If you go to Wikipedia, and try to navigate from one article to another you will probably learn plenty about both subjects. More importantly, you are very likely to remember the learning because our memory works through connections. Created by Ivan Zhao, Three Degrees of Wikipedia makes this into a social game. You can not only acquiring new knowledge through solving such 3-degrees connection puzzles, but also enlightening other players by create your own puzzles.

Features/Gameplay:
+ Solve a problem by connecting two Wikipedia articles through their links, in 3 degrees total
+ Create problems to challenge other players, and earn “Enlightening” points (or special badges) if your problems are well-received.
+ Review your completed or favourite problems to reinforce the learning
+ “Most Enlightening Problems of the Week”
+ Abbreviated Wikipedia articles to for quicker game-play and learning that is right to the point
+ Connect to Facebook & Twitter for saving and sharing your problems.
+ Badges, badges, badges!
+ Retina Display ready

..and all of this delivered in an elegant and beautifully designed UI. A must!

Platform: iPhone
Version: 1.0
Cost: $0.99 / $2.99
Developer: Three Degrees of Wikipedia

Created by Dofl Y.H Yun of Firstborn, DolfBall is an “air hockey” type game, fun for people and animals alike. Named after Firstborn Senior Developer, DoflBall meshes the iPad’s touchscreen capabilities with engaging and fun multiplayer gameplay.

Dofl and the Firstborn team created this simple “air hockey” type game where players fling a “ball” back and forth across the screen, holding down two fingers to create a deflection. Participants can play with a friend or against the app. Dofl even enlisted his cat to be a test subject—while she didn’t totally understand the rules it proved to be a great way to keep Dof’s furry friend entertained for hours.

Watch Cat Vs Dog demo below.

Made with openFrameworks + ofxiPhone + ofxBox2d.

Platform: iPad
Version: 1.0
Cost: Free
Developer: Firstborn

MOC by Lab212 explores the relationship between sound and image through simple interactions and fun. Exhibited in the French Institute of Meknes (Moc à Meknès, Maroc, à l’occasion du FICAM10.), MOC is an imaginary landscape that passes in front of the viewer. Whistling into a microphone, a tree grows: its shape will evolve in real time based on the sound produced. At each pause, the tree stops growing. At the sound of the voice, random fantastic animals will emerge in the forest.

Setup:
- microphone on a stand
- 2.30 x 2.30m retroprojected screen
- videoprojector and a mirror
- custom software written in C++/openFrameworks

Cyril of Lab212 was kind enough to provide some details:
The app extracts the dominant bin of the sound frequency to grow each branches at a certain angle. When the difference between the base angle and the last one reaches a certain value, the branch splits etc.. Because of the way we’re currently drawing the leafs (ofImages with their own matrix), we quickly faced performance issues. So we moved the points of the branches from vectors/ofPolys to vbo/gl_triangle_strip which saved a lot of CPU resources. Also, now, when a whistling is complete the whole tree is drawn on a FBO thanks to ofxFBOTexture addon. That also added lot more fps! But for the next show of the installation we’ll try to move the leafs from ofImages to vbos which should completely remove the lag you may encounter in this version.

Team:
Béatrice Lartigue – artistic direction & design
Cyril Diagne – software development
Lab212

Created by Eric Rosenbaum at the  MIT Media Lab + Lifelong Kindergarten, MmmTsss is a free application for playful sound looping. Pressing the mouse button will allow you to attach a sound to a track. You can increase or decrease volume of each track or use plus or minus to increase or decrease tempo. Left and Right arrows allow you to move between the tracks to either selectively switch some off or to add additional sounds.

MmmTsss is available for both Mac and Windows and can be downloaded here.

What does “MmmTsss” mean?
It’s a sound: a bass drum in your throat (mmm) and then a little hi-hat on your teeth (tsss). Do this over and over, bobbing your head, and you’ve got your own party. Mmmtsss mmmtsss mmmtsss mmmtsss….

MmmTsss

Made with openFrameworks

(via)

Created using openFrameworks, DropBlocs is a new block dropping game created by Lloyd Harrison. You score points by dropping blocks onto their matching counterparts whilst trying to manage the tilt on the iPhone. When you find the block on the screen, by panning around, tap the screen and select matching block to drop. To match you will also need to rotate the falling block while maintaining the spotlight around the square you are matching. Move too fast and you will loose the points. Tricky but fun.

Lloyd is a designer/developer specialising in creating rich and engaging interactive applications for web, kiosk and mobile devices. Currently working at Liquid Digital, he is responsible for developing the creative talents and output of the creative team. He has several years experience working with large clients like Motorola, Tesco, Asda, WHSmith, Coca Cola, Cabvision and many more. For other projects see lloydharrison.co.uk

Platform: iPhone
Version: 1.0
Cost: Free
Developer: Lloyd Harrison

Inspired by the brilliant use of an early 80′s concept in the recent OKGo ‘WTF’ video (see below), Mehmet Akten aka memo created this little open-source demo in Processing. It works in real-time with a webcam.

You can download the source here.

