Kim Gentes

Remember the promises of science fiction? Well, things haven't turned out quite the way the Jetsons promised us. When they said "Flying cars, robotic servants, instant meals", we didn't know they meant "Southwest Airlines, automated sales calls to our cell phones, and McDonald's happy meals".  But who's to blame? Well certainly not Batuhan Bozkurt.

Batuhan is a "sound artist" and programmer living in Istanbul, Turkey.  And he has done his part in bringing forth the joyous reality of that fantasy of almost all great science fiction- the fusion of technology and art. But is it that hoped-for utopia where ones own thoughts of melodies were enough for mind-reading computers to generate the symphonic masterpeices of the future?  Mr. Bozkurt doesn't promise such glorious realities, but he takes the needed baby-steps for our neophite, web-connected world. He calls it Otomata.

Quite simply, Otomata, is a sound generation web application. It generates tones based on a 9x9 grid which contains any number of bouncing boxes. You start with a blank grid. You add your boxes. You click play. The fun begins.

This might seem trivial (and it is), but Otomata is based on the same rules of operation that most iOS apps and even the first video game (Pong) held to- collision and redirection.  The boxes you place on the grid all move, in any of the 4 directions you instruct them to. When they hit another  box or a wall they alter direction. When they hit a wall, they emit a sound. The grid is set up in a specific musical configuration so that notes ascend a scale from left to right. You get the idea quickly. You develop patterns that create sound loops for basic rhythm and meter. Add some melodic chaos notes (boxes) to overlay said patterns of rhythm.

But the more complex you make them, the less sure you are of a clean results, or one that sounds musical (instead of an explosion of computer sounding blurps).

But enough talk. Try it out! Otomata is online, for all to try (apparantly, phone apps are in the works as well). You can go here and get started:

http://www.earslap.com/projectslab/otomata

Now for the really cool part. Once you develop an interesting pattern on Otomata, click the "Copy piece link" and you have the URL to your musical/web/grid configuration. Share it with your friends, build on each other's patterns. All very fun, time wasting and addictive.  Real musos will initially bauk at this trivial tool, but finding the patterns is the key. Don't waste your time just throwing blocks on the board (at least don't keep doing it after 30 minutes or so). If you just do that, of course, you will be bored. Instead, start to develop a library of patterns that you can re-use for your bass end, your mid-chords and your high end rhythms.  Then, start to mix and match and see what happens.

The app is online for anyone who has a web browser. Oh, a real web browser I mean- this one is in Flash, so you can't play it on iPads or iPhones (at least until they add Flash).  However, the folks who wrote this online application have a great new port for the iOS devices and you can also download an app for your iPhone/iPod/iPad as well to take Otomata mobile.

Here are a couple patterns I worked on that I use as a base for more "compositions". Real music? Hmmm.. maybe not. But inventive, thoughtful, and certainly musical fun. You decide.

http://www.earslap.com/projectslab/otomata?q=4g3k5z4x0d0v7n7a8d8v

http://www.earslap.com/projectslab/otomata?q=3n4n5n3a4a5a8j0q177r

http://www.earslap.com/projectslab/otomata?q=3n4n5n3a4a5a8j0q

It's a fun time waster.. and your pattern recognition skills may just improve along the way!

Thanks Otomata! Thanks Batuhan Bozkurt!

Let's go people---

Go forth and blipify! 

Kim Gentes

I own an iPad. I love using it. I use Netflix and stream movies when I am sitting on the couch. I check my mail, calendar, and even write notes in some meetings. I use a Bible application for following along in church and I access maps for quick references. I have already written two articles about the iPad- one a positive review of it, the other a critique of Apple's decision to exclude flash technology from the platform. Check either of those articles to see that I love the positive attributes of the device, but remain skeptical of some aspects of the device.

That said, nothing burns me more than to see someone fly completely against reason and logic with an outright lie. Apple recently did this with their new advertizement for the iPad. So that you can review it for yourself, I encourage you to view the ad on Apple's website here:

http://www.apple.com/ipad/gallery/#ad

What you will see is a brilliant marketing and visual story. Compelling and fresh. I love it. Except that while it is listing the sparkling features of the iPad, at 0:17 through 0:20, the commercial says this:

"All the world's websites in your hands"

This is simply not true. Literally millions of websites run either completely or partially based on Adobe Flash. This is not a guess, this is a fact. Any website using Flash will not be able to function on iPad. In fact, a huge number or them won't even be visible at all, except for a "not supported" message.

