intermorphic blog

Overall Summary: In my view, well worth the £5.99 ($9.99) upgrade price.

Well, I just managed to upgrade my iPod touch 2g to iPhone OS 3.0. It all went smoothly, although there were some niggles in the purchase process (I had to go through a loop 3 times for some reason). Here are some initial observations:

Bluetooth stereo: The first thing I checked was how it worked with Bluetooth stereo, as I wanted to use it in my (old) car and a newish Sony MEX-BT 3600 radio. The good news is that it paired fine, and the results were good! I initially forgot to turn off my WiFi connection and was finding that the stereo signal broke up or glitched every 15 - 20 seconds or so. Then I turned off the WiFi, and all was fine. The only thing to report is that it is LOUD. I have to turn the car radio down very low, and have not yet figure out how to adjust the volume on the device. If it is not possible to adjust the volume on the iPod touch or iPhone, and you are using a Bluetooth headset, then watch your ears!

Onscreen keyboard: With the car stopped/stationary and engine off (!), I tried typing whilst playing music over the bluetooth connection. I figure this would be a good stress test. Although the audio clicks for key presses were all over the place, typing speed was very very good - much much better than before - even with bluetooth going. And, the landscape keyboard is great!

Just these 2 features make it worth the £5.99 upgrade for me, so good one Apple!

Calendar woes: However, I do admit to being very disappointed that Calendar STILL does not show To Do items from iCal, at least as far as I can see. I just cannot understand why Apple have not fixed that, as there have been plenty of posts I have seen about it. The only thing I can think of is that it is not included for business reasons. I am really surprised by its glaring omission because it makes paying good money for the MobileMe offering seem a lot less interesting - and all the more so seeing as Apple are pushing MobileMe hard these days. If anyone from Apple reads this, please get out a point release fast that fixes that, thanks! My guess is you will sell more MobileMe subscriptions if you do that, so there is a real financial reason for doing it.

TeckNet iPhone composite AV and USB cable: This used to work fine under 2.2.1 but has stopped working under iPhone OS 3.0. I just get a message that this hardware is not supported. That is a bummer, too!

Apple bluetooth keyboard: I did try seeing if the iPod touch would discover a Wireless Apple keyboard (in a vain hope!), but it does not. I seems to keep trying to discover devices, but it never shows up. However, now the onscreen keyboard is so much more responsive, it lessens the desire for that. However, it would still be handy, as you can still type faster on a real keyboard.

Other bluetooth device: I dunno why , but I also tried to see if it would Bluetooth connect to my old N95. Well, it did, but as soon as it got connected the connection was terminated. Happened every time I tried to pair it. This does tend to indicate, though, that it should be possible to pair with other Bluetooth devices and developers could have a lot of fun there!

Voice Memos app and external mic: Just to confirm, this works fine with my external mic and cable system as noted earlier. You still don’t hear what you are saying in the headphones (no input monitoring - what was I hoping for ), and the volume level seems a bit low with the mic.

In-app purchasing: I am looking forward to seeing how in-app purchasing pans out, as this is something Intermorphic really wants to get into, as it would be ideal for getting add-on content for Mixtikl.

That’s it folks, hope it was of interest!

Thanks to the helpful people at HTC support I have now found out how to play the MP4 video files I recorded on my HTC Touch HD - simply rename them to .3gp files and they will play fine in Quicktime.

I had been trying everything, including searching the net, for a solution as to why they would not play in anything I had in Mac or Windows. I could not find any suggestion anywhere, hence this post in the hope it might help someone. Every media player I tried just said something like the following (unhelpful Mac finder message) “The movie could not be opened. An invalid sample description was found in the movie.”

I was told by HTC that the 3gp format was derived from the mp4 format, which itself is itself derived from mov (quicktime). Well, why they do not save to a .3gp file instead of .mp4 file, which won’t play anywhere, goodness only knows! Go figure. But, at least the problem is now solved and I can play my video files.

