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Glitch assets freely available to public
Those who have mourned the closure of the 2-D browser sandbox Glitch now have a new way to revel in the memories: all of the game's art and animation assets. Tiny Speck has released everything into the public domain, so instead of only owning just a hardcover book of Glitch's art, fans can actually get their hands on the art and use it for whatever they want. What's included? Everything really, even the kitchen sink! President Stewart Butterfield said, "The team at Tiny Speck put years of work into the art for Glitch: many thousands of hours by a hugely talented team [spent] on illustration, animation, character designs, effects, avatar systems and environmental. The game didn't make it, but [we] couldn't stand the thought of all of that creative work shuttered away forever. Making it freely available to all as a public good is a worthy legacy for the project. We hope it will be useful for other creative projects, from student and artistic work to unfettered commercial use." [Source: Tiny Speck press release]
YouTube wants more videos to have background music, adds audio editor
Need something to fill in the awkward silence between your vlog's unscripted stuttering? YouTube's got your back. In yet another attempt to make your crummy videos just a little better, the streaming outfit has revamped its audio editing suite, giving users access to over 150,000 tracks and a simple sound mixer, to boot. Sure, YouTube's tracks may not be as catchy as your favorite Flaming Lips single, but at least you won't have to worry about copyright infringement. Check out YouTube's quick demo of the feature after the break.
Supreme Court rules public domain isn't permanent, says Congress can re-copyright some international works (update)
If you've been enjoying the fireworks over PIPA and SOPA these past weeks, get ready for more intellectual property ugliness. The US Supreme Court handed down a decision in Golan v. Holder Wednesday granting Congress the power to restore copyright claims on works that had entered the public domain. The six to two decision (with only the conservative Samuel Alito and liberal Stephen Breyer dissenting) was issued primarily with an eye towards bringing the country in line with an international treaty known as the Berne Convention. The plaintiffs in the case included orchestra conductors, educators, performers and archivists who rely on public domain works such as Fritz Lang's Metropolis and compositions from Igor Stravinsky. Many orchestras, including that of lead plaintiff Lawrence Golan, will now be forced to stop performing works that are a regular part of their repertoire due to licensing fees. Hit up the more coverage link for the complete (PDF) decision.Update: To be clear, this decision upheld a statute granting copyright protection to a bundle of international works that were placed in the public domain (and therefore denied copyright protection) under previous US laws.
Sony and Library of Congress launch streaming National Jukebox, ready to DJ at your local speakeasy
Who's better, Sammy Hagar or The Great Caruso? We know you have every track the Red Rocker ever laid down, but if you haven't upgraded your gramophones of the great Italian tenor, today is the first day of the rest of your life. The Library of Congress, working with Sony, now streams a collection of 10,000 historical recordings, including Caruso and other pre-1925 greats. This "National Jukebox" is a bit of a hodge-podge, including everything from early jazz to poetry to yodeling, but digging through the archive is half the fun. But while access to this material is great for sound preservationists, commenters on BoingBoing point out that it's not truly public domain work: thanks to our spaghetti-tangle of copyright arcana, Sony still owns the rights. It's allowing users to stream but not download, and technically could revoke its gratis license at any time. So get your Caruso fix while you can.
The Noun Project: public domain pictograms for designers, the illiterate
OK, this might not be much to look at -- a page full of Dingbats, essentially -- but the premise behind the Noun Project is sound and, in this increasingly complex world, important: by creating a visual collection of downloadable public domain symbols representing things like escalators, fast food, and customs checkpoints, the website hopes to promote a visual language "that can be understood by all cultures and people." And since we're sticklers for good, clean design, projects like this are especially dear to us. Hit up the source link to see for yourself.
AutoSmiley uses the iSight to turn your face into an emoticon
This one's a little silly but I still really like it -- AutoSmiley is a public domain app that runs in the background while you work, quietly monitoring your iSight's camera input. Whenever it detects a smiling face on the camera (so any time you smile while working), it will send a ":)" emoticon to the keyboard. It's probably not quite practical, as there are a lot of times when you might smile but don't want to actually send an emoticon. I do like the idea that it turns emoticons into real expressions of emotion. When you actually see a ":)" or an "lol" in someone's IM or email, you never really know if they've actually smiled or laughed at what you've typed earlier, and a program like this puts a little more power behind the colon and parenthesis. As the app's description says, using it can go a little farther towards "enforcing honesty in your online communication." The app is a free download for US, UK, and NL keyboards on the Mac. The app was featured on Wednesday's TUAW TV Live, which you can watch to see AutoSmiley in action.
