Our friend Dr. Ge Wang of Smule kicked off the 2011 Game Developers Conference with a panel providing a nice overview of all of the company's apps so far. The theme of his talk was basically what we spoke with him about at CES earlier this year: as computers grow from mainframe to personal computer, and now to smartphones and mobile devices, the technology is disappearing into the background, and the connections it creates between us are coming to the forefront. Lately, he said, "technology is so personal, it's pervasive." That's the realm Smule has tried to enter into with its apps, from the early Sonic Lighter up through Magic Fiddle. "Old computing is about what computers can do," said Dr. Wang, "and new computing is about what people can do with them." During the talk, Dr. Wang went through demos of all of Smule's apps, and while he didn't have Read More

The big knock against smartphones, iPods and iPads is that no one really needs one. There is no question you can get by without any of the nearly 300,000 mobile apps on the market. But if you ever felt the need to express yourself with music, and you test out some of the better apps, your definition of “need” may quickly wither. Tricked out with apps like Glee ($1), Band ($4), Bebot ($2) and others, the iPhone is history’s most versatile music creation device. The iPad offers a different and, in many ways, expanded dimension to the iPhone’s musical abilities, with apps like Magic Piano ($1), Air Harp ($2), Xewton Music Studio ($15) and Korg’s iElectribe ($10). And although users of other types of mobile phones, like the Android and the BlackBerry, are so far without these particular apps, they can still find a few decent ones to help tap into Read More

We've talked to a lot of people at Macworld already, but Dr. Ge Wang is one of my favorites -- he's the co-founder of Smule, creators of popular apps for the iPhone that combine music and social experiences in a very interesting way. Wang's day job is an associate professorship at Stanford, and you can tell when listening to him talk about these apps that he's very passionate about using interesting platforms like the iPhone (and soon, as we discuss, the iPad) to help people from all walks of life make and share their own songs and musical experiences. I can't say I've been a fan of all of Smule's apps (as we say in the video, I still don't really understand the full appeal of Sonic Lighter), but I can't argue that Dr. Wang has some really intriguing ideas about how to use this platform. And Smule's ongoing popularity can't Read More