MetaFilter posts tagged with software

EyeWriter Initiative

brundlefly — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 14:32:53 -0800

"The EyeWriter project is an ongoing collaborative research effort to empower people, who are suffering from ALS, with creative technologies." From the site:

Members of Free Art and Technology (FAT), OpenFrameworks, the Graffiti Research Lab, and The Ebeling Group communities have teamed-up with a legendary LA graffiti writer, publisher and activist, named Tony Quan, aka TEMPTONE. Tony was diagnosed with ALS in 2003, a disease which has left him almost completely physically paralyzed… except for his eyes. This international team is working together to create a low-cost, open source eye-tracking system that will allow ALS patients to draw using just their eyes. The long-term goal is to create a professional/social network of software developers, hardware hackers, urban projection artists and ALS patients from around the world who are using local materials and open source research to creatively connect and make eye art.

The 'Democratization of Music.'

Lutoslawski — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 11:07:36 -0800

uPlaya uses algorithms to determine if a song will be a hit. Brought to you by Music Intelligence Solutions, the uPlaya software uses spectral deconvolution to rate a song on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being assurance that the song will be a hit. Ostensibly, the software can be used to sell new bands to record labels if a song achieves a ranking of platinum or better. According to Harvard Business School, the software is accurate 8 out of 10 times. The software is a finalist for the Creative Coast's Innovation Awards. A vodpod documentary about uPlaya. The uPlaya blog.

Need Firefox 0.8?

netbros — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 06:37:15 -0800

Remember when your computer just worked? Did you click 'OK' to that recommended update on programs like iTunes, Adobe Reader, or Yahoo Messenger, only to realize that the older version ran faster or had better features? Then Version Download may be your solution. Includes back-level versions of browsers, audio and video, security and anti-virus, FTP, file-sharing and communications software.

Google Asks: "What Would Email Look Like, If It Were Invented Today?"

zarq — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 07:45:13 -0800

Google began inviting volunteers to a public preview test of their new Wave web-based collaborative email and document communications platform yesterday, which enables users to "communicate and work together in real time." Initial reviews this past May seemed positive. (Previously) Features include real-time collaboration, (including concurrent editing and control of each "wave" thread,) natural language tools and a variety of APIs which users can use to embed content in other sites. Google Wave Developer Preview at Google I/O 2009 (80min video -- an abridged 10 minute version is here. Wave login page is here. Google Wave Federation Protocol is an open source project for developers. The WSJ reports that invites are now for sale on EBay. Something similar happened when Google launched GMail in 2004.

The Last Lecture

kliuless — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 04:56:15 -0800

Horrifically bad software demo becomes performance art

Netflix gives up $1M software prize

Twang — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 02:32:53 -0800

The winners of the prize - for software 10% better at recommending movies than Netflix own Cinemax - were a team described here back in June. They beat another team by getting their results in 20 minutes earlier. Netflix was happy: “You look at the cumulative hours and you’re getting Ph.D.’s for a dollar an hour.” - so happy they're offering two new $half-million prizes.

No mention yet whether there's been any progress on the "Napolean Dynamite problem" ... the movies it's hard to predict your reaction to.

When Bertoni showed me a list of his 25 most-difficult-to-predict movies, I noticed they were all similar in some way to “Napoleon Dynamite” — culturally or politically polarizing and hard to classify, including “I Heart Huckabees,” “Lost in Translation,” “Fahrenheit 9/11,” “The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou,” “Kill Bill: Volume 1” and “Sideways.”

A maemo to Apple and Google

sien — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 18:43:24 -0800

Nokia has announced the n900 running the maemo Linux based operating system will be released in October. The phone has similar specifications to the iphone, but with a keyboard and considerably higher resolution display (800x480). In addition the OS is an open platform with free GPL development tools. More from The Guardian and CNET.

Ow, my iPhone!!

acb — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 09:48:57 -0800

The 10 smartest and stupidest iPhone apps , according to British technology website The Register. The smartest apps include things like personal databases, information tools and music streaming and identification apps. The stupid section is a morass of farts, poop, pickup lines and badly rendered, vaguely creepy pictures of girls. Idiocracy, it seems, has come early to the App Store.

