Hasta La Gadget!

Poor 3PO. He was never as popular as R2 and he never will be. At least someone thought enough of the prissy protocol droid to make an electric guitar out of his action figure collectors case.

Everyone knows the Darth Vader collector’s case, but not as many people had the C-3PO version because, well because no one seems to like him. Though his action figure case makes a great body for an electric guitar once you ad a neck and strings. The case still opens up and it even talks. C-3PO says three different phrases. That’s a little disappointing since he’s supposed to be fluent in over six million forms of communication.

This protocol guitar measures 41″ tall X 15″wide and is 5″ thick. It was made by Etsy artist RainyDayInstruments and will cost you $465(USD).

Digital audio software lets you emulate the sounds of instruments that you don’t own or know how to play in real life. But these programs don’t eliminate the learning curve. They’re still not intuitive. Imitone can change that. It’s an Windows and OS X application that helps your computer convert your voice into a signal that music creating software can understand. With Imitone, you can sing a piano track. Whistle a guitar hook. Fart a string section. I hope.

Imitone is a software MIDI controller. In simple terms, a MIDI controller turns your input into MIDI, a format that many music and sound creation programs can understand. Common examples of a MIDI controller include keyboards and drum machines. Obviously, with those MIDI controllers you still have to know how to play drums, piano, etc. in order to create a melody. But with Imitone, the only thing you need to know how to use is your voice.

Here’s Imitone inventor Evan Balster imitating a violin in real time with the help of Imitone and Ableton Live:

Imitone reminds me of the Beardytron 5000, but way more user friendly. Speaking of which, Imitone will have two versions. Imitone will be for casual and amateur users, while Imitone Prime will pack advanced capabilities such as multi-channel control, noise cancellation, adjustable tuning and more. Pledge at least $25 (USD) on Kickstarter to get a copy of Imitone as a reward; pledge at least $60 if you want a copy of Imitone Prime.

Today is April 1st, and that means there will be lots of pranks floating around online today. This is one of the more irritating days to be a gadget writer, some of the pranks are obvious, but at times they can be subtle and you end up writing about something that is fake that you think is real. It’s safe to say I saw this prank coming from a mile away.

Sony has unveiled what it says are the “latest in fuel cell technology.” I opened the press release expecting something to power gadgets, what I found was a picture of a protein energy bar, and other food items they say can power your electronics. The “product line” also includes Power Food Cake mix, Crunchy Loop Cereal.

Sony says that its Voltaic Enzyme is the conduit for transferring chemical energy or organic matter into gadgets as electricity. It all sounds rather like the Mr. Fusion that Doc Brown had on his car in Back to the Future.

Have you seen any good pranks online today?

This April Fools’ Day, the elite leaders of Google Maps are looking for the very best, like no one ever was. They need your help to catch Pokémon scattered all over the world. The winner gets a chance to officially become Google’s Pokémon Master. Or not. But it can’t hurt to try.

To join the fun, all you have to do is download and open the latest version of Google Maps on your iOS or Android device. Tap the search bar and you should see the words “Press Start” with a Pokéball icon right below the search text field. Tap the words and you’ll launch straight into hunting.

To hunt, just scroll through the map until you find a Pokémon and then tap it. There’s even a Pokédex to make it easier to see how many more you have to catch. The last time I checked there were 150 creatures on the list, coming from the different games in the series.

Will Google really hire the winner? Probably not. Then again we just saw a flashy commercial that must have cost a pretty penny to create. Google can easily afford your services, even just for a day.

[via Google]

Many geeks – myself included – have sometimes passed the time by debating who would win if this famous person squared off with this superhero, and so on. The upcoming collectible card game Triptych is a lot like that. The game features characters both fictional and real as well as other entities and geeky concepts.

At the core of it, Tryptich is a game of addition. Each card has a number on the top right corner. Players form a deck of 30 cards, but the total value of the cards in the deck must not exceed 120. Each round players draw three cards, and the player whose cards have the highest total value wins the round. Of course, it won’t be much of a game if that’s all there is to it, so the makers of Triptych added card types and abilities to the mix. For instance, George Washington has an ability called Revolution, which lets you subtract 5 to the value of a card with the royal or leader type.

In addition, abilities fall under four classes: Body, Mind, Spirit and Anytime. After players draw their three cards for the round, they play one game of Rock, Paper, Scissors to determine what abilities can be played that round. Rock is Body, paper is Mind and scissors are Spirit. As its name implies, Anytime abilities can be used regardless of the result of the Rock, Paper, Scissors played.

After playing Rock, Paper, Scissors, each player takes turns playing one card at a time, activating a usable ability if they choose and immediately resolving its effects. When both players have played three cards each, you then add the final value of your cards. As you can see, because of the abilities the individual values of the cards have most likely changed at this point. The player with the highest total card value wins the round.

The loser must then remove cards from his or her deck equal to the point differential between their total card values, e.g. if you scored 20 and your opponent scored 25, then you have to remove 5 cards from your deck. The game ends when one of you runs out of cards, with the winner naturally being the one with a card or cards remaining in his or her deck.

Those are the basic rules of the game, but there are other rules that I didn’t explain here. You can download the rulebook for free on the Triptych website. In fact, like Cards Against Humanity, not only can you download the rulebook, you can also download and print the starter cards and the first expansion for free.

Triptych also shares one of the weaknesses of Cards Against Humanity – some of its cards may offend or unnerve some people. For instance, there’s a Jesus Christ card and a Martin Luther King Jr., card. It’s nowhere near as offensive as Cards Against Humanity, but you should still avoid playing this with certain people.

Pledge at least $27 (USD) on Kickstarter to get the 90-card starter set as well as 12 dice as a reward. As mentioned in the video, the printed cards you’ll get as a reward have a higher quality compared to the free PDF of the same cards, so that’s a nice incentive to buy the set.

There are also higher reward tiers that let you send your own image or artwork to be printed on a card. Can you, Moby Dick and sports beat Albert Einstein, foreshadowing and drugs? Get Triptych and you’ll find out. My money’s on your team.

[via Geeks Are Sexy]