Open-Source Digital Artmakers: Adobe Flex 2 + AS3 Goes Open

Flex (and thus ActionScript 3 / Flash) are going open source, according to an Adobe announcement today. Ely Greenfield, Flex architect, and David Wadhwani, vice president of Flex Product Line, explained to Robert Scoble what it all means: It’s difficult to say yet exactly what all the implications are, but something very exciting is happening […]

Before NASA: Real First-Ever 3D Images?

Seems I spoke too soon. While NASA claims to have the first-ever 3D images of the sun, John Cabrer claimed the honors on the Make blog way back in September, with a couple of homebrewed shots. They’re not as sophisticated, of course, but the real deal-killer is he did only still shots — no video. […]

Why is Apple's Support for Java Multimedia So Poor?

It’s ironic to me that so many users of the superb, Java-based Processing multimedia tool seem to prefer the Mac, because Mac Java support seems downright anemic. Mac users have long complained that, since Apple develops their own Java support for Mac OS X, the platform tends to lag behind Sun’s releases. That to me […]

Why is Apple’s Support for Java Multimedia So Poor?

It’s ironic to me that so many users of the superb, Java-based Processing multimedia tool seem to prefer the Mac, because Mac Java support seems downright anemic. Mac users have long complained that, since Apple develops their own Java support for Mac OS X, the platform tends to lag behind Sun’s releases. That to me […]

NASA Yuri’s Night Rave: Space is the Place

Adding to our running tally of totally geeky events, electronic musician Chachi Jones writes with a report from the Yuri’s Night party at NASA’s Ames Research Center. Sure, Yuri’s Night events, in honor of the great space explorer cosmonaut, take place all over the world. But when it hits Ames, you get a full-blown rave […]

Circuit-Bent Events: Bent Fest NYC Now; Bent Notes from LA and MN

Bent gear aplenty in Minnesota, in this Flickr photo from circuitmaster (GetLoFi). The Bent Festival, a celebration of music electronic, circuit-bent, and otherwise technologically manipulated, reaches its final US city starting tonight (Thursday) through Saturday, with three days and nights of music and workshops. Check out the lineup on the Bent NYC site; I’ll be […]

LittleGPTracker: LSDJ-Style Music Tracker for Linux Game Systems, Windows, and Mac

As seen in the video from last month’s Music Makers event, LittleGPTracker is a tracker for Linux-based GP2X and GP32 systems. The GP-series boxes are terrific little game machines that, unlike proprietary commercial game systems from Sony and Nintendo, are completely open. (Well, even if there is a certain pleasure to hacking PSPs, Game Boys, […]

Celebrating Paper, Tonight in Brooklyn

Tonight CDM joins with MAKE, Popular Science, Etsy, and Instructables in an event celebrating all things made out of paper. My own interpretation is to mess with the concept a bit, and build a MIDI sequencer/sampler that works with barcodes. If you do make it, bring your favorite magazine/book barcode and we’ll see how it […]

Etsy Video: Handmade Music Geekfest, MIDI Slime, Shock Gloves, GP Tracker

Vanessa from Etsy shot a great video of last month’s Handmade Music, sponsored by CDM, MAKE, and Etsy Labs. See me chatting about the idea and why working with tools like Reaktor and Max/MSP/Jitter is DIY, too, plus Eric Singer demonstrating the Sonic Banana and Slime-o-Tron slime-to-MIDI interface, Herr Professor showing off his portable GP […]