I can’t really imagine a more appropriate medium for Bjork’s music than an iPad. It’s as if Bjork’s two decade career and the evolution of the Apple brand have come together in perfect symmetry in 2011 to bare this app album into existence. Biophilia is an interactive galaxy of app songs to be played with and listened to on the iPhone or iPad, but let me tell you it’s way better on the iPad.

The apps vary in how engaging they are. Most of them don’t just play a song, but allow users to rearrange notes, change pacing and pitch, as well as watch and interact with animations. The Moon app is a song that begins to play, but which the user can stop, slow down, and change the tune of according to the phases of the moon. The beautiful graphic and animation pulls it together into what is actually a lovely and transfixing experience. Crystalline is a game app that has you tilting your iPod/Pad to navigate through a geometric crystal tunnel, hitting crystals as the song plays along. These are certainly some of the most visually interesting and engaging apps I’ve seen so far. They take advantage of the device like nothing else has before. But as a way to hear music? It works for Bjork, but it may not work for many others though I’m sure there will be a rash of “app albums” coming our way soon.

Saying that Mexico City is a huge melting pot with lots of interesting things going on at the same time is a big cliché, that could fit perfectly in almost any other city in Latin América, or even the world. But sometimes, you actually can use the cliché to describe the scenario.

While many Mexicans are going nuts figuring out how can a presidencial candidate mistake the autors of 2 classic books, others are very excited about the Octavio Paz poem Ipad App devoloped by the National Council for Culture and Arts, online now and as a free download since december. Besides reading the poem Blanco, the users get translations on the text, experts reviews, and an audio version with the author’s voice. This app makes Paz original idea of poem being multidemsional come true. To download Blanco please click here.

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Paz para el iPad

Decir que la capital mexicana es una ciudad de contrastes es un cliché poco ingenioso que podría decirse de cualquier otra urbe en Latinoamérica, o incluso en el mundo. Pero a veces sí aplica, en el siguiente caso dentro del ámbito de la literatura.

Mientras muchos ponen el grito en el cielo –quizá porque comparten el mismo dolor intelectual– por el desatino de un candidato a la presidencia a la hora de mencionar títulos de libros, otros se entusiasman con la aplicación para iPad sobre un poema de Octavio Paz que desarrolló y lanzó el Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes apenas este mes para descarga gratuita en iTunes. Además de la lectura de este poema, llamado Blanco, los usuarios pueden ver traducciones y opiniones de expertos, así como escuchar el poema de la voz del Premio Nobel mexicano, entre otras posibilidades. Lo mejor es que la aplicación permite la idea original de Octavio Paz de leer el poema en varias dimensiones. Para descargarlo hay que entrar a este enlace.

Steve Jobs was a one-man wonder. His ingenuity while he was at the helm with Apple led to the global reinvention of the concept of the personal computer, music, and cell phone.

He has been called a modern day Da Vinci. A visionary. A genius.

His way of thinking was a step ahead of the curve: his marketing tactics and Apple’s aesthetic focuses on fulfilling the dreams people have about what technology can do for them. This is what helped to make Apple so successful.

This is the man behind the personal computer, the iPod, iPhone, and iPad. A creative dreamer who was also one of the most innovative men of our era.

I’ve always found keeping up with the New Yorker to be a little stressful – you get caught up in a book, you have a busy week, you stop paying attention for one second, and all of a sudden there’s an imposing stack of unopened issues sitting on your desk, reminding you that all of your friends are smarter than you. Thankfully, staying on top things has gotten a little easier now that  A) I’ve purchased an iPad 2 which I’m too ashamed to use in public, and B) the New Yorker iPad app has finally started offering digital issues free of charge to anyone with a print subscription.

The digital issues are gorgeous, they’re available 3-4 days before the print versions arrive in my mailbox, and they make for a remarkably enjoyable reading experience (scrolling left/right to navigate from one article to the next, up/down to scroll through an individual article). Even the ads are somehow more interesting for the clarity and color with which they pop off the screen.

