I’ve been looking for something like this my whole life — and of course now that I’ve found it, I can’t have it. MusicBox is the Masters thesis project of MIT Media Lab student Anita. I’ve never been impressed with things like Coverflow and Genius because they seem so shallow; there’s so much metadata in and around our music libraries that something more robust should certainly be possible, I always thought. And look, someone like-minded but far more capable than myself has created a powerful, intuitive, and attractive tool for visualizing, sorting, and playing your music.

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MIT professor Hal Abelson started today’s final presentation for the school’s “Building Mobile Applications” class by saying, “A course like this couldn’t have existed ten years ago… maybe not even a year ago. Courses like this right now are unique, but in two years they’ll be completely ordinary.”

What’s extraordinary is that on top of a full college course-load at one of the most challenging schools in the country, these groups of students built fully working mobile applications for Windows Mobile, Android, and Symbian devices while mentors from the likes of Google, Nokia, Bank of America, and Microsoft oversaw their progress.

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Look at Apple, all busy filing patents and whatnot. Take this one (well, these ones), which shows several potential 3D interfaces for the Finder. The patents were first filed, according to AppleInsider, in June of last year under the name “Multi-Dimensional Desktop.”

It’s as you might imagine: the Dock & Co. are able to move along the Z axis in addition to the normal XY axes. A simple concept, yes—“hey, let’s make the Finder 3D”—but one that really hasn’t been deployed in any meaningful way yet.

The question then becomes, when can we expect such an interface? Probably not with the next version of OS X, 10.6, (that’s “O Ess Ten” not “O Ess Ecks”), or Snow Leopard, which is rumored to be released on next June. (Rumored in so far as Apple said in June that it was about a year away.)

Sure, you could pay $1.00 for this new VLC remote control app [iTunes link] for the iPhone (and iPod touch), or you could simply select “Add Interface, Web Interface” then point your iPhone to the resulting Web server. After that, you can apply this skin to your iPhone to make the whole package look a little more elegant.

Not to knock the new app, mind you, but it strikes me as an unnecessary waste of your money, considering VLC+Web Interface+iPhone already does the trick, and then some.

Your choice.

via Lifehacker

Here’s a random software recommendation for Mac OS X users. A ProTip, if you will. If you’re into IRC at all, you should check out Linkinus, which is developed by Conceited Software. I bought it last spring and have been using it ever since. Yes, I understand the concept of buying an IRC application borders on the insane, what with X-Chat being free and all, but the shareware period is long enough to decide if you want it or not.

The main innovation of Linkinus, which costs £12.50 (right now, around $18.54), aside from its customizable user interface, is this pane system it uses. It divides the main window into as many panes as you want. In each pane is a chat room, meaning that you can follow several different rooms simultaneously. (I typically follow What.cd’s room, HDBits’ room and 2600’s room.) It’s pretty neat, otherwise I wouldn’t waste your time with this post. It’s also a fairly esoteric application, so unless you’re searching MacUpdate or VersionTracker for “IRC” you’re not likely to come across it during your daily Internetting.

So yeah, if you’re looking for a better-than-average IRC app be sure to check Linkinus out. And no, I don’t know the developers from a hole in the wall, I just thought some of you might like it.

Spending your fiat money from the comfort of your iPhone is even easier, now that Amazon has released an application (“App”) for Apple’s little wonder. The mundane functions are as you’d expect: you launch the app, then you can browse and buy goods from Amazon just as you would from your computer.

What’s worth singling out is this little photo-takign feature. Using the app, you take a photo with your iPhone then send it to Amazon. Then, after a bit of voodoo, Amazon sends you an e-mail with a link to products that match the photo (or its best guess). For example, you take a photo of a a french press, then Amazon sends you links to french presses you can buy from them. Technologically neat, sure, but you wonder how well it works in practice… and me without an iPhone!

One of the most exciting things I’ve seen at Nokia World 2008 is the Point and Find service: aim a phone camera at an object and the camera detects what it is. Currently set to debut in London and San Francisco, the initial version of the application will be tied to movie posters. Point your camera at a movie poster and the software will identify the movie, fetch reviews, provide links to trailers, and use the GPS in the phone to display the closet cinema and its showtimes for that film.
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Israeli scientists have developed software that turns your ugly mug into a mathematically beautiful visage. Yes, we have evolved a great deal, us humans.

What the software (a Photoshop plugin) does is alters a face to make it “look” more attractive, based on mathematics and “perceived” attractiveness. If you’ve watched any of those TLC or Discovery Channel documentaries about human behavior, you’ll know that things like distance between someone’s eyes, shape of someone’s nose, etc. all affect a person’s level of attractiveness. A woman whose eyes are too far apart—and we’re talking micrometers here—might as well wear a paper bag over her head.

Yes, this raises some ethical concerns. Will people use this software to “improve” their looks with plastic surgery? Will this make people think they’re ugly? Will Sarah Jessica still look like a horse?

One of the silliest stories I’ve heard in a while.

via The Insider

You know the HP TouchSmart? It’s a neat bit of work—that is, it has to potential to be. That potential is now one step closer to reality given that HP has just opened it up to third-party development. Would-be developers need to sashay over to the TouchSmart Community. There you’ll find the necessary software to develop your fancy application.