According to several studies, approximately 1/3 of all websites will be useless on the iPad. In one of the largest online reviews of website technology, Opera Software surveyed 3.5 million web pages and about 33% of them used Flash.  That number gets even larger in developing technology regions of the world, such as China (at 67%) and Turkey (at 60%).  You can see the results of this survey data at http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/mama-key-findings/#flash

Admittedly the report is 1.5 years old, which is a long time on the web. But with the web following its trends, Flash implementation actually could reasonably be believed to be higher now than it was 1.5 years ago. With the iPad coming out just weeks ago, any change in that strategy would not have embedded itself in the majority of websites.  Those websites that are working to accommodate both Flash and HTML5 (iPad's only online web media player solution, except iTunes and Quicktime of course), such as Youtube.com have done so only very recently and have provided both options (Flash and HTML5) in deference to the vast hundreds of millions of users who use Flash as their web media player.

Back to the original point. Apple clearly says "All the world's websites in your hands". Why lie? Why not spin the commercial to say something complimentary about the browsing experience. Why lie blatantly in the face of undisputed facts?  I won't answer the question, but I hope Apple does do something.

My hope is that Apple will listen to my request to them:

Apple, change the commercial. Advertise honestly. You didn't want to put Flash on your device. That is fine. Your call. But don't lie about the capabilities of the iPad in the face of the decision you made.

Here's hoping someone cares about "truth in advertizing" these days... we'll see.

Happy iPad-ding and web surfing...

Kim Gentes

Whether you are trying prepare for Sunday morning and need to get media from home to church or preparing, sharing resources while emailing a friend and need a file quickly, sometimes you need a direct ability to transfer files quickly from one person to another. That is what Files Over Miles is (http://www.filesovermiles.com/).  It is computer to computer, browser to browser file transfer, without needing to upload your file to a cloud service or website or across an IM service, all of which make transcient copies of your file and are inevitably slow.

Tracing the real history of the Internet is a little like telling who the most important people where in the 20th century-- you will get a different answer from different people.  Although generally agreed upon major players and organizations make it in to most stories of the Internet, you will find derivations from the source material that depend on, well, the source!  The Brits, French and Americans all think they did something major to help develop what would eventually become the internet.  But frankly, one thing should be said that is not normally expressed in most text books or fact lessons- the Internet itself was not a pre-planned notion or idea.  No one woke up one day and said "hey, we have computers. Let's build a world wide connected system of redundant path communication nodes, with a robust protocol and extensible architecture."  In fact, most of what we now have that is used on the Internet was an amalgamation of ideas and systems that merged over time, to meet the needs of different governmental and commercial entities.

For me, as a software engineer, I began using the Internet in 1993.  One thing commonly minimalized by "Internet" historians are two major points: 1) popularization of network services to home users by the CompuServe service (the first true precursor to the modern day ISP).  2) the explosion of the Internet directly attributable to the development of the Mosiac Browser and the work done at NCSA-UIUC.  Frankly, most "historians" tend to think technology drove the Internet explosion.  But that is short sighted.  We had connectivity technology long before 1993/1994.  But no one really cared much about it (except scientists, academics and military minds) before the release of the Mosaic browser.  Mosaic was the grand-daddy of all web browsers.  From it, all browsers came. Once we have a graphical viewing tool to accompany the information storage and retrieval devices of the internet, common use of the web exploded- and Internet found a lifeline to become the predominant technological and commercial wonder of the last 20 years.  These two points (CompuServe and NCSA-UIUC's Mosaic browser) are often trivialized by historians, because, frankly they see the non-academic/scientific influences as being somehow less valuable. But they are crucial. Keep that in mind as you read or watch any history of the Internet.

For those who want a somewhat extensive (and less than clearly scholarly) review of the Internet development, I would refer them to the well-kept article at Wikipedia. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet

Yes, it is actually fairly accurate and is kept under close scrutiny by the myriad of people who watch over that portal.

For a more terse, though somewhat euro-centric branded, view of the growth of the Internet, there is a good web movie online at YouTube that does quite well. See below.

Hope this little informational walk-through helps you understand a little bit more about the technology we now use everyday.

Kim Gentes