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TUAW Giveaway: 10 copies of Alarms.app!
We covered a neat new productivity application called Alarms last week. This week, we're excited to offer 10 licenses to our readers, and all you have to do is leave a comment for a chance to win one! Tell us how Alarms would help you be more productive, or maybe what you're currently using to meet the same demands. If you missed the coverage and explanation last week, be sure to check out Alarms helps with 'Productive Procrastination,' and then head to the Alarms website for more details. Here are the rules and a link to the legal statement: Open to legal US residents of the 50 United States and the District of Columbia who are 18 and older. To enter leave a comment about how Alarms would help your productivity. The comment must be left before Friday, October 8, 11:59PM Eastern Daylight Time. You may enter only once. Ten winners will be selected in a random drawing. Prize: Alarms full license (US$15 value) Click Here for complete Official Rules. Good Luck!
oStylus capacitive pen review
Like it or not, the capacitive touchscreen just isn't cut out for use with a stylus. We've seen foam-tipped pens and meat-injected tubes have a go at it, but we've yet to really find an option that we were truly satisfied with. It's not hard to imagine why having a legitimate capacitive stylus would be beneficial for creative types; doodling on a tablet, a Magic Trackpad or a mobile device (just to name a few) would be killer if we had a reliable tool to doodle with. Enter the oStylus, a limited run (for now) product that aims to shift the paradigm and make drawing on capacitive touchpanels just as easy as drawing on resistive ones. Creator Andrew Goss was kind enough to send us what appears to be the sixth finalized unit from the production line, and we were able to test it on the iPad, Apple's Magic Trackpad and an iPhone. Read on if you're interested in our two pennies. %Gallery-103981%
HTC HD7 schematic illustrates our Windows Phone 7 future
First thing's first: there's no way to verify that the above image is a legitimate HTC doc. The tipster seems reliable, having provided WMPoweruser with the HTC Mozart video yesterday, but until we witness Peter Chou holding the damn thing up in front of an audience struggling to get a WiFi signal, we'll remain cautious. Anyhow, what we're looking at above is the claimed first visual of that ephemeral HD7 from HTC, replete with a dedicated camera button and what looks like a dual-LED flash, along with a MicroUSB data/power port and headphone jack at the bottom (identical to the HD2 and Desire HD). It's reassuring to see much of the glorious HD2 heritage being carried over into this successor atop HTC's Windows phone line, though if you're not all that keen on jumping on what looks like yet another superpowered 4.3-inch slate, there's always the rumored Trophy handset as well.
oStylus capacitive pen is worthy of an oFace (video)
It's no coincidence that the stylus above looks like a precision instrument, it is. The oStyle was designed and hand crafted by Andrew Goss, a jeweler, for drawing on large capacitive touchscreens like, oh say, the JooJoo. While the benefit of the ringed-shape stylus over an opaque finger, foam-tipped pen, or meat-injected tube might not be immediately obvious, the video embedded after the break is convincing enough. Sorry no price or availability yet, all we know is that a limited production run is planned.
BMW Megacity EV gets sketched out in more detail
Admit it, you've been desperately refreshing this page in the simple hope of learning more about BMW's first all-electric vehicle. Originally announced with nary a visual clue to its appearance, the Megacity has now been fleshed out in the above futuristic sketch, which gives us an inkling of the car's design direction. Don't expect it to have too much bearing on the final product, though -- we do anticipate the real deal to have, y'know, tyres. BMW is also putting together an all-new chassis specifically for this battery-powered city transporter, and has already begun crash-testing the carbon fiber-equipped shells. In spite of its compact dimensions, the Megacity is being described as a "premium sustainability" vehicle, meaning its 2013 launch will be relevant to a somewhat select group of people.
Pressure-sensitive drawing headed to iPad in free software library (video)
"The iPad's IPS panel is pressure-sensitive, you say?" No, that's not quite right, but with some clever software and a special capacitive stylus, the folks at Ten One Design built a convincing proof of concept anyhow. While we're not quite sure how it works, the current theory states that the soft tip of the stylus expands like a brush when you press it down, generating a "larger press" that can be detected by the hooks in Ten One's code -- which they soon plan to share as a free software library (assuming Apple allows) with developers around the world. See it in action in a video after the break, and if you're feeling your inner Rorschach today, let us know what you see in the above drawing.
