Rivalries are good: they keep software developers competitive, leapfrogging each other in features. They keep the pressure on, and having seen what happens when one company gets a monopoly (Microsoft Office, I’m looking at you), progress generally slows. Notation users have benefited from the Finale/Sibelius rivalry, and that competition continues to produce better and better […]

If I can do it, you can do it. Over on the just-launched Create Digital Motion, I describe assembling a custom PC from a barebones Shuttle case, with photos of each step. To keep that from getting boring, I dropped it all into the fantastic plasq app Comic Life to make it into a how-to […]

Thanks to the release of the Prophet 64 music production cartridge for Commodore 64, a lot of C64 music makers have been hanging out on the Prophet 64 Yahoo Group. There are some really talented hackers and case modifiers building beautiful custom computers out of vintage Commodore machines. Last week, we got to see Traktor […]

Geek couture takes another giant leap forward: via the excellent bending blog Get Lofi, we learn someone has started selling t-shirts with Max/MSP patches and circuit-bent Speak-and-Spells: such a turn on: unlikely apparel Just US$9.99, too, and shipping internationally. If you get one, send us a photo of you in it, please. I do enjoy […]

I may have to stop writing about new items, because as soon as I do, they disappear for a few months. (Okay, maybe it’s not me, specifically.) The reality is, shipping music products takes a long time, so a six month or more lag between when products are introduced (often at the massive NAMM trade […]

If you’re anywhere near Manchester, England, you’ll want to clear your schedule for 20-23 July (and thereabouts). The upcoming Futuresonic festival has been all over my inbox, and it looks really cool, especially since it supplements the usual talks and presentations with some very useful free workshops: Futuresonic: Social Technologies Summit The keynote is by […]

If you haven’t used Flash lately, you’ve missed a lot: it’s been quietly becoming more powerful. ActionScript 2.0 finally made Flash into a suitable programming environment, and Flash 8 brought awesome pixel-processing features via the BitmapData API. Add these to Flash’s lovely vector animation features, and Flash becomes a must-have tool. We’ve had a lively […]

A new companion to Create Digital Music, Create Digital Motion will focus on producing motion graphics, video, and animation, with an emphasis on real-time creation of visuals for performance, VJing, and interactive art. Because artists increasingly span disciplines and media, CDMu and CDMo will share a single forum: createdigitalnoise.com Create Digital Music / Create Digital […]