Having seen a few demos in my time, and someone sent me a link to this one. What impressed me about this was how powerful a technology demo it was (from UK-based Antix Labs - http://antixlabs.com. A mobile version of Sim City (a well known branded game) was running on PC, and this was sent via bluetooth to a Windows Mobile phone. OK, so far so good, and pretty impressive.
The game was then bluetoothed from the Windows Mobile phone to a Symbian phone, and then played on that!! Wow!
What I found so impressive, was that this was the binary of a branded C++ game (not a Java game) that ran on 3 different platforms - yep, you heard me, the same binary!! I.e. not a different build version for the operating system. Now, maybe someone has seen a demo like that before, but I never have. You could just see how this could set the mobile gaming scene alight.
I was very privileged to be invited by Microsoft’s Jason Langridge to demo miniMIXA today. This was at the Microsoft Windows Mobile 6 Press Launch at Weber Shandwick’s offices in London.
From what I saw, Windows Mobile 6 looks absolutely fantastic for connectivity, email, look-and-feel, ease of use and so many other things. Jason also gave some excellent demos of a range of software applications, including Deepfish, and a superb business card scanner (Worldcard Mobile from http://www.penpowerinc.com/. The easy way you can filter and use email, get maps and information to local amenities, greatly improved improved outlook calendar and the new Windows Mobile Device Center (the replacement for Active Sync) etc seemed brilliant. I must admit, on the basis of what I saw today, I am looking forward to buying my own WM6 device!
When it came time to demo miniMIXA on WM6, I did it on an HTC Hermes device. This has a 300MHZ processor with VGA screen. I also briefly showed miniMIXA on an older WM5 HTC TyTN device, and explained that the exact same demo/performance I gave on the touch screen device was just as easy to give on the smartphone with keypad.
You can hear a mono recording of the actual demo/talk I gave HERE
The recording features my commentary throughout the demo. The demo mainly covered the MusicDJ mode, but I also gave a quick showing of the simpler RingtoneDJ mode. To go through all of the capabilities would have taken hours, rather than 10 minutes, so I concentrated on showing a live performance! The audio recording of the demo was made on my Micro BR.
There is a video clip of a screen capture of a similar miniMIXA performance now on YouTube, recorded at 22Khz stereo. This is a mix created with the more advanced MusicDJ mode, which is being used by the Slough Young People’s Center.
The video on YouTube also doubles as a quick tutorial on using miniMIXA++ and MusicDJ mode, as it is annotated to show how to do various things.
The audio output created from this mix was recorded to my Micro BR from the headphone output of the PDA, and the screen capture of the video was recorded on my laptop. I used Microsoft Movie Maker 2 to pull the two together. You can see the video clip below or link to it is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBP97NwG4nU.
Jason Langridge (Mr Mobile) of Microsoft UK runs a highly read blog. He has just said that miniMIXA is one of the coolest/greatest Windows Mobile applications that exist. Seems other readers of his blog also agree. Check out his blog entry here!!
In relation to the SYP Mobile Mashup below, there was also a report on Radio 1 Newsbeat during the Scott Mills show, just before 6pm yesterday. You might be able to hear it here for 7 days (it is at the end of the 15 minute report). I understand that Radio 1 has an audience of 2 million listeners, so that is pretty good! When they mentioned it will cost you £200 to £400 pounds, what they meant was that that was the price of a higher end Smartphone or PocketPC - not the price of the miniMIXA software (which is around £10 to £20)! I guess there will be information about miniMIXA posted on the BBC website later.
NB: You might also be searching for mini mixer, mini mix, minimix, minimixer, music mixer, mobile phone etc.
On Saturday I was at the Slough Young People’s Center (SYPC) launch of their 6 MOBILE MASHUP courses. One of these is music mixing with miniMIXA. It was an interesting afternoon and DJ Spencer Lowe had created some drum loops that he was trying out, and various MCs including PanicPhaze joined in. Tao have a press release about the collabaration with SYPC here.
We were lucky to have Nadia from Radio 1Extra come to check out the course start and interview DJ Spencer Lowe and MC PanicPhaze. She also interviewed someone signing up for the course, and the SYPC Center Manager. Nadia’s report is being broadcast on Radio 1 today at 2:40pm, after the entertainment section (was around 3pm).
Here is the link to the 1Extra Homepage, click on the ‘Listen Live – Real’ link to tune in to the station: http://www.bbc.co.uk/1xtra/
Here is a picture of Nadia interviewing Spence, who is explaining how miniMIXA works.
I made a short video clip of the initial performance setup, and then where DJ Spencer Lowe and MC PanicPhaze were briefly showing Nadia the software (I did not make clips of the performance and audience though). l put something together and have uploaded it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-nqTef3j30
Well, it has been a busy time here for miniMIXA, and I have given a number of demos on Windows Mobile and Symbian devices to various Japanese handset manufacturers and service providers. The reaction in every case has been outstanding, and I have had comments from senior industry figures and meeting attendees like “My son would absolutely love to have this application on his phone”, “amazing” and “this would be really good in Japan” to “simply light years ahead of anything else I have seen” etc.
