I was playing around with the second beta that was released today and I found that you can now have 11 pages of applications! Check out the screenshot below for 11 dots that represent pages, at the bottom. When 3.0 is publically released this summer, iPhone and iPod touch users will have a (current) limit of 180 apps instead of 148 apps which is how many 2.0 can have.
Hey everybody!
Congrats to the first two people to see this because you just won a free copy of BurnBall!
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To redeem go to www.itunes.com/redeem if you win please comment and follow the official twitter and the creators twitter
Coming sometime Tuesday, an official version of Skype for iPhone. The pricing is unknown. More news will develop soon.
Images (via CNET)
honor of the Smule interviews, one random person will win a free copy of Smule’s upcoming app, Leaf Trombone: World Stage! To enter, leave (or should I say, leaf) a comment below saying where you heard about The Loop Blog. Don’t forget to tell all your friends about the giveaway! Good luck!
Jonah: What got you into code and iPhone development?
David: I’ve been programming for a long time now and I’ve always enjoyed it. To me, writing code is like building virtual lego. Its very satisfying to assemble all the different pieces into something whole and functional. I got into iPhone development because I’ve developed for every other mobile platform under the sun (windows mobile, blackberry, palm os, etc) and when I met up with Jeff and Ge last summer, everything was aligned to take the plunge to do some iPhone dev.
Jonah: What was the first language of code and when did you learn it?
David: The first programming language I learned was BASIC and I was in 7th grade
Jonah: Is Smule the first development team you have worked for? If so, what companies and what did you make for them?
David: Smule is either the 3rd or 4th company I worked at, depending on if you count working for yourself or not. I previously worked at Jarna, Simple Mobility, Morgan Stanley. Those companies were all business focused and did not make consumer applications.
Jonah: What was your favorite Smule app to work on?
David: It’s like children, you must love them all equally and not play favorites.
Jonah: What first gave you the idea to use computers as instruments in an orchestra?
Ge: Wow thats a great question that I certainly can’t take credit for that as an idea. I would credit that idea to two people, Dan Truman and Perry Cook. Both professors at Princeton. In 1999 Dan made this crazy speaker array that was essentially the heart of a traditional Violin’s components which would be a fingerboard, a bow, as well as a bridge, and the sound. And then he used basically sensor software and speakers and put it back together. Then what it looks like is a big ball of speakers that he would actually have in front of him and perform with a sensor automated bow and a computer to synthesize the sounds as it interprets the movements. He asked what it would be like to have an army of people playing these speaker arrays and thats where he got the idea of a computer orchestra. So in short, it was not fully my idea but I was around for it.
Jonah: What brought you to starting Smule with Jeff Smith?
Ge: Well from my point of view when we started talking about Smule in April 2008 I was literally under a lot of crazy pressure helping to start the Stanford laptop orchestra and trying to finish up on my PHD at Princeton. That combination was doing a number on my schedule, sanity so if co-founding a company at that point certainly was not in my playbook at the time. The thing that really changed my mind was the iPhone, the SDK, and the App Store together. I think its truly something of an inflection point in terms of computing because when you look at the iPhone, its so much more then a phone. Its got multi-touch, microphone input, speaker output, a powerful CPU that rivals machines years ago, a graphics processing unit. Ontop of that it’s got GPS location and its always connected to the internet. And all of those are packed into this tiny device which I can put in my pocket and then take it out and use it pretty much anytime, anywhere. And to me it doesn’t seem like a miniturized computer, its its own thing. So in April 2008 Jeff Smith and I talked about this and a lot of ideas and we decided to try it in the summer of 2008.
Jonah: Was the original plan to make iPhone apps that are heavily sound and network integrated?
Ge: You know to tell the truth when starting Smule we didn’t know what we were going to do. We still don’t. The golden quote that has been adopted by many of us is, “If we knew what we were doing, it would not be research.” It is the “Smulean” way.
Jonah: When you sat down and thought about Ocarina, was blowing into the microphone the clear path you wanted to take?
Ge: Pretty much.
Archimage: If you were not to do sound based apps what type of apps would you do?
Ge: I think apps that really explore the potential platform. When I think about that for us I think apps that really allow you to be expressive, if not musically and sonically expressive and to be creative.
Jonah: If you could work for any other development team, what would it be?
Ge: I’d probably be catching up on sleep or be working for iSleep/iEat/Cornholio inc.
Jonah: This ones for The Mule, what would your life be like without the Smulean presence?
The Mule: Hahaha, well thats an interesting question, I think I’m actually here because my life was somewhat similar to how it is now. I think the reason Ge and Jeff decided to call me up one day late last summer was possibly because I’m just goofy, crazy, and wear crazy clothes all the time
