El Canto Del Loco, Madrid, 30/10/09 - Concert Photos

I was back in Spain at the weekend; the prime purpose of the visit being to see El Canto Del Loco in concert on the Friday night at the huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge Palacio de los Deportes, in Madrid.
Awesome gig; amazing lights, amazing atmosphere, superb playlist - and great crowd and band interaction.
Will be writing a review up on www.elcantodelloco.co.uk - but for now here's some iPhone pics from the concert...

Apple's App Store Is 1 Year Old

Apple's App Store - part of iTunes, and used for buying applications and games for the iPhone and iPod Touch, turns 1 year old, having put over 56,000 apps on its virtual shelves and had over a billion downloads.
They're celebrating with some special download offers on their most popular apps...

Apple iPhone 3.0 Out Today

All excited. Don't forget that today is the iPhone 3.0 software update - nice review of some top features here at Cult of Mac - and of course for those that have more money than sense (I usually include myself in that bracket, but not this time) then there's the costly upgrades of the iPhone itself also becoming available imminently.
This time though I reckon cost far outweighs worth and will be giving it a miss. Much as I want 32Gb of storage for music and movies, dammit.

iPhone App Download Hyperwall

Hyperwall in WWDC 2009, Live from App Store from Imagebakery on Vimeo.

Yes, it's another utterly unfathomable headline...
Geeky but fun - this is a "hyperwall" (apparently) at this week's Apple Worldwide Developers' Conference (WWDC) showcasing the popularity of iPhone apps, with a selection of around 20,000 of them pulsing and sending out ripples across a matrix of twenty 30" Cinema Displays as they are sold in realtime.
Somewhere in the region of 3,000 apps are downloaded every minute incidentally...

MotoGP.com Release Awesome iPhone App

I have a (possibly ever-so slightly deserved) reputation as a bit of a geek / nerd / saddo when it comes to anything Mac or iPhone related. So, imagine my joy then, when I was pointed at a dedicated iPhone app from MotoGP.com

Let's face it, MotoGP and Dorna have been way more innovative, smart and genuinely rewarding in their approach to online delivery than F1 - and far better at doing something of genuine interest to punters.
And so perhaps this is no great surprise. Doesn't mean that it's not worth a bit of a rave though...
It's a thoroughly tasty piece of work from start to finish, playing both to their own strengths in content and data, and the iPhone's strengths in interface and usability.

The key to it of course is dynamic data - in this case, live timing with race lap, rider position, lap time, gap time, and top speed. And nice touches like rotating the iPhone into 'horizontal' position to get a full live timing view, and live commentary from the MotoGP crew as well.
The app also provides access to race results, championship results, latest news, rider profiles, competition calendars and schedules, and a huge photo gallery.
Aside from all the good functionality, it also has the MotoGP.com excellent branding DNA, and attention to detail, in buckets. It's one of the slickest looking apps I've seen. (*And I've seen more than enough to prove I should get out more...)

To be honest it's a steal at only £1.79 and certainly an invaluable addition to the tech tools of anyone who loves MotoGP and their gadgets.

For some bizarre reason MotoGP.com have disabled 'embedding' of their Youtube demo of the app - which is a real shame as it'd be nice to just plonk it on the page here and share it on other sites and blogs, but if you click on this link then you can watch it anyway...

Finally, if you need no further persuading then just click here to go directly to the app in iTunes...

Tube "Departure Boards" on WWW & iPhone

(*Yes, it's always this much fun...)

Quite a nice new development from TFL, the people who bring you tube trains. Sometimes.
It's a new web tool called "Departure Boards" which as the name suggests, provides upcoming live train information in exactly the format you would see on the departure boards at any given station.
You simply select any station from any line, and - whoomph - there it is.
Excellent piece of work, and one that could only be seriously bettered if it were translated into a bespoke iPhone application; something which has in fact been done here by awavana.com - and very nice it is too.

Although the interface and execution are nice - and it is genuinely a great idea for communicating data, there does remain the question of the relevance and accuracy of the information itself. Let us not forget that last year the Departure Boards at Gunnersbury Station (District Line, Richmond Branch) were actually nominated for the 2008 Whitbread Prize For Fiction...



(*Okay; so that last bit was untrue... But only because nobody had the presence of mind to fill in a nomination form)

Random Pic: Chiswick Park

Just a nice catch of a couple of Piccadilly Line trains speeding through Chiswick Park tube station, as I was waiting for the District Line back into town after drinks last night.

Kind of nice textures, colour and vibe courtesy of the iPhone's idiosyncratic camera...

W4 5TS :: 7.30AM :: 28_04_09

Taken on the iPhone, early this morning at work.

What the hell happened to all that beautiful weekend sun?

Wishlist For iPhone 3.0 Software

With Apple's announcement of an event on March 17th, centring on the next software version for iPhones - 3.0 - the geek and fanboy forums are abuzz with speculation and wishlisting about what v3 may bring...

It goes without saying that whatever Apple finally release, not everybody's going to be happy. They never are. Apple could include World Peace and an end to Global Warming & Poverty but there'd still be someone saying that they'd have preferred a new icon for the Calculator app.

Nonetheless it's becoming ever more clear (in a trend that has evolved over past releases) that there are a couple of key features that very many users would be pretty much universally happy to see (and may be extremely miffed NOT to see...)

• Copy & Paste
• MMS
• Push Notification System
• Video Recording
• Tethering

Personally, I'd be totally behind all of those - copy & paste in particular seeming something of a no-brainer. Beyond that however, there's a couple of other things that I'd rather like to see; things that are of varying importance / triviality and I have no idea how much they might mean to anybody else...

