Category: ifttt

By Jeffry Thurana, MakeUseOf – August 31, 2010 at 01:31PM

As an old-fashioned self-proclaimed (amateur) musician, I was amazed when watching a video showing a local band of five performing a Coldplay song using “only” iPhones and iPod Touches.

I was even more amazed watching a YouTube video of a young Korean girl who calls herself Applegirl doing solo Lady Gaga’s Poker Face cover using her iDevices.

I feel that a revolution is happening in the music world, especially in the iDevices country. So, not wanting to be left behind, it’s only logical that a few of the first apps that I downloaded for my phone were apps to make music with an iPhone.

If you also want to make music using your iDevices, here are some of the free ones that you can try.

The Musical Instruments

Let’s start our list with apps that imitate traditional musical instruments. They are trying to utilize iPhone features to produce the sound and feeling of the real instruments.

1. Touch Xylophone

Xylophone is probably one of the most simple and universal musical instruments. I guess almost everybody is familiar with this one (even though the name might be different and the shapes are slightly different in different parts of the world).

The app is trying to replicate the wooden instrument. But instead of hitting the bars with a stick to produce sound, you just need to touch them.

2. Piano

There are many piano apps available out there. Just do a search in the iTunes App Store and you will find a bunch of them. I use Touch Piano as an example because of the simplicity. You just open it and play.

This one is great for those ice breaking moments or to keep the kids quiet, but won’t substitute the real one. And your fingers should be tiny enough to play this piano comfortably.

3. Angklung

Angklung is a traditional musical instrument from Indonesia. It’s made from bamboo and you shake it to produce the sound. Each angklung will produce one note, so to be able to play a complete song, you need a set of angklungs (played by one person or by a group of people).

Similar to the real thing, you shake the Angklung app to play the sound and it can only produce one note at a time. But this electronic angklung can be set to play any note that you want.

4. Drums

Again, there are many drums apps out there. Drum Meister Pro Lite is chosen as an example because this is the best that I found among the free alternative music making iPhone apps.

Tapping on one of the drum kits will give you the drum sound, that’s pretty ordinary. But tapping on different parts of a cymbal will also give you a different sound, just like the real thing. Other cool things about this app are the ability to re-arrange the position of the drums, and to record and play your virtual drum playing.

If you love percussion, you can also try Touch Conga.

5. Guitars

Unlike the Piano and Drums categories, I can’t single out a particular app to use as an example for guitar apps. There are too many of them and each has their own uniqueness. So I’ll show you three different guitar apps: Instant Guitar Solo Lite that will give you instant licks just by tapping a button, Guitar Free which imitates the classical guitar, and Steel Guitar with more strings to play than ordinary guitar.

The Music Generators

This second group of apps does not imitate any ordinary musical instruments. Instead, they will help you generate music using unique and different methods.

6. RJDJ

I had difficulties finding words trying to explain this app. Basically, you are given several “Scenes” to choose and these scenes are unique environments where you can create your music. Some scenes generate music using your voice, some use the touch, and others use the movement of your iPhone.

There are no better way to enjoy this app than using it yourself. You might want to start from the “Interactive – Tutorial Scene” to get familiar with it.

7. Beatwave

In Beatwave, you create your music by placing notes in the “music field“. Then the “music scanner” will continuously move along the field and play any notes it meets along the way. You have four fields to play with, and there are a bunch of settings that you can change – like tempo and sound – to generate different outputs.

Similar to RJDJ, the best way to enjoy the app is to use and experiment with it. And since this one uses regular “scanning” intervals, you can’t help but get electronic vibes in your music.

The Others

I picked up other things during my treasure hunt. Not exactly music making apps, but will help you in the process.

They are: Guitar Tuner that will help you keep your guitar from the land of the false notes,

And iTick, the electronic metronome that will keep your beat in check.

I’m sure that my findings are minuscule compared to the collection of free music making apps available out there. So if you love to make music and you have your own favorite music-making iDevices apps, why not share them with other music lovers using the comments below?

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By Kevin Purdy, Lifehacker – August 31, 2010 at 07:00AM

Some sites don’t give enough context in their RSS feeds to help you decide on committing to a full read. New web-based RSS reader prldr skips truncated feeds and shows full web page links in a side panel.

