Well, it’s been a long time since last blog update… Don’t worry though, we are not dead (yet), we’ve just been working on some other stuffs lately… It’s coming soon

Back to feature of the week #2 ! This time, I’ll show you a little web app that may become quite handy : Kuler.

Kuler

Kuler , developed by Adobe, is like a color picker but in a more advanced version : pick one color and in a few clicks you’ll get analogs, complementary, shades, … Of course you can also pick some other random colors and see how they work together.

Another great side of Kuler is its community aspect. Type an idea, a movie, a mood, a place, an event, or anything going through your head and you’ll get instantly a 5-colors combination matching your request. Looks good, but last color should be a bit darker ? Click the edit button and change the ‘too-light-for-you’ one

You can also create you own combination from scratch: either by picking a color or by uploading an image.

And last but not least, Kuler’s developers are providing you with a API to enhance your own applications. For instance, panels where created for Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Flash, …

And Kuler is free, ain’t it great ? As usual, I hope you’ll enjoy it !

kuler.adobe.com

DaMintGum

Touchable Holography !

Traduction soon !
Don’t wait ? See it in french

We will show you something we discovered on the Internet once a week…

This said, let’s start with the Hype Machine !

The Hype Machine

This website is just like an RSS aggregator, but instead of news, it gather MP3 from blogs. The Hype Machine (aka Hypem) was created by Anthony Volodkin in 2005.

It is a great way to discover new artists or remixes and if you get an (free) account, you’ll be able to “bookmark” your favorites songs via the love button. You can browse Hypem in several styles : the classic “Latest”, the obvious “Popular” and it’s Twitter version, a radio, songs of the year and a “Spy” mode. This one let you hear what other members are listening to at the moment…

Hypem also allows you to share on Facebook or Twitter this ass-kicking remix you just found in one click ! Wanna buy it ? Just click on the Amazon or iTunes logo.

As for Last.fm (witch is supported by The Hype Machine), the more songs you add to your “Loved” folder, the more accurate the site gets to find events and music you might like…

Hope you’ll enjoy it !

As ever, you can visit our profiles : Maxweb, Munix and DaMintGum

DaMintGum

This technique will allow you to get easily more balanced compositions and eventually force you to focus on a particular point of your work.

History

It has been largely used since early history, in monuments such as Stonehenge (although it is doubtful), the Great Pyramid of Giza or some Greek temples. It is also widely based on a mathematical number, the Golden Ratio, approximately equal to  1.618…

The term of Rule of thirds appears for the first time in 1797, as a painting rule.

I’ll stop here history and math but feel free to check those websites by yourself if you are interested by the matter.

• Golden Ratio
• Works involving the Golden Ratio
• Proportions in architecture

The Technique

The concept of the Rule of Third, is to mentally divide your image in 9 area of the same size (again the Golden Ratio appears but I won’t go further on this subject) just as the graphic on the right.

The horizontals and verticals lines please the eye, so place your subject or a “strong” line of your work on them. As well, the dots at the intersections of these lines are the first zones to be focused by the eye. You should place there the most important point of your composition (eg. a head for a portrait, …)

Some examples

First things first, placing the subject at the intersections of the lines

The same, cropped

Now, placing your subject on one of the lines

This technique may also be used in landscape photography, by placing divisions in your picture on the lines (background, foreground, …).

Of course, the Rule of thirds is not absolute and breaking the rules has always been part of creativity, so don’t hesitate to try and keep only the result you prefere  !

Sources :

• Photo96
• Myself

By DaMintGum

Munix, drawn by Inal

And here they come ! Well… actually only one guy, but not anybody… The G.U.Y.

To be short, our new soldier is an amazing living jukebox, a great dj and is always hunting the latest move-your-body-sound.  This dude has a name – Munix – and he’ll teach you how to listen to (good) music !

Oh, by the way, for those how are living in the Liege area (Belgium), he’ll be performing during the Fiesta City in Verviers (between midnight and 2pm) at “Le Bilboquet”.

By DaMintGum

Due to the raising number of people using handlet devices and surfing on internet, we decided to adapt this blog to other platform such as : iPod touch, iPhone, PDA, Nokia phone, PSP, NDS …
It will enable a more comfortable and easy access to this blog, introducing a new & simple interface : Categories clearly shown and divided, advertisement removed and finally article’s size automatically fitted to your current platform.

We hope that you’ll like the improvement, enjoy it and give us your feedback !

By Mateo

Well, actually FM ain’t dead… not yet ! But it is certain that its success has only decreased during these few last years. The good old radio is suffering from one huge problem, you simply cannot skip the song you hate or tune to the style you want to hear if not any station is broadcasting this style at the moment.

In this article, I will introduce Last.fm

History

Last.fm was born in 2002 as an Internet radio with community features, such as generating playlists based on others reviews of songs. At this time, Audioscrobbler was a distinct project with another goal : having a record of what the people where listening, allowing charts and collective filtering.