Having posted about JoikuSpot yesterday, I now reckon that JoikuSpot is probably the best app I have ever come across , as it has set me free in a (mobile) way I have always wanted, but never been able to figure out how to do.

I am doing this update from a cafe, and connecting my MacBook Pro to my S60 Nokia N95 wirelessly; no cable required. This morning I even had a googlechat session on my iPod touch (via N95) whilst on a walk and listening to music. JoikuSpot lets you see how much data you are using up, which is handy as I can see that doing chat etc uses very little, whilst normal browsing via the iPod touch uses quite bit as there is no way of turning images off.

Anyhow, with this kind of set up, all you need is a (suitable for your needs) data plan from your operator, and a suitable S60 device and a computer/laptop (or iPod touch) with WiFi. Provided you are not wanting to do too much, you don’t ever need to consider a mobile hotspot plan like with BT Openzone or The Cloud etc (well, I don’t now, anyhow).

Sorted, and big thanks Joiku!

PS: I would expect that operators without an iPhone offering would be jumping at the chance to partner with Joikusoft Oy. The reason being that instead of losing customers who wanted an iPhone, they could suggest instead maybe getting an iPod touch with an S60 device and it would be nearly the same (well, customers could use the iPod touch instead ). Maybe the operator would even want to offer customers a bundle of S60 phone, iPod touch and JoikuSpot, and bring their purchasing power to bear. Now that could make sense!

A while back we decided we needed a Windows Mobile phone on which to do testing of our mobile music mixing system Mixtikl, and that we needed a touch only version. We were not sure at that time on our iPhone plans otherwise we would have gone for an iPhone instead. We got a good deal on an HTC Touch HD from Orange, and so that was that. However, I have at long last retired the HTC Touch HD as my working phone, and none too soon as it drove me potty.

Why I got fed up with the HTC Touch HD is a long story, but I had a devil of a job accepting calls with the front slider, making calls by mistake, it being so very slow to do anything on and a host of other reasons. Besides which, having now got an iPhone Touch for testing out Mixtikl, I realised just how poorly the touch screen UI on the HTC Touch HD was implemented. Everything to do with it seems to happen in slow motion compared to the iPod touch.

Anyhow, enough said on that. I was always a big fan of my Nokia N95, as it just worked and always gave good service, so I decided to go back to using that (bliss!). There was one big but, though. Although I liked it as a phone, I was not so keen on going back to keyboard only control, especially for browsing, having experienced the iPhone Touch. What I wanted to do was to find a way to connect my iPod touch to the N95 so I could use that for browsing on, but then use the N95 as my phone.

As luck would have it, I came across a fabulous little app for S60 / N95 called JoikuSpot Premium. For around 15 euros this allows my N95 to become a WiFi hot spot that my iPod touch can connect to wirelessly (and with WEP encryption)! This means that when I am out and about I can browse on the iPod touch, connecting wirelessly to my N95 which in turn is connected to my network. I can also use chat etc on the iPod touch. I had being tempted to consider getting a monthly subscription to a hotspot network like The Cloud etc, but it always seemed so expensive when I was on a contract with a data plan sufficient for when I was not at home. So, all in all, a result!

NB: I did have a little problem running the app, once installed, but I took my heart in my hands and upgraded my N95 Firmware to the latest version, and that seemed to fix that.

What I am waiting for next is for iPhone OS 3.0 to be released, because I _hope_ the there will be drivers in it to allow me to connect my Apple Wireless (bluetooth) keyboard to the iPod touch. Great for making notes on the go etc. I also just hope Safari in iPhone OS 3.0 can be configured to turn off images so as to save bandwidth - goodness knows why that option was never included in the first place.

Finally, I figure I will be really sorted once I can also figure out how to connect up iTM Keys so that I can use MIDI to control (and input to) Sonar in Parallels. But I am a bit stuck on that right now…

I spent a bit of time in the last day or so trying to figure out the easiest way, for me, to get an external microphone and guitar audio input into my 2nd gen iPod touch. This was by way of a break from playing with (oops, working on skins for) Mixtikl for iPhone.

