Hasta La Gadget!

Star Guitar is built around a calculator-like interface that lets you choose from 144 chords.

Updated on March 28 at 12 p.m. PDT: The developers of Star Guitar explained to me that the latency between chord changes is intentional–it’s meant to change on the first beat of the next measure. If you want to change it immediately, you can simply double-tap. Also, Star Guitar also records .WAV files–they’re hidden at the bottom of the library list, below all the .pattern files that represent the built-in rhythms (you can edit them or create new ones on your computer). Finally, they asked me to link to the demo video on YouTube, so here it is.

I’ve been playing around with a new iPhone app, Star Guitar, for the last day or so, and it’s a sophisticated piece of work that could help beginning guitar players learn how chords fit together into songs, as well as give more experienced songwriters a quick way to record their ideas when they don’t have a guitar handy.

Released last week by Amidio, the creators of the Noise.io Pro synthesizer application for the iPhone, Star Guitar is based around a calculator-like interface that lets you choose from 144 chords.

The designers had to be very clever to fit that many chords on a single screen–essentially, you start by picking one of the seven natural-tone letters (A through G), then adding various modifications (flat or sharp, seventh, major, and suspended fourth). You might have to consult the help screen to figure out exactly which combination of buttons will create a particular chord–for example, a G6 is created by hitting “G” and “major”–but for the most part, if you know your chords, it’s fairly intuitive.

If you don’t know your chords, it’s a fantastic way to learn what all these cryptically named chords sound like. I’ve played for years, but still have to think for a few seconds before I could hum you the notes in a suspended fourth. With Star Guitar, I can just play it.

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Originally posted at Digital Noise: Music and Tech

Today’s gaggle of gadgets are all extremely inappropriate. Only one of them is inappropriate in “that” way.

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EPISODE 130

A Bus Stop Ad that Displays Your Weight

Electric Cigarettes, with liquid nicotine, catching on in the U.S.

The reason cats act like they hate us…

Originally posted at Gadgettes, the blog

Here it comes, another action-packed hour of heartfelt learning and sharing, with your close personal friends Joshua, Nilay and Paul. It’s a real variety pack this week, with the market-shifting OnLive and Digital Rebel T1i stealing the show, but plenty of supporting characters (and obligatory Netflix love) keeping things grounded. Frankly, it’s a chewy nougat of podcast goodness that’s not to be missed for any reason, barring personal emergency or having something else to do today.

Hosts: Joshua Topolsky, Nilay Patel, Paul Miller
Producer: Trent Wolbe
Song: Barracuda

00:03:15 – OnLive killed the game console star?
00:17:50 – Nintendo launches Wii System Menu 4.0, including SD card WiiWare playback
00:25:35 – ‘Resident Evil 5’ Xbox 360 unboxing
00:27:25 – Canon EOS Digital Rebel T1i now official (and that article Nilay was talking about)
00:43:55 – Kodak EasyShare Z980 unboxing and impressions
00:48:30 – Kodak Zx1 unboxing and impressions
00:56:35 – Blockbuster OnDemand coming to TiVo
01:02:16 – Is Netflix PS3-bound, too?

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Filed under: Podcasts

Engadget Podcast 139 – 03.27.2009 originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 27 Mar 2009 14:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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With a promised price tag of less than $50,000 (after a $7,500 federal tax credit), the new Tesla Model S sedan is certainly a good deal cheaper than Tesla’s pricey roadster, not to mention its competitors, but according to Tesla CEO Elon Musk, it’s actually quite a bargain compared to your run-of-the-mill sedan as well. As Musk tells it, “the ownership cost of Model S, if you were to lease and then account for the much lower cost of electricity versus gasoline at a likely future cost of $4 per gallon, is similar to a gasoline car with a sticker price of about $35,000.” Musk further adds that the Model S would still be a bargain “even if gasoline were $1 per gallon,” saying that it costs just $5 to drive 230 miles. Of course, all of that assumes that you’ll actually be able to get your hands on the car one of these days, but Musk seems confident that’ll happen as well, saying that the company is “close” to receiving $350 million in loans from the U.S. Department of Energy, which would be used to build the plant in California that would manufacture the Model S.

Filed under: Transportation

Tesla CEO says Model S isn’t really expensive, when you think about it originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 27 Mar 2009 14:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Don’t get us wrong, the concept of a truly dynamic keypad on a phone is awesome, and we’re sure that the concept is going to be going places in the next few years — we just don’t think that a handset that looks like this is going to be the one to light the fire. Pictures of the Alias2 from Samsung have filtered in after yesterday’s user manual leak, giving us a better idea of what the phone looks like; we still can’t put our finger on what technology the keypad is using, but given that we’ve heard that it’ll retain its layout with the battery out, we’re starting to think that it might be segmented E Ink. Active matrix E Ink would’ve been ten times cooler, but we imagine it’s not quite at the price point yet where it makes sense for a product in this range. Keep on keepin’ on with the innovative stuff, though, guys — just make sure it spends a little more time in the design department next time.

Filed under: Cellphones

Samsung’s Alias2 in live shots, still not looking awesome originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 27 Mar 2009 13:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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