For me, the coolest new feature of Mac OS 10.4 “Tiger” is an application called Quartz Composer included with ‘Developers Tools’. It allows the user/developer to create patches for the real time generation and manipulation of images using the new Core Image engine via a visual patch based interface.
Quartz Composer shares much of its interface style and function with its predecessor PixelShox, an OpenGL based real time video application a mate of mine Khalid has been using for vj work for a while now. While it is no longer being actively developed (its developer has taken a full time position in the computer graphics field *cough* at apple *cough*), it’s worth a look if you have a Mac and have not moved to 10.4 yet.
Like PixelShox, Quartz Composer has a wide array of live inputs such as mouse and keyboard tracking, MIDI, audio and video inputs. One new input featured in Quartz Composer which has caught my eye is RSS processing using the new Safari RSS engine. While a more generic XML parser would have been preferable I’m sure I can have a lot of fun with RSS alone 
Quartz compositions may be incorporated in ‘real’ programs with Cocoa bindings and interfaces built with the ‘inteface builder’ application, used as screen savers (one of the default screen savers included with 10.4 displays the current Apple News RSS feed in an ‘eye candy’ 3d flythrough) and, drumroll…. played in QuickTime Player in 10.4!
QuartzComps has popped up as a blog for sharing and discussing Quartz Composer patches, as has the Apple Quartzcomposer-dev Info Page mail list (see the Mailing List Archives too).
For more info on Core Image, Core Video and Quicktime 7 see this page of ArsTechnica’s excellent and in-depth review of 10.4 - Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger : Page 16
Guess The Google is a flash game which shows you a grid of 20 images from a Google image search for a particular word. You have 20 seconds to correctly identify the search word.
Its very neat and quite addictive but I’d love to see a version which searches flickr or a video sharing site. Also I’d like to see it search for a larger range of words (it seemed to repeat when I replayed).
via jill/txt » guess the google
Naoism - interfearence is a very slickly produced flash interactive video work (Jessica Helfand would label its typographic style a disciple of the ‘cult of the scratchy’ a la Seven). The work has a a simple branching structure presenting the user with a short video loop sourced from US archival footage and two choices, “join the party” or “escape from it all”. Each choice triggers the next loop and two more choices. The sound design is perhaps the best aspect of the work, providing a nice distraction from the stop - start nature of the interactivity. Fragments of voices jumble randomly over a beat as the work waits for the user to make their choice.
Another very handy little Cocoa program I came across recently is CocoaMySQL. Its basically a graphical user interface (GUI) for accessing MySQL databases. I recently installed WordPress (which stores user account information and more in MySQL) locally on my laptop as an experiment and CocoaMySQL helped demystify the installation process completely. Initially I didn’t really know how such a database worked but after examining it using this program it all started to make sense.
I’m a big fan of these applications which make UNIXy command line processes accessible to the lay-person.
del.icio.us is a free social bookmarking site which lets you log in, post a URL, a brief description and use ‘tags’ to organise and categorise your links and browse those submitted by others. It even generates RSS feeds of bookmarks for each user. On its own this is very cool, and a good way to keep track of bookmarks across multiple computers / operating systems / locations.
If you happen to be using Mac OS X, Cocoal.icio.us allows you to access and manage your del.icio.us bookmarks, descriptions and tags without having to use a web browser by talking directly to the del.icio.us API (once you’ve told it your username and password). It also features a built in browser preview window, so you can click on a bookmark and to check that you got the URL right etc.
via http://del.icio.us/cnwb/
Ok, this version (Vidget 3.5) follows on from previous versions:
Vidget 1
Flickr Image Viewer (Vidget 2), and
Vidget 3
Vidget 3.5 is an experimental interactive audiovisual performance device which allows the user to manipulate video in real time online. As well as mixing a number of video clips together, the user may search for still images from the Flickr photo sharing site and mix them together. For a instructions on usage see previous versions above.
Continue reading ‘Re: Vidget 3.5′
I recently came across a copy of Ben Hammersley’s presentation on the ‘Semantic Web’. I’d heard the term a few times but never really looked into it. This was an excellent introduction to the concept. Also impressive is the Quicktime movie itself which features a small view of Ben giving the presentation, along with a larger view of the slides he is referring to. Here is Ben’s comment on the presentation: The Sporting Gentleman’s Guide to the Semantic Web and other such Technological Marvels of the Modern Age - remixed. from Ben Hammersley’s Dangerous Precedent
And here is the file: Quicktime (38Mb)
As a follow up to the TV series “24″, Fox is releasing a series of one minute ‘Mobisodes’ dubbed “24: Conspiracy”. These new micro-episodes are to be distributed (sold?) to Vodafone customers’ phones. I didn’t really get into the show when it was on TV but I think the subject matter would be ideal for an alternate reality style game.
I think the key to making this cooler would be using the fact that the playback device is a phone. This means ‘Mobisodes’ could be broadcast at any time of day or night with a 100% chance the audience will see them (even if they check their messages the next day). Users/viewers could send information back to the producers and/or to each other to select a character or plot thread to follow or just to comment.
I doubt that this will happen, but still, its is an interesting move for a major studio to start producing content for 3G capable phones.
More info:
MSNBC - Fox to create TV series for cell phones
BBC NEWS | Entertainment | TV and Radio | 24 being made for mobile phones
24weblog.com - Vodafone lures 3G customers with 24-inspired drama
Yahoo! News - Fox to Create Series for Wireless Phones
via SG and Boing Boing
