Crave

(Credit: Ghostly International)

Mood-based music playlists have been a holy grail for audio entrepreneurs since the dawn of the MP3. There's just something unshakable about the idea that your iPod might sense your mood and play music to fit your precoffee grogginess or sun-filled Saturday frolic. Unfortunately, everyone from MIT to Memorex has experienced mixed success trying to crack the music mood algorithm.

The problem with automatic playlists based on mood is that the scope of music can often be overwhelming (what's more energetic, Techno or Oompah Polka?) and the technology used to analyze and assign mood attributes to music files is imperfect.

But just when all hope seemed lost that a mood-based jukebox would ever see the light of day, independent music label Ghostly International ripped the curtain off an iPhone app that takes a new approach.

Ghostly Discovery is a free application for the iPhone and iPod Touch that allows you to stream music from Ghostly's eclectic catalog of electronic, pop, hip-hop, and ambient artists. The streaming audio app serves up recommended songs based on your mood input (based around a mood ring-style color gradient) and settings for music style (digital/organic) and tempo (faster/slower). Once a song is playing, you can play, pause, and skip songs, read artist information, or choose to purchase the song through iTunes.

Ghostly Discovery from Ghostly International on Vimeo.

The brilliant part of all this is that it solves three problems in one shot. First off, it cracks the long-standing mood jukebox problem by offering a selection of songs small enough for the developer to tag individually and accurately (like a label-specific Music Genome Project). Second, it gives fans of the Ghostly's tightly curated roster of artists a way to hear songs free of charge. And finally, the app boosts the profile of the label, maintaining its relevance as a taste-maker, promoting its artists, and giving fans a cool app to show off to friends.

Let's hope other labels follow suit. I'd love to see indie rock labels like Sub Pop try its hand at this, or maybe a jazz label like Vanguard with an intimidatingly large catalog. Thoughts?

(via ISO50)

(Credit: Crave UK)

During the day, we're mild-mannered tech bloggers, wearing glasses and looking moody in our vast, yet innocuous, Crave penthouse. But at night, we fight crime. We take on the persona of a creature of the night--black, terrible, shadowy. We become the Ghost Pigeon.

To protect our loved ones, we have to keep our secret identity super-duper seekrit. That means hiding our calls and texts to the police commissioner, especially when we send him MMS messages with videos of us collaring a miscreant.

Luckily, just for people like us there's Sonaworks' Ghost Pigeon software, a secret-phone-within-a-phone that will hide your texts, MMS messages, and calls. It's available now in the U.K. and a bunch of other countries, including Estonia, Bulgaria, Norway, Nigeria, and Cyprus, but apparently it hasn't made its way to the U.S. yet.

Ghost Pigeon is invisible on the phone--there's no icon in the menu. Instead, you launch the application by typing in a password. Here at Crave UK, we installed Ghost Pigeon on our 8GB Nokia N95, and although it's visible in the list of installed apps, its name is well disguised.

We could hide contacts, so that we only saw them from within Ghost Pigeon, not in our normal list of contacts. The phone rang normally for incoming calls from hidden --or "pigeonated"--contacts, but they were only stored in Ghost Pigeon's call logs and weren't visible in the normal call log.

Similarly, our phone alerted us to incoming texts from a hidden contact, but the texts didn't show up in our normal in-box, only in the Ghost Pigeon in-box.

Justin's new roommate.

(Credit: The Horror Dome)

Man, we're never going to have a complete show again. With Wilson in Boston visiting his newborn son, we invite Natali Del Conte back on the show, where we disgust and delight her with stories about gravity-defying bras, sleeping with rodents, and a $4k pair of Xbox/Nike sneakers.

After begging Natali to take me back, we move onto a story about a pair of Nike sneakers that fetched $4k on eBay this weekend. They're custom made and feature fiber optic wiring that makes the shoes light up and glow on the wearer. You can guess how wide Jeff opened up the hating floodgates on these guys.

We've also got a really disgusting story about a new strain of SUPER RAT found in Europe that's resistant to pesticides and modern poison. I've got my own story to tell about my ongoing battle with mice in my home, and I won't give away any secrets, but be sure to listen to the last 15 minutes of the show to hear the rest...R.O.U.S. is a staggering understatement. Enjoy your lunch everyone!

(Credit: Engadget Japan)

This post was updated Monday at 12:06 p.m. PDT to include SCEA's official statement on the issue.

The PSP 3000 is equipped with an updated screen, which--according to Sony--reduces glare, offers better color reproduction, and reduces pixel ghosting. Now that the models are hitting retail, however, some users are complaining that the supposed improvements are actually a step backward, introducing artifacts in the form of visible scanlines and jaggies on the screen.

When queried on the issue, Sony's Japanese headquarters (SCEI) is said to have replied, "Since this phenomenon is caused by hardware characteristics, there is no plan to fix it with a system software update." (That's as reported on Engadget Japan, and translated by its sister site, Joystiq.)

We've reached out to Sony's U.S. arm, SCEA, who provided us with the following statement:

On some occasions, scan lines may appear on scenes where brightness changes drastically, due to the hardware features of the new LCD device on PSP-3000. Installed with this new LCD device, PSP-3000 offers more natural and vibrant colors on its screen, but the scan lines have come out to be more visible as a result of improving response time to alleviate the afterimages on PSP-3000. Since this is due to hardware specification, there are no plans for a system software update concerning this issue.

