deeje.com/musings

Rise of the Social Art Apps

2011-11-10T10:47:35-08:00

There's a new class of apps emerging, what I call Social Art apps. These are apps that let you create something, then see and rate creations by others.

Besides offering the tools to create, all of these apps allow you to see and rate content by others from within the app itself and see leader boards of content and creators. Many also allow you to comment and post links on social networks like Facebook and Twitter.

Here are some of the more interesting ones:

Doodley
medium: simple painting
audience: kid-centric
Spray Can
medium: graffiti
audience: youth
Sketch Club
medium: drawings
audience: serious painters
Mixel
medium: clip art
audience: casual
tappr.tv
medium: visuals for music
audience: music fans

IMG_1243 [Flickr]

2011-10-23T17:07:58-07:00

deeje posted a photo:

tappr.tv Roadmap

2011-10-08T23:25:27-07:00

I have a grand vision for tappr.tv, and I've been steadily working my way thru a roadmap to get there. Below are the various features of the roadmap. I'm thinking of incorporating a "Roadmap" panel inside of tappr.tv, so that you can vote on order of the features.

Wands (tappr.tv 1.0)

Wands are the core of tappr.tv, something that responds to your taps and tilts by putting stuff on the screen. The first generation of wands are based on a particle emitter engine with over a dozen parameters, leading a near-infinite variety of visual styles.

Tracks (tappr.tv 2.0)

Tracks allow you to record and layer multiple wand motions on top of each other.

Dances (tappr.tv 3.0)

Create tracks of wand motion recordings to your favorite songs.

Community (tappr.tv 4.0 - Coming Soon!)

Join the tappr.tv community to publish your dances and subscribe to dances to your favorite musical artists.

Leaderboards

Compete for the top spot on weekly, monthly, and all-time leader boards based on views, votes, and shares by the tappr.tv community.

Timeline

See and edit your dances on a timeline for more precise creation.

Comments

Add comments to dances, both yours and others, in the timeline.

Remix

Like that bass track by another tappr.tv member, but want to do your own vocals? Create a remix that incorporates tracks by others along with tracks of your own.

Visual Effects

Apply visual effects to tracks, such as echo, chorus, symmetry.

3D

Moving beyond wands in a single plane, be able to position and orient your wand recordings in a 3D space, and moving around that space while the dance is being played.

Wand Editor

Ability to create and customize new particle wands, and dynamically change wands in tracks (e.g. alpha, size, color).

Strings

Wands that require two touch points, that react to your inputs in interesting ways.

Geometries

Wands that are 3D shapes (spheres, cubes, etc), that react to your inputs in interesting ways.

Audio Input

Create tracks of wand motions by singing along to your favorite songs.

Drummer Input

Create tracks of wand motions by tapping the sides of your iDevice.

Gyro Input

Wave your iDevice around in the air to generate 3D wand motions

Network Input

Capture and present input from multiple paired iDevices, each using their own input methods.

Magic Backgrounds

Generate and customize background tracks of wand motion automatically.

VJ

A mode in tappr.tv, comparable to Studio and Theater, that is customized for live and collaborate performances.

OSC

Integrate tappr.tv into your actual music studio to systematically animate your music.

WIST support

Korg's open source library for synchronizing several apps via BlueTooth.

Desktop Playback

A tappr.tv music visualizer plugin that integrates with iTunes on your desktop.

Web Playback

Ability to watch a dance via a web browser.

Programmable Wands

Wands that can be defined using a scripting language such as Lua.

Seeking RoR engineer in SF

2011-06-15T13:32:46-07:00

About Me

I've been making software experiences for over 20 years, recently moved back to coding and into mobile. I've worked on numerous projects and have many of my own in the app store. All of mine have a mobile-cloud architecture to enable social experiences, and I'm fluent in iOS <-> RoR. The goal of my latest project, http://tappr.tv, is to digitize our impulse to dance together to our favorite music, and I'm starting the next phase of adding a cloud layer. I could do it myself, literally, but I now have motive enough to accelerate things significantly. You can learn more about me starting here http://deeje.com

About You

Ideally… you've already built several mobile-cloud apps that are available in the app stores. You have experience with Heroku, RoR, AWS, SendGrid, and APNS APIs. You code fast and you code well. You can estimate, communicate, and deliver. You live in SF and can commit to up to 2 months of full time work, the first 2 weeks of which will be dedicated to finalizing UX, architecture, and specs.

