The app stores are teeming with new releases, but who has time to go through them all? We do. Bringing you a selection of the most interesting, creative, and innovative apps each week. Submit your suggestions for next week in the comments below.Squeal [iPad]
Earlier this week we featured an interview with Hong Kong composer Leung Kei Cheuk who performs under the name Gaybird. In the interview he spoke about his upcoming concert "Digital Hug," which is less a concert and more a "new media music experiment". One of the artists who will be performing at the concert is Henry Chu, and for this performance he designed a music generating “singing face” app called Squeal. The app features faces refracted into polygons, and when users push on different parts of the face—the eyes, nose, and cheek—it creates different sounds. It aims to launch with 100 faces (tentative launch date is this July) and should you wish to be one of them, you can get involved here.Talk-o-Meter [iPhone, iPod touch and iPad]
“Shut up.” “No you shut up.” “No, you shut up.” With debates like that, it’s easy to lose track of who’s winning the argument, along with who’s having equal say. Nobody likes to listen idly while someone is blabbering on non-stop, hardly allowing anyone to get a word in edge-wise. An egalitarian approach to discourse should of course be the goal in any casual conversation, dinner party debate or raging argument. Each party must have its say—it’s just common decency. But how to measure such a thing can be tricky. Which is where Talk-o-Meter comes in. Calibrate the app to recognize both your voices, the app then color codes them as red and blue and gives a percentage breakdown of your talk time. So next time that special someone’s wittering on and on and on… you can just give a discrete nod to your smartphone rather than telling them to shut up.
Pixel Zombies Live Wallpaper [Android]
Yes, it’s zombies and pixels together at last. In this live wallpaper you can see how the zombie invasion manifests as the swarming undead devour the flesh of the living and all that. The pixels are colored red for zombies, blue for zombie hunters, and green for civilians. With this you simulate a never-ending doomsday zombie takeover as the civilians slowly get overwhelmed by the shifting monstrosities. As George A. Romero knows, there is a defeating inevitability as to who will win in the end. Your only recourse is to unleash a nuke by dropping an icon on your screen, which nihilistically wipes out all living and non-living forms.Supersonic [iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad]
You can’t help but feel that this game was influenced by Tetsuya Mizuguchi, the man who created Rez, as it takes in a first-person perspective whizzing along in an incandescent tunnel of abstract neon shapes. You ride along in sync with the music of Finnish electronic band Kitkaliitto in a blaze of colored polygons, bleeping about and charging along, losing yourself in the gameplay and rhythm of the music. Which amounts to a fine way to lose a few hours of your life.Songkick [iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad]
Already an established website, the idea behind Songkick is that when a band you like is playing in your area, it notifies you via email. It goes through your music library, making notes of what music you’re into, and when the artist is heading out for a tour, it lets you know. Now you can get it in app form (as a free, no less) and get all the same functionality on the go. It’ll search for music on your device, detect your location and start compiling a concert calendar of when and where the artists will be playing, doing all the leg work for you.
Earlier this week we featured an interview with Hong Kong composer Leung Kei Cheuk who performs under the name Gaybird. In the interview he spoke about his upcoming concert "Digital Hug," which is less a concert and more a "new media music experiment". One of the artists who will be performing at the concert is Henry Chu, and for this performance he designed a music generating “singing face” app called Squeal. The app features faces refracted into polygons, and when users push on different parts of the face—the eyes, nose, and cheek—it creates different sounds. It aims to launch with 100 faces (tentative launch date is this July) and should you wish to be one of them, you can get involved here.
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“Shut up.” “No you shut up.” “No, you shut up.” With debates like that, it’s easy to lose track of who’s winning the argument, along with who’s having equal say. Nobody likes to listen idly while someone is blabbering on non-stop, hardly allowing anyone to get a word in edge-wise. An egalitarian approach to discourse should of course be the goal in any casual conversation, dinner party debate or raging argument. Each party must have its say—it’s just common decency. But how to measure such a thing can be tricky. Which is where Talk-o-Meter comes in. Calibrate the app to recognize both your voices, the app then color codes them as red and blue and gives a percentage breakdown of your talk time. So next time that special someone’s wittering on and on and on… you can just give a discrete nod to your smartphone rather than telling them to shut up.

Yes, it’s zombies and pixels together at last. In this live wallpaper you can see how the zombie invasion manifests as the swarming undead devour the flesh of the living and all that. The pixels are colored red for zombies, blue for zombie hunters, and green for civilians. With this you simulate a never-ending doomsday zombie takeover as the civilians slowly get overwhelmed by the shifting monstrosities. As George A. Romero knows, there is a defeating inevitability as to who will win in the end. Your only recourse is to unleash a nuke by dropping an icon on your screen, which nihilistically wipes out all living and non-living forms.Supersonic [iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad]
You can’t help but feel that this game was influenced by Tetsuya Mizuguchi, the man who created Rez, as it takes in a first-person perspective whizzing along in an incandescent tunnel of abstract neon shapes. You ride along in sync with the music of Finnish electronic band Kitkaliitto in a blaze of colored polygons, bleeping about and charging along, losing yourself in the gameplay and rhythm of the music. Which amounts to a fine way to lose a few hours of your life.Songkick [iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad]
Already an established website, the idea behind Songkick is that when a band you like is playing in your area, it notifies you via email. It goes through your music library, making notes of what music you’re into, and when the artist is heading out for a tour, it lets you know. Now you can get it in app form (as a free, no less) and get all the same functionality on the go. It’ll search for music on your device, detect your location and start compiling a concert calendar of when and where the artists will be playing, doing all the leg work for you.