What I like about the DS is, that you not only can play games with it, but that also applications are released. Last week there was an ebook-collection released for the DS, and some weeks ago the Korg DS-10 synthesizer. People are beginning to get creative with that.

Absolutely low-tech hacking

This guy here shows us how to turn the DSi with the Korg DS-10 into a talkbox, simply by using a straw. It is recommended to try this out on the DSi, because the speakers on the DSi are “hidden” just under one big hole, compared to the DS lite, where the speakers are below a “matrix of hole”, that are much more difficult to focus the sound with the straw. Once fixed, voila, you have a nice little, portable talkbox. I am sure that this can also get more convenient, than holding the DS close to your mouth all the time. There are rumours, that an Korg-engineer itself (Mr.Kanamori-san) came up with the idea.

Ok, normally I am totally out of recent poplular music. So maybe this may nothing new, but I fell in love with the animations on this videos. No too much about the precise lightweight music from Kanye West, but more about the heart-opening videos that somehow have a decent experimental quality, don’t you think so? What do you think?

Good Morning

Heartless

Upcoming title Scribblenauts for the Nintendo DS, will be an interesting expereince, that twears and merges different genres and histories into one game. It is a mix of a puzzlegame, an inaginary playfield and thouse holy old text-driven adverntures from the past like Zak McCracken. In an interview at IGN the creative director Jeremiah Slaczka says about Scribblenauts:

So if there’s a Starite in the tree, you could write “ladder” and then a ladder would spawn. Climb up the ladder, and you grab the Starite. There’re more ways of doing it though obviously. You could write “axe”, and then cut the tree down using the object you spawned. You could write “shuriken” and throw that at the Starite in the tree and knock it down. It’s all based on real physics and interaction, so there’s nothing pre-canned.

I do not know any implementation details, therefore I don’t know how the vocabulary / inventory engine really works. Did they really put up hundreds and thousands of words and objects, each with different functionalities, into the DS database, in order to solve the 100 puzzels? An interesting question, especially if you think of re-use the engine, for example of opening it for the crowd to surf on it.

Everybody knows, that I am in love with pixels. So it’s no surprise, that this video Dot Matrix Revolution from the Toronto-based Superbrothers instantly caught my attention. The short video is a mixture of music video and short film, that shows the history and development of computer-technology in a minimal and, well, pixelized fashion. Pretty fun watching it. Charming, reduced and with interesting colors.

Screenshot from the level-bonuspack.

A game of the blissful kind is about to come. In Mirror’s Edge the society has become conformist, with highly monitored communication by a totalitarian government. People, who do not want this kind of observation use “runners” to bypass the situations. The Runners are humans, who submit messages on the most analogue way possible: by running through the city. Just imagine how dangerous this job is! You play the main character Faith, who is a runner.

What I have seen and heard about the game until now is simply awesome. It uses the Unreal Gameengine, but the experience is extreme un-egoshooter like. You play the runner, have to avoid at every cost to meet or even shoot people. Your worst enemies are armed polices (with a really bad vibe carrying around), while your job is to explore and cross the city, that is resting there is pale and bright sunlight.

Mirror’s Edge: official trailer.

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Processing Monsters is a nice project from Lukas Vojir (also blogging here). It is a collection of “black and white monsters” made in Processing. Basically everyone can contribute and besides the code you can leave a link to your own website. The project is still fresh, but two monsters that show the direction of the monsters-project are for example the Sliding Monster and the Eye Monster. Feel free to add your own or enhance, build upon or modify the work of others. Take the interactive, animated character update. (via)

Adobe got revolutionary things going on in their labs, that combines ease of use with new video-manipulating abilities, let’s say “for the YouTube generation”. New editing modes, new interactive experiences and navigation modes from within the video, as well as smart detection of objects and overlaying technologies will drive a new era of homebrewed videos.

Via smart-machines. Related on Digital Tools: I love Sketch, Making of 3D-textures with a photocam.