Aquila Online

Tipp-Kick football game timelapse

// November 28th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // Video, iPhone

I’ve been playing around with the iTimeLapse app for the iPhone and I must say that I’m hooked.

What is iTimeLapse?

With iTimeLapse you can create stunning time lapse videos straight from your phone! iTimeLapse allows you to capture a series of images rapidly and then compile them into a video.

So with the iPhone in hand, I loaded up the iTimeLapse app and directed it at the Tipp-Kick Table football game.

What is Tipp-Kick?

TIPP-KICK is a football game featuring two versatile metal players who can kick the ball along the ground or lob it up in the air. One push of the button sends the goalkeeper diving / leaping across the goal to clear the ball. The colour showing uppermost on the two-tone balls tells the players who is allowed to kick. The winner is the one that manages to combine ability, skill and tactics.

After recording 15 minutes of “footage” and a quick render - the end result was of course the following video:

And for those wondering, the final score was 3-2 in favour of the red team.

What’s that song again?

// August 29th, 2009 // 2 Comments » // Music, Tech, Video, iPhone

Ever had a song stuck in your head and you don’t know the name? It happens to me all the time. Either I know a line from the song, or have some idea of the tune, but no idea who the artist or the song is.

To make matters worse, I always seem to miss the song intro on the radio and the DJ never seems to repeat the song title.

Imagine my delight when I stumbled upon the iPhone song identification application Midomi. Let me briefly interject.
A good friend, Leon Jacobs once said, “The greatest things about iPhone is the potential that every new app has to completely transform the device into a totally new experience.” I have to agree with Leon. Midomi has transformed the way I interact with music.

The premise is simple - open Midomi, press the big orange button, hold your iPhone up to a source of music and voila, it identifies the artist and song title. It even allows you to play back a short clip (from its own database) so that you can confirm if it’s the same song. Just watch out for loud ambient noise though - it makes song recognition a bit tricky.

Surprisingly enough it even recognised my tone-deaf humming of certain songs. Of course, if you don’t want to feel like a dork singing to your phone, you can also search for a song or band just by saying or typing the name.

The features don’t stop there though. You can bookmark and share your song results via Twitter and Facebook. Check out the lyrics, videos via YouTube and obtain detailed artist info. You can buy the song, but I haven’t been able to do so since the iTunes music store is still not available in South Africa.

All in all, this is a great application and at $4.99 (around R38) it’s worth every cent.

Download the Midomi application for your iPhone here.

Timothy Moloi - the YouTube sessions

// March 16th, 2009 // No Comments » // Music, Video

Recently I received an email from James Bassingthwaighte introducing himself as a musician that reads blogs. Well James, cool surname, although I still can’t pronounce it without getting my tongue twisted in at least three knots. Apparently he’s a music producer and his record label has just signed their first artist, a guy by the name of Timothy Moloi. Since I’m always interested in finding new South African music, I eagerly clicked on the relevant links and landed on a couple of cool cover songs.

Dubbed, the YouTube sessions, it is a collection of well known songs from artists such as Timbaland/One republic, Mika, Frank Sinatra and others. I was very impressed with Timothy’s voice and overall sound. For a brief moment I thought I was listening to Seal - a good thing in my books.

If these renditions are anything to go by, I’ll be the first to stand in line when his album hits the shelves. Hope I can get mine signed.

As a parting note, why not listen for yourself - Timothy singing a cover of Mika - Relax, take it easy.