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Brian Eno, widely known as the father of ambient music and one of the greatest musical minds of our time, is the composer of the music for the Windows 95 project. When he was approached in 1994 by designers Mark Malamud and Erik Gavriluk, he created the six-second start-up music-sound of the Windows 95 operating system, which was called The Microsoft Sound. There’s a confession in the San Francisco Chronicle, where he said that “the idea came up at the time when I was completely bereft of ideas. I’d been working on my own music for a while, and was quite lost, actually, and I really appreciated someone coming along and saying “Here’s a specific problem – Solve it!” […] “And it must be 3¼ seconds long". I thought it was so funny, and an amazing thought to actually try to make a little piece of music. It’s like making a tiny little jewel. In fact, I made eighty-four pieces. I got completely into this world of tiny, little pieces of music. I was so sensitive to miscroseconds, at the end of this, that it really broke a logjam in my own work. Then, when I’d finished that and I went back to working with pieces that were, like, three minutes long, it seemed like oceans of time”.

Today, Brian Eno was once again approached by the musician/programmer Peter Chilvers, this time to create one of the coolest, most unique iPhone applications to hit the App Store yet. The project was dubbed Bloom and it’s “part instrument, part composition and part artwork”.

Most music-creation applications take an existing musical instrument and cram it in a very awkward way into the phone, but compared to those Bloom creates a completely new “instrument” designed specifically for the iPhone. A very important aspect is that everyone can play with Bloom and coax gentle melodies and ambient soundscapes out of their iPhone. Therefore, you can generate, play and visualize ambient music. It’s a little bit hard to explain the mechanism, but you’re provided with a colored screen and a quiet drone and you should tap the screen in different places to generate sounds. The sounds you play repeat periodically and form a composition.

When you get bored, you can either shake the screen and your work up until that moment will be cleared, or tap anywhere else to add more sounds. If you’re not in an inspirational mood, you can also let Bloom create music on its own and listen to it, especially because the application comes up with a new, unique piece every time you run it. Once you have something you like, you have the possibility to freeze the piece you’ve created to keep new notes from being introduced. In addition, the tones correspond to colored spots appearing on your display which slowly fade.

If you are familiar with Eno’s work you might have expected this application as he has always been interested in exploiting the latest technologies and platforms for his artworks, all the way back to creating Mac-compatible Media Art distributed on CD-ROMs. As a consequence, you can now witness several Eno-inspired tools and toys available on Apple platforms.

Bloom is available on the App Store for $3.99 and addresses to all of you out there interested in ambient music or, why not, music in general.

(Source TheAppleBlog)

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Leaving all these cool cell phones aside… do you know what day it is today? -It’s Google’s birthday!!!
We are anxious to wish Google a happy 10th anniversary and all the best in this world for many years ahead! Ten years and counting…

Now it’s your turn to express your feelings in a comment. Have a great day to you all!

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Reevoo is an independent publisher from the United Kingdom that keeps track of impartial customer reviews of different products including cell phones. It works with companies like Vodafone and Orange and the site’s visitors can find a helpful resource of information helping them to decide what to buy according to their needs and the reviews displayed online.
In its latest press release, Reevoo announced the results of a survey of 31,000 customers, which shows the best and worse features people encountered at cell phones after purchase.
Results are published on the Decide What to Buy blog, where we had the chance to read about what statistics say.

It seems that what customers appreciate most is the cell phone’s design, followed by compactness, built-in camera with video recording capability, music player, web browsing and organizer, while the email functionality is on the last position in their Best Bit top.
The worse features used in their cell phones include the battery life which is too short, then comes the navigation and keypad input, software problems, sound quality, synchronization with other devices, and screen.



Are you wondering what cell phone models people prefer? Well, let’s see. Here we have the Nokia N95 on the first place, a much appreciated handset for its camera, but disappointing with the battery life. The next phone is another Nokia, the 6300, liked for compactness and liked less for its battery life. Samsung G600 has a good camera but its battery doesn’t provide enough talk time, while Sony Ericsson K910i seems to be one of the best choices when it comes to music on the go, and less spectacular when talking about battery life.



The SE W580i has the same good and bad points, while the SE K850i has a high percentage of satisfaction for its camera functionality. Here, the bad points are related to the navigation/keypad input.
People like the LG KU990 Viewty because it just looks too good, but the navigation/keypad functionalities are not at the same level.
Nokia 6500 classic looks good but has less impressive battery life.
Another Sony Ericsson cell phone liked for its small and compact form factor is the K880i with poor navigation/keypad input, having the same issues in customers’ eyes, like the Samsung U600.



“It was surprising that the most popular responses had nothing to do with a phone’s features, but more on the look and size,” said Chris Winstanley, spokesman for Reevoo.com. “We are seeing eye-catching phones such as the LG Chocolate and designer handsets from the likes of Prada and Ted Baker serving this market. But slim and sexy handsets with all the trimmings come with a few sacrifices, because they don’t have the battery life of larger models and their small size tends to make them harder to use.”
“People are using their phones like miniature entertainment centres and are demanding better mobile functionality, while not losing sleekness. The challenge for consumers is to find a balance between the functions they need and the performance they want from their phones.”
Chris Winstanley added, “Consumers are spoilt for choice when purchasing a mobile phone and their expectations are growing. With the credit crunch, consumers want to feel confident that they are spending money wisely. Most people rely on recommendations when buying a new mobile phone as it’s difficult to have confidence without testing it out or talking to people who own them. This is where genuine reviews can really help consumers’ confidence prior to making a purchase.”

In September, our friends, TechPin.com together with the LaptopsArena.com team, are inviting you to take part at a giveaway that will bring some cool pocket gadgets to 6 of you who will get on the randomly chosen winners list!

It will be fun, interesting and you won’t have to do anything complicated in order to participate. Further details are available on TechPin.com and LaptopsArena.com. Subscribe to our newsletters and start posting your opinion. Good Luck!

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According to Sprint, Samsung Instinct broke records after the release on the market. It was released on June 20 and became the fastest-selling EVDO handset in the first week of availability.The high-end functionalities that we saw during the Sprint’s live presentation we were invited at, plus the amazing price of just $129.99 with a 2-year contract after a $100 mail-in rebate, convinced us of its upcoming success, but we would expect some numbers from Sprint, to backup its announcement.
And now it’s iPhone 3G’s turn to prove what it is capable of.

The latest Apple’s press release says that the company sold 1 million new iPhones with 3G capability in the first weekend, three days after the release to be more exactly, which is really impressive, but as we’ve expected, because the iPhone 3G had a longer promoting campaign than Samsung Instinct, plus that Apple had the first version available since a long time on the market.
iPhone 3G appeared at AT&T on July 11, at $200 for the 8GB model and $300 for the 16GB version with more storage, and is not available in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland,
Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, New
Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, UK, US and France, totalizing 21 countries. The price includes a 2-year contract.

"iPhone 3G had a stunning opening weekend," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. "It took 74 days to sell the first one million original iPhones, so the new iPhone 3G is clearly off to a great start around the world."

The 3G technology support makes the transfer speeds 2 times faster than the previous model, and in addition it brings also built-in GPS, iPhone 2.0 software supporting Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync, and access to 800 third party applications.