Wonder what’s boiling in the WP7 kitchen? Give a look at Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 YouTube channel and judge for yourself if it’s meat or fish.
Collecting both intros and demo tours as well as future WP7 apps, the Windows Phone YouTube channel is a good place to have a first glimpse at Microsoft’s next mobile system environment.
Some of the demos and previewed apps are shown below.
Via: WMExperts
Share and Enjoy:
Every musician needs a good ear. Not just a good ear for pitch, but more importantly a good ear for time. I remember the days of my teacher having me clap to the rhythm of the metronome for practice. This practice extended to playing the notes of the song with only claps but trying to still keep the proper time. I’m a rusher – I tend to rush and my internal clock just continues increasing speed after every so many bars. The only way to remove such poor form is through lots of practice – and practice I did! Now, there is a utility for the iPhone called iKeepTime that is perfect for those internal metronome synchronizations. Let’s enter the JAMM labs and find out just how easy it is to tune your internal timer with iKeepTime!
This is the main screen. The big metal bar is the plate you need to tap. The meter above will show you the drag or rushes based on the reference time. Clicking on the information button will bring your to settings screen where you can set up your desired difficulty, tempo, or see the instructions for the program.
This is the settings screen. From here, I’ll choose my options such as the tempo desired. For a quarter note it can go as slow as 40 and all the way as high as 200. Practice vs Quick Test – I’ll choose quick test. The difference between practice and test is that for the quick test, you’ll only be given 16 measures. The practice mode is endless. The differences between the difficulty levels are how many guided beats you get and how many unguided. Easy always gives you guide beats (you’ll always hear the metronome). Medium gives you 3 guided measures with the metronome followed by 1 unguided where the metronome is off thereby testing your internal clock.. Hard gives you 2 guided measures and 2 unguided measures. Let’s just briefly look at the "help” screen before we start. Simple enough..just tap to the beat…let’s go back to the settings screen and begin the test.
This is what I see when I’m tapping. The 86.4 you see is my score / current accuracy. The circles underneath show the four beats to the measure. The circles will light when a beat is supposed to be tapped so even if I turned off all the sounds and just used the circles I tended to be at a 67.5% accuracy even on hard – YAY!
Now, playing with the tapper in all seriousness, I was able to improve my accuracy score by about 3-7%. That’s not bad at all. All in all this was a fun way of practicing rhythm. As it’s on the iPod for me, I can be practicing anywhere whether it be in between customers, during my 15 min. breaks, waiting at the bus stop, etc. This is one very handy musician’s training tool. I highly recommend it!
Share and Enjoy:
Add another big name in the tablet war: RIM has announced its first tablet ever, the BlackBerry PlayBook!
Presented at this year BlackBerry DevCon event, this new tablet shows guts:
- 7″ LCD, 1024 x 600, WSVGA, capacitive touch screen with full multi-touch and gesture support
- BlackBerry Tablet OS with support for symmetric multiprocessing
- 1 GHz dual-core processor
- 1 GB RAM
- Dual HD cameras (3 MP front facing, 5 MP rear facing), supports 1080p HD video recording
- Video playback: 1080p HD Video, H.264, MPEG, DivX, WMV
- Audio playback: MP3, AAC, WMA
- HDMI video output
- Wi-Fi – 802.11 a/b/g/n
- Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
- Connectors: microHDMI, microUSB, charging contacts
- Open, flexible application platform with support for WebKit/HTML-5, Adobe Flash Player 10.1, Adobe Mobile AIR, Adobe Reader, POSIX, OpenGL, Java
- Ultra thin and portable:
- Measures 5.1″x7.6″x0.4″ (130mm x 193mm x 10mm)
- Weighs less than a pound (approximately 0.9 lb or 400g)
- Additional features and specifications of the BlackBerry PlayBook will be shared on or before the date this product is launched in retail outlets.
