fantastic flying books

App on Tap:

If you have fears and concerns with digital technology destroying the book, creativity and any art of the hand, you must spend some time with The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore on the iPad. The creators call it an 'interactive storybook,' that also fits into a fast growing trend called enhanced books.  This one, though, absolutely leads in raising the bar for interactivity and art direction in apps.  It's visually stunning for starters.  And it's creatively inspiring. 

The app-book evolved in conjunction with a short animated movie by the same creative team, Moonbot Studios.  Morris Lessmore is "Inspired in equal measures, by Hurricane Katrina, Buster Keaton, The Wizard of Oz, and a love for books, "Morris Lessmore" is a story of people who devote their lives to books and books who return the favor."   Once you have the app, be sure to watch the 'Making Of' video to get a glimpse into some details and concepts of the craftsmen behind the finished work, including the 1/6 and 1/12 scaled sets.  Morris Lessmore is the vision of a passionate collaboration of artists, indeed.

And the film?  The short animated film is also a warm, elegant tribute to culture and humanity. They'll get my standing ovation when William Joyce and Moonbot Studios takes home an Oscar for outstanding achievements in animated shorts this year!  Bravo! 


Here's a video clip of the iPad app.

To get the app, it costs US$4.99 (click here).

The HD short movie is currently free through iTunes or Vimeo.

the interactive periodic table

App on Tap:

The Elements: A Visual Exploration

The Elements is a beefy educational iPad app with motion and interactive features that make studying the periodic table more interesting and more tangible.  

"If you think you've seen the periodic table, think again."  

The visual quality is high and appealing, and the technical information is supported by Wolfram Alpha.  Spending time with the app feels easy, either as a beautiful reference tool or a more pleasurable alternative to flashcards for rigorous memorization for school.  I didn't buy the 3D glasses to see the additional visual feature of the app;  I didn't feel I needed it.  

The downside:  the app is 1.71 GB so it takes a LOOOONG time to download (expect a couple of hours) plus it takes up a lot of memory space, which may very well be all fine if you expect and plan for it.

Here is a video showing how and why the creator (Theodore Gray), who authored the coffee table book and other periodic table related merchandise, decided to make the app. 

I learned about The Elements from another artist.  I read a review by Tina Hoggett on her blog, big ideas. 

Click here to Find the app in the App Store.   

360 panorama

App on tap:

Bruce just introduced me to a very cool iPhone app called 360 Panorama.  You basically move the camera around while it takes frames of images and they get combined into one shot.  Voila! A 360 degree panoramic photo. Tons of potential for creative picture taking with this app.

If you see me around town spinning in circles with my phone in the air, I might be playing with this!

Bruce took this panoramic snap to show me how it works.  

Update 29 November 2011: 


Okay, Bruce took another photo that is pretty funny so I must add it here.

words with friends free

One of my twenty-something nephews hooked me on the app, Words With Friends.  At first, I made fun of him for the name of the game (not that he named it but how lame!) and he agreed, but regardless of the name, it wouldn't be long before I would be laying in bed playing a few rounds before finally tucking in. Then I roped Bruce into the game and we would be side-by-side, playing the game just before lights out.  Eventually another nephew started playing and I would have several games going.  One (or sometimes two) with Bruce at my side, another with a nephew in Alaska and yet another with a different nephew in Indiana.

Since we covered three time zones, someone would send a word while I would be in a meeting or having breakfast and I would reply with my word at lunch or after work and so on. It's like getting a little hello with play time attached.  You reply by playing your turn when you have a few minutes. It's great when maybe no on has anything big to report but you still interact.

The fanaticism wore off after a few weeks and now Bruce and I are back to British Murder Mysteries just before drifting off to sleep, but I still play a round here and there with one of my nephews. Don't get me wrong, the game isn't replacing talking to my nephews, it's just added long distance contact. There's a chat option in the app that we haven't taken much advantage of. The play is enough good scrabble-like fun, musing over the words each player chooses plus it feels like I'm still encouraging educational games and being a good Auntie.

Words with Friends Free is modeled after the game of Scrabble and like its name says, is free.  It's available for Android and iPhone. You can get an upgraded version, also named Words with Friends but without the 'free', for $2.99 which doesn't have an advertisements that pop up after your every move, literally when you finish a word and submit it to play, and is probably worth the few bucks.  The free version features the main aspects of the upgraded version. 

Features:
• The game plays as you would expect, like the board game of Scrabble
• You can simultaneously play multiple games with different friends who also have the app whether they use an iPad, iPod Touch, iPhone or even if they use a Droid instead of a Mac device.  You can play a round by taking turns passing the device back and forth. 

• Turn-based design lets you play up to 20 games simultaneously
• Play with your friends or match-make instantly with a random opponent
• It also supports in-game chat messaging if you like to trash talk
• Push notifications tell you when it’s your turn

Electronic Arts made the 'authentic' Scrabble iPhone app for Mattel Inc. which I haven't tried yet, and (at the time of this posting) it also costs $2.99.