Pressure-sensitive drawing on the iPad
Ten One Design has made a reputation for themselves by providing tools and technology to turn touch-sensitive surfaces into drawing tablet style interfaces. They sell a Pogo Stylus that works along with the capacitive touchscreen of the iPhone to make it an even better tool for artists. And in the video above, they're showing off a tech demo that seems to have a modified version of the Pogo Stylus that makes pressure-sensitive drawing possible on Apple's iPad. Unfortunately, Ten One doesn't have software to sell yet; the tech above uses a private API call, which means it couldn't be approved on the App Store. As far as I can guess, they're somehow passing pressure information back through the stylus to the iPad, since the iPad's screen itself isn't pressure sensitive at all. No matter how they're doing it, though, it's cool. I don't think this is exactly what Jobs expects the iPad to be used for, so it's not likely that we'll see official pressure sensitivity on an iOS device very soon. But it's cool to see a video like this that shows off the potential. Update: As a few of our observant commenters noted, there's no Bluetooth call here -- the private API call is just tracking the size of the touch on the iPad's screen -- bigger touch means more pressure and a wider stroke. That does seem like something Apple could eventually implement, so hopefully they will make that official in the future.
Holiday weekend giveaway: Type Drawing for iPad
There's a lot of great drawing apps for the iPad out there, but Type Drawing puts a unique spin on things. With Type Drawing, you can sketch anything your mind can conceive of, but your brush strokes are made up of words instead of lines. I've been playing around with the app for a while now, and it's really quite fun. Enter the word or phrase you want to draw with, choose the font and color, and then sketch away! There's even a Flickr group where you can show of your Type Drawing skills (some drawings are very impressive). Type Drawing is the brain child of Hansol Huh and sells on the App Store for the low price of $2.99, but we've got 10 copies to give away to TUAW readers. To enter the giveaway, simply leave a comment on this post. Ten people will be chosen at random (sorry, readers outside the US; app promo codes are geographically constrained). Good luck everyone! Open to legal US residents of the 50 United States and the District of Columbia. To enter leave a comment on this post. The comment must be left before Wednesday June 2, 11:59PM Eastern Daylight Time. You may enter only once. Ten winners will be selected in a random drawing. Prize: One (1) promo code for Type Drawing for iPad per winner. Retail value $2.99. Click here for complete official rules. Update: Replaced original image with current Type Drawing icon.
Found Footage: Creating manga on the iPad
In the video above, artist Yoshitoshi Abe uses LiveSketch HD [$0.99] to sketch one of his characters named Ain. Yoshitoshi's normal medium is pencil and paper, but you can see that the detail he achieves in the sketch on the iPad is almost in parity with his pencil sketches. What's even more impressive is that he does the sketch in under four minutes and uses only one hand. As you can see in the video, his other hand is busy holding his iPhone 3GS, which he is using to record his creation. Ah, when talent and technology meet. [via ZanyPickle]
Wacom Cintiq 21UX reverently unboxed by honest-to-goodness digital artist
Though the hive mind of Engadget has drawn the occasional stick figure, we're not exactly what you'd call artists -- and as such, our prior attempts to describe the $1,999 Wacom Cintiq 21UX pen display have been limited to fawning over its gorgeous pressure-sensitive screen and figuring how many organs we'd need to harvest to afford one. However, a man named Christopher Miles most certainly can draw -- you'll find his resume and portfolio at the source link -- and he unabashedly calls the tablet display "a digital artist's wet dream." Christopher gave the new Cintiq a thorough unboxing and even created a sample illustration with the device, the images from which you can find immediately below. Just be sure to remove your wallet and all easily pawned items from your general vicinity before viewing. Trust us, it's for your own good. %Gallery-90246% [Thanks, Christopher]
Layers released for iPad
When I was at the Apple Store on Tuesday test driving an iPad, the girl next to me with her parents was asking about drawing programs she could use. I immediately suggested Layers to them, which we initially reviewed last summer. There are several excellent drawing programs for the iPhone, but Layers was always my favorite and I'm glad to see that it's now on the iPad. Layers for iPad was released on April 5, and is currently on sale for $2.99USD. The normal price will be $6.99USD. Even if you don't have an iPad, this is a fantastic deal and if you plan on getting one, I'd snag the program now and keep it updated for when you do take the plunge. For an initial look at the app, check out the review over at MacStories.
