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Adobe previews expanded controls for Photoshop's Content-Aware Fill
Adobe's next Photoshop release will give users more control over the Content-Aware Fill feature. If you've used the tool, you know that it lets you remove objects from a photo -- like people, signs or equipment. Photoshop then generates pixels to fill in the blanks. Now, Photoshop will let you determine which pixels it uses to fill the voids. Adobe released a sneak preview today.
WhoSampled's mobile app is Shazam for song samples
If you're a music junkie (especially in the electronic realm), there's a good chance that you've used WhoSampled to identify song samples, covers or remixes. So far, though, you've had to know the name of the song you're looking for to start your journey -- what if you hear an interesting sample in a song on the radio? You're in luck after today. WhoSampled has introduced Shazam-style music recognition to its Android and iOS apps, helping you identify both the song you're listening to and (if it's in the company's database) discover its connections. Are you convinced a strange song is using the Amen Break? You can find out just by putting your phone within listening range.
Vine's soundboard lets you add audio memes to your loops
Vine is a six-second comedy echo chamber. As soon as someone creates a meme-worthy joke, the punch line phrase, sound effect or editing technique spreads like wildfire. Usually it's mere imitation, but sometimes Viners will remix the snippet into new, equally creative loops. To support this trend, Vine has added a "soundboard" feature that makes it easy for iOS users to import popular and recognizable clips. "LeBron James," "why you always lyin" and "freshavocado" -- to add these and others, just hit the soundwave icon after recording a new video. You'll then have access to the new library, which the company says will be updated over time.
De La Soul's samples are why its classic albums stay offline
Have you wondered why De La Soul is more than happy to offer its newer albums online, but has had so much trouble getting its classics (Stakes Is High and earlier) online that it gave them away at one point? You now have a good, if imperfect, explanation. Their label, Warner Music Group, tells the New York Times that its staff "don't believe it is possible" to clear all the samples in early tracks for digital music services. It doesn't explain why those samples are being held back, but the group's current sample clearance agent suspects that many of those samples may have been cleared improperly, sometimes through informal agreements. It's also possible that many of the sample deals didn't account for non-physical releases, so Warner might have to start from scratch.
Two-player synthesizer looks just as wild as it sounds
Noodling on a synthesizer is normally a solo affair, but Ben Bengler and Fiore Martin have found a way to spice things up. Their Collidoscope lets two musicians play in tandem thanks to the combination of twin keyboards and a clever sample-grabbing mechanism: all you have do is record something and use a hybrid knob/slider to determine what you're sampling. It looks cool (somewhat like a musical, multiplayer Pong), but the big deal is that dueling artists can quickly create a track without breaking their flow. Perfect for live sets, we'd say. The team isn't selling the Collidoscope right now, but there are hints that you'll one day get to buy this competitive composition tool.
Western Digital builds 5mm-thick hybrid hard drive, Ultrabook makers sign on early
Those 7mm-thick hard drives you've seen in some Ultrabooks are already looking a tad on the chunky side. Western Digital has started producing sample versions of a hybrid hard drive (you're not yet looking at it here) that measures just 5mm (0.2in) tall, even as it crams in both flash and a 500GB main disk. If you think the slimmer drive is just the ticket for a best-of-all-worlds laptop that's both fast and capacious, you're not alone: Acer and ASUS have mentioned their collaboration in the same breath, which may be a strong clue as to where future Aspires and Zenbooks are going. The remaining question is when they arrive. Sampling isn't the same as mass production, which could leave us with months to go before the 5mm drive lands in future extra-skinny PCs.
Native Instruments Traktor Kontrol F1 review
What is a DJ? Everyone who considers him or herself one can probably give you a unique answer. Is everyone with a music collection and a sense for good timing a DJ, or does their music collection have to exceed a certain number of gigabytes or slabs of vinyl to be in the club (no pun intended)? Audio playback devices are certainly getting more plentiful and powerful on a large scale; anyone who's played with an iOS DJ app can tell you that. In the deeper end of the DJ pool, things aren't expanding at such a frantic pace. But every once in a while a new toy crops up that adds depth and breadth to the way music nerds play back music. Native Instruments' just-released Traktor Kontrol F1 is a blinking slab of rainbow-tinged hardware with an intense devotion to manipulating samples. While boxes from Roland and Akai have been defining genres for decades, this 16-pad add-on takes the sampling game to a new arena. Will DJ's want it? We feel it's safe to say they will. At $279, should they buy it? That question's a little more complicated.%Gallery-156497%
Akai makes intentions clear with MPC Renaissance (video)
While the majority of technology execs are packing their cases for Vegas, for some it's all about Anaheim. Akai is clearly ramping up its NAMM campaign, outing the latest in its legendary MPC series: the Renaissance. While the new boy is no dumb controller -- it packs a full audio interface, USB hub and lots of I/O -- for the first time the MPC gets dedicated external software. Sound familiar? Well yes, it's no doubt a direct response to the popular Maschine hardware / software combo from Native Instruments, but Akai isn't just playing catch-up here. The new hardware includes a "vintage" mode that recreates some of that legendary MPC3000/60 crunch, and the standalone software comes with a massive sound library, instant VST mapping (so you can work with all your third-party synths) as well as the option to run in VST / AU / RTAS mode itself. If you're worried about the possible implications of a "tethered" MPC, take a peek at the promo video over the jump, which should soon allay your fears.