Some of the digital ‘extras’ can be a little superfluous  – I don’t need to hear Sherman Alexie read his poem out loud on my tinny iPad speakers – but the additional photo galleries are a welcome bonus, and hopefully there will be further additions soon. I’m generally neutral when it comes to the digital vs. print dilemma, but in this case the New Yorker app itself is so easy to use, and the text and images so crisp and clear, that I’m beginning to wonder if I should just ditch the print subscription entirely and commit to the digital version.

Time changes and even if the message of radioactivity doing interesting things and good vs evil has stayed the same the medium has changed. I wonder if Marshall McLuhan liked Batman?

We live in a downloadable age and even comics are having to adapt to that. Thankfully, the majesty of the two big boys, Marvel and DC continues on, even if they seem to be a little distracted with cinematic licensing deals from time to time.

Marvel’s digital comics app now means you have forty plus years of back catalog at your finger tips. With Spiderman, the Avengers and Thor from throughout the ages available for free or at low cost to download, you’re reliving your childhood already. Plus, the graphic novels are available for cheaper than average and the damn thing doesn’t crash constantly. DC is all there as well, with the bonus additions of DC’s legendary Vertigo being available as well. One is left to wonder to a certain degree what bonuses they may have in stores as they swing towards the launch of a Justice League of America franchise and the last of Nolan’s Batman films.

Thankfully, the deliver all stems from one company, Comixology. They’ve visibly got the market cornered for the iPhone down hard, representing the big boys as well as indie comic publishers . It’s a beautiful thing, a rarefied art form gets kept alive and the harshest of lover of the craft get a product they’ll actually keep coming back to. Everyone’s a winner.

CC-BY ND 2.0, by Jeffrey Beall on Flickr

While others in this category are probably thinking about new cool gadgets like the iPad — which certainly looks like fun — I’ve been going in a different direction recently. I still love my iPhone and MacBook, but I’ve been choosing not to add to my gadget obsession. Between the phone and the lightweight computer, I haven’t felt a need for an intermediate device except, perhaps, to manage my reading, of which I do a lot!

For a while, I was buying a lot of books, which I would always read (I’m not the kind of person who buys a book, reads the first chapter, and puts it away). I have to move to a new apartment soon and feeling overwhelmed by the sheer number of books around I decided to downsize. I figured I might get a Kindle or something, but then realized most of the books I’d bought I’d read only once. After a lot of thinking, I decided that even on a Kindle, there aren’t many books I’d need to re-read, and thus pay a lot for in the first place.

So, I’ve gone low-tech and started regularly revisiting my local public library. Until recently I hadn’t been inside in years, and I was pleasantly surprised that the technology and selection of materials to check out has been vastly updated — there are even many current films on DVD (another nail in the coffin for Blockbuster). Now, I can satisfy my constant thirst for words without taking up too much space in my home, or freeing up too much virtual space in my bank account (I won’t say wallet, because I never use cash). I’ll still buy books to which I think I will refer again, but the library is providing a very cool, much-overlooked place to go for a test run.

Last year when Rupert Murdoch announced that his News Corporation was working on the world’s first newspaper made exclusively for iPad, the general opinion among the experts was close to this: It is the last chance for the newspaper industry. If Murdoch doesn’t manage to make a statement with his Daily, nobody would do it afterwards.

Well, all the interactivity of The Daily reduces to infinite polls (“Should the Caribbean countries rely on tourism? Yes / No”), infographics — what an innovation! – and  audio commentary, which I discovered suddenly in the very end. A little bit quiet and somehow familiar tenor said: “Interesting.”

Once again we are dealing with a phenomenon that has yet to be named. There are people who know how to make cool applications for tablets, and there are people who know a lot about good journalism, but fate has never brought them together. It seems they go to different restaurants and drink at parallel parties.

The newest addition to Korg’s Electribe family, the iElectribe lets iPad owners carry around a digital version of the famous Electribe. Released in May 2010, iElectribe lets users create loop-based music (hip-hop, jungle, house, techno, etc.) from scratch, or, for beginners there are 100+ preloaded loops to tweak and play with.

