August 14, 2009
Staff Picks: Google Street Art, Groovemaker, Bag-Claim, The Ambulator and More
Tristan
The suitcase is probably the most annoying aspect of traveling. Packing it, carrying it, and checking it in is actually not as bad as waiting for it to roll out, especially when the person who pissed you off the whole flight gets theirs before yours.
Well, now you can act cool, with Bag-Claim for the iPhone you will never have to push up against strangers to see if that's your bag. The app detects any bluetooth speaker you put in your luggage and shows you visually where your suitcase is. The range is 75 feet which could also help locate your bag if someone takes it.
Matthew
Looking for the next hot app to turn your iPhone or iPod Touch into a mobile recording studio? Look no further than Groovemaker by IK Multimedia. The application gives aspiring producers loads of samples, beats, loops, and effects that can turn even a novice beat-mixer into a Kanye…minus the arrogance and insanity.
Launching it takes very little time and synchronizing mixes is easy and simple. What’s more, the software is intuitive, user friendly and online demo videos can help to clear up any other difficulties. Best of all, there’s a free starter version. You can finish dropping a beat in about the same amount of time that it took you to read this…and given today’s music climate, if you’re turning out tracks that took you 45 seconds to conceptualize, you’ll be right on par with what everybody else in the industry is doing.
Michael
Never lose another old person thanks to the GPS-enabled shoe, the Ambulator. I actually called my 94 year-old Grandma in Seattle to ask her thoughts on the product. Her response, “it’s creepy, but I know some friends that need it. The only way I’d let you know where I was would be if I could still wear my UGG boats.” There’s your focus group Aetrex Worldwide: Even the elderly choose style over utility.
Allison
The Nine Eyes of Google Street View
One year ago, artist Jon Rafman began collecting screen captures of Google Street Views, which he curated, annotated. The resulting photo essay, “The Nine Eyes of Google Street View,” is by turns heartbreaking and hilarious. In Rafman’s words, “The world captured by Google appears to be more truthful and more transparent because of the weight accorded to external reality, the perception of a neutral, unbiased recording, and even the vastness of the project.”
In addition to the one pictured above, some of my favorites include:
Rod Stewart Fan Club (Scotland)
Rifle-Toting Man in Harley Sweatshirt and Mom Jeans (South Dakota)
Woman in Bikini "Napping" on Sidewalk (Spain)
Amanda
I saw this on The Approval Matrix (week of August 10, 2009) in New York magazine and I think it's really clever. Spanish designer Oscar Diaz, created a calendar that sucks ink out of a bottle displaying what day it is. It is by far the coolest calendar I've EVER seen!
Andrea F.
40 Fantastic Time-Wasting Sites
Most of us work and yet we always find ways of doing completely useless activities. Well, to contribute to the edifice of human procrastination, I am sharing this link that could take away weeks of your life. These time-wasting sites will be perfect for building up your non-legacy. My favorites? Virtual NES and FMyLife.
Jeremy
I know we talked about this in our news section, but I think it's crucial how Nokia might be in a power position that the likes of BlackBerry and Apple haven't seen coming.
According to this interesting profile on Nokia in the September issue of Fast Company, their stated goal is to become the “world’s biggest entertainment media network.” Although all the attention right now is on the success of Apple’s iPhone/app store platform, Nokia arguably has a much larger worldwide market share (1.1 billion users).
If you think about all those users as a unified distribution platform (for social activity, delivering content, etc) that’s a potentially huge base of consumers. Though the jury’s still out on Nokia’s Ovi platform (though Ovi email just hit a million users), it’s worth keeping an eye on the handset-makers up in Helsinki.
