The Touch Pad as Musical Instrument

I've not invented a way to use today's tools from Synaptic Products in my writing or literature classes, but I'm sure there are a few classes (music history, theory, and video production come to mind) that could make immediate use of them. NOTE: Before you can install these touchpad instruments, you need the latest touchpad drivers. They're working fine for me, but you might want the older, Gateway-approved version near to hand in case you have problems.

By installing a simple program, you can convert your touchpad into a drumpad (complete with base, snare, crash ride, high hat, bongos, and more). Unfortunately, there's no cowbell whereby you can increase assurances that the reaper is not to be feared.

Not a fan of the drums? Never thrashed your head in time when Motley Crue used hydraulics to send their drummer out over the crowd, rotated his cage, and he played fully inverted and in motion!? Or was that Ratt? I'm not really a fan of drums.

Well then perhaps the Theramin is for you. The Theramin is an unusual instrument that saw most of its use in sci-fi films to indicate the sound that flying saucers apparently make. It's an electrically-pitched sound not unlike the sound made by people who play the wood saw. There is a Theramin on display at the National Music Museum in Vermillion, SD. This download allows you to control the pitch and vibrato of a theramin with the touchpad.

Synaptics Products offers a few more tools, such as the ability to use your touchpad to draw, but since I'm using a Tablet, that tool held no allure for me. Enjoy!

Microsoft Live Labs: Photosynth

I was reminded today at how naive it is to count Microsoft out, even in the age of Web 2.0 . Today I watched a
Video Overview that fairly impressed me with the potential it exhibits, both for classroom and anytime use, to transform how we use images and perform many forms of research.

First of all, Photosynth ascertains a unique "DNA" for any photo based on the features of the subject. It then constructs a live, 3D model based on all other photographs that contains strains of that same DNA, or near-cousins. The result are giant-scale, manipulatable 3D models of any place in the world that has been photographed (the more photos, the better the model, of course). The video uses St. Peters basilica as a great example of the software in action.

As if that weren't a valuable enough tool, where the software truly begins to shine is in its ability to automatically reference webpages that contain a matching image among their content, not only allowing one to perform research at any stage of viewing the model or those of its DNA cousins, it offers the revolutionary ability to, say, use a web-capable camera-phone to take a snapshot of a piece of art in the Louvre or a well known geographical feature, such as the Devil's Tower, and have that photo instantly compared to its matches on the web, so that the photographer has instant access to historical, scientific, cultural, and social information relevant to the object or location photographed. Tagless photo databasing, manipulation, modeling, and research. Wow.