As I live not far from a Maplins, I was hoping I could do it with some standard connectors. It turns out I could, but I wanted to make sure I used the minimum number of them so as to keep it as simple as possible. Here is what I found worked for me (item 4 being the adaptor to connect to my guitar jack input, and item 5 the adaptor to connect to my condenser mic).

Here is a picture of the layout:

1) 4-pole 3.5mm Sony “Camcorder” style audio lead, part L53BA for £7.99

2) Two phono to 3.5mm stereo adaptor, part JK14Q for £2.29

3) metal 3.5mm stereo coupler, part JK05F for £1.89

4) 1/4 inch mono to phono adaptor, part RW01B for £1.79

5) 3 pole XLR female to RCA / phono socket, part number N27GB for £8.29

Notes:

I found that the black 3.5mm plug casing on item 1 was a bit too chunky to allow for the iPod touch connector to plug in along side it; so I trimmed a tiny bit of the black plastic off the plug casing where it butted up against the iPod connector, and then tried it again to make sure it was OK (I did not touch the iPod connector of course!) .

My electric guitar connected a treat, and I had a lot of fun with StompVox (what a cool app that is and excellent value!). The input monitoring (i.e. you can hear through headphones the effected signal) was very effective as the audio latency was surprisingly good! I had a lot of fun with the Looper unit in this app, and would recommend it highly to anyone. Although it is billed as a vocal app, I had a lot of fun with it with my guitar.

I then used my Sennheiser E835 mic and got that to be recognised by, and recorded by the QuickVoice app, so that worked OK, too. I then also tried my Takamine steel guitar with line out, but it just did not get detected by QuickVoice, so I need to check into that.

The iPod touch does not have the usual red, white, yellow RCA cable assignments, as I read on the net, but no worry. I found that the yellow and white leads (on the item 1 cable) were for the left and right channels for the headphone output, and the red one worked for mono audio input.

Maplins also do a Panasonic Camcorder lead, which seems to do the same thing, but with different wiring. It looks like the 4-pole plug casing on this one is a bit smaller, but it was not in stock when I went along.

Maplins is a retail electronic component outlet in the UK, probably a bit like Tandy, Radio Shack or Circuit City etc elsewhere.

Hoping this helps some people, as I could not find anything like this when I searched. This may or may not work for you, so I am making no claims to that here! Errors and omissions excepted and use the info at your own risk etc!

Further comment:

Electric guitar not being detected as input: One thing I have found is that some times my electric guitar is not detected sometimes, and by this i mean that when i run one of the above apps you seem to get no input. However, my microphone is always detected - so go figure. Now, it could simply be a loose connection on my side, but I don’t think so. It seems that I have to have the guitar plugged in, and being strummed so it generates a decent signal, before I start the app in order for the guitar input to be detected and the app work (and I can never seem to get it detected if not initially detected). But, I am not even sure of that as there seems to be something temperamental going on. I will investigate further and see if I can get to the bottom of it.

It may seem that we are a bit quieter than normal, but it is just because we have our noses to the grindstone with porting Mixtikl to iPhone. Mixtikl has turned out to have been a huge project for us, and we are so very much looking forward to getting this upcoming rev done and out.

We are continuing to make good progress, but there is still a lot to do before we are ready to release what we are calling Mixtikl V1.5. This will not only have a much nicer, cleaner and easier to use UI, but will also include some significant changes under the hood.

Once Mixtikl V1.5 is out, we will have a portable 12 track music mixing software system that includes the Noatikl generative music engine and the Partikl Synth/MIDI/FX sound engine, and that runs on iPhone/iPod touch, Windows Mobile Smartphone & Pocket PC / PDA, Windows XP/Vista and Mac OSX (and in due course we also hope to get it running, too, on the Antix Game Player). Phew!