1 - Desktop/Spaces:
Although it'd be hard to imagine Apple opening up the iPhone's "desktop" to the kind of lush and flexible interface you have in the OSX Finder, I think there's more room for simple and efficient icon and app management than at present. A bespoke implementation of something like the "Spaces" concept from OSX might be quite cool, for instance by an icon effectively being a folder that contains whichever apps you choose to store in it - something you could do to reflect categories such as tools, games, fun, music, travel, etc. And maybe 'most used' or daily/frequent...

2 - Removing Apple's apps:
I hate having my various desktop screens hogged by Apple's unremoveable apps. Why can these not behave as your purchased or free downloaded apps; whereby they can be retained within iTunes and chosen to be synced across or not as you wish. I mean "Stocks" FFS!!!
Easy and obvious.

3 - Full Alert / Notification Customisation:
At the moment you can't even allocate your own sound for an SMS alert... Pah!
I'd love to see a complete system of customisable notifications across alerts - not only for which sounds you use, but also individual volume and vibrate controls, and notification repeat options.


So we now just have to wait for the iPhone 3.0 software preview on the 17th to find out what it's *really* all about....

Google Earth For iPhone

Google Earth hits the small screen with the release of its iPhone (and iPod Touch) version.
Although a natural for a nice big monitor and a fast computer, it holds up surprisingly well within the confines of the iPhone.
As well as some decent smooth zooming and searching - and the inclusion of familiar functions such as photos and Wikipedia location notes, it also holds the odd nice touch in reserve such as using the iPhone's tilting to alter the view from 'above' to the more 3D angle treatment.
I need to get to know it a bit more but first impressions are pretty sweet :)
Here's a quick trial run...

1 - Initial view

2 - Searching for "Talavera de la Reina"

3 - View of Talavera de la Reina, with picture icons and Wikipedia icon showing up (activated by tapping...)

4 - Tilted over, looking in 3D 'landscape' view, north from Talavera (the compass icon shows up in the top right corner)

Just go to the iTunes Store, and seaarch for "Google Earth"...

Enjoy :)

Has Brian Eno Made The Coolest iPhone App To Date?

Er... well, Yes actually.
Superb piece of work - and as creative, refreshing and innovative as you'd expect from Britain's national treasure in charge of brainiac music.
Bloom is not merely a music generator - a very clever ambient music generator - it's also an experience to be enjoyed passively or interactively. Probably why it's described as "part instrument, part composition and part artwork."
And it *is* pretty much a work of art in its own right.
Having set a basic "Mood" - which defines tone and colour, a drone starts up and you tap / press the screen wherever you want to create musical notes, which repeat in looping patterns and drive blossoming and fading 'dot' visuals across the colour gradients of the screen.
The application will even evolve and develop the 'music' if you leave it alone.
Then in the best traditions of Etch-a-Sketch you simply shake your phone around to clear the composition.

It's beautiful, and strangely addictive - and the fact that it's done with such a non-musical interface (just coloured washes, with no need for keyboards or buttons or anything) makes it a genuinely enjoyable and non-technical experience.
It's only a couple of quid and it's worth every single penny.
Awesome.

Here's the iTunes link to the Bloom application...

W4 5TS :: 7.30AM :: 09_10_08

Taken on iPhone, shot treated with Camera Bag - an iPhone app that filters your pics with atmospheric "real" camera colours and textures.

The iPhone Camera: Not Shit After All, Apparently...

Although I'd be the first to admit that the iPhone's camera isn't the best (kind of galling for such an Apple fanboy - but really, it *is* a bit pants), it's still phenomenal what you can do with one, given a bit of imagination and presumably a shedload of patience...
Look at these amazing, almost Hockney-esque montages by p0psharlow posted on Flickr...
Tremendous.

Spotted on Cult of Mac by Chris. Thanks :)

The Burning Question About The Android Market

A piece of brilliant smart-arseiness on the MacRumors forum, discussing Google's new "Android Market" (their version of the iPhone's App Store basically...) - Click on the image to get it full-size and readable. It's worth it.

Cool iPhone App: Wine Pad

One of my current fave iPhone apps is Wine Pad, which is a nifty notebook for logging all kinds of details, notes and ratings for wines you're checking out.
Given that I've been checking out quite a few (largely Spanish reds) recently, I've got to know the app pretty well.
Whilst it lacks a nice global touch like a big fat searchable database of wines, or at least broad wine reference information, it certainly does what it say on the tin in terms of letting you note all kinds of details - colour, varietals, region, taste, price... loads of stuff - as well as give star ratings, so you can always refer to your notes wherever you are and have with you a list of wines you know you like.

Click here to go to Wine Pad on the App Store...

Random Pic: Centrepoint

Just a pic taken yesterday beneath Centrepoint, next to Tottenham Court Road tube station, whilst waiting to meet up with composer Keith Johnson to discuss the brief for a website documenting a 'musician in residence' project he's working on at UCL.

Sunny :)

iPhone Screengrab Trick

Having been used to doing "Shift Apple 3" for screengrabbing on my desktops and laptops for years and years and years, I was pleased (but a bit surprised in a way) to find out from Cult of Mac that Apple allow you to screengrab your iPhone too...
Dead easy of course.
All you do is hold in the "Home" button (that's the round one below the screen) and click once on the "Power" button that's on the top of the phone. Don't hold it down, just click it the once, and you'll hear the familiar camera shutter noise, and if you then go to the "Camera Roll" part of the camera where you store photos you've taken with your iPhone, you'll find the image there.
And then you just import it into iPhoto.