Not Even Doom Music justifies this.

jscott — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 23:19:57 -0800

iD Software has been acquired by ZeniMax media. (Reports here, here, and many other places.) John Romero, the co-founder of the company, had some initial concerns but seems to have cheered up. No doubt a wide variety of retrospectives, histories, opinions and flames will rise from this most infamously-independent of game studios joining forces/merging/being swallowed by another, younger one. (ZeniMax was founded in 1999, iD in 1991.) With iD releasing games with years-long gaps between them, younger readers might not have grown up playing this company's output, but if you've ever run down a hallway with a gun bouncing earnestly before you and looking through a heads-up display, iD has touched your life too. Masters of Doom is an excellent history of the company in book form, assuming you still read.

Books have the same enemies as people: fire, humidity, animals, weather, big business and their own content.

bigmusic — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 07:27:19 -0800

Build a DIY non destructive book scanner for under $300. An open source OCR package. A gratis ebook creation tool. An open source ebook library management tool and reader. An open-source Linux distribution for eink-based devices. And many, many ebook readers.

Aladdin for the Genesis had just been released.

WolfDaddy — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 11:49:37 -0800

A visit to id Software, 1993. A must watch for anyone who's ever played Doom.

Yo dawg, we herd you like webapps...

Mr. Anthropomorphism — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 21:19:28 -0800

Software startup 280 North today announced Atlas: a rich, web-based environment for developing Mac-like web applications. The company garnered praise last year when they released web-based slideshow app 280 Slides, which offers powerful features in an oddly familiar motif. The similarities are more than skin deep, for 280 Slides, though a polished and capable product in its own right, is also a showpiece for even more ambitious projects: a programming language and open-source framework that allow developers to write cross-platform applications for the web (nearly) the same way they would for the Mac. Atlas, then, is a place to put it all together—an online Xcode for Mac-style web development.

Buying a scalpel set doesn't make you a surgeon, but...

cthuljew — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 10:03:33 -0800

Not all of us need, or want, $10,000 worth of Adobe and Microsoft software to be creative. So, here's some alternatives, each available on every major platform:

GIMP, for all your drawing and photo-editing needs. (Windows and OSX.)
Inkscape, for vector graphics creation.
Scribus, for incredibly powerful document creation.
FontForge, if you want to make your own fonts.
OpenOffice, the old standby for word processing, spreadsheets, and all those other office needs. I'm a personal fan of Inkscape for its wonderfully intuitive interface, as well as Scribus for its stylesheet-based power. I hope these links improve your productivity, instead of ruining it for the day.

Road to Riches or Hopeless Quagmire?

Bango Skank — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 09:28:15 -0800

Despite lukewarm reviews Ethan Nichols' iPhone game iShoot has earned him enough money to allow him to quit his day job. A recent article makes iPhone software development sound like something anyone can do, and software developers as young as nine-years-old have Apple approved games in Apple's App Store. However, according to many developers things are not as rosy as they appear on the surface. Some have challenged Apple's decisions on which apps are and are not approved for sale, and others have accused fellow developers of manipulating the review system. Initially developers were preventing from even discussing these issues by a mandatory NDA, which after much criticism Apple later repealed.

"...And all for the want of a horseshoe nail."

orthogonality — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 09:21:22 -0800

Picture a three-guy trading floor. They would call a carrier,... [and] manually move trunks in and out of route by issuing SQL commands against the Veraz's Oracle database.... Let me write that out for you: One ass-hat residential customer with a 20yo telephone with four extra buttons did thirty million dollars in damages in less than one night. Anyways, that's how the company went bankrupt... and about 6000 or so people ... all got laid off.

"It's rare to come to face-to-face with the people behind the software, music, and media we pirate on regular basis; I guess that's part of the problem."

ND¢ — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 14:42:11 -0800

So there is this guy named Jona Bechtolt and he is an electronic musician and multimedia artist who performs as YACHT. He recently described in an interview some audio software that he had illegally downloaded, adding "Does all this piracy make me a bad person?". The company that makes the software that he illegally downloaded apparently saw his comment and wrote a blog post where they linked to his interview and stated "We've put up with rampant idiocy from people that style themselves members of the creative community but are actually members of some kind of bullshit that doesn't have a name." Then Mr. Bechtolt commented on that blog post kind of apologizing, but also saying "I'm a musician and I haven't bought music in years, nor have almost all of my musician friends." Then the company wrote him an open letter explaining why they did not accept his apology. [via Pitchfork]