If you’ve only got a few feeds you normally look through, you’ll probably like prldr’s color-coded feed sidebar, and won’t have a problem with the fairly simple read/unread and date sorting tools. Power users will still find Google Reader a more powerful tool for sorting, searching, and controlling large batches of RSS, but it’s hard to resist the appeal of seeing the whole story, in its intended context, through prldr. You get to see a better preview of content and skip a click, and publishers get to show you the ads and other stuff they use to stay in business.

Prldr is a free webapp that requires an account to use. For a similar kind of full-feed solution for Reader, try Google Reader Full Feed.

By Matt Cherette, Gizmodo – August 31, 2010 at 05:00AM

You’ve seen the sonar image of the Titanic‘s remains. Now, the video: here’s an eerie peek inside the debris of the most famous ship in history, shot by Expedition Titanic‘s new underwater remotely operated vehicle. Watch the chilling footage inside. More »

By CmdrTaco, Slashdot – August 30, 2010 at 01:39PM

IQpierce writes “My good friend Bradley W. Lewis has set up a site for his hobby: building replica lightsabers at home. These aren’t your average cheap pieces of plastic, in fact they’re more authentic than the Master Replica sabers: Brad tracks down the pieces of equipment actually used to build the original props — or, when they’re unavailable, very close replicas, that he further customizes with a metal lathe in his garage — and puts them together with loving attention. My favorite part is the embellishments he does add, on the inside of the saber — his replica of Luke’s saber from ANH can be opened to see authentic-looking internals such as a glowing crystal (as well as another surprise — an autograph from Luke himself, Mark Hamill). Each project is documented step-by-step with hundreds of photos — whether you’re a hobbyist, or just a big Star Wars geek like me, you’ll find it interesting.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

By Casey Chan, Gizmodo – August 28, 2010 at 08:00PM

The first sonar images of the Titanic have been mapped and the ship’s debris field is much larger than scientists anticipated. Here’s what the dots in the sonar image is actually showing. More »

By Kyle VanHemert, Gizmodo – August 27, 2010 at 09:20AM

Asteroids! No not the video game—I’m talking about all those old rocks floating around up in space. Here’s a mesmerizing video that tracks every single one of them that’s visited our solar system since 1980. Space: busy place! More »

By CmdrTaco, Slashdot – August 26, 2010 at 11:14AM

An anonymous reader writes “Since 1980 over a half million asteroids have been discovered, mostly between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, now thanks to this video you can see this activity condensed into a few minutes. At full resolution it’s a mesmerizing experience as new discoveries are added and the video makes it possible to see patterns in the discovery positions, for example a large number appear in line between Earth and Jupiter as astronomers started looking for smaller jovian moons after Voyagers visit to the system.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

By Adam Pash, Lifehacker – August 26, 2010 at 08:30AM

Popular to-do list application Remember The Milk is releasing their iPhone app for free to all users. And yes, there is a catch.

Remember The Milk has long been a favorite among Lifehacker readers, but unless you were paying $25 per year for a pro account, you didn’t have access to RTM’s really useful iPhone app. Until today.

There is, however, still a difference between free and premium RTM accounts on your iPhone. If you’ve got a free account, RTM can sync once, manually, every 24 hours, and it won’t support push notifications. If that’s not going to work for you, the premium account still supports unlimited auto-syncing and push notifications. At first blush, to this editor at least, the free version sounds a little underwhelming. But if you only want to use RTM as an iPhone-based to-do list manager that backs up once-a-day to the web, it’s still a great little app.

Remember The Milk is a free download for iOS.

By Mark Wilson, Gizmodo – July 30, 2010 at 08:20PM

This video, by artist Isao Hashimoto, charts every nuclear detonation from the US’s tests in 1945 to the modern era. Even if you’re versed in history, it still offers a perspective that’s tough to entirely grasp in numbers alone. More »

By dominick, AwkwardFamilyPhotos.com AwkwardFamilyPhotos.com – September 15, 2010 at 11:00AM

Congratulations to Erin and her officemates from Dashing Through the Atrium for winning the Awkward Office Photo Contest! As Erin explains, the credit truly belongs to only one person:  “EVERY year my boss makes us take a team photo with Santa. EVERY year he wears his red suit, and EVERY year he refuses to smile. This photo is put on the front of a card and sent out to hundreds of sales reps, managers and directors across the country.”

Thanks to everyone for sending in so many great submissions (check out all the entries here) and don’t forget to pick up The Office: Season 6 (Now on DVD and Blu-ray)!