With an assortment of knobs and buttons that allow users to adjust pitch, tempo (BPM), effects (distortion, delay), 4 channels of programing space, combined with 64 keys allows for a near infinite possibility of songs and sounds. The learning curve may be a bit steep to those uninitiated with sequencers, but a built-in manual and countless tutorials on YouTube permit one can create original sounds in a matter of minutes.

My experience with the iElectribe was rewarding after a few minutes of play. Using the preloaded electro loops I was distorting and altering the loops, putting on a small show for our group of 4 people. Having a true-to-life Korg in your lap is exciting by itself – combine this with crystal-clear sound from the iPad’s speaker (nevermind nice, bassy headphones) and some alcohol — you have a mini dance party in your living room.

The ipad: Portable Multitasking at it's finest

Okay, so the Digital Revolution technically began around 1980, and it’s not over yet. It all started with the home computer: the first portable, called the Micro Star in 1979, followed by the first PC — the Compaq Portable in 1983, the Apple IIe in 84, and the first Macintosh portable in 1989. From there, things began to get a little crazy.

Not long after Steve Jobs introduced the iPod in 2001, the mp3 pretty much obliterated the Compact Disc. The archaic land line, already well on its way to technological death when the iPhone came out in 2007, has since become a dinosaur. Now, in 2011, Apple is King. The iPhone has overtaken RIM, the manufacturers of Blackberry, and now dominates the market — when it comes to smartphones, at least.

And now, with the iPad in 2010, Apple is well positioned to rise once again, this time gaining in the ranks of mobile computer sales. Having sold over 4.19 million iPads by the second quarter of 2010, it seems as if the only real threat to Apple taking over is the open-source freeware Google Android.

Apple vs. Android

Will 2011 be the year that Apple falls?

Only time (and money) will tell.

A screenshot of the Cook's Illustrated app

Cooking, and especially baking, is a huge passion/hobby/professional pursuit for me. I love looking through cookbooks and buy them frequently because I don’t have to worry about damaging them. The format appeals to me to browse through. Still, when I’m away from my library and want to look up a specific type of recipe or an idea for a specific ingredient, I often turn to my phone. I am using cooking apps on my iPhone more and more every day. The phone is light and small, and can be shoved into my back pocket as I move around the kitchen.

Here are three apps I love:

Epicurious
This app is the sister to Epicurious.com, the amazing cooking resource that compiles recipes from Bon Appetit, Gourmet (RIP), Self, and similar publications. This is my favorite when I am trying to look for a specific recipe, such as braised short ribs. I also use it when I want to see more variations than you would find in a normal cookbook. There are seemingly endless riffs on any kind of dish you could imagine. And they all show up with photos. The navigation leaves something to be desired, but as a free app the wealth of information is unbelievable.

Cook’s Illustrated
This app is the companion to Cook’s Illustrated magazine, published by America’s Test Kitchen, and its website. There are fewer recipes here but I turn to it for the basics. The recipes explain exactly why everything works — and why other variations didn’t work. This is great for getting a perfect crispy chicken cutlet or for making a vanilla birthday cake from scratch that rises as well as a boxed mix. It also includes technique videos, which I love. The downside is that to access all of the app’s information, you need to be a paid subscriber to the site. I’ve found it to be a worthy, small investment though to access everything between the site and the app.
Ratio
What an amazing idea. This is based on Michael Ruhlman‘s book by the same name, which breaks down broad classes of recipes into their essential ingredient ratios. For instance, you can come up with your own riffs on something like pound cake if you know that the essential ratio that makes a pound cake a pound cake is one part butter, one part sugar, one part eggs and one part flour.

The app distills all this down to an interactive tool that lets you pick these different kinds of basic recipes, and then input the number of servings desired to get custom measurements for each ingredient. Each basic recipe also includes notes on technique and general variations. The app is still a little slow, but Ruhlman is a passionate writer and cook, and I feel confident he will improve the app in future updates.