vulture bytes

Vulture Bytes: Listening in on Random Strangers

This week: an app that lets you listen to random strangers’ music, a panoramic camera for your iPhone, moody covers of indie-folk songs, an app that turns your phone into an antique camera, and a cheaper, more commercial Kindle.

As always, we continue to await your tips at VultureBytes@gmail.com.

This is just too good for us to even dare question its legality. 8tracks, a website that somehow has escaped our notice until now, has come out with an iPhone app, and it has quickly become our favorite way to discover new music on our phones. Anyone can upload their own mixes of at least eight songs, with no artist able to appear more than twice. The app does a nice job of integrating with the music that’s already on your phone, so it’s very easy to assemble your tracks. And the best part is the chance to search for your favorite songs in others’ mixes. Nearly all of Vulture Bytes’ beloved tunes showed up in mixes called “music I listen to when I think the apocalypse nears” or some variant thereof. But misery loves company. Price: Free.
Vulture Bytes, along with a generation of twentysomethings who grew up while encyclopedias (albeit digital encyclopedias) still mattered, has very fond memories of Microsoft Encarta. We marveled at how so much information was crammed onto such a small CD-ROM. Its most entertaining function was always its 360-degree panorama shots of foreign cities. To this day, the only things we can tell you about Marrakech is that it’s in Morocco, Crosby, Stills, & Nash like it, and it looked real pretty inside Encarta. Ever since, we’ve always wanted to make our own panoramas. With an iPhone add-on we now can, and as a special bonus, they’re panoramic videos, not just photos. This supremely odd-looking accessory magnetically snaps onto your iPhone lens and lets you film in every direction without actually turning your phone. With 31 days to go to its deadline, it has already quadrupled its fund-raising goal on Kickstarter. It appears we’re not the only ones who want to return to Marrakech. PRICE: $50.
A couple of years ago the Internet stumbled upon two Swedish girls singing a Fleet Foxes song somewhere in the forest. It was the rare YouTube cover that actually worked on its own — close enough to the original’s haunting melody without being an imitation of it. Their video quickly topped a million views, and in 2010 they played SXSW. But that was a rare find. Wading through the muck to find stripped-down covers on YouTube is always difficult. Next time, we’re going to the Voice Project first. It’s run by a nonprofit dedicated to raising awareness of the bloodshed in central Africa, and while it won’t have all — or even most — of the covers you’re looking for, it will have some by established musicians. No need for strangers in a forest when you have Billy Bragg covering Joanna Newsom, Andrew Bird doing Cass McCombs, and Peter Gabriel paying homage to Tom Waits. They’re all acoustic, moody, black-and-white affairs, and they’re all quite good. PRICE: Free.
2011’s technology has finally found a way to replicate 1911’s art. This silent film app is mostly a fun little gimmick, but it continues to support Vulture Byte’s pet theory that all we want from our technology is to bring us back to a simpler time. The app is really just a visual effects editor in your pocket, but by honing its focus it actually proves more useful, becoming an Instagram for video. The app will convert your video to sepia, speed it up and even add those grainy projector lines to the images. Captions for all the nonspoken dialogue are also welcome. And if you tire of the silent-film treatment, there’s also a hipster/sixties mode to give the colors a good wash. PRICE: $2.
We know that most of you who have resisted buying a Kindle have done it for one reason: The thing just isn’t showing you enough ads. Amazon understands this has been a concern for many, which is why it’s coming out with a new version of its e-reader that will give you all the commercial notices you could ever want. The company has apparently unearthed an old business model from 1995, and plans to show you ads as the Kindle’s screensaver. When you turn the Kindle off, you’ll be greeted with grayscale one-sheets for Visa, Olay, and Buick. Your friends who bought the old one, meanwhile, will still get their staid images of Twain, Woolf, and Verne. You might think you’d have to pay for this privilege of having ads invade books, the last place they hadn’t yet conquered. But Amazon, in its generosity, is subsidizing this opportunity. Is it giving away free Kindles since it’ll make so much money from the advertising, you ask? No, you greedy fool, that’d be crazy. But Amazon is making these these ad-supported Kindles cheaper. By $25! They’re available starting May 3. Hurry and get in line. PRICE: $114.
Vulture Bytes: Listening in on Random Strangers