I’m totally not sure yet what to think of the new (and still beta) release of NodeBox 2 (located at this beta-site at the moment). It is once again GPL and build upon NodeBox. You can use Python-Scripts to generate “generative art”. Like the original NodeBox, that was Macintosh-only, NodeBox2 has the emphasis clearly on simplicity and quick and direct results. In this release they have two new main features. The first one is not really a feature in the deeper sense of meaning: It is available for Windows. The second: It’s got a graphical-editor, where you can combine modules in some sort of “maxMSP-style”. I just played with it a little bit, and can confirm, that this approach really leads to once again much quicker results, than tinkering with code only. Purist will also come to their right, because tinkering with code only is also an option. Well, let’s see how this new (kind of) user-interface will react with the output. I am totally in love with this plain simplicity of NodeBox1. Having too much of everything, and getting results too quickly is not always for the best. Let’s just wait and see what will happen.

Great idea! Great Execution. A Winamp skin, expecially for the upcoming Blip-Festival. Get it here: .wsz. (via)

(Did you know, we have an Interview with Justin Frankel about the “early years of Winamp” available?)

I can’t tell exactly, what is so cool about Saintrooper, but there is some magic included to this freeware game for Windows. This platformer got plain level-graphics like Boulder Dash has for example, the controls and action reminds me little bit on games like “Gargoyles Quest”. You can jump, climb on walls, have to find keys, unlock doors, rescue friends and defeat big boss enemies. Sounds like arcade? Yes! The game also feels a little bit of a Japanese action game – no wonder. It is from Japan, so find your way through the foreign letters at the download page. Some hours of action-arcade fun will be guaranteed to you!
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New stuff from the Processing-community. Karsten Schmidt, better known as Toxi has released an respectable collection of libraries for the processing-scripting-facilities. It’s a collection of classes and tools, he developed over the last years of Processing-practise. The Toxiclibs are not constrained to work only with Processing itself. Even Java-heads will have pleasure:

Even though these libraries have been mainly developed for use in Processing related projects (see examples below), there is no explicit dependency on the monolithic PApplet or any other classes of the Processing toolkit. This is intentional & should be considered as a feature. Also, please note that all code in this project is now using Java 5 syntax and so will not work with older versions (before 0140) of Processing. Personally, I’ve been mainly using Eclipse for my larger projects and the “new” syntax just speeds up development time (if not execution time too).

I especially like to see the Processing-community really growing into serious and professional things. Look for example at the HYPE-framework, that was developed for Flash/Actionscript 3 and released some weeks ago. It seems, that sophisticated high-level stuff is about to come!
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Tweakbeat: Everything happens on this single screen!

Tweakybeat is an extremely reduced sound-(beat)-sequecer, availlable for iPhone / iPod touch for free. Tweakybeat basically only has 16 steps, a little bit of tempo and shuffle and you can customize 16 different “instruments”. Each one is a basic synth with elementary parameters like pitch shift, waveform modulation, decay, tone, release. Although it is only monophonic and doesn’t even has anything like cutoff or resonance it rocks like hell!

I’ve never seen such a small music-application, that was so well balanced with the features. If you got one of this magic-phones: a must download! Here is the developers site and the app-entry on playstate.org.

Nintendo DS homebrewers will love this new synth, that is about to be released officially. The Tonesynth DS looks like a fancy “all in one” music tools, combing current trends of mobile- and webbased music-creation like “ToneMatrix” or “Korg DS-10″ with a crisp classic tone-generation. (via)

Chip everything, chip the world! Not long ago, we had with Da Chip the ultimate collection of Daft Punk tracks in chipmusic-style. And today we present “Wanna hld yr Hendheld Vol.1“. A collection of Beatles-tracks, that got chippyfied by famous artists like Anamanaguchi, Glomag, Goto80 or Psilodump. It took over two years in the making, and some of the sounds compiled there are phenomenal. Both from the uniqueness of sounds, as well as from the composition. This tracks are more, than just “Beatles played on chip”. Worth trying!

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