iPad apps: defining experiences from the first wave
There are now over 1,348 approved apps for the iPad. That's on top of the 150,000 iPad-compatible iPhone programs already available in the App Store. When Apple's tablet PC launches, just hours from now, it will have a software library greater than that of any handheld in history -- not counting the occasional UMPC. That said, the vast majority of even those 1,348 iPad apps are not original. They were designed for the iPhone, a device with a comparatively pokey processor and a tiny screen, and most have just been tweaked slightly, upped in price and given an "HD" suffix -- as if that somehow justified the increased cost. Besides, we've seen the amazing potential programs have on iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Windows Mobile and webOS when given access to a touchscreen, always-on data connection, GPS, cloud storage and WiFi -- but where are the apps that truly define iPad? What will take advantage of its extra headroom, new UI paradigms and multitouch real estate? Caught between netbook and smartphone, what does the iPad do that the iPhone cannot? After spending hours digging through the web and new iPad section of the App Store, we believe we have a number of reasonably compelling answers. Update: Now includes Wormhole Remote, TweetDeck, SkyGrid, Touchgrind HD, GoToMeeting, SplitBrowser, iDisplay, Geometry Wars and Drawing Pad.
Aikon 2 robot sketches the human face, uses its talent to meet girls
Yes, that's exactly what it looks like -- a robot that can look at a human face and make a pretty reasonable sketch of it. Featured at London's Kinetica art fair last week, the Aikon 2 project boasts an "inexpensive" robot arm and software developed by a research team at Goldsmiths University of London. As you might have guessed, building a device with rudimentary artistic ability is no mean feat -- leading the developers to try and understand and simulate the processes by which artists sketch the human face, including: visual perception of the subject and the sketch, drawing gestures, cognitive activity, reasoning, and the influence of training. The project's website emphasizes that "due to knowledge and technological limitations the implementation of each process will remain coarse and approximate." In other words, the robot "is expected to draw in its own style." Which is, quite frankly, better than we can do. We look forward to seeing these things in the cafes of the future, where robots not only fetch us drinks but chat up girls with offers to draw their portraits. Video after the break.
Wacom Intuos4 succumbs to peer pressure, goes wireless
Okay, so maybe there's not an overwhelming group of "peers" for Wacom's Intuos4 graphics tablet, but we're still kind of saddened to see a device that hardly seems to require wirelessness donning a Bluetooth connectivity option and following the wireless peripherals crowd. Ah well, guess we can't grumble too much about choice, so if you have some freaky workplace scenarios that require your tablet to be untethered (to up to 10 meters), you should be circling the latter part of March and expecting to pay around $400 for the privilege, or about $50 more than the wired Medium tablet. No luck if you were after the other sizes, unfortunately -- you'll just have to learn to love that wire.
'Let's Draw,' says Majesco to Nintendo DS owners
Majesco's Let's Draw is ridiculously cute. Chances are it won't be as cute in untrained hands, but that's no reason not to try! Let's Draw combines minigames with Drawn to Life–style customization -- it's part drawing book, part game -- and adorability varies (based on the player's skill). Kids (and yes, this is for kids) draw and color images as prompted by the game, which are then animated in minigames like Whack-a-Mole and Air Hockey. Let's Draw also includes simple drawing lessons, based on a Japanese drawing book series. Drawn to Life was a big success for THQ -- we'll see how this younger take on the idea works out for a somewhat bruised and beaten Majesco when the game releases this March for $19.99. %Gallery-83630%
Cartoon Creator: a great introduction to animation in an app
Remember flip books? Get a stack of paper and draw something on the first page. On the next page, draw just about the same thing moved slightly, repeat until you run out of paper. Staple the pile together, flip through the pages and if you did it right, your drawings move like an animated cartoon. That, in a few words, is the basis of movement in all animation and motion pictures. When you go to the movies, the projector displays 24 frames per second giving the illusion of movement.Flip books used to come in Cracker Jack boxes, be sold in stores, and steal hundreds of hours of kids lives who were taken with the idea and who made lots and lots of them. I was one of those kids.Well, there's an app for that. Cartoon Creator [iTunes link] is a fun app that makes flip books on your iPhone or iPod touch running OS 3.0 or later. Choose a pen and a color and go to work. Draw something on page, click the empty face button and an overlay drops over your first page allowing you to see what you did but also letting you draw a slightly moved version. Wash, rinse and repeat until you have a full animation that will play back at any speed you determine. The app has some very nice options, like three different pens, each with a thinner or thicker line, lots of colors to choose from, and a bunch of cartoonish sounds that you can attribute to any page. If you are creating an animation of a brick being thrown through a window, why not assign a glass breaking sound to the page where the brick hits the glass? In addition, and this is something near and dear to my heart, it does anaglyph 3D, (red and cyan) with the appropriate glasses. This works remarkably well. The app gives you the ability to draw on three planes. Along with regular drawing that appears on the plane of the screen, you can draw behind the screen and in front of the screen as well. After digging out my anaglyph glasses, I found this to be some of the best anaglyph 3D I remember seeing. The image is sharp, clear and very dimensional.This is a really nice app, and a great introduction to animation and 3D. It would be perfect for kids. My flip book period took most of my ninth year. It would also be great if you can actually draw. I have absolutely no talent in this area.When you run the app, you are presented with a an uninviting lined screen titled 'Cartoons.' Big detriment there, but the web site provides full instructions on how to use the app. This is a problem I've seen with many apps. Load it and then what? At the very least having a link to the site would be a help.Another problem with the app is that you can't delete anything but a particular page. If you are a screw-up like me and want to delete an entire animation, you can't. Any time you start an animation, an entry named Untitled appears and you can't get rid of it. That may not seem like much of an oversight to someone who can draw, but it's me reviewing this app and a delete option would get more use than anything else. These two slights are minor and I'm sure can, and hopefully will, be fixed in a an update. As it stands now, it's a fun app, does great 3D, can waste countless hours and might even teach kids about animation. At $.99US it's worth the money and at the same time you'll get to feel good about yourself when you think of all the trees you're saving.