NVIDIA announces quad-core Kal-El SOC, promises it in tablets by August (video)
So it turns out that NVIDIA roadmap we saw last month was as true and pure as driven snow. The barely conceivable quad-core Tegra chip that it listed has now been made official by none other than NVIDIA itself, with the company also informing us that the new silicon is already sampling out to prospective clients. Known as Kal-El internally, this will most likely turn into NVIDIA's Tegra 3 as and when it's ready to enter the consumer market. Tonight NVIDIA whetted our appetite for what's to come with a demo that can most fittingly be described as an exhibition of unadulterated computational muscle. A 2560 x 1440 stream was being decoded on a developmental device, scaled down to that slate's native 1366 x 768 resolution, and additionally displayed on a connected 30-inch, 2560 x 1600 monitor. That entire voluminous workload was being handled in real time by Kal-El and we saw no signs of it struggling. By NVIDIA's own estimation, the quad-core newbie provides roughly double the processing power of Tegra 2 and triple the graphics-crunching prowess. In the second demonstration of the evening, we saw an instance of Great Battles Medieval -- ran at 720p with 650 enemy soldiers on the field -- on both a Tegra 2 and a Kal-El platform, which showed the baby superhero handily dusting its still very new brethren. This was in large part down to the full dozen GPU cores contained within Kal-El, though before you freak out about battery-draining insanity, NVIDIA claims things are much, much more efficient as well -- up to 12 hours of HD video playback are promised under the right circumstances. It's a big fat wedge of awesome boasts we've heard from the GeForce maker today, however the company's given us a schedule to hold it to as well. The "August timeframe" is when the quad-core Kal-El is expected to land in tablets, while smartphones will have to wait until the holiday season to benefit from what's likely to be a slightly downgraded variant. Skip past the break to eye the future Tegra roadmap for the next few years plus video of the wildly impressive demos we were witness to. %Gallery-116789%
European Union's 'One charger for all' starts sampling, coming this year
It was way back in summer of 2009 that Nokia, Apple, RIM, and the rest of the mobile world agreed to make micro-USB the connector around which all future European chargers would be built. Since then, most of those companies have transitioned their hardware to micro-USB without further prompting, but the European Union is still pushing ahead with a universally compatible charger standard to make sure everything is nice and harmonized. The details of what's expected of these chargers were published in December and now the first samples of the new hardware have been produced. The EU expects all manufacturers to have chargers adhering to the new guidelines by the end of 2011 -- and if you're wondering about how Apple, one of the signatories to this agreement, will handle it, there's a note to say that adapters will be allowed on phones without a micro-USB port. Full press release after the break.
Qualcomm: 1.5GHz dual-core Snapdragon devices to arrive at end of 2011, 1.2GHz in Q1
Bad news: Qualcomm's just informed us that while it's still on track to ship the juicy 1.5GHz dual-core QSD8672 Snapdragon in Q4 this year, the end-user devices aren't expected to hit the market until the end of 2011 -- potentially almost a whole year later than its previous "early next year" or "by Christmas" prediction. What a shame. On a slightly more positive beat, though, the lesser 1.2GHz dual-core MSM8x60 chipset should be heading towards consumers early next year. Alas, this won't change the fact that we'll still need something to fill the void until 2011 -- Windows Phone 7, we're looking at you.
Qualcomm to ship 1.5GHz QSD8672 Snapdragon processor in Q4
And you thought a dual-core 1.2GHz chip was quick. If all goes to plan (that's a big "if," by the way), Qualcomm will one-up its Computex standout before the end of this year, with vice president of product management Mark Frankel affirming that his company is on track to ship a 1.5GHz dual-core QSD8672 chip prior to the dawn of 2011. He's quoted as saying that the blazing new Snapdragon could find a home in smartphones, low-cost laptops and tablet PCs, and while we're led to believe that the vast majority of said products won't actually greet consumers until early next year, a few aggressive partners may get wares out "by Christmas." For those unfamiliar, the fancy new 8672 is based on an ARM design and will be crafted using a 45nm process technology, and the individual voltage scaling will enable each core to be clocked independently of the other in order to maximize battery life and performance. Naturally, 1080p video playback will be supported, as will DDR2, DDR3 and HDMI interfaces. Oh, and don't sweat it -- you've still got plenty of time to get on Santa's 'good' list.