I have a good feeling now that we will be able to get services going in Japan around intent miXaPlayer (miniMIXA), and around Tao’s intent GamePlayer, too, the demos of which were also received very well indeed.
I must say, I found Japanese hospitality to be outstsanding, and I was made to feel very welcome. Japanese people everywhere seem very courteous and friendly, and it was a pleasure to be a visitor to this beautiful country. The transportation system in Tokyo is incredible, but, I must admit, I would not have had a clue (and still don’t) about how to find my way around it were it not for my knowledgeable companions. It may be I will be coming back to Japan soon, and I very much look forward to that!
I am on my first visit to Japan right now, doing a miniMIXA demo tour. An auspicious start was when my BA flight was full and I somehow got upgraded to business class. I have never in all my years traveled before in business class, and I must admit to being impressed (the food, cabin service and environs were all excellent). The trouble is, once you have experienced it, you can never look back! My one quibble, if I were to be allowed one, would be why do BA charge you to plug in your laptop on the plane? I was expecting (perhaps stupidly) to be able to plug in a standard mains power plug, and I had brought lots of adaptors just in case mine did not fit. Not a chance! I was told you have to buy a special adaptor for £80! Hmmm.
Just before leaving for this trip I had the privilege of giving a miniMIXA demo/performance to an audience of Microsoft employees. It was part of a demo extravaganza session by Jason Langridge and Dan Cohen. I must I was well impressed with the new Windows Mobile 6 interface, and how cool it looked. It also seemed to be so easy to enter text on a Smartphone device. That got me thinking that before setting off on this trip I needed to have an easy way to enter text on my own pocket pc. I decided to check out a piece of software called SPB Software House Full Screen Keyboard. It took no time at all to get used to, and it sure beats having to buy a bluetooth keyboard. It is well laid out and I don’t know why I did not think of looking for a software solution like this before. Word completion is excellent, too. It looks great and it is one piece of software that does the job without a fuss. One suggestion though, is were it too be possible, somehow miraculously, to be able to second guess when you got the key press area slightly wrong (some kind of weighting system), then it would be perfect. As I am just still trying out the demo version, this is one piece of software I will most certainly be buying. Mind you, that said, having seen how sexy the new window mobile 6 interface is, and how easy it is to enter text on a messenger like device, maybe I will be needing to trade in my ppc for one of those! I have my eye on one of the new, super powerful and nicely specced imate ‘ultimate‘ devices. Like any audio bod, I can always use the most powerful processors, so I am also keeping my eyes open for what Marvell are going to come up with next, too.
On Monday night (12th Feb) at the Tao 3GSM party in Barcelona’s Red Lounge, I did short performance on miniMIXA, mingling with the party goers - in between a great set from the house DJ, “DJ Monk”. I had miniMIXA++ running on an PocketPC and sending the live 22Khz stereo audio output stream via bluetooth to the venue’s PA system. It all worked fine, and I had some senior mobile industry figures mixing live, too.
For the set I had purchased from Time and Space some middle eastern audio loops (Roots of the Middle East and North Africa from Big Fish Audio and SoundScan Arabian Traditions from Universal Sound Bank) and was mixing these together with some excellent bass and drum loops from the Music Tech Magazine, plus an audio track and a modular synth riff, together with some spot loops. I had set these up with the miniMIXA++ Cell Mix (MusicDJ) mode, and used the new beta XY control surface and quality filter to cool effect.
It really was pretty spectacular (and fun) to be doing this all live on a mobile device, on the floor. I lost the bluetooth connection a couple of times when someone passed in front of the bluetooth module (it was a low power one), so that was useful to know.
Even though I am not a DJ, people seemed to enjoy it, and especially enjoyed participating in the mix and hearing themselves over the PA - seeing the excited reactions was really cool. The XY control surface went down particularly well, too. In the hands of a real DJ, this could all be so much cooler still.
For those interested, I have uploaded a quick mix of roughly what I did. It uses 11 of the 12 tracks in miniMIXA, and all 4 sections in MusicDJ mode. It uses high quality low pass and high pass filters (controlled with XY control surface), reverbs and even a modular softsynth. You should hear that everything is pretty tight. It was live mixed, and recorded (direct to SD card) on an HTC Universal. You can find the recording here :Red Lounge - Tao 3GSM Party Mix.
Was this a world first performance? Quite possibly(!), as it included the following elements: live 12 track mixing on a Windows Mobile device; 22KHz stereo output over bluetooth to the club’s PA; audience participation; modular synthesizer; spot loop triggering; full track audio file streaming from storage card; XY control panel (controlling filter cutoff/Q); loading content into the mix on the fly (auto pitch shift/time stretch from other MIXApaks); use of a range of live fx at track and global level.
It really was pretty spectacular (and fun) to be doing this all live on a mobile device, on the floor. I lost the bluetooth connection a couple of times when someone passed in front of the bluetooth module (it was a low power one), so that was useful to know.