SMule: Ocarina [Zeldarian] from SonicMule, Inc. on Vimeo.
Perhaps the smartest iPhone app maker out there is Smule — a new startup whose founders include Princeton alumni Ge Wang and Spencer Salazar along with computer science professor Perry Cook.
Smule’s digital lighter is today’s number one iPhone app. And iPhoneNess reports that the Ocarina — another Smule app that turns the iPhone into a modern version of an ancient flute-like instrument — has taken the top spot at the iTunes store. The app also allows you to hear other Ocarina iPhone users currently playing elsewhere on planet Earth. As the company’s CEO explained recently at the Under the Radar conference, Smule is a pioneer in the new product category of sonic media.
Ocarina, which Mamk.net calls “brilliant,” is apparently becoming popular among Zelda players. Jason Rappaport offers an in-depth tutorial on zeldauniverse.net. (By the way, that is Ge Wang in the video above.)
Let’s see — what digital media outlet hasn’t written about Smule yet? Find more at Gizmodo, The Girl Gamer, Wireless Week, iphonehacks, Techcrunch, Cnet, and Wired.
In more serious news, the current Princeton Alumni Weekly features Perry Cook’s work on the Aphasia Project with computer science graduate students Xiaojuan Ma and Sonya Nikolova. The project seeks to use computers to aid those who because of brain injury have difficulties with language.
Cook, by the way, is cofounder, with Dan Trueman, of the Princeton Laptop Orchestra, or PLOrk. PLOrk is the subject of several short, masterful videos by documentary filmmaker Jeremy Robins. Lance Herrington of the Princeton Broadcast Center also recently produced a fabulous video about PLOrk.
