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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Software, Odds and ends, Universal Binary

Dream recorder

by Scott McNulty (RSS feed) on Dec 29th, 2006

If I were giving out awards for creepiest Mac application Dream recorder would be the front-runner. This app, as the name implies, aims to help you record your dreams and get a sense for how well you are sleeping. As you can see in the illustration to the right, the proper usage of Dream recorder involves:
  1. Placing your Mac on a night table next to your bed (the Mac must have a camera attached to it).
  2. Take a picture with Dream recorder in the dark, so it can adjust its settings.
  3. Go to sleep. Dream recorder will take a picture of you every 2 minutes by slowly brightening the screen.
  4. Dream recorder will determine the best time to wake you, based on a range you enter and what sleep cycle you are in.
  5. When you wake up, hit the space bar to stop the picture taking and to start the audio recording (this is where you tell the Mac about your dreams).
The developer has kindly uploaded a sample of what the resultant movie, constructed from all those pictures, looks like. Creepy, huh?

There is a 15 day trial, after which a 3 license pack costs $45. Dream recorder requires OS X 10.4.8 and Quicktime 7.

Tags: creepy, dream, Dream recorder, DreamRecorder

Filed under: Software

My Dream App Winners Announced!

by Dan Lurie (RSS feed) on Oct 25th, 2006

The votes are in folks, and the winners are Atmosphere, Portal, and Cookbook, with Portal beating out Hijack by only 5 votes. It looked like Hijack had Portal beaten, that is before the filtering of fraudulent votes. Fraudulent votes were defined as more than 50 votes for the same application originating from the same IP address. With a result this close, there are bound to be some sore feelings between winners and losers, but let's just try and remember it's not the end of the world, and life will go on. So did your preferred app make the cut? Let us know in the comments.

Tags: app, atmosphere, cookbook, dream, mda, my, mydreamapp, portal, winners

Filed under: Software

My Dream App final round voting

by Dan Lurie (RSS feed) on Oct 24th, 2006



Eight o'clock (EDT) tomorrow night marks the end of voting for the final round of Phill Ryu's My Dream App competition. What started just over a month ago with 24 eager contestants and their software-concepts has been whittled down by four rounds of voting to the six best ideas as decided by thousands of people like ourselves. The masterminds of the three ideas with the most votes will receive a new MacBook and a contract to have their software made into a full-fledged OS X application, the revenue from which they get a share of. Keeping with tradition (and even going a bit above and beyond what we've seen in the past), everyone who votes in this last round will receive a free license for Overflow 2.0, PhotoPresenter 2.6, and $5 off one of the new Insanely Great Tees from Monkey Business Labs.

Competition between the contenders has been brutal this round, with almost all of the ideas making it into the top three at one time or another over the past day, with Atmosphere (one of the app's I voted for, yay!) currently in the lead. The one contestant that has stayed consistent throughout the voting has been Blossom, of which Steve Wozniak has to say; "This would only be remotely entertaining if the plant was marijuana or opium and when you did certain things like actually work, you killed your crop. Maybe you could make virtual cash and compete online for the best cash crop. In order to grow the weed and heroin you have to browse certain web sites that would require you be smoking weed to start with; like the Microsoft.com Vista developer site."

So get out there and vote! It only takes a few minutes, you get yourself some great free software, and in the process help decide the winner of a great competition that will eventually benefit you through new and interesting applications to play with.

Update: "What, you mean today isn't Wednesday?" Thanks for pointing out my errors guys, I must be losing it.

Update, the second: Ok, here's the deal on the whole "who's on first" business. I do have insider information when it comes to MDA, but not in the case of this vote. Without even really thinking about it, I made a (silly now that I think of it) assumption that the first, second, third etc histogram bars corresponded to the first, second,third etc applications listed below. I would never intentionally do anything to skew the results. Sorry about the confusion

Tags: app, dream, mda, my, mydreamapp

Filed under: Software

My Dream App Semifinals voting ends tonight

by Dan Lurie (RSS feed) on Oct 14th, 2006

Voting for the Semifinals round of the My Dream App contest ends tonight at Midnight (EDT), and with it, seemingly any chance of Desktop Wars (my original choice) making it to the final round. Digg founder Kevin Rose, Peter Cohen and Jason Snell from Macworld, David Pogue of the New York Times, and netcaster Leo Laporte are just some of this rounds Big-Name™ judges. Everyone who votes in this round will get a free copy of playful recording software Voice Candy.

So get out there and Vote! Show your patriotism.... or something like that.

Tags: app, candy, cohen, contest, digg, dream, jason, kevin, krose, laporte, leo, my, mydreamapp, peter, rose, semifinals, snell, voice

Filed under: Software

My Dream App Round 3 voting ends tonight

by Dan Lurie (RSS feed) on Oct 5th, 2006

With only twelve concepts still in the running to be turned into someone's dream Mac OS X application, the My Dream App competition ends its third round of public voting tonight at midnight. As a reward for your input, everyone who votes will recieve a free copy of Musicast which allows anyone to stream music from their iTunes library over the web. And just incase you can't decide which of the ideas you like best, a panel of guest judges including Adam Betts and David Lanham share their opinions on each app up for votes.

Tags: adam, app, betts, contest, david, dream, lanham, musicast, mydreamapp

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