If this sounds interesting, ping me deeje@tappr.tv and let's meet in person to discuss.

Introducing tappr.tv

2010-12-02T22:26:59-08:00

tappr.tv is a new iOS app for visual scratching. What's visual scratching? Well, DJs play music and scratch records, but VJs only seem to play videos… I wanted a more interactive visual experience.

Here are some samples of visual scratching:

In tappr.tv, you have a selection of visual "instruments" that you can choose from, and then multi-touch and gesture to play the instrument on your screen. On the iPad, the interface looks like this:

And on the iPhone and iPod Touch, the interface looks like this:

You can make all the controls go away by tapping the Fullscreen button in the lower right corner.

There are 20 instruments included with tappr.tv, and here is a gallery of some of my favorites:

If that wasn't enough, you have two options for even more instruments!

First, you can tap the Download button (at the top of the instrument list), and browse the available instrument packs. Packs include streaks, circles, sticks, etc.

Alternatively, you can generate random instruments by tapping the Random button (also at the top of the instrument list).

If you find an instrument you like, tap the Star button and give your new instrument a witty name!

As you play with various instruments, you can take snapshots of them by touching the Camera button (in the upper right corner on iPad and lower left corner on iPhone/iPod). This will start a time-series of 5 snapshots, 1 per second.

After the snapshots are captured, you'll be taken to the snapshots view, where you can browse and view the various snapshots for the current instrument. If you see one you like, share it by tapping the Action button in the lower-right corner. You can share your snapshot to Facebook, to Twitter, via Email, and more.

One last feature, for iPad only right now… video out! This requires a video out cable, of course, which come in two varieties. A composite or component cable will support a 480p resolution, while a VGA cable will 1024x768. And of course, it just works… plug in the cable, and the instrument plays on the TV while you still have all your controls on the iPad.

This is just the beginning for tappr.tv, too. If you're curious about our roadmap, tap the Home button at the top of the instruments list, then drop into the Settings area to see what features we're planning next!

tappr.tv has been submitted to Apple for approval, and should be in the app store by mid-December 2010.

I hope you love tappr.tv as much as I do. Tweet us your thoughts @tapprtv

IMG_1980 [Flickr]

2010-11-30T21:22:10-08:00

deeje posted a photo:

IMG_1962 [Flickr]

2010-11-30T21:22:01-08:00

deeje posted a photo:

IMG_1942 [Flickr]

2010-11-30T21:21:53-08:00

deeje posted a photo:

IMG_1915 [Flickr]

2010-11-30T21:21:45-08:00

deeje posted a photo:

Bansai Tree 3

2010-07-22T21:18:08-07:00

Bansai Tree 3
Originally uploaded by deeje

ommmmmmmm

iPad First Impressions

2010-04-05T10:34:04-07:00

Overall, I think the iPad is great, and I've already got a list of features I want to see soon…

iPod and Airport Express - would love to play songs directly from my iPad over my home stereo, without having to plug in a wire.
Users and/or guest accounts - want to be able to hand my iPad to my kids, spouse, or friends who are visiting, and not worry about them playing my games (in progress), sending emails or tweeting from my account, or buying things with my credit card.
iMagazine - not sure any of the periodicals have the use case right for iPad… what I want is to subscribe, and have new content delivered automatically, all of which speaks to a background process. What I don't want is each periodical with its own background process. Podcast content has the same issues.
Springboard 2.0 - As it is, the home screen only scales to a few pages of apps, and as with the iPhone, doesn't scale well to hundreds of apps. This is further compounded on iPad because sometimes all I want to see are iPad-specific apps… personally, I want to tag all my apps and then pivot on those tags.
Family iPhoto Cloud - my wife and I both take pictures, and store them on different computers… how can my iPad pull all those photos in, complete with tags, faces, event info, etc?

Media, Media, Everywhere!

