The sad part is, most folks don’t know who he was. Michael S. Hart invented electronic books (now called eBooks) in 1971, when he typed the text of the free printed copy of the U.S. Declaration of Independence he had been handed into a plain ASCII text file and sent it over the net to his friends. In 1971 almost no-one knew there was a net, still decades away from evolving into the web, but even back then Mike realized it was a powerful tool for education and literacy, and he kept typing in and disseminating royalty free literature. He later went on to found the Gutenberg Project and became an advocate for both literacy and for the preservation of public domain rights and resources, all for the greater good of the human race. In case it wasn’t obvious by my statements, this is one of my heroes, and one of the giants who helped build today’s modern world of the future. He will be missed.
The folks at Production IG have released yet another sci-fi app in the form of the Ghost in the Shell: Optical Camouflage Camera. This one allows you to snap pictures or capture video that turns transparent against the background, as the characters did in the original GITS movie. To make it even tastier, they are throwing in free backgrounds from the GITS: SSS movie for you to position your people and objects in front of, to maximize the fun. It is currently on sale for $1.99 during the roll-out period, but expect the price to go up after a bit. While you are in there, you might want to grab their previous two apps which are running at 99 cents each. The first is the Character Music Player from Ghost In The Shell: S.A.C. Section9, the second is the 3D Cyber Clock. While I like all of these apps, only the first allows you to create your own original video.
The other app worth mentioning is FiLMiC Pro, which gives you a bunch of functionality for enhancing your HD video capture. It is a bit pricy at $2.99 compared to most other apps (or at least most I find interesting), so check out the new stuff it gives you before making your decision. *grin*
The Radioactive Orchestra has an assortment of over 3,000 radioactive isotopes which you can use to create music. Strange as that sounds, it is a first class way to get an instinctive understanding of radiation decay behaviors and patterns, allowing you to directly perceive the activity. And, with a little mixing of isotopes and adjusting your BPM rate and root frequency you can actually end up with an interesting music bed from which to build your own compositions. They also have some wave filter functions; it defaults to a sine wave, but try a square wave or sawtooth for some interesting acoustic variations. Thanks to the folks at New Scientist for the heads up on this one.
Planning on taking a trip this year? I have to recommend the Epic Fu episode Best Travel Apps, as seen below. Zadi puts together some of the best compilations of useful information online about using the online environment, and she has done it again with this one. If you are planning to travel any time in the next year or so, watch this video and start collecting the Apps that will help your journey the most.
Haruhi Suzumiya has had an assortment of Manga and two seasons of Anime created for and about her, and now she finally has her own Apps. They are simple Apps that allow you some dialog access, a clock, and an alarm function, at least as far as I can tell. While I currently have a small Nihongo (Japanese) vocabulary, I haven’t learned how to read Kanji yet, so I may be missing some functions because I can’t read the instructions. At the moment Haruhi’s AniPoke is free, and until the end of August Mikuru’s AniPoke and Nagato’s AniPoke will each run at $0.99. Once we hit September the other two go back up to their normal $3.99 each. I could not find any difference between the paid and free variations, beyond who the character you were poking was (and no, this series isn’t ANYTHING like Pokeman; shame on you for not knowing that!). The alarm function gives you the voice of the character telling you to pay attention, over and over; it doesn’t stop until you tell it to. Thanks to the folks at Crunchyroll for the heads up on this one.
You can make your own online videos, to share whatever drives your enthusiasm with the world, and lots of you have done so. If you want to build your own, I recommend you check out the two videos on the page. They will give you a few good rules of thumb and tell you about some excellent tools to help you succeed, many of which are even free (the software ones, at least; there are very few free video cameras or microphones, although there are a number of cheap but high quality hardware options). Thanks to Epic Fu and The Fine Bros. for some good insight into the process.