siri mood. Here are six fresh instances of Siri hilarity and utility. 6. Request Poetry Siri is the mistress of creativity, whether you ask it to tell you a story, sing you a song or recite poetry. As with all things Siri and silly, make sure you're persistent. Siri may try to blow you off a few times. If you keep asking, you'll eventually be rewarded by one of several poems in its repertoire. In fact, if you persist at this long enough, Siri will eventually reward you with some authentic material from Hitchhiker's. 5. Ask Siri to Read A Book Siri offers some pretty hilarious replies in response to any request for it to read books out loud. We're pretty sure this has to do with licensing agreements and issues with other providers like Audible, but Siri's responses are amusing in and of themselves. 4. Play a dice-based board game Siri recently added some game features that include dice rolls and picking numbers. Just ask it to "Roll the dice," and you'll get a new random result each time. You can also ask it to pick a random number, e.g., "Pick a number between 1 and 10." 3. Ask those life-affirming important questions It all comes down to the basics, and Siri's got you, ahem, covered. Not to mention... And... 2. Pass the time Siri is a surprisingly adaptable conversationalist when you ask it the right kind of question. Or even the wrong kind of question. When you've got nothing better to do, why not indulge in the "Guess What" game? 1. Establish your Geek Street Cred And at our No. 1 slot for this edition of Siri responses, we give you the following without any further editorial comment. Steven Sande and Erica Sadun have been working on the third edition of Talking to Siri, the book that covers all the ins and outs of everyone's favorite digital assistant.
Engadget's back to school guide 2013: fun stuff!
Welcome to Engadget's back to school guide! Today, we're talking fun stuff. Head to the back to school hub to see the rest of the product guides as we add them throughout the month. Be sure to keep checking back; in early September, we'll be giving away a ton of gear, including some of the picks in our guides. If we may paraphrase a tried-and-true saying, all work and no play makes one a very dull boy or girl. While laptops, tablets and smartphones are all essential pieces of study-time equipment, it's important to remember to cut loose and have a little fun every once in a while. To beat the midterm blues, check out top gadget picks below the break.
The Mog Log: Believing in Final Fantasy XIV
This week, I'm going to do something different. I'm going to talk about my wife. Lest anyone worry that this is the start of a Paul McCartney-esque slide into sappy sentimentality, there's good reason for this. Ms. Lady has been mentioned on previous occasions as a gaming partner and skilled roleplayer. She's not as into MMOs as I am, but she plays them a lot and she certainly knows what she likes and what she doesn't. And let me tell you, she didn't like Final Fantasy XIV. This is a point of view I hold against absolutely no one, but it sure as heck meant that she was not interested in the relaunch. She'd had enough of the game after the first couple of tries to break in. The relaunch had no hooks to pull her back in, no interesting features that stirred her interest, nothing but the promise of a game she'd already decided wasn't good enough to play. And that all changed.