100 sci-fi stories in your pocket
If you're an unabashed science fiction fan it's probably worth taking a look at 100 SciFi Stories for your iPhone or iPod touch. The app is US$0.99. All the stories are in the public domain, and many are true classics. Other selections are less well-known, but worth a read. You can adjust the text size, and when you relaunch the app, it picks up where you left off. Books you've already started are also marked on the contents page. The developer claims future updates will include more books at no additional cost. You can scroll the pages continuously, or page by page. The app includes authors like H.G. Wells (of course) and S.P. Meek, George Griffith, Ray Cummings, Edgar Rice Burroughs and many others. Are there any downsides? A few. When the app first came up I thought it had frozen at the splash screen, but I had to touch on the word 'stories' to actually get to the contents. I think the app should just go directly to the contents page. I'd like to get the text size even bigger, and I'd like to see a landscape mode for reading. I couldn't find a complete list of all the titles included, which I think is a rather big omission. If you want to give the app a try there is a free 'lite' version with 7 stories. It will give you an idea how the app behaves. I think 100 SciFi Stories is reasonably priced and could be nice on an overnight or even a long trip. All these books can be found online and downloaded for free, but it's nice to have them grouped together in one app. %Gallery-87387%
Movies on your iPhone embedded in an app
I like a good movie as much as the next person, so it was with some interest I took a look at a movie app a reader suggested to us. It is a movie called 'The Invaders' and you purchase the app for U.S. $0.99 [iTunes link] and then play it all you want. For a minute I thought it might be the sixties TV series with Roy Thinnes, but no such luck. In fact, 'The Invaders' is a 1912 public domain silent western about Indians attacking an Army fort. You buy the app, download the 150 MB file to your iPhone or iPod touch, and watch the movie. Then I guess you throw it away, because it is not material that stands up to repeat viewings. The developers have a bunch of other public domain titles in their Cinema Classics series, like 'Night of The Living Dead', but you can download or view most of these titles for free from the web anytime you want. You can also access them from the Internet Archive and watch them on your iPhone or iPod touch with Safari. At last count Night of The Living Dead was available on DVD from 23 firms, and you could view it for free on Google Video or YouTube. It's one of those films that inadvertently slipped into the public domain, leaving the creators with a lot of remorse and no money. The same firm, LOL Software has dozens of iPhone apps, many that just collect news feeds from other sources and put them into an iPhone framework. LOL indeed. Yawn.
Sony brings over a million Google Books to the Reader
Cool move by Sony to bolster the number of titles in its Reader ebook store -- it's linked up with Google to provide over a million free public domain works from Google Books, just like those fun folks at Barnes and Noble. The books are in the EPUB format and will work with the PRS-505 or the PRS-700 in the US only for now -- different countries have different copyright terms, so we'd imagine the lawyers are busy sorting it all out. Sure, none of this will do much to shake the Kindle's market- and mindshare, but at least Sony won't be deleting this stuff off your device without your permission, right?[Thanks, Tom]
Free access to 1800 audiobooks for iPhone
Your iPhone/iPod touch listening options just got a lot larger. Audiobooks, [App Store] a free app, gives you a large catalog of public domain classic works from Dickens to Verne for your listening pleasure. The books come from the LibriVox library, a non-profit project that has volunteers read the books and then releases the free recordings. The app is ad-supported, but the ads are not obtrusive in my view. The books I listened to were competently read. Downloading was quick over WiFi, quite a bit slower over 3G, but usable.(Mea culpa. Books can be downloaded over WiFi only. I confused this with another e-book app I am reviewing.) You can start listening while the book is completing the download, which is a plus. Downsides are that every chapter starts with disclaimers about the book being in the public domain, which kind of breaks the mood. The search function works well, but would be better if you could search by genre. There is a nice surprise me button, which gives you a book at random, but in practice that isn't really that helpful. The developer of this app also sells audiobooks at the iTunes Store, which we have reviewed. These audiobooks show the text synced to the audio, but I do not find that a compelling feature. I think the new app is the way to go. Here are a few screen grabs: %Gallery-64181%
Letting the iPhone read to you
With apologies to Steve Jobs, who pretty much implied reading was dead, there are more and more applications coming to the iPhone/iPod touch to allow people to do just that -- read books.Today, Traveling Classics has released several public domain titles that you download as applications. A voice reads the book to you while the text stays in sync. The books are narrated by volunteer readers from the Librivox Project, who record the complete text and release their narration into the public domain. It is a bit like open source for books.Among the titles are: (click on them for their App Store links)* Treasure Island * Art of War * The Curious Case of Benjamin Button* Adventures of Huckleberry Finn * The Tell-Tale Heart* The Adventures of Tom Sawyer* The Gospel of John * Pride and PrejudiceAll the books are US $0.99 until February 20th, then they are all $1.99.The Gospel of John is free. I tried two of the books, The Art of War, and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Both presentations sounded professional. The text did scroll along with the spoken words. You could exit the book, and when re-starting you are given the option to resume where you left off. That worked well. Audio quality was quite good on headphones, and clear enough through the iPhone speaker, but I don't think that is the preferred way to listen.These books compare with other Audio Books available from the App Store, and are certainly cheaper than the same titles from Audibile.com, the iTunes Store or Amazon. On the other hand, those titles from other sources can be played back through a car audio system with an iPod adapter, or burned to a CD, where with the self contained books from Traveling Classics, you'd have to use the headphone jack to get access to the sound. Also, you can get current books from Audibile.com, but the Traveling Classics are just that -- Classics in the public domain. There are other versions of almost all these books. There is, for example, a free version of The Art of War on the iTunes store, but it is text only, no narrator.The Traveling Classics are a nice variation of the standard audio book that people started buying on cassettes years ago, then on CD, and now by downloading them from the Internet. This latest option will appeal to some, but many readers will stick with something they can download and use with other media players.For those of us who like books, despite what Steve Jobs thinks about the market for them, having more to read, and more ways to read, can only be a good thing.
Old horror films and books: They won't stay dead!
Lest you forget the upcoming All Hallows' Eve holiday, The Moon Books Project has been posting horror-themed content almost every day, stacking its shelves with DS-compatible novels and movies. They're downloadable for free and completely legal, so you won't have to fear any threatening "I Know What You Downloaded Last Night" letters from the MPAA bogeymen. Already, the site has put up over a dozen classics like Nosferatu and Fall of the House of Usher. Even if you don't have the homebrew hardware and software (Moonshell) needed to view the files on your DS, you can still scare yourselves silly with iPod/PSP-formatted and streaming versions of Night of the Living Dead.