We can then also get back to working on Noatikl 2, which we are so looking forward to doing!

best wishes to all our users and customers,

tim

We noted with interest the post at CDM referring to what we, back in 2000, coined “vector audio” - see: Create Digital Music.

It is actually with great happiness that we saw this, and it is thanks to Twitter that it has really come into its own. Back then we had build into Koan what we called “vector audio”, namely the ability (synth) sounds and FX to be described in (XML) text format for the purposes of being sent on/shared by SMS (that was the vision, anyhow). Yes, it was just tokenised parameter values for the various FX/Synth settings, but the idea was that these values could be sent/shared in as little as 1 SMS. Admittedly, our aim was to have the Koan Interactive Audio System embedded on mobiles devices, or used as a plugin in webpages, and we did not forsee Twitter . See: SSEYO web archive at Wayback Machine.

We think it is fantastic that Twitter has provided a viable outlet for this kind of technique. One day we might be able to resurrect this approach in Mixtikl! But, we still have a lot to do before then.

Intermorphic is, at last, a registered iPhone / iPod touch developer.

We already have Mixtikl running on iPhone, and it seems to perform well. It will be a while before we are ready to launch it, but it does now seem like Mixtikl will make it to iPhone / iPod touch (all things being equal!).

With 12 tracks for the mixing of audio (Ogg/WAV) and MIDI with a range of customisable FX, and including a runtime Noatikl generative engine and the Partikl DLS and modular synth/sound generator, it should be a lot of fun to use and play with.

We will keep you posted!

I was interested to read the Telegraph article today (see here) in which they talked up the iPhone as a new musical instrument. Whatever you make of the music in the video clip they link to, this ‘development’ has been a long time coming, and something I have been predicting for years (since SSEYO got into mobile music making apps and tech in 2000).

Even before SSEYO was acquired by Tao in 2002, SSEYO was already developing interactive audio frameworks and technology for Tao intent. Tao intent was a virtual processor, and we (the SSEYO, and now Intermorphic, founders) created the intent Sound System (now owned by Intermorphic!) to be a programmable, and versatile framework for application developers.

Our vision for many years was that the phone was going to be the next electric guitar (well, a musical instrument in the general case!). In 2003 we created a paper for Tao about the ‘Musikfone’, and this was sent to a number of handset manufacturers and operators (and various presentations were made, too). We were hoping they would listen, see what was coming, and decide to deploy Tao intent and let developers create rich, interactive music (and other) apps for those mobile devices. You can guess what happened; it turns out no one really got it…

On the lines of ‘the mobile phone is the next electric guitar’, back in August 2006 I wrote about this for Vodafone Receiver (see here) and in October 2006 presented/demoed the precursor to the 12-track mobile music mixer ‘Intermorphic Mixtikl’ for smartphone / PocketPC PDA at the Symbian Smartphone show (see David Wood, Symbian EVP Research refer to it here).

Tao intent went on to be embedded in many millions of handsets (mainly because of its Java engine), which was great. But sadly the Tao intent SDK (with the advanced intent Sound System) was never freely available to application developers. There was never a freely downloadable intent runtime, either, that might have helped kickstart the intent music app side of things. Many complex chicken and egg business issues there, for sure.

Here we are in 2009, though, and Apple appear to have done it with music apps on the iPhone - their own hardware/software platform. I say well done to them!

Well, Apple have not exactly done it entirely themselves, though. Yes, they put everything in place for it to happen: the iPhone with a great set of hardware and software capabilities, including audio, and deployments in volume; an SDK with audio support that any developer can get hold of and develop with; an easy to use store; lots of marketing etc.

But, there was still still something missing - the apps and games themselves, and this was where the 3rd party developers showed just how important they were (imho) to the iPhone success.

The Telegraph article, at least to my way of thinking, affirms that to me.

Mixtikl is rated as one of “10 of the Best Windows Mobile Applications” by TrustedReviews.com, who refer to it as “a little gem of an application”. We are honoured, and heartily thank TrustedReviews for the plaudit!

Read the TrustedReviews Mixtikl review here