TheDopeFiend :: Your Daily Fix

Midomi VS iPhone

There's nothing worse than forgetting the name of the artist who sings a song you heard. Or when you hear a song in a store an really want to know who the artist is that sings it. Midomi for the iPhone takes care of these problems along with providing many other cool features. This iPhone application allows you to sing, hum or play a song into your iPhone's mic, then searches Midomi's music database to match your singing, humming or the song with the closest results. You can also simply say or type the name of a song or artist to search the Midomi database. After you do a search and results are found you can then purchase the artist's tracks from iTunes, view YouTube videos, view photos and see more tracks available from the artist. The application's interface is very simple and easy to use. I only hope that the database becomes a bit more expansive, as many of the more obscure songs I have searched have no results. Overall a great application with many uses.

Labels: apple, apps, iphone, midomi, technology

In The Mod

In The Mod is a small application that every designer will love. The application comes in four different editions: The Flickr Edition, Webcam Edition, Your Images Edition and the Online Edition. The concept of each edition is essentially the same, creating swatches from various photos from either various Flickr photos, photos from your webcam, and photos in your personal library. Have you ever been inspired by the color way of your favorite sneakers, or by a photo that you took of a building in you neighborhood. In The Mod can import and use photos to create a swatch of 1-1,000 different colors, and then export the swatch to Photoshop of Illustrator. A handy little tool in any designers collection of apps.

Labels: apps, design, technology

Unkle Releasing 4 Free Tracks

I like to see musicians using alternative means of promotion and ways of selling their music these days. Such as Nine Inch Nails making multitracks available to download and remix, or Radiohead making their album In Rainbows available to download at a "name your cost" basis and more recently Girl Talk doing the same with his album Feed the Animals. Rather than fighting file sharing and download community, they are utilizing it to their advantage.

Unkle is doing something cool to promote their new album End Titles... Stories For Film (in stores July 7th). Starting today with the track "Kaned and Able", Unkle are making four tracks from the new album available free to download via four different websites. Each track will be released on a different day, and when compiled together make one seamless piece of music that also makes up the middle section of their album. This is another great example of how artists are using innovative ways to promote themselves, benefiting both the artists and the fans.

Download the first track and see when and where the rest are available here.

Labels: mp3, music, technology, unkle

Kitsune Noir Desktop Wallpaper Project

When you spend as much time in front as your computer as I do you tire easily of your desktop wallpapers. In addition to using the application I previously mentioned, Desktoptopia, I also eagerly await the weekly release of the desktops on Kitsune Noir's Desktop Wallpaper Project. The project features super talented artists such as Mopa, Ryan Cox and Kelsey Brookes every week to produce designs and illustrations that are used for Desktop Wallpapers. All of the designs are free for download and available in almost all resolutions and even for the iPhone and PSP.

Labels: design, technology, web

I Vote For Art

I love simple online tools that do their job well, especially when they allow you to make a little extra dough using your creative talents (ie. the amazing t-shirt site Bountee). The new Australian site I Vote For Art would fall into this category. I Vote For Art is simple, it allows you to easily buy and sell art and support small independent artists. Artwork is voted upon by users of the website, the most voted being featured on the homepage and towards the top of the artwork pages. Pieces must be submitted and accepted before posted to the site, and judging by the work so far the site's management has a pretty good eye.

Labels: art, design, technology, web

Dropbox

Dropbox is a new online service making it possible to easily and seamlessly sync and access your important files over multiple computers. After installing Dropbox the application creates a designated folder on your hard drive, simply drag and drop files into this folder and they are synced with your online account. Installing the application on multiple computers works the same way, except those files are now synced with all computers on your account as well as your online account. This is a great way to make sure you always have current working files if you are on-the-go or away from your computer and the ease-of-use is unmatched by any other option I have tried. Not only does Dropbox sync and backup your files, but you can also create public folders to invite others to collaborate and share files with. At the moment Dropbox is still in beta and only offers 2GB of storage. I am really hoping they offer pay plans with more storage which I am guessing is likely. The service is available for both Mac and PC and works fine over cross platform networks.

Labels: technology

Desktoptopia

Desktoptopia is an awesome little desktop/wallpaper manager that will automatically update your PC or Mac with fresh wallpapers directly from their online vault of wallpapers. Simply install their free software and set your preferences to how often each wallpaper changes and which libraries you want them selected from. They claim to have a panel that only selects the best of wallpapers submitted, and most of them I have seen so far have been pretty cool. However, if for some reason you aren't liking the selected wallpaper you can easily skip to the next.

[Via: Josh Spear]

Labels: apps, mac, technology

Thursday, July 24

Midomi VS iPhone

Thursday, July 10

In The Mod

Friday, June 27

Unkle Releasing 4 Free Tracks

Wednesday, June 11

Kitsune Noir Desktop Wallpaper Project

Tuesday, June 3

I Vote For Art

Friday, May 16

Dropbox

Wednesday, April 9

Desktoptopia