First Look: Layers for iPhone, natural media painting app
The very talented Ben Gotow has just released a brand new iPhone app called Layers, his third now after Mathomatic and NetSketch (iTunes links). Layers, not to be confused with the innovative screen capture application on the Mac desktop, is a natural media painting app for the iPhone. Stating the obvious, it incorporates Photoshop-like layers, as well as a variety of brush and color selection options, panning, zooming and the ability to export your masterpieces as JPG or Photoshop PSD files (layers included). I gave it a run-through and am extremely impressed with the implementation. I am no painter, a fact hinted at by my not posting any screenshots of my own work. However, I'm adept enough with digital art to recognize that this is a very intuitive interface. Manipulating layers is done in a side view with layer previews, allowing a tap-and-drag re-ordering and one-tap addition and subtraction of layers. I especially appreciate the 30 levels of undo history, making it simple to backtrack errant swipes. The application allows for sophisticated artistic expression beyond mere "finger painting," and, with a little practice, you can create some complex imagery. The layering functionality even allows for photo compositing, using multiple layers with photos and the eraser tool to remove portions of the top layers. This is more in line with my personal skill set, so I had some fun with this. Tight erasing can be a little tricky when you have big fingers which are hard to see around, but the undo functionality and some dedication make it perfectly feasible.
Genius EasyPen and MousePen graphics tablets play on both sides of the fence
Genius, a regular purveyor of cheap and cheerful technology, has today announced a pair of "dual platform" tablets that play nice with both Windows and Mac OS. The EasyPen i405 comes with 28 programmable hot keys, a software bundle, 4 x 5.5-inches of real estate and a $79 price tag. This is trumped by the MousePen i608, which throws in an optical mouse, a 6 x 8-inches working area and -- best of all -- one more hot key to program. Bargain hunters out there might want to prick up their ears, as the MousePen is already available at Amazon and Newegg at prices south of $60, far below its suggested retail price of one Benjamin -- hey, it's no Wacom, but it certainly won't dent the wallet too bad.
Sony Ericsson XPERIA X2 drawings tell the tale from every angle
We've already seen Sony Ericsson's supposed next-gen Windows Mobile device in the wild a couple times, but there's one way we haven't seen it yet: as a sketch. Danish site mobil.nu appears to have stumbled upon engineering drawings that detail the XPERIA X2 from every conceivable angle, showing that it faithfully carries over the shapely slider curve made famous by its predecessor; the mesh on either end is an interesting design detail, too, but otherwise, nothing new has really been revealed here. If anyone notices a microprint release date buried somewhere in these lovely pictures, though, do let us know, alright?[Via mobile-review]
World of WarCrafts: Wowatar fills in the lines
World of WarCrafts spotlights art and creativity by WoW players, including fan art, cooking, comics, cosplay, music and fan fiction. Show us how you express yourself by contacting our tips line (attention: World of WarCrafts) -- not-for-profit work only, please.Getting started can be the most difficult step for WoW newbies and WoW "WarCrafters" alike. Showing your artwork to other people – or even having the gumption to create any in the first place – can be intimidating stuff. Discovering someone who's willing to show you how it's done or even share his creative process represents a major inspirational coup. Swedish WoW player Jonas at wowatar.com is one of those creative wellsprings. He's created a small drawing site filled with WoW-related nuggets that inspire, instruct and delight.