Memo writes: I tried to keep the source super minimal and as easy to read as possible. For better results, you can try running an erode on the subtracted image, do a contour analysis and smooth the edges slightly. It also helps to run it in front of an empty wall with stable lighting, and ideally a webcam which has manual exposure / shutterspeed / gain etc.

If you are looking for a QuarzComposer version of the same, Vade made one and you can download it here.

See also how the original OKGo video was made here and the King of Pop’s version from over 3 decades ago here

It’s almost Christmas time and we would like to take a quick moment and thank our great sponsors for enabling us to deliver such great content to our readers. Please take a moment and visit their websites for great products and offers.

Why Advertise on CreativeApplications.Net?
CAN is always seeking site sponsors for our growing audience of gamers, musicians, creative geeks and more. If you are a developer, merchandiser or supplier with products aimed at a design-savy audience we need you!! In addition to all the click love you will receive a monthly recognition to thank you as our sponsors, just like this one.

Our ad space is available at variable sizes, no obligation, cancel after the first month. If interested, check out our BuySellAds directory listing for prices and stats.

1. 125—125px Banners / $35 / Right Column // AVAILABLE!!

2. 255—125px Banner / $60 / Right Column //sold out // get on the waiting list

3. 640—90px Banners / $35 / In-Post // sold out // get on the waiting list

This month, we would like to thank our valued sponsors mills, Bleepboxapp, The Strange Agency, Appsaurus and our newest sponsor: synthprobe

SynthProbe

SynthProbe is a new musical instrument which every users can enjoy playing, regardless of instrument skills, intuitively. By touching and tilting your iPhone, or iPod Touch, you can play a variety of phrases.SynthProbe features an analog synthesizer. You can play music in many genres such as techno, house, hip-hop, dance , etc. Touch and tilt your iPhone or iPod Touch, a variety of effects and filter effects will be changed and played in an unexpected sound or phrase.

Find out more by visiting the website.

Appsaurus

Appsaurus is the latest app from San Francisco based Hello, Chair Inc. Currently under development, expect to see it in the App Store (and all over the internet) late fall ’09. In the meantime, make sure you check out their other products at hellochair.com.

MillsUsTwo

mills is the co-owner of digital design family ustwo ‘the studio of dreams’ – talking iPhone Apps+Design and one of the only tweeters not talking f*cking sh*te. Cool as ice, funny as folk, sharp as a knife, bling, bling you don’t get much more fun out of twitter. Follow him today!

Just released is their second of five 48 hours apps, a mix of sound, graphics, and addictive game play ..™ is the new dot adventure. Tilt the phone to guide DOT in this 3D world, blue balls are food, red triangles are death. Simple, gorgeous and addictive gameplay. How long can you last?

Thank you Mills for your continued support!

Sound Scope Space

Building on the huge success of its free Sound Scope iPhone application, the Strange Agency LLC’s Sound Scope Space is a unique audio-visual, multi-touch musical instrument for the iPhone. The team has also just released new app called Slice. Slice is the ultimate DJ experience, Slice lets you juggle broken beats like a pro DJ with an absolutely unique touch interface. Jump around the loop, rearrange its pieces, select portions to make shorter loops, add and tweak echo effects, all in real time as the loop keeps playing!

We wrote about Slice already so check out the post here + find more great iPhone sound toy apps by the Strange Agency on their website.

BleepBox

bleep!BOX is an electronic drum / synth box for your iPhone. It features no samples. All sounds controllable and synthesized in realtime on the iPhone!

Features:
10 Synth / Drum parts (aka voices)
50+ Parameters
Save patches and presets
Live performance modes
Step sequencing + recording modes
Parameter automation
Realtime processing – NO SAMPLES

You can also download the Player (lite) version here. It is the same as the full version apart from ability to save.

In addition, bleep!Synth, high-quality synthesizer for your iPhone or Touch is coming out Dec 28th!  For more info see bleepsynthapp.com

I do wonder whether submitting an unfinished app to the AppStore will get you a post on CAN, ie if you can get it pass Apple. I repeatedly mention to developers that we love playing with things ‘in progress’, sketchy, unfinished, unskinned, buggy apps as there is something really interesting in how apps become apps without all the glitz, UI dress and final colouring in. I also think that, like in this instance, some developers think that their app will go unseen considering the 500 releases/updates daily in the AppStore. Of course, what they don’t realise that we at CAN scan through AppStore daily for quirky, new, interesting apps even though this process can sometimes be quite tedious.

StiloPhone is one of those apps. Call it ‘work in progress’ or just a ‘test’, considering that electronic is also spelt “eletronic”, single screenshot, things are off-centre, suggests that guys at stilomatic just wanted to see what happens. I have been wondering whether to post anything about this app but considering it’s functionality is quite interesting and you, the reader, might actually enjoy this.

Built using openFrameworks StiloPhone is an interesting, fun, buggy soundtoy for your iPhone/iPod Touch. It allows you to create compositions using three methods; First method, which repeatedly crashes the App is something to do with drawing circles. The second method “grid” is a basic tonematrix with some quite interesting samples built in. The third is called “random” and it includes lots of particles bouncing around the screen somewhat generating the sound. I couldn’t quite figure what was going on but all quite interesting nevertheless.