So far, I only play with three different people and haven't sought out players through my contacts, Facebook friends and so on.  It's been a family game for me.  Saccharine as it sounds, I like the virtual check in, especially with those who are far away. Like the closing scene of the Walton's, at night I play a turn or two and they play a turn or so back.  "Goodnight John-Boy."  "Goodnight Elizabeth."

Little Instants

Here is a low commitment, immediate satisfaction kind of fun. 

 

My friend Chris told me about this desktop application called Poladriod that makes your digital photo look like you took it on a polaroid.  

It's super simple and goofy and I like it.  

You drag and drop your digital file onto the apps polaroid icon, and it plays a sound effect of taking a polaroid photo. 

A picture pops out and gradually 'develops' into a new image with a polaroid frame format and darkened edges around your image as if it really had squeezed through polaroid camera rollers.  

You can then save the JPEG files of your Poladroid pics to email friends or make a little faux album.  Like I said, it's a silly little thing, but why not?  

Sometimes, I need a little instant gratification in the studio.  Or just in a day.  

The app developer offers it on a donation basis from his website.  It is very quick and easy to download and start playing with pictures.  I highly recommend it.  Have some fun.  

(Thanks, Chris!)

A Light Read

Beyond games, I want apps to make my life more organized or lighter - literally minimize the stacks of bound leaves of processed wood pulp that collect in every room of my house until I trip over them, then eventually haul them out to recycling.  Publishers may cringe or jump up and down depending on how they see this, but apps hold enormous tidiness potential.

McSweeney's has a subscription iPhone app that they call Small Chair. If you know McSweeney's, you know they are solid.  If you don't, McSweeney's is a reputable publisher with varying content from whimsical to heady.  Just one example, "An Open Letter To My Artistic Potential" by Jamie King is a great tongue-in-cheek creative kick in the ass.  They publish great interviews with top notch creatives.  Check them out through the built in links. My point is that you can trust McSweeney's to pull together good collections of works.  Plus, they aren't sell outs for advertising (so far) so you can rely on a clean, uninterrupted read (at least on their end - you can't blame them for the neighbors dogs barking incessantly).

With Small Chair, Russell Quinn and McSweeney's did a beautiful job building a simple, smart interface that bridges the distance between a conventional magazine subscription and a virtual one.  Because it is in my pocket, I can pull up the app and read a bit of fiction while I'm waiting to meet a friend at a cafe or watch an art video when waiting at the dentist or what have you.  And because it is in my phone, it's with me most of the time but not as cumbersome as a collection of magazines.  Further, if I like an author and am interested in their other works, I can pop over to Google seamlessly without need for scraps of paper for jotting web addresses that eventually wind up in that recycling pile.  And if I do want to make notes for follow up, I put it in my iPhone and get this: my notes are kept more in order by being in one place.  It's a revolution, I tell you.  Not to mention a purge from the guilt acquired by physical magazines not fully read that lay under foot waiting to be 'finished.'

It works just like conventional subscriptions.  You pay a six-month subscription rate that includes the app purchase (right now the whole deal costs only $5.99) to receive weekly uploads of articles, stories, interviews, and videos culled from their publications plus additional exclusive content. I picked a combo of two of their magazines, Believer (more literary) and Wholphin (art & video).  With conventional hard copy subscriptions I would have had to commit to just one.  And I would have had a magazine and a dvd to dedicate my attention to separately.  And because the app is always on the run with me, I get more reading done this way.

Finally, I am not advocating that all printed material belongs in an app or is by any means better than gripping a hard cover, nose down and turning pages of a novel.  Nothing truly replaces that kind of experience.  Subscriptions like McSweeney's are perfect for apps probably because they are ongoing and short format plus they also have videos and music combined with the 'printed' word.  I'm not so ready to see The New Yorker do this. Partly because I can't picture it.  (They have an app for their cartoons that apparently reviewers feel is overdone with ads but don't have a full blown subscription deal like Small Chair.) The sequence of how you read a New Yorker is so important, I think.  Even if you start with the cartoons, as many of us do, the structure, scale and layout are integrated into that reading experience.  But hey, if they put Russell Quinn to work on it, no doubt they can figure it out.  And I'd be thrilled to give it a go, especially if it is as lean and smart as my Small Chair.

An App For That

I helped make an iPhone app this winter for The Book of Answers.  It has put me on a real high.

The entire process has been a fun surprise.  The author, Carol Bolt, has been a dream as a collaborator.  I have known her for many years and way back when we first met, we simply connected.  We met through the auspices of MFA graduate school - she was on her way out with graduation and I was on my way in with application.  We had a single phone conversation that sealed the friendship.  It wasn't confessional or cathartic or anything, but it did it.  Our studies didn't overlap and neither did our lives.  I moved several hundred miles away. Many years passed.  Even so, we overlapped somewhere in our parallel lives, in our hearts and heads, as friends.

I'm not sure what causes the doppelganger effect with Carol. I suspect it's our shared appreciation for earthly delights, affinity for materials, and ability to laugh through the bigs and smalls of things. We are also just the right amount of different too, keeping a balance.

And of course, in working on the App Bruce spices up the whole collaboration with heaping scoops of dreamy and pinches of grounding, depending on what the moment needs.  I could go on and on about it, I am so tickled by the whole thing.

No doubt, for a long time, I'll ride this high.