In 2005, the two projects merged into a new Last.fm.

I choose to drop the “financial” part as it is not the most interesting part of Last.fm’s history.

The basis

Last.fm has two majors sides. The Audioscrobbler, the “Player”… I’ll start with the scrobbler !

The Audioscrobbler is simply a web-service, witch keeps a record of the song you are listening. It also store information such as the number of time you heard a tune or if you hate or love a music.

With those information, your own library is build and you can share it with your friends.

Last.fm can also recommend you song you might like, based on your library, and this is certainly the most interesting feature of this website ! You can start a radio airing only tunes you (might) like or muic you added on your “love-this-stuff” list !

However there are a few restrictions :

• Listening to a radio is free if you are in the US, UK or Germany. If not, you’ll have to pay to get this functionality (living in Belgium, it costs me 3€ per month)
• You cannot select the song you want to listen, it’s random.

The plus

Last.fm is not just a great player… It has also lot of functions like events, biography and news about your favorite artist, video clip, free songs to download, …

The site provide a great API too, but I’ll describe it in another post.

And finally, the artists get paid when you listen their songs !

If you have another similar service,leave it in the comments, I would be pleased to check it out !

You can also take a look on my Last.fm account

Soucres : Wikipedia & Last.fm

By DaMintGum

Hi everyone !

Three months ago, I’ve bought an Akai MPD24.

Read the full article and discover all the possible use of this midi-controller !

The Akai MPD24

The Akai MPD24 is a professional usb/midi controller.

It’s a sort of evolution of the famous Akai MPC, but all the sound is produced by your computer. It doesn’t contain any sound-chip : this is a controller, not a rhythm box ! It has 6 sliders, 8 knobs, 5 transports controls (play, rec,…) and 16 pads, but you have four pad bank, so you have virtually 64 pads (4*16) !

You can create your own presets to personalize the pressure curve of the pad, the midi note of each button, …

Finally you have three specials buttons :

• Full level : This button blocks each pressure on the pad up to a maximum level of 127.
• 16 Level : It saves the last pressed pad’s note, and activates it to all 16 pads, but within a different range of levels (1 is the lower, and 16 beeing the highest)
• Preview : When you push this button and turn one of the knob the data is sent right away when the button is released. It also allows you to ‘preview’ the future value via the screen.

That’s it for the presentation .

First impressions

I wanted the table to control various applications (such as Ableton, Tracktor, 8Loop, Resolume, …) because mixing (as a dj or as a vj) with a mouse isn’t that great ! I ordered it from Thomann (a German “online music store”) … Whenbought it, my first opinion was that the device would be more like a toy with a cheap plastic shells, lightweighted, … But I was totally wrong, we are definitively talking about a professional product (Akai professional) !

The first impression I got (as I unpacked it) was a great feeling of strength! When you lay it down on a table, the rubbers feet helps to maintain it steady.

The Test

Okay, so it’s finally time (after three month of use) to  say my impressions about this midi-device !

The screen :

The screen is very bright (lit), clear and contrasted. It contains most of the important informations, without tons of useless ones!

The displayed information is, for example, the number of the pad / knob / fader which is controlled, the pressure level applied to the hitted the pad, during and after touching it.

The only thing we could deplore, is the slowness of the screen to update. Another flaw is that the screen can get a bit blurry, although the midi stream is still sent on time…

The pads :

The pads are correctly sized and the texture of it is very soft, great feeling ! The sensibility is good, but do not hesitate to hit it ! (E.g : to reach the maximum level (127), you really have to smash it:D ) There’s an after pressed effect, so that when you continue pressing the pad you can still see the values changing…

The extreme corners of pads are not always correctly detected (but the extreme corners of this device are rarely used!)

The Faders :

The Knobs :

The knobs of this controller are precise and can go up to an infinite value. Whereever infinite knob are good or bad depends to you.

For myself I enjoy very much as you can assigne each controller to what you want. But possibilities aren’t totaly endless, you have 128 values and when the max value is reached well… you can’t go further.

Transport controls :

There are 5 transport control buttons (<<, >>, STOP, PLAY, REC). They are very useful ! It didn’t work out-of-the-box in Ableton Live, but fortunatly you can assign a note to each of these buttons and it’ll do the trick.

I/O :

As you can see, there is a power input which is not useful if you connect the akai by usb (self-powered).

You can attach your akai with a Kingston security cable.

There’s a midi out/in working very efficiently (nearly not latency). I can connect all my devices to the computer with this controller.

This is the end of my first article. I hope you liked it and if you have any further questions,  please leave a comment !

PS: there may still be some mistakes in my sentences, and I do apologiz, English isn’t my native language…

By Maxweb

In this blog, we’ll aim to share our discoveries in all kind of new technologies such as visual effects, web dev, apps dev, music, science and much more !

Since this blog has recently been posted online, it is currently kinda empty and not-that-much customized… Don’t loose hope thaw, it’ll be soon fixed