Now, if any of this sounds at all interesting to you, it will be $1.99 for your to download this fun yet buggy little app. Alternatively, you could always wait for an update but considering that this may never happened you may be left in the dark wondering if you missed out on something special. So I leave this decision to you and if you like what you see below the decision should be easy…or not =]

Platform: iPhone
Version: 1.0
Cost: $1.99
Developer: stilomatic

We would like to thank our loving sponsors for enabling us to deliver such great content for our readers. Please take a moment and visit their websites for some great products and offers.

Why Advertise on CreativeApplications.Net?
CAN is always seeking site sponsors for our small but diverse audience: gamers, iPhone lovers, creative geeks and more. If you are a developer, merchandiser or supplier with products aimed at a design-savy, geeky audience we need you!! In addition to all the click love you will receive a monthly recognition to thank you as our sponsors, just like this one.

Our ad space is available at variable sizes, no obligation, cancel after the first month. If interested, check out our BuySellAds directory listing for prices and stats.

1. 125—125px Banners / $35 / Right Column //sold out // get on the waiting list

2. 255—125px Banner / $60 / Right Column //sold out // get on the waiting list

3. 640—90px Banners / $35 / In-Post // sold out // get on the waiting list

This month, we would like to thank our valued sponsors mills, Bleepboxapp, The Strange Agency, Appsaurus and our newest sponsor: GravSynth

GravSynth

GravSynth is musical instrument app for the iPhone that allows you to produce and alter sounds using the touch interface and tilt motion (accelerometer) in the iPhone. We have already written about this awesome sound toy and you can read out whole review here. We would like to thank the team at Kayac for supporting us. Read more about GravSynth and many other apps team has produced on their website.

Appsaurus

Appsaurus is the latest app from San Francisco based Hello, Chair Inc. Currently under development, expect to see it in the App Store (and all over the internet) late fall ’09. In the meantime, make sure you check out their other products at hellochair.com.

MillsUsTwo

mills is the co-owner of digital design family ustwo ‘the studio of dreams’ – talking iPhone Apps+Design and one of the only tweeters not talking f*cking sh*te. Cool as ice, funny as folk, sharp as a knife, bling, bling you don’t get much more fun out of twitter. Follow him today!

UsTwo have a new app soon to be available in the AppStore under the name of Crazo. Whilst we don’t yet have the details of the game, get this FREE set of iPhone wallpapers, taken from this christmas iPhone game.

Christmas is also a time of giving, and ustwo™ are doing just that. They are offering FREE APPvertisemART™ for 10 Apps within CRAZO™, to go alongside their very own inApp adverts. The team will choose the most beautiful/creative and cool APPvertismART™ to be included within the APPvertismART™ section of the FREE CRAZO™ App (predicted to get 200k+ downloads). It’s an opportunity NOT to be missed. Get more info here.

Thank you Mills for your continued support!

Sound Scope Space

Building on the huge success of its free Sound Scope iPhone application, the Strange Agency LLC’s Sound Scope Space is a unique audio-visual, multi-touch musical instrument for the iPhone. The team has also just released new app called Slice. Slice is the ultimate DJ experience, Slice lets you juggle broken beats like a pro DJ with an absolutely unique touch interface. Jump around the loop, rearrange its pieces, select portions to make shorter loops, add and tweak echo effects, all in real time as the loop keeps playing!

We wrote about Slice already so check out the post here + find more great iPhone sound toy apps by the Strange Agency on their website.

BleepBox

bleep!BOX is an electronic drum / synth box for your iPhone. It features no samples. All sounds controllable and synthesized in realtime on the iPhone! It is coming soon to the app store.

Features:
10 Synth / Drum parts (aka voices)
50+ Parameters
Save patches and presets
Live performance modes
Step sequencing + recording modes
Parameter automation
Realtime processing – NO SAMPLES

In the meantime, check out the site with many screens and full feature list.

You can also download the Player (lite) version here. It is the same as the full version apart from ability to save.

Currently in review Now available is the new iPhone painting application by Kenichi Hamada that allows you to create mysterious swirling patterns from dots on a revolving canvas. Inspired somewhat by the 60s spin art and work of Alfons Schilling and even later our own Damien Hirst, Dr. Mandala is a digital version of very popular rotating canvas painting.

Included also is a high level of customisation of how your dots appear and behave on the canvas. Besides being able to changed the dot size, you can also change the dot shape (only 2 available for now). You can turn the grid on/off to guide the dots or load an image from your photo album to paint over. There is also a bunch of shake operations as you can see in the video but I have never been fond of having to shake the phone to do anything so this one is on you.

Dr. Mandala, as appears in the video, does produce some pretty incredible patterns. I do like that the author adds a message to warn that: Staring for prolonged periods at rapidly rotating pictures may cause nausea. If this happens, please stop using this application immediately. Sounds like a must =]

Dr. Mandala

(thanks Kenichi)

Platform: iPhone
Version: 1.0
Cost: Free to try + $1.99 upgrade to full version
Developer: Kenichi Hamada