Wii enhancements: Wee!

There’s good news for gamers, yet again. The Nintendo Wii is possibly the greatest gaming system ever in life (warning: the preceding was a completely biased opinion and no, the author does not care), and Nintendo has plans to make it even better. Hot on the heels of the wildly popular Wii-Fit, which is has revolutionized the lives of fat-bottomed (warning: the preceding was a Queen reference, who caught that?) gamers everywhere, Nintendo intends to enhance the standard Wii-mote with a wee, teeny box called the Wii MotionPlus. It’s supposed to enhance the Wii-mote’s response and precision, and to make playing games on the Wii an overall more intense experience – namely because it is much more motion sensitive. Nintendo’s also introducing Wii Music, which lets gamers play fifty different instruments, just the way they are really played. The balance board is going to double as part of a drum kit – it will be the bass drum. Ba-dum ching, baby.

Pitch-Perfect Technology

So. Good news and bad news, all in one package. Celemony Software, a Munich based company, has come out with some new recording technology. Direct Note Access is a computer program which can create digital recordings in which each note is perfect. It can change the individual notes of a specific instrument, for example, without it being necessary to touch any of the other notes. Everything can be entirely pitch perfect with little to no effort – because, yes, it is possible to perfect a singer’s pitch as well. So why is this bad news, too? Because I imagine that it means there will be tons more singers of the Ashlee Simpson/Brooke Hogan/et cetera variety, who can’t really carry a tune but get a record deal anyway, because they look good and computers can make them sound good, so hey, why not? I’m a music snob, ergo it’s bad news to me. Of course, that’s likely Ashlee’s problem already: her real problem on that SNL debacle was probably due to the fact that her studio made her sound so perfect that lip-synching was her only option for a live performance.

Turn Your Phone into a Jukebox

We use our cell phones for everything these days. They can double as computers, cameras, and little pocket-jukeboxes – except that the sound quality in most devices, no matter how chic they are, rarely give us the oomph we get from MP3 players. If we don’t have the funds to spring for the choicest wireless devices, we’re SOL – at least, we were. Logitech’s got a Pure-Fi mobile speaker out on the market now. Phones with A2DP support will get some serious stereo-sound from these, and when paired with a Bluetooth, you can hear your music even if you’re 33 feet away.