2010-01-27T20:41:16-08:00

Here's something I've noticed about the iPod/iPad user experience… my media is scattered all over the place!

iTunes - buy songs
iPod - play music, videos (movies and TV shows), audiobooks, podcasts
Videos - play TV shows and movies
App Store - buy apps
Home screen - run apps
Photos - view images and play movies
Camera - take and view images and videos
MobileMe - view photos from the web
iBooks - buy and read books

That's a lot of places to go to get to my media. What's more, sometimes the store for a kind of media is a feature of its related player (iBooks), and sometimes its a product in and of itself (iTunes/iPod, AppStore/Home). I think that lack of consistency is a problem that will only get worse.

FlockDraw

2009-12-06T19:08:45-08:00

Draw with me!

Or, go here http://flockdraw.com/2xozbd

Just how accurate is the iPhone 3GS GPS and Compass?

2009-10-09T14:51:15-07:00

I'm excited about the concept of augmented reality (AR) apps, and am curious what kinds of AR apps are *practical* with the state of the art iPhone 3GS and its accelerometer, GPS, and Compass sensors. I decided to do some field tests to see how accurate the GPS and Compass sensors are on the device. In this post, I'll describe my tests, show you the data, and offer some conclusions…

Setup

iPhone 3GS with OS 3.1.1

Specifically picked Golden Gate Park to maximize signal strengths

used Map app with some MotionX GPS

Mophie Air on about half the time

Data

Below are screenshots of my iPhone using Maps, showing its measured location and course, along with a red arrow indicating where I was actually standing and pointing. I also took photos, which are not included here.

And here is a view of some GPS tracking data as I walked around the Concourse. As you can imagine, I wasn't actually staggering thru the park, but rather was walking very specific center and edge lines.

Observations

An iPhone in motion *appears* to be more accurate than an iPhone in place, probably because a directional vector can be computed using all of the sensor data. On the other hand, standing perfectly still leads to readings that can "wiggle".
GPS data appears accurate to within several meters, and can be useful in a variety of AR situations.
Compass data accuracy is well within the "stated" (graphical) range, but for AR apps, that accuracy is too low to provide a satisfying experience. For instance, if I pointed at this large statue, where would an AR app display information about it?
Is there any reason to believe that other iPhones have similar or better accuracy?

Conclusion

The current state of the art will allow us cutting-edge types to explore AR apps, but more technology advances will be needed to bring this mainstream.

Technical Details

According to this teardown, the GPS chip inside the iPhone 3GS is rumored to be an Infineon Hammerhead II and the Compass chip is rumored to be an Asahi Kasei – AK8973

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2009-10-06T00:00:00-07:00

See It, Follow It

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2009-09-23T00:00:00-07:00

jaimerios.com » Calculating distance between 2 points on Earth using the Haversine formula

Burning Man 2009

2009-09-22T08:03:16-07:00

Burning Man 2009
Originally uploaded by H Dragon

This was one of the most amazing things I saw at burning man 2009… a string of balloons, apparently 1/4 mile long steel cable, and at night each balloon also had a small light on it… simply stunning!

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2009-08-18T00:00:00-07:00

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2009-06-02T00:00:00-07:00

creating toolbar Icons with OmniGraffle

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2009-05-29T00:00:00-07:00

TVOut

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2009-05-27T00:00:00-07:00

Is it possible to draw on a sprite? - cocos2d-iphone-discuss | Google Groups
Time Lapse of Galactic Center of Milky Way rising over Texas Star Party
According to William Castleman: "The time-lapse sequence was taken with the simplest equipment that I brought to the star party. I put the Canon EOS-5D (AA screen modified to record hydrogen alpha at 656 nm) with an EF 15mm f/2.8 lens on a weighted tripod. Exposures were 20 seconds at f/2.8 ISO 1600 followed by 40 second interval. Exposures were controlled by an interval timer shutter release (Canon TC80N3). Power was provided by a Hutech EOS203 12v power adapter run off a 12v deep cycle battery. Large jpg files shot in custom white balance were batch processed in Photoshop (levels, curves, contrast, Noise Ninja noise reduction, resize) and assembled in Quicktime Pro. Editing/assembly was with Sony Vegas Movie Studio 9."

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2009-05-20T00:00:00-07:00