Qualcomm ships first dual-core Snapdragon chipsets clocking 1.2GHz
Oh yeah baby, Qualcomm's finally shipping its first dual-core Snapdragons. To whom, is the big question. Its third-generation Mobile Station Modem MSM8260 and MSM8660 Snapdragon chipsets for high-end smartphones -- originally announced in February 2009 -- are now sampling and capable of running at up to 1.2GHz. The MSM8260 supports HSPA+, while the MSM8660 brings support for multi-mode HSPA+ and 1xEV-DO Rev. B. Both integrate GPS, a GPU with 2D / 3D acceleration engines for Open GL ES 2.0 and Open VG 1.1, 1080p video encoding and decoding, a dedicated low-power audio engine, and support for 24-bit WXGA 1,280 x 800 pixel displays. Anybody at Computex care to step forward with a reference design? Update: We just spoke with company representatives here at the show, and try as we may, we couldn't convince anyone at the company to show off a dual-core reference design. We were flat-out told that the only people at Computex getting a glimpse at the new silicon were prospective customers, though we did manage to pry out a few interesting details about the chip itself and the future of the line. For one, these new chips have two application cores and a single modem core, whereas existing chips have a single application core alongside a single modem core. We were also told in no uncertain terms that an even quicker version of the Snapdragon would be launched before the year's end, and as you'd likely surmise, it'll be aimed at "larger screen" devices -- you know, like slates and tablet PCs. [Image courtesy of Carina Larsson]
David Jaffe talks death of Calling All Cars as servers go offline
This week heralded the end of the Calling All Cars saga, as David Jaffe finally saw the lights go out on his PSN baby. He's got a set of final thoughts over on his blog -- he says that as his first online game, it was definitely a learning experience, and while there were good times, it wasn't the most fun he'd ever had. He's suprisingly regretful about the whole thing: He says that he seriously thinks he probably should have "made it war themed and ['ditched'] the cartoony stuff," and that it was really a problem of expectation. At $10, he says, they were expecting gamers buying downloadable titles to just be "sampling them like candy," not looking for a full game experience. But we wouldn't worry too much about Jaffe -- while he jokes that the CAC server shutdown "marks the beginning of the end of my career," we're sure there's still more fun to be had from that mind of his. We're hoping to see what he's got planned next by the time E3 rolls around this year.
Homegrown USB-powered calculator synth doubles as pillow
As if the Cushion Control pillows weren't cute enough, here we find a USB-powered, felt-covered calculator synth to ooh and aww over. Artists Kelli Cain and Brian Crabtree were able to conjure up this nifty device at a Felt Circuits workshop held in Los Angeles, and while details are relatively scarce, the creation is essentially a homemade eight- x six-inch calculator constructed from dyed wool that was hand-rubbed into felt. The two also "designed, etched, and populated noise-making circuit boards" which were then put into the contraption, and when connected to a USB port, touching the metal contacts that are sewn on "makes a bunch of noise," which we can causally refer to as abstract music. Unfortunately, there's no sign of these things going on sale, but if you beg the duo hard enough, you might find out if another workshop is in the pipeline.
Rap song samples extensively from C64 demo
If you're into the ultra-niche classic console demoscene, last June's release of the Nelly Furtado single "Do It" may have sounded awfully familiar to you. Apparently, the single samples heavily from a 2000 piece originally composed for the Commodore 64 as part of the Old Skool Music Competition. What's more, a 2005 ringtone from Furtado mega-producer Timbaland uses the same sample. The similarities between Tempest's "Acid Jazzed Evening" (later remixed by demoscener GRG) and the Furtado track are apparent and extensive -- from the bass line to the melody, the songs are nearly identical, except for Furtado's addition of lyrics. Still, it's a tough call as to whether or not the sampling constitutes illegal copyright infringement -- the case law involved is long and somewhat contradictory. The legal point may be moot though -- according to some hearsay from a self-described friend on the SomethingAwful forums, original artist Tempest doesn't want to go through the "time-consuming and horrible" process of a legal suit. Still, the fact that a major record producer is taking direct inspiration from a years-old chiptune composition speaks to both the creativity of the demoscene and the dearth of originality in modern pop music.