I think it’s fairly obvious from the above few sentences that I don’t have a developer bone on my body.

via Slashdot

Previously believed to be based on Windows Vista, it’s just been announced that forthcoming Windows Embedded platform code-named “Quebec” will actually be based on Windows 7.

The announcement came from Microsoft General Manager Kevin Dallas in an industry address at the Embedded Systems Conference in Boston today (10/28).

It’d previously been casually referred to as Vista Embedded but the platform’s 2010-ish launch date puts it squarely in line to don the overcoat (or undershirt?) of what will be Microsoft’s then-current operating system, Windows 7.

Full release after the jump…

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Microsoft just announced a Windows Embedded developer competition here at the Embedded Systems Conference in Boston. It’s called the “SPARKs Will Fly” contest and will award a $15,000 cash prize to one lucky/brilliant Windows Embedded developer.

It’s a push to get people to start (or keep) developing for Microsoft’s platform and it just may work, as the dev kit – called the SPARK kit — for hobbyists and academics totals about $200 and includes a bunch of free software and a VIA ARTiGO board.

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If you guys haven’t tried out OpenOffice… well, it’s okay. No, it’s good, it’s just that they’re building an office suite to compete with people who have been “refining” their product for a couple decades now. Still, even in traditional office environments, word processors, spreadsheets and so on are giving way to either more specialized tools or free/online versions. I still don’t trust online tools enough to use them for anything but the most superficial tasks, but I’m also not about to shell out hundreds for an office suite I’ll hardly ever use, or go through the trouble of pirating it. OpenOffice to the rescue!

Although I doubt this new version will truly leapfrog Office, it certainly is free, open source, and much more likely to change in response to the demands of an quickly-changing software climate.

Tyler Loch, maker of VisualHub, one of the best applications for converting video on the Mac ever in the whole wide world, is citing health and relationship reasons for closing up shop and potentially releasing the product as open source.

Loch’s company, Techspansion, will cease support and Apple had nothing to do with the decision. Loch wrote:
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You’re looking at the BlackBerry Application Center, RIM’s answer to Apple’s App Store and Google’s Android Market. Same basic concept as the other two—you browse and buy applications that enhance your BlackBerry experience.

The Application Center—we’re running out of variants of the term “application store!”—is set to debut with the BlackBerry Storm software version 4.7. All application data will be stored at the carriers’ locale; RIM is totally out of the loop as far as that goes. It’s supposed to differentiate the Application Center from the App Store in that regard—carriers can put the applications they want on their own little store.

So there you have it, RIM’s attempt to cash into the nascent application craze. I can’ tell if it’s going after Wall Street (well, what’s left of it) or Main Street with this, and the Storm more generally. As if this one BlackBerry (out of how many?) will capture the same type of minshare that the iPhone already. Then there’s the G1.

But, hey, should make for some interesting days ahead.

For those of you who don’t care for the stock interface or firmware on your digital music player, there’s the Rockbox firmware, which works on many Archos, iRiver, iPod, iAudio, Gigabeat, and Sansa devices. The firmware features extended codec support (OGG, Flac, etc.) plus enhanced audio magic, MPEG video support, tagging, plug-ins, playlist creation, games, and more (see the full feature list here).

Plus, it’s open source so it gets developed on a fairly regular basis. Version 3.0 was recently released, adding new software decoding features, a new installer, more codecs, and various miscellaneous updates and improvements.

[via Lifehacker]

In the war against software piracy, it seems that the rule is: If you can’t beat ‘em, lower the price to almost nothing and hope to make at least a little bit of money. Such is the case in China, where last year’s software piracy rate was over 80% according to the Financial Times. In the hopes of actually selling some stuff over there, Microsoft has lowered the price of Office Home and Student 2007 to the equivalent of $29 – more than 70% off of the previous MSRP.

It appears to be working, too, as retailers stocked up on about a half-year’s worth of inventory for the new promotion and have “run out faster than they had expected.” This all begs the question, though: What kind of message does this send? Pirate enough software and the legit versions will eventually become affordable?

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Oh boy, some non-Android news for you. My guess is that it’ll be wall-to-wall Android in a few hours, so smoke ‘em if you got ‘em. That is to say, if you have no interest in Android—impossible!—may I suggest you break out the stamp collection, maybe watch Ferris Bueller’s Day Off for the 900th time?

Anyhow, the next version of Adobe Photoshop, CS4, which comes out in October, will use your GPU to improve the whole experience. Expect smoother zooming, rotating, scaling, etc.

I wonder what sort of wacky activation schemes Adobe has developed in order to prevent piracy? Because you know the entire Creative Suite will be leaked and cracked like two days before it hits retail.

Photoshop CS4 carries a $199 upgrade price, or $699 for the non-CS4 Extended version. Prices for the entire Creative Suite top out at $2,500.

I’ve included the full press release on the other side, if that’s your thing.

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According to PC Pro, there are some Asus recovery DVDs floating around containing some pretty weird files. A reader reported that the DVD that came with his notebook contains a directory named “Crack” that’s full of serial numbers for various software, a directory full of confidential Microsoft files containing information about certain PC manufacturers as well as more software keys, and a mish-mash of internal Asus documents along with source code and even a PowerPoint file “that details ‘major problems’ identified by the company, including application compatibility issues.”

Asus has responded, saying "We will be investigating this at quite a high level. Once the investigation is complete, we will ensure it doesn’t happen again." Good idea!

[via Gizmodo]