Vocaloid Storytime

anthy — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 13:44:59 -0800

The Vocaloids,¹ anime-like characters created for the singing synthasizer program by the Yamaha Corporation, have been capturing the imaginations of Japanese fans for more than a year. They've inspired and starred in a large body of fan-produced songs and animated videos,² ranging from macabre to sorrowful to dramatic to humorous. [Massive MLYTP] Take Alice Human Sacrifice, the story of a small dream who just wants to survive. Or an alternate version...and a few more unsubtitled but progressively creepier and bloodier adaptations. In the mood for something a bit more SF? Check out Kokoro Kiseki, the story of a scientist who creates a cute girl robot without a heart. Then follow it up with the sequel from the robot's point of view. Or watch an alternate mix of both viewpoints.³ Or watch Daughter of Evil, the saga of an irredeemably wicked princess who gets her just deserts. Or does she? Round out the trilogy with a message of regret. Or visit two alternate viewpoints to get the full story.⁴ For the tale of a psychotic lover, see Cantarella.⁵ Or visit the nightmarish Dark Woods Circus. Looking for something a bit lighter? How about the story of the most high-maintenance girlfriend ever? Then watch the reply from a male point-of-view. Or two. Finish up by witnessing a proposal. Or just watch the twins being dorks. ¹Previously on Metafilter here and here. Since the last post, a set of vocaloid twins has also been released, and a new bilingual vocaloid character is slated for release on January 30. ²Often posted to Nico Nico Video, then later ported to Youtube. I've tried to link the English subtitled version of the video where possible, but in some cases there were multiple alternate versions and it was hard to choose. A few alternates I couldn't fit in:

³Rin's version alts: 1, 2, 3D Animation. Manga version. Untranslated: Alt animation for Len's version.
⁴The Servant of Evil and Regret Message with alternate animation. Untranslated alts for Daughter of Evil and Servant of Evil: 1, 2.
⁵Alternate untranslated version.

I Hardly Know Her - an "alternative way to view Flickr photostreams"

nthdegx — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 07:24:45 -0800

I Hardly Know Her - is an "alternative way to view Flickr photostreams. It is designed to facilitate high quality viewing with minimal distractions." By Justin Ouellette, creator of Muxtape.

People doing strange things with electricity

funkiwan — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 21:59:04 -0800

Dorkbot is a "monthly meeting of artists (sound/image/movement/whatever), designers, engineers, students, scientists, and other interested parties who are involved in the creative use of electricity." Started in NYC in 2000 by Douglas Repetto, Director of Research at the Columbia University Computer Music Center as well as one of Wired's 10 Sexiest Geeks, there are now dozens all over the world. Past presenters have been featured here on the blue. For instance Jeff Han presented his multi-touch interface at dorkbot-nyc in April of 2006. Miru Kim presented her naked city spleen at dorkbot-nyc in October of 2006. Bummed that there's not one in your own city? Start your own! The NYC meetings (first Wednesday of the month) are very casual and draw an eclectic range of presenters. A great mix of software and hardware mixed with various artistic influences. Would love to hear how they are run in other cities if anyone's been.

Even the nervous user can create plush toys

geos — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 09:26:21 -0800

We introduce Plushie, an interactive system that allows nonprofessional users to design their own original plush toys.

Why yes, I do have a clue

Mitheral — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 20:28:10 -0800

EclipseCrossword is a powerful windows tool for automatically creating crossword puzzles. You can create multiple puzzles from the same word list; print the puzzles in assorted formats; or export interactive puzzles for web pages. Or you can create crossword puzzles online.

Animata

Blazecock Pileon — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 00:46:02 -0800

Animata is an open source real-time animation software, designed to create animations, interactive background projections for concerts, theatre and dance performances.

Plainview is a free full-screen web browser for your mac.

krautland — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 16:51:28 -0800

Plainview is a free full-screen web browser for your mac. Until now, you had two options for showing Internet work: capture it all to Quicktime and throw it into Powerpoint or Keynote (looks nice but no interactivity as everything has to be canned) or show it in your browser (interactive but with ugly chrome distracting people from your beautiful sites). So here's a third option. Fire up your full-screen browser and let your audience focus on the work. Oh yeah, the same guys also made a neat little flash game called Tankageddon and of course the subservient chicken.

El Compa Vs The Cisco Kid

Artw — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 10:47:51 -0800

Would you like some Narco ballards with your network software?

Free as in ... money

swift — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 09:17:58 -0800

Coding Horror blogger Jeff Atwood granted $5,000 of his ad revenue to a worthy, open-source .NET project only to find the winner doesn't know what to do with the money. Any suggestions?