Having a PSP 3000 on hand, here's what we'd say: the issue definitely exists, and is more noticeable in scenes with a lot of movement (on games or video playback). Likewise, it's more irksome to some more than others. Still, that's little comfort for someone who's paying between $170 and $200 for what's billed as the latest and greatest PSP system to date.

We're continuing our evaluation of the PSP 3000 with the screen issue in mind, and will update our review accordingly. In the meantime, any interested buyers should hold off on taking the plunge on the PSP 3000--or at least make sure to get a hands-on demo in the store first.

(Source: Engadget Japan via PSP Fanboy via Joystiq)

Nine Inch Nails' surprise release of Ghosts I-IV today in five differently priced formats is the perfect example of how recorded music can, should, and inevitably will be sold in a world where free has become the norm.

Would you pay $300 for this? Depends on how big a fan you are.

(Credit: Nine Inch Nails)

I suggested several business models for recorded music in my post the other day, which was a response to Chris Anderson's Wired article about "free" as the future of business. Ghosts employs at least two of them.

First and foremost, it's a great example of the "freemium" model, in which the hardcore NIN fans subsidize the cheaper offerings--the highest-priced $300 edition is personally signed by Trent Reznor and includes the regular CDs, a data DVD with the entire album in .wav files, a Blu-ray DVD with a high-definition (24-bit, 96kHz) version and slideshow, four vinyl LPs, and more.

Implicitly, NIN is also using the cross-subsidy model. All the offerings include non-DRM-protected data files, and some even include lossless files, which offer the same quality as a CD. Trent Reznor isn't dumb--he knows that somebody will post these files online within seconds of receiving them. In fact, the band has even posted the first nine tracks (the free MP3 versions) to several BitTorrent trackers. But he hopes that casual listeners or one-time fans who haven't checked out NIN's recent work will be sufficiently attracted by these free files to check the band out when it comes through town, and may eventually become big enough fans to pay for future releases.

It looks foolproof to me. NIN minimizes the risk of unsold physical inventory by taking advance orders, and with downloads, there's almost no incremental cost of distribution. The only potential problem would be if the band doesn't sell enough to cover the cost of recording the album, which seems unlikely. Any label lucky enough to have an artist with a devoted following and decent live show should be paying attention--although they might find that selling a two-CD set for $10 makes it hard to pay for the upkeep on those private jets.

(Credit: IWantOneOfThose.com)

All good things must come to an end. Eventually, your co-workers will become immune to your flying toy antics, and you'll need to come up with some other way to irritate them. So here's the answer you've been looking for: the black helicopter.

This way, not only can you buzz them at will, but you can also prey on their paranoid tendencies at the same time--the best of all conspiratorial worlds. The "Black Ghost," as first seen on Coolest-Gadgets, has "full altitude and directional control," which is a good thing because it'll need it when the other cubicle dwellers come after it to retaliate.

Just in case you aren't busy enough playing Metroid Prime 3: Corruption today, here are the three virtual console games released this morning.

• Super C (1990, NES, 500 Wii points)--Super C is the sequel to the classic Konami action side-scroller, Contra. In Super C, you'll take on even more aliens and baddies, some of which used to be your allies.
  
  
• Breath of Fire II (1995, Super NES, 800 Wii points)--Play as one of nine available characters in this highly regarded RPG filled with demons, dragons, and magic.
  
  
• Ghouls 'n Ghosts (1989, Genesis, 800 Wii points)--The Ghouls 'n Ghosts series has lasted multiple console generations and has even been remixed for today's gamers. Up for download is the original 1989 classic that every fan of the series should experience.

(Credit: Tokyomango)

We always suspected it was true, and now we have confirmation: Alien eyeballs are invading the planet. There have been all manner of thinly veiled ocular disguises, ranging from loudspeakers to super magnifiers, but the true masterminds have taken the form of Webcams.

The indisputable proof? An appendaged speciman of an eyeball Webcam has been photographed and posted on Tokyomango, masquerading as a replica of a Japanese ghost named "Medama no Oyaji" who, oddly enough, walks around naked and "speaks in a really high voice." (We hope those two characteristics aren't related.) Come to think of it, the alien identity is probably preferable.

When Sharon Leong conducts field work, she packs a digital camera, a thermometer and an electromagnetic field meter. She isn't a private detective or an electrician. Leong, a legal secretary by day, is an avid ghost hunter by night.

With those gizmos and many others in tow, Leong treks to reputedly haunted homes, battlefields, bars and hotels, gathering what she thinks may be evidence of a world beyond this earthly one. The pursuit of ghostly evidence has been a popular pastime for centuries. Now, instead of Ouija boards, ghost hunters are increasingly turning to high tech gear to assist in their search.

Such ghost hunters rely upon digital equipment to document potential signs of hauntings. Cameras and voice recorders pick up eerie sights and sounds, while handheld gadgets measure electromagnetic radiation and odd drops in temperature. Jumpsuits like those from Ghostbusters are unnecessary, but pocket-laden cargo pants and fishing jackets are handy for stashing all of the gear.

For the full News.com story on how well all this equipment works, click here.