While the collaborative recording Tithra didn’t quite make my ‘tops of 2011’ list, Vijay Iyer’s Historyicity remains one of the best recordings of the last five years and a personal favorite. So when I heard that Vijay Iyer’s trio was releasing a new album in early 2012 I got excited … and when I discovered that NPR was hosting the full record for streaming I was REALLY excited. And after listening … I am ecstatic!
We all know that iOS is not the king of customization, but sometimes a little change is a breath of fresh air. I have been through the jailbreak stage with plenty of themes and fancy alternate icons, each time causing my phone to become deathly slow. About the only way iOS users can set their devices apart is through custom lock screens and backgrounds. It is fun to have some pictures of my kids or a cool Apple background, but it still is not exactly custom. As I scoured the app store this week I came across a little gem…
The launch this week of Mass Effect 3 is a huge event in the gaming world. It is a Bioware RPG, which already makes it a big deal. But it is the end of a trilogy that has sold millions of copies across platforms and has enchanted gamers who have fallen in love once again with the same characters we find in every Bioware games, but now with different names and in a non-Star Wars sci-fi setting. But there are a couple of clouds hovering – issues with importing your existing character, and some DRM details that cast an unfavorable…
This post is completely and totally anecdotal but I thought it was worth sharing my experience thus far with iOS 5.1 and see if anyone else is seeing what I am seeing. I recently upgraded all of my iOS devices to Apple’s new iOS 5.1 operating system. While it isn’t as bad as the initial upgrade to iOS 2.0 (that operating system continually crashed and Apple scrambled to get out an update) this update has some significant issues that are appearing.
In it’s first month of availability, Vintage Camera, a simple, straightforward photography app, was downloaded by more than 3 million users and was one of the most downloaded free apps during the holiday season. Vintage Camera, developed by Presselite, is available for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad and requires iOS 4.0 and later. It is offered as a free download in base form with the professional version priced at just 99 cents in the Apple App Store. Vintage Camera, now in version 1.2, utilizes a square format for image capture and offers choice of after effects the user can…
Electronic music can get rather ‘spacey’ or ‘sci-fi’ at times, but this takes it to new levels! Electronic Encounters – The Special Edition is a compilation of electronica tracks inspired by the classic film, Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, and the collection is available for FREE! Head here to check out the song ‘Believe’ by Logan 5: Here is the synopsis of the inspiration: Back in June 2001, I went searching on the internet for anything relating to Close Encounters of the Third Kind. What little I did find was not very impressive. It was then that I decided…
While the outside of a musical instrument is a thing of beauty, what of the inside? It is responsible for the entirety of the structure and much of the sound – and yet all we ever see are little bits through the sound holes. Now the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra has done a series of photos looking inside the instruments in high resolution glory! The instrument at the top is a guitar, and here is a pipe organ: Source: BuzzFeed
At the recent Grammy Awards the producers were constantly talking about artists they were throwing together for ‘once in a lifetime’ performances you ‘won’t want to miss’. But in reality the Coldplay / Rihanna medley was the perfect example of how lousy they were – she sang her song, they sang their song, and in between they sang a duet song about 10 feet apart with Rihanna never really acknowledging Chris Martin and the whole thing reminding you that just because two artists appear on a song together doesn’t mean they have ever met.
Want more for your money? This arena-based, futuristic first-person shooter game, which was originally free, has now been remade for Xbox Live Arcade and is now available for 800 MS points.
I am a sucker for cool and creative mashups, so here is another one that I saw at Neatorama. This is a remake of the classic Smiths song ‘This Charming Man’ – from the original ‘The Smiths‘ or the wonderful ‘Complete‘ from last year … but done in the style of Super Mario Bros!
If the recession that started in 2008 changed nothing else, it was the monetization of blogs and online review sites. I was primarily a computer and video game reviewer at that time, and many of the ‘big’ sites seemed to be doing pretty well separating content and administration. From my friends there, the attitude from the site owners was ‘you worry about writing, we’ll worry about getting the advertising dollars’. But suddenly money was scarce and advertisers wanted to see a return on their investment. Fast forward to now and you can be sure that for anyone paying for advertising,…
Back in November we reviewed Skooba Designs’ new V.3 Tablet Messenger. I liked it a lot and wrote this: What I Like: Small and light; lots of well-organized pockets; Special slot for your tablet; Grab and go handle; interior tablet access without opening the flap; Funky closure method for the flap What Needs Improvement: The blue highlights make it a bit less professional-looking You can read the full review here and find out more details here on the product page. That’s not the reason for this post however. No, the reason for this post is that Skooba Designs is running…
I hae always had a natural curiosity for everything scientific … which likely makes sense given my day job! But as I have grown up and see my kids learning science, there are many things that were thought to be true back then that have changed since: things like our view of how dinosaurs lived and moved – and even what they were based on has shifted from lizards to birds! As we learned more and more arcane and esoteric topics, it became fun to fashion some incorrect but plausible explanation to amuse ourselves – or really outlandish ideas just…
I love when a company has a really good product but looks for ways to make it even better, and that’s exactly what Tom Bihn did with their Ristretto bag. We’ve reviewed the bag in a number of different sizes. You can read our review of the Ristretto, the Ristretto for iPad, and the review of the Ristretto for MacBook Air. The new Ristretto has a number of key improvements. We have a review sample on the way, but I wanted to run down the key changes in advance of that.
When I was a kid, I wanted to be an astronaut in the worst way. I had astronaut ice cream, an astronaut Barbie, and to this day I still say Epcot is the coolest amusement park in the world because of “Spaceship Earth”. I eventually outgrew my desire to fly far away from this planet, but I still love all things space-y.
The color pink, technically called Magenta, is in theory a blend of Red and Violet. That is wonderful for mixing paints … but in terms of the electromagnetic spectrum it makes no sense. Why is that? Because colors are based on a continuum, that means that in order for a color to exist it needs to follow some progression of wavelength shortening from red to violet. Color is visible to us based on the wavelength of light, and aside from the so-called ‘primary colors’ ROYGBIV’ (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet), all other colors are merely combinations of…
You don’t tug on Superman’s cape You don’t spit into the wind You don’t pull off the mask of the old Lone Ranger … And you don’t do an announcement on the day Apple holds a major press event. Any person who is interested in technology in any way – even if they HATE Apple and would never buy their products – was glued to find out details. My family all knew it was happening, it was on our local news and in the local paper as well as being a major hallway conversation topic. There is a saying that…
Have you given up hope of EVER seeing the Harry Potter series in ebook form? Well, don’t despair … there is a new blog post on the Pottermore site stating that we will get access in early April!
I have had some ups and downs with the Treasure Seekers series – the first game was fun, the second I criticized for lacking direction, and I loved the third game on all levels. So how will the latest entry fare? Let’s take a look!
Apple is about to hold its March announcement. We will have the news as it comes in…
It seems like everyone in my social circle, from Gear Diary to Facebook to coworkers, are anxiously awaiting The Hunger Games. Know who else is excited for them? Surprisingly, The Muppets!