The device has been presented by RIM’s Founder and Co-CEO Mike Lazaridis as a BlackBerry companion aimed at the business user, with some eye blinking to consumers and BlackBerry wannabes (HDMI, 1080p playback and dual cameras). It is not equipped with phone connection and is thought to be used together with the BlackBerry.
Amazon.com has already promised Kindle support for the PlayBook… Any thoughts?
Meanwhile give a look to the video presentation below.
Via: CrackBerry
Share and Enjoy:
With the upcoming release of Windows Live Essentials 2011, Microsoft will be retiring its Windows Live Spaces blogging platform, the infrastructure behind its blogging tool, Windows Live Writer. The platform has been around since December of 2004. I saw a cool article about all of this on TechFlash, and wanted to point it out to everyone.
In a recent statement, Microsoft confirmed the partnering with WordPress.com, owned by Automattic, stating,
Automattic is a company filled with great people focused on blogging and how to continually make their blogging experiences better and better," says Dharmesh Mehta, director of Windows Live product management, in a blog post. "So rather than having Windows Live invest in a competing blogging service, we decided the best thing we could do for our customers was to give them a great blogging solution through WordPress.com.
Spaces users will have six months to move their blogs to WordPress.com using a specially developed migration tool that will move their posts, photos and other media to WordPress blogs. The migration will also redirect existing Spaces URLs to new addresses on the free WordPress.com platform. The companies will offer a service called Messenger Connect for WordPress.com users to share posts with their Windows Live contacts, attempting to take the place of the existing integration between Spaces and other Windows Live services.
This is actually a huge move for Microsoft; and a rather smart one, too, if I might add. Microsoft is pulling back some of their services so that they can consolidate their core competencies and instead concentrate on Bing and Search and their number one competitor in that space, Google. Being a blogging platform was never a key business initiative for MS, especially since Windows Live Services never truly penetrated the blogosphere as it was originally envisioned.
New blogs started with Windows Live Essentials 2011 will be WordPress blogs and again, will be the default blogging platform for the suite of tools when they are released later this Fall.
Share and Enjoy:
IPad, a magical device – indeed it is. I’m using one right now for this post coupled with the WordPress app. For bloggers, this seems to be a very convenient way to write, although just using the onscreen keyboard can be slightly awkward at first. So far I can type almost normally except for learning to keep my hands in the air for the resting position. This does provide for some discomfort for extended periods. 2 finger typing can also be very effective when using this keyboard. I am currently contemplating on whether or not to get an add-on bluetooth keyboard and using the iPad as a on the go computer replacement.
While typing, I can be listening to my iTunes library…nothing like writing with some classical music. I’m now at the end of my first thoughts. Trying to attach a photo, I haven’t found out yet how to remove photos from a post. So apparently I can now either upload 3 screenshots of me typing this post, or scrap this post and remake it using copy and paste (which is what I decided to do). The screenshot taken had to be pulled into Adobe Photoshop Express for rotation.
Well, that’s it for now for this iPad neophyte’s first adventure with blogging with the iPad…figuring out how everything works is what took the longest time…which I’m sure future posts will be much easier to do.
Share and Enjoy:
Creativity knows no bounds. It is great to have a fashionable accessory perform and already look good by itself – but what more can be done? With Apple’s latest generation of iPod nano’s, that means the return of the wristwatch! Danish company NanoWatch sells a wristband specially made so that your nano can easily clip on. Now that’s a unique approach.
Sadly, Apple’s new iPod Shuffle can’t do what it used to. The above pictured iPod Shuffle was the perfect accessory for any techie that wears ties – yes, the perfect tie clip. It was not only fashionable but multipurpose. I wonder what’s next? with Nano’s now having touch screens, any thoughts on mini apps? What about Bluetooth or Wi-Fi? Or, I know! What about putting the camera back but keeping the current form factor? It probably won’t be long before Apple will have a Dick Tracy watch type product where you can not only listen to your tunes but also call in the possy with video conferencing. Apple, I got my eye on